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.