As mentioned in our discussion of Alma 29, there appears to have been a special recognition of a great season of peace at this time among the Nephites. Before King Mosiah died, he had reigned for thirty-three years after the time of King Benjamin’s speech. Now in Alma 30, it was the sixteenth and then seventeenth years of the reign of the judges, totaling forty-nine and fifty years since King Benjamin’s speech. Dates are often given to us in the Book of Mormon for some kind of meaning, and thus it is possible that this moment may have been recognized as a type of jubilee season, although we cannot be sure what that observance or celebration in Zarahemla might have looked like.
It is even unclear how the Jubilee might have been observed in ancient Israel under the law found in Leviticus 25. Jonathan Burnside, a professor of law at the University of Bristol, discusses this question in his superb book, Law, God, and Society (Oxford University Press, 2011), chapter 6. On page 205, he surmises that in the Jubilee, there might have been one full year sabbatical rest in the forty-ninth year (the completion of the seventh sabbatical), and then in the fiftieth year, as it would have been too difficult to keep the crops going and provide enough food to live on, the Jubilee event could have occurred in the opening months of the fiftieth year. According to Burnside’s analysis, it was only in the commencement of the fiftieth year that the Jubilee events took place to take care of reconfiguring the economy, such as liberating the slaves, forgiving debts, allowing original owners to redeem their lands, and moving people around as needed to have their blessings and rights protected under the jubilee laws. Several factors make this festival season a plausible context in these chapters.
First, in Alma 29:1, Alma declared, “O that I were an angel, that I could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God.” The word trumpet (Exodus 19:13) or ram’s horn (Joshua 6:5) in Hebrew is yôbh?l. It is also the word for the Jubilee (in Leviticus 25:10–15, the chapter in which the Jubilee laws are given). It was the time of the trumpets. If we read Alma 29, particularly thinking of the emotions of people who may have been celebrating the Jubilee, there are some very interesting ways to appreciate what Alma was saying.
Second, Alma ended the forty-ninth year with great success and joy. A difficult war had been won. New converts had been protected. His four friends (the Sons of Mosiah) had returned from their missions and were working closely with him. He even said that his soul was filled with joy: “Yea, my joy is full,” not only about what he had done, but also the success of his brethren, who had brought the Ammonites up to the Land of Jershon. He was optimistic. The word joy appears seven times at the end of Alma 29. And indeed, Professor Burnside suggests that “the specific purpose of the jubilee law [was] to rejoice in the difference between being a slave of Pharaoh and a slave of Israel’s God (p. 211).
Third, regarding any concrete evidence of the actual observance of the Jubilee, Professor Burnside regrets that there is very little historical evidence that it was actually honored among the ancients, although its laws certainly set forth social and spiritual ideals that the people did strive to achieve. And while there is no archaeological evidence for the celebration of the Jubilee in ancient Israel, this occasion in the Book of Mormon may provide one such piece of circumstantial evidence. Particularly, the Nephites under Alma had a season of peace in “all the sixteenth year” and on into “the commencement of the seventeenth year” (30:4–5), as Burnside has surmised was the way the Jubilee was observed.