Shabbat Parashat Behar-Bechukotai - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Behar-Bechukotai - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  The resting of the land shall be yours to eat, for you and for your slave and for your

  maidservant and for your hired worker and for one who resides with you. [Vayikra 25:6]

The Torah commands us that we are not to work the land in the seventh year of each seven-year cycle. At first glance, this yields a problem--what are we to eat in that year? Jewish society a couple thousand years ago was very agrarian, and had only limited capability for preserving food. Most people lived paycheck-to-paycheck, growing crops to be eaten later that year and during the next growing season until the next year's harvest. What could they do to survive? To answer this one must first understand what "the resting of the land" is about.

Rashi and many others read the beginning of our verse literally, that "resting of the land" refers to food that grows on its own, without the farmer doing anything to bring it about. There are rules about harvesting, such as only picking what you need now, not to preserve for later. This leads to the same question for next year, how will the farmer eat during the next year's growing season? The answer given is that in year 6 enough will grow to provide an abundance sufficient to get the people through until the year 8 harvest. Rashi also makes clear that everyone is equal in owning the year 7 produce, slaves, hired workers, strangers living with the people, etc. Ramban adds that resting here means produce because resting, Shabbat, is not an item of food that could be eaten. Torah Temimah specifies that our verse means that we may eat from land that was not worked during the Shemittah year, but may not eat from land that did not rest, and also that we may not waste what we pick during that seventh year.

Malbim supplies a slightly different angle in Vayikra 25:4, that the resting does not refer to food but to the laying off of working the land. He says the Torah there tells us that the Shemittah is a Shabbat for God just as is stated about the Shabbat in the story of Creation. Other uses of Shabbat are typically worded a "Shabbat for you" or similar. Thus the Shemittah has a direct relationship with the seventh day of Creation. These two testify to God having rested on the seventh day, while the other uses of the word testify about God being the Creator rather than having rested. Malbim then explains that the other uses of the word refer to taking out one day each week in the normal course of nature, but since land grows crops 24/7 and does not take off one day a week, the Shemittah is the way for land to catch up and honor God's having rested.

In the Shemittah year, we are allowed to pick and eat whatever grows in the course of nature, without our working the land. All who live in the land are equal in access to that natural growth, because we have an obligation to feed those who live with us. The crop we harvest at the end of the sixth year is always big enough for us to maintain ourselves, along with that wild growth, until the new harvest of the eighth year, so long as we honor God's commandment of resting the land.