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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.

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13 Each of you must return to your family property in this year of Jubilee.

14 When you sell something to or buy something from your fellow citizen, you must not cheat each other. 15 You will buy from your fellow citizen according to the number of years since the Jubilee; he will sell to you according to the number of years left for harvests. 16 You will raise the price if there are more years, or lower the price if there are less years because it is the number of harvests that are being sold to you. 17 You must not cheat each other but fear your God because I am the Lord your God. 18 You will observe my rules, and you will keep my regulations and do them so that you can live securely on the land.

Food during fallow years

19 The land will give its fruit so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it. 20 Suppose you ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we don’t plant or gather our crops then?” 21 I will send my blessing on you in the sixth year so that it will make enough produce for three years. 22 You can plant again in the eighth year and eat food from the previous year’s produce until the ninth year. Until its produce comes, you will eat the food from the previous year.

Buying back family property

23 The land must not be permanently sold because the land is mine. You are just immigrants and foreign guests of mine.

24 Throughout the whole land that you possess, you must allow for the land to be bought back. 25 When one of your fellow Israelites faces financial difficulty and must sell part of their family property, the closest relative[a] will come and buy back what their fellow Israelite has sold. 26 If the person doesn’t have someone to buy it back, but then manages to afford buying it back, 27 they must calculate the years since its sale and refund the balance to the person to whom they sold it. Then it will go back to the family property.[b] 28 If they cannot afford to make a refund to the buyer, whatever was sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Jubilee year. It will be released in the Jubilee year, at which point it will return to the family property.

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Footnotes

  1. Leviticus 25:25 Or next of kin; traditionally redeemer
  2. Leviticus 25:27 Or they will go back to their family property; also in 25:28.