August 3, 2013, Reading

Leviticus 25:1, 8-17

1 Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and said:

8 “You will count seven weeks of years — seven times seven years, that is to say a period of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years.

9 And on the tenth day of the seventh month you will sound the trumpet; on the Day of Expiation you will sound the trumpet throughout the land.

10 You will declare this fiftieth year to be sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the country’s inhabitants. You will keep this as a jubilee: each of you will return to his ancestral property, each to his own clan.

11 This fiftieth year will be a jubilee year for you; in it you will not sow, you will not harvest the grain that has come up on its own or in it gather grapes from your untrimmed vine.

12 The jubilee will be a holy thing for you; during it you will eat whatever the fields produce.

13 “In this year of jubilee, each of you will return to his ancestral property.

14 If you buy land from, or sell land to, your fellow-countryman, neither of you may exploit the other.

15 In buying from your fellow-countryman, you will take account of the number of years since the jubilee; the sale-price he fixes for you will depend on the number of productive years still to run.

16 The greater the number of years, the higher the price you will ask for it; the fewer the number of years, the greater the reduction; for what he is selling you is a certain number of harvests.

17 So you will not exploit one another, but fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God.