"If ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year: until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store."
"Ye shall keep My sabbaths . . . and if ye walk contrary unto Me . . . I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it."
In the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy this sabbatic year is called a year of release. The specific injunctions here relate to loans made to a Hebrew and to a foreigner, and to the taking of a Hebrew into bondage. The laws as to loans had direct reference to the sabbath of the land, for since only Hebrews might possess the Holy Land, interest on a debt might not be exacted from a Hebrew in the sabbatic year, as the land did not then yield him wherewith he might pay. But loans to foreigners would be necessarily for commercial, not agricultural, purposes, and since commerce was not interdicted in the sabbatic year, interest on loans to foreigners might be exacted. Warning was given that the loans to a poor Hebrew should not be withheld because the sabbatic year was close at hand. The rules with respect to the Hebrew sold for debt into bondage are the same as those given in the Book of the Exodus.
In Deuteronomy it was also enjoined that—
"at the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the Feast of Tabernacles" (that is, in the feast of the seventh month), "when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing."
We find no more mention of the sabbatic year until the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. He had made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them, that every Hebrew bondservant should go free, but the princes and all the people caused their Hebrew bondservants to return and be in subjection to them. Then Jeremiah the prophet was sent to remind them of the covenant made with their fathers when they were brought out from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondmen; and in the Second Book of Chronicles it is said that the sign of the breaking of this covenant, already quoted from the Book of Leviticus, was being accomplished. The Captivity was—
"to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil three-score and ten years."
After the exile, we find one reference to the sabbatic year in the covenant sealed by the princes, Levites, and priests and people, in the Book of Nehemiah:—
"That we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt."
Just as the Feast of Weeks was bound to the Feast of the Passover by numbering seven sabbaths from the day of the wave-offering—"even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days:"—so the year of Jubilee was bound to the sabbatic year:—