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Levítico 25

ARC · Chapter 25/27

1Fallou mais o Senhor a Moysés no monte de Sinai, dizendo:

2Falla aos filhos de Israel, e dize-lhes Quando tiverdes entrado na terra, que eu vos dou, então a terra descançará um sabbado ao Senhor.

3Seis annos semearás a tua terra, e seis annos podarás a tua vinha, e colherás a sua novidade:

4Porém ao setimo anno haverá sabbado de descanço para a terra, um sabbado ao Senhor: não semearás o teu campo nem podarás a tua vinha

5O que nascer de si mesmo da tua sega não segarás, e as uvas da tua separação não vindimarás: anno de descanço será para a terra

6E o sabbado da terra vos será por alimento, a ti, e ao teu servo, e á tua serva, e ao teu jornaleiro, e ao estrangeiro que peregrina comtigo;

7E ao teu gado, e aos teus animaes, que estão na tua terra, toda a sua novidade será por mantimento.

8Tambem contarás sete semanas d'annos, sete vezes sete annos: de maneira que os dias das sete semanas d'annos te serão quarenta e nove annos.

9Então no mez setimo, aos dez do mez, farás passar a trombeta do jubileu: no dia da expiação fareis passar a trombeta por toda a vossa terra.

10E sanctificareis o anno quinquagesimo, e apregoareis liberdade na terra a todos os seus moradores: anno de jubileu vos será, e tornareis, cada um á sua possessão, e tornareis, cada um á sua familia.

11O anno quinquagesimo vos será jubileu: não semearás nem segarás o que n'elle nascer de si mesmo, nem n'elle vindimareis as uvas das separações,

12Porque jubileu é, sancto será para vós: a novidade do campo comereis.

13N'este anno do jubileu tornareis cada um á sua possessão.

14E quando venderdes alguma coisa ao vosso proximo, ou a comprardes da mão do vosso proximo, ninguem opprima a seu irmão:

15Conforme ao numero dos annos desde o jubileu, comprarás ao teu proximo; e conforme ao numero dos annos das novidades, elle a venderá a ti.

16Conforme á multidão dos annos, augmentarás o seu preço, e conforme á diminuição dos annos abaixarás o seu preço; porque conforme ao numero das novidades é que elle te vende.

17Ninguem pois opprima ao seu proximo; mas terás temor do teu Deus: porque Eu sou o Senhor vosso Deus.

18E fazei os meus estatutos, e guardae os meus juizos, e fazei-os: assim habitareis seguros na terra.

19E a terra dará o seu fructo, e comereis a fartar, e n'ella habitareis seguros.

20E se disserdes: Que comeremos no anno setimo? eis que não havemos de semear nem colher a nossa novidade;

21Então eu mandarei a minha benção sobre vós no sexto anno, para que dê fructo por tres annos.

22E no oitavo anno semeareis, e comereis da novidade velha até ao anno nono: até que venha a sua novidade, comereis a velha.

23Tambem a terra não se venderá em perpetuidade, porque a terra é minha: pois vós sois estrangeiros e peregrinos comigo.

24Portanto em toda a terra da vossa possessão dareis resgate á terra.

25Quando teu irmão empobrecer e vender alguma porção da sua possessão, então virá o seu resgatador, seu parente, e resgatará o que vendeu seu irmão.

26E se alguem não tiver resgatador, porém a sua mão alcançar e achar o que basta para o seu resgate,

27Então contará os annos desde a sua venda, e o que ficar restituirá ao homem a quem o vendeu, e tornará á sua possessão.

28Mas, se a sua mão não alcançar o que basta para restituir-lh'a, então a que fôr vendida ficará na mão do comprador até ao anno do jubileu: porém no anno do jubileu sairá, e elle tornará á sua possessão.

29E, quando algum vender uma casa de moradia em cidade murada, então a pode resgatar até que se cumpra o anno da sua venda; durante um anno inteiro será licito o seu resgate.

30Mas, se, cumprindo-se-lhe um anno inteiro, ainda não fôr resgatada, então a casa, que estiver na cidade que tem muro, em perpetuidade ficará ao que a comprou, pelas suas gerações: não sairá no jubileu

31Mas as casas das aldeias que não teem muro em roda serão estimadas como o campo da terra: para ellas haverá resgate, e sairão no jubileu.

32Mas, tocante ás cidades dos levitas, ás casas das cidades da sua possessão, direito perpetuo de resgate terão os levitas.

33E, havendo feito resgate um dos levitas, então a compra da casa e da cidade da sua possessão sairá no jubileu: porque as casas das cidades dos levitas são a sua possessão no meio dos filhos de Israel.

34Mas o campo do arrabalde das suas cidades não se venderá, porque lhes é possessão perpetua.

35E, quando teu irmão empobrecer, e as suas forças decairem, então sustental-o-has, como estrangeiro e peregrino, para que viva comtigo.

36Não tomarás d'elle usura nem ganho; mas do teu Deus terás temor, para que teu irmão viva comtigo.

37Não lhe darás teu dinheiro com usura, nem darás o teu manjar por interesse.

38Eu sou o Senhor vosso Deus, que vos tirei da terra do Egypto, para vos dar a terra de Canaan, para ser vosso Deus.

39Quando tambem teu irmão empobrecer, estando elle comtigo, e se vender a ti, não o farás servir serviço de escravo.

40Como jornaleiro, como peregrino estará comtigo; até ao anno do jubileu te servirá:

41Então sairá do teu serviço, elle e seus filhos com elle, e tornará á sua familia, e á possessão de seus paes tornará.

42Porque são meus servos, que tirei da terra do Egypto: não serão vendidos como se vendem os escravos.

43Não te assenhorearás d'elle com rigor, mas do teu Deus terás temor.

44E quanto a teu escravo ou a tua escrava que tiveres, serão das gentes que estão ao redor de vós; d'elles comprareis escravos e escravas.

45Tambem os comprareis dos filhos dos forasteiros que peregrinam entre vós, d'elles e das suas gerações que estiverem comvosco, que tiverem gerado na vossa terra; e vos serão por possessão.

46E possuil-os-heis por herança para vossos filhos depois de vós, para herdarem a possessão; perpetuamente os fareis servir: mas sobre vossos irmãos, os filhos de Israel, cada um sobre seu irmão, não vos assenhoreareis d'elle com rigor

47E quando a mão do estrangeiro e peregrino que está comtigo alcançar riqueza, e teu irmão, que está com elle, empobrecer, e se vender ao estrangeiro ou peregrino que está comtigo, ou á raça da linhagem do estrangeiro.

48Depois que se houver vendido, haverá resgate para elle: um de seus irmãos o resgatará;

49Ou seu tio, ou o filho de seu tio o resgatará; ou um dos seus parentes, da sua familia, o resgatará; ou, se a sua mão alcançar riqueza, se resgatará a si mesmo.

50E contará com aquelle que o comprou, desde o anno que se vendeu a elle até ao anno do jubileu, e o dinheiro da sua venda será conforme ao numero dos annos: conforme aos dias de um jornaleiro estará com elle.

51Se ainda muitos annos faltarem, conforme a elles restituirá o seu resgate do dinheiro pelo qual foi vendido,

52E se ainda restarem poucos annos até ao anno do jubileu, então fará contas com elle: segundo os seus annos restituirá o seu resgate.

53Como jornaleiro, de anno em anno, estará com elle: não se assenhoreará sobre elle com rigor diante dos teus olhos.

54E, se d'esta sorte se não resgatar, sairá no anno do jubileu, elle e seus filhos com elle

55Porque os filhos de Israel me são servos; meus servos são elles, que tirei da terra do Egypto: Eu sou o Senhor vosso Deus.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

God institutes the sabbatical year (every seven years, the land rests) and the Year of Jubilee (every fifty years), when land returns to its original owners, debts are forgiven, and Hebrew slaves are set free.

Explanation

The Jubilee was one of the most radical economic systems of the ancient world: every half century, the entire structure of property and debt was reset, keeping wealth from becoming permanently concentrated in a few families across generations. The theological basis is stated plainly: 'the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me' — in other words, no one truly owns the land; they merely manage it temporarily for God. This protected impoverished families from losing everything forever and limited debt slavery to a fixed period, with dignity preserved throughout the process. The application today: this system points to the idea that the economy should serve human dignity and social justice, not the other way around.

Fun facts

  • The phrase 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof' (v. 10) is inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, a symbol of United States independence.
  • There is no clear historical record that the Jubilee was ever fully observed by Israel across the centuries, which later prophets (such as Jeremiah) point to as one of the reasons given for the Babylonian exile.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Levítico 25:1This opening formula specifically marks Mount Sinai as the place of instruction — a reminder that this whole great block of laws in the book was given before the people continued their journey.
  2. Levítico 25:2The idea of a sabbath, until now applied to people and animals on a weekly basis, extends here to the land itself: every seven years, it too was entitled to a year of rest.
  3. Levítico 25:3Six years of normal planting and pruning set up the contrast with the seventh year, described right after, when all that activity stopped.
  4. Levítico 25:4Every seven years, the land itself rested: no one planted or pruned the vineyard, and whatever grew on its own was free for everyone to eat, including the animals. It is as if the weekly sabbath for people gained a seven-year version for the soil.
  5. Levítico 25:5Even what grew on its own, without planting, or grapes that grew by themselves, could not be harvested commercially that year — the land’s rest went beyond just “not planting again.”
  6. Levítico 25:6Whatever the land produced on its own during the rest year became common food: owner, servant, hired worker, and even the foreigner living there could all eat from it equally.
  7. Levítico 25:7Even domestic and wild animals had a right to eat from whatever grew on its own that year — the land’s spontaneous produce belonged to no one in particular during the rest period.
  8. Levítico 25:8Counting seven times seven years, forty-nine in total, builds the larger cycle that sets up the arrival of the Year of Jubilee, described in the following verses.
  9. Levítico 25:9The trumpet of Jubilee was sounded right on the Day of Atonement — no coincidence: the spiritual reset of forgiveness and the economic reset of Jubilee happened on the same day of the calendar.
  10. Levítico 25:10The Year of Jubilee arrived every fifty years, seven cycles of seven plus one, and worked as society’s reset button: land sold out of necessity returned to the original family, and anyone who had become a servant for debt regained their freedom. The idea was to keep poverty or the loss of land from becoming permanent across generations.
  11. Levítico 25:11The Jubilee year, the fiftieth, also came with the same farming pause as the ordinary sabbatical years — Jubilee added the redistribution of land to a whole year without commercial planting.
  12. Levítico 25:12Called “holy,” this year followed the same rule as the ordinary rest years: eat only directly from what the land produced on its own, without stockpiling to sell.
  13. Levítico 25:13The central mechanism of Jubilee is repeated here with full clarity: every family returned to possession of its own original land in this year.
  14. Levítico 25:14Buying and selling among neighbors came with a clear condition: no one was to take advantage of the other in this kind of deal.
  15. Levítico 25:15The price of a piece of land was not fixed: it depended on how many harvests remained until the next Jubilee. In practice, no one bought land forever, they bought the right to harvest from it until the date it would return to its original owner.
  16. Levítico 25:16The price of the land was to rise or fall depending on the years remaining until the next Jubilee — in practice, the land itself was not sold, what was sold was the right to harvest from it for a set number of years.
  17. Levítico 25:17The same principle of not oppressing your neighbor repeats here, tied to the fear of God — commercial ethics and faith went hand in hand in this system.
  18. Levítico 25:18Following these statutes came with a very concrete promise: living safely in the land, not some abstract or distant reward.
  19. Levítico 25:19The promise continues: the land would yield fruit in abundance, and the people would eat their fill, living in safety — a very practical incentive to trust the system of agricultural rest.
  20. Levítico 25:20The text anticipates the people’s obvious question: without planting or harvesting in the seventh year, what exactly would they eat?
  21. Levítico 25:21The answer is a blessing promised for the sixth year: the normal harvest would yield triple, enough to cover the rest year and then some.
  22. Levítico 25:22The text spells out the logistics: in the eighth year they planted again, but kept eating from the old stored harvest until the new one finally came in, in the ninth year.
  23. Levítico 25:23Here is the foundation of the whole Jubilee system: the land does not actually belong to whoever holds it, it belongs to God, and the people are described as guests and travelers on it. That is why no one had the right to sell land forever.
  24. Levítico 25:24Throughout the land, the right of redemption — buying back what had been sold — had to be guaranteed, a permanent principle tied to land ownership.
  25. Levítico 25:25The “redeemer” was a close relative who had the right, and culturally almost the duty, to buy back land that a poor relative had sold, keeping the property within the family. This same role appears prominently later in the story of Ruth, with Boaz.
  26. Levítico 25:26If someone had no relative to redeem their land, but later managed to save up enough money on their own, the redemption mechanism was still available.
  27. Levítico 25:27The calculation was proportional: the years since the sale were counted, and the person repaid the buyer only the difference corresponding to the years still remaining until Jubilee.
  28. Levítico 25:28If the person could not save up enough for this redemption, the land stayed with the buyer until Jubilee — but in that year, the return happened automatically, whether or not redemption was paid.
  29. Levítico 25:29A house inside a walled city followed a different rule from farmland: only a full year for the original owner to buy it back. After that deadline, the house stayed permanently with the buyer; not even Jubilee returned it, unlike what happened with farmland.
  30. Levítico 25:30An important exception: a house in a walled city not redeemed within a year became the buyer’s permanent property, with no return at Jubilee — unlike farmland, which was tied to the family’s survival.
  31. Levítico 25:31Houses in unwalled villages, on the other hand, were treated as part of the countryside — they followed the normal rule of returning at Jubilee, because they were part of the agricultural way of life, not urban commerce.
  32. Levítico 25:32A special exception covered the cities of the Levites: they always kept the right to redeem their own houses, with no deadline — since they had no other land inheritance like the other tribes.
  33. Levítico 25:33Even with this extended right of redemption, a redeemed Levite house still returned at Jubilee — because these houses were, in practice, the only fixed “possession” the Levites had among the tribes.
  34. Levítico 25:34The fields surrounding the Levite cities could not be sold at all, period — an even stronger protection than the Jubilee rule, because there no sale was possible to begin with.
  35. Levítico 25:35If an Israelite fell into poverty and could no longer support himself, the community had a duty to help him get by, the same way it would help a resident foreigner.
  36. Levítico 25:36The prohibition here is charging interest on a fellow Israelite who had fallen into poverty. The problem is not lending money, it is profiting from someone already struggling; the law expects that a loan, in this case, be help, not business.
  37. Levítico 25:37The ban on charging interest extended beyond money: not even food could be lent with the intent of profiting from another person’s need.
  38. Levítico 25:38The exodus from Egypt returns as the justification — the same argument repeated throughout the book to ground why these specific economic protections existed.
  39. Levítico 25:39An Israelite who sold himself for debt was not to be treated as a slave in the harshest sense of the word: the law treats him more like a hired worker, with a fixed end date, at Jubilee. It is a different category from the foreign slaves mentioned later in the same chapter.
  40. Levítico 25:40An Israelite who sold himself for debt was to be treated as a hired worker, not as a slave — serving only until the year of Jubilee arrived.
  41. Levítico 25:41At Jubilee, he and his children went free, returning to their own family and to their ancestors’ original land — the same fifty-year reset that applied to the land also applied to people.
  42. Levítico 25:42The reason is direct: since all were “servants” of God Himself, who brought them out of Egypt, no Israelite could permanently own another Israelite.
  43. Levítico 25:43Ruling over this worker harshly was forbidden — the fear of God was meant to temper even the way someone treated a fellow countryman in a debt situation.
  44. Levítico 25:44Here comes a distinction that troubles the modern reader: slaves, in fact, could be acquired from neighboring nations — the chapter’s protection was specific to Israelites among themselves, not universal.
  45. Levítico 25:45This permission also extended to the children of resident foreigners, including those born there in the land — widening who could fall into this category of servitude with no Jubilee deadline.
  46. Levítico 25:46Unlike the Israelite, who had Jubilee as a guaranteed limit, a foreign slave could be inherited as permanent property from generation to generation — a difference in treatment clearly marked in the text.
  47. Levítico 25:47The chapter now reverses the scenario: a resident foreigner who grew rich, while an Israelite nearby grew poor to the point of selling himself to him or his family.
  48. Levítico 25:48Even in this case, the Israelite kept the right of redemption — a relative could still buy him back from the foreigner’s hand.
  49. Levítico 25:49The list of possible redeemers was wide: uncle, cousin, any close relative, or the Israelite himself, if he managed to prosper and free himself.
  50. Levítico 25:50The redemption price followed the same proportional logic already seen with land: calculated by the years remaining until Jubilee, as if it were the wages of a hired worker for that period.
  51. Levítico 25:51If many years still remained until Jubilee, the amount to be repaid was proportionally larger, reflecting more remaining time of service.
  52. Levítico 25:52If few years remained, the redemption amount was proportionally smaller — the same math as always, just calculated the other way.
  53. Levítico 25:53For as long as the arrangement lasted, he was to be treated as a worker hired year by year, and the foreign owner was forbidden to treat him harshly — a detail suggesting some form of social oversight by the community.
  54. Levítico 25:54Even if no redemption ever took place, Jubilee guaranteed his automatic freedom, along with his children’s — the same final safety mechanism seen elsewhere in the chapter.
  55. Levítico 25:55The chapter closes explaining the logic behind it all: since the whole people of Israel were already “servants” of this God alone, who brought them out of Egypt, no Israelite could permanently belong to another human being.

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