Later text
When the people of the land bring merchandise or any kind of grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we will not buy from them on a Sabbath or holy day. Every seventh year we will let the fields lie fallow, and will cancel every debt.
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
When the people of the land bring merchandise or any kind of grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we will not buy from them on a Sabbath or holy day. Every seventh year we will let the fields lie fallow, and will cancel every debt.
Earlier text
Exodus 23:11BSB
but in the seventh year you must let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor among your people may eat from the field and the wild animals may consume what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and olive grove.
Exodus 23:11 commands letting the land lie fallow (שָׁמַט, shamat) in the seventh year, and Nehemiah 10:31 records the post-exilic community pledging to resume this practice: "Every seventh year we will let the fields lie fallow, and will cancel every debt." The Nehemiah assembly's sworn commitment links both agricultural rest and debt cancellation in a single pledge, combining the Exodus sabbatical-year land provision with Deuteronomy's debt-release legislation. This oath demonstrates that the returning community recognized the sabbatical year as binding law that had been neglected during the pre-exilic and exilic periods—indeed, 2 Chronicles 36:21 measures the exile's duration by the land's Sabbaths: "So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed."