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.
Not to demand payment of a debt after the sabbatical year has released it
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־יִגֹּשׂ 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.
הזהירנו שלא לתבוע משאות בשנת השמיטה אבל ישמטו כלם יחדו שנאמר שמוט כל בעל משה ידו ולא יגוש את רעהו, וזה אין חייבין בו מן התורה אלא בארץ ישראל בעת שתהיה שם שמיטת קרקע רוצה לומר היובל, ומדרבנן יתחייב כן בכל מקום ובכל זמן. ואינו מותר לגוש המשאת שעברה עליה השביעית אבל ישמט. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בשביעית. (ראה אנכי, הלכות שמיטה פ"ט):
He prohibited us - not to claim debts on the sabbatical year, but rather to release them all. For it is stated (Deuteronomy 15:2), "every creditor that lends anything to his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour." And we are only liable for this - according to the Torah - in the Land of Israel at the time when the sabbatical of the land is [operative]; meaning, the Jubilee. But rabbinically, one is liable for it in every place and at every time; so it is not permissible to exact debts that have gone over the seventh year. Rather one must release [them]. And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Sheviit. (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 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
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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Spec. Leg. 2.71-73 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.281-283 paraphrased it
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 remission with penalty for creditor who collects canceled debt Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence remission and creditor-penalty provisions (cf. §§3-7) Kraus, Königliche Verfügungen in altbabylonischer Zeit (1984); cf. Finkelstein, JCS 15 (1961)
- code of hammurabi Old Babylonian law limiting debt-bondage to three years and requiring release in the fourth year; the broader mīšarum tradition (of which this law is part) penalized creditors who collected debts the king had officially canceled, a royal-enforcement analogue to the Deuteronomic prohibition on post-sabbatical collection 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.