Leviticus 25
1 And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses, in mount Sinai, saying,
Yahweh said to Moses/me on Sinai Mountain,
2 'Speak unto the sons of Israel, and thou hast said unto them, When ye come in unto the land which I am giving to you, then hath the land kept a sabbath to Jehovah.
“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.
3 'Six years thou dost sow thy field, and six years thou dost prune thy vineyard, and hast gathered its increase,
For six years you are to plant seeds in your fields and prune your grapevines and harvest the crops.
4 and in the seventh year a sabbath of rest is to the land, a sabbath to Jehovah; thy field thou dost not sow, and thy vineyard thou dost not prune;
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].
5 the spontaneous growth of thy harvest thou dost not reap, and the grapes of thy separated thing thou dost not gather, a year of rest it is to the land.
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.
6 'And the sabbath of the land hath been to you for food, to thee, and to thy man-servant, and to thy handmaid, and to thy hireling, and to thy settler, who are sojourning with thee;
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.
7 and to thy cattle, and to the beast which [is] in thy land, is all thine increase for food.
Also, [during that year] your livestock and the wild animals in your land are permitted to eat it.’
8 'And thou hast numbered to thee seven sabbaths of years, seven years seven times, and the days of the seven sabbaths of years have been to thee nine and forty years,
‘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.
9 and thou hast caused a trumpet of shouting to pass over in the seventh month, in the tenth of the month; in the day of the atonements ye do cause a trumpet to pass over through all your land;
10 and ye have hallowed the year, the fiftieth year; and ye have proclaimed liberty in the land to all its inhabitants; a jubilee it is to you; and ye have turned back each unto his possession; yea, each unto his family ye do turn back.
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).
11 'A jubilee it [is], the fiftieth year, a year it is to you; ye sow not, nor reap its spontaneous growth, nor gather its separated things;
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.
12 for a jubilee it [is], holy it is to you; out of the field ye eat its increase;
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).
13 in the year of this jubilee ye turn back each unto his possession.
‘In that Year of Celebration, everyone must return to their own property.
14 'And when thou sellest anything to thy fellow, or buyest from the hand of thy fellow, ye do not oppress one another;
‘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:
15 by the number of years after the jubilee thou dost buy from thy fellow; by the number of the years of increase he doth sell to thee;
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.
16 according to the multitude of the years thou dost multiply its price, and according to the fewness of the years thou dost diminish its price; for a number of increases he is selling to thee;
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].
17 and ye do not oppress one another, and thou hast been afraid of thy God; for I [am] Jehovah your God.
Do not cheat each other; instead, revere me. I, Yahweh your God, [am the one who am commanding this].
18 'And ye have done My statutes, and My judgments ye keep, and have done them, and ye have dwelt on the land confidently,
‘Obey all my laws [DOU] carefully. If you do that, you will continue to live safely in your country [DOU].
19 and the land hath given its fruit, and ye have eaten to satiety, and have dwelt confidently on it.
And crops will grow well on the land, and you will have plenty to eat.
20 'And when ye say, What do we eat in the seventh year, lo, we do not sow, nor gather our increase?
But you may ask, “If we do not plant or harvest our crops during the seventh year, what will we have to eat?”
21 then I have commanded My blessing on you in the sixth year, and it hath made the increase for three years;
[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!
22 and ye have sown the eighth year, and have eaten of the old increase; until the ninth year, until the coming in of its increase, ye do eat the old.
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!
23 'And the land is not sold — to extinction, for the land [is] Mine, for sojourners and settlers [are] ye with Me;
‘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.
24 and in all the land of your possession a redemption ye do give to the land.
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].
25 'When thy brother becometh poor, and hath sold his possession, then hath his redeemer who is near unto him come, and he hath redeemed the sold thing of his brother;
‘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.
26 and when a man hath no redeemer, and his own hand hath attained, and he hath found as sufficient [for] its redemption,
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,
27 then he hath reckoned the years of its sale, and hath given back that which is over to the man to whom he sold [it], and he hath returned to his possession.
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.
28 'And if his hand hath not found sufficiency to give back to him, then hath his sold thing been in the hand of him who buyeth it till the year of jubilee; and it hath gone out in the jubilee, and he hath returned to his possession.
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.
29 'And when a man selleth a dwelling-house [in] a walled city, then hath his right of redemption been until the completion of a year from its selling; days — is his right of redemption;
‘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.
30 and if it is not redeemed until the fulness to him of a perfect year, then hath the house which [is] in a walled city been established to extinction to the buyer of it, to his generations; it goeth not out in the jubilee;
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.
31 and a house of the villages which have no wall round about, on the field of the country is reckoned; redemption is to it, and in the jubilee it goeth out.
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.
32 'As to cities of the Levites — houses of the cities of their possession — redemption age-during is to the Levites;
‘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.
33 as to him who redeemeth from the Levites, both the sale of a house and the city of his possession have gone out in the jubilee, for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession in the midst of the sons of Israel.
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].
34 And a field, a suburb of their cities, is not sold; for a possession age-during it [is] to them.
But the pastureland near their towns must not be sold. It must belong to the original owners permanently/forever.
35 'And when thy brother is become poor, and his hand hath failed with thee, then thou hast kept hold on him, sojourner and settler, and he hath lived with thee;
‘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.
36 thou takest no usury from him, or increase; and thou hast been afraid of thy God; and thy brother hath lived with thee;
[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.
37 thy money thou givest not to him in usury, and for increase thou givest not thy food;
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.
38 I [am] Jehovah your God, who hath brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give to you the land of Canaan, to become your God.
[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].
39 'And when thy brother becometh poor with thee, and he hath been sold to thee, thou dost not lay on him servile service;
‘If one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells himself to you, do not force him to work like a slave.
40 as an hireling, as a settler, he is with thee, till the year of the jubilee he doth serve with thee, —
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.
41 then he hath gone out from thee, he and his sons with him, and hath turned back unto his family; even unto the possession of his fathers he doth turn back.
During that year, you must free him, and he will go back to his family and to the property that his ancestors owned.
42 'For they [are] My servants, whom I have brought out from the land of Egypt: they are not sold [with] the sale of a servant;
[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.
43 thou rulest not over him with rigour, and thou hast been afraid of thy God.
And do not treat the Israelis whom you buy cruelly; instead, revere me, your God.
44 'And thy man-servant and thy handmaid whom thou hast [are] of the nations who [are] round about you; of them ye buy man-servant and handmaid,
‘If you want to have slaves, you are permitted to buy them from nearby countries.
45 and also of the sons of the settlers who are sojourning with you, of them ye buy, and of their families who [are] with you, which they have begotten in your land, and they have been to you for a possession;
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.
46 and ye have taken them for inheritance to your sons after you, to occupy [for] a possession; to the age ye lay service upon them, but upon your brethren, the sons of Israel, one with another, thou dost not rule over him with rigour.
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.
47 'And when the hand of a sojourner or settler with thee attaineth [riches], and thy brother with him hath become poor, and he hath been sold to a sojourner, a settler with thee, or to the root of the family of a sojourner,
‘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,
48 after he hath been sold, there is a right of redemption to him; one of his brethren doth redeem him,
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:
49 or his uncle, or a son of his uncle, doth redeem him, or any of the relations of his flesh, of his family, doth redeem him, or — his own hand hath attained — then he hath been redeemed.
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.
50 'And he hath reckoned with his buyer from the year of his being sold to him till the year of jubilee, and the money of his sale hath been by the number of years; as the days of an hireling it is with him.
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.
51 'If yet many years, according to them he giveth back his redemption [money], from the money of his purchase.
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.
52 'And if few are left of the years till the year of jubilee, then he hath reckoned with him, according to his years he doth give back his redemption [money];
If there are only a few years that remain until the Year of Celebration, he must pay a smaller amount to be released.
53 as an hireling, year by year, he is with him, and he doth not rule him with rigour before thine eyes.
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.
54 'And if he is not redeemed in these [years], then he hath gone out in the year of jubilee, he and his sons with him.
‘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,
55 For to Me [are] the sons of Israel servants; My servants they [are], whom I have brought out of the land of Egypt; I, Jehovah, [am] your God.
because [it is as though] you Israelis are my slaves/servants, whom I, Yahweh your God, freed from [being slaves in] Egypt.’”
