While the Sabbath occurred every seventh day, the Sabbatical Year occurred once every seven years. Just as there was to be six days of labor and one day of rest so the land was to “be tilled for six years and then allowed to rest by lying fallow in the seventh year.”
Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field, nor prune your vineyard.”
During this Sabbatical year, organized farming, plowing, pruning and reaping were forbidden, and the children of Israel were to “behave like the nomads they were before the conquest.” “The emphasis on the Sabbatical Year is that the land is lie fallow.” However, according to Hamilton there other emphases within the Sabbatical Year: Exodus 23:11claims it is for “the needy of your [Israelites] people,” while Deuteronomy argues that it is for the benefit of debtors through the remission of debts. In any case, the Sabbatical Year taught the Israelites the indispensability of reliance on God and forced them recognize God as “the supreme provider, and that while man could assist this process by …show more content…
The word “Jubilee” is an “Anglicized transliteration of the Hebrew word ‘yobel’, which translates both as ‘ram’ and ‘ram’s horn,’ the sounding of which proclaims the start of the Jubilee Year.” The Year of Jubilee began on the “tenth day of Tishri, the seventh month, the Day of Atonement.” The Jubilee year began on an appropriately solemn day when the entire nation received forgiveness for their sins. It is required that all debt be “cancelled, landowners who had leased their patrimony return to their land, and that Israel debtor-slaves be freed.” According to Hartley, every Israelite was to be a freed, equal citizen with the coming of the Jubilee