Immerse: Beginnings Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 205
25:13-31
L e v itic u s
193
produces on its own. In the Year of Jubilee each of you may return to the
land that belonged to your ancestors.
“When you make an agreement with your neighbor to buy or sell property, you must not take advantage of each other. When you buy land from
your neighbor, the price you pay must be based on the number of years
since the last jubilee. The seller must set the price by taking into account
the number of years remaining until the next Year of Jubilee. The more
years until the next jubilee, the higher the price; the fewer years, the lower
the price. After all, the person selling the land is actually selling you a certain number of harvests. Show your fear of God by not taking advantage
of each other. I am the Lord your God.
“If you want to live securely in the land, follow my decrees and obey
my regulations. Then the land will yield large crops, and you will eat your
fill and live securely in it. But you might ask, ‘What will we eat during the
seventh year, since we are not allowed to plant or harvest crops that year?’
Be assured that I will send my blessing for you in the sixth year, so the land
will produce a crop large enough for three years. When you plant your
fields in the eighth year, you will still be eating from the large crop of the
sixth year. In fact, you will still be eating from that large crop when the new
crop is harvested in the ninth year.
“The land must never be sold on a permanent basis, for the land belongs to
me. You are only foreigners and tenant farmers working for me.
“With every purchase of land you must grant the seller the right to buy
it back. If one of your fellow Israelites falls into poverty and is forced to
sell some family land, then a close relative should buy it back for him. If
there is no close relative to buy the land, but the person who sold it gets
enough money to buy it back, he then has the right to redeem it from the
one who bought it. The price of the land will be discounted according to
the number of years until the next Year of Jubilee. In this way the original
owner can then return to the land. But if the original owner cannot afford
to buy back the land, it will remain with the new owner until the next Year
of Jubilee. In the jubilee year, the land must be returned to the original
owners so they can return to their family land.
“Anyone who sells a house inside a walled town has the right to buy
it back for a full year after its sale. During that year, the seller retains the
right to buy it back. But if it is not bought back within a year, the sale of
the house within the walled town cannot be reversed. It will become the
permanent property of the buyer. It will not be returned to the original
owner in the Year of Jubilee. But a house in a village—a settlement without fortified walls—will be treated like property in the countryside. Such
