Evidence #172 | March 22, 2021

Book of Mormon Evidence: Peace Treaty in a Jubilee Year

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Scripture Central

Abstract

The ten-year peace treaty between the Nephites and Lamanites was established in the 350th year since Christ’s birth. This would have been the seventh jubilee since that occasion, a time that was meant to be filled with peace, rest, prosperity, forgiveness, and blessings.

After briefly reporting on 24 years of continuous war and wickedness, Mormon said that the Nephites entered into a treaty with the Lamanites in the 350th year (Mormon 2:28). The terms of the treaty required the Nephites to forfeit all their territory in the land southward (v. 29), but it brought peace for ten full years in return (Mormon 3:1).

Assuming that the Nephite festival schedule reset when they started counting their years from Christ’s birth (3 Nephi 2:8), this would have been a jubilee year. The jubilee year was an additional sabbatical year observed at the end of the seventh seven-year sabbatical period.1

One Day, One Night, and One Day, by Jorge Cocco.

According Robin J. DeWitt Knauth, “The Year of Jubilee … is the last layer in the extension of the Sabbath principle.”2 Being the pinnacle of the sabbatical system, the jubilee year came every fifty years. It is easy to imagine that a people who saw significance in calendrical cycles of seven3 would have noticed that this jubilee year in the 350th year was not just any jubilee—it was the seventh jubilee since the birth of Christ (350 being 7 x 50).4 Stated another way, the 350th year concluded the seventh cycle of seven cycles of seven-year periods since Christ’s birth.5

Land of Nephi. Image via churchofjesuschrist.org. 

Resting the land was central to both the jubilee law in general and to this treaty in particular. The jubilee was intended to be “a year of ‘rest’ for the land.” It was also a time when “land was to be restored to its original inherited line of ownership.”6 Thus, at a time when land was supposed to be restored to its proper owner, large portions of Nephite and Lamanite lands were reallocated under the terms of this ten-year treaty, as they “did get the lands of their inheritance divided” (Mormon 2:28).

Conclusion

The jubilee year was meant to be a time of peace, rest, prosperity, forgiveness, and blessings.7 The timing of the ten-year peace treaty reported in Mormon 2:28, established precisely at the outset of the seventh jubilee year since Christ’s visitation, hints at elaborate calendrical and time keeping practices among Book of Mormon peoples that are consistent with those known among some ancient Jews and Israelites.

Further Reading
Relevant Scriptures
Endnotes
Culture
Festivals and Holidays
Peace Treaty
Book of Mormon

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