Exodus 23:11

But the seventh year thou shall let it rest, and lie still,.... From tillage, and make its fruits common, as the Targum of Jonathan; the note of Jarchi is, "let it rest", from perfect tillage, as

And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: Six years thou shalt sow - intermitting the cultivation of the land every seventh year.

Thou shalt let it rest, and lie still, i.e. from manuring, ploughing, tilling, and sowing, and reaping also, by comparing . And this God ordained not only for the reason here mentioned, the more comfortable provision of the poor, and for the cattle, but for other weighty reasons; as, 1. That the heart and strength of the land might not be eaten out by continual tillage. 2. That he might both try and exercise, and also secure the obedience of the Israelites. 3. That he might keep them in dependence upon himself, and give to them and all their neighbours a manifest proof of his singular and gracious providence over his people. 4. That by this kind of quit-rent they might be admonished that God alone was the Lord and Proprietary of the land, and they were only tenants at his will. 5. That being freed from their great labours about the land, they might have the more leisure to meditate upon God’ s works, and to attend upon the law, which was to be solemnly read at this time, , &c. That the poor of thy people may eat. Quest. What had the poor to eat? Answ. Not only the fruits of the vines, and olives, and other fruit trees, but also all that grew of its own accord, , from those seeds which in the last reaping-time were scattered here and there, which were much more numerous now than in other years, because God gave a special blessing to the sixth year, whereby it did bring forth the fruit of three years, , and in years of so great plenty men are generally more negligent in their reaping, and therefore the relics are more. In like manner thou shalt deal, i.e. thou shalt not prune nor dress them, nor gather and appropriate to thy own use what they shall produce, but shalt leave them to the poor.

Exodus 23:11 But the seventh [year] thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, [and] with thy oliveyard.Ver. 11. But the seventh year.] That they might learn to live by faith, and be at good leisure to wait upon God. Let every one of us keep a spiritual Sabbath, saith Ignatius, Mελετηνομουχαιρων, ουσωματοςανεσει, Better apaid of the meditation of the law, than of the relaxation and rest from labour. Ep, iii. ad Magnes.

(11) That the poor of thy people may eat.—For fuller particulars see Leviticus 25:1-7. The owner was to have no larger part of the seventh year’s produce than any one else. He was to take his share with the hireling, the stranger, and even the cattle, which during this year were to browse where they pleased. Thy vineyard . . . Thy oliveyard.—These would bear a full average produce, and the boon to the poor man would in these respects have been very considerable. Corn, wine, and oil were the staple commodities of Palestine (Deuteronomy 8:8; 2 Kings 18:32, &c.).

Verse 11. The seventh year thou shalt let it rest] As, every seventh day was a Sabbath day, so every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year. The reasons for this ordinance Calmet gives thus: - "1. To maintain as far as possible an equality of condition among the people, in setting the slaves at liberty, and in permitting all, as children of one family, to have the free and indiscriminate use of whatever the earth produced. "2. To inspire the people with sentiments of humanity, by making it their duty to give rest, and proper and sufficient nourishment, to the poor, the slave, and the stranger, and even to the cattle. "3. To accustom the people to submit to and depend on the Divine providence, and expect their support from that in the seventh year, by an extraordinary provision on the sixth. "4. To detach their affections from earthly and perishable things, and to make them disinterested and heavenly-minded. "5. To show them God's dominion over the country, and that HE, not they, was lord of the soil and that they held it merely from his bounty." See this ordinance at length, Lev. xxv. That God intended to teach them the doctrine of providence by this ordinance, there can be no doubt; and this is marked very distinctly, Leviticus 25:20-21: "And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years." That is, There shall be, not three crops in one year, but one crop equal in its abundance to three, because it must supply the wants of three years. 1. For the sixth year, supplying fruit for its own consumption; 2. For the seventh year, in which they were neither to sow nor reap; and 3. For the eighth year, for though they ploughed, sowed, c., that year, yet a whole course of its seasons was requisite to bring all these fruits to perfection, so that they could not have the fruits of the eighth year till the ninth, (see Leviticus 25:22), till which time God promised that they should eat of the old store. What an astonishing proof did this give of the being, power, providence, mercy, and goodness of God! Could there be an infidel in such a land, or a sinner against God and his own soul, with such proofs before his eyes of God and his attributes as one sabbatical year afforded? It is very remarkable that the observance of this ordinance is nowhere expressly mentioned in the sacred writings though some suppose, but without sufficient reason, that there is a reference to it in Jeremiah 34:8-9. Perhaps the major part of the people could not trust God, and therefore continued to sow and reap on the seventh year, as on the preceding.

11. thou shalt let it drop and abandon it] viz. the land, less probably the increase: RV. (substantially = AV.) is a paraphrase. The word rendered let drop means properly to fling or throw down (2 Kings 9:33, of Jezebel). In Deuteronomy 15:2-3 it is differently applied; and is used of letting a debt drop every seventh year, in the ‘year of dropping’ or of ‘release’ (Deuteronomy 15:1-2; Deuteronomy 15:9); and the rend. release in RVm. here brings out this connexion—though, it is true, it is not more than a verbal one—with the law of Deu 15:1-6. abandon] or leave, let go; rendered ‘forgo’ in Nehemiah 10:31. that the poor, &c.] contrast Leviticus 25:6-7. In Lev_Exodus 25:1-7; Leviticus 25:20-22 (H), the fallow year, whatever may be the case in Ex., becomes, as has just been remarked, a fixed year for the whole country; and the motive is no longer exclusively a philanthropic one, but a religious one, viz. that the land may ‘keep a sabbath to Jehovah’ (whence the term ‘sabbatical year’): in Deuteronomy 15:1-6 it receives an entirely different application, and becomes a fixed septennial ‘year of release,’ applied for the relief of the poor debtor, by the exaction of debts being prohibited in it. Whether however even the present passage gives the original motive of the institution may be doubted. Analogous usages in other countries (see Maine, Village Communities in the East and West, pp. 77–79, 107–113, &c.; Fenton, Early Hebrew Life, 1880, pp. 24–26, 29–32, 64–70) suggest that it may be a relic of communistic agriculture, i.e. of a stage of society in which the fields belonging to a village are the property of the villagers collectively, individuals only acquiring the use of particular portions for a limited period, and the produce, at stated intervals, reverting to the use of the community generally. The fallow year of Ex. and Lev. is similarly an institution limiting the rights of individual ownership in the interests of the community generally: in Ex. the institution is applied so as to minister to the needs of the poorer classes; in Leviticus 25:1-7 the prominent idea is the benefit which the land would derive from remaining periodically uncultivated.

11. The seventh year… rest — This provision for a sabbatic year is one of the most remarkable enactments of the Mosaic legislation, but we have no evidence that it was ever observed by the nation.