Leviticus 25:3-13

3 Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years.

4 But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to God; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.

5 Don't reap what grows of itself; don't harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest.

6 But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath year - you and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country,

7 and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten. "The Fiftieth Year Shall Be a Jubilee for You"

8 "Count off seven Sabbaths of years - seven times seven years: Seven Sabbaths of years adds up to forty-nine years.

9 Then sound loud blasts on the ram's horn on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. Sound the ram's horn all over the land.

10 Sanctify the fiftieth year; make it a holy year. Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in it - a Jubilee for you: Each person will go back to his family's property and reunite with his extended family.

11 The fiftieth year is your Jubilee year: Don't sow; don't reap what volunteers itself in the fields; don't harvest the untended vines

12 because it's the Jubilee and a holy year for you. You're permitted to eat from whatever volunteers itself in the fields.

13 "In this year of Jubilee everyone returns home to his family property.

Leviticus 25:3-13 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO LEVITICUS 25

In this chapter the Israelites are directed, when come into the land of Canaan, to observe every seventh year as a sabbatical year, in which there was to be no tillage of the land, and yet there would be a sufficiency for man and beast, Le 25:1-7; and every fiftieth year as a year of jubilee, in which also there was to be no tillage of the land, and every man was to return to his possession or estate, which had been sold to another any time before this, Le 25:8-17; and a promise of safety and plenty in the seventh year is made to encourage the observance of it, Le 25:18-22; and several laws and rules are delivered out concerning the sale of lands, the redemption of them, and their return to their original owner in the year of jubilee, Le 25:23-28; and the sale of houses, and the redemption of them, and the difference between those in walled cities and those in villages, with respect thereunto, Le 25:29-31; and also concerning the houses of the cities of the Levites, and the fields of the suburbs of them, Le 25:32-34; to which are added some instructions about relieving decayed, persons, and lending and giving to them, without taking usury of them, Le 25:34-38; and other laws concerning the release of such Israelites as had sold themselves for servants to the Israelites, in the year of jubilee, since none but Heathens were to be bondmen and bondmaids for ever, Le 25:39-46; and of such who were sold to proselytes, Le 25:47-55.