SABBATICAL YEAR
201
SABBATICAL YEAR
no more relates to the law of the sabbatical year than ver. 19 sq. (comp. Ranke, Pentat. ii, 3C2), and where the sabbatical year is expressly treated of— as in Lev. xxv — nothing is said of such manumission. Nor does Jo- sephus {Ant. iii, 12, 3) mention it. Lev. xxxiv, 8 does not refer at all to this institution (yet see Hitzig, ad Inc.), and ver. 14 refers only to the law in Exod. xxi, 2. See Kei.ease.
IIL Time, Observance, and Limit of the Sabbatical Year. — The sabbatical year, like the year of jubilee, be- gan on the first day of the civil new year = the tirsb of the month Tisii (Maimonides, I. c. iv, 9). See New Year. But though this was the time fixed for the celebration of the sabbatical year during the period of the second Temple, yet the tillage and cultivation of certain fields and gardens had already to be left off in
''For the law, for the divine service," etc. The sabbati- cal year, liowever, was only binding upon the inhabi- tants of Palestine {Kiddiis/dn, i, 9; Orlah, iii, 9), the limits of which were determined on the east by the desert of Arabia, on the west by the sea, on the north by Amana, while on the south the boundary was doubt- ful (comp. Geiger, Lehr- vnd Lesebuch zur Sjwache der Mishna [Brcslau, 1845], ii, 75, etc.).
As to the obedience to this law, ancient Jewish tra- dition tells us that it was never kept before the exile, and that it is for this reason that the Jews were seventy years in the Babylonian captivity, to give to the land the seventy years of which it was deprived during the seventy sabbatical j'ears, or the 430 years between the entrance into Canaan and the captivity, as it is written (2 Chron. xxxvi, 20, 21), " until the land had enjoyed
the sixth j'ear. Thus it was ordained that fields upon her Sabbaths [i. e. sabbatical years], for as long as she
which trees were planted were not to be cultivated after the feast of Pentecost of the sixth year (Mishna, She- biith, i, 1-8), while the cultivation of corn-fields was to cease from the feast of Passover {ibid, ii, 1). Since the destruction of the Temple, however, the sabbatical year, or, more properly, cessation from tillage and cultivation of all kinds, does not begin till the feast of New Year. According to the Mosaic legislation, the laws of the sabbatical year were to come into operation wlien the children of Israel had possession of the promised land ; and the Talmud, Maimonides, etc.; tell us that the first sabbatical year was celebrated in the twenty-first year after they entered Canaan, as the conquest of it record- ed in Josh, xiv, 10 occupied seven 3-ears, and the divi- sion thereof between the different tribes mentioned in Josh, xviii, etc., occupied seven years more, whereupon they had to cultivate it six years, and on the seventh year — the twenty-first after entering therein — the first sabbatical year was celebrated (Babylon Talmud, Era- chun, 12 b; Maimonides, I. c. x, 2). On the feast of Tabernacles of the sabbatical year, certain portions of the law were read in the Temple before the whole con- gregation (Deut. xxxi, 10-13). As the Pentateuchal enactment assigns the prelection of the law to the priests and college of presbyters (ibid.) — viz. the spirit- ual and civil heads of the congregation (hence the sin- gular N^i^ri, ^•thou shcdt read this law before all Israel") — the Hebrew canons ordained that the high-priest, and
laj' desolate she kept Sabbath to fulfil threescore and ten years [i.e. sabbatical years]" (comp. Shuhbuth, 13, a ; Seder Olam, c. xxvi; Kashi on 2 Chron. xxxvi, 20). After the captivity, however, when all the neglected laws were more rigidly- observed (see Neh. x, 31), the sabbatical year was duly kept, as is evident from the declaration in 1 j\Iacc. vi, 49 that "^hey came out of the city, because they had no victuals there to endure the siege, it being a year of rest for the land," from the fact that both Alexander the Great and Cains Csesar ex- empted the Jews from tribute on the seventh year, be- cause it was unlawful for them to sow seed or reap the harvest (Josephus, .4?^^xiv, 10,6), and from the sneers of Tacitus about the origin of this festival {Hist, v, 2, 4), as well as from the undoubted records and the post-exilian minute regulations about the sabbatical year contained in the ancient Jewish writings. According to 1 Mace, vi, 53, the one hundred and fiftieth year of the Selcucid iera was a sabbatical year (Josephus, Ant. xiii, 8, 1, 16, 12; XV, 1, 2; War, i, 2, 4; comp. Hitzig, Isa. p. 433; Von Bohlen, Gen. p. 138 sq., Einleit.). The Samaritans observed it (Josephus, Ant. xi, 8, 6). St. Paul, in re- proaching the Galatians Avith their Jewish tendencies, taxes them with observing years as well as days and months and times (Gal. iv, 10), from which we must in- fer that the teachers who communicated to them those , tendencies did more or less the like themselves. An- j other allusion in the New Test, to the sabbatical year is perhaps to be found in the phrase tv cafi^idriij tevre-