And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and gather in its produce;
God gave Israel a farming calendar shaped like the week. Six years of sowing and reaping, then a year when the fields rest. That raises two plain questions. How does a family eat through a year with no crop? And who does the fallow year serve?
After a run of prohibitions, the tone shifts. One writer sees the six-and-one pattern of the working week carried over into the land's calendar.
In contrast to the negative laws of the first nine verses, verses 10-19 speak positively about the attitude Israel was to show toward God. God told people to work six days of the week. In the same way He tells them to sow their crops six years out of seven, and to let the land lie fallow in the seventh year. This was good for the land. It also showed consideration for the poor. They could come onto someone else's property and take any produce that came up on its own, even though no one had worked the land.
The field was never really the farmer's. Its rest said who owned it, and who else God had in view.
The land was to enjoy her sabbaths, as a lasting sign that it belonged to the Lord. So it, as well as man, must share God's rest. Here, however, the poor and the beasts of the field are prominent. Both had to be considered. However far apart they stand, both alike are creatures of God. This reminded the children of Israel that they were only tenants. They held their land, their vineyards and their olive groves from the Lord. So they had to consider even the poor and the beasts of the field, because these too were the objects of His care.
The command itself gives no answer to the food problem. One commentator ties the answer to the warning against other gods that closes the same section.
The second section — verses 10-13 — commands rest, not only for man and beast but even for the land. The natural tendency would no doubt be to ask: if we keep verse 11 about one year's rest in seven, how are we to live in the seventh year? The answer surely would have been: as to that, you must trust in God. That is why, we think, the section closes by telling them to be "circumspect," or "on their guard," and not to name other gods. No false god could give them any such assurance. They would only destroy the assurance that would enable them to obey.
Set beside the other duties here, the fallow year does moral work on the heart.
Yet it becomes clear, as we look at what is before us here, how great a check to covetousness these ordinances would be. Every seventh day was a Sabbath of rest. Every seventh year was a sabbath year as well. Three times a year every male was to appear before the Lord, and never empty-handed. The firstfruits were to be for Him.
Israel did not keep the law, and greed got the opposite of what it wanted.
If Israel had held to this, they would have been greatly blessed. The six years they worked would have provided more than enough to keep them through the seventh year. All they needed was faith to believe God. But we know how selfish our own hearts are. Their crops were so abundant for six years that selfishness would say: why not get the same profit from the seventh year too? Israel would not rest and give God glory. They preferred their own works, and so lost instead of gained... Despite much experience, we are slow to learn that selfishness defeats its own ends.
Commentators read these repeated rests as a pledge of a coming age of rest that has not yet arrived.
It is striking to see the many ways the Jewish system held the millennial rest in view. Every seventh day was a sabbatical day. Every seventh year was a sabbatical year. Every seven times seven years there was a jubilee. Each of these solemn signs held before the eye of faith the blessed prospect of a time when labour and sorrow would cease.
One writer draws the point out of how a land lease worked.
As the jubilee drew near, the lease of the land dropped in value to the holder. In the same way, as the coming of Christ seems near to us, we value the earth and earthly things less.
- Owner — the fallow year was a standing reminder that the land was the Lord's and Israel only tenants on it.
- Trust — the tenant could only live through year seven by taking God at His word. That is why the same passage warns against other gods.
- Curb — resting the land struck at covetousness, one of many checks God set on greed.
- Reach — the rest reached past the farmer to the poor, and past them to the animals; both are God's creatures.
- Result — Israel kept sowing and lost what greed grasped for. The rest they refused still lies ahead: a time when labour and sorrow cease.
but in the seventh thou shalt let it rest and lie [fallow], that the poor of thy people may eat [of it]; and what they leave, the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thine olive-tree.
For one year in seven, a whole farming nation had to leave its fields alone. God's reason is not the soil but people — the poor eat first, then the animals. So how was Israel to live that year?
The command only makes sense if the fields were never really Israel's to begin with.
The land was to enjoy her sabbaths, as a lasting sign that it belonged to the Lord. So the land, as well as man, had to share God's rest. Here, though, the poor and the beasts of the field stand out. God had thought for both alike, however great the distance between them, since both were His creatures. This reminded the children of Israel that they were only tenants. They held their land, their vineyards and their olive groves from the Lord. So they had to consider even the poor and the beasts of the field, because these were the objects of His care.
God did not take a share of the harvest the farmer worked for. He took the year's growth that no one worked for at all.
God did not allow them to use one seventh of their time for their own ends. He did not allow the occupier to keep one seventh of the ground's increase as his own. Jehovah had a right to do that, and this law showed strict righteousness. The farmer had full right to what his own work produced. But God claimed as His alone the growth of the land that had cost the occupier no labour. That year the barns and storehouses were not to fill up for the occupier's profit... This law was a test: it would show whether greed and disregard for others would mark the people the Lord had brought out of Egypt.
The verse names its beneficiaries in sequence — the poor, then what is left over.
The seventh day was the day of rest. The seventh year was to give the land rest. That seventh year was meant for the poor above all. Whatever grew by itself belonged to them, and what they left the beasts of the field were to eat. What a gracious provision this was! How merciful and gracious our God is!
The same word for letting the land rest appears in the law about cancelling debts.
Compare Exodus 23:11, where the same word used here for "release" is applied to the land — letting it rest. That assures us plainly: this was not an absolute cancelling of all debt. It was a temporary one during the land-rest, which might prevent payment... God would have no poor among His people. Yet there would always be some, left to test and draw out the mercy of their brothers. Their care was to make poverty cease in practice. Nor did they need to fear loss through this freedom; they would be blessed in all they put their hand to.
Obeying meant staking a whole year's food on a promise.
Nowhere but in Israel was such a provision made, because it was not man's thought but God's. What a sight it must have been! In the sabbatical year the land lay fallow everywhere. No sound of farming. The plough and harrow laid aside, no seed sown, no field watered. The sixth year's crop had been so large that it provided enough for three years. So it met the people's needs in full, and nothing was lacking for man or beast. Who could promise this? Who could keep such a promise, but One?
Commentators see these repeating sabbaths as pictures of an age of rest still to come.
It is interesting to notice the many ways the Jewish system held up the millennial rest to view. Every seventh day was a sabbath day. Every seventh year was a sabbatical year. And every seven times seven years there was a jubilee. Each of these held a blessed prospect before the eye of faith: a time when labour and sorrow would cease. Then no one would need the sweat of the brow to satisfy hunger.
The command was, in the end, ignored — and the land took its rest anyway.
So the word of God through Jeremiah came true. The land of Israel would lie desolate and enjoy the sabbaths it had not enjoyed for years. The people were greedy: they wanted crops in the seventh year as well as in the six years God had allotted them. That is why God had told them through Jeremiah that the land would stay desolate for 70 years — the length of Judah's captivity in Babylon.
- Owner. The land was the Lord's; Israel farmed it as tenants, and the fallow year was the standing reminder.
- Rent. God claimed no part of what their labour produced — only the seventh year's growth, which cost them nothing.
- Table. God gave that free growth to the poor first, and the wild animals after them.
- Trust. The sixth year's crop had to feed three years. The year ran on God's promise, not on planning.
- Refusal. Greed for a seventh crop cancelled the rest for centuries. Then exile gave the land the sabbaths its tenants had withheld.