What is Shemitah and what does the Torah command?

Leviticus 25:4 commands: "In the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD." Every seventh year, Israel ceased all agricultural work — no plowing, planting, or pruning. The land lay fallow and its produce was ownerless, available to all. Leviticus 25:23 gives the theological basis: "The land is mine."

Why did the Babylonian exile last seventy years?

2 Chronicles 36:21 explains: to "fulfil the word of the LORD...until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths." Leviticus 26:34-35 had predicted this. Israel had failed to keep the Shemitah during the monarchy — roughly 490 years of occupation, minus the required Sabbatical years, yielding approximately seventy uncollected rests. The exile collected them.

What happened to Shemitah produce during the seventh year?

All produce that grew on its own during the seventh year was ownerless — anyone could come and take it, including the poor, animals, and strangers. Exodus 23:11: "the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat." The social redistribution was built into the agricultural rest.

What did Nehemiah's community commit regarding Shemitah?

Nehemiah 10:31 records the post-exilic community's covenant including: "we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt." The returned exiles — who had just come from the exile that the violated Shemitah caused — explicitly included land rest in their renewal covenant.

Can Shemitah be observed outside of Israel?

Rabbinic law holds that Shemitah applies only to the land of Israel, not to Jewish-owned land outside Israel. Leviticus 25:2: "When ye come into the land...the land shall keep a sabbath." The commandment is land-specific. Jeremiah's command to farm in Babylon was not a Shemitah — it was survival in diaspora. Shemitah requires being in the land.

Commandment #62 · Positive · Agricultural Laws

Let the Land Rest in the Sabbatical Year — Shemitah

שְׁמִטַּת קַרְקָעוֹת

Source: Exodus 23:11 · Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive #62

Leviticus 25:2 states the theological premise: "The land shall keep a sabbath unto the LORD." The land had its own Sabbath. It did not belong to its farmers — it belonged to God. Every seventh year, by ceasing all agricultural labor and releasing all produce as ownerless, Israel acknowledged that the land was on loan.

שָׁבַת שַׁבָּתוֹן יִהְיֶה לָאָרֶץ שַׁבָּת לַיהוָה

"A sabbath of solemn rest shall the land have, a sabbath for the LORD."

Leviticus 25:4 — Open in Torah Reader

The Land Belongs to God: The Shemitah's Theology

Leviticus 25:23: "The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." The Shemitah was built on this premise: the land of Canaan was God's, not Israel's. Israel were tenants, not owners. The Sabbatical year was the annual rent reminder — one year in seven when the tenant acknowledged the landlord.

Produce of the Sabbatical year was ownerless and available to all: the poor, the animals, the stranger. The social redistribution was part of the theology: when the land is God's, its produce cannot be hoarded. The Shemitah simultaneously declared God's ownership and Israel's obligation to the vulnerable.

2 Chronicles 36:21: The Land Collecting Its Sabbaths

עַד רָצְתָה הָאָרֶץ אֶת שַׁבְּתוֹתֶיהָ

"Until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath."

2 Chronicles 36:21

2 Chronicles 36:20-21 is the most devastating explanation of the Babylonian exile in all of Scripture: Israel was carried to Babylon "to fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years."

The seventy-year exile was the land collecting the Sabbatical years Israel had refused to give it. Leviticus 26:34-35 had predicted this: "Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate...even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths." The Shemitah violated was not forgiven — it was deferred, and the land collected with interest.

Jeremiah's Command: Plant Despite Exile

Jeremiah 29:5-7 commanded the Babylonian exiles to "plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them" — to farm in exile. This is the inverse of the Shemitah: in Babylon there was no land to rest. The farming that had been regulated in Canaan became survival in exile. The absence of Shemitah in Babylon was a marker of displacement — you can only keep Shemitah when the land is yours.

The future return promised in Jeremiah 29:10 — after seventy years — was also the return of the Shemitah possibility. Restoration meant land; land meant Shemitah; Shemitah meant acknowledging God's ownership again.

Key Figures

The Land Itself — The Sabbath Keeper

2 Chronicles 36:21 personifies the land as an active agent: it "enjoyed her sabbaths" during the exile. The land that Israel refused to give rest collected its own rest through forced desolation. The Shemitah's observance or non-observance was not between Israel and God alone — the land itself was a party.

Nehemiah — The Post-Exilic Shemitah Renewer

Nehemiah 10:31 records the returned exiles specifically committing to observe the seventh year rest: "if the people of the land bring ware or any victuals on the sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them...and that we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt." Their covenant included Shemitah — they had learned the lesson.

Study Questions

For reflection and group study

Leviticus 25:23 says "the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." What does acknowledging tenant status in your own country every seventh year accomplish spiritually and socially that annual tithing cannot?

See Lev 25:23; Deut 8:17; Ps 24:1

2 Chronicles 36:21 says the exile lasted seventy years to let the land enjoy its Sabbaths. What does this interpretation — the exile as enforced Shemitah — say about the relationship between voluntary covenant observance and forced consequences?

See 2 Chr 36:20–21; Lev 26:34–35; Jer 25:11–12

The Shemitah made all produce ownerless in the seventh year — available to the poor and animals without restriction. What does a commandment that redistributes agricultural produce by making it available to all say about the relationship between property and covenant obligation?

See Lev 25:4–7; Ex 23:11; Matt 6:24

Nehemiah 10:31 specifically includes Shemitah in the post-exilic covenant renewal. What does the explicit inclusion of land rest in the returning community's covenant suggest about what they had learned from exile?

See Neh 10:31; 13:15–22; Lev 26:34–43

Jeremiah commanded exiles to farm in Babylon. Shemitah can only be kept in the land of Israel. What does the land-dependency of this commandment say about the relationship between the covenant people, the covenant land, and covenant obligations?

See Jer 29:5–7; Deut 12:1; Lev 25:2

Read this commandment in the original Hebrew.

Open Exodus 23:11 in Torah Reader

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