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Laws concerning the Sabbatical Year

Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts. ²And this is the manner of the remission: every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it of a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the L ord’s remission has been proclaimed. ³Of a foreigner you may exact it, but you must remit your claim on whatever any member of your community owes you. ⁴There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the L ord is sure to bless you in the land that the L ord your God is giving you as a possession to occupy, ⁵if only you will obey the L ord your God by diligently observing this entire commandment that I command you today. ⁶When the L ord your God has blessed you, as he promised you, you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow; you will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you.

⁷ If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the L ord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. ⁸You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. ⁹Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the L ord against you, and you would incur guilt. ¹⁰Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the L ord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. ¹¹Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

¹² If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. ¹³And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. ¹⁴Provide liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your wine press, thus giving to him some of the bounty with which the L ord your God has blessed you. ¹⁵Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the L ord your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command upon you today. ¹⁶But if he says to you, “I will not go out from you,” because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, ¹⁷then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his earlobe into the door, and he shall be your slave forever.

You shall do the same with regard to your female slave.

¹⁸ Do not consider it a hardship when you send them out from you free persons, because for six years they have given you services worth the wages of hired laborers; and the L ord your God will bless you in all that you do.

The Firstborn of Livestock

¹⁹ Every firstling male born of your herd and flock you shall consecrate to the L ord your God; you shall not do work with your firstling ox nor shear the firstling of your flock. ²⁰You shall eat it, you together with your household, in the presence of the L ord your God year by year at the place that the L ord will choose. ²¹But if it has any defect—any serious defect, such as lameness or blindness—you shall not sacrifice it to the L ord your God; ²²within your towns you may eat it, the unclean and the clean alike, as you would a gazelle or deer. ²³Its blood, however, you must not eat; you shall pour it out on the ground like water.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

6. For the Lord thy God blesseth thee. He confirms the foregoing declaration, but ascends from the particular to the general; for, after having taught that they might expect from God’s blessing much more than they have bestowed on the poor, he now recalls their attention to the Covenant itself, as much as to say, that whatever they have is derived from that original fountain of God’s grace, when He made them inheritors of the land of Canaan. God reminds them also that He then promised them abundant produce; and thus indicates that, if they were mean and niggardly, they would cause the land to be barren. When He says that they should lend to all nations, he speaks by way of amplification; and also in the next clause, that they should reign over the Gentiles; whence it follows, that if there were any in want among them, it would arise from the wickedness and depravity, of the people themselves.