Halakhah for Rosh Hashanah 4:13

I shall explain the verse “it will bring forth produce for the three years” (ibid. 25:21).⁸⁸ Scripture states: “If you should say: ‘What will we eat on the seventh year? Behold we will neither plant nor gather our produce.’ I shall command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it will bring forth produce for the three years. You will plant in the eighth year and eat of the old produce until the ninth year, until the arrival of its produce, you will eat old” (Leviticus 25:20–22). Among the problems that these verses present are: (1) the “three years” are listed as through the ninth year, which tallies to four years (6, 7, 8, and 9) instead of three. (2) We do not even have three full years, since the produce serves for half the sixth year, the whole seventh year, and half the eighth year. (3) Why would they be eating old produce through the ninth year when they can plant and harvest on the eighth year (since the year begins with Tishre)? Ibn Ezra addresses these problems. Be aware that a minute remaining of a Biblical day is considered a full day. For example, it is written “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (ibid. 12:3). If one is born on Friday one-half hour before the Sabbath commences, he is circumcised the following Friday morning, even though he has not completed seven full days.⁸⁹ Thus we see that when Friday ends one full day is completed, even though it was not 24 hours. Therefore the following Friday is the eighth day. Similarly, one day in the year is considered a full year. Sometimes it is counted as a separate year and sometimes it is left as part of the previous full year. Thus it is written “you will bear your sins for forty years” (Numbers 14:34). Now this incident occurred in the second year, and God did not punish them before they sinned.⁹⁰ The problem is how to arrive at a figure of forty years of wandering from the time they sinned (the slanderous report of the spies), when they remained in the wilderness only 39 more years. The number forty was due to their not crossing the Jordan until the “tenth of the first month” (Joshua 4:19) in the forty-first year.⁹¹ In this case part of one month counted as a year. This is in contrast to “they ate the manna forty years” (Exodus 16:35).⁹² The manna began in the first year of the exodus from Egypt and continued into the forty-first year. Yet Scripture writes “forty years,” omitting the one month of the forty-first year. In Scripture the “seventeenth” (1 Kings 14:21) is identical with “the eighteenth year” (ibid. 15:1);⁹³ We know that Rehoboam and Jeroboam began their reigns in the same year, with Rehoboam preceding Jeroboam by a few weeks. Also, Scripture relates that Rehoboam ruled for seventeen years (1 Kings 14:21), which would likewise be the seventeenth year of Jeroboam. Yet Scripture states that Rehoboam’s son, Abijam, began his reign in the eighteenth year of Jeroboam (ibid. 15:1). Obviously here “seventeenth year” and “eighteenth year” were the same year. also the “nineteenth.”⁹⁴ The eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 52:29) is also referred to as the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (ibid. 52:12). “The eleventh year” (2 Kings 9:29) is the same as “The twelfth year” (ibid. 8:25).⁹⁵ The verse relates that Ahaziah began his reign in the eleventh year of Jehoram (2 Kings 9:29), while in 2 Kings 8:25 it is written that Ahaziah began his reign in the twelfth year of Jehoram. Also, Ahaziah ruled for two years beginning with “the seventeenth year of Jehoshaphat” (1 Kings 22:52), yet Jehoram his brother ruled after him “in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat” (2 Kings 3:1). There are many similar examples.