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Parashas Bechukosai · Passuk context
The land will be forsaken by them and will make up for its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they will make up for their iniquity, because, even because they rejected My judgments and their soul abhorred My statutes.
Sifra, Bechukotai, Chapter 7:2 — the land itself “repays” the missed Shemittot through desolation; the exile is the land’s forced rest.
English: “Then the land will make up for its Sabbaths” — I told you to sow six and leave one fallow for Me; you did not do so. Rise and be exiled from it, and it will rest of its own accord for all the Shemittot it owes Me.
Halachic–historical derasha — Shemittah debt paid in desolation.
Exile is framed as the land collecting its due. The missed sabbatical years are not forgotten; the empty land becomes the mechanism of repayment.