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Levítico 25

BLIVRE · Chapter 25/27

1E o SENHOR falou a Moisés no monte Sinai, dizendo:

2Fala aos filhos de Israel, e dize-lhes: Quando houverdes entrado na terra que eu vos dou, a terra guardará um sábado ao SENHOR.

3Seis anos semearás a tua terra, e seis anos podarás a tua vinha, e colherás os seus frutos;

4Mas no sétimo ano a terra terá um sábado de descanso, sábado ao SENHOR; não semearás a tua terra, nem podarás a tua vinha.

5O que nascer de si mesmo na tua terra ceifada não ceifarás; e as uvas do teu vinhedo não vindimarás; será um ano de descanso para a terra.

6Mas o sábado da terra vos será para comer a ti, e a teu servo, e a tua serva, e a tua criado, e a tua estrangeiro que morar contigo:

7E a teu animal, e à animal que houver em tua terra, será todo o fruto dela para comer.

8E te hás de contar sete semanas de anos, sete vezes sete anos; de modo que os dias das sete semanas de anos virão a ser para ti quarenta e nove anos.

9Então farás passar a trombeta de júbilo no mês sétimo aos dez do mês; o dia da expiação fareis passar a trombeta por toda vossa terra.

10E santificareis o ano cinquenta, e apregoareis liberdade na terra a todos os seus moradores: este vos será jubileu; e voltareis cada um à sua possessão, e cada qual voltará à sua família.

11O ano dos cinquenta anos vos será jubileu: não semeareis, nem colhereis o que nascer de seu na terra, nem vindimareis seus vinhedos:

12Porque é jubileu: santo será a vós; o produto da terra comereis.

13Em este ano de jubileu voltareis cada um à sua possessão.

14E quando venderdes algo a vosso próximo, ou comprardes da mão de vosso próximo, não engane ninguém a seu irmão:

15Conforme o número dos anos depois do jubileu comprarás de teu próximo; conforme o número dos anos dos frutos te venderá ele a ti.

16Conforme a abundância dos anos aumentarás o preço, e conforme a diminuição dos anos diminuirás o preço; porque segundo o número dos rendimentos te há de vender ele.

17E não engane ninguém a seu próximo; mas terás temor de teu Deus: porque eu sou o SENHOR vosso Deus.

18Executai, pois, meus estatutos, e guardai meus regulamentos, e ponde-os por obra, e habitareis na terra seguros;

19E a terra dará seu fruto, e comereis até fartura, e habitareis nela com segurança.

20E se disserdes: Que comeremos no sétimo ano? eis que não temos de semear, nem temos de colher nossos frutos:

21Então eu vos enviarei minha bênção no sexto ano, e fará fruto por três anos.

22E semeareis no ano oitavo, e comereis do fruto alheio; até o ano nono, até que venha seu fruto comereis do alheio.

23E a terra não se venderá definitivamente, porque a terra minha é; que vós peregrinos e estrangeiros sois para comigo.

24Portanto, em toda a terra de vossa possessão, outorgareis remissão à terra.

25Quando teu irmão empobrecer, e vender algo de sua possessão, virá o resgatador, seu próximo, e resgatará o que seu irmão houver vendido.

26E quando o homem não tiver resgatador, se alcançar sua mão, e achar o que basta para seu resgate;

27Então contará os anos de sua venda, e pagará o que restar ao homem a quem vendeu, e voltará à sua possessão.

28Mas se não alcançar sua mão o que basta para que volte a ele, o que vendeu estará em poder do que o comprou até o ano do jubileu; e ao jubileu sairá, e ele voltará à sua possessão.

29E o homem que vender casa de morada em cidade cercado, poderá resgatá-la até acabar-se o ano de sua venda: ano será o termo de se poder resgatar.

30E se não for resgatada dentro de ano inteiro, a casa que estiver na cidade murada ficará para sempre por daquele que a comprou, e para seus descendentes: não sairá no jubileu.

31Mas as casas das aldeias que não têm muro ao redor, serão estimadas como uma plantação da terra: terão remissão, e sairão no jubileu.

32Porém em quanto às cidades dos levitas, sempre poderão resgatar os levitas as casas das cidades que possuírem.

33E o que comprar dos levitas, sairá da casa vendida, ou da cidade de sua possessão, no jubileu: porquanto as casas das cidades dos levitas é a possessão deles entre os filhos de Israel.

34Mas a terra dos arredores de suas cidades não se venderá, porque é perpétua possessão deles.

35E quando teu irmão empobrecer, e se refugiar a ti, tu o ampararás: como peregrino e estrangeiro viverá contigo.

36Não tomarás juros dele, nem lucro; mas terás temor de teu Deus, e teu irmão viverá contigo.

37Não lhe darás teu dinheiro a juros, nem tua comida a ganho:

38Eu sou o SENHOR vosso Deus, que vos tirei da terra do Egito, para vos dar a terra de Canaã, para ser vosso Deus.

39E quando teu irmão empobrecer, estando contigo, e se vender a ti, não lhe farás servir como servo:

40Como criado, como estrangeiro estará contigo; até o ano do jubileu te servirá.

41Então sairá de tua presença, ele e seus filhos consigo, e voltará à sua família, e à possessão de seus pais se restituirá.

42Porque são meus servos, os quais tirei eu da terra do Egito: não serão vendidos à maneira de servos.

43Não serás senhor dele com dureza, mas terás temor de teu Deus.

44Assim teu servo como tua serva que tiveres, serão das nações que estão em vosso ao redor: deles comprareis servos e servas.

45Também comprareis dos filhos dos forasteiros que vivem entre vós, e dos que da linhagem deles são nascidos em vossa terra, que estão convosco; os quais tereis por possessão:

46E os possuireis por herança para vossos filhos depois de vós, como possessão hereditária; para sempre vos servireis deles; porém em vossos irmãos os filhos de Israel, não vos dominareis cada um sobre seu irmão com dureza.

47E se o peregrino ou estrangeiro que está contigo, adquirisse meios, e teu irmão que está com ele empobrecer, e se vender ao peregrino ou estrangeiro que está contigo, ou à raça da família do estrangeiro;

48Depois que se houver vendido, poderá ser resgatado: um de seus irmãos o resgatará;

49Ou seu tio, ou o filho de seu tio o resgatará, ou o próximo de sua carne, de sua linhagem, o resgatará; ou se seus meios alcançarem, ele mesmo se resgatará.

50E contará com o que o comprou, desde o ano que se vendeu a ele até o ano do jubileu: e há de estabelecer preço o dinheiro de sua venda conforme o número dos anos, e se fará com ele conforme o tempo de um criado assalariado.

51Se ainda forem muitos anos, conforme eles voltará para seu resgate do dinheiro pelo qual se vendeu.

52E se restar pouco tempo até o ano do jubileu, então contará com ele, e devolverá seu resgate conforme seus anos.

53Como com tomado a salário anualmente fará com ele: não será senhor dele com aspereza diante de teus olhos.

54Mas se não se resgatar em esses anos, no ano do jubileu sairá, ele, e seus filhos com ele.

55Porque meus servos são os filhos de Israel; são servos meus, aos quais tirei da terra do Egito: 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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