What If Jubilee Isn’t Just a Year but a State of Mind?

Q: Today we received a question on the blog:

This morning I was reading Jeremiah 17:7-8 and a single Hebrew word stopped me cold: יוּבַל (Yuval). It’s translated into English as “stream” — the blessed man who sends his roots by a stream. But in Hebrew, Yuval looks almost identical to יובל (Yovel), the word for Jubilee. Could these two words actually be connected?

A: Oh, what a great catch — and no, that’s not a coincidence you can just walk past!

Yovel, the Jubilee יובל, is the 50th year — the great reset. When debts are cancelled, when land returns to its source, when slaves are sent into freedom. When a new reality emerges from the depth of creation, one that can never be captured or calculated by men. When all causal thinking and causal transactions return to point zero — a fresh, unwritten page.

And here in Jeremiah, the same picture is presented to us, through the lens of a tree planted on water, sending its roots toward the stream, Yuval. The letters of Yuval יבל also form the verb להוביל — which means to lead. So the stream doesn’t just water the tree, it leads. Not what we think or calculate, but life as current, as flow. When life leads with love, not with knowledge.

Now another question rises: what kind of water are we talking about? Not a seasonal brook that floods in winter and dries at the first month of summer. Yuval here refers to נחל איתן — an eternal stream, one that runs year-round regardless of rain or drought. It doesn’t wait for the right season. It just flows.

The verse draws a beautiful picture: the person who trusts in יהוה is like a tree planted on the bank of that stream. Its roots reach toward the eternal stream. It doesn’t fear a scorching summer, its leaves stay green, and even in a dry year it keeps bearing fruit. The heat comes, the drought comes — the tree is not influenced by the apparent season.

That’s the Jubilee reality. Not a one-time event every fifty years, but a quality of life — rooted in a source that doesn’t depend on circumstances to keep flowing, free from causal thinking. Think of it as the stream out of Eden, the water that was there before time itself was manifested.

When you’re planted there, living isn’t something you wait for. It’s what you’re drawing from, constantly, through your roots.