1. The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and commanded him
2. to give the following regulations to the people of Israel. When you enter the land that the Lord is giving you, you shall honour the Lord by not cultivating the land every seventh year.
3. You shall sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and gather your crops for six years.
4. But the seventh year is to be a year of complete rest for the land, a year dedicated to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.
5. Do not even harvest the corn that grows by itself without being sown, and do not gather the grapes from your unpruned vines; it is a year of complete rest for the land.
6. Although the land has not been cultivated during that year, it will provide food for you, your slaves, your hired men, the foreigners living with you,
7. your domestic animals, and the wild animals in your fields. Everything that it produces may be eaten.
8. Count seven times seven years, a total of 49 years.
9. Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement, send someone to blow a trumpet throughout the whole land.
10. In this way you shall set the fiftieth year apart and proclaim freedom to all the inhabitants of the land. During this year all property that has been sold shall be restored to the original owner or his descendants, and anyone who has been sold as a slave shall return to his family.
11. You shall not sow your fields or harvest the corn that grows by itself or gather the grapes in your unpruned vineyards.