The Song of the Shmittah Year:
144,000 Harps
Behar "On the Mountain"
Leviticus 25:1-26:2
Jeremiah 32:6-27
Psalm 112
Revelation 14:1-5

The year of release each seventh year leads to a Yovel, or Jubilee.  It is a return, "each man to his family."  We usually read about the Yovel as a physical return to the physical Land of Israel according to tribal affiliation. The Word, however, is both physical and spiritual (Romans 7:14).   If there is a natural goal of return each 50 years, then there is a spiritual goal in returning to the physical Land.  

In past studies, we've established Israel as the Resurrection Land, for the Garden of Eden hovers hidden just above it.  The Yovel then becomes another way of illustrating how a person is "gathered to his people."  Instead of being gathered to the bones of an ancestral grave, the person is gathered to a living, producing, Land in a year when the produce is not humanly grown.  Its residents eat spiritual-natural food, returning the tribes to Eden, a spiritual-natural place that must be worked and guarded for a period of six years, then rested.  When the 7 shmittah years have been counted, then the Yovel of free return can occur.

Apart from this process, Eden disappears from sight because humans "sell out" their faith in return and resurrection.  You sell out, you move out.  This is what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Even a "slave," whether pierced or not, must return to his ancestral property. This is not a slave in our Western understanding of a human as property.  This type of "slave" either sold himself to work for unpaid debts (better), or the court sold him to work for unpaid debts or thefts for which he could not pay restitution (not as better).  These Hebrew indentured servants had to be treated respectfully and on a level with the "master's" privileges in terms of comfort. 

On the cross, a thief was paying his debt the Roman way.  The Hebrew way would have been to indenture him to work for someone until he repaid restitution for his thefts.   Yeshua forgave the thief of a much greater debt, and he assured the thief that he would return to his homeland "this day." 

The LORD then spoke to Moses  at  Mount Sinai, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a  sabbath to the LORD. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a  sabbath  rest, a  sabbath  to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. Your harvest's  aftergrowth  you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year. All of you shall have the  sabbath  products of the land for food; yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you. Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat . 

'You are also to count off seven  sabbaths  of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven  sabbaths  of years, namely, forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram's horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim  a  release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you,  and  each of you shall return to his own property,  and  each of you shall return to his family. You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its  aftergrowth , nor gather in from its untrimmed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field. On this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his own property.  (Le 25:1-13)

Notice the equivalency.  Do not:

Sow your field = prune your vineyard

Here is an example of a  contranym  in the Hebrew word for "prune." A contranym is its own opposite, such as "cleave" in English.  The Hebrew contranym in the verse is from the root zamar:


  zâmar ; to  trim  a vine: prune, to be pruned. #559
Lo tizmor= you will not prune

Zamar  is  to trim  something, often something to be burned, like a thorn, or burned by fire, cut off, removed.   It also means  to plant  in a vineyard as one sows a field.   Rashi  points out the slightly different contexts in verses 3 and 4:
                                                                                                                                    Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall  prune [actively propagate]  your  vineyard and gather in its  crop, but  during the seventh year the land shall have a  sabbath  rest, a  sabbath  to the LORD; you shall not  sow  your field nor  prune  your  vineyard .


T here is a linguistic connection made by the root  zamar , one of the Words that holds Creation together. It links pruning, selectively choosing that which will yield to the gathering and removing that which will not for burning, to playing and singing psalms of praise to the Holy One of Israel. 

In Jewish tradition, David was taught certain psalms when he hung up his harp at night.  The wind would move through the strings and teach him the song.  Psalms link two realms, supernatural and natural. Inspired combinations from the many waters Above and the natural strings and voices from below, freely passing back and forth.  Sincerely played and prayed Psalms are unrestricted access to the  Heavenlies , returning a person to his/her ancestral land, the Lower Garden of Israel.
 
זָמַר  zâmar ;  a primitive root (perhaps identical with  H2168  through the idea of striking with the fingers); properly, to touch the strings or parts of a musical instrument, i.e. play upon it; to make music, accompanied by the voice; hence to celebrate in song and music:-give praise, sing forth praises, psalms .  To pluck over and over.

Like a vineyard worker who repetitively prunes a vine according to his vision of what he wants the vine to produce, a musician "prunes" a song from the many possibilities offered by the instrument's strings.  

Then I looked, and behold, the Lamb was standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads.  And  I heard  a voice from heaven, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder , and the voice which I heard was  like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the one hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth. These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they have kept themselves chaste. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the Lamb .
 (Re 14:1-4)

This waterfall of four springs is the headwaters supplying the Galilee, or properly, the Kinneret.  Kinneret is from kinnor, a harp.  It is a voice of many waters that will run through the harp of the Kinneret and through the length of Israel all the way to the Salt Sea.


John's vision pairs the  firstfruits  who were purchased from among men with the sound of the chaste ones plucking and singing with their harps.
Their song is "new," not one that has been gone over through repetition, a pruning action prohibited on the year of release.   The sound of thunder and lightning accompanied the giving of the Torah "on the mountain" at Sinai through the sound of the  yovel . (Ex 19:13)

In the years of release, the Master of the Vineyard will not "prune" the Land. It is released to grow of its own accord.  It is a "free" growth of spiritual and natural.  It responds to the spiritual Word of creation,  Yeshua's  complete authority.   It sings a song of its own accord, inspired by Words of Spirit, not natural pruning.  It rests in the  prunings  (plantings and removals) worked in them in the previous six years.

So the Torah portion Behar goes on to discuss the 6 th  feast, Yom  HaKippurim as the time of blowing the Yovel.  It  seals up the judgments (inclusions and removals of Rosh  HaShanah, which means " head of the year/change") with the blowing of the  Yovel .  The authority of the Judge is accepted and the judgments executed.  

The nations will be drawn to the song which can only be learned by  those with  Yeshua's  authority , those  who have separated themselves from idolatry.  This  representative number of 144,000 has been "purchased" from among  men, representing the holiness of the fields and vineyards from which they were cultivated and purchased in the previous six "years," or changes.  The  moedim  mark the working changes within the various kinds of  firstfruits  within a one-year period:  barley, wheat, vegetables, fruits, clean cattle fit for sacrifice.  Yom  HaKippurim  "seals" these fields of holy first fruits over to Sukkot.

Let's look at what it means to be "purchased" from among men in the Torah. Isaiah 5 establishes that the natural vineyard is a parable of the vineyard of Israel.  Adonai planted and cultivated it, yet it brought forth inferior fruit.   When Judah was conquered and deported, it was for idolatry as with Israel in the North, but also because they did not allow the Holy Land its release years and  Yovlim .  Natural enemies' walls, such as the Jericho- ites ', fall when the Torah is practiced.  When the authority of the Torah is not "bound in your hand," it is not practiced, and the enemy, such as the Chaldeans, breach the walls of Zion.  

You shall surely tithe all the produce from  what you sow, which comes out of the field every year .  You  shall eat in the presence of the LORD your God,  at the place where He chooses to establish His name , the tithe of your grain, your new wine, your oil, and the  firstborn of your herd and your flock , so that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always.  If  the  distance  is so great for you that you are not able to  bring  the tithe , since the place where the LORD your God chooses to set His name is too far away from you when the LORD your God blesses  you,  then  you shall exchange it for money, and 
bind  the money in your hand and go to the place which the LORD your God chooses.  You  may spend the money for whatever your  heart  desires : for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your  heart desires ; and  there you shall eat in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household .  (Dt.14:22-27)


Here is the pattern of holiness in redemption:

* Tithe products are Holy
* Firstborn of herds and flocks
* Grains, fruit of ground, fruit of the tree
* Sell for silver money
* Bind (compress tightly) safely into your hand because:
* Now the money is holy 
* Purchase commanded products in Jerusalem
* The holiness passes from the money to the products
* Share and eat the products
* All share the holiness of the original tithe that has been redeemed from among men.


The tithe is holy, for it is a thorough representation of the holy deeds in the rest of the field, the farmer's deeds, or fruit.  The rest of the field is holy because it has been redeemed by the pruned and plucked "song" of the first fruits.  The farmer is in touch with holy things during the entire process, from planting to eating.  In the year of release, though, it is a free, new song without ownership.  All Israel, including the animals, share and eat of the holiness in the entire Land of Resurrection.                        

Yom  HaKippurim  seals  the judgments of  tithes and first fruits which  the Israelite  has "bound and compressed"  [* tzur ] tightly  in his  hand.  Likewise ,  Yeshua  said this at  Chanukkah , which is celebrated as a Sukkot Sheni:

My  sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;  and  I give eternal life to them , and they will never perish; and  no one will snatch them out of My hand .  My  Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and  no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand .  I  and the Father are  one. ( Jn  10:27-30)

The 144,000 have been redeemed as first fruits to represent the holiness of the fields from which they were redeemed from the world.  Their freedom song is a song of the Seventh Year of release.  To the degree that the Israelites take hold of the holiness of the feasts through tribulations, they may be confident that  Yeshua  and the Father will forgive them, accept them, and seal them into Sukkot.  They will return, every person, to his and her family in the Garden full of free fruit.



This is why we bind the commandments on our hands.  It is the same as the thread tied around the first fruits of the field to mark them for holy redemption in Jerusalem.  If these first fruits are faithful, then the year of release will be even more abundant!  And the song?  So many waters flowing through the Harp of Israel!  As we bind the commandments on our hands, so Yeshua and the Father bind us into theirs, and their grip is tight!

Wherefore the law  is   holy , and the  commandment   holy , and just, and good. (Ro 7:12)

Holy passes to holy.  It is redeemed by Yeshua.  Its holiness is enjoyed in New Jerusalem with the family and the Great High Priest.

Freedom and release seems to send out, but it gathers in people to a place that they may not even remember if they or their ancestors departed long ago.   Yovel  (Jubilee) is "freedom of movement" signaled by the  yovel , the ram's horn.  We know that before sin, Adam and Eve could freely move between spiritual and natural realms.

After sin, they fell from the wheels of fiery rivers into the natural realm, unable to return to the freedom of movement in their original home.
There was a boundary between them that required a  Yovel  in order to return to their original homeland.  In order to return to the natural Land of Israel, the Israelites had to conquer the first city by crossing the Yarden (Jordan), which means "descending."  They had to go back up.

Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel;  no one went out and no one came in .   The LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors.  You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days.

Also  seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams' horns ( yovlim ) before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets (shofar) .  It shall be that when they make  a long blast with the ram's ( yovel ) horn , and when you hear the sound of the trumpet (shofar), all the people shall  shout with a great shout ; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and  the people will go up every man  straight ahead." ( Jo  6:1-6) 


Israel is not just a natural Land.  It is a spiritual Land.  Yeshua has been faithfully pruning us.  The tighter we bind the commandments into our hands, the more it hurts, but the more secure we are in the long journey in Yeshua's holiness.  If it feels as if we are being pruned repetitively, we are, but look how much energy the vine above was feeding in a direction that it didn't need to go.  Let the Ruach HaKodesh direct our thoughts and intents, every activity that sucks production away from real fruitfulness.

The year of release to go up is just ahead.  We will cross over in Yeshua's hand.  Come up here.  Come back to the Garden.

  

* Tzur  is the same root translated into "tribulation"


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Sukkot in Israel 2019
October 10-22, 2019

Ready to walk the paths that Yeshua walked in the Galilee, open your eyes in the Tzin where manna fell each morning, pray at the Kotel, walk in the Sukkot Parade of the Nations in Jerusalem, and gather in the desert sukkah for fellowship, teaching, praise, and worship in the evenings?

Dust off your passport and click on  SUKKOT IN ISRAEL  to read the itinerary.  A $500 deposit will hold your place in a tour that will likely fill up early.  Our maximum number of participants is 40.  Although every Israel tour requires a lot of walking, this one will be easier on the feet because of the open windows of leisure time built in it to honor the sabbaths of Sukkot.  Many thanks to Kisha Gallagher for her hard work on the itinerary to bring together a tour that respects Adonai's holy days.  

Mount Arbel in the Galilee


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