but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahweh. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.
Not to till or work the soil in the seventh year
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
שָׂדְךָ לֹא תִזְרָע
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהירנו מעבודת הארץ בשני שביעית. והוא אמרו יתעלה שדך לא תזרע, וכל מי שעבר על לאו זה לוקה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשביעית. (בהר סיני, הלכות שמיטה פ"א):
He prohibited us from working the land in the seventh year. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "you shall not sow your field" (Leviticus 25:4). And anyone who transgresses this negative commandment is lashed. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Sheviit. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
- Binding in the land of Israel
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
- Lashes (malkot)
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Vayikra Rabbah 1:1 (midrashically identifying the 'gibborei koach' of Ps 103:20 with shemittah-observers) expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.86-109 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.280-286 affirmed it
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes thirty-nine lashes for tilling the soil in the seventh year; post-Enlightenment norms treat state-administered corporal punishment as inherently incompatible with human dignity.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment; judicial lashes for a calendrically-defined agricultural prohibition constitute degrading treatment under international human-rights law.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Modern penal proportionality doctrine does not countenance corporal punishment for a non-violent agrarian offense such as cultivating one's own land in a prohibited year, in which no direct victim or demonstrable harm is present.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the Sanhedrin's corporal jurisdiction lapsed with the exile of the great court from the Temple precincts (b. Sanhedrin 41a); the de jure malkot norm remains in halakhic codes but has not been applied by any recognized Jewish court since late antiquity.