Exodus 23:11

11. The seventh year… rest This provision for a sabbatic year is one of the most remarkable enactments of the Mosaic legislation, but we have no evidence that it was ever observed by the nation . It is repeated in fuller form in Leviticus 25:1-7, and is there associated with the law for the fiftieth year jubilee . The far-reaching and ennobling influences upon a people of the faithful observance of this law must needs be very great . It would (1 . ) teach that the land was God’s rather than the people’s . (2 . ) It would afford a rest to the soil, which would be materially helped by remaining fallow one year in seven . (3 . ) Inasmuch as it has been repeatedly proven that a man will do more and better work by resting one day in seven, it is at least presumable that, by proper care in cultivation, and one year’s rest in seven, the soil will yield as much or more than when no sabbatic year is observed. (4.) It would help to bring all classes of the people into closer sympathy, and remove some of the incitements to anarchical socialism. (5.) It would tend to cultivate the best sentiments of humanity and regard, alike for man and beast. (6.) It would afford extraordinary advantages for mental and moral culture. (7.) It would beget a most beautiful confidence in the providence of God. No people’s faith in God, not even ancient Israel’s, seems ever to have been sufficient to attempt the observance of this law. Hence the judgment of seventy years’ exile and desolation, “until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths.” 2 Chronicles 36:21. Even the resolution to observe the seventh year, after the exile, (Nehemiah 10:31,) does not appear to have been kept . Here is a decisive argument against critics who dispute the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch on the ground that the laws therein recorded were not observed before the exile . We have no historical evidence that this law was ever observed .

Rest and lie still The parallel passage in Leviticus 25:4, shows that this was intended to stop all sowing and cultivation for the year; not, as some have supposed, that the tilling should go on as usual, but the crops be left to the poor. The thought, rather, is, that the poor of thy people may be allowed free appropriation of such products as grew without sowing and cultivation. No land-owner should that year claim the natural products of the soil for himself.