Leviticus 25:1–7

Shmita: the land sabbath

What is written

1 Yahuah said to Moses on Mount Sinai, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, ‘When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to Yahuah. 3 You shall sow your field six years, and you shall prune your vineyard six years, and gather in its fruits; 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahuah. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and you shall not gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. 6 The Sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for yourself, for your servant, for your maid, for your hired servant, and for your stranger, who lives as a foreigner with you. 7 For your livestock also, and for the animals that are in your land, shall all its increase be for food.

Leviticus 25:1–7

The practical question

Of everything on this list, this is the one that cannot be improvised. A household that feeds itself from its own ground has to know, years in advance, which year it is and what it will eat.

The open questions are large: which year is it? Does it apply outside the Land? What counts as sowing and pruning? Does a kitchen herb pot, or feeding livestock, or a greenhouse fall under it? And note verse 6 and 7: the year’s growth is explicitly food, for the household, the servant, the stranger, and the livestock. Resting the land is not the same as abandoning it.