This is the way it shall be done: every creditor shall release that which he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not require payment from his neighbor and his brother, because Yahweh’s release has been proclaimed.
To release all debts in the seventh (sabbatical) year
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
שָׁמוֹט כָּל־בַּעַל מַשֵּׁה יָדוֹ אֲשֶׁר יַשֶּׁה בְּרֵעֵהוּ לֹא־יִגֹּשׁ אֶת־רֵעֵהוּ וְאֶת־אָחִיו כִּי־קָרָא שְׁמִטָּה לַיהוָה
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להשמיט כספים כלומר החובות כלם בשנת השמטה, והוא אמרו יתברך ואשר יהיה לך את אחיך תשמט ידך. וכבר נכפל הצווי הזה באמרו וזה דבר השמטה וגו'. ולשון התוספתא בשתי שמטות הכתוב מדבר אחת שמטת קרקעות ואחת שמיטת כספים. ומצות שמיטת כספים אינה נוהגת מן התורה אלא בזמן ששמיטת קרקע נוהגת, בכל מקום. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת שביעית בפרק בתרא. (ראה אנכי, הלכות שמטה פ"ט):
That is that He commanded us to release monies - meaning all debts - on the sabbatical year. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "but that which you have with your brother, release your hand" (Deuteronomy 15:3). And this command was already repeated with His saying, "And this is the matter of the release" (Deuteronomy 15:2). And the language of the Tosefta (Gittin 36a) is, "Scripture is speaking about two releases, the release of lands and the release of monies." But by Torah law, the commandment of the release of monies is only practiced at the time that the release of land is [applicable]; and it is practiced in every place. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Sheviit in the first chapter. (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee 9.)
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
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, 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.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) ii reinterpreted it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.273 affirmed it Paraphrastic restatement of the sabbatical debt-release legislation in Josephus' summary of Mosaic law
The New Testament
- Luke 4:18-19 read it spiritually Jubilee/release language ('to proclaim liberty') applied eschatologically to Jesus' mission; draws on the shemittah-yovel release tradition
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 and arrears remission (mīšarum) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§1-4 (debt and arrears remission provisions) Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi three-year limit on debt-bondage of family members sold for debt (manumission limitation; analogical parallel to debt relief) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi Old Babylonian law capping debt-service bondage of pledged family members at three years, after which freedom is restored — a royal-mediated, limited debt-relief mechanism contrasting with the Deuteronomic calendrical, divine-law universal debt release 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.