The Shemitah Did Not Happen As Expected…Why?
Friday, September 18, 2015 12:31
The Shemitah DID NOT Happen As Expected…Why?
By
Israel Ben Barzle
And
Yehoshua Ben Barzle
Many of us have been baffled by the non-event of the Shemitah of 2015. I am sure that there are those who have thrown up their hands and said to themselves “this whole Shemitah thing is a bunch of Bravo Sierra”!
Unfortunately, the information you have received prior to the Shemitah of 2015 was incomplete. Writers like Johnathan Cahn and others have done an outstanding job at bringing the subject of the Shemitah and some of its nuances to light, but they have focused primarily on symptomatic issues, various causes, and how this all fits into past history.
Though much of the information presented by these writers is right on the money, what these writers have not done is viewed the Shemitah in the context of how it really works in the biblical sense as a mechanism of legal justice. This is a critical point of the Shemitah, otherwise what happens is we get stuck focusing in on the various shades of law versus the ultimate legal verdict.
The word “Shemitah” is a legal term that comes from the Torah of Moses, the first five books of the Scriptures. Shemitah in the Hebrew means a “legally permanent release”. The root idea of the word Shemitah in the Hebrew means to “violently throw something down with force—to utterly destroy something”. To a biblical court of Law, the Shemitah was a time-sensitive, permanent legal release that was to absolutely abolish whatever legal issue was at stake.
To those of us here in America we have witnessed some of the financial aspects of the Shemitah at work firsthand. The most recent economic crashes of 2001 and 2008 on the specific Jewish calendar date of Elul 29 has led many to a keen interest in the Shemitah cycles and its potential impact on our markets. The pattern we have seen in the past Shemitah seven year cycles was perfect, precise, very Torah, very much like how the Creator always does things: with absolute precision. To anyone with any sense of mathematical probability, there is no way you could have had multiple consecutive economic hits to the American economy on the same critical Shemitah date, Elul 29, as outlined in the Biblical Laws of the Shemitah seven year cycle. It is statistically impossible.
So, if the pattern were to continue on consistently, a major economic shake up, one of greater severity than the past cycles, should have happened on or right around Elul 29 (Friday or Monday) in order to properly fulfill the biblical outlines of the Shemitah as we have seen them done in the last two cycles (2001 and 2008). Again, the Creator is a precise being. He does not play games; nor does He just make it up as He goes. He has placed certain laws at work that function perfectly towards a perfect outcome.
OK then…what’s up? Why no huge economic correction on or prior to Elul 29, 2015? It came and went and nothing really happened???
Let’s answer these questions with another foundational question: why is a seven year cycle of debt release even necessary?
Why A Shemitah?
When a corporate nation of people have a Judeo, G-d of Abraham legacy, such as ancient Israel, and such as the United States of America, the Creator has a unique economic outline for their financial dealings. The Scriptures spell out in detail how that nation is to conduct its business affairs corporately and personally. This economic outline is based on a precise seven year business cycle. When that seven year cycle is complete, any financial debt is zeroed out, and a new cycle commences with everyone, including the nation itself, having a clean slate.
Unfortunately, as good as this system sounds, and as much sense as it makes, greed, in the end, usually wins out—and perpetual debt is “the” vehicle of greed. It is very difficult for greed to get much traction in a seven year business cycle that zeros out and starts over. Biblically this is why it was designed this way. The Shemitah, in essence, was purposely designed by G-d for His people to keep greed, and the accompanying debt, from overtaking the society. This was to be done in complete contrast to the pagan world which relished in greed and debt, and eventually imploded on itself every time.
In the past, both in ancient Israel and in America, debt has played a key part in the fate of the nation. In both, we see debt based boom-bust cycles take place. At times in the history of both nations the debt load was not too significant, thus the zeroing out bust was not too significant. In other times the debt was substantial, and historically we have seen substantial economic busts take place—like in King Ahab’s time; and as we see in the 1930s depression in America.
But nothing has compared to the outright debt binge of the modern era. We, as a nation, have literally annulled any idea of real debt satisfaction, but have incorporated a financial system based on perpetual debt with continually growing deficits. This perpetual debt system has allowed America, and the West as a whole, to live off of excessive, ever expanding debt to the eventual tune of trillions and trillions of dollars, an amount that is realistically inconceivable. Never in the history of the world has there been this kind of debt by a debtor nation, especially one with its own history so intertwined with the G-d of the Bible.
With this staggering amount of debt in play, a debt that was to be biblically paid up prior to every end of the seventh year Shemitah, we have witnessed historically the Creator’s direct intervention in our financial affairs. We have seen smaller financial interventions when the debt amount owed was relatively small, as in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. But as the debt load has increased and carried over each seven year cycle, the seventh year crashes have become more and more significant, as in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. This has become even more apparent as the most recent seventh year crashes have specifically taken place on Elul 29, the very last day of the biblical Shemitah in 2001 and 2008, almost as if someone is trying to get something across very, very clearly.
But it is obvious we are not getting it. Even as the seventh year crashes become more and more serious with each passing Shemitah, America is continuing headlong into debt hell with no end in sight. So, for those watching and trying to understand the Shemitah cycles, it would seem like this Elul 29, 2015 would be a no brainer. I mean, come on, in order to keep the building crescendo of a seventh year crash pattern keeping lock-step with our own immense debt ballooning into the stratosphere, we should have seen a bloodletting on the financial streets on Elul 29 of catastrophic proportions with all kinds of super precise number drops, like the Dow losing 7,777 points, or something…right?
A No Show!
And yet, Elul 29 went by without a whimper….
(Crickets chirping)
Unfortunately, we are missing some key pieces of data regarding the Shemitah that are absolutely necessary to get the whole picture for what all this actually means.
Please understand: the Shemitah is technically a legal mechanism. Sure, it can be viewed in a prophetic sense, and, as such, viewed as a warning, a harbinger of things to come, if you will. But more importantly, the Shemitah’s primary function is a scale balancer—it zeros out the imbalances. This was its function in the Bible, and this has been its function in our own financial history.
So let’s put this into proper legal perspective. The past Shemitahs in which we have seen the precise seven year pattern at work have been ultimately “corrective”. The point losses on Wall Street and the result to the economy has CORRECTED the incorrect financial imbalances of improper gains made by improper debt. The losses incurred by the date of Elul 29 every seventh year made things judicially correct. In essence, the price of not clearing the debt at the Shemitah was ultimately cleared by the Creator.
In other words, G-d has used the past Shemitah economic hits as warnings; but He has also “corrected” the transgression by forcing financial loss on the transgressor and balancing the scales. This is the ultimate goal of the Shemitah concept in the first place. The whole point of the Shemitah is to make things financially right for everyone.
So the crashes we have seen in 2008, 2001, and those prior, have had much to do with a certain legal satisfaction. America’s debt cup was full at the end of these Shemitah cycles. Naturally, we would view these crashes as punishment…and in some ways that is not too far off. But what we are missing is the fact that “technically” the Shemitah WAS satisfied by the resulting losses. Literally, the greed gains of the debt cup were emptied, zeroed, in large measure by the losses that occurred at the end of these Shemitah’s. Thus, America was given another seven year cycle with another chance to redeem itself.
Sadly, America has not learned from its many chances. And as Elul 29 has come and gone, we now find ourselves in a whole new ball game.
The pattern has changed. Elul 29, 2015 was a no show.
A Historical Snapshot
Folks, this is EXACTLY how the Creator did it with the Kingdom of Judah before the final fall of Jerusalem in the Prophet Jeremiah’s time. The narrative parts of the Book of Jeremiah, in essence, really revolve around two main Shemitah issues: the land Sabbath of the land of Israel; and financial debt release. Read it and see. The Old Testament spells it out clearly.
