Sabbatical year (Hastings' Dictionary)

In this article several distinct topics are treated together, wliich are too closely related to one another to be dealt with separately without a good deal of overlapping. A clear summary statement of the position of the Sabbatical and Jubile years in the cycle of Hebrew sacred seasons will be found under the art. Feasts AND FASTS. The 7 j'ears' period recurs at every stage of the legislation, but not always with itfentical provi- sions, or even with application to the same suoject.

The 50 years' term is first found in the Priestly Code, but it is applied to cases previously connected with the 7 years period. Consequently it will be • There is no necessary discrepancy between Lk 24^0 and Ac V^. In the former passage it is Hjii<l that our Lord took out the diBciples V«< wptt li«iy«..cx., 'until they came within view of Bethany' (Blass, XT (iraminar, 139 n. 4), which (Jn ll'") was 16 furlongs from Jerusalem.

In the latter passage it is said that the disciples ' returned from the Mount called olivet, which iB nigh unto Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's Journey off' — that is, from 6 to 6 furlongs. The Mount of '(Hives was a ridge about a mile long, and it Is this and not Bethany whose distance is thus mea.'iurLKl after Luke's manner (cf. 24i:'), for the purpose of in- fonning readers unacquainted with the locality. Bethany waa on the south-east slope of the ridge, about a mile beyond the summit.

It is unlikely that Luke intended to represent the Ascension os takiui; place either withiu or close to the vUloge. 324 SABBATICAL YEAR SABBATICAL YEAR clearest to gather the whole material from the successive sources in such a form as to make coui- jjaxison easy. Accordingly, tlie same letter is vised to mark corresponding matter in the following paragraphs. I. Comparative Summary of Laws.— (i.) Tke earliest Legislation — E. — a.

The 7 years' ]ieriod is found in tlie Covenant Book Ex 23""-, and among the Judgments Ex SP'* (cf. vol. i. p. 810). b. In the former it is laid down as an obligation that every Hebrew owner of land should ■ let it rest and lie fallow' in the 7th j-ear. Hupfeld and Wellhausen apply this to the increase only, as though it was lawful to sow, but not to reap ; but it is better, with Dillmann, Nowack, etc., to take it, as in our versions, as prescribing an entire ce.

ssation of all field work ; for the two verbs in V." ' let drop (or ' release ') and leave alone ' (njE^^f'fi B?y?}')i seem obviously in contrast to both verbs in v.'" 'sow' and 'gather.' The oliveyards and vine- yards are to come under the same rule as the corn land, i.e. no work is to be done in them in the 7th year. The aim expressed is ' that the poor of thy people may eat.'

And so stringent is the rule that, if all is not consumed by tlie poor, the remainder must not be garnered, but must be left for ' the beast of the field ' to eat. It is not explicitly stated that the owner and his family were not to eat of the spontaneous growth of the fallow year, but the passage, taken by itself, rather suggests that they might not. c. In Ex 21'"' a 6 years' term is fixed as the normal period during which a Hebrew could be compelled to serve as a slave.

In the 7th year he could demand his freedom (see, further, art. Servant, and the Oxf. Hex. i. 55). d. Neither in connexion with the fallow for the land nor with the emancipation of the slave is there any clear indication that the 7 years' period was fixed, beginning and ending simultaneously all over the country.

In the second case, of the slave, this hypothesis is practically ruled out as impracticable, and in the case of the fallow the natural interpretation of the language is that each owner would reckon the term independently of others, and indeed that diiierent portions of his holding would lie fallow in different years, so that, e.g., if his com land did not require his labour, he would still have his vines and olives to attend to, and vice versd.

The analogy of the weekly sabbath is too precarious to be allowed much weight. e. Tne earliest legislation has no laws as to the inheritance, sale, or redemption of land. (ii.) The Dcuteronomic Code — D. — a. The 7 years' period occurs t%vice in Dt 15, in w.'^* and vv.""-", and a third time in 31'°"''. b.

No mention is made of any custom of a periodical fallow, but an ordinance appears 15'"' for the first time (reflecting the life of times when the purely agricultural stage has been passed), which provides for the remission, or, as some hold, the suspension of debts due to a creditor from ' his neighbour and his brother,' though debts may be exacted 'of a foreigner.' The motive of the law is compassion for the poor and unfortunate among the Israelites.

And tlie provision in 31'°"" that ' at the end of 7 years, in the set time of the year of ra- lease' (.lEOif, from Ef'c ' let drop '[KV'm ' release '], Ex 23"), in the 'Feast of Booths.'^a public reading of the Deut. Law-book should take place, indicates that the sanction for the ordinance is to be found in the great principles of love to God and man reiterated in it. c. A Hebrew slave (15'^"") may go free after serving for 6 years. d.

'The period, in the last case, obviously berfns with the entrance of the slave upon servitude ; out in the former, it is clear, from the allusion to the 'proclaiming' of 'J"'s release,' that the close of each period is to be simultaneous over all the country, and to be publicly announced. e. Except for the warnings against disturbing a neighbour s 'landmark' (lO''' ~1^'), no Deuteronomio law bears on the ownership of land. (iii.) The Priestly Code — P. — a.

Not only is the 7 years' period found in this, the latest stratum of Hebrew legislation, but a 50 years' term is added to crown the calendar (Lv 25). b. Every 7th year, and in addition every 50th year, is to be kept with strictness as a fallow year, the crops being neither sown at the beginning nor reaped at the close, the vines not pruned and the grapes not gathered.

The idea must be that no storing, or systematic harvesting o|)erations, was to go on, but not that the crops that might grow of themselves were to be left unlouched, for it ia added, ' the sabbath of the land shall be for food for you ; for thee, and for thy servant and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant and for thy stranger that sojourn with thee ; and for thy cattle, and for the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be for food.

So it was lawful to go into the fields and oliveyards and vineyards, and gather food as it might be wanted from the spontaneous yield of the land. This view is maintained by Dillmann, Nowack, and the Jewish interpreters. iStUl it is stran^'e that in w. 20-22, wiiere the prob- lem of food supply is dealt with, no allusion is made to the rijiht conferred in v.w- (cf. v.i2). It might be conjectured that v. 6 was added to v.^ to modify a stringency regarded as impracticable.

All mention of the poor has dropped out, and the ordinance is expressly based on the religious principle that the land, as well as the people, should keep Sabbath unto J". Neither is the arrangement of Deuteronomy recalled for the re- mission of debts, though the prohibition of usury is repeated from Dt 23'". c. A provision for emancipation of slaves occurs yy 89-64^ but in connexion witli the jubile, in which year eveij Hebrew slave is to go free with his family.

'This can scarcely be in addition to, but rather in substitution for, the earlier provisions; for (1) if the law' of emancipation at the 7th year was in force, it would be unnecessary to order it in the 50th ; and (2) the later law in another point abrogates the earlier, as it prohibits lifelong bondage, and leaves no room for such a riveting of the ties of slavery as was involved in the archaic ceremony of the boring of the ear.

Moreover, we find again the express mention of a religions prin- ciple as the motive for the law, viz. that all Israel- ites are J'"s servants, and therefore cannot be permanently owned by anotlier. V."*- a new provision is also added, that a Hebrew enslaved to a ' stranger ' (i3) may be redeemed by a relative, the price varying with the distance of the jubile. Curiously, no such provision e.\ists in the case of a Hebrew enslaved to a Hebrew. d.

The 7th year in Leviticus becomes for the first time a true sabbatical year, a season to be simultaneously observed as a fallow year in which no field work was to be done under a directly re- ligious sanction. Moreover, the difficulties of such observance being apjiarent, doubters are encouraged (yy 30-22) by an assur.ance of Providential aid in the shape of an unusually abundant yield in the Cvh year. The produce is to be enough for 3 years, ' untU the 9th year, until her fruits come in.'

The reason is that, after the fallow of the 7th year, the ground is so hard that a second or third plougliing is necessary in the 8th year before sow- ing can take place, and consequently only the Bummer-sown crops of the 8th year come to any- thing, and they are not available for use till the beginning of tlie 9th year, the reckoning of the years being, of course, in this context from autumn to autumn.

SABBATICAL YEAR SABBATIC^\X YEAS 325 It i« not therefore necessary to reject ' until the 9th year," M Dillm. proposes, on the eround that the "i years' would naturally be tne 6th, 7tb, and 8th years, and that the allusion to the 9th year has been introduceu because an editor referred the passage to the exceptional case of the 49th ami 5i)th years when two fallow years followed one another, tho 7th sal)batical year and the jubile year.

Vet it is natural to conclude from the languat'e of Lv 'ib, as K;ilisch does, that the intention of the oniinance was that, after 7 sabbatical periods had uassed, the 50th or jubile vear should be intercalated as an additional tallow year, iranietllately after the 7th sabbatical year, and that a new sabbatical period should begin with the 5l8t year. This was also the %'iew of the Jewish interpreters. But see, further, below II. (iv.) e.

The purchase and redemption of land is not alluded to in the earlier codes (but cf. Kzk 46'"' for allusion to some such custom), but is here treated with some fulness (vv."-"" '-•"• **""). The i>rovisions may be entuiierated as follows : — ( 1 ) The freehold of agricultural land could not be sold outri<'ht, for at the 50th or jubile year every piece sold returned to the owner or his representatives.

The utmost that an owner desirous of selling could do was to grant a lease of the property, the term of the lease to expire at the next jubile, however near that might be. The purchaser only obtained the usu- fruct for the time being, and the price was to be regulated by the number of the crops due before the jubile. (2) In every case of a man being forced to sell part of his patrimony, it was the duty of his kinsman (v.") either, according to the ordinary interpretation, to redeem the land, i.

e. from the purclia.ser (who is not named), or, accord- ing to the attractive theory put forth by liuhl (AJTh i. 738), to exercise a rijjht of pre-emption. (3) If there wius no kinsman to ellect the gc'uUah, still, if the original owner at any time became rich enough, he could buy it back at the selling price, less the proportion belonging to the years since the sale (v.^*-). (4) House property in a walled city might be sold outright witliout returninj; to the vendor at the jubile (v.

^') ; but he was given the right of redemption during the one year after the sale (Maimonides and others mention a tradi- tion that the term 'walled cities' is restricted to those that were such in Joshua's time). (5) House property in a village was subject to the provisions, see (l), (3) above, attaching to agricultural land.

(6) Tlie Levitical possessions were subject to special provisions; (a) house property in their cities was to be saleable, as far as the leasehold value went, redeemable at any time, and restored at the jubile ; and (h) the farm land round their cities was to be altogether unsaleable and inalienable. (7) The ca.se of a field devoted to J" is treated in Lv 27"'*'.

The field was to be valued at once, and might be redeemed at that j^irice, with a tifth addetl, up to the jubile, after which it |)assed to the priest. If the held had been already sold, then no redemption was possible, and the gift became ell'ective and final at the jubile.

If the field was not part of the donor's own patrimony, but a purchased ( = leased) portion of another man's possession, then the gift could only involve the usufruct till the jubile, when the property returned to the original owner. Summary. — Three stages may thus be distin- guished. ( I ) In Exodus a 7th year fallow for the land »nd a 7 years' term for Hebrew .slaves is reiiuired, witlioutanysinmltaneous reckoning of either period throughout the country.

(2) In Deuteronomy a ■imultaneous remission of debts replaces the fallow year, the term of service for slaves remaining the same. (3) In Leviticus a simultaneous 7th year fallow is ordered ; remission of debts is drojilied in favour of a general prohibition of usury; emanci- pation at the 50lh year is all that remains of the 7 years' term of service ; and a whole series of pro- visions is added on land and h<m.><e property. Tht ytno/ysu qf l/v 2S.

— That this chapter contains earlier ftBd Ut«l element is generally admitted. Uillmaon, Kuenen, and Nowack consider that there are no sure grounds on which to discriminate these. Driver and White ( Leviticus' in SBO'F) treat the jubile tor the land as ori^'inal in the Uulinesa legislation (Pt"), but ascribe to a later hand the extension to ]tersons.

Wellhausen thinks that the llrst draft placed tho freeing of slaves and re<leniption of land in the 7th year, and, if Oillmann criticizes this reconstruction as involving an un- workable arrangement, Uolzinger points out, on the other hand, that the priestly scribes were not always very uracticaL Another solution is offered in the Oa/ord Ufxat>^udi, ii. 177, on Lv 25. It is there suggei,ted that the regulations on the sabbath year, w.-b-7.

1b, 22^ belong to the first draft of l'^ ; that tlie block of material on the jubile, vv,s-l7, which now inter- rujits the former, is itself composite, as is shown (I) by the number of doublets, and (2) by trie recurrence of phrases which recall Pb ; that a second draft of l'^ underlies this pa.

ssage and also the remainder of the chapter ; that in this second draft the emancipation of slaves and redemption of land, and possibly a 50 years' term, were included ; and that the rest, embracing all the clauses in which the term 'jubile' occurs, is by a later priestly editor. Addis and llaentsch take a similar view.

The blowing of the trumpets on the 10th day of the 7th month is thought by many to be a provision earlier than the appoint- ment of the same day as the solemn day of atonement, so that v.'"' will be later than v.^. II. Hlstorical Character. — (i.) The Seventh Year Fallow.

— The custom of a periodical fallow is so common a feature in agricultural practice that we should almost require evidence ti) prove that there was nothing of the kind amongst the Hebrews from the beginning of their settled life ; and the 7 years' period, which is still observed in Palestine and Syria, has every argument from analogy in favour of it.

Moreover, the fact that the Covenant Book in Ex 23 is throughout directed to defining and reflating ex- isting customs, and bears no mark of introducing any novelty (cf. the prob. allusion in Jer 17^ [Heb.] ; see Driver, Dent. 174), weighs in the same scale. The silence of the earlier historical books must be regarded as entirely natural if the fallow was not simultaneously observed. It would not be a feature that would call for mention.

It is other- wise with so serious an interruption of the common life as would be occasioned by the observance of the same year as a universal fallow year, so that all workers on the land would be keeping holiday for 12 months. Moreover, the tradition at the Exile explicitly denies the observance of the sabbath years in the pre-exilic times (2 (^h 30'-', cf. Lv 26'"'- •»}.

In fact, the first historic al refer- ence to the sabbatical year as an institution within the range of practical politics is in Neh 10^', where it occurs among the items included in the covenant that was entered into at the prompt- ing of Neheniiah. Even there the allusion is not quite certain.

The language ' leave (k's; ; = ' let lie fallow,' Ex 23") the seventii year, and the exaction of every debt,' recalls the "law of the fallow in Exodus ; but the clause is elliptical and far from explicit, and the following words, which recall Dt 15 , make it doubtful whether the remission of debts in the 7th year is not the institution in view. It is not, in fact, till we reach the Greek period that we come upon undisputed references to the observance of the sabbatical j'ear (Jos. AtU. XI.

viii. 26) : for Maccabtean times, see 1 Mac 6"- " ; Jos. Atit. XHI. viii. 1, XIV. X. 0, XV. i.2;BJ I. ii. 4 ; and for the Ilerodian era, Jos. Ant. Xiv. xvi. 2, XV. i. 2 ; Pliilo in Eus. Frcep. ad Ev. viii. 7 ; and Tac. HUl. v. 4. (ii.) 'I'he Emancipation of Slaves at the Seventh Year. — This is once refeiTeid to in .Jer 34""-, * where tho custom is shown to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and to be most difficult to enforce.

Tho postponement of libera- tion to the 50th year may be another witness to the same fact. (iii.) Tlie liemission or Suspension of Debts. — • Note here the techn. phrase im Nip (' proclaim liberty 'X W.9.1S. 17; also Is Oil of captives (cf. Kzk 40"» the 'year of im,' either of the jubile, or of tho year of emancipation of slavchi and Lv 26>o of the Jubile. (8. K. b.J. 326 SAEBEUS SACKBUT Unless Nell 10" refer to this, history is silent as to the observance of any such custom. (iv.)

The Redemption of Real rruperty. — That there was some provision in law or custom against alienating land is clear from the instance of Naboth, and the institution of the (jc'uUnh, Jer 32*"-, Ru 4. An obscure allusion in tzk 7'-'- may be taken in the same sense ; and it is, of course, possible that the ' year of liberty ' in Ezk 46" refers to the 50th year as an institution already known. Neither is there anything impracticable in the provisions themselves.

See for parallels among other nations, Maine, Village Communities, 81-88; Early Hist, of Institutions, 81 f., 100 ff.; von Maurer, Durfocrfassuiig, i. 304 ff. This kind of tenure is known as the ' sliifting severalty.' Strabo speaks of the Dalmatians redistributing land ever3- S j'oars, a practice wliich would supiiort Wellliauscu's theory that the term was ori'^inally 7 years and uot 50.

Tlie denunciations of land- grabbing in Isaiali and Micah show that no such law was operative even if in existence. Moreover, uo single undisputed liistorical allusion to the jubile exists, and the dating of the 3 sabbatical years that can be securely traced in B.C. 164-163, 38-37, and A.D. 68-09 leaves no room for the inter- calation of the jubile year.

For this reason, and because of the difficulty of the two fallow years in succession, the text has been strained to permit the identification of the 7th sabbatical year with the jubile year. The evidence from the literature is therefore rather against the jubile year having ever been historically observed. Neither is the anthropological evidence such as to rebut this presumption. The term jubUe.

— Nowack grivea a summary of interpreta- tions, and refers to two essays by Krariold and Wolde (Gott. 1H37) for a fuller account ; but tlie Ox/. Heb. Lex. mentions only that which he selects as the best, and which is su|iported by the Targum on Ex 191- and Jos 0^. and by Phosnician inscrip- tions, viz. '?3i = * ram.' It is used both in combination, as Joa ti^i^-, and alone, as Ex 191^, for a ' ram's horn,' and lastly stands as a desijjnatioD of the 50th year, ushered in by trumpet blasts.

LlTBRATCRB.— Treatises on Heb. Archiuolo'^^y by Keil (Eng. tr. ii. 10-2U), Nowack, and Benziiiger ; Ewald, Anti-jiiitieg, 369-380; Schiirer, UJ P I. i. 41) If . ; Dillm., Driver- White, Kalisch, Addis, Baentsch, and Ox/. Hex. on Lv 25 ; Mishna, Rosh ha-shana i. 1, Hhebiiih vi. 1, 2, 5, 6. G. Harford-Battersby. SABBEUS(Sa/3;3aIas),lEs9^' = Sheniaiah,EzrlO»'. SABI (B Tw^e(s, A Sa^tl, AV Sami), 1 Es 5= = Shobai, Ezr 2", Neh 7*>. SABIAS CSa/SIas).

— A chief of the Levites in the time of Josiah, 1 Es 1', called in 2 Ch 35' Hasha- UlAH.