Leviticus 25:4-6
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. 25:6 You may have the Sabbath produce 4 of the land to eat – you, your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker, the resident foreigner who stays with you, 5
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 The word “produce” is not in the Hebrew text but is implied; cf. NASB “the sabbath products.”
5 tn A “resident who stays” would be a foreign person who was probably residing as another kind of laborer in the household of a landowner (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 170-71). See v. 35 below.