DEUT701 This rule assured that debts (which held as collateral the debtor's land) would not cause the debtor's property to be passed to anyone else. Additionally, it took into account the changing vicissitudes of agricultural life and compensated for it. In the rabbinic period., As the Jews moved from the farm to the cities, their agricultural-based legal system carried with it obstacles to Jewish participation in a competitive free market. The law of debt remission in the seventh year was avoided in the new setting by not lending money in the sixth year! The rabbis, therefore, instituted a "correction" in the biblical law to compensate for the new economic setting. Called the "Prosbul," it was a legal document which allowed the lender to recover his money after the seventh year. Mishnah, Sheviit 10.3-4.