Leviticus 25:4

But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land,.... From all tillage of it, from planting and cultivating any sort of trees in it; and even from digging pits, ditches; and caves, as

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 25:4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.Ver. 4. A Sabbath of rest unto the land.] This and the jubilee year shadowed our eternal rest. (l.) Every seventh day they rested from their labours. (2.) Every seventh year the ground rested. (3.) Every seventh seventh (as some reckon it) was the jubilean Sabbath: at which time all debts were remitted, prisoners released, mortgages restored to the right inheritors. The great and eternal Sabbath comprehends all these. How then should we breathe after it, and even go forth to meet it, as the Jews do their weekly Sabbath, beginning it an hour sooner than the law required? and this they called their Sabbatulum, or little Sabbath.

(4) The seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest.—Literally, the seventh year shall be a rest of solemn resting, or a sabbath of sabbaths. For the import of this phrase see Note on Leviticus 16:31. Like the weekly sabbath, the seventh year is to be the Lord’s sabbath. The soil is therefore to have a perfect rest. Thou shalt neither sow thy field.—What constitutes cultivation, and how much of labour was regarded as transgressing this law, may be seen from the following canons which obtained during the second Temple. No one was allowed to plant trees in the sabbatical year, nor to cut off dried-up branches, to break off withered leaves, to smoke under the plants in order to kill the insects, nor to besmear the unripe fruit with any kind of soil in order to protect them, &c. Any one who committed one of these things received the prescribed number of stripes. As much land, however, might be cultivated as was required for the payment of taxes as well as for growing the barley required for the omer or wave sheaf at the Passover, and wheat for the two wave-loaves at Pentecost.

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.

A sabbath of rest - See Leviticus 23:3 note. The express prohibition of sowing and reaping, and of pruning and gathering, affords a presumption in favor of the sabbatical year beginning, like the

4. A sabbath for the Lord — This was Jehovah’s sabbath, because it rested solely on his authority, and not because it was to be devoted to acts of worship, sacrifices, and holy convocations.