Imamat 25:1-7

Regulations for the Sabbatical Year

25:1 The Lord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai: 25:2 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land must observe a Sabbath ¹  to the Lord. 25:3 Six years you may sow your field, and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather the produce, ²  25:4 but in the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath of complete rest ³  – a Sabbath to the Lord. You must not sow your field or ⁴  prune your vineyard. 25:5 You must not gather in the aftergrowth of your harvest and you must not pick the grapes of your unpruned ⁵  vines; the land must have a year of complete rest. 25:6 You may have the Sabbath produce ⁶  of the land to eat – you, your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker, the resident foreigner who stays with you, ⁷  25:7 your cattle, and the wild animals that are in your land – all its produce will be for you ⁸  to eat.

Nehemia 10:31

10:31 We will not buy ⁹  on the Sabbath or on a holy day from the neighboring peoples who bring their wares and all kinds of grain to sell on the Sabbath day. We will let the fields lie fallow every seventh year, and we will cancel every loan. ¹⁰ 

[25:2]  ¹ tn Heb “the land shall rest a Sabbath.”

[25:3]  ² tn Heb “its produce,” but the feminine pronoun “its” probably refers to the “land” (a feminine noun in Hebrew; cf. v. 2), not the “field” or the “vineyard,” both of which are normally masculine nouns (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 170).

[25:4]  ³ tn Heb “and in the seventh year a Sabbath of complete rest shall be to the land.” The expression “a Sabbath of complete rest” is superlative, emphasizing the full and all inclusive rest of the seventh year of the sabbatical cycle. Cf. ASV “a sabbath of solemn rest”; NAB “a complete rest.”

[25:4]  ⁴ tn Heb “and.” Here the Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) has an alternative sense (“or”).

[25:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “consecrated, devoted, forbidden” (נָזִיר, nazir). The same term is used for the “consecration” of the “Nazirite” (and his hair, Num 6:2, 18, etc.), a designation which, in turn, derives from the very same root.

[25:6]  ⁶ tn The word “produce” is not in the Hebrew text but is implied; cf. NASB “the sabbath products.”

[25:6]  ⁷ tn A “resident who stays” would be a foreign person who was probably residing as another kind of laborer in the household of a landowner (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 170-71). See v. 35 below.

[25:7]  ⁸ tn The words “for you” are implied.

[10:31]  ⁹ tn Heb “take.”

[10:31]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “debt of every hand,” an idiom referring to the hand that holds legally binding contractual agreements.