Leviticus 25:3

Six years thou shalt sow thy field,.... Under which is comprehended everything relating to agriculture, both before and after sowing, as dunging the land, ploughing and harrowing it, treading the

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. When ye come into the land which I give you.

Leviticus 25:3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;Ver. 3. Six years.] Beginning at September, according to the Jews’ civil account.

(3) Six years thou shalt sow.—See Exodus 23:10. The fruit thereof.—That is, of the land which is mentioned in the preceding verse, and which includes fields, vineyards, olive-gardens, &c. (See Exodus 23:11.)

1–7. The rest year was a transference to the land of the sabbatical idea emphasized each week for living creatures, the year being now taken as the unit instead of the day. See App. I, pp. 172 f. for the difference in standpoint between this and the parallel ordinances elsewhere in the Hexateucb, as indicating modifications of the same law in successive periods. The seventh year is to bear the same relation to the six preceding years as the sabbath to the six preceding days of the week. The parallel between the land and the bondman was close. The divinely appointed seventh day of rest is to be kept holy by abstaining from work, so the land shall keep every seventh year holy to the Lord by resting from all work. It cannot be wholly inactive, but nothing is to be done which will cause the land to put forth its full strength. By a curtailment of the full powers bestowed upon man and land by their Creator both were to keep holy a season to the Lord. In Exodus 23:10-11 the fallow year is regarded as a provision for the poor and part of the animal creation, while the religious idea underlies the injunctions of the passage in Leviticus. In pre-exilic times the law seems to have been, at any rate to a large extent, disregarded (see ch.Leviticus 26:35; Leviticus 26:43; 2 Chronicles 36:21). It is true that the custom of letting land lie fallow prevails in so many countries and can be traced back so far that it is certain that the Hebrews must have observed something of the kind from the time of their being settled. If the fallow time were different for different fields there would be nothing to call for special note, and it is not surprising that no reference is found to the practice in the historical Books. But a fixed fallow year for all the land would cause an interruption of social life of which some traces would be found in the history. Later on, in Nehemiah’s time (Nehemiah 10:31), the people bound themselves to carry out the Law. According to Josephus (Ant. xi. 8. 6) both Jews and Samaritans observed it in the time of Alexander the Great, and so later in the days of the Hasmonean dynasty (1Ma 6:49; 1Ma 6:53; Ant. xiii. 8. 1) and the Herods (ib. xiv. 16. 2). Tacitus (Hist. Leviticus 25:4), however, attributes the Jews’ observance of it to laziness. The sabbatical year concluded with the Feast of Tabernacles (Deuteronomy 31:10), and the old reckoning, by which the year began in autumn, not in spring (see on Leviticus 23:23-25), was necessarily applied in this case. The year’s circle of agricultural operations naturally would begin as soon as harvest and vine-gathering were finished. Had it begun in the first month (after the sowing of spring time) the harvests of both sixth and seventh years would have been lost.

Vineyard - Rather, fruit-garden. The Hebrew word is a general one for a plantation of fruit-trees.

3. Vineyard — Garden-land or fruit-land. Kerem, literally a noble plantation, includes both oliveyards and vineyards. Deuteronomy 24:20-21, and Judges 15:5, notes.