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Leviticus 25:1-26:46

The Sabbatical Year. (Lv.25.1-7)

25¹Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and said: ²'Speak to the Israelites and say to them:

'When you enter the country which I am giving you, the land must keep a Sabbath's rest for Yahweh. ³For six years you will sow your field, for six years you will prune your vineyard and gather its produce. ⁴But in the seventh year the land will have a sabbatical rest, a Sabbath for Yahweh. You will neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard, ⁵nor reap any grain which has grown of its own accord, nor gather the grapes from your untrimmed vine. It will be a year of rest for the land. ⁶But what the land produces in its Sabbath will serve to feed you, your slave, male or female, your employee and your guest residing with you; ⁷for your cattle too, and the wild animals of your country, whatever it produces will serve as food.

The Year of Jubilee. (Lv.25.8-17)

⁸'You will count seven weeks of years—seven times seven years, that is to say a period of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years. ⁹And on the tenth day of the seventh month you will sound the trumpet; on the Day of Expiation you will sound the trumpet throughout the land. ¹⁰You will declare this fiftieth year to be sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the country's inhabitants. You will keep this as a jubilee: each of you will return to his ancestral property, each to his own clan. ¹¹This fiftieth year will be a jubilee year for you; in it you will not sow, you will not harvest the grain that has come up on its own or in it gather grapes from your untrimmed vine. ¹²The jubilee will be a holy thing for you; during it you will eat whatever the fields produce. ¹³'In this year of jubilee, each of you will return to his ancestral property. ¹⁴If you buy land from, or sell land to, your fellow-countryman, neither of you may exploit the other. ¹⁵In buying from your fellow-countryman, you will take account of the number of years since the jubilee; the sale-price he fixes for you will depend on the number of productive years still to run. ¹⁶The greater the number of years, the higher the price you will ask for it; the fewer the number of years, the greater the reduction; for what he is selling you is a certain number of harvests. ¹⁷So you will not exploit one another, but fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God.

Abundance for the Sabbatical year. (Lv.25.18-22)

¹⁸'Hence, you will put my laws and customs into practice; you will keep them and put them into practice, and you will live securely in the country. ¹⁹The land will give its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live in security. ²⁰'In case you should ask: What shall we eat in this seventh year if we do not sow or harvest our Produce? ²¹I shall order my blessing to be on you in the sixth year, which will yield you enough produce for three years. ²²You will have the old produce to eat while you are sowing in the eighth year, and even in the ninth year, you will be eating the old produce, while waiting for the harvest of that year. ²³'Land will not be sold absolutely, for the land belongs to me, and you are only strangers and guests of mine. ²⁴You will allow a right of redemption over any ancestral property.

Restoration of property. (Lv.25.25-34)

²⁵If your brother becomes impoverished and sells off part of his ancestral property, his nearest male relative will come and exercise his family rights over what his brother has sold. ²⁶The man who has no one to exercise this right may, once he has found the means to effect the redemption, ²⁷calculate the number of years that the alienation would have lasted, repay to the purchaser the sum due for the time still to run, and so recover his ancestral property. ²⁸If he cannot find the sum in compensation, the property sold will remain in the possession of the purchaser until the jubilee year. In the jubilee year, the latter will vacate it and return to his own ancestral property. ²⁹'If anyone sells a dwelling house inside a walled town, he will have the right of redemption until the expiry of the year following the sale. His right of redemption is limited to the year; ³⁰and if the redemption has not been effected by the end of the year, the house in the walled town will become the property of the purchaser and his descendants in perpetuity; he need not vacate it at the jubilee. ³¹But houses in villages not enclosed by walls will be considered as situated in the open country; they carry the right of redemption, and the purchaser will vacate them at the jubilee. ³²'As regards the towns of the Levites, town houses forming part of their ancestral property will carry a perpetual right of redemption in their favour. ³³If a Levite is the one to be affected by the right of redemption, at the jubilee he will vacate the purchased property and return to his own home, to the town in which he has a title to property. The houses in the Levites' towns represent their ancestral property in Israel, ³⁴and the arable land depending on these towns cannot be sold, being their ancestral property for ever.

The poor. (Lv.25.35-38)

³⁵'If your brother becomes impoverished and cannot support himself in the community, you will assist him as you would a stranger or guest, so that he can go on living with you. ³⁶Do not charge him interest on a loan, but fear your God, and let your brother live with you. ³⁷You will not lend him money on interest or give him food to make a profit out of it. ³⁸I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and be your God.

Manumission. (Lv.25.39-55)

³⁹'If your brother becomes impoverished while with you and sells himself to you, you will not make him do the work of a slave; ⁴⁰you will treat him like an employee or guest, and he will work for you until the jubilee year. ⁴¹He will then leave you, both he and his children, and return to his clan and regain possession of his ancestral property. ⁴²For they are my servants whom I have brought out of Egypt, and they may not be bought and sold as slaves. ⁴³You will not oppress your brother-Israelites harshly but will fear your God. ⁴⁴'The male and female slaves you have will come from the nations round you; from these you may purchase male and female slaves. ⁴⁵As slaves, you may also purchase the children of aliens resident among you, and also members of their families living with you who have been born on your soil; and they will become your property, ⁴⁶and you may leave them as a legacy to your sons after you as their perpetual possession. These you may have for slaves; but you will not oppress your brother-Israelites. ⁴⁷'If a stranger or guest living with you gets rich and your brother, in the course of dealings with him, becomes impoverished and sells himself to this stranger or guest, or to the descendant of a stranger's family, ⁴⁸he will enjoy the right of redemption after being sold, and one of his brothers may redeem him. ⁴⁹His paternal uncle, his uncle's son, or a member of his own family may redeem him; if he has the means, he may redeem himself. ⁵⁰By agreement with his purchaser, he will count the number of years between the year of sale and the jubilee year; his sale-price will be proportionate to the number of years, his time being valued as that of an employee. ⁵¹If there are still many years to run, in proportion to their number he will refund part of his sale-price as payment for his redemption. ⁵²And if there are only a few years still to run before the jubilee year, he will calculate with him what should be refunded for his redemption, in proportion to their number, ⁵³as though he were hired by the year. You will see to it that he is not harshly oppressed. ⁵⁴'If he has not been redeemed in any of these ways, he will go free in the jubilee year, both he and his children; ⁵⁵for the Israelites are my servants; they are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.' '

Blessings for obedience. (Lv.26.1-13)

26¹' 'You will not make idols for yourselves; you will not erect statues or cultic stones, or erect carved stones in your country, for you to worship: for I, Yahweh, am your God. ²You will keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am Yahweh. ³'If you live according to my laws, if you keep my commandments and put them into practice, ⁴I shall give you the rain you need at the right time; the soil will yield its produce and the trees of the countryside their fruit; ⁵you will thresh until vintage time and gather grapes until sowing time. You will eat your fill of bread and live secure in your land. ⁶'I shall give peace in the land, and you will go to sleep with no one to frighten you. I shall rid the land of beasts of prey. The sword will not pass through your land. ⁷You will pursue your enemies and they will fall before your sword; ⁸five of you pursuing a hundred of them, one hundred pursuing ten thousand; and your enemies will fall before your sword. ⁹'I shall turn towards you, I shall make you fertile and make your numbers grow, and I shall uphold my covenant with you. ¹⁰'Having eaten all you need of last year's harvest, you will throw out the old to make room for the new. ¹¹'I shall fix my home among you and never reject you. ¹²I shall live among you; I shall be your God and you will be my people, ¹³I, Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you should be their slaves no longer, and who broke the bonds of your yoke and made you walk with head held high.

Penalties. (Lv.26.14-46)

¹⁴'But if you will not listen to me and do not put all these commandments into practice, ¹⁵if you reject my laws and detest my customs, and you break my covenant by not putting all my commandments into practice, ¹⁶this is how I shall treat you:

'I shall subject you to terror, consumption and fever, making you dim of sight and short of breath. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will eat it. ¹⁷I shall turn against you and you will be defeated by your enemies. Your foes will have the mastery over you, and you will flee when no one is pursuing you. ¹⁸'And if, in spite of this, you will not listen to me, I shall punish you seven times over for your sins. ¹⁹I shall break your proud strength. I shall make the sky like iron for you, and your soil like bronze. ²⁰You will wear out your strength in vain, your land will not yield its produce, nor the trees of the country their fruit. ²¹'And if you go against me and will not listen to me, I shall heap seven times more plagues on you for your sins. ²²I shall send wild animals to attack you and rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and reduce your numbers until your roads are deserted. ²³'And if that does not reform you, and you still go against me, ²⁴then I shall go against you and punish you another seven times over for your sins. ²⁵I shall bring the sword on you, which will avenge the covenant, and when you huddle inside your towns, I shall send pestilence among you, and you will fall into the enemy's clutches. ²⁶When I take away the bread which supports you, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven and will then dole your bread out by weight; you will eat but not be satisfied. ²⁷'And if, in spite of this, you will not listen to me but go against me, ²⁸I shall go against you in fury and punish you seven times over for your sins. ²⁹You will eat the flesh of your own sons, you will eat the flesh of your own daughters. ³⁰I shall destroy your high places and smash your incense-altars; I shall pile your corpses on the corpses of your foul idols and shall reject you. ³¹I shall reduce your cities to ruins; I shall lay waste your sanctuary and refuse to inhale from you smells intended to please. ³²I shall make such a desolation of the country that your enemies who come to live there will be appalled by it. ³³And I shall scatter you among the nations. I shall unsheathe the sword against you, reducing your country to desert and your towns to ruins. ³⁴Then the country will indeed observe its Sabbaths, all the while it lies deserted, while you are in the country of your enemies. Then indeed the country will rest and observe its Sabbaths. ³⁵And as it lies deserted it will rest, as it never did on your Sabbaths when you were living there. ³⁶I shall strike such fear into the hearts of those of you who survive in the countries of their enemies that the sound of a falling leaf will set them fleeing; they will flee as though fleeing from the sword, and fall when no one is pursuing. ³⁷They will stumble over one another as though fleeing before the sword, when no one is pursuing. You will be powerless to stand up to your enemies; ³⁸you will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will swallow you up. ³⁹Those of you who survive will pine away in their guilt in the countries of their enemies and, bearing the guilt of their ancestors too, will pine away like them. ⁴⁰'Then they shall admit their guilt and that of their ancestors and their infidelities against me, and further, their setting themselves against me. ⁴¹'I in my turn will go against them and bring them into the land of their enemies. Then their uncircumcised hearts will grow humble and then they will accept the punishment for their guilt. ⁴²I shall remember my covenant with Jacob, I shall remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham; and I shall remember the country too. ⁴³'Abandoned, the country will keep its Sabbaths, as it lies deserted in their absence, and they will have to accept the punishment for their guilt, since they detested my customs and rejected my laws. ⁴⁴'Yet, in spite of all this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I shall not so utterly reject or detest them as to destroy them completely and break my covenant with them; for I am Yahweh their God. ⁴⁵For their sake I shall remember the covenant I made with those first generations that I brought out of Egypt while other nations watched, so that I should be their God, I, Yahweh.' ' ⁴⁶Such were the decrees, customs and laws which Yahweh established between himself and the Israelites on Mount Sinai through Moses.