Opus 2023-187: Another Slant on Liberty

You may have heard of the Liberty Bell.  You may be aware of the inscription, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land.”  I would hope you know where that phrase came from but if you went to public school all this would all bring from you is “Huh?”

The inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Bible.

(Lev 25:10 KJV)  And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

The bell makers took the part they wanted but there is more to the quotation than meets the editors eye.  A little background is in order.  I am not going to try to go through the entire chapter but I want to lift out some specifics of the verse.

There are several revolutionary concepts in this.  The first is the concept of “liberty.”  When the bell was ordered and the inscription agreed on the first thing that came to mind was the idea of political liberty.  Today we would think in terms of the Bill of Rights.  In the time Leviticus was written political freedom was a different concept than we have today.  Israel had no king or organized government.  The closest was in the person of Moses who had appointed tribal elders to assist him in running things.  It would have been closer to the original arrangement of the United States under the Articles of Confederation.  

The Hebrew word for “liberty” is consistently translated that way by the KJV.  The NASB more frequently uses the word “release”.  The underlying concept is flowing or free run.  From our Declaration of Independence you might get “the pusuit of happiness.”  That understanding relates to the other concepts in this verse and the rest of the chapter.

Involved in this statement is a concept that is anathema to the modern elites.  It is the concept of property.  Back when Israel moved into the Promised Land and divide it up there were assignments given.  That land was to stay in the family forever.  In most ancient and medieval cultures the land belonged to the elites.  In order to maintain this non-traditional arrangement, only under precise circumstances could it be sold and usually that sale was more of a lease.  It had to be returned to the original owner in the year of Jubilee.  A landless man was little more than a slave.  So every fifty years all land was to revert to the original owner.  That obviously meant the original Jewish owner, not the original pagan tribes that held the land, so don’t get excited about giving Manhattan back to the Indians, although I am not sure I would not vote for that.  

Also implicit in this regulation was that slaves were to be freed.  The seeds to destroy slavery were being laid by God all the way back in Leviticus.  It did not eliminate slavery, common to all cultures, it put a time limit on the servitude.  

Also notice the importance of the family.  When you are freed you are to go back home.  This is another foundation of Godly society that the Marxists and their followers are trying to destroy.

So happy 4th.  Celebrate with your family in your home.  Enjoy the liberty to travel and move around as much as you want.  The foundation for all that is in the Bible.

homo unius libri