Sabbath Laws

¹⁰ “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, ¹¹ but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused.^(A) Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

¹² “Six days do your work,^(B) but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.^(C)

¹¹ But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys^(A) that drinks rain from heaven.^{(B) 12} It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes^(C) of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

¹⁹ When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?^{[a] 20} However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees^(A) and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.