-Or Jobel more properly, which signifies a ram's horn. The day of Jubilee was a high feast in the Jewish church, and appointed by the Lord for the great year of release, every forty-ninth year, or seven times seven. In the twenty-fifth of Leviticus, we have the whole account of the appointment. Some have taken for granted, that the name itself was taken from Jubal, or Jobel, the son of Lamech, because he was the father or inventor of music; but others, more probably, derived it from the verb Hebiel, to bring back; because it was the year of general restoration, or bringing back. The imagination cannot conceive the effect of the morning of the day which commenced the Jubilee, which must have been wrought upon the different orders, of the people among the Jews. It began we are told on the first day of the month Tizri, the first month of the year, and the seventh of the ecclesiastical year, and corresponded to our month of September; and on the ninth day of Tizri, when the trumpets sounded, at that instant, every poor captive among the Jews was freed; and every mortgaged inheritance returned to its original owner. I leave the reader to his own reflections, what feelings must have been wrought on the different minds of all concerned; both of the master and of the servant, both of the man with whom was vested bonded land, and the one who received back his mortgaged inheritance. But while I pass over the Jewish camp on these particulars, I cannot help observing how infinitely surpassing must be the effect of the Jobel trumpet in the Christian church; when the captive sinner, and the poor soul who hath mortgaged his; inherited, inheritance, first hears the joyful sound of redemption by the blood of Christ, and is brought "to walk in the light of the Lord's countenance." (Psalms 89:15) And this is not limited, to every forty-ninth year, but is every year and every day, yea, every hour of the day since Christ wrought salvation for his people, and the type of the Jubilee trumpet done away by the thing signified being come. Concerning this blessed event the Lord hath said, "the year of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." (Isaiah 63:4) See Feasts. It is said, that after the Jews returned from Babylon the Jubileee was discontinued, but they observed the Sabbatical year.
See Sabbatical.