Sabbatical Years and the Jubilee

¹The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: ²Speak to the Israelite people and say to them:

When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord. ³Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. ⁴But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. ⁵You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. ⁶But you may eat whatever the land during its sabbath will produce—you, your male and female slaves, the hired and bound laborers who live with you, ⁷and your cattle and the beasts in your land may eat all its yield.

⁸You shall count off seven weeks of years—seven times seven years—so that the period of seven weeks of years gives you a total of forty-nine years. ⁹Then you shall sound the horn loud; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month—the Day of Atonement—you shall have the horn sounded throughout your land ¹⁰and you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family. ¹¹That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, neither shall you reap the aftergrowth or harvest the untrimmed vines, ¹²for it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you: you may only eat the growth direct from the field.

¹³In this year of jubilee, each of you shall return to his holding. ¹⁴When you sell property to your neighbor,^a or buy any from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. ¹⁵In buying from your neighbor, you shall deduct only for the number of years since the jubilee; and in selling to you, he shall charge you only for the remaining crop years: ¹⁶the more such years, the higher the price you pay; the fewer such years, the lower the price; for what he is selling you is a number of harvests. ¹⁷Do not wrong one another, but fear your God; for I the Lord am your God. [ . . . ]

²³But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. ²⁴Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

²⁵If your kinsman is in straits and has to sell part of his holding, his nearest redeemer^b shall come and redeem what his kinsman has sold. ²⁶If a man has no one to redeem for him, but prospers and acquires enough to redeem with, ²⁷he shall compute the years since its sale, refund the difference to the man to whom he sold it, and return to his holding. ²⁸If he lacks sufficient means to recover it, what he sold shall remain with the purchaser until the jubilee; in the jubilee year it shall be released, and he shall return to his holding. [ . . . ]

³⁵If your kinsman, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, let him live by your side: ³⁶do not exact from him advance or accrued interest,^c but fear your God. Let him live by your side as your kinsman. ³⁷Do not lend him your money at advance interest, or give him your food at accrued interest. ³⁸I the Lord am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God.

³⁹If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. ⁴⁰He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you only until the jubilee year. ⁴¹Then he and his children with him shall be free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his ancestral holding.—⁴²For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude.— ⁴³You shall not rule over him ruthlessly; you shall fear your God. ⁴⁴Such male and female slaves as you may have—it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves. ⁴⁵You may also buy them from among the children of aliens resident among you, or from their families that are among you, whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property: ⁴⁶you may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves. But as for your Israelite kinsmen, no one shall rule ruthlessly over the other.