but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the animal of the field shall eat. In the same way, you shall deal with your vineyard and with your olive grove.
To declare all produce of the seventh year ownerless and freely available
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהַשְּׁבִיעִת תִּשְׁמְטֶנָּה וּנְטַשְׁתָּהּ וְאָכְלוּ אֶבְיֹנֵי עַמֶּךָ וְיִתְרָם תֹּאכַל חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להפקיר כל מה שתצמח הארץ בשנת השמיטה והתיר צמחת קרקעותינו כלם לכל אדם, והוא אמרו יתברך והשביעית תשמטנה ונטשתה. ולשון מכילתא והלא הכרם והזית בכלל היו ולמה יצאו להקיש אליהם מה כרם מיוחד שהוא בעשה ועוברים עליו בלא תעשה אף כל שהוא בעשה עוברים עליו בלא תעשה, וענין זה המאמר מה שאספר, וזה שאמר והשביעית תשמטנה ונטשתה כולל מה שיצמח מן הארץ בשנה השביעית מן התאנים והענבים והזיתים ואפרסקין ורמונים והחטה והשעורה וזולת זה, הנה הודיע שהשמטות הכל מצות עשה ואחר כך פרט ואמר כן תעשה לכרמך וגו' וזה בכלל כל מה שיצמח מן הארץ. ואמנם בא זה הצווי בכרם וזית לבד בעבור שבא בכתוב אזהרה ביחוד מלאסוף תבואת הכרם והוא אמרו וענבי נזיריך לא תבצור, וכמו שהכרם שהפקרו מצות עשה הנה מניעתו בלא תעשה כן הזית כל מה שיצמח בשנה שביעית שהתבאר שהפקרו בעשה הנה מניעתו בלא תעשה ודין הזית ודין שאר פירות אחד. הנה התבאר מכל מה שקדם שהשמטת גדולי שביעית מצות עשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת שביעית, וגם כן אינה נוהגת ואינה חובה מן התורה אלא לפירות ארץ ישראל בלבד. (ואלה המשפטים, זרעים הלכות שמטה ויובל פ"ד):
That is that He commanded us to render ownerless all that grows from the ground during the sabbatical year and permit the growth of all of our lands to any person. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "But in the seventh you shall release it and let it lie fallow." And the language of the Mekhilta (Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 23:11) is, "And were the vineyard and olive tree not in the category? So why were they specified? To compare to them: Just like the vineyard is particular in that it is a positive commandment and [if we do not let it rest], we transgress it as a negative commandment; so too [with] everything that has the positive commandment, we would [also] transgress the negative commandment." And the content of this statement is what I will explain. So that which He said, "But in the seventh you shall release it and let it lie fallow," includes everything that will grow from the ground in the seventh year - figs, grapes, olives, peaches, pomegranates, wheat, barley and other things. However this command came only about the vineyard and the olive tree on account of Scripture having come to specifically prohibit gathering of the produce of the vineyard - and that is His saying, "you shall not gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines" (Leviticus 25:5). And just like the vineyard, which the positive commandment rendered ownerless, has surely been prevented with a negative commandment; so too, is the olive tree: Anything that grows in the seventh year - which it is explained that it has been rendered ownerless by the positive commandment - is [also] prevented by the negative commandment. And the law of the olive tree and the law of other produce is the same. Behold it has been made clear to you from all of the above that the release of what grows during the seventh [year] is a positive commandment. And the regulations of this commandment are already explained in Tractate Sheviit. And it too is only practiced and obligatory by Torah law exclusively with the produce of the Land of Israel. (See Parashat Mishpatim; 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 flat, unconditional command
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
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
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 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.86-109 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.281-282 The catalog describes this reception as: reported
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- edict of ammisaduqa royal misharum edict remitting debts and arrears Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§1-4 (misharum/debt-remission provisions) Kraus, Ein Edikt des Königs Ammi-saduqa von Babylon (1958); Finkelstein, JCS 15 (1961)
- code of hammurabi debt-pledged family members (wife, son, daughter) released after three years of service; a time-limited servitude mechanism Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§117-119 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.