The Fourth of July celebrates the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence from Great Britain in 1776. While it does include the phrase “all men are created equal,” Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration included the following clause that was removed in the final version mainly over the objection of South Carolina and Georgia to get unanimous approval by all the original 13 states:
[King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
“Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents: Jefferson’s ‘original Rough draught’ of the Declaration of Independence,” Library of Congress. (Before it was revised by the other members of the Committee of Five and by Congress. From The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 1, 1760-1776. Ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp 243-247.) Emphasis added.
This original ideal for the United States of America was finally put into action via the blood of the Civil War of 1860–1865, Reconstruction amendments of 1865–1870 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But America’s model, Israel, had this ideal of freedom for the oppressed in its constitution, the Torah, roughly 3,500 years earlier:
“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 [yobel in Hebrew] 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.”
Leviticus 25:9–11 NASB 1995
When Israel failed in living up to this ideal and didn’t set people free and rest the Land when Heaven called for it, this became a key reason for the exiles of Israel (the northern 10 tribes by Assyria and the southern tribes led by Yehudah (Judah)).
Thanks be to God that the King of Kings, Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) establishes the ultimate Yobel:
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
Isaiah 61:1–3 NASB 1995
Because the LORD has anointed me
To bring good news to the afflicted;
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And freedom to prisoners;
To proclaim the favorable year of the LORD
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To grant those who mourn in Zion,
Giving them a garland instead of ashes,
The oil of gladness instead of mourning,
The mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting.
So they will be called oaks of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”
Yeshua quoted the first verse of this messianic prophecy at the outset of His ministry, concluding the quotation with this affirmation.
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:21 NASB 1995
Amen! Come quickly, Prince of Peace.