EXODUS 23:11 — KING JAMES VERSION 1 0
“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.”
Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. The sabbatical year applies to every form of agriculture: fields, vineyards, olive groves. No agricultural holding is exempt from the seventh-year rest. The comprehensive coverage ensures that the covenant rhythm is not observed selectively by those whose crops can survive a fallow year and ignored by those whose crops cannot. Deuteronomy 15:1–11 connects the sabbatical year for the land with the sabbatical year for debt: every seventh year debts are cancelled, just as the land rests. The integrated sabbatical economy addresses both the land and the poor simultaneously. Isaiah 61:1–2 announces the year of the Lord's favor — the sabbatical and jubilee patterns reach their eschatological expression in Jesus' inaugural sermon in Luke 4:18–19.
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
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