Exodus

Take-Aways

The command to rest on the seventh day and to let the land lie fallow in the seventh year is repeated several times in the first five books of the Bible. While “the Sabbath was made for humankind” (Mk 2:27), this passage in Exodus reveals that the command to rest is for animals as well as humans. It should also be noted that the reason in this passage to rest the land in the seventh year is for the benefit of the poor. Consider the fact that while it is the consumption of natural resources by industrialized nations that is having the greatest detrimental impact on our planet, it is the world’s poorest populations that are being harmed by climate change right now because they are most reliant on subsistence agriculture, and most likely to live in areas severely affected by drought and flood. Forty percent of the world’s population, including the poorest among us, gets its drinking water from glaciers that are disappearing. What would it do for the poor if we took more care to rest from our consumption? (See the section “Creation Care as Justice”).

New Interpreters Bible Commentary

The pattern of seven years may indeed derive from old cultic procedure, but here the law simply concerns crop rotation and the practice of letting the land lie fallow every seventh year. The motivation for such rotation is noteworthy. It is not said that such “rest” is good for the land–which it is. Rather, the fallow land, which will continue to produce some useful volunteer growth, is for the benefit of those who have not property of their own. Thus fields, vineyards, and orchards are, in the “off year,” fair territory for the poor and for wild animals. The law resists any practice of “enclosure” that draws too tightly the bounds of private property. Even private property must be managed to keep it sometimes open to the needs and requirements of the community (Volume I, p870-871).

[commentary for Ex. 23: 10-19]

The three-festival calendar is explicitly oriented to Yahweh. In it, the crucial times of the agricultural economy become times at which Yahweh’s sovereignty is enacted. The two “laws of seven” have a very different orientation, being primarily concerned for God’s creation (for the poor and wild animals, for the ox and donkey, for the slave, and for the resident alien). These laws themselves do not say much about Yahweh, aside from the motivational addendum of v.13. Thus vv. 10-12 concern creaturely well-being, and vv. 14-19 concern the creator who own the land.
Concerning both creaturely well-being and acknowledgment of the creator, the covenant community practices a rhythm of observations not unlike the church year. The community is enjoined to treat time as holy, both in order to value creation and to honor the creator. (In Gen 2:1-4a, time is the first element of creation that God makes holy.) All of these times, the festivals of seven and the threefold festival, intend to break the conventional economic practice of working, getting, and spending, or ingathering and harvest. The festivals are an act of faith because they make an ordered acknowledgment that prevents human business from degenerating into an endless effort at management, success, and self-security.” Volume I, p874-875