על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ב כ״אOn the Special Laws, Book II 21
א׳
1[104] These considerations the prophetic author of our laws had before his eyes when he proclaimed a rest for the land and made the husbandman stay his work after six years. But he gave this enactment not only on the grounds which I have mentioned but also moved by that habitual kindliness which he aims at infusing into every part of his legislation, thereby impressing on the readers of the sacred scriptures the stamp of good and neighbourly customs.
ב׳
2[105] For he forbids them to close up any field during the seventh year. All olive-yards and vineyards are to be left wide open and so with the other kinds of property, whether of sown crops or orchard-trees, thus giving an unrestricted use of such fruits as are of natural growth to the poor quite as much, if not more so, than to the owners.
ג׳
3[106] Thus on the one hand he did not allow the masters to do any work of tillage because he wished to avoid giving them the painful feeling that they had incurred the expenditure but did not receive the income in return, and on the other hand he thought fit that the poor should for this year at any rate enjoy as their own what appeared to belong to others, and in this way took from them any appearance of humiliation or possibility of being reproached as beggars.
ד׳
4[107] May not our passionate affection well go out to laws charged with such kindly feeling, which teaches the rich to give liberally and share what they have with others and encourages the poor not to be always dancing attendance on the houses of the wealthy, as though compelled to resort thither to make up their own deficiency, but sometimes also to come claiming a source of wealth in the fruits which, as I have said, develop untilled and which they can treat as their own?
ה׳
5[108] Widows and orphans and all others who are neglected and ignored because they have no surplus of income have at this time such a surplus and find themselves suddenly affluent through the gifts of God, Who invites them to share with the owners under the sanction of the holy number seven.
ו׳
6[109] And indeed all stock-breeders feel at liberty to take out their own cattle in search of pasturage and to select meadow-land of good herbage and particularly suitable for grazing their beasts. Thus they take full advantage of the immunity secured by the time of freedom. And this is not opposed by any grudging on the master’s side. They are under the sway of a very ancient custom, which through long familiarity has won its way to the standing of nature.