“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”

Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance.

Sabbath Laws

“For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops,

“Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. “Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.

“Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

“Celebrate the Festival of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering at the turn of the year.

“‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God.

“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest.

“‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the Lord your God.’”

Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.

The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines.

You are to buy from your own people on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And they are to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops.

You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?”

While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.

Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.

You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.

“I give you all the finest olive oil and all the finest new wine and grain they give the Lord as the firstfruits of their harvest.

And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.”

Not Because of Israel’s Righteousness

Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky.

After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.

It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.