What Does Deuteronomy 15:1 Mean?
At the end of every seven years you shall make a release.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for release carries the image of letting a claim drop, so the seventh year marks the point when what is owed is no longer held.
THE MEANING
You are addressed by a rhythm that gives a claim a limit: at the end of seven years, release is made. What is owed does not remain an unending hold on another person’s future.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is owed must remain a permanent claim over another person.
THE ROOT
שְׁמִטָּה
shemittah
GROWS FROM
שמט
sh-m-t
To let fall, drop, or release.
Shemittah comes from the root for letting something fall: release is pictured as a claim no longer being held. The same root describes releasing a debt and letting land go unworked, so both people and ground are given relief from a continuing claim.
ALSO GROWS
shāmōṭ: Release or let drop; used for releasing a debt.
שָׁמוֹט
In Deuteronomy 15:2, the creditor is told to let the claim drop, making explicit what this verse calls a release.
tishmetennah: You shall let it go or leave it fallow.
תִּשְׁמְטֶנָּה
In Exodus 23:11, the same root describes letting the land go unworked, extending release from debts to the ground itself.
THE PATTERN
What is held under claim is given a recurring limit, making room for release and renewed life.
But in the seventh year you shall let it drop and leave it, that the poor of your people may eat, and what is left over the beasts of the field shall eat. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.But in the seventh year there shall be a full stopping for the land, a stopping for the LORD. You shall not sow your field, nor prune your vineyard.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
And this is the word of the release. Every one whose hand has lent to his neighbor shall let it fall, and he shall not press it from his neighbor or from his brother, for it is called the LORD's release.The next verse turns the noun shemittah into an action: the creditor shall release the debt, letting the claim drop. The release here is concrete; it changes what one person may continue to demand from another.
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