This is a neat word – with the same root it used in the Torah to mean the Flood, Jubilee, and Increase. Of course, the word is really all one and the same – with four variations.
The first use is the Flood – first described as a mabul of water. This word is consistently used as an increase. It just happens to be a lot of water.
Yevulah is understood as “produce” of the earth, but also just means “increase” – the earth increases by growing upward.
Which then explains how the Jubilee, the yovel, can have the same root word as mabul and yevulah. When the Jubilee year happens, the land literally becomes overgrown and unkempt. It is a year of little/no maintenance on the earth.
The Torah tells us that the year of the Jubilee is when we proclaim דְּר֛וֹר בָּאָ֖רֶץ. What is דְּר֛וֹר , dror? Well, in the Torah dror only means 2 things: myrrh and thistles. (translators struggle with this, and translate it as “freedom,” but the word is not found with that meaning anywhere else in the text).
Myrrh and thistles are connected! In a physical sense, the Jubilee is a year when the earth grows wild, when the weeds have their way. In other words, the land grows thistles.
And at the same time, it is an opportunity for people to establish and grow spiritual connections! And myrrh is the symbolic mirror-image of the thistle: scent reminds us that our souls are ensouled through our nostrils, that there is much in the world that we cannot perceive by touch, taste, or sight. By spending that year not paying attention to the physical land, we have the time and incentive to look for G-d, to connect through our souls instead of through the labor of our hands.
This meaning works with the very first time the word yaval is found in the Torah. Yaval is the man who lives in tents and has herds (Gen. 4:20). He does not cultivate the land at all! His home is mobile, and he grazes from whatever is available. All the forefathers were shepherds – living off the land without being tied to it, and having plenty of time for contemplation and open for a divine connection. It was during shepherding, after all, when Moses sees the burning bush.
All the same word!