The Book of Jubilees, a fascinating text considered scripture by some but excluded from the standard Jewish and Christian Bibles, gives us a glimpse into that cosmic schedule. It tells us that God didn't just create the sun and moon; He appointed them.
Specifically, the text emphasizes their role “to rule over the day and the night, and divide the light from the darkness.” Pretty standard stuff. But then it gets interesting. The sun, it says, was appointed “to be a great sign on the earth.” A sign for what, you ask? For "days and for sabbaths and for months and for feasts and for years and for sabbaths of years and for jubilees and for all seasons of the years.”
Whoa. That’s a lot. We all know days, months, and years. Sabbath (Shabbat) is the day of rest, observed weekly. A “sabbath of years” refers to the Shmita year, the sabbatical year that occurs every seventh year, during which the land lies fallow. And jubilees? Those are the big ones. The Book of Jubilees, as you might guess, places great emphasis on the Yovel, the Jubilee year, occurring every 50th year. It was a time of great societal reset, with debts forgiven and land returned to its original owners.
So, according to Jubilees, the sun isn't just a giant ball of burning gas. It's a divine timekeeper, marking out the sacred rhythms of existence, from the weekly Shabbat to the epochal Yovel. The very light that sustains us is also a constant reminder of these sacred cycles.
And it doesn't stop there. The sun, the text says, “divideth the light from the darkness… for prosperity, that all things may prosper which shoot and grow on the earth.” It’s not just about marking time; it’s about facilitating life, growth, and abundance. The light nourishes the earth, allowing everything to flourish.
But what about the creatures? Before the sun and moon were appointed to their celestial duties, what life had already been breathed into the cosmos?
Well, the Book of Jubilees tells us, "on the fifth day He created great sea monsters in the depths of the waters, for these were the first things of flesh that were created by His hands, the fish and everything that moves in the waters, and everything that flies, the birds and all their kind.”
So, before the calendar was set, before the rhythms of light and darkness were perfectly orchestrated, life already teemed in the waters and soared through the skies. It’s a beautiful image, isn't it? Life bursting forth even before time itself was fully defined.
It makes you wonder: what does it mean that these creatures were created before the calendar? Were they outside of time in some way? Or were they the beginning of the clock, the first movements in a grand cosmic dance?
Perhaps the Book of Jubilees is inviting us to see time not as a rigid structure, but as a framework within which life unfolds, grows, and flourishes. A framework that is, itself, a testament to the creative power that brought everything into being. A framework that connects us to something far greater than ourselves, something ancient and eternally renewing.