The Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee
1Yahweh 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 itself must keep a sabbath to Yahweh. 3For six years you may sow your field, and for six years you may prune your vineyard and gather its harvest. 4But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath to Yahweh. You must not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5You must not reap what grows on its own from your untended harvest, nor gather the grapes of your unpruned vines. It is a year of rest for the land. 6Whatever the land produces during its sabbath is to be food for you — for yourself, your male and female servants, your hired worker, and the settler who resides among you, 7as well as for your livestock and for the wild animals in your land. All its produce is to be food. 8Count off seven sabbaths of years — seven times seven years — so that the seven sabbaths of years give you a period of forty-nine years. 9Then on the tenth day of the seventh month you are to sound the trumpet blast; on the Day of Atonement you are to sound the trumpet throughout your land. 10You are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It is to be a Jubilee for you: each of you is to return to his property, each of you is to return to his family. 11That fiftieth year is to be a Jubilee for you. You must not sow, you must not reap what grows on its own, and you must not gather the grapes of the unpruned vines, 12for it is the Jubilee — it is to be holy to you. You are to eat only what the field yields of itself. 13In this year of Jubilee, each of you is to return to his property.
Honest Dealing and the Right of Redemption
14If you sell anything to your neighbor or buy anything from your neighbor, do not wrong one another. 15You are to buy from your neighbor according to the number of years since the Jubilee, and he is to sell to you according to the number of remaining harvest years. 16The more years remain, the higher the price you pay; the fewer years remain, the lower the price — for what he is selling you is a certain number of harvests. 17None of you is to wrong your neighbor; instead, fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God. 18Keep my statutes and observe my ordinances and carry them out, and you will live in the land securely. 19The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there securely. 20If you ask, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year, since we will not sow or gather our harvest?’ — 21I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it produces a harvest enough for three years. 22You will sow in the eighth year while still eating from the old harvest; until the ninth year, until its harvest comes in, you will eat the old store. 23The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine — you are only foreigners and settlers with me. 24Throughout the land you hold, you must allow the land to be redeemed.
Redeeming Land, Houses, and the Poor Brother
25If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his brother sold. 26If a man has no one to redeem it, but he himself prospers and finds enough to redeem it, 27he is to count the years since its sale, repay the balance to the man he sold it to, and return to his property. 28But if he cannot find enough to repay him, what he sold will remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee it will be released, and he will return to his property. 29If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he retains the right to redeem it for a full year after its sale — his right of redemption lasts a full year. 30But if it is not redeemed before a full year has passed, the house in the walled city is to belong permanently to its buyer, throughout his generations. It will not be released in the Jubilee. 31But houses in villages that have no wall around them are counted as open country: they may be redeemed, and they are released in the Jubilee. 32As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites always retain the right to redeem the houses in the cities they hold. 33If someone redeems a house from a Levite, the house sold in the city he holds is to be released in the Jubilee, for the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the Israelites. 34But the open pastureland around their cities must not be sold, for it is their permanent possession. 35If your brother becomes poor and cannot support himself among you, help him as you would a foreigner or settler, so that he can continue to live among you. 36Do not charge him interest of any kind, but fear your God, so that your brother may continue to live among you. 37You must not lend him your money at interest or sell him your food at a 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.
Hebrew Servants and Redemption from a Foreign Master
39If your brother becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. 40He is to stay with you as a hired worker or settler; he is to serve you until the year of Jubilee. 41Then he is to be released from you, he and his children with him, and he is to return to his family and to the property of his ancestors. 42For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt — they must not be sold as slaves are sold. 43You must not rule over him harshly, but you must fear your God. 44As for the male and female slaves you may have — you may acquire male and female slaves from the nations around you. 45You may also buy them from the children of the settlers living among you, from their families born in your land, and they are to become your property. 46You may leave them to your children after you as an inheritance to possess; you may make them slaves permanently. But you must not rule harshly over your brothers, the Israelites, one over another. 47If a foreigner or settler among you grows rich, and your brother beside him grows poor and sells himself to the foreigner or settler among you, or to a member of the foreigner’s family, 48after he is sold he still has the right of redemption — one of his brothers may redeem him. 49His uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or any close relative from his family may redeem him; or if he himself prospers, he may redeem himself. 50He and his buyer are to count the years from the year he was sold to him until the year of Jubilee, and the price of his sale is to be set according to the number of years, reckoned like the wages of a hired worker. 51If many years remain, he is to repay for his redemption in proportion to the money he was bought for. 52If only a few years remain until the year of Jubilee, he is to reckon accordingly and repay for his redemption according to those years. 53He is to be with him like a worker hired year by year; his master must not rule over him harshly before your eyes. 54If he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he is still to be released in the year of Jubilee, he and his children with him. 55For it is to me that the Israelites are servants — they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.
