to the sabbath
of the land, for since only Hebrews might possess the Holy Land,
interest on a debt might not be exacted from a Hebrew in the sabbatic
year, as the land did not then yield him wherewith he might pay. But
loans to foreigners would be necessarily for commercial, not
agricultural, purposes, and since commerce was not interdicted in the
sabbatic year, interest on loans to foreigners might be exacted.
Warning was given that the loans to a poor Hebrew should not be withheld
because the sabbatic year was close at hand. The rules with respect to
the Hebrew sold for debt into bondage are the same as those given in the
Book of the Exodus.

In Deuteronomy it was also enjoined that--

"at the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year
of release, in the Feast of Tabernacles" (that is, in the
feast of the seventh month), "when all Israel is come to
appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall
choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their
hearing."

We find no more mention of the sabbatic year until the reign of
Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. He had made a covenant with all the
people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them, that
every Hebrew bondservant should go free, but the princes and all the
people caused their Hebrew bondservants to return and be in subjection
to them. Then Jeremiah the prophet was sent to remind them of the
covenant made with their fathers when they were brought out from the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondmen; and in the Second Book of
Chronicles it is said that the sign of the breaking of this covenant,
already quoted from the Book of Leviticus, was being accomplished. The
Captivity was--

"to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah,
until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she
lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil three-score and ten
years."

After the exile, we find one reference to the sabbatic year in the
covenant sealed by the princes, Levites, and priests and people, in the
Book of Nehemiah:--

"That we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of
every debt."

Just as the Feast of Weeks was bound to the Feast of the Passover by
numbering seven sabbaths from the day of the wave-offering--"even unto
the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days:"--so
the year of Jubilee was bound to the sabbatic year:-