Rules about the Jubilee Year
8 You must also count seven Sabbath years. That is seven times seven years, or 49 years. 9 In the 50th year you must make a loud noise with trumpets everywhere in your land. Do that on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. 10 You must make sure that the 50th year is a special holy year. It is a happy Jubilee year. It is a time for everyone in the land to become free from their debts. Anyone who has sold his family's land will receive it back again. Slaves will return to live with their own people. 11 The 50th year is a Jubilee year for you. You must not plant any seeds in your fields. You must not cut your crops at harvest time. You must not pick any grapes from your vines. 12 It is a Jubilee year for you. You must keep it as a holy year. You may only eat food that grows by itself in your fields.
Rules about land and houses
13 In the Jubilee year you will all return to the land that belongs to your family.
14 At any time, if you agree with someone to buy or sell land, you must be fair. 15 If you buy some land, you must count the number of years until the next Jubilee year. That will decide the fair price for you to pay. You are paying for the number of years that you can grow crops on the land. 16 If there are many years until the Jubilee year, the price of the land will be larger. If only a few years remain, the price will be smaller. The other man is selling you a certain number of years when you will get crops from the land. 17 Do not cheat each other. Respect and obey your God. I am the Lord your God.
18 You must obey my rules and my laws. If you are careful to do that, you will live safely in the land. 19 The land will provide plenty of food for you to eat. You will live there safely. 20 You may think, “If we do not plant any seeds in the seventh year, what food will we eat?” 21 This is what will happen. I will bless the land in the sixth year so that it grows a lot of food for you. It will provide enough crops to give you food for three years! 22 When you plant seeds in the eighth year, you will still be eating your old crops. You will be eating food that the land provided in the sixth year. You will continue to eat those old crops until you bring home new crops in the ninth year.
23 You must never sell your land so that it completely belongs to someone else. The land always belongs to me, the Lord. I allow you to live on it for a time, like foreigners. 24 Anybody who sells land must always have the chance to buy it back again.
25 If an Israelite becomes poor, he may need to sell some of his land. If so, the person who has authority in his family must buy the land back from the new owner. 26 There might not be anyone in the man's family who can do that. Later, the man himself may have enough money to buy the land back again. 27 He must count how many years remain until the next Jubilee year. He must pay the value of those years to the man that he sold the land to. Then it will become his own land again. 28 But the man may never have enough money to pay the value of the land. If so, the land that he sold will belong to the other person until the next Jubilee year. When the Jubilee year comes, the new owner must return the land to the poor man who sold it. Then the man can return to live on his land again.
25:25The person with authority was called a family-redeemer. If the family was in trouble, he was the one who needed to give help. See Ruth 3:12. 29 It is different for a house inside a city that has walls. If someone sells his house in a city, he may buy it back in the first year. For one complete year after he has sold it, he has the chance to buy it back. 30 If the man does not buy back the house in that year, it will completely belong to the new owner. It will continue to belong to him and to his descendants for ever. They will not have to return it in the Jubilee year. 31 But a house may be in a village that has no walls around it. If someone sells the house, it is the same as a piece of land like a field. The person who sells it must always have the chance to buy it back again. If not, when the Jubilee year comes, the house will belong again to the first owner.
32 Some cities belong to the Levites for them to live in. If a Levite sells his house, he must always have the chance to buy it back again. 33 When the Jubilee year comes, a house that a Levite has sold will belong to him again. This is because the Levites need to live in the houses that belong to them in their cities. The other Israelite tribes have given those places to the Levites. 34 But the Levites must never sell the fields that are around their cities. That land belongs to them for ever.
