We first learn about the
laws of Shmita (the Sabbatical year) in Parshat Mishpatim, Shmot 23:10-11:
Six years shall you sow
your land and gather in its produce. And in the seventh, you shall leave it
untended and unharvested, and the destitute of your people shall eat, and the
wildlife of the field shall eat what is left; so shall you do to your vineyard
and to your olive grove.
In the following verse,
Shmot 23:12 we read about the observance of Shabbat:
Six days shall you
accomplish your activities, and on the seventh day you shall desist, so that
your ox and donkey may be content and your maidservant’s son and the sojourner
may be refreshed.
In Parshat Behar (Vayikra
25:1-6) the Torah gives us a more in depth explanation of the laws of Shmita.
God spoke
to Moshe on Mount Sinai saying: Speak to B’nai Yisrael and say to them:
When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a Shabbat
of God. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard
and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a Shabbat
of complete rest, a Shabbat for God: you shall not sow your field or prune your
vineyard. You shall not reap the after growth of your harvest or gather the
grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the
land. But you may eat whatever the land during
its Shabbat will produce—you, your male and female slaves, the hired and bound
laborers who live with you.
If the laws
of Shmita are more detailed in Parshat Behar, then why did they need to be
introduced in Parshat Mishpatim?
Shmita in Parsha
Mishpatim is juxtaposed with the laws of Shabbat since both Shmita and Shabbat represent
man’s testimony that God created the universe in six days and rested on the
seventh.
Shadal writes in his
commentary on Vayikra 25:2:
Just as the Shabbat day strengthens our conviction that the Jewish Nation is
holy to God, so too, the Shmita year instills within us the belief that Eretz
Yisrael is holier than all other lands. The land rests on the seventh year,
just as God rested on the seventh day of creation.
And just as in the desert, God gave B’nai Yisrael a double portion of manna
on Friday to last for two days, so too, when they are on their own land, they
will receive the blessing of the sixth year that the land will produce enough
for the seventh year as well.
Sefer HaChinuch, The Book of Mitzvah
Education 84:2 explains:
At the root of this commandment lies
the purpose to establish in our heart and set in our thought a firm conception
of the doctrine that the world was brought into being as a new entity, out of
nothing- As it says in Shmot 20:11: “in six days did God make the heavens and
the earth” and on the seventh day God did not create anything – God imposed
rest on Himself.
In order to remove, uproot and
eradicate from our thoughts any concept of the world’s timeless pre-existence
in which the deniers of the Torah believe in, through which they destroy all
its principles and break through its walls – did the requirement come upon us
to expend all our time, day by day and year by year, for this matter, by
counting six years and resting on the seventh. In this way, the matter will
never depart from between our eyes for all time. And this is similar to the
manner in which we count the days of the week by dividing them into six days of
work and the seventh is a day of rest.
Therefore, God commanded us to
render ownerless all that the land produces in this year – in addition to
resting during the year- so that a person will remember that the land which
produces fruits for him every year does not produce them by its own might and
virtue. For there is a Lord and Master over it and over its owner – and when He
wishes, He commands the owner of the land to render the fruit ownerless.
There is another benefit in this
matter – to acquire the trait of letting go of one’s possessions, for there is
no one more generous than he who gives without hope for recompense.
And there is another benefit – the
outcome of this is that a person will add to his trust in God, since anyone who
finds it in his heart to give and abandon to the world all of the produce of
his lands and his ancestral inheritance for an entire year – and educates
himself and his family through this for all of his days – will never have the
trait of stinginess overcome him too much, nor will he have a deficient amount
of trust.
Celebrating Shabbat each week and observing the Shmita year once in seven
years are constant reminders that God created the world and that He is in
charge of everything. Just as the Jewish nation is holy, so too is the land of
Israel and it must not be taken for granted.
