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.
12. The whole year shall be sacred for you; you shall eat only what the fields produce of themselves.
13. In this year all property that has been sold shall be restored to its original owner.
14. So when you sell land to your fellow-Israelite or buy land from him, do not deal unfairly.
15. The price is to be fixed according to the number of years the land can produce crops before the next Year of Restoration.
16. If there are many years, the price shall be higher, but if there are only a few years, the price shall be lower, because what is being sold is the number of crops the land can produce.
17. Do not cheat a fellow-Israelite, but obey the Lord your God.
18. Obey all the Lord's laws and commands, so that you may live in safety in the land.
19. The land will produce its crops, and you will have all you want to eat and will live in safety.
20. But someone may ask what there will be to eat during the seventh year, when no fields are sown and no crops gathered.
21. The Lord will bless the land in the sixth year so that it will produce enough food for two years.
22. When you sow your fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating what you harvested during the sixth year, and you will have enough to eat until the crops you plant that year are harvested.
23. Your land must not be sold on a permanent basis, because you do not own it; it belongs to God, and you are like foreigners who are allowed to make use of it.
24. When land is sold, the right of the original owner to buy it back must be recognized.
25. If an Israelite becomes poor and is forced to sell his land, his closest relative is to buy it back.
26. Anyone who has no relative to buy it back may later become prosperous and have enough to buy it back.
27. In that case he must pay to the man who bought it a sum that will make up for the years remaining until the next Year of Restoration, when he would in any event recover his land.
28. But if he does not have enough money to buy the land back, it remains under the control of the man who bought it until the next Year of Restoration. In that year it will be returned to its original owner.
29. If someone sells a house in a walled city, he has the right to buy it back during the first full year from the date of sale.
30. But if he does not buy it back within the year, he loses the right of repurchase, and the house becomes the permanent property of the purchaser and his descendants; it will not be returned in the Year of Restoration.
31. But houses in unwalled villages are to be treated like fields; the original owner has the right to buy them back, and they are to be returned in the Year of Restoration.
32. However, Levites have the right to buy back at any time their property in the cities assigned to them.
33. If a house in one of these cities is sold by a Levite and is not bought back, it must be returned in the Year of Restoration, because the houses which the Levites own in their cities are their permanent property among the people of Israel.
34. But the pasture land round the Levite cities shall never be sold; it is their property for ever.
35. If a fellow-Israelite living near you becomes poor and cannot support himself or herself, you must provide for them as you would for hired servants, so that they can continue to live near you.
36. Do not charge them any interest, but obey God and let your fellow-Israelites live near you.
37. Do not make them pay interest on the money you lend them, and do not make a profit on the food you sell them.
38. This is the command of the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt in order to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
39. If a fellow-Israelite living near you becomes so poor that he sells himself to you as a slave, you shall not make him do the work of a slave.
40. He shall stay with you as a hired servant and serve you until the next Year of Restoration.
41. At that time he and his children shall leave you and return to his family and to the property of his ancestors.
42. The people of Israel are the Lord's slaves, and he brought them out of Egypt; they must not be sold into slavery.
43. Do not treat them harshly, but obey your God.
44. If you need slaves, you may buy them from the nations round you.
45. You may also buy the children of the foreigners who are living among you. Such children born in your land may become your property,
46. and you may leave them as an inheritance to your sons, whom they must serve as long as they live. But you must not treat any of your fellow-Israelites harshly.
47. Suppose a foreigner living with you becomes rich, while a fellow-Israelite becomes poor and sells himself as a slave to that foreigner or to a member of his family.
48. After he is sold, he still has the right to be bought back. One of his brothers
49. or his uncle or his cousin or another of his close relatives may buy him back; or if he himself earns enough, he may buy his own freedom.
50. He must consult the one who bought him, and they must count the years from the time he sold himself until the next Year of Restoration and must set the price for his release on the basis of the wages paid to a hired servant.
51-52. He must refund a part of the purchase price according to the number of years left,
53. as if he had been hired on an annual basis. His master must not treat him harshly.
54. If he is not set free in any of these ways, he and his children must be set free in the next Year of Restoration.
55. An Israelite cannot be a permanent slave, because the people of Israel are the Lord's slaves. He brought them out of Egypt; he is the Lord their God.