על המידות הטובות י״טOn the Virtues 19
א׳
1[97] Then there is the legislation on the seventh year, which enacts that all the land should be left during that year to stand idle, and that the poor may resort securely to the estates of the rich to gather the gift of nature, the fruit which springs without cultivation. Does not this show charity and humanity?
ב׳
2[98] For six years, says the law, the owners should have the enjoyment in virtue of their ownership and labour on the land. But during one year, the seventh, when nothing in the way of cultivation has been performed, that enjoyment goes to those who have no landed possessions nor money. For it was felt to be unjust that some persons should labour and others have the produce. What is intended is that since the estates have been left, in a sense, without masters, and husbandry has had no hand in the work, the free gifts which come from God alone should come full and complete anticipating the wants of the needy.
ג׳
3[99] Again, in all the rules prescribed for the fiftieth year, do we not find the utmost height of humanity? Who would not agree to this, if he belongs to the company which has not just tasted and sipped the contents of the law, but has feasted abundantly and revelled in its most sweet and lovely principles?
ד׳
4[100] The measures taken in the seventh year are repeated, but he adds others even greater, by which possessions ceded to others through untoward circumstances are returned to the original owners. He does not allow the purchasers to have absolute possession of what belongs to others, thus barring the roads to covetousness, in order to curb that insidious foe and source of all evils, desire. And also he did not think it right that the original holders should be deprived of their own for ever, and so pay a penalty for their poverty, which cannot justly be visited with punishment, but must on every ground receive compassion.
ה׳
5[101] The particular enactments include a host of others bearing on conduct to fellow-countrymen, but as I have sufficiently noted them in my former treatises, I will content myself with those just mentioned, which I have added as examples suitable to prove my point.