The Lord's Release (Latin : remissionis Domini) is the title given by Deuteronomy 15:2 in the Hebrew Bible to the obligation and practice of releasing debtors from their debts every seventh year within the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah:
A debtor is an entity that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this debt arrangement is a bank, the debtor is more often referred to as a borrower.
The sabbath year also called the sabbatical year or shǝvi'it is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel, and still observed in contemporary Judaism.
Torah has a range of meanings. It can most specifically mean the first five books (Pentateuch) of the 24 books of the Tanakh, and is usually printed with the rabbinic commentaries. It can mean the continued narrative from the Book of Genesis to the end of the Tanakh (Malachi), and it can even mean the totality of Jewish teaching, culture and practice, whether derived from biblical texts or later rabbinic writings. Common to all these meanings, Torah consists of the origin of Jewish peoplehood: their call into being by God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God, which involves following a way of life embodied in a set of moral and religious obligations and civil laws.
- ”Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it”
The obligation only applied to the Israelites living in the Promised Land: it did not apply to foreigners. [1] A similar obligation in relation to the release of Hebrew slaves who have served in slavery for seven years is described in Deuteronomy 15:12-18
The Israelites were a confederation of Iron Age Semitic-speaking tribes of the ancient Near East, who inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. According to the religious narrative of the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites' origin is traced back to the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham and his wife Sarah, through their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca, and their son Jacob who was later called Israel, whence they derive their name, with his wives Leah and Rachel and the handmaids Zilpa and Bilhah.
The Promised Land is the land which, according to the Tanakh, was promised and subsequently given by God to Abraham and his descendants, and in modern contexts an image and idea related both to the restored Homeland for the Jewish people and to salvation and liberation is more generally understood.
The term "the LORD's release" is used in the King James Version of the Bible and in the New King James Version and Revised Standard Version; other translations refer to the Year of Remission (Wycliffe Bible), the LORD's remission (New American Standard Bible) or Hashem’s Shemittah (Orthodox Jewish Bible). Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible states that although most texts say "it is called the LORD’s release", the meaning is more likely to be that "it is proclaimed to be the LORD's release". [2]
The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB) or simply the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, begun in 1604 and completed as well as published in 1611 under the sponsorship of King James I of England. The books of the King James Version include the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. The translation is noted for its "majesty of style", and has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.
The New King James Version (NKJV) is an English translation of the Bible first published in 1982 by Thomas Nelson. The New Testament was published in 1979, the Psalms in 1980, and the full Bible in 1982. It took seven years to complete. The anglicized edition was originally known as the Revised Authorized Version, but the NKJV title is now used universally.
The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches. The RSV is a revision of the American Standard Version, and was intended to be a readable and literally accurate modern English translation which aimed to "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries" and "to put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition." The New Testament was first published in 1946, the Old Testament in 1952, and the Apocrypha in 1957; the New Testament was revised in 1971. The original Catholic edition of the RSV was published in 1966, and the Apocrypha was expanded in 1977. The second Catholic edition was published in 2006. In later years, the RSV served as the basis for two revisions – the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of 1989, and the English Standard Version (ESV) of 2001.
The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary considered the release to be temporary: "Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it — not by an absolute discharge of the debt, but by passing over that year without exacting payment. The relief was temporary and peculiar to that year during which there was a total suspension of agricultural labor." [3] Similarly, the seventeenth-century nonconformist Matthew Poole stated that the relief was temporary; you must "not absolutely and finally forgive it, but forbear it for that year". [4] However, to theologian John Gill, the release was to be permanent: "it rather seems to be a full release, so as the payment of them might not be demanded, neither this year nor afterwards" [5]
The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary refers to a biblical commentary entitled a Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, prepared by Robert Jamieson, Andrew Robert Fausset and David Brown and published in 1871; and derived works from this initial publication, in differing numbers of volumes and abridgements. The commentary uses the King James Version of the Bible as its text.
Matthew Poole (1624–1679) was an English Nonconformist theologian.
John Gill was an English Baptist pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian who held to a firm Calvinistic soteriology. Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he attended Kettering Grammar School where he mastered the Latin classics and learned Greek by age 11. He continued self-study in everything from logic to Hebrew, his love for the latter remaining throughout his life.
