Attos' Magazine

Volume #107, March/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

Jubilee

I shall postpone only a little giving the answer to the question just posed. First, I should like to find an explanation for the institution of the jubilee year of the Israelites.

Every seventh year, according to the law, was a sabbatical year during which the land had to be left fallow and Jewish slaves set free. The fiftieth year was a jubilee year, when the land not only had to be left fallow, but had to be returned to its original proprietors. According to the law, one could not convey his land for ever; the deed of sale was but a lease for whatever number of years remained until the jubilee year. The year was proclaimed by the blowing of horns on the Day of Atonement. “In the Day of Atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.”

Ever since, exegetes have labored over the biblical statement that the jubilee year was to be observed every fiftieth year. The seventh sabbatical year is the forty-ninth year: “And the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. . . . And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year.” To leave the land fallow for two consecutive years was too great a demand and cannot be explained by the need of the soil under cultivation for rest. The festival of the jubilee, with the return of land to its original owners and the release of slaves, bears the character of an atonement, and its proclamation on the Day of Atonement emphasizes this still further. Was there any special reason why fear returned every fifty years? The jubilee of the Mayas must have had a genesis similar to that of the jubilee of the Israelites. The difference lies in the human character of the festival of the Jews and its inhuman character among the Mayas; but with both peoples it was a year of atonement, repeating itself every fiftieth year in the one case and every fifty-second year in the other.

Comets do not return at exact periods because of perturbations caused by larger planets. The Mayas expected the return of a catastrophe every fifty-second year because that was the interval between two cataclysms that had taken place. It may be that the comet was actually seen again at such intervals. The Jews fasted and prepared themselves for the Day of Judgment on the earliest possible date of its return; the Mayas had their festival when the dreaded time had passed without harm.

On the Day of Atonement the Israelites used to send a scapegoat to “Azazel” in the desert. It was a ceremony of propitiation of Satan. In Egypt the goat was an animal dedicated to Seth-Typhon. Azazel was a fallen star or Lucifer. It was also called Azzael, Azza, or Uzza. According to the rabbinical legend, Uzza was the star angel of Egypt: it was thrown into the Red Sea when the Israelites made their passage. The Arab name of the planet Venus is al-Uzza. Arabs used to bring human sacrifices to al-Uzza; Mohammed, too, in his early days, worshiped it, and even today the Arabs seek its help.

On the day on which the jubilee year was proclaimed, the Israelites dispatched a placating offering of a scapegoat to Lucifer. But what had Venus to do with the jubilee and the atonement?

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