Leviticus 25
1 Yahweh said to Moses/me on Sinai Mountain,
Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,
2 “Tell the Israelis [that I, Yahweh, say this]: When you enter the land that I am about to give you, every seventh year you must honor me by [not planting any seeds. You will be] allowing the ground to rest.
“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, 'When you come into the land that I give you, then the land must be made to keep a Sabbath for Yahweh.
3 For six years you are to plant seeds in your fields and prune your grapevines and harvest the crops.
You must plant your field for six years, and for six years you must prune your vineyard and gather the produce.
4 But the seventh/next year you must [dedicate] to me, and allow your fields to rest. Do not plant seeds in your fields or prune your grapevines [during that year].
But in the seventh year, a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land must be observed, a Sabbath for Yahweh. You must not plant your field or prune your vineyard.
5 Do not reap [the grain] that grows in your fields without having been planted, or harvest the grapes that grow [without the vines being pruned]; you must allow the land to rest for that one year.
You must not conduct an organized harvest of whatever grows by itself, and you must not conduct an organized harvest of whatever grapes grow on your unpruned vines. This will be a year of solemn rest for the land.
6 But you are permitted to eat whatever crops grow by themselves during that year without having been planted. You and your male and female servants, and workers whom you have hired, and people who are living among you temporarily are permitted to eat it.
Whatever the unworked land grows during the Sabbath year will be food for you. You, your male and female servants, your hired servants and the foreigners who live with you may gather food,
7 Also, [during that year] your livestock and the wild animals in your land are permitted to eat it.’
and your livestock and also wild animals may eat whatever the land produces.
8 ‘Also, after every 49 years has ended, you must do this: (On the tenth day of the seventh month/At the end of September) [of the next/50th year], blow trumpets throughout the country, to declare that it will be a day on which you request that I forgive you for the sins that you have committed.
You must count off seven Sabbaths of years, that is, seven times seven years, so that there will be seven Sabbaths of years, totaling forty-nine years.
Then you must blow a loud trumpet everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you must blow a trumpet throughout all your land.
10 Set apart that year, and proclaim that throughout the country, it will be a year of restoring the land and freeing people: All the people [who sold their property] will receive back the property that they previously owned, and slaves must be (freed/allowed to return to [their property and] their families).
You must set apart the fiftieth year to Yahweh and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be a Jubilee for you, in which property and slaves must be returned to their families.
11 That year will be a Year of Celebration; [during that year] do not plant anything, and do not harvest [in the usual way] the grain/wheat that grows without having been planted, or the grapes that grow without the vines being pruned.
The fiftieth year will be a Jubilee for you. You must not plant or conduct an organized harvest. Eat whatever grows by itself, and gather the grapes that grow on the unpruned vines.
12 It will be a Year of Celebration, so eat [only] what grows in the fields (by itself/without any work being done to produce anything).
For it is a Jubilee, which will be holy for you. You must eat the produce that grows by itself out of the fields.
13 ‘In that Year of Celebration, everyone must return to their own property.
You must return everyone to his own property in this year of Jubilee.
14 ‘If you sell some of your land to a fellow Israeli or if you buy some land from one of them, you must treat that person fairly:
If you sell any land to your neighbor or buy any land from your neighbor, you must not cheat or wrong each other.
15 If you buy land, the price that you will pay will depend on the number of years there will be until the next Year of Celebration. If someone sells land to you, he will charge a price that is determined by the number of years until the next Year of Celebration.
If you buy land from your neighbor, consider the number of years and crops that can be harvested until the next Jubilee. Your neighbor selling the land must consider that also.
16 If there will be many years before the next Year of Celebration, the price will be higher; if there will be only a few years until the next Year of Celebration, the price will be lower. [You could say that] what he is really selling you is the number of crops [which you can harvest before the next Year of Celebration].
A larger number of years until the next Jubilee will increase the value of land, and a smaller number of years until the next Jubilee will decrease the value, because the number of harvests the land will produce for the new owner is related to the number of years before the next Jubilee.
17 Do not cheat each other; instead, revere me. I, Yahweh your God, [am the one who am commanding this].
You must not cheat or wrong one another; instead, you must honor your God, for I am Yahweh your God.
18 ‘Obey all my laws [DOU] carefully. If you do that, you will continue to live safely in your country [DOU].
Therefore you must obey my decrees, keep my laws, and carry them out. Then you will live in the land in safety.
19 And crops will grow well on the land, and you will have plenty to eat.
The land will yield its produce, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety.
20 But you may ask, “If we do not plant or harvest our crops during the seventh year, what will we have to eat?”
You might say, “What will we eat during the seventh year? Look, we cannot plant or gather our produce.”
21 [My answer is that] I will bless you very much during the sixth/previous year, with the result that during that year there will be enough crops to provide food for you for three years!
I will command my blessing to come upon you in the sixth year, and it will produce harvest enough for three years.
22 Then, after you plant seed during the eighth/next year [and wait for the crops to grow], you will eat the food grown in the sixth year, and continue to eat it until more food is harvested in the ninth year!
You will plant in the eighth year and continue to eat from the previous years' produce and the stored food. Until the harvest of the ninth year comes in, you will be able to eat from the provisions stored in the previous years.
23 ‘You must not sell any of your land to belong to someone else permanently, because the land [is not yours, it]; is really mine, and you are only living on it temporarily and (farming/taking care of) it for me.
The land must not be sold to a new permanent owner, because the land is mine. You are all foreigners and temporary residents on my land.
24 Throughout the country that you will possess, you must remember that if someone sells some of his land to you, he is permitted to buy it back from you [if he wants to].
You must observe the right of redemption for all the land that you acquire; you must allow the land to be bought back by the family from whom you bought it.
25 ‘So, if one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells some of his property [to obtain some money], the person who is most closely related to him is permitted to come and buy that land for him.
If your fellow Israelite became poor and for that reason sold some of his property, then his nearest relative may come and buy back the property that he sold to you.
26 However, if a man has no one to buy the land for him, and he himself prospers again and saves enough money to buy that land back,
If a man has no relative to redeem his property, but if he has prospered and has the ability to redeem it,
27 he must calculate how many years there will be until the next Year of Celebration. Then he must pay to the man who bought the land the money that he would have earned by continuing to grow crops on that land for those years.
then he may calculate the years since the land was sold and repay the balance to the man to whom he sold it. Then he may return to his own property.
28 But if the original owner does not have any money to buy the land that he sold, it will continue to belong to the man who bought it, until the next Year of Celebration. In that year it must be returned to its original owner, and he will be able to live on it again.
But if he is not able to get the land back for himself, then the land he has sold will remain in the ownership of the one who bought it until the year of Jubilee. At the year of Jubilee, the land will be returned to the man who sold it, and the original owner will return to his property.
29 ‘If someone who lives in a city that has a wall around it sells a house there, during the next year he will be permitted to buy it from the man who bought it.
If a man sells a house in a walled city, then he may buy it back within a whole year after it was sold. For a full year he will have the right of redemption.
30 If he does not buy it during that year, it will belong permanently to the man who bought it and to his descendants. It must not be returned to the original owner in the Year of Celebration.
If the house is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city will become the permanent property of the buyer and his descendants. It is not to be returned in the year of Jubilee.
31 But houses that are in villages that do not have walls around them are considered to be as though they are in a field. So if someone sells one of those houses, he is permitted to buy it back at any time. And [if he does not buy it], it must be returned to him in the Year of Celebration.
But the houses of the villages that have no wall around them will be considered as the field of the land. They may be redeemed, and they must be returned during the year of Jubilee.
32 ‘If any descendants of Levi sell their houses in the towns in which they live, they are permitted to buy them back at any time.
However, the houses owned by the Levites in their cities may be redeemed at any time.
33 And because the houses in their towns are on land that [was given to them by] other Israelis, that land will become theirs again in the Year of Celebration [if they do not buy it back before then].
If one of the Levites does not redeem a house he sold, then the house that was sold in the city where it is located must be returned in the year of Jubilee, for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their property among the people of Israel.
34 But the pastureland near their towns must not be sold. It must belong to the original owners permanently/forever.
But the fields around their cities may not be sold because they are the permanent property of the Levites.
35 ‘If one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and is unable to buy what he needs [IDM], others of you must help him like you would help a foreigner who is living among you [DOU] temporarily.
If your fellow countryman becomes poor, so that he can no longer provide for himself, then you must help him as you would help a foreigner or anyone else living as an outsider among you.
36 [If you lend money to him], do not charge any kind of interest [DOU]. Instead, [show by what you do that you] revere me, your God, and help that man, in order that he will be able to continue to live among you.
Do not charge him interest or try to profit from him in any way, but honor your God so that your brother may keep living with you.
37 If you lend him money, do not charge interest; and if you sell food to him, [charge him only what you paid for it]; do not get a profit from it.
You must not give him a loan of money and charge interest, nor sell him your food to earn a profit.
38 [Do not forget that] I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God and to give you the land of Canaan, [and I did not charge you for doing that].
I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, in order that I might give you the land of Canaan, and that I might be your God.
39 ‘If one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells himself to you, do not force him to work like a slave.
If your fellow countryman has become poor and sells himself to you, you must not make him work like a slave.
40 Treat him like you treat workers that you hire or like someone who is living on your land temporarily. But he must work for you [only] until the Year of Celebration.
Treat him as a hired servant. He must be like someone living temporarily with you. He will serve with you until the year of Jubilee.
41 During that year, you must free him, and he will go back to his family and to the property that his ancestors owned.
Then he will go away from you, he and his children with him, and he will return to his own family and to his fathers' property.
42 [It is as though] you Israelis are my slaves/servants, whom I [freed from being slaves] in Egypt. So none of you should be sold to become slaves.
For they are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They will not be sold as slaves.
43 And do not treat the Israelis whom you buy cruelly; instead, revere me, your God.
You must not rule over them harshly, but you must honor your God.
44 ‘If you want to have slaves, you are permitted to buy them from nearby countries.
As for your male and female slaves, whom you can obtain from the nations who live around you, you may buy slaves from them.
45 You are also permitted to buy some of the foreigners who are living among you, and members of their clans that were born in your country. Then you will own them.
You may also buy slaves from the foreigners who are living among you, that is, from their families who are with you, children who have been born in your land. They may become your property.
46 They will be your slaves for the remaining years of your life, and after you die, it is permitted for your children to own them. But you must not act in brutal ways toward your fellow Israelis.
You may provide such slaves as an inheritance for your children after you, to hold as property, and make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your brothers among the people of Israel with harshness.
47 ‘If a foreigner who is living among you [DOU] becomes rich, and if one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells himself to that foreigner or to a member of his clan/family,
If a foreigner or someone living temporarily with you has become wealthy, and if one of your fellow Israelites has become poor and sells himself to that foreigner, or to someone in a foreigner's family,
48 it is permitted for someone to pay for him to be freed. It is permitted for one of his relatives to pay for him to be released:
after your fellow Israelite has been bought, he may be bought back. Someone in his family may redeem him.
49 An uncle or a cousin or another relative in his clan may pay for him to be released. Or, if he prospers [and gets enough money], he is permitted to pay for his own release.
It might be the person's uncle, or his uncle's son, who redeems him, or anyone who is his close relative from his family. Or, if he has become prosperous, he may redeem himself.
50 The man who wants to pay for his own release must count the number of years until the next Year of Celebration. The price he pays to the man who bought him will depend on the pay that would be given to a hired worker for that number of years.
He must bargain with the man who bought him; they must count the years from the year he sold himself to his purchaser until the year of Jubilee. The price of his redemption must be figured in keeping with the rate paid to a hired servant, for the number of years he might continue to work for the one who bought him.
51 If there are a lot of years that remain until the Year of Celebration, he must pay for his release a larger amount of the money.
If there are still many years until the year of Jubilee, he must pay back as the price for his redemption an amount of money that is in proportion to the number of those years.
52 If there are only a few years that remain until the Year of Celebration, he must pay a smaller amount to be released.
If there are only a few years to the year of Jubilee, then he must bargain with his purchaser to reflect the number of years left before the year of Jubilee, and he must pay for his redemption in keeping with the number of years.
53 During the years that he is working for the man who bought him, the man who bought him must treat him like he would treat a hired worker, and all of you must make sure that his owner does not treat him cruelly.
He is to be treated like a man hired year by year. You must make sure he is not treated with harshness.
54 ‘And even if a fellow Israeli who has sold himself to a rich man is not able to pay for himself to be freed by any of these ways, he and his children must be freed in the Year of Celebration,
If he is not redeemed by these means, then he must serve until the year of Jubilee, he and his children with him.
55 because [it is as though] you Israelis are my slaves/servants, whom I, Yahweh your God, freed from [being slaves in] Egypt.’”
To me the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.'”
