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Levítico 25

VBL · Chapter 25/27

1El Señor le dijo a Moisés en el Monte Sinaí,

2“Dile a los israelitas: Cuando entren a la tierra que les daré, la tierra misma debe también observar un descanso sabático en honor al Señor.

3Seis años puedes cultivar tus campos, cuidar tus viñedos y cosechar tus cultivos.

4Pero el séptimo año ha de ser un sábado de completo descanso para la tierra, un sábado en honor al Señor. No planten sus campos ni cuiden sus viñedos.

5No cosechen lo que haya crecido en sus campos, ni recojan las uvas que no hayan cuidado. La tierra debe tener un año de completo descanso.

6Pueden comer lo que la tierra produzca durante el año sabático. Esto se aplica a ti mismo, a tus esclavos y esclavas, a los trabajadores asalariados y a los extranjeros que viven contigo,

7y a tu ganado y a los animales salvajes que viven en tu tierra. Todo lo que crezca puede ser usado como alimento.

8“Cuenta siete años sabáticos, es decir, siete veces siete años, para que los siete años sabáticos sumen cuarenta y nueve años.

9Luego haz sonar la trompeta por todo el país el décimo día del séptimo mes, que es el Día de la Expiación. Asegúrate de que esta señal se oiga en todo el país.

10Dedicarás el año cincuenta y anunciarás la libertad en todo el país para todos los que viven allí. Este será su Jubileo, cuando cada uno de ustedes vuelva a reclamar su propiedad y a formar parte de su familia una vez más.

11El 50º año será un jubileo para ti. No siembren la tierra, no cosechen lo que haya podido crecer en sus campos, ni recojan las uvas de sus viñedos que no hayan cuidado.

12Es un Jubileo y debe ser sagrado para ustedes. Podrán comer todo lo que produzca la tierra.

13En este año jubilar, cada uno de ustedes volverá a su propiedad.

14“Si venden tierra a su vecino, o le compran tierra, no se exploten mutuamente.

15Cuando compren a su prójimo, calculen cuántos años han pasado desde el último Jubileo, pues él les venderá según los años de cosecha que queden.

16Cuantos más años queden, más pagarán; cuantos menos años queden, menos pagarán, porque en realidad les está vendiendo un número determinado de cosechas.

17No se exploten los unos a los otros, sino respeten a Dios, porque yo soy el Señor su Dios.

18“Guarden mis reglas y observen mis mandamientos, para que puedan vivir con seguridad en la tierra.

19Entonces la tierra producirá una buena cosecha, para que tengas suficiente comida y vivas seguro en ella.

20Pero si preguntas: ‘¿A qué iremos en el séptimo año si no sembramos o cosechamos nuestros cultivos?’

21Yo te bendeciré en el sexto año, para que la tierra produzca una cosecha que sea suficiente para tres años.

22Como sembrarán en el octavo año, seguirán comiendo de esa cosecha, que durará hasta su cosecha en el noveno año.

23“La tierra no debe ser vendida permanentemente, porque realmente me pertenece. Para mí ustedes son sólo extranjeros y viajeros de paso.

24Así que cualquier tierra que compren, deben hacer arreglos para devolverlo a su dueño original.

25Si uno de los tuyos se vuelve pobre y te vende parte de su tierra, su familia cercana puede venir y comprar de nuevo lo que ha vendido.

26Sin embargo, si no tienen a nadie que pueda volver a comprarla, pero mientras tanto su situación financiera mejora y tienen suficiente para volver a comprar la tierra,

27trabajarán cuántos años han pasado desde la venta, y devolverán el saldo a la persona que la compró, y volverán a su propiedad.

28Si no pueden reunir lo suficiente para pagar a la persona por la tierra, el comprador seguirá siendo su propietario hasta el Año Jubilar. Pero en el Jubileo la tierra será devuelta para que el propietario original pueda volver a su propiedad.

29“Si alguien vende una casa situada en una ciudad amurallada, tiene derecho a comprarla de nuevo durante un año completo después de venderla. Puede ser comprada de nuevo en cualquier momento durante ese año.

30Si no se recompra al final del año, la propiedad de la casa en la ciudad amurallada se transfiere de forma permanente al que la compró y a sus descendientes. No será devuelta en el Jubileo.

31Pero las casas de las aldeas que no tienen muros a su alrededor deben ser tratadas como si estuvieran en el campo. Pueden ser compradas de nuevo, y serán devueltas en el Jubileo.

32“Sin embargo, los levitas siempre tienen el derecho de volver a comprar sus casas en los pueblos que les pertenecen.

33Todo lo que los levitas poseen puede ser comprado de nuevo, incluso las casas vendidas en sus ciudades, y debe ser devuelto en el Jubileo. Eso es porque las casas en las ciudades de los levitas son lo que se les dio en propiedad como su parte entre los israelitas.

34Sin embargo, los campos que rodean sus ciudades no deben ser vendidos porque pertenecen a los levitas permanentemente.

35“Si alguno de los tuyos se vuelve pobre y no puede subsistir, debes ayudarlos de la misma manera que ayudarías a un extranjero o a un extraño, para que puedan seguir viviendo en tu vecindario.

36No les hagas pagar ningún interés o exigir más de lo que pidieron prestado, pero respeta a tu Dios para que puedan seguir viviendo en tu zona.

37No les prestes plata con intereses ni les vendas comida a un precio exagerado.

38Recuerda, yo soy el Señor tu Dios que te sacó de Egipto para darte la tierra de Canaán y ser tu Dios.

39“Si alguno de los tuyos se hace pobre y tiene que venderse para trabajar para ti, no le obligues a trabajar como esclavo.

40Haz que vivan contigo como un trabajador asalariado que se queda contigo por un tiempo. Trabajarán para usted hasta el año del Jubileo.

41Entonces ellos y sus hijos deben ser liberados, y pueden volver a su familia y a la propiedad de su familia.

42Los israelitas no deben ser vendidos como esclavos porque me pertenecen como mis esclavos - los saqué de Egipto.

43No los traten con brutalidad. Tengan respeto por su Dios.

44“Compra tus esclavos y esclavas de las naciones vecinas.

45También puedes comprarlos a los extranjeros que han venido a vivir entre ustedes, o a sus descendientes nacidos en tu tierra. Puedes tratarlos como tu propiedad.

46Puedes pasarlos a tus hijos para que los hereden como propiedad después de tu muerte. Puedes convertirlos en esclavos de por vida, pero no debes tratar brutalmente como esclavo a ninguno de tu propio pueblo, los israelitas.

47“Si un extranjero entre ustedes tiene éxito, y uno de los suyos que vive cerca se empobrece y se vende al extranjero o a un miembro de su familia,

48todavía tienen derecho a ser comprados de nuevo después de la venta. Un miembro de su familia puede volver a comprarlos.

49Un tío, o primo, o cualquier pariente cercano de su familia puede volver a comprarlos. Si tienen éxito, pueden volver a comprarse a sí mismos.

50El interesado y su comprador calcularán el tiempo desde el año de la venta hasta el año del jubileo. El precio dependerá del número de años, calculado con la tarifa diaria de un trabajador asalariado.

51Si quedan muchos años, deberán pagar un porcentaje mayor del precio de compra.

52Si sólo quedan unos pocos años antes del Año Jubilar, entonces sólo tienen que pagar un porcentaje dependiendo del número de años que les queden.

53Deben vivir con su propietario extranjero como un trabajador asalariado, contratado de año en año, pero procuren que el propietario no lo trate brutalmente.

54Si no son recomprados de ninguna de las maneras descritas, ellos y sus hijos serán liberados en el Año Jubilar.

55Porque los israelitas me pertenecen como mis esclavos. Son mis esclavos, yo los saqué de Egipto. Yo soy el Señor tu Dios”.

📖 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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