Leviticus 25–26

25TH CHAPTER

The Year to Honor the Lord

¹The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, ²“Tell the Israelites: When you come into the land I’m giving you, the land will celebrate a year to honor the Lord. ³Then, for six years you may plant crops in your fields, prune your vineyards, and gather what they produce. ⁴However, the seventh year will be a festival year for the land. It will be a year to honor the Lord. Don’t plant crops in your fields or prune your vineyards. ⁵Don’t harvest what grows by itself or harvest grapes from your vines. That year will be a festival for the land. ⁶Whatever the land produces during that year is for all of you to eat—for you, your male and female slaves, your hired workers, foreigners among you, ⁷your animals and the wild animals in your land. Everything the land produces will be yours to eat. 

The Jubilee for the Land

⁸“Count seven of these years seven times for a total of 49 years. ⁹On the tenth day of the seventh month, the special day for the payment for sin, sound rams’ horns throughout the country. ¹⁰Set apart the fiftieth year as holy, and proclaim liberty to everyone living in the land. This is your jubilee year. Every slave will be freed in order to return to his property and to his family. ¹¹That fiftieth year will be your jubilee year. Don’t plant or harvest what grows by itself or pick grapes from the vines in the land. ¹²The jubilee ⸤year⸥ will be holy to you. You will eat what the field itself produces. 

¹³“In this jubilee year every slave will be freed in order to return to his property. ¹⁴If you sell anything to your neighbor or buy anything from him, don’t take advantage of him. ¹⁵When you buy property from your neighbor, take into account the number of years since the jubilee. Your neighbor must sell it to you taking into account the number of crops ⸤until the next jubilee⸥. ¹⁶If there are still many years ⸤until the jubilee⸥, you will pay more for it. If there are only a few years ⸤until the jubilee⸥, you will pay less for it because he is selling you only the number of crops. ¹⁷Never take advantage of each other. Fear your God, because I am the Lord your God. 

¹⁸“Obey my laws, and carefully follow my rules. Then you will live securely in the land. ¹⁹The land will give you its products, and you will eat all you want and live there securely. ²⁰You may ask, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or bring in our crops?’ ²¹I will give you my blessing in the sixth year so that the land will produce enough for three years. ²²You will plant ⸤again⸥ in the eighth year but live on what the land already produced. You will eat it, even in the ninth year, until the land produces more. 

²³“Land must never be sold permanently, because the land is mine. To me you are strangers without permanent homes. ²⁴People must always have the right to buy their property back. ²⁵If your brother becomes poor and sells some of his property, then the one who can assume responsibility, his nearest relative, must buy back what he sold. ²⁶If a man doesn’t have anyone to buy it back for him, but if he prospers and earns enough to buy it back himself, ²⁷he must count the years from its sale. Then he will pay what is left to the man to whom he sold it, and it will be his property again. ²⁸However, if he cannot earn enough to buy it back, what he sold stays in the hands of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it will be released, and he will own it again. 

²⁹“If anyone sells a home in a walled city, for one year after selling it he has the right to buy it back. He may buy it back only within that time. ³⁰If he does not buy it back during that year, the house in the city belongs to the buyer for generations to come. It will not be released in the jubilee. ³¹However, houses in villages without walls are regarded as belonging to the fields of the land. They can be bought back. They will be released in the jubilee. 

³²“The Levites always have the right to buy back their property in the cities they own. ³³If any Levite buys back ⸤a house⸥, in the jubilee the purchased house in the city will be released, because the houses in the Levite cities are their property among the Israelites. ³⁴But a field that belongs to their cities must not be sold, because it is their permanent property. 

The Jubilee for the People

³⁵“If an Israelite becomes poor and cannot support himself, help him. He must live with you as a stranger without a permanent home. ³⁶Don’t collect interest or make any profit from him. Fear your God by respecting other Israelites’ lives. ³⁷Never collect any kind of interest on your money or on the food you give them. ³⁸I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you Canaan and to be your God. 

³⁹“If an Israelite becomes poor and sells himself to you, don’t work him like a slave. ⁴⁰He will be like a hired worker or a visitor to you. He may work with you until the year of jubilee. ⁴¹Then you will release him and his children to go back to their family and the property of their ancestors. ⁴²They are my servants. I brought them out of Egypt. They must never be sold as slaves. ⁴³Do not treat them harshly. Fear your God. 

⁴⁴“You may have male and female slaves, but buy them from the nations around you. ⁴⁵You may also buy them from the foreigners living among you and from their families born in your country. They will be your property. ⁴⁶You may acquire them for yourselves and for your descendants as permanent property. You may work them as slaves. However, do not treat the Israelites harshly. They are your relatives. 

⁴⁷“Someone who is a foreigner without a permanent home among you may become rich, and your relative living with him may be poor. The poor Israelite may sell himself to that foreigner or a member of his family. ⁴⁸After he has sold himself, he has the right to be bought back. One of his brothers may buy him back. ⁴⁹His uncle, his cousin, or some other relative could also buy him back. If he becomes rich, he could buy his own freedom. ⁵⁰Then he and his buyer must take into account the number of years from the year he was bought until the year of jubilee. His sale price will be adjusted based on the number of years he was with his buyer, like the wages of a hired worker. ⁵¹If there are many years left, he must refund from his purchase price an amount equal ⸤to those years⸥. ⁵²If there are only a few years left until the year of jubilee, he must take them into account. He must refund from his purchase price an amount equal to those years. ⁵³During those years he should serve his buyer as a hired worker. His buyer should not treat him harshly. ⁵⁴If he cannot buy his freedom in these ways, he and his children will be released in the year of jubilee. 

⁵⁵“The Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants. I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” 

26TH CHAPTER

God’s Promises for Those Who Keep His Laws

¹⸤The Lord continued,⸥ “Never make worthless idols or set up a carved statue or a sacred stone for yourselves. Never cut figures in stone to worship them in your country, because I am the Lord your God. ²Observe my days of rest as holy days and respect my holy tent. I am the Lord. 

³“This is what I will do if you will live by my laws and carefully obey my commands: 

⁴“I will give you rain at the right time. The land will produce its crops, and the trees in the field will produce their fruit. ⁵Threshing^atime will last until grape gathering, and grape gathering will last until planting. You will eat all you want and live securely in your land. 

⁶“I will bring peace to your land. You will lie down with no one to scare you. I will remove dangerous animals, and there will be no war in your land. ⁷You will chase your enemies, and you will defeat them. ⁸Five of you will chase a hundred of them, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand of them. You will defeat your enemies, ⁹and I will be pleased with you. Your families will be large, and I will keep my promise^bto you. ¹⁰You will clear out old food supplies to make room for new ones. 

¹¹“I will put my tent among you, and I will never look at you with disgust. ¹²So I will live among you and be your God, and you will be my people. ¹³I am the Lord your God. I brought you out of Egypt so that you are no longer slaves of the Egyptians. I have broken their power over you and made you live as a free people. 

God’s Curses for Those Who Break His Laws

¹⁴“If you will not listen to me and obey all these commands, ¹⁵if you reject my laws and look at my rules with disgust, if you reject my promise by disobeying my commands, ¹⁶then this is what I will do to you: I will terrorize you with disease and fever. You will suffer from eye problems and depression. You will plant your crops and get nothing because your enemies will eat them. ¹⁷I will condemn you so that you will go down in defeat in front of your enemies. Those who hate you will be your rulers. You will run away even when no one is chasing you. 

¹⁸“If you still will not listen to me, I will discipline you seven times for your sins. ¹⁹I will crush your arrogance. You will have no rain, and your land will be as hard as cement. ²⁰You will work hard for nothing because your land will produce no crops and the trees will produce no fruit. 

²¹“If you resist and don’t listen to me, I will increase the punishment for your sins seven times. ²²I will send wild animals among you. They will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle, and make you so few that your roads will be deserted. 

²³“If this discipline does not help and you still resist, ²⁴then I, too, will resist you. I will punish you seven times for your sins. ²⁵I will bring war on you to get revenge for my promise ⸤that you rejected⸥. When you gather in your cities, I will send plagues on you and you will fall under the control of your enemy. ²⁶I will destroy your food supply. Ten women will need only one oven to prepare your food. You…