Every 7th year

‎Every seventh year, the land was to be left untilled. It is when we consider the objects of this law that we can see its wisdom. Agricultural science has discovered the virtue of giving the land an occasional rest to prevent the exhaustion of its fertility; this may have been included in the objects aimed at in the Mosaic law. But the specified object opens out quite another line of consideration: “that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat” (Exod. 23:11). The land, left to “rest and lie still” during the seventh year, would bring forth “that which groweth of its own accord” (Lev. 25:5). This was to be at the service of all comers, with one condition only—that they were poor. That year, there would be no trespass laws. There would be common thoroughfare over all land, with a free welcome to whatever might be found useful. What a spectacle on earth!—the products of every estate and farm in the whole country, once in seven years at the free disposal of the poor and needy. A most wise adjunct to the jubilee law of a family inheritance: for though, in the main, that law would preserve the community from impoverishment, there would necessarily be many never-do-wells who from mismanagement would be out of their family lands: as Moses told them, “The poor will never cease out of the land”. Here, for such, would be an alleviation on which they could reckon every seven years: the spontaneous products of the whole land placed at their free disposal. Here was a” poor law” eclipsing all Gentile arrangements.

‎As regards the owners, how were they to fare during that seventh year ? Their needs were provided in a manner only possible in a divine system: “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” (Lev. 25:20), So that the proprietors would have laid in a stock that would place them above anxiety while all manner of visitors were prowling over their lands in search of food.

Roberts, R. (1987). The Law of Moses