Leviticus
Chapter 25
The Sabbatical Year
The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai:
“Speak to the Israelites and tell them:
When you enter the land I am giving you, let the land rest for the Lord every seventh year.
For six years, you shall sow your field, prune your vineyard, and harvest the produce,
but in the seventh year, the land shall have a rest, or Sabbath, a Sabbath for the Lord. You shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard;
you shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest nor gather the grapes of your uncultivated vines. This shall be a year of rest for the land,
but whatever it produces will provide food for you, your male and female slaves, your hired servant, and the stranger who lives with you.
Its produce will also provide food for your livestock and the wild animals on your land.
Jubilee Year
When seven Sabbaths of years have passed, which is seven times seven years, there will be the time of the seven weeks of years, totaling forty-nine years.
Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month, blow the trumpet loudly; it will be heard throughout the land on this Day of Atonement.
Keep the fiftieth year holy and proclaim freedom for all the inhabitants of the land. It shall be a year of jubilation for you when each person recovers his property and returns to his family.
In this fiftieth year, your Year of Jubilee, you must not sow or reap the aftergrowth or gather grapes from uncultivated vines.
This Jubilee year will be holy for you, and you shall eat what the field produces naturally without cultivation.
In this Year of Jubilee, everyone shall reclaim their own property.
When you sell something to your neighbor or buy something from him, don’t cheat each other.
According to the number of years after the Jubilee, you shall buy it from your neighbor, and based on how many years remain until the harvest, he shall sell it to you.
When many years pass, the price will be higher, and when fewer years pass, the price will be lower, because the amount of crops he’s selling to you depends on that.
Therefore, do not wrong each other, but fear your God, for I am your Lord.
Exhortation and Promise
Follow my precepts and obey my laws. This way, you will live safely in the land.
The land will yield its fruit, so you will have plenty of food and live securely.
But if you ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not sow or gather crops?” know that
I will send you my blessing in the sixth year so that it may produce enough for three years.
Thus, in the eighth year, the remains of the old crop will provide you with what to sow and eat until the ninth year’s harvest is ready.
Consequences of the Jubilee Year
Real Estate
The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine; you are merely strangers and guests of mine.
The land must be redeemed in all the territory you occupy.
When your brother becomes poor and sells his property, his nearest relative is to come and buy back what he has sold.
If the man has no relatives to buy back his property, but later acquires sufficient means to redeem it,
he will calculate the value based on the number of years since he sold it and refund the difference to the man to whom he sold it. In that way, he shall recover his property.
But if he does not find the means to repay him, what has been sold shall remain with the buyer until the Jubilee year when it must be returned to its original owner.
Similarly, if a man sells a house in a walled city, his right of redemption shall last until the end of a year from the sale; his right of redemption continues for a full year.
If it is not redeemed by the end of a complete year, the house in the walled city shall permanently belong to the buyer and his descendants, and it shall not be released in the Jubilee year.
Houses in villages without a surrounding wall are considered fields; they have redemption rights and can be released in a Jubilee year.
As for the towns of the Levites, their houses belong to the Levites, and they have the right to redeem what is sold to them permanently.
Any house in a Levite town can return to them during the Jubilee, for the houses in the Levite towns are their possession among the Israelites.
The lands in their towns must never be sold; they are their permanent property.
Social Conduct
If your brother becomes poor and cannot support himself, help him. Help this stranger or guest so that they can live with you.
Do not charge him interest, but fear your God, so that your brother may live among you.
Do not lend him your silver at interest, nor your food for profit.
I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of the Canaanites and to be your God.
Slaves
Of Their Own People
If your brother becomes poor and sells himself to you, do not treat him like a slave,
but let him stay with you as a hired servant and a foreigner until the year of Jubilee.
He shall then leave you, he and his sons with him, and return to his own family and the property of his ancestors.
For they are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt, and they are not to be sold as slaves.
Do not treat them harshly, but revere your God.
Foreign Slaves
As for the male and female slaves, it is from the nations around you that you are to buy them.
You may also buy from among the aliens who live with you and from their families, born in your land, and they may be your property.
You may pass them down to your children as inherited possessions and bind them for life. However, concerning your fellow Israelites, you must not govern them harshly.
Israelite Slave of a Foreigner
If an alien or temporary resident becomes prosperous and one of your brothers becomes so poor that he has to sell himself to a stranger living with you or a member of the stranger’s family,
he shall have the right of redemption. One of his brothers may redeem him,
or his uncle or the son of his uncle or a near relative may redeem him.
If he becomes wealthy, he should redeem himself. He shall determine his settlement with his buyer from the time he sold himself until the year of Jubilee, and the price of his sale shall correspond to the number of years. If many years remain, he shall be valued at the rate of a hired servant, based on the number of years.
If redeemed when many years remain, he shall be reimbursed from the price paid for him, according to the remaining time.
If only a few years remain until the Jubilee year, he will calculate and refund accordingly.
He shall be with him as a hired servant year by year, and he shall not be treated harshly.
If he is redeemed in any of these ways, he shall be released in the Jubilee year, along with his sons.
For it is to me that the Israelites are servants; they are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God.
Commentaries
The Sabbatical Year.
The sabbatical year for the land, already established in Exodus 23:10-11, follows the same pattern of six days of work and a seventh day of rest for people. According to the priestly tradition (P), this reflects the Creator’s pattern: six days of creation followed by a day of rest (cf. Gn 1:1-2:4a). For the land, this means six years of production and one year of rest. The importance of this law lies, first, in honoring the land as if it were a living being; it is understood that the land needs rest, just as every creature does. Second, the direct beneficiaries of the fruits produced during this sabbatical year include not only the owner but also the slave, the female slave, the day laborer, the migrant, the livestock, and the wild animals.
Jubilee Year – Exhortation and Promise.
Perhaps no law in the entire Old Testament is more radical than this law of the Jubilee, which aims to address inequality and social injustice. The monarchy historically brought many evils to Israel, including a shift from an egalitarian society to one characterized by economic and social disparities, which prophets often condemned (Am 2:6; 5:11; Hab 3:14, etc.). From the exile Israel currently faces, it dreams of returning to the land and restoring the nation. As noted earlier, the priestly tradition (P) sees this restoration through the lens of a perfect cult. It is unclear whether, influenced by Deuteronomistic thought (D) or independently, the priestly tradition (P) includes this mandate regarding the Jubilee year in its restoration plan, which aims to periodically equalize society.
This year, which is celebrated every fifty years, began on the Day of Atonement. On that day, the trumpet was sounded throughout the country, signaling the return of Israelites who had been forced into slavery due to poverty, the repurchase of land sold because of hardship, and the forgiveness or remission of debts (10-17). This Jubilee was never observed in Israel after the exile; at least, there is no record of it in any of the books of the Old Testament.
Consequences of the Jubilee Year.
The laws in these verses stem from the commandment regarding the jubilee year, but they also serve as preparations for it. An important perspective about the land is that it belongs to the Lord, who has lent it to the Israelites; they are simply guests or pilgrims of the Lord (23). Land and houses can be negotiated, but never in an absolute or final sense; instead, they are returned to their rightful owner or descendant (24-28). The enrichment of one person cannot compensate for the impoverishment of another without conflicting with God’s plan of justice.
From laws concerning property sales, we turn to social relations, which ultimately follow the same principles of buying and selling, with the potential for humans to become objects of trade. It is stressed that Israelites should be treated as brothers—not exploited or abused—and not even as slaves; this rule does not apply to people from other nations or ethnic groups, who could be bought or sold like any other commercial object, considered part of the family estate, and even passed down as an inheritance to their children (46).