Sabbatical Year (Old Testament)

For the practice of granting pastors a period of rest from ministry, see Sabbatical.

Biblical Texts and Content

• Exodus 23:10-11: The land is to be sown for six years, and in the seventh year it is to rest and lie fallow. Whatever grows of itself that year is for the poor to eat, and what they leave, the wild animals may eat. Vineyards and olive groves are subject to the same rule.
• Leviticus 25:1-7: The seventh year is appointed as the year in which the land keeps "a sabbath unto the LORD." In that year the fields are not to be sown nor the vines pruned, and what grows of itself is not to be harvested and stored. Its produce is to be eaten by the owner together with servants, hired workers, sojourners, livestock, and wild animals. In 25:18-22 God promises to provide enough produce in the sixth year to last for three years. The year that follows seven cycles of these seven years is the Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-12).
• Deuteronomy 15:1-11: At the end of every seven years a "release" is to be observed, so that loans made to a neighbor and fellow Israelite are not to be exacted. The passage also urges the people not to be reluctant to lend to the poor because the year of release is near.
• Deuteronomy 31:10-13: The law is to be read aloud before all the people at the Feast of Tabernacles in the year of release.

Background and Terminology

The institution extends the seventh-day Sabbath to a cycle of years. Leviticus 25:4 calls this year "a sabbath of rest," that is, a complete rest, while Deuteronomy 15 uses the Hebrew word shemittah, meaning "release" or "remission." Underlying the institution is the conviction that God is the owner of the land and that human beings dwell on it as sojourners (Leviticus 25:23).

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

Leviticus 26:34-35 warns that if the people are carried into exile, the land will enjoy the sabbaths it had been denied. 2 Chronicles 36:21 describes the Babylonian exile as the period during which the land enjoyed its sabbaths. Jeremiah 34 records how, in the days of Zedekiah, the people released their Hebrew slaves and then took them back again. After returning from exile, the people pledged to forgo the produce of the seventh year and the exaction of debts (Nehemiah 10:31).

The New Testament does not directly command the sabbatical year. Many interpreters, however, connect the scene in which Jesus reads from Isaiah in the synagogue and proclaims "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-3) with the theme of liberation in the Jubilee and the sabbatical year. The Septuagint rendered the "release" of the sabbatical year and the Jubilee with the Greek word aphesis, a term also used in the New Testament for "forgiveness" and "liberty."

Interpretation and Issues

• Present-day application: Reformed traditions, including Presbyterian churches that follow the Westminster Confession of Faith, hold that Israel's judicial (civil) laws expired together with the Israelite state and that only their general equity remains. Many denominations, rather than observing these regulations literally, receive them as principles of faith: care for neighbors in need, rest for the land and for creation, and the conviction that God is the owner of the land.
• Scope of debt release: Scholars disagree as to whether the release in Deuteronomy 15 canceled debts outright or merely suspended their collection for a year.
• Actual observance: It is unclear to what extent the institution was observed before the exile. The calculation that the seventy years of exile corresponded to 490 years' worth of neglected sabbatical years is an interpretation derived from 2 Chronicles 36:21, not a statement made directly by the text.
• Jewish tradition: Judaism has continued the institution as shmita. Rabbi Hillel is traditionally credited with instituting the prosbul, a legal device for avoiding the cancellation of debts.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, the term ansiknyeon (sabbatical year) usually refers to a period in which a pastor or missionary rests from ministry. The Old Testament sabbatical year, together with the Jubilee, is cited in sermons on economic justice, sharing, the environment, and the Season of Creation.