Leviticus 25

1 The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai. He said, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: When you come into the land I am giving you, the land I am giving you is to rest — a Sabbath to the Lord. 3 Six years you are to sow your field, and six years you are to prune your vine and gather in its fruit. 4 But in the seventh year there is to be a Sabbath, a rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You are not to sow your field and you are not to prune your vine. 5 And you are not to reap what comes up on its own in your field, and you are not to gather the grapes of your set-apart vine. It is to be a year of rest for the land. [a] 6 And the Sabbath of the land will be food for you, and for your male servant and your female servant, and your hired man, and the foreigner living with you, 7 and for your cattle and for the wild animals in your land. All its produce will be food.

8 And you are to count off for yourself seven rests of years — seven years seven times — and they will be for you seven weeks of years, forty-nine years. 9 And in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you are to send out the sound of a trumpet through all your land; on the day of atonement you are to send out the trumpet through all your land. 10 And you are to make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim a release throughout the land to all who live in it. It is to be for you a year of release, announced by the trumpet; and each of you will go back to his own holding, and each of you will go back to his own family. [b] 11 This is the trumpet of release; the fiftieth year is to be that year for you. You are not to sow, and you are not to reap what comes up on its own, and you are not to gather from its set-apart vines, 12 because it is the trumpet of release. It is to be holy to you; you are to eat its produce straight from the fields. 13 In the year of release, at its trumpet, each of you is to go back to his own holding.

14 And if you make a sale to your neighbor, or buy from your neighbor, no one is to press his neighbor down. 15 You are to buy from your neighbor by the number of years since the trumpet, and he is to sell to you by the number of years of crops. 16 The more years there are, the more he is to raise the price of his holding; and the fewer years there are, the more he is to lower the price of his holding — because what he is selling you is a number of harvests. 17 No one is to press his neighbor down, and you are to fear the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God. 18 And you are to do all my rules and all my judgments, and keep them and do them, and you will live in the land in safety. 19 And the land will give its yield, and you will eat your fill and live on it in safety.

20 And if you say, ‘What are we going to eat in this seventh year, if we do not sow and do not gather in our crops?’ — 21 then I will send my blessing on you in the sixth year, and the land will make its crops for three years. 22 And you will sow in the eighth year and eat from the old crops; until the ninth year, until its crop comes in, you will be eating the old of the old.

23 And the land is not to be sold for good, because the land is mine; for you are newcomers and foreigners living with me. [c] 24 And in every land you hold, you are to allow the land to be bought back. 25 If your brother who is with you becomes poor and sells part of his holding, and the near relative closest to him comes, he is to buy back what his brother sold. [d] 26 And if a man has no near relative, and his own hand does well and he finds enough for his buy-back price, 27 then he is to reckon up the years since his sale and pay the difference to the man he sold to, and go back to his holding. 28 But if his hand has not done well enough to pay him back, then what he sold stays with the buyer until the sixth year of the release; and it goes free at the release, and he goes back to his holding.

29 And if a man sells a house he lives in inside a walled city, he keeps the right to buy it back until a full year has gone by; his right to buy it back lasts a full year. 30 And if it is not bought back before a whole year is up, the house in the walled city is confirmed for good to the man who bought it, through his generations. It does not go free at the release. 31 But houses in settlements with no wall around them are to be reckoned as fields of the countryside. They may always be bought back, and they go free at the release. 32 And as for the cities of the Levites, the houses of the cities they hold may always be bought back by the Levites. 33 And if anyone buys from the Levites, the sale of the houses of the city they hold goes free at the release, because the houses of the cities of the Levites are their holding among the children of Israel. 34 And the fields set apart around their cities are not to be sold, because that is their holding forever.

35 And if your brother becomes poor and cannot support himself beside you, you are to take hold of him as you would a newcomer or a foreigner living among you, and your brother is to live with you. 36 You are not to take interest from him, or anything above what you gave, and you are to fear your God — I am the Lord — and your brother is to live with you. † 37 You are not to give him your silver at interest, and you are not to give him your food for a return. 38 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, so as to be your God.

39 And if your brother beside you is brought low and is sold to you, he is not to work for you as a slave works. 40 He is to be with you as a hired man or a foreigner living with you; he is to work for you until the year of release. 41 And he goes free at the release, and his children with him, and he goes back to his family; he runs back to the holding of his fathers. 42 For these are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. He is not to be sold the way a slave is sold. [e] 43 You are not to drive him hard with heavy labor, and you are to fear the Lord your God. 44 And as for male and female servants that you have from the nations around you — from them you may buy a male slave and a female slave. 45 And from the sons of the foreigners living among you, from these you may buy, and from their relatives who are born in your land; they may be yours as a holding. 46 And you may divide them among your children after you, and they will be held by you as property forever. But over your brothers, the children of Israel, no one is to drive his brother hard with heavy labor.

47 And if the hand of a newcomer or of a foreigner living with you does well, and your brother beside him falls into want and is sold to that newcomer or foreigner living with you, or to one born a newcomer, 48 after he is sold there is still a buying back for him: one of his brothers is to buy him back. 49 His father’s brother, or his father’s brother’s son, is to buy him back; or one of his own close kin from his tribe is to buy him back; or if his own hand does well, he may buy himself back. 50 And he is to reckon up with the man who bought him, from the year he sold himself to him until the year of release; and the silver of his sale is to be reckoned like a hired man’s wages, year by year that he was with him. 51 If there are many years left, he is to pay his buy-back price out of the silver he was sold for, in proportion to them; 52 and if only a few of the years are left until the year of release, he is to reckon it out by his years and pay his buy-back price. 53 He is to be with him as a hired man, year by year. He is not to be driven hard with heavy labor in front of you. 54 And if he is not bought back this way, he goes free in the year of release, he and his children with him. 55 For the children of Israel are servants to me; they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” [f]