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Selected Scripture Passages
The sabbatical year
Exodus 23:10-11 (NAB)
For six years
you may sow your land and gather in its produce.
But the seventh year you shall let the land lie
untilled and unharvested, that the poor among
you may eat of it and the beasts of the field
may eat what the poor leave. So also shall you
do in regard to your vineyard and your olive grove.
Leviticus 25:2b-7 (NAB)
Speak to the Israelites
and tell them: When you enter the land that I
am giving you, let the land, too, keep a sabbath
for the LORD. For six years you may sow your field,
and for six years prune your vineyard, gathering
in their produce. But during the seventh year
the land shall have a complete rest, a sabbath
for the LORD, when you may neither sow your field
nor prune your vineyard. The aftergrowth of your
harvest you shall not reap, nor shall you pick
the grapes of your untrimmed vines in this year
of sabbath rest for the land. While the land has
its sabbath, all its produce will be food equally
for you yourself and for your male and female
slaves, for your hired help and the tenants who
live with you, and likewise for your livestock
and for the wild animals on your land.
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Against
wanton destruction
Deuteronomy 20:19-20 (NRSV)
If you besiege a town
for a long time, making war against it in order
to take it, you must not destroy its trees by
wielding an axe against them. Although you may
take food from them, you must not cut them down.
Are trees in the field human beings that they
should come under siege from you? You may destroy
only the trees that you know do not produce food;
you may cut them down for use in building siege-works
against the town that makes war with you, until
it falls.
Protecting species
Deuteronomy 22:6-7 (NIV)
If you come across a
bird's nest beside the road, either in a tree
or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on
the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother
with the young. You may take the young, but be
sure to let the mother go, so that it may go well
with you and you may have a long life.
Precaution
Deuteronomy 22:8 (JPS)
When you build a new
house, you shall make a parapet for your roof,
so that you do not bring blood guilt on your house
if anyone should fall from it.
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