What Does Deuteronomy 15:1 Mean in the King James?

At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.

Deuteronomy 15:1 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

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 the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.

Exodus 23:11 · KJVThe same Hebrew root names release for the land, whose produce becomes available to the poor and the animals.

But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

Leviticus 25:4 · KJVThe seventh-year rhythm gives the land a defined interval free from cultivation.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

Luke 4:18 · KJVRelease reaches people held in captivity and oppression, carrying the pattern from land and debt into human life.

THE THREAD

And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the LORD’s release.

Deuteronomy 15:2 · KJV

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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