Annual Reading Schedule - Torah Given Through Mosheh - Week 29 - The Lamps Burn Continually, Eye For Eye Tooth For Tooth Ruling, Land Sabbaths & Year of Jubilee, Laws of Redemption, & Torot (Leviticus 23:44-26:46)

1. When a pregnant woman is hit and children come out (Exodus 21:24)
2. When a blemish is inflicted upon a neighbor (Leviticus 24:20)
3. When someone bears false witness (Deuteronomy 19:21)

See the reading notes for Week 46 of the Annual Reading Schedule for more commentary related to this subject and the teachings of Yahushua.

It sounds like in Leviticus 25:5-7, related to the 7th Year Land Rest, that it's saying we shouldn't be harvesting the land as normal, but that if we get hungry and need to eat we can go get what we need to eat at that moment from the crops that are growing. However, that's different from harvesting where you take all the crops in from the field or vine all at once and store them for later. This, on the other hand, sounds like each person can only take what they need to eat at that moment if their store of food from the previous year has run out. This would minimize the impact we make on the land once every 7 years but also provide a way for people to eat if the food supply ran low during at least the spring, summer, and fall. I think it is possible that perhaps we should have a store of food from the previous year to deal with the winter in those situations.

Of course, for most of us today who do not own land or grow crops or have room to store lots of food, I am not sure there is much we can do. The responsibility for observing the land Sabbaths fall on the land owners ultimately. However, if we were financially blessed enough, we could stock up, perhaps, on some crops or foods which will not go bad such as bags of flour or canned vegetables or other things with expiration dates more than a year and a half in advance if we have a place to store such food safely so it will not spoil.

I wonder if, perhaps, storing up food for a year of a land Sabbath might one day prove to help out in a crisis situation that would occur during a year of a land Sabbath? I have my own views on when the land Sabbath years are, but I'm not sure that should be the focus of these notes at this time.

Notice in this reading it talks about redeeming. In Leviticus 25:25-28 it talks about redeeming possessions and brothers (which could mean any relatives really) helping each other redeem things they sold to deal with their situation of being poor. Then in Leviticus 25:47-55 it speaks of redeeming your brother himself if he sold himself because of his poverty. The principle here is that if our brothers are in debt and we are able to help them get out of debt or redeem something of theirs, we should.

Obviously people need to make wise decisions and we can't be responsible for everyone's debt or help every person out of debt every time, but the Torah does encourage to help others out of debt who arrived in that situation.