Exodus 23:10,11

The fallow year. In every seventh year the fields, vineyards, and olive-gardens are to remain uncultivated, such produce as they bear naturally being not gathered by the owners, but left to the poor. The terms in which the law is expressed leave it uncertain whether (as is generally supposed) a year common to the whole land is intended, or (Riehm, HWB.s.v. Sabbathjahr; Wellh. Hist.p. 117 f.; Nowack, Archäol.ii. 162; W. R. Smith in EB.iv. 4180; Bä.) one varying with he different properties, and reckoned in each from the year in which it first began to be cultivated: the analogy of v.12 would favour the former interpretation; practical considerations, and the analogy of Leviticus 19:23-25, would support the latter. In Leviticus 25:1-7 (H) it is represented as a fixed year to be observed throughout the country simultaneously; but this does not determine the question whether it had that character from the beginning. A common septennial fallow year, must, in practice, have had its inconveniences: 2 Chronicles 36:21 (cf. Leviticus 26:34-35) seems to imply that it was not observed, at least regularly, before the exile: but there are several notices of its observance in the Greek period (e.g. 1Ma 6:49; 1Ma 6:53 : DB.iv. 325 b).