Leviticus 25:8-34
The Voice
8 You are to count off seven Sabbath years (that’s seven times seven years), which gives you 49 years. 9 After the 49th year is over, sound a ram’s horn across the land in the 50th year on the tenth day of the seventh month. Sound the ram’s horn throughout the land on the Day of Atonement. 10 When the 50th year arrives, sanctify it and declare liberty throughout the land for all who live there—dramatic, radical liberty for all. It is to be your jubilee year. Each of you is allowed to go back to the land that belonged to your ancestors; and each of you may return to your own family. 11-12 The 50th year is to be your jubilee year. Do not plant. Do not harvest anything that grows on its own or pick grapes from the unpruned vines. You may eat what the land produces naturally. For it is a jubilee, a special, sacred time for you.
The year of jubilee is a far-reaching idea in the ancient world. In the 50th year, land that has been sold to pay debts during the preceding 49 years returns to its original owners. Israelites who had to sell themselves into slavery to pay debts are set free. All debts are declared “paid in full.” The jubilee is a regular reminder to God’s covenant people that every acre of ground, every soul belongs to God, not to those rich enough to buy them. Actually land cannot be sold; it can only be leased in 50-year increments, from jubilee to jubilee. So God’s law protects the welfare of future generations by preventing the permanent transfer of land and wealth outside the control of the family.
Eternal One: 13 Everyone will return to his ancestral property during the year of jubilee. 14 If you sell something to a friend or buy something from your neighbor, do it honestly. 15 When you lease property from a friend, you should pay only for the time you get to use it. He will base the price on the number of harvest years remaining until the jubilee returns. 16 You will raise the price if the jubilee year is far away. You will lower the price if the year is near, for what you are really buying is the number of harvests you can get in before the next jubilee. 17 Do not cheat each other. Instead, fear the God who has power over you; for I am the Eternal One, your God.
18 So follow My directives and live by My rules; as you do, you and your people will most certainly be secure in the land I will give you. 19 The land will produce an abundance of food, and you will have all you need to eat and live safely in the land. 20 You might ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we don’t plant and harvest crops?” 21 Don’t worry. I will direct My blessing to come to you during the sixth year so that the land will produce three years’ worth of crops in that one year: 22 Even while you are planting during the eighth year, you will eat your fill of the previous crops harvested in the sixth year. You will eat those crops right up until the time when you harvest the new crops in the ninth year.
23 You are not allowed to sell the land in perpetuity because it isn’t actually yours. The land belongs to Me. You will always be strangers and outsiders living in My land. 24 So every plot of ground you possess carries a “right of redemption.”
25 If your fellow citizen becomes so impoverished that he has no choice but to sell off a portion of his land, then his nearest family relation is to buy back the portion sold for him. 26 If a man doesn’t have any relatives but finds a way to earn the money to redeem his land himself, 27 then he will buy it back from the man who bought the land from him, less the profit the buyer would have made in the years since he leased it; then the original owner can go back to live on his land. 28 But if a man does not earn or find the money he needs to buy back his land, then the man who leased the land will keep it until the year of jubilee. When the year of jubilee arrives, the land will return to the possession of its original owner.
29 By the same token, anyone who sells a house that is located within the city walls has one year to buy the house back after it is sold. The right of redemption lasts only one year. 30 If the seller does not buy back his house within a year of the date it was sold, then the house located within the city walls belongs to the new owner for all his generations. It will not go back to the original owner in the year of jubilee.
The houses located within the city walls are not protected from permanent sale probably because city dwellers do not live off the land.
31 The houses in towns that have no walls are classified as fields. They are subject to the rights of redemption and return to their original owner in the year of jubilee, just like any other field. 32 In the Levites’ cities, the houses permanently carry the right of redemption: 33 The Levites are able to redeem any and all property, and any house that is sold goes back to its original owner when the year of jubilee arrives because all the houses are the Levites’ inheritance from the other tribes of Israel. 34 The open country around the cities and villages is not allowed to be sold because this land belongs to them for all time.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
