StrongerBible

shemittah

שְׁמִטָּה

HebrewH8059“release, remission”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Deu 15:1Deu 15:2 (2×)Deu 15:9Deu 31:10
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradesheh-mee-TAHnoun

What shemittah means

the release: Deuteronomy's technical term for the seventh-year cancellation of debts, and for the year that release falls in

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

This word is a noun built directly from a verb meaning "to let drop" (שָׁמַט), and it is coined nowhere else in the Bible but Deuteronomy. All four of its occurrences sit in Deuteronomy 15 and 31, and every one of them names the same fixed, dated event: once every seven years, a lender lets go of what a fellow Israelite still owes him, so that the debt disappears for good.

Deuteronomy 15 opens by commanding Israel to "carry out a release" at the end of every seven years, then spells out exactly what that means: every creditor is to let his claim on a neighbor's debt drop, because "a release has been proclaimed for the LORD." Deuteronomy 31:10 uses the same word simply to date a different event, the public reading of the law at the Festival of Booths, "at the appointed time of the year of release," which shows that by the time that law was given, the release was already a fixed point on Israel's calendar, as familiar as a festival date.

This word names only that one institution. It is not the same as the fiftieth-year Jubilee of Leviticus 25, which mainly returns land to its original family and is described with entirely different words (יוֹבֵל, דְּרוֹר); Leviticus never uses this noun at all. It is also narrower than the fallow-year law of Exodus 23:11, which lets the land itself rest but likewise never uses this noun, only the verb it is built on. Whatever debate exists about this word concerns the history of the institution it names (whether Deuteronomy invented the debt release or inherited it, and whether it was ever actually kept), not what the word itself refers to.

Deu 15:1Deu 15:2 (2×)Deu 15:9Deu 31:10

Disputed

Whether Deuteronomy's seventh-year debt release was a new legal institution its authors created by reusing older language about letting the land rest, or a codification of an already-existing practice with parallels in older Near Eastern royal decrees canceling debts.

  • majorityDeuteronomy deliberately took the older verb for releasing the land and repurposed it for canceling debts, coining this noun in the process; a case of reusing older legal language to authorize something genuinely new.; Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford University Press, 1997); Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996)
  • minorityThe debt release codifies a longstanding institution comparable to the Old Babylonian royal decrees that periodically canceled debts and freed debt-slaves, now made a fixed, divinely mandated cycle rather than an occasional royal act.; Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Magnes/Fortress, 1995); Raymond Westbrook, Property and the Family in Biblical Law (JSOTSup 113, 1991)
  • minorityThe institution is a late literary construction rather than an inherited practice, since the closest Mesopotamian parallel had gone out of use long before it could have been borrowed into Hebrew.; N. P. Lemche, "The Manumission of Slaves, the Fallow Year, the Sabbatical Year, the Jobel Year", Vetus Testamentum 26 (1976), pp. 38-59

What scholars say about shemittah

Every major lexicon treats this as a Deuteronomic technical coinage built on the verb שׁמט "let drop": BDB glosses it "a letting drop, (temporary) remitting," HALOT and DCH give "remission, release," and Gesenius' 18th edition (Donner/Meyer) glosses "Erlass, Freilassung." Robin Wakely's NIDOTTE article (4:155 to 160) traces the bridge from the verb's concrete sense to this noun's legal one through the idiom "let the hand drop" in Deuteronomy 15:2 to 3. Its distribution is compact and exclusively Deuteronomic: Deuteronomy 15:1, 2, 9 and 31:10. Leviticus 25, which addresses the same seventh year, never uses it, preferring שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן; Ezekiel likewise avoids it in favor of שַׁבָּת and שְׁבִיעִית. No lexicographer of note treats this as anything other than the straightforward noun of the single root שׁמט.

Live debate concentrates on the history of the institution the word names, not on its lexical sense. Bernard Levinson (Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation, Oxford University Press, 1997) argues that Deuteronomy's authors deliberately reused Exodus 23:11's verb for releasing land and redeployed it for debt cancellation, coining this noun as part of a broader program of legal innovation; Jeffrey Tigay's JPS commentary (1996) largely concurs, calling the debt release an unprecedented extension of the older fallow-year principle. Moshe Weinfeld (Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East, Magnes/Fortress, 1995) and Raymond Westbrook (Property and the Family in Biblical Law, JSOTSup 113, 1991) instead read the institution against F. R. Kraus's and J. J. Finkelstein's studies of Old Babylonian misarum edicts, royal decrees that periodically canceled debts, treating Deuteronomy's release as a democratized version of that older practice rather than a rhetorical invention. N. P. Lemche ("The Manumission of Slaves, the Fallow Year, the Sabbatical Year, the Jobel Year," Vetus Testamentum 26, 1976, pp. 38-59) argues the institution is instead a late literary construction, since the closest Mesopotamian analogue had gone out of technical use well before it could have been borrowed into first-millennium Hebrew. Whether the release was ever actually practiced is disputed as well: Nehemiah 10:32 records the postexilic community formally vowing to keep it, which most scholars take as the first firm evidence it was observed; by the Second Temple period the institution was firmly established (1 Maccabees 6:49 to 53; Josephus), though enforcing debt relief specifically had grown so unworkable that Hillel devised a legal workaround, the prosbul, to route around it.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, s.v. שׁמטהlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. שׁמטהlexicon
  • DCH, vol. 8, s.v. שׁמטהlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 18th ed. (Donner/Meyer), s.v. שׁמטהlexicon
  • Robin Wakely, "שׁמט", NIDOTTE 4:155-160theological-dictionary
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996)commentary
  • Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy (Old Testament Library, 2002)commentary
  • Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford University Press, 1997)monograph
  • Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Magnes/Fortress, 1995)monograph
  • Raymond Westbrook, Property and the Family in Biblical Law (JSOTSup 113, 1991)monograph
  • N. P. Lemche, "The Manumission of Slaves, the Fallow Year, the Sabbatical Year, the Jobel Year", Vetus Testamentum 26 (1976), pp. 38-59article

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of שְׁמִטָּה

f s absolute

שְּׁמִטָּה, שְׁמִטָּה

Deu 15:2, Deu 15:9, Deu 31:10, Deu 15:1, Deu 15:2