“ ‘You shall count off seven Sabbaths of years, seven times seven years; and there shall be to you the days of seven Sabbaths of years, even forty-nine years.
To count seven sabbatical cycles and sanctify the fiftieth year as the Jubilee
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְסָפַרְתָּ֣ לְךָ֗ שֶׁ֤בַע שַׁבְּתֹ֣ת שָׁנִ֔ים שֶׁ֥בַע שָׁנִ֖ים שֶׁ֣בַע פְּעָמִ֑ים וְהָי֣וּ לְךָ֗ יְמֵי֙ שֶׁ֣בַע שַׁבְּתֹ֣ת הַשָּׁנִ֔ים תֵּ֥שַׁע וְאַרְבָּעִ֖ים שָׁנָֽה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו למנות השנים והשמטים שבע שבע עד שנת היובל, אחר שנכבשה הארץ והתגברנו בה. ומצוה זו כלומר ספירת שני השמיטה היא נמסרת לבית דין הגדול כלומר סנהדרי גדולה, כי הם שימנו שנה שנה מהחמשים שנה כמו שימנה כל איש ואיש ממנו ימי העומר. והוא אמרו יתעלה וספרת לך שבע שבתות שנים. ולשון ספרי יכול יספור שבע שמטות זו אחר זו ויעשה יובל תלמוד לומר שבע שנים שבע פעמים, הא עד שיאמרו שני כתובים ואם לאו לא שמענו, כלומר שמצוה זו לא הגיע איכות עשייתה אלא משני כתובים והוא שימנם השנים ביחיד ונמנה השבועות עמהן שבע פעמים. ואחר שאמר שזה הענין לא הגיע אלא משני כתובים הורה שהם מצוה אחת בהכרח שאילו היו שתי מצות כלומר מנין שני השמיטות ומנין השנים לא אמרו עד שיאמרו שני כתובים כי כל שתי מצות ילמדו משני כתובים, וכן כל מצוה ומצוה מכתוב שלה, ואמנם יאמר לעולם הא עד שיאמרו שני כתובים במצוה אחת שלא תשלם ידיעתו אלא משני כתובים כמו הבכור שבא בכתוב וכל פטר רחם לי ויורה לזה לבדו שיהא הבכור לה' בין זכר בין נקבה ובא בכתוב אחר הזכרים לה' ויורה הכתוב הזה לבדו שכל זכר לה' בין בכור בין פשוט ומשני הכתובים הגיע ענין המצוה שהוא בכור זכר לבד כמו שביארו במכילתא. (בהר סיני, שמטה ויובל פ"י):
That is that He commanded us to count the years and the sabbatical cycles until the Jubilee year, once the land has been conquered and we have subdued it. And this commandment - meaning the counting of the years of the sabbatical cycle is given over to the Great Court, meaning the Great Sanhedrin. For they are the ones that count each year of the fifty years, just like each and every one of us counts the days of the omer. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "And you shall count off seven weeks of years" (Leviticus 25:8). And the language of the [Sifra] (Sifra, Behar, Section 2:1) is, "I might think that one counts seven sabbatical years, one after the other, and then have the Jubilee. [Hence] we learn to say, 'seven years, seven times.' [This was not] until both verses were stated; if not, we would not have understood [the law.]" That is to say that the nature of this commandment's performance is only attained with two verses - and that is that he counts the years individually and counts the cycles with them, seven times. And once it says that this matter is only attained from two verses, it indicates that they are perforce one commandment. For had they been two commandments - meaning the counting of the sabbatical cycles and the counting of the years - they would not have said, "[This was not] until both verses were said." For we always learn two commandments from two verses; and likewise always learn every singular commandment from one verse. However, it is said that this is not at all [understood] until two verses were said for this one commandment - the knowledge of which would be incomplete without the two verses. This is like [the commandment of] the firstborn animal that comes from the verse, "All that opens the womb is Mine" (Exodus 34:19). However this alone would indicate that the firstborn would be the Lord's, whether male or female. But another verse comes - "the males are the Lord's" (Exodus 13:12). However that verse by itself would indicate that all the males are the Lord's - whether they are a firstborn or [not]. Rather the content of the commandment comes from the two verses, which is that it is only a firstborn male, like they explained in the Mekhilta. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee 10.)
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.
- 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 Not binding
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Not 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) reinterpreted it
- 4Q387, 4Q390 (Apocryphon of Jeremiah, jubilee chronology) reinterpreted it
- Jubilees (4Q216 etc.) reinterpreted it
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.110-123 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.282-285 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Luke 4:18-19 read it spiritually Reading of Isa 61 framed as eschatological jubilee fulfillment
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 debt-release (mīšarum) proclamation with andurārum provisions Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§1-22 Kraus, Ein Edikt des Königs Ammi-ṣaduqa von Babylon (1958); cf. Kraus, Königliche Verfügungen in altbabylonischer Zeit (1984)
- code of hammurabi debt-pledged person released after three years' service — a fixed-term debt-bondage release that shares with the Jubilee the principle of mandatory temporal limit on debt-servitude, though fixed at three years by royal fiat rather than at fifty by divine calendar Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 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.