Leviticus 25:8-22
New Catholic Bible
The Year of Jubilee.[a] 8 “You shall count seven Sabbaths of years for yourselves, seven times seven years, and your span of seven times seven years will be forty-nine years. 9 You shall blow the trumpet of the Jubilee on the tenth day of the seventh month, on the Day of Atonement you shall blow the trumpet throughout the land. 10 You shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the whole land to all of its inhabitants. It will be a Jubilee for you. Each of you shall return to his own property, and each shall return to his own clan. 11 The fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee for you. You shall not sow nor reap. You shall not reap what grows on its own, and you shall not gather grapes from the undressed vines. 12 It is a Jubilee and it is to be holy for you. You shall eat only what comes directly from the fields.
13 “In the Jubilee Year you shall return each man to his property. 14 If you sell some merchandise to your neighbor, or you buy something from your neighbor, you shall not take advantage of one another. 15 You shall buy from your neighbor based on the number of years since the Jubilee. He is to sell to you based on the number of years left for harvesting crops. 16 If the number of years left is greater, you shall increase the price paid, but if the number of years is smaller, then you shall decrease the price paid, for it is the number of harvests that he is selling you. 17 You shall not wrong one another, for you shall fear your God. I am the Lord, your God.
18 “You shall observe my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them in order to live securely in the land. 19 The land shall yield its fruit, and you shall eat your fill, and dwell in the land securely. 20 If you should say, ‘What will we eat the seventh year, for we are not sowing nor are we gathering our increase,’ 21 then I will send my blessing upon you in the sixth year so that the crops are abundant enough for three years. 22 You shall sow in the eighth year, but you shall still be eating old fruit until the ninth year. You shall be eating old fruit until its fruit comes in.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Leviticus 25:8 The Jubilee of the fiftieth year began with the sounding of trumpets or yobel, hence its name. This institution was closely connected with the sabbatical year and had for its purpose to ensure the vigorous maintenance of the structures on which Jewish society was based: the clan and the family estate. The text was composed during the Exile and reflects an abiding ideal rather than an actual practice.
