The Lord's Release ( la, remissionis Domini) is the title given by in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...

to the obligation and practice of releasing

debtors A debtor or debitor is a legal entity (legal person) that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this ...

from their debts every seventh year within the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

: :”Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it” The obligation only applied to the

Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

living in the

Promised Land The Promised Land ( he, הארץ המובטחת, translit.: ''ha'aretz hamuvtakhat''; ar, أرض الميعاد, translit.: ''ard al-mi'ad; also known as "The Land of Milk and Honey"'') is the land which, according to the Tanakh (the Hebrew ...

: it did not apply to foreigners. A similar obligation in relation to the release of Hebrew

slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

who have served in slavery for seven years is described in The term "the LORD's release" is used in the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...

of the Bible and in the

New King James Version The New King James Version (NKJV) is an English translation of the Bible. The complete NKJV Bible was published in 1982 by Thomas Nelson, now HarperCollins. The NKJV is described by Thomas Nelson as being "scrupulously faithful to the origin ...

and

Revised Standard Version The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. This translation itself is a revision of the Ameri ...

; other translations refer to the ''Year of Remission'' (

Wycliffe Bible Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of English theologian John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translati ...

), the ''LORD's remission'' (

New American Standard Bible The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is an English translation of the Bible. Published by the Lockman Foundation, the complete NASB was released in 1971. The NASB relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew and Gre ...

) or ''Hashem’s Shemittah'' (

Orthodox Jewish Bible Messianic Bible translations are translations, or editions of translations, in English of the Christian Bible, some of which are widely used in the Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots communities. They are not the same as Jewish English Bible tran ...

). Albert Barnes' ''Notes on the Bible'' states that although most texts say "it is called the LORD’s release", the meaning is more likely to be that "it is ''proclaimed'' to be the LORD's release". The

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary refers to a biblical commentary entitled a ''Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible'', prepared by Robert Jamieson, Andrew Robert Fausset and David Brown and published in 1871; and de ...

considered the release to be temporary: "Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it — not by an absolute discharge of the debt, but by passing over that year without exacting payment. The relief was temporary and peculiar to that year during which there was a total suspension of agricultural labor." Similarly, the seventeenth-century nonconformist

Matthew Poole Matthew Poole (1624–1679) was an English Non-conformist theologian and biblical commentator. Life to 1662 He was born at York, the son of Francis Pole, but he spelled his name Poole, and in Latin Polus; his mother was a daughter of Alderman T ...

stated that the relief was temporary; you must "not absolutely and finally forgive it, but forbear it for that year". However, to theologian

John Gill John Gill may refer to: Sports *John Gill (cricketer) (1854–1888), New Zealand cricketer *John Gill (coach) (1898–1997), American football coach *John Gill (footballer, born 1903), English professional footballer *John Gill (American football) ...

, the release was to be permanent: "it rather seems to be a full release, so as the payment of them might not be demanded, neither this year nor afterwards"Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
on Deuteronomy 15, accessed 5 December 2015

References

{{reflist Book of Deuteronomy