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Leviticus 25
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Chapter 25
a. The Sabbatical Year
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Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai; he said:
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to the sons of Israel and say to them: “When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land is to keep a sabbath’s rest for Yahweh”.
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For six years you shall sow your field, for six years you shall prune your vine and gather its produce.
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But in the seventh year the land is to have its rest, a sabbath for Yahweh. You must not sow your field or prune your vine,
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or harvest your ungathered corn or gather grapes from your untrimmed vine. It is to be a year of rest for the land.
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The sabbath of the land will itself feed you and your servants, men and women, your hired labourer, your guest, and all who live with you.
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For your cattle too, and the animals on your land, its produce will serve as food.
b. The Year of Jubilee
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You are to count seven weeks of years – seven times seven years, that is to say a period of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years.
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And on the tenth day of the seventh month you shall sound the trumpet; on the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout the land.
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You will declare this fiftieth year sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the inhabitants of the land. This is to be a jubilee for you; each of you will return to his ancestral home, each to his own clan.
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This fiftieth year is to be a jubilee year for you: you will not sow, you will not harvest the ungathered corn, you will not gather from the untrimmed vine.
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The jubilee is to be a holy thing to you, you will eat what comes from the fields.
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In this year of jubilee each of you is to return to his ancestral home.
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If you buy or sell with your neighbour, let no one wrong his brother.
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If you buy from your neighbour, this must take into account the number of years since the jubilee: according to the number of productive years he will fix the price.
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The greater the number of years, the higher shall be the price demanded; the less the number of years, the greater the reduction; for what he is selling you is a certain number of harvests.
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Let none of you wrong his neighbour, but fear your God; I am Yahweh your God.
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You must put my laws and customs into practice; you must keep them, practise them; and so you shall be secure in your possession of the land.
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The land will give its fruit, you will eat your fill and live in security.
The divine guarantee
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In case you should ask: What shall we eat in this seventh year if we do not sow or harvest the produce?
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I have ordered my blessing to be on you every sixth year, which will therefore provide for you for three years.[*a]
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You will have the old produce to eat while you are sowing in the eighth year and even as late as the ninth year; you will eat the old produce, while waiting for the harvest of that year.
a. The land: redemption of landed property
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Land must not be sold in perpetuity, for the land belongs to me, and to me you are only strangers and guests.
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You will allow a right of redemption on all your landed property.
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If your brother falls on evil days and has to sell his patrimony, his nearest relation shall come to him and exercise his right of redemption on what his brother has sold.
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The man who has no one to exercise this right can regain his property in this way: when he has found the means to effect the redemption,
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he is to calculate the number of years that the alienation would have lasted, repay to the purchaser the sum due for the time still to run, and so return to his property.
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If he cannot find the sum for paying the compensation, the property sold shall remain in the possession of the purchaser until the jubilee year. In the jubilee year, the latter must relinquish it and return to his own property.
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If anyone sells a dwelling house that is in a walled town, he shall have the right of redemption until the expiry of the year following the sale. His right of redemption is limited to the year;
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and if the redemption has not been effected by the end of the year, this house in the town shall be the property of the purchaser and his descendants in perpetuity; he need not relinquish it at the jubilee.
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But houses in villages not enclosed by walls will be considered as situated in the open country; they carry the right of redemption, and the purchaser must relinquish them at the jubilee.
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As regards the towns of the Levites, any property in the towns possessed by them shall carry a perpetual right of redemption in their favour.
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If it is a Levite who is affected by the right of redemption, at the jubilee he must come out of the property that was sold and return to his house, to the town in which he has a title to property. For the houses in the towns of the Levites are their property in the midst of the sons of Israel,
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and the arable land depending on these towns cannot be sold, for it is their property for ever.
b. The people: loans and enfranchisement
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If your brother who is living with you falls on evil days and is unable to support himself with you, you must support him as you would a stranger or a guest, and he must continue to live with you.
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Do not make him work for you, do not take interest from him; fear your God, and let your brother live with you.
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You are not to lend him money at interest, or give him food to make a profit out of it.
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I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
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If your brother falls on evil days when he is with you and sells himself to you, you must not impose a slave’s work on him;
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he shall be like a hired man or a guest, and shall work with you until the jubilee year.
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Then he shall leave you, he and his children; he shall return to his clan and regain possession of his ancestral property.
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For they are my servants, these whom I have brought out of Egypt, and they must not be sold like slaves.
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You must not be a hard master to him, but you must fear your God.
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The servants you have, men and women, shall come from the nations round you; from these you may purchase servants, men and women.
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You may also purchase them from the children of the strangers who live among you, and from their families living with you who have been born on your soil. They shall be your property
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and you may leave them as an inheritance to your sons after you, to hold in perpetual possession. These you may have for slaves; but to your brothers, the sons of Israel, you must not be hard masters.
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If some stranger or settler among you grows rich, and your brother falls on evil days and is in difficulties with him and sells himself to him, to this stranger or settler among you or to one of his descendants,
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he shall enjoy the right of redemption after sale, and one of his brothers may redeem him.
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His paternal uncle, his uncle’s son, or a member of his own family may redeem him; if he has the means, he may redeem himself.
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By agreement with his purchaser, he must count the number of years between the year of sale and the jubilee year; the sum of the price of sale must be calculated at the annual rate for these years, his time being valued as that of a hired man.
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If there are still many years to run, in proportion to their number he must refund part of his sale price as payment for his redemption.
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And if there are only a few years still to run before the jubilee year, he must calculate in proportion to the number of these years what shall be refunded for his redemption,
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the calculation being made as if he were hired by the year. You must see that the man is not hardly dealt with.
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If he has not been redeemed in any of these ways, he shall go free in the jubilee year, he and his children with him.
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For they are my servants, these sons of Israel; they are my servants whom I have brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.
Chapters of Leviticus
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
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