Leviticus 25
25
Sabbath Years and Jubilee
1The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: 2“Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you enter the land I am giving you, the land will observe a Sabbath to the Lord. 3You may sow your field for six years, and you may prune your vineyard and gather its produce for six years. 4But there will be a Sabbath of complete rest # Lv 16:31 for the land in the seventh year, a Sabbath to the Lord: you are not to sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5You are not to reap what grows by itself from your crop, or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. It must be a year of complete rest for the land. 6Whatever the land produces during the Sabbath year can be food for you — for yourself, your male or female slave, and the hired hand or foreigner who stays with you. 7All of its growth may serve as food for your livestock and the wild animals in your land.
8“You are to count seven sabbatical years, seven times seven years, so that the time period of the seven sabbatical years amounts to 49. 9Then you are to sound a trumpet loudly in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month; you will sound it throughout your land on the Day of Atonement. # Lv 23:27 10You are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom in the land for all its inhabitants. It will be your Jubilee, # Lv 27:17-24; Nm 36:4; Dt 15:1 when each of you is to return to his property and each of you to his clan. 11The fiftieth year will be your Jubilee; you are not to sow, reap what grows by itself, or harvest its untended vines. 12It is to be holy to you because it is the Jubilee; you may only eat its produce directly from the field.
13“In this Year of Jubilee, each of you will return to his property. 14If you make a sale to your neighbor or a purchase from him, do not cheat # Dt 23:16 one another. 15You are to make the purchase from your neighbor based on the number of years since the last Jubilee. He is to sell to you based on the number of remaining harvest years. 16You are to increase its price in proportion to a greater amount of years, and decrease its price in proportion to a lesser amount of years, because what he is selling to you is a number of harvests. 17You are not to cheat one another, but fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God.
18“You are to keep My statutes and ordinances and carefully observe them, so that you may live securely in the land. # Lv 18:4-5,26; 19:37; 20:8,22; 26:3-5 19Then the land will yield its fruit, so that you can eat, be satisfied, and live securely in the land. 20If you wonder: ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we don’t sow or gather our produce? ’ 21I will appoint My blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. 22When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating from the previous harvest. You will be eating this until the ninth year when its harvest comes in.
23“The land is not to be permanently sold because it is Mine, and you are only foreigners and temporary residents on My land. # Lit residents with Me # 1Ch 29:15; Heb 11:13 24You are to allow the redemption of any land you occupy. 25If your brother becomes destitute and sells part of his property, his nearest relative may come and redeem what his brother has sold. 26If a man has no family redeemer, but he prospers # Lit but his hand reaches and obtains enough to redeem his land, 27he may calculate the years since its sale, repay the balance to the man he sold it to, and return to his property. 28But if he cannot obtain enough to repay him, what he sold will remain in the possession of its purchaser until the Year of Jubilee. It is to be released at the Jubilee, so that he may return to his property.
29“If a man sells a residence in a walled city, his right of redemption will last until a year has passed after its sale; his right of redemption will last a year. 30If it is not redeemed by the end of a full year, then the house in the walled city is permanently transferred to its purchaser throughout his generations. It is not to be released on the Jubilee. 31But houses in villages that have no walls around them are to be classified as open fields. The right to redeem such houses stays in effect, and they are to be released at the Jubilee.
32“Concerning the Levitical cities, # Nm 35:1-8; Dt 18:1-2; 19:2-9; Jos 21; 1Ch 6:54-81 the Levites always have the right to redeem houses in the cities they possess. 33Whatever property one of the Levites can redeem # Hb obscure — a house sold in a city they possess — must be released at the Jubilee, because the houses in the Levitical cities are their possession among the Israelites. 34The open pastureland around their cities may not be sold, for it is their permanent possession.
35“If your brother becomes destitute and cannot sustain himself among # Lit and his hand falters with you, you are to support him as a foreigner or temporary resident, so that he can continue to live among you. 36Do not profit or take interest from him, # Ex 22:25; Dt 23:19-20; Ezk 22:12 but fear your God and let your brother live among you. 37You are not to lend him your silver with interest or sell him your food for profit. 38I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
39“If your brother among you becomes destitute and sells himself to you, # 2Kg 4:1; Neh 5:5; Is 50:1; Mt 18:25 you must not force him to do slave labor. 40Let him stay with you as a hired hand or temporary resident; he may work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41Then he and his children are to be released from you, and he may return to his clan and his ancestral property. # Ex 21:3-6 42They are not to be sold as slaves, # Lit sold with a sale of a slave because they are My slaves that I brought out of the land of Egypt. 43You are not to rule over them harshly # Ex 1:13-14 but fear your God. 44Your male and female slaves are to be from the nations around you; you may purchase male and female slaves. 45You may also purchase them from the foreigners staying with you, or from their families living among you — those born in your land. These may become your property. 46You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But concerning your brothers, the Israelites, you must not rule over one another harshly.
47“If a foreigner or temporary resident living among you prospers, but your brother living near him becomes destitute and sells himself to the foreigner living among you, or to a member of the foreigner’s clan, 48he has the right of redemption after he has been sold. One of his brothers may redeem him. 49His uncle or cousin may redeem him, or any of his close relatives from his clan may redeem him. If he prospers, he may redeem himself. 50The one who purchased him is to calculate the time from the year he sold himself to him until the Year of Jubilee. The price of his sale will be determined by the number of years. It will be set for him like the daily wages of a hired hand. 51If many years are still left, he must pay his redemption price in proportion to them based on his purchase price. 52If only a few years remain until the Year of Jubilee, he will calculate and pay the price of his redemption in proportion to his remaining years. 53He will stay with him like a man hired year by year. A foreign owner is not to rule over him harshly in your sight. 54If he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he and his children are to be released at the Year of Jubilee. 55For the Israelites are My slaves. # Ex 4:10 They are My slaves that I brought out of the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.
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Leviticus 25: HCSB
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© 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.
Leviticus 25
25
1And the Lord spoke to Moses in mount Sinai, saying:
2Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: When you shall have entered into the land which I will give you, observe the rest of the sabbath to the Lord.
3Six years thou shalt sow thy field and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and shalt gather the fruits thereof.
4But in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath to the land, of the resting of the Lord. Thou shalt not sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
5What the ground shall bring forth of itself thou shalt not reap: neither shalt thou gather the grapes of the first-fruits as a vintage. For it is a year of rest to the land.
6But they shall be unto you for meat, to thee and to thy man-servant, to thy maid-servant and thy hireling, and to the strangers that sojourn with thee.
7All things that grow shall be meat to thy beasts and to thy cattle.
8Thou shalt also number to thee seven weeks of years: that is to say, seven times seven, which together make forty-nine years.
9And thou shalt sound the trumpet in the seventh month, the tenth day of the month, in the time of the expiation in all your land.
10And thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee. Every man shall return to his possession, and every one shall go back to his former family:
11Because it is the jubilee and the fiftieth year. You shall not sow, nor reap the things that grow in the field of their own accord, neither shall you gather the first-fruits of the vines,
12Because of the sanctification of the jubilee. But as they grow you shall presently eat them.
13In the year of the jubilee all shall return to their possessions.
14When thou shalt sell any thing to thy neighbour, or shalt buy of him; grieve not thy brother. But thou shalt buy of him according to the number of years from the jubilee.
15And he shall sell to thee according to the computation of the fruits.
16The more years remain after the jubilee, the more shall the price increase: and the less time is counted, so much the less shall the purchase cost. For he shall sell to thee the time of the fruits.
17Do not afflict your countrymen: but let every one fear his God. Because I am the Lord your God.
18Do my precepts, and keep my judgments, and fulfil them: that you may dwell in the land without any fear.
19And the ground may yield you its fruits, of which you may eat your fill, fearing no man's invasion.
20But if you say: What shall we eat the seventh year, if we sow not, nor gather our fruits?
21I will give you my blessing the sixth year: and it shall yield the fruits of three years.
22And the eighth year you shall sow, and shall eat of the old fruits, until the ninth year: till new grow up, you shall eat the old store.
23The land also shall not be sold for ever: because it is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners with me.
24For which cause all the country of your possession shall be under the condition of redemption.
25If thy brother being impoverished sell his little possession, and his kinsman will: he may redeem what he had sold.
26But if he have no kinsman, and he himself can find the price to redeem it:
27The value of the fruits shall be counted from that time when he sold it. And the overplus he shall restore to the buyer, and so shall receive his possession again.
28But if his hands find not the means to repay the price, the buyer shall have what he bought, until the year of the jubilee. For in that year all that is sold shall return to the owner, and to the ancient possessor.
29He that selleth a house within the walls of a city, shall have the liberty to redeem it, until one year be expired.
30If he redeem it not, and the whole year be fully out, the buyer shall possess it, and his posterity for ever, and it cannot be redeemed, not even in the jubilee.
31But if the house be in a village, that hath no walls, it shall be sold according to the same law as the fields. If it be not redeemed before, in the jubilee it shall return to the owner.
32The houses of Levites, which are in cities, may always be redeemed.
33If they be not redeemed, in the jubilee they shall all return to the owners: because the houses of the cities of the Levites are for their possessions among the children of Israel.
34But let not their suburbs be sold, because it is a perpetual possession.
35If thy brother be impoverished, and weak of hand, and thou receive him as a stranger and sojourner, and he live with thee:
36Take not usury of him nor more than thou gavest. Fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee.
37Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury: nor exact of him any increase of fruits.
38I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that I might give you the land of Chanaan, and might be your God.
39If thy brother constrained by poverty sell himself to thee, thou shalt not oppress him with the service of bondservants.
40But he shall be as a hireling, and a sojourner: he shall work with thee until the year of the jubilee.
41And afterwards he shall go out with his children: and shall return to his kindred and to the possession of his fathers.
42For they are my servants, and I brought them out of the land of Egypt: let them not be sold as bondmen.
43Afflict him not by might: but fear thy God.
44Let your bondmen, and your bondwomen, be of the nations that are round about you:
45And of the strangers that sojourn among you, or that were born of them in your land. These you shall have for servants:
46And by right of inheritance shall leave them to your posterity, and shall possess them for ever. But oppress not your brethren the children of Israel by might.
47If the hand of a stranger or a sojourner grow strong among you, and thy brother being impoverished sell himself to him, or to any of his race:
48After the sale he may be redeemed. He that will of his brethren shall redeem him:
49Either his uncle, or his uncle's son, or his kinsman, by blood, or by affinity. But if he himself be able also, he shall redeem himself:
50Counting only the years from the time of his selling unto the year of the jubilee: and counting the money that he was sold for, according to the number of the years and the reckoning of a hired servant.
51If there be many years that remain until the jubilee, according to them shall he also repay the price.
52If few, he shall make the reckoning with him according to the number of the years: and shall repay to the buyer of what remaineth of the years.
53His wages being allowed for which he served before: he shall not afflict him violently in thy sight.
54And if by these means he cannot be redeemed, in the year of the jubilee he shall go out with his children.
55For the children of Israel are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt.
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An historical text maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society.