The Jubilee Cycle (49 years or 50 years)?

The Jubilee Cycle is important to understand if you want insight into the Biblical Calendar and Bible prophecy. Some think it is 50 years, others 49 years.

The Jubilee year is the only other special reoccurring year in Scripture, other than the sabbatical year that arrives every seven years. It is basically a week of Sabbath years, following the same pattern as the Sabbath day and Sabbath year cycles.

Leviticus 25:8-10 — "For seven days present a food offering to the LORD. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.’ The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest."

This passage can leave you wondering if the cycle spoken of is 49 or 50 years long. Most people understand it to mean 50, but this view actually breaks Scripture: the requirement that Jubilees follow every seventh Sabbath year. A Jubilee cycle of 50 years falls out of pattern with the Sabbath year cycle since 50 is not a multiple of seven. It falls at the right place for the first Jubilee but with each subsequent Jubilee cycle it would drift a year later each time. Only a Jubilee on a 49-year cycle stays in the Biblical pattern (7 x 7 = 49).

So why does the Bible refer to the Jubilee as a 50th year? Because the Jubilee is based on and derived directly from the Sabbath year cycle, or specifically counting seven Sabbath year cycles = 49 years. By saying to hallow the 50th year, it makes it clear that it is the year following every seventh Sabbath year. It also makes it clear that the Jubilee is not ever the same year as a Sabbath year nor is it on a separate sequence coming every 50th year. It is the 50th year counting from the last Jubilee because it is is using inclusive reckoning in its counting. If you count normally from the last Jubilee and do not include the year you are counting from, but mark it as 0, then you get 49 years between Jubilees.This means each Jubilee is really the first year of the first Sabbath year cycle of the next Jubilee cycle. In other words, the Jubilee year does not interrupt the Sabbath year cycle, but is always followed by the second year of that Sabbath year cycle. In this way, every Sabbath year remains a multiple of seven years away from any other Sabbath year in history.