Leviticus 25:20-48

²⁰But you may ask, ‘If we do not plant or harvest our crops during the seventh year, what will we have to eat?’

²¹My answer is that I will bless you very much during the sixth/previous year, with the result that during that year there will be enough crops to provide food for you for three years!

²²Then, after you plant seed during the eighth/next year and wait for the crops to grow, you will eat the food grown in the sixth year, and continue to eat it until more food is harvested in the ninth year!

²³You must not sell any of your land to belong to someone else permanently, because the land is not yours; it is really mine, and you are only living on it temporarily and ◄farming/taking care of► it for me.

²⁴Throughout the land that you will possess, you must remember that if someone sells some of his land to you, he is permitted to buy it back from you if he wants to.

²⁵So, if one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells some of his property to obtain some money, the person who is most closely related to him is permitted to come and buy that land for him.

²⁶However, if a man has no one to buy the land for him, and he himself prospers again and saves enough money to buy that land back,

²⁷he must calculate how many years there will be until the next Year of Celebration. Then he must pay to the man who bought the land the money that he would have earned by continuing to grow crops on that land for those years.

²⁸But if the original owner does not have any money to buy the land that he sold, it will continue to belong to the man who bought it, until the next Year of Celebration. In that year it must be returned to its original owner, and he will be able to live on it again.

²⁹If someone who lives in a city that has a wall around it sells a house there, during the next year he will be permitted to buy it from the man who bought it.

³⁰If he does not buy it during that year, it will belong permanently to the man who bought it and to his descendants. It must not be returned to the original owner in the Year of Celebration.

³¹But houses that are in villages that do not have walls around them are considered to be as though they are in a field. So if someone sells one of those houses, he is permitted to buy it back at any time. And if he does not buy it, it must be returned to him in the Year of Celebration.

³²If any descendants of Levi sell their houses in the towns in which they live, they are permitted to buy them back at any time.

³³And because the houses in their towns are on land that was given to them by other Israelis, that land will become theirs again in the Year of Celebration if they do not buy it back before then.

³⁴But the pastureland near their towns must not be sold. It must belong to the original owners permanently/forever.

³⁵If one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and is unable to buy what he needs IDM, others of you must help him like you would help a foreigner who is living among you DOU temporarily.

³⁶If you lend money to him, do not charge any kind of interest DOU. Instead, show by what you do that you revere me, your God, and help that man, in order that he will be able to continue to live among you.

³⁷If you lend him money, do not charge interest; and if you sell food to him, charge him only what you paid for it; do not get a profit from it.

³⁸Do not forget that I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God and to give you the land of Canaan, and I did not charge you for doing that.

³⁹If one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells himself to you, do not force him to work like a slave.

⁴⁰Treat him like you treat workers that you hire or like someone who is living on your land temporarily. But he must work for you only until the Year of Celebration.

⁴¹During that year, you must free him, and he will go back to his family and to the property that his ancestors owned.

⁴²It is as though you Israelis are my slaves/servants, whom I freed from being slaves in Egypt. So none of you should be sold to become slaves.

⁴³And do not treat the Israelis whom you buy cruelly; instead, revere me, your God.

⁴⁴If you want to have slaves, you are permitted to buy them from nearby countries.

⁴⁵You are also permitted to buy some of the foreigners who are living among you, and members of their clans that were born in your country. Then you will own them.

⁴⁶They will be your slaves for the remaining years of your life, and after you die, it is permitted for your children to own them. But you must not act in brutal ways toward your fellow Israelis.

⁴⁷If a foreigner who is living among you DOU becomes rich, and if one of your fellow Israelis becomes poor and sells himself to that foreigner or to a member of his clan/family,

⁴⁸it is permitted for someone to pay for him to be freed. It is permitted for one of his relatives to pay for him to be released: