Leviticus 25: The Sabbath year, the Jubilee, and buying back

In plain English: Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,

In plain English: "Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you come into the land that I am giving you, the land is to keep a Sabbath (a time of rest) to Yahweh.

In plain English: For six years you are to sow your field, and for six years you are to prune your vineyard and gather in its produce.

In plain English: But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of solemn rest, a Sabbath to Yahweh. You are not to sow your field or prune your vineyard.

The Hebrew words: "A Sabbath of solemn rest" is shabbat shabbaton, two forms of the same word, a little like saying "a rest of resting". In Leviticus the same words are used for the Day of Atonement in 16:31 and for the weekly seventh day in 23:3.

Good to know: Here the rest is for the land. Every seventh year the fields and vineyards are left alone.

In plain English: You are not to reap what grows by itself from your harvest, and you are not to gather the grapes of your untrimmed vine. It is to be a year of solemn rest for the land.

In plain English: What the land grows in its Sabbath will be food for you: for yourself, your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker, and the foreigner who lives with you.

In plain English: All its produce will also be food for your livestock and for the animals in your land.

In plain English: "You are to count off seven Sabbaths of years, seven times seven years, so that the seven Sabbaths of years come to forty-nine years.

In plain English: Then on the tenth day of the seventh month you are to sound the loud trumpet (literally: the ram's horn of loud blast). On the Day of Atonement you are to sound the trumpet through all your land.

The Hebrew word: "Trumpet" is shofar, a curved horn. The dictionary gives it as "a cornet (as giving a clear sound) or curved horn".

How it is translated: This Bible says "trumpet" in all 63 verses that use the word. This is the only verse in Leviticus that has it.

Good to know: The Day of Atonement is the day described in Leviticus 16 and dated to the tenth day of the seventh month in 23:27.

In plain English: You are to make the fiftieth year holy and proclaim liberty (or: release) throughout the land to everyone who lives in it. It is to be a Jubilee for you. Each of you is to go back to his own property, and each of you is to go back to his family.

The Hebrew words: "Jubilee" is yovel. The dictionary gives it as "the blast of a horn", and from that the festival the horn begins. "Liberty" is deror, which the dictionary gives as "freedom".

How it is translated: This Bible says "jubilee" in 19 of the 25 verses that use yovel. In Joshua 6:4 it is the "rams' horns" carried around Jericho. For deror it says "liberty" in 6 of its 7 verses, as in Isaiah 61:1: "to proclaim liberty to the captives".

Good to know: In Luke 4:17 to 19 Jesus reads from that passage of Isaiah. The words "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof", from this verse in the King James Bible, are cast on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

Church tradition: Readers differ on how fully the Jubilee was kept in Israel's history, and on what it means today. The Catholic Church holds holy years that it calls jubilees, a custom it has kept since the year 1300.

In plain English: That fiftieth year is to be a Jubilee for you. In it you are not to sow, or reap what grows by itself, or gather grapes from the untrimmed vines.

In plain English: For it is a Jubilee, and it is to be holy to you. You are to eat what the field produces.

In plain English: "In this Year of Jubilee each of you is to go back to his property.

In plain English: "If you sell something to your neighbor, or buy from your neighbor, you are not to wrong one another.

In plain English: You are to buy from your neighbor according to the number of years since the Jubilee. He is to sell to you according to the number of years of crops left.

In plain English: If there are many years left, you are to raise the price; if there are few years left, you are to lower the price. For what he is selling you is the number of crops.

In plain English: You are not to wrong one another. You are to fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God.

In plain English: "So you are to do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and do them, and you will live in the land in safety.

In plain English: The land will give its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety.

In plain English: If you say, 'What will we eat in the seventh year? We are not to sow or gather in our crops.'

In plain English: then I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, and it will produce enough crops for three years.

In plain English: You will sow in the eighth year and still eat from the old crop until the ninth year. Until its crop comes in, you will eat the old store.

In plain English: "The land is not to be sold permanently, for the land is mine. You are foreigners and settlers (people living there for a time) with me.

The Hebrew words: "Strangers" is ger, which the dictionary gives as "properly, a guest; by implication, a foreigner". "Foreigners" is toshav, "resident alien": someone who lives in a land that is not his own.

Good to know: Yahweh says the land is his, and the people live on it as his guests. The word for "in perpetuity" (permanently) is in only 2 verses of the Bible, this one and verse 30.

In plain English: In all the land you own, you are to allow the land to be bought back (redeemed).

In plain English: "If your brother becomes poor and sells some of his property, then his closest relative is to come and buy back what his brother has sold.

The Hebrew word: "Redeem" is ga'al, and "his kinsman" is the same word: the go'el, the redeemer. The dictionary gives it as "to be the next of kin (and as such to buy back a relative's property, marry his widow, etc.)".

How it is translated: In Leviticus this Bible says a form of "redeem" in all 15 verses that use the word. Across the Bible it says "redeem" in about 7 of every 10 of its 84 verses, "avenger" in 12 (the avenger of blood) and "kinsman" in 10.

Good to know: In the book of Ruth, Boaz is this kind of close relative: in Ruth 4:4 to 6 the nearer kinsman gives up his right to redeem the land of Naomi's family.

In plain English: If a man has no one to buy it back, but he himself becomes prosperous and has enough to buy it back,

In plain English: then he is to count the years since he sold it and pay back what is left over to the man he sold it to, and he will go back to his property.

In plain English: But if he does not have enough to get it back, what he sold is to stay with the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee it is to be released, and he will go back to his property.

In plain English: "If a man sells a house to live in, inside a walled city, he may buy it back within a whole year after he sold it. For a full year he has the right to buy it back.

In plain English: If it is not bought back within a full year, the house in the walled city is to belong permanently to the buyer and his descendants. It is not to be released in the Jubilee.

In plain English: But the houses of villages that have no wall around them are to be counted with the fields of the country. They may be bought back, and they are to be released in the Jubilee.

In plain English: "But as for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may buy back the houses in the cities they own at any time.

In plain English: The Levites may buy back a house that was sold in a city they own (literally: what one of the Levites buys back), and it is to be released in the Jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their property among the Israelites.

In plain English: But the pasture fields around their cities may not be sold, for they are their property forever.

In plain English: "If your brother becomes poor, and he cannot support himself among you (literally: his hand slips), you are to help him (literally: hold him up). He is to live with you like a foreigner and a settler (or: help him as you would a foreigner and a settler, so that he can live with you).

In plain English: Do not take interest or profit from him, but fear your God, so that your brother may live among you.

The Hebrew words: "Interest" is neshek, which the dictionary gives as "interest on a debt". "Profit" is tarbit, "percentage or bonus in addition to principal": something added on top of what was lent.

Good to know: Deuteronomy 23:19 and 20 also forbid interest from a brother, and allow it from a foreigner.

Church tradition: For many centuries the church forbade Christians to lend at interest, pointing to verses like this one. Later most churches came to allow it. Jewish law reads these verses as a rule between Jews.

In plain English: You are not to lend him your money at interest, or give him your food for profit.

In plain English: 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.

In plain English: "If your brother becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, you are not to make him work as a slave.

The Hebrew words: "Serve as a slave" is literally "work the work of an ebed". Ebed is the one Hebrew word for both a servant and a slave.

How it is translated: Across the Bible this Bible says "servant" for ebed in about 95 of every 100 of its 714 verses. In Leviticus the word is in 6 verses, all in chapters 25 and 26: this Bible says "slave" in 4 and "servant" in 3 (one verse has both).

In plain English: He is to be with you as a hired worker and as a settler. He is to serve you until the Year of Jubilee.

Good to know: Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12 say that a Hebrew servant goes free in the seventh year. This verse names the Year of Jubilee. The text does not say how the two rules fit together, and readers explain it in different ways.

In plain English: Then he is to go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own family and to the property of his fathers.

In plain English: For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They are not to be sold as slaves are sold.

Good to know: "Servants" and "slaves" in this verse are the same Hebrew word, ebed. Yahweh calls the Israelites his own servants, and says they are not to be sold as slaves are sold. Verse 55 says it again.

In plain English: You are not to rule over him harshly, but you are to fear your God.

The Hebrew word: "Harshness" is perek, which the dictionary gives as "severity".

Good to know: The same word is used in Exodus 1:13 and 1:14, where the Egyptians "ruthlessly" made the Israelites serve. In this chapter it comes again in verses 46 and 53.

In plain English: "As for your male and female slaves, whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from the nations around you.

Good to know: Verses 44 to 46 allow Israelites to buy male and female slaves from the nations around them and from the foreigners living among them, to keep them for life and leave them to their children. The rule against ruling harshly in verse 46 is about fellow Israelites. This is law for that time and place as the text records it, and Jewish and Christian traditions differ on what it means now.

In plain English: You may also buy from the children of the foreigners who live among you, and from their families who are with you, who were born in your land. They will be your property.

In plain English: You may leave them to your children after you, to keep as property. You may keep them as slaves forever. But over your brothers, the Israelites, you are not to rule harshly, one over another.

In plain English: "If a foreigner or settler living with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to that foreigner or settler, or to a member of the foreigner's family,

In plain English: after he has been sold he may be bought back. One of his brothers may buy him back,

In plain English: or his uncle, or his uncle's son, or any close relative from his family may buy him back. Or if he becomes rich, he may buy himself back.

In plain English: He is to count with the man who bought him from the year he sold himself until the Year of Jubilee. The price he was sold for is to be set by the number of years. His time with the buyer is to be counted like the time of a hired worker.

In plain English: If many years are still left, he is to pay back for his release a matching part of the money he was bought for.

In plain English: If only a few years are left until the Year of Jubilee, he is to count them with the buyer and pay back for his release according to his years of service.

In plain English: He is to be with the buyer like a worker hired year by year. The buyer is not to rule over him harshly in your sight.

In plain English: If he is not bought back in these ways, he is to be released in the Year of Jubilee, he and his children with him.

In plain English: For the Israelites are servants to me. They are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God.