Dual Panel1GOD spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai,
2"Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them: When you enter the land which I am going to give you, the land will observe a Sabbath to GOD.
3Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years.
4But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to GOD; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.
5Don't reap what grows of itself; don't harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest.
6But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath year--you and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country,
7and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten.
8"Count off seven Sabbaths of years--seven times seven years: Seven Sabbaths of years adds up to forty-nine years.
9Then sound loud blasts on the ram's horn on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. Sound the ram's horn all over the land.
10Sanctify the fiftieth year; make it a holy year. Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in it--a Jubilee for you: Each person will go back to his family's property and reunite with his extended family.
11The fiftieth year is your Jubilee year: Don't sow; don't reap what volunteers itself in the fields; don't harvest the untended vines
12because it's the Jubilee and a holy year for you. You're permitted to eat from whatever volunteers itself in the fields.
13"In this year of Jubilee everyone returns home to his family property.
14"If you sell or buy property from one of your countrymen, don't cheat him.
15Calculate the purchase price on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. He is obliged to set the sale price on the basis of the number of harvests remaining until the next Jubilee.
16The more years left, the more money; you can raise the price. But the fewer years left, the less money; decrease the price. What you are buying and selling in fact is the number of crops you're going to harvest.
17Don't cheat each other. Fear your God. I am GOD, your God.
18"Keep my decrees and observe my laws and you will live secure in the land.
19The land will yield its fruit; you will have all you can eat and will live safe and secure.
20Do I hear you ask, 'What are we going to eat in the seventh year if we don't plant or harvest?'
21I assure you, I will send such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years.
22While you plant in the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and continue until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.
23"The land cannot be sold permanently because the land is mine and you are foreigners--you're my tenants.
24You must provide for the right of redemption for any of the land that you own.
25"If one of your brothers becomes poor and has to sell any of his land, his nearest relative is to come and buy back what his brother sold.
26If a man has no one to redeem it but he later prospers and earns enough for its redemption,
27he is to calculate the value since he sold it and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it; he can then go back to his own land.
28If he doesn't get together enough money to repay him, what he sold remains in the possession of the buyer until the year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee it will be returned and he can go back and live on his land.
29"If a man sells a house in a walled city, he retains the right to buy it back for a full year after the sale. At any time during that year he can redeem it.
30But if it is not redeemed before the full year has passed, it becomes the permanent possession of the buyer and his descendants. It is not returned in the Jubilee.
31However, houses in unwalled villages are treated the same as fields. They can be redeemed and have to be returned at the Jubilee.
32"As to the Levitical cities, houses in the cities owned by the Levites are always subject to redemption.
33Levitical property is always redeemable if it is sold in a town that they hold and reverts to them in the Jubilee, because the houses in the towns of the Levites are their property among the People of Israel.
34The pastures belonging to their cities may not be sold; they are their permanent possession.
35"If one of your brothers becomes indigent and cannot support himself, help him, the same as you would a foreigner or a guest so that he can continue to live in your neighborhood.
36Don't gouge him with interest charges; out of reverence for your God help your brother to continue to live with you in the neighborhood.
37Don't take advantage of his plight by running up big interest charges on his loans, and don't give him food for profit.
38I am your GOD who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
39"If one of your brothers becomes indigent and has to sell himself to you, don't make him work as a slave.
40Treat him as a hired hand or a guest among you. He will work for you until the Jubilee,
41after which he and his children are set free to go back to his clan and his ancestral land.
42Because the People of Israel are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt, they must never be sold as slaves.
43Don't tyrannize them; fear your God.
44"The male and female slaves which you have are to come from the surrounding nations; you are permitted to buy slaves from them.
45You may also buy the children of foreign workers who are living among you temporarily and from their clans which are living among you and have been born in your land. They become your property.
46You may will them to your children as property and make them slaves for life. But you must not tyrannize your brother Israelites.
47"If a foreigner or temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your brothers becomes poor and sells himself to the foreigner who lives among you or to a member of the foreigner's clan,
48he still has the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his relatives may buy him back.
49An uncle or cousin or any close relative of his extended family may redeem him. Or, if he gets the money together, he can redeem himself.
50What happens then is that he and his owner count out the time from the year he sold himself to the year of Jubilee; the buy-back price is set according to the wages of a hired hand for that number of years.
51If many years remain before the Jubilee, he must pay back a larger share of his purchase price,
52but if only a few years remain until the Jubilee, he is to calculate his redemption price accordingly.
53He is to be treated as a man hired from year to year. You must make sure that his owner does not tyrannize him.
54"If he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he goes free in the year of Jubilee, he and his children,
55because the People of Israel are my servants, my servants whom I brought out of Egypt. I am GOD, your God.