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.
Not to harvest fruit from trees in the seventh year in the normal manner
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְאֶת־עִנְּבֵי נְזִירֶךָ לֹא תִבְצֹר
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מללקט מה שיצמחו האילנות מן הפירות בשנה ז' כמו שנאסוף פירותיהם בכל שנה, אבל נעשה אותו בשנוי להורות כי הוא הפקר. והוא אמרו ואת ענבי נזיריך לא תבצור, ובא הפירוש לא תבצור כדרך הבוצרים. מכאן אמרו חכמים תאנים של שביעית אין קוצין אותן במוקצה אבל קוצין אותן בהרבה, ואין דורכין ענבים בגת אבל דורך אותן בעריבה, ואין עושין זיתים בבד ובקוטב אבל כותש הוא. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו עם שלפניו במסכת שביעית. (שם, שם פ"ד):
He prohibited picking the fruit which grew on the trees in the seventh year in the [same] way that we gather their fruits every year. Rather we do it with a modification to show that it is ownerless. And that is His saying, "and the grapes of your untended vines, you shall not gather" (Leviticus 25:5). And the explanation appeared (Sifra, Behar, Chapter 1:3): "'You shall not gather' - in the [usual] way of the gatherers. From here, they said (Mishnah Sheviit 8:6), 'Figs of the seventh year are not to be cut in a muktzeh, but they may be cut in an open place. Grapes may not be trodden in the wine-press, but they may be trodden in a kneading-trough. Olives may not be prepared in an olive-press or in a small olive-press, but one may crush them.'" And the regulations of this commandment and the one before it have already been explained in Sheviit. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee 4.)
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
- Conservative Binding, with modification
- Reform Not binding
- 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.86-109 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.281-282 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 gathering tree fruit in the normal commercial manner 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 prohibition on commercial fruit harvest from one's own trees 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 harvesting orchard fruit in a prohibited year, an offense that involves no direct victim and no harm beyond violation of a religiously-mandated land-rest cycle.
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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 survives in halakhic codes but has not been applied by any recognized Jewish court since late antiquity.