Leviticus 25
Leviticus 25:1 Yahveh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, and this is what he said,
Leviticus 25:2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when you come into the land that I give you, the land will keep a Sabbath to Yahveh.
Leviticus 25:3 For six years you will plant your field, and for six years you will prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits,
Leviticus 25:4 but in the seventh year there will be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahveh. You will not plant your field or prune your vineyard.
Leviticus 25:5 You will not reap what grows of itself in your harvest or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It will be a year of solemn rest for the land.
Leviticus 25:6 The Sabbath of the land will provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the guest who lives with you,
Leviticus 25:7 and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield will be for food.
Leviticus 25:8 “You will count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years will give you forty-nine years.
Leviticus 25:9 Then you will sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Reconciliations, you will sound the trumpet throughout all your land.
Leviticus 25:10 And you will consecrate the fiftieth year and cry out “liberty” throughout the land to all those who stay there. It will be a liberation for you, when each of you return to his property and each of you will return to his clan.
Leviticus 25:11 That fiftieth year will be a liberation for you; in it you will neither plant nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.
Leviticus 25:12 Because it is a liberation. It will be sacred to you. You may eat the produce of the field.
Leviticus 25:13 “In this year of liberation each of you will return to his property.
Leviticus 25:14 And if you make a sale to your associate or buy from your associate, you will not wrong one another.
Leviticus 25:15 You will pay your associate according to the number of years after the liberation, and he will sell to you according to the number of years for crops.
Leviticus 25:16 If the years are many, you will increase the price, and if the years are few, you will reduce the price, because it is actually the number of the crops that he is selling to you.
Leviticus 25:17 You will not oppress — a man against his associate, but you will fear your God, because I am Yahveh your God.
Leviticus 25:18 “Therefore you will do my prescriptions and keep my judgments and perform them, and then you will stay in the land securely.
Leviticus 25:19 The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and stay in it securely.
Leviticus 25:20 And if you say, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year, noticing we may not plant or gather in our crop?’
Leviticus 25:21 I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years.
Leviticus 25:22 When you plant in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you will eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.
Leviticus 25:23 “The land will not be sold in perpetuity, because the land is mine. Because you are guests and temporary residents with me.
Leviticus 25:24 And in all the country you possess, you will allow a redemption of the land.
Leviticus 25:25 “If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer will come and redeem what his brother has sold.
Leviticus 25:26 If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it,
Leviticus 25:27 let him figure out 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.
Leviticus 25:28 But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold will remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of liberation. In the liberation it will be released, and he will return to his property.
Leviticus 25:29 “If a man sells a house where he stays in a walled city, he may redeem it until a year is finished.[1] For a full year he will have the right of redemption.
Leviticus 25:30 If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city will belong in perpetuity to the buyer, throughout his generations; it will not be released in the liberation.
Leviticus 25:31 But the houses of the villages that have no wall around them will be classified with the fields of the land. They may be redeemed, and they will be released in the liberation.
Leviticus 25:32 As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem permanently the houses in the cities they possess.
Leviticus 25:33 And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city they possess will be released in the liberation. Because the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel.
Leviticus 25:34 But the fields of pastureland belonging to their cities may not be sold, because that is their possession permanently.
Leviticus 25:35 “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you will make him strong[2] as though he were a foreign guest and a temporary resident, and he will live with you.
Leviticus 25:36 Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.
Leviticus 25:37 You will not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.
Leviticus 25:38 I am Yahveh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
Leviticus 25:39 “If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you will not make him serve as a slave:
Leviticus 25:40 he will be with you as a hired worker and as a temporary resident. He will serve with you until the year of the liberation.
Leviticus 25:41 Then he will 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.
Leviticus 25:42 Because they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they will not be sold as slaves.
Leviticus 25:43 You will not judgment over him ruthlessly but will fear your God.
Leviticus 25:44 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.
Leviticus 25:45 You may also buy from among the temporary residents who are guests with you and their clans that are with you, who have been given birth to in your land, and they may be your property.
Leviticus 25:46 You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a permanent possession. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you will not judgment, one over another ruthlessly.
Leviticus 25:47 “If a stranger or temporary resident with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the foreign guest or temporary resident with you or to a member of the temporary resident’s clan,
Leviticus 25:48 then after he is sold, he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him,
Leviticus 25:49 or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or an actual close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich, he may redeem himself.
Leviticus 25:50 He will figure out with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of liberation, and the price of his sale will vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner will be rated as the time of a hired worker.
Leviticus 25:51 If there are still many years left, he will pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price.
Leviticus 25:52 If there remain but a few years until the year of liberation, he will figure it out and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service.
Leviticus 25:53 He will treat him as a worker hired year by year. He will not judgment ruthlessly over him in your sight.
Leviticus 25:54 And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him will be released in the year of liberation.
Leviticus 25:55 Because 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 Yahveh your God.
[1] תָּמַם = finish. Leviticus 25:29; 26:20.
[2] חָזָק= make strong.
Leviticus 25 quotes:
“The Day of Atonement is an annual holiday, but Leviticus stipulates that every 49 years, the sound of the shofar on the Day of Atonement marks the beginning of a Year of Jubilee.”
Lawrenz, Mel. Jubilee : A Season of Spiritual Renewal. Regal Books, 2008. p. 75.
“Studying Leviticus 25 and related scripture texts, especially the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel and the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, and reading contemporary commentators on Jubilee, I have become convinced that Jubilee provides avenues for educating religiously and interreligiously and that instead of being an obsolete set of pathways belonging exclusively to an ancient people who never really tried them (as some argue), it is — or can be — a richly textured, vital response to the challenges of our era and the complex issues of contemporary life.”
Harris, Maria. Proclaim Jubilee! : A Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century. 1st ed, Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. p. 2.
“But it was more than just a rest for the land, for everyone was to return tothe property that by heredity belonged to their family (Leviticus 25:10). The implications of this were profound. To make it possible for everyone to be able to return to their original homesteads, all indebtedness had to be removed. Thus, every fifty years the economic structures of the community _ were to be adjusted so that there would be no debts or capital loans…”
March, W. Eugene. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Abingdon Press, 2012. p.65.
Leviticus 25 links:
a hand up and out
abundant grace
brothers yet to be liberated
freedom and fairness
hope of recovery
identifying with God
law abuse
not over your brothers
Shenandoah
the sound of freedom
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