The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, “Speak to the
people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that
I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. For six
years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune
your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year
there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to
the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You
shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the
grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest
for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you,
for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired
worker and the sojourner who lives with you, and for your cattle
and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall
be for food.
“You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years,
so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-
nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day
of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the
trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the
fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its
inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall
return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.
That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall
neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes
from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to
you. You may eat the produce of the field.
“In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his
property. And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your
neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. You shall pay your
neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee, and he
shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops. If
the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years
are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the
crops that he is selling to you. You shall not wrong one another,
but you shall fear your God, for I am the LORD your God.
“Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform
them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. The land will
yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it
securely. And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year,
if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ I will command my
blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop
sufficient for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you
will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until
the ninth year, when its crop arrives.
“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine.
For you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the
country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.
“If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property,
then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother
has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes
prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him
calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to
the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property. But if
he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold
shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In
the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his
property.
“If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem
it within a year of its sale. For a full year he shall have the
right of redemption. If it is not redeemed within a full year, then
the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the
buyer, throughout his generations; it shall not be released in the
jubilee. But the houses of the villages that have no wall around
them shall be classified with the fields of the land. They may be
redeemed, and they shall be released in the jubilee. As for the
cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the
houses in the cities they possess. And if one of the Levites
exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in
a city they possess shall be released in the jubilee. For the
houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the
people of Israel. But the fields of pastureland belonging to their
cities may not be sold, for that is their possession forever.
“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with
you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a
sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or
profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.
You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your
food for profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the
land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
“If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to
you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you
as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until
the year of the jubilee. Then he shall go out from you, he and his
children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the
possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought
out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You
shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God. As for
your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and
female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may
also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their
clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they
may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you
to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them,
but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one
over another ruthlessly.
“If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your
brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger
or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger's clan, then
after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem
him, or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative
from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich he may redeem
himself. He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he
sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his
sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his
owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker. If there are
still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his
redemption some of his sale price. If there remain but a few years
until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his
redemption in proportion to his years of service. He shall treat
him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly
over him in your sight. And if he is not redeemed by these means,
then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of
jubilee. For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants.
They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am
the LORD your God.
