Leviticus 25:13-28

New Living Translation

¹³ In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.

¹⁴ “When you make an agreement with your neighbor to buy or sell property, you must not take advantage of each other. ¹⁵ When you buy land from your neighbor, the price you pay must be based on the number of years since the last jubilee. The seller must set the price by taking into account the number of years remaining until the next Year of Jubilee. ¹⁶ The more years until the next jubilee, the higher the price; the fewer years, the lower the price. After all, the person selling the land is actually selling you a certain number of harvests. ¹⁷ Show your fear of God by not taking advantage of each other. I am the Lord your God.

¹⁸ “If you want to live securely in the land, follow my decrees and obey my regulations. ¹⁹ Then the land will yield large crops, and you will eat your fill and live securely in it. ²⁰ But you might ask, ‘What will we eat during the seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops that year?’ ²¹ Be assured that I will send my blessing for you in the sixth year, so the land will produce a crop large enough for three years. ²² When you plant your fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating from the large crop of the sixth year. In fact, you will still be eating from that large crop when the new crop is harvested in the ninth year.

Redemption of Property

²³ “The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me.

²⁴ “With every purchase of land you must grant the seller the right to buy it back. ²⁵ If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to sell some family land, then a close relative should buy it back for him. ²⁶ If there is no close relative to buy the land, but the person who sold it gets enough money to buy it back, ²⁷ he then has the right to redeem it from the one who bought it. The price of the land will be discounted according to the number of years until the next Year of Jubilee. In this way the original owner can then return to the land. ²⁸ But if the original owner cannot afford to buy back the land, it will remain with the new owner until the next Year of Jubilee. In the jubilee year, the land must be returned to the original owners so they can return to their family land.