For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left over. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. The sabbatical year for the land extends the six-and-one pattern of the Sabbath and the manna week to the agricultural calendar. The seventh year's fallow is simultaneously an act of land stewardship, a provision for the poor who can glean from the unharvested growth, and a statement of trust: the land belongs to God, and its productivity is His gift. Leviticus 25 develops the sabbatical year into the jubilee system. Mark 2:27 says the Sabbath was made for humanity — the sabbatical year extends that gift of structured rest to the earth itself.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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