Leviticus 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

On Mount Sinai the LORD gives Moses laws for the land Israel is entering: every seventh year the land rests, and after seven cycles of seven years the fiftieth year is a jubilee, announced by a horn on the Day of Atonement, when property returns to its original family and people return to their families. Sales of land are priced by the number of harvests left before the jubilee, and land is not sold permanently, because the land belongs to the LORD. The chapter then sets rules for buying back sold land and houses, for helping a poor fellow Israelite without charging interest, and for how an Israelite who sells himself is to be treated and bought back. It closes with the statement that the Israelites are the LORD's servants, brought out of Egypt.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai.
2. 25:2
   • The LORD told Moses to speak to the Israelites and say to them the following.
   • The Israelites will come into the land.
   • The LORD is giving them that land.
   • When they come into that land, the land is to keep a sabbath to the LORD.
3. 25:3
   • For six years you may sow your field.
   • For six years you may prune your vineyard.
   • You may gather in the land's produce during those years.
4. 25:4
   • In the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land.
   • That seventh year is a sabbath to the LORD.
   • You shall not sow your field in the seventh year.
   • You shall not prune your vineyard in the seventh year.
5. 25:5
   • You shall not reap the growth that comes up by itself from your harvest.
   • You shall not gather the grapes of your untended vines.
   • The seventh year shall be a year of complete rest for the land.
6. 25:6
   • What the land produces during its sabbath shall serve as food for you.
   • It shall be food for you yourself.
   • It shall be food for your male servant.
   • It shall be food for your female servant.
   • It shall be food for your hired worker.
   • It shall be food for the foreign resident who lives with you.
7. 25:7
   • What the land produces shall be food for your livestock.
   • What the land produces shall be food for the wild animals in your land.
   • All of the land's produce shall be for food.
8. 25:8
   • You shall count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself.
   • Seven sabbaths of years is seven years seven times.
   • The days of the seven sabbaths of years amount to forty-nine years.
9. 25:9
   • You shall sound a loud horn blast in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month.
   • That day is the Day of Atonement.
   • You shall sound the horn throughout all your land.
10. 25:10
    • You shall consecrate the fiftieth year.
    • You shall proclaim liberty in the land to all its inhabitants.
    • The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you.
    • Each man shall return to his holding.
    • Each man shall return to his family.
11. 25:11
    • The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you.
    • You shall not sow in it.
    • You shall not reap what grows of itself in it.
    • You shall not gather the grapes of the untended vines in it.
12. 25:12
    • It is a jubilee.
    • The jubilee year shall be holy to you.
    • You shall eat the produce directly from the field.
13. 25:13
    • In this year of jubilee each man shall return to his holding.
14. 25:14
    • If you make a sale to your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another.
    • If you buy from your neighbor's hand, you shall not wrong one another.
15. 25:15
    • You shall buy from your neighbor according to the number of years since the jubilee.
    • He shall sell to you according to the number of crop years remaining.
16. 25:16
    • The more years there are, the more you shall increase the price.
    • The fewer years there are, the more you shall decrease the price.
    • He is selling you a number of harvests.
17. 25:17
    • You shall not wrong one another.
    • You shall fear your God.
    • The LORD is your God.
18. 25:18
    • You shall carry out the LORD's statutes.
    • You shall keep the LORD's judgments.
    • You shall carry out those judgments.
    • You shall dwell in the land in security.
19. 25:19
    • The land will yield its fruit.
    • You will eat your fill.
    • You will dwell in security on the land.
20. 25:20
    • You may ask what you will eat in the seventh year.
    • You may say that you will not sow in the seventh year.
    • You may say that you will not gather in your produce in the seventh year.
21. 25:21
    • The LORD will command his blessing upon you in the sixth year.
    • The land will produce a crop sufficient for three years.
22. 25:22
    • You will sow in the eighth year.
    • You will eat from the old crop while sowing in the eighth year.
    • You will eat from the old crop until the ninth year.
    • You will eat from the old crop until the new produce comes in.
23. 25:23
    • The land shall not be sold permanently.
    • The land belongs to the LORD.
    • You are foreigners and residents with the LORD.
24. 25:24
    • In all the land you possess you shall grant a right of redemption for the land.
25. 25:25
    • If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his holding, his nearest kinsman-redeemer shall come.
    • That redeemer shall redeem what his brother sold.
26. 25:26
    • A man may have no kinsman-redeemer.
    • That man may prosper and obtain enough for his own redemption.
27. 25:27
    • He shall count the years since the sale.
    • He shall repay the balance to the man to whom he sold it.
    • He shall return to his holding.
28. 25:28
    • He may not obtain enough to repay the buyer.
    • In that case what he sold shall remain in the buyer's hand until the year of jubilee.
    • In the jubilee it shall be released.
    • He shall return to his holding.
29. 25:29
    • If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, his right of redemption lasts until the end of the year of its sale.
    • His right of redemption lasts a full year.
30. 25:30
    • If the house is not redeemed before a full year is complete, the house in the walled city passes permanently to its buyer.
    • It passes to the buyer throughout his generations.
    • It shall not be released in the jubilee.
31. 25:31
    • Houses in villages that have no wall around them shall be reckoned as open country field.
    • Such houses have a right of redemption.
    • Such houses shall be released in the jubilee.
32. 25:32
    • The cities of the Levites and the houses in the cities of their holding are an exception.
    • The Levites shall have a perpetual right of redemption for them.
33. 25:33
    • If someone redeems from the Levites, the house that was sold in the city of their holding shall be released in the jubilee.
    • The houses of the cities of the Levites are their holding among the Israelites.
34. 25:34
    • The open pastureland field around their cities shall not be sold.
    • That pastureland is their perpetual possession.
35. 25:35
    • If your brother becomes poor and his means fail among you, you shall support him.
    • You shall support him as you would a foreigner or a resident alien.
    • He is to live with you.
36. 25:36
    • You shall not take interest from him.
    • You shall not take increase from him.
    • You shall fear your God.
    • Your brother is to live with you.
37. 25:37
    • You shall not lend him your money at interest.
    • You shall not give him your food for increase.
38. 25:38
    • The LORD is your God.
    • The LORD brought you out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD brought you out to give you the land of Canaan.
    • The LORD brought you out to be your God.
39. 25:39
    • If your brother among you becomes poor and is sold to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave serves.
40. 25:40
    • He shall be with you as a hired worker and as a resident alien.
    • He shall serve you until the year of jubilee.
41. 25:41
    • Then he shall go out from you.
    • His children shall go out with him.
    • He shall return to his family.
    • He shall return to the holding of his fathers.
42. 25:42
    • The Israelites are the LORD's servants.
    • The LORD brought them out of the land of Egypt.
    • They shall not be sold as slaves are sold.
43. 25:43
    • You shall not rule over him with harshness.
    • You shall fear your God.
44. 25:44
    • Your male and female slaves shall come from the nations around you.
    • From those nations you may buy male and female slaves.
45. 25:45
    • You may also buy from the children of the resident foreigners who live among you.
    • You may buy from their families that are with you, whom they have fathered in your land.
    • Those people shall become your property.
46. 25:46
    • You may bequeath them to your children after you as inherited property.
    • You may keep them as slaves permanently.
    • You shall not rule with harshness over your brothers the Israelites, one over another.
47. 25:47
    • A foreigner or resident alien among you may prosper.
    • Your brother living with that foreigner may become poor.
    • Your brother may sell himself to that resident foreigner.
    • Your brother may instead sell himself to a member of the foreigner's family.
48. 25:48
    • After he is sold he retains a right of redemption.
    • One of his brothers may redeem him.
49. 25:49
    • His uncle may redeem him.
    • His uncle's son may redeem him.
    • A blood relative from his family may redeem him.
    • If he prospers, he may redeem himself.
50. 25:50
    • He shall reckon with his buyer from the year he sold himself until the year of jubilee.
    • The price of his sale shall be according to the number of years.
    • His time with the buyer shall be counted like the days of a hired worker.
51. 25:51
    • If many years remain, he shall repay his redemption price in proportion to them out of the money he was bought for.
52. 25:52
    • If few years remain until the year of jubilee, he shall reckon with the buyer.
    • He shall repay his redemption price according to those remaining years.
53. 25:53
    • He shall be with the buyer as a worker hired year by year.
    • The buyer shall not rule over him with harshness in your sight.
54. 25:54
    • If he is not redeemed by these means, he shall go out in the year of jubilee.
    • His children shall go out with him.
55. 25:55
    • The Israelites are servants belonging to the LORD.
    • They are the LORD's servants.
    • The LORD brought them out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD is your God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

25:1

Mount Sinai is the mountain in the desert where, in the account these books give, Israel camped after leaving Egypt and received the law. Leviticus presents its rules as spoken there.

25:2

A sabbath is a ceasing from work, normally the seventh day of the week. Here the same pattern is stretched over years: every seventh year the fields are left unworked, and the land is spoken of as taking the rest a person takes.

25:3

A vineyard is a field of grapevines. To prune is to cut off extra branches so the plant grows better fruit.

25:4

Farmers usually plant seeds every single year. Here God says to leave the fields alone one year in seven. Resting dirt grows better food later.

25:5

In 1611 English, to dress a vine meant to prune and tend it, so the "vine undressed" is simply one nobody has trimmed that year. What is banned is the organized harvest, gathering the crop in as the owner's property, not the eating of what grows.

25:6

Three different statuses are listed. A male or female servant was an owned or indentured household worker; a hired worker was paid wages and free to leave; a "foreigner staying with you" was a non-Israelite settled long-term in Israel, who by law held no land of his own. In the fallow year all of them ate from the untended fields on the same footing as the landowner.

25:7

Wild animals are included on purpose. For one year in seven the boundary between a farmer's crop and open country is dropped.

25:8

"Sabbaths of years" counts year-cycles the way one counts days toward a sabbath: seven blocks of seven years, so the seventh year of each block is a fallow year and the whole count reaches forty-nine.

25:9

The horn is a ram's horn (shofar), blown as a long carrying signal, not a musical instrument. The Hebrew word behind "jubilee," yovel, appears to have meant the ram's horn itself. The seventh month of the Hebrew year falls in our September–October, and its tenth day was the Day of Atonement, the annual day of fasting on which the sanctuary and the people were ritually cleansed.

25:10

Two things are being announced. "Freedom" is the release of Israelites who had sold themselves into service to pay debts. "Back to his own property" refers to the division of Canaan, in which every family received a permanent allotment of land; any of it sold since the last jubilee reverted to the original family. "Family" here translates a word for a clan, the extended kin group larger than a household and smaller than a tribe.

25:12

Food could be picked from the fallow fields as it was needed, but not reaped, processed and stored as a harvest.

25:14

"Take advantage" translates a word for defrauding or squeezing someone in a deal. In this context it means charging a price that ignores how few harvests are actually left before the jubilee returns the land.

25:15

This is the key to the whole system of land sales. What changes hands is not the ground itself but the harvests still to come before the next jubilee, so every sale is really a lease with a fixed end date, and the price is calculated per remaining year.

25:16

Because land always reverted at the jubilee, no sale was permanent. What changed hands was the use of the field for the years remaining, so the price was effectively a lease price falling year by year.

25:17

"Fear thy God" means live in awe of him. In Leviticus the phrase is attached to laws that are easy to break without getting caught, where no human court could prove what happened inside a deal.

25:18

"Statutes" and "judgments" are two kinds of law: standing rules laid down in advance, and rulings given in particular cases. Together they mean the whole body of instruction, not two separate lists.

25:21

The arithmetic: the sixth year's crop has to feed them through the seventh year, when nothing is sown, and through the eighth, which is sown but not yet reaped, until the ninth year's harvest comes in.

25:22

The farming arithmetic runs like this: the sixth year's harvest has to feed people through the seventh year, when nothing is planted, and on through the eighth year while the new crop is still growing, until that crop is gathered in the ninth year.

25:23

"Foreigners and temporary residents" is legal language for people living on land they do not own, by the owner's permission. Israelites are described as holding their land from God on those terms.

25:24

To "buy back," or redeem, is a specific legal act: a payment that recovers property, or a person, out of someone else's hands. The rest of the chapter sets out who may make that payment and how the price is figured.

25:25

"Brother" here means a fellow Israelite, not necessarily a blood brother. Israelite law gave the nearest male relative both the right and the expected duty to buy back land or a person on behalf of an impoverished member of his family; the same institution drives the story of Ruth.

25:27

Since the price covered only the harvests left before the jubilee, buying back was a refund: the seller repays the buyer for the crop years the buyer will no longer get.

25:29

The distinction is between property tied to a family's ancestral farmland and property that is not. Fields and village houses were part of the inheritance and always returned at the jubilee. Houses inside walled towns were treated more like traded goods, and after one year the sale became final.

25:31

Houses in unwalled villages stood among the fields of farming families and belonged to the same working land, so they follow the rule for fields: always redeemable, and released at the jubilee.

25:32

The Levites were the tribe set apart for service at the sanctuary. When the land was divided they received no territory of their own; instead they were given towns scattered among the other tribes, with grazing land around them. Those town houses were their equivalent of family land, which is why they keep a right of redemption that ordinary town houses lose.

25:34

The pastureland was the belt of common ground around a Levite town, used for grazing their animals. Unlike the houses, it could not be sold at all.

25:35

The Hebrew is compressed and can be read two ways: help him even though he is a foreigner or temporary resident, or help him in the way you would support such a person, as a dependent living alongside you.

25:36

The King James word "usury" meant any interest at all, not just excessive interest. Two terms are used: one for interest taken off the top of a loan, the other for the extra amount repaid at the end. The rule concerns lending to a fellow Israelite who has fallen into poverty.

25:37

Loans of food were as ordinary as loans of silver. Requiring back more grain than was lent counted as interest just as much as a cash charge.

25:38

Canaan was the land along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea that became Israel's home.

25:39

"Sells himself" describes debt bondage: a man who had lost his land and could not pay handed over his labor to the creditor. It was a way of settling debt, not capture in war or purchase on a market.

25:40

A hired worker gets paid for his work. He is not owned by anyone.

25:41

His children go with him. Because the whole arrangement was tied to a debt rather than to the person, the release cancels the family's obligation as well, and they return to fields they can farm again.

25:42

One Hebrew word, eved, covers both "servant" and "slave"; English translators choose between them case by case. The verse turns on that single word (Israelites are already God's eved, and so are not to be sold as anyone else's) and the wordplay disappears in English.

25:43

"Rigour" means crushing, driving harshness. It is the same word Exodus uses for the way the Egyptians worked Israelite slaves, so the law is forbidding Israelites to do to one another what was done to them in Egypt.

25:44

"Heathen" in the King James simply means the nations, that is, peoples other than Israel; in 1611 it carried no insult. The verse marks a legal line: permanent, inheritable slavery is permitted for non-Israelites, while Israelites in debt bondage must be released.

25:46

"For ever" here means for life and then by inheritance, passing to the owner's children with no jubilee release. The closing clause repeats that the ban on harsh rule applies specifically to fellow Israelites.

25:47

"A member of the foreigner's family" renders a phrase for his clan, the wider kin group, larger than a household, that a resident foreigner's descendants would form in Israel.

25:49

The list moves outward from the closest kin: uncle first, then cousin, then any relative in the wider family group. Redemption was a family obligation, and the nearest relative was expected to act before anyone further out.

25:50

Hired labor was paid by the day, so the price is worked out as a day-laborer's wage multiplied by the years still to run before the jubilee. The nearer the jubilee, the fewer years are left to buy and the cheaper the release.

25:53

"Where you can see it" puts the wider Israelite community in the picture: they are the ones expected to notice and object if a foreign master treats an Israelite bondman harshly.

25:55

The same Hebrew word, ebed, stands behind "servants" here and behind the word for slaves earlier in the chapter, and the closing line leans on that overlap. It restates the reason given for every limit placed on Israelite servitude in this chapter: the people were brought out of Egypt and are described as already claimed.