Leviticus 25
25
“The Land Will Observe a Sabbath to God”
1-7 God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai: “Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, When you enter the land which I am going to give you, the land will observe a Sabbath to God. Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years. But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to God; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Don’t reap what grows of itself; don’t harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest. But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath year—you and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country, and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten.
“The Fiftieth Year Is Your Jubilee Year”
8-12“Count off seven Sabbaths of years—seven times seven years: Seven Sabbaths of years adds up to forty-nine years. Then sound loud blasts on the ram’s horn on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. Sound the ram’s horn all over the land. Sanctify the fiftieth year; make it a holy year. Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in it—a Jubilee for you: Each person will go back to his family’s property and reunite with his extended family. The fiftieth year is your Jubilee year: Don’t sow; don’t reap what volunteers itself in the fields; don’t harvest the untended vines because it’s the Jubilee and a holy year for you. You’re permitted to eat from whatever volunteers itself in the fields.
13“In this year of Jubilee everyone returns home to his family property.
14-17“If you sell or buy property from one of your countrymen, don’t cheat him. Calculate the purchase price on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. He is obliged to set the sale price on the basis of the number of harvests remaining until the next Jubilee. The more years left, the more money; you can raise the price. But the fewer years left, the less money; decrease the price. What you are buying and selling in fact is the number of crops you’re going to harvest. Don’t cheat each other. Fear your God. I am God, your God.
18-22“Keep my decrees and observe my laws and you will live secure in the land. The land will yield its fruit; you will have all you can eat and will live safe and secure. Do I hear you ask, ‘What are we going to eat in the seventh year if we don’t plant or harvest?’ I assure you, I will send such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant in the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and continue until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.
23-24“The land cannot be sold permanently because the land is mine and you are foreigners—you’re my tenants. You must provide for the right of redemption for any of the land that you own.
25-28“If one of your brothers becomes poor and has to sell any of his land, his nearest relative is to come and buy back what his brother sold. If a man has no one to redeem it but he later prospers and earns enough for its redemption, he is to calculate the value since he sold it and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it; he can then go back to his own land. If he doesn’t get together enough money to repay him, what he sold remains in the possession of the buyer until the year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee it will be returned and he can go back and live on his land.
29-31“If a man sells a house in a walled city, he retains the right to buy it back for a full year after the sale. At any time during that year he can redeem it. But if it is not redeemed before the full year has passed, it becomes the permanent possession of the buyer and his descendants. It is not returned in the Jubilee. However, houses in unwalled villages are treated the same as fields. They can be redeemed and have to be returned at the Jubilee.
32-34“As to the Levitical cities, houses in the cities owned by the Levites are always subject to redemption. Levitical property is always redeemable if it is sold in a town that they hold and reverts to them in the Jubilee, because the houses in the towns of the Levites are their property among the People of Israel. The pastures belonging to their cities may not be sold; they are their permanent possession.
35-38“If one of your brothers becomes indigent and cannot support himself, help him, the same as you would a foreigner or a guest so that he can continue to live in your neighborhood. Don’t gouge him with interest charges; out of reverence for your God help your brother to continue to live with you in the neighborhood. Don’t take advantage of his plight by running up big interest charges on his loans, and don’t give him food for profit. I am your God who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
39-43“If one of your brothers becomes indigent and has to sell himself to you, don’t make him work as a slave. Treat him as a hired hand or a guest among you. He will work for you until the Jubilee, after which he and his children are set free to go back to his clan and his ancestral land. Because the People of Israel are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt, they must never be sold as slaves. Don’t tyrannize them; fear your God.
44-46“The male and female slaves which you have are to come from the surrounding nations; you are permitted to buy slaves from them. You may also buy the children of foreign workers who are living among you temporarily and from their clans which are living among you and have been born in your land. They become your property. You may will them to your children as property and make them slaves for life. But you must not tyrannize your brother Israelites.
47-53“If a foreigner or temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your brothers becomes poor and sells himself to the foreigner who lives among you or to a member of the foreigner’s clan, he still has the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his relatives may buy him back. An uncle or cousin or any close relative of his extended family may redeem him. Or, if he gets the money together, he can redeem himself. What happens then is that he and his owner count out the time from the year he sold himself to the year of Jubilee; the buy-back price is set according to the wages of a hired hand for that number of years. If many years remain before the Jubilee, he must pay back a larger share of his purchase price, but if only a few years remain until the Jubilee, he is to calculate his redemption price accordingly. He is to be treated as a man hired from year to year. You must make sure that his owner does not tyrannize him.
54-55“If he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he goes free in the year of Jubilee, he and his children, because the People of Israel are my servants, my servants whom I brought out of Egypt. I am God, your God.
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Leviticus 25: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Leviticus 25
25
1 And the Lord spoke to Moses on mount Sinai, saying:
2 Speak to the sons of Israel, and you shall say to them: When you will have entered into the land which I will give to you, rest on the Sabbath of the Lord.
3 For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall care for your vineyard, and you shall gather its fruits.
4 But in the seventh year, there shall be a Sabbath of the land, a resting of the Lord. You shall not sow your field, and you shall not care for your vineyard.
5 What the soil shall spontaneously produce, you shall not harvest. And you shall not gather the grapes of the first-fruits as a crop. For it is a year of rest for the land.
6 But these shall be yours for food, for you and for your men and women servants, and for your hired hands, and for the newcomers who sojourn with you:
7 all that grows on its own shall provide food for your beasts and cattle.
8 You shall also number for yourselves seven weeks of years, that is, seven times seven, which together makes forty-nine years.
9 And you shall sound the trumpet in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, at the time of the atonement, throughout all your land.
10 And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and you shall proclaim a remission for all the inhabitants of your land: for the same is the Jubilee. A man shall return to his possession, and each one shall go back to his original family,
11 for it is the Jubilee and the fiftieth year. You shall not sow, and you shall not reap what grows in the field of its own accord, and you shall not gather the first-fruits of the crop,
12 due to the sanctification of the Jubilee. But you shall eat them as they present themselves.
13 In the year of the Jubilee, all shall return to their possessions.
14 When you will sell anything to your fellow citizen, or buy anything from him, do not cause your brother grief, but buy from him according to the number of years from the Jubilee,
15 and he shall sell to you according to the computation of the produce.
16 The more years that will remain after the Jubilee, the more the price shall increase, and the less the time is numbered, so much less shall the purchase price be. For he will sell to you the time for the produce.
17 Do be willing to afflict your countrymen, but let each one fear his God. For I am the Lord your God.
18 Accomplish my precepts, and observe my judgments, and complete them, so that you may be able to live in the land without any fear,
19 and so that the soil may produce its fruits for you, from which you may eat, even to fullness, dreading violence by no one.
20 But if you will say: What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we do not sow and do not gather our produce?
21 I will give my blessing to you in the sixth year, and it shall yield the produce of three years.
22 And in the eighth year you shall sow, but you shall eat from the old produce, until the ninth year, until what is new matures, you shall eat what is old.
23 Also, the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for it is mine, and you are newcomers and settlers to me.
24 Therefore, every region of your possession shall be sold under the condition of redemption.
25 If your brother, being in need, will have sold his little possession and his close relative is willing, he is able to redeem what he had sold.
26 But if he has no near relative, and he himself is able to find the price to redeem it,
27 the produce shall be calculated from that time when he sold it. And what is lacking, he shall repay to the buyer, and so he shall receive his possession.
28 But if his hand will not have discovered a way to repay the price, the buyer shall have what he bought, until the year of the Jubilee. For in that year all that has been sold shall return to the owner, and to the original possessor.
29 Whoever will have sold a house within the walls of a city shall have the freedom to redeem it, until one year has been completed.
30 If he has not redeemed it, and the year will have turned full circle, the buyer and his posterity shall possess it, in perpetuity, and it is not able to be redeemed, even in the Jubilee.
31 But if the house is in a village, which has no walls, it shall be sold by the law of the fields. If it has not been redeemed beforehand, then in the Jubilee it shall return to the owner.
32 The buildings of the Levites, which are in the cities, are always able to be redeemed.
33 If they have not been redeemed, then in the Jubilee they shall return to the owners, for the houses of the cities of the Levites are for their possession among the sons of Israel.
34 But let not their suburbs be sold, for it is an everlasting possession.
35 If your brother has become impoverished, or infirm of hand, and you take him in, like a newcomer or a sojourner, and he lives with you,
36 do not accept usury from him, nor anything more than what you gave. Fear your God, so that your brother may be able to live with you.
37 You shall not give him your money by usury, nor exact from him an overabundance of produce.
38 I am the Lord your God, who led you away from the land of Egypt, so that I might give to you the land of Canaan, and so that I may be your God.
39 If your brother, having been compelled by poverty, will have sold himself to you, you shall not oppress him with the servitude of indentured servants.
40 But he shall be like a hired hand or a settler; he shall work with you, until the year of the Jubilee.
41 And after that, he shall depart with his children, and he shall return to his kindred, to the possession of his fathers.
42 For these are my servants, and I led them away from the land of Egypt; let them not be sold into the condition of servitude.
43 Do not afflict him by power, but be fearful of your God.
44 Let your male and female servants be from the nations which are all around you,
45 and from the newcomers who sojourn with you, or who have been born from them in your land. These you shall have as servants,
46 and, by the right of inheritance, you shall transmit them to your posterity, and you shall possess them forever. But do not oppress your brothers, the sons of Israel, by power.
47 If the hand of a newcomer or a sojourner will have grown strong among you, and your brother, having become impoverished, will have sold himself to him, or to any of his stock,
48 after the sale, he is able to be redeemed. Whoever is willing among his brothers shall redeem him:
49 either the paternal uncle, or the paternal uncle's son, or his close relative, by blood or by affinity. But if he himself will be able also, he shall redeem himself,
50 considering only the years from the time of his selling until the year of the Jubilee, and calculating the money for which he was sold, according to the number of years and the accounting of a hired hand.
51 If there will have been many years which remain until the Jubilee, according to these shall he also repay the price.
52 If few, he shall determine the accounting with him according to the number of years, and he shall repay to the buyer by what is left remaining of the years;
53 his wages being charged by what served before. He shall not afflict him violently in your sight.
54 But if, by these means, he will not be able to be redeemed, then in the year of the Jubilee he shall depart with his children.
55 For they are my servants, the sons of Israel, whom I led away from the land of Egypt.
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