Discovery BoxLeviticus 25:4-5 
Context25:4 but in the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath of complete rest 1 – a Sabbath to the Lord. You must not sow your field or 2 prune your vineyard. 25:5 You must not gather in the aftergrowth of your harvest and you must not pick the grapes of your unpruned 3 vines; the land must have a year of complete rest.
Leviticus 25:20-22
Context25:20 If you say, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not sow and gather our produce?’ 25:21 I will command my blessing for you in the sixth year so that it may yield 4 the produce 5 for three years, 25:22 and you may sow the eighth year and eat from that sixth year’s produce 6 – old produce. Until you bring in the ninth year’s produce, 7 you may eat old produce.
1 tn Heb “and in the seventh year a Sabbath of complete rest shall be to the land.” The expression “a Sabbath of complete rest” is superlative, emphasizing the full and all inclusive rest of the seventh year of the sabbatical cycle. Cf. ASV “a sabbath of solemn rest”; NAB “a complete rest.”
2 tn Heb “and.” Here the Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) has an alternative sense (“or”).
3 tn Heb “consecrated, devoted, forbidden” (נָזִיר, nazir). The same term is used for the “consecration” of the “Nazirite” (and his hair, Num 6:2, 18, etc.), a designation which, in turn, derives from the very same root.
4 tn Heb “and it [i.e., the land] shall make the produce.” The Hebrew term וְעָשָׂת (vÿ’asat, “and it shall make”) is probably an older third feminine singular form of the verb (GKC 210 §75.m). Smr has the normal form.
5 tn Smr and LXX have “its produce” (cf. 25:3, 7, etc.) rather than “the produce.”
6 tn Heb “the produce,” referring to “the produce” of the sixth year of v. 21. The words “sixth year” are supplied for clarity.
7 tn Heb “until the ninth year, until bringing [in] its produce.”
