Torah Portion: Ki Sisa

You shall desist from plowing and harvesting (Shemos 34:21).

It is a positive commandment to desist from working the land on the seventh year, as it is written, You shall desist from plowing and harvesting (Shemos 34:21). Our Sages explain that this verse refers to the seventh year [of the Shemitahcycle] and that it is saying that we are commanded to withdraw from all in the work of the land. A full discussion of this mitzvah has already been presented above (Mitzvah #84), on the verse, But during the seventh year, you must leave [your land] alone and withdraw from it  (Shemos 23:11). {There it was explained that among the roots of the mitzvah is the aim that we set in our hearts, and make the strongest impression on our minds, the truth that God created the world out of nothingness, for It was during six days that Hashem made the heaven and the earth (ibid. 20:6), but on the seventh day, when He did not create anything, he “rested,” as He put it about Himself (ibid.). And in order to banish the thought that the world has always existed, as the heretics believe and claim in order to undermine the entire Torah, we are enjoined to count all our time-frames — day by day and year by year — around this idea. So we are to count six years and then rest on the seventh, just as we count six days of work and then have the seventh as a day of rest.

This mitzvah applies to men and women in the Land of Israel alone, when the Jewish people dwell there. By Rabbinic decree it also applies nowadays, even though not all of Jewry are on their Land, but [even nowadays it] only applies in the Land of Israel.}