Leviticus

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.