Leviticus 25:47-27:13

English Standard Version

Redeeming a Poor Man

⁴⁷“If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and ^(A)your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger's clan, ⁴⁸then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, ⁴⁹or his uncle or his cousin may ^(B)redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he ^(C)grows rich he may redeem himself. ⁵⁰He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be ^(D)rated as the time of a hired worker. ⁵¹If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price. ⁵²If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service. ⁵³He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. ^(E)He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight. ⁵⁴And if he is not redeemed by these means, then ^(F)he and his children with him shall be released in the year of jubilee. ⁵⁵For it is ^(G)to me that the people of Israel are servants.^[a] They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Blessings for Obedience

26 “You shall not make ^(H)idols for yourselves or erect an ^(I)image or ^(J)pillar, and you shall not set up a ^(K)figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God. ²^(L)You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

³^(M)“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, ⁴then ^(N)I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. ⁵^(O)Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And ^(P)you shall eat your bread to the full and ^(Q)dwell in your land securely. ⁶^(R)I will give peace in the land, and ^(S)you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. And ^(T)I will remove harmful beasts from the land, ^(U)and the sword shall not go through your land. ⁷You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. ⁸^(V)Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. ⁹^(W)I will turn to you and ^(X)make you fruitful and multiply you and will confirm my covenant with you. ¹⁰You shall eat ^(Y)old store long kept, and you shall clear out the old to make way for the new. ¹¹^(Z)I will make my dwelling^[b] among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. ¹²^(AA)And I ^(AB)will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. ¹³^(AC)I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. ^(AD)And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.

Punishment for Disobedience

¹⁴^(AE)“But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, ¹⁵if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but ^(AF)break my covenant, ¹⁶then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with ^(AG)wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And ^(AH)you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. ¹⁷I will ^(AI)set my face against you, and ^(AJ)you shall be struck down before your enemies. ^(AK)Those who hate you shall rule over you, and ^(AL)you shall flee when none pursues you. ¹⁸And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again ^(AM)sevenfold for your sins, ¹⁹and I will break ^(AN)the pride of your power, and I ^(AO)will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. ²⁰And ^(AP)your strength shall be spent in vain, for ^(AQ)your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

²¹^(AR)“Then if you walk contrary to me and will not listen to me, I will continue striking you, sevenfold for your sins. ²²And ^(AS)I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that ^(AT)your roads shall be deserted.

²³“And ^(AU)if by this discipline you are not turned to me ^(AV)but walk contrary to me, ²⁴^(AW)then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will strike you sevenfold for your sins. ²⁵And ^(AX)I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant. And if you gather within your cities, ^(AY)I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. ²⁶^(AZ)When I break your supply^[c] of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and ^(BA)you shall eat and not be satisfied.

²⁷“But ^(BB)if in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, ²⁸then I will walk contrary to you ^(BC)in fury, and I myself will discipline you ^(BD)sevenfold for your sins. ²⁹^(BE)You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. ³⁰And ^(BF)I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and ^(BG)cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you. ³¹And I will ^(BH)lay your cities waste and will ^(BI)make your sanctuaries desolate, and ^(BJ)I will not smell your pleasing aromas. ³²And ^(BK)I myself will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be ^(BL)appalled at it. ³³And ^(BM)I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.

³⁴^(BN)“Then the land shall enjoy^[d] its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. ³⁵As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it. ³⁶And as for those of you who are left, ^(BO)I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies. The ^(BP)sound of a ^(BQ)driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues. ³⁷They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though none pursues. And ^(BR)you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. ³⁸And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. ³⁹And those of you who are left shall ^(BS)rot away in your enemies' lands because of their iniquity, and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall rot away like them.

⁴⁰“But if ^(BT)they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they ^(BU)committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, ⁴¹so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their ^(BV)uncircumcised heart is ^(BW)humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, ⁴²then I will ^(BX)remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will ^(BY)remember the land. ⁴³But ^(BZ)the land shall be abandoned by them and enjoy its Sabbaths while it lies desolate without them, and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my rules and their soul abhorred my statutes. ⁴⁴Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, ^(CA)I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and ^(CB)break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. ⁴⁵But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, ^(CC)whom I brought out of the land of Egypt ^(CD)in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.”

⁴⁶^(CE)These are the statutes and rules and laws that the Lord made between himself and the people of Israel through Moses ^(CF)on Mount Sinai.

Laws About Vows

27 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ²“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, If anyone ^(CG)makes a special vow to the Lord involving the valuation of persons, ³then the valuation of a male from twenty years old up to sixty years old shall be fifty shekels^[e] of silver, according to the ^(CH)shekel of the sanctuary. ⁴If the person is a female, the valuation shall be thirty shekels. ⁵If the person is from five years old up to twenty years old, the valuation shall be for a male twenty shekels, and for a female ten shekels. ⁶If the person is from a month old up to five years old, the valuation shall be for a male five shekels of silver, and for a female the valuation shall be three shekels of silver. ⁷And if the person is sixty years old or over, then the valuation for a male shall be fifteen shekels, and for a female ten shekels. ⁸And if someone is too poor to pay the valuation, then he shall be made to stand before the priest, and the priest shall value him; the priest shall value him according to what the vower can afford.

⁹“If the vow^[f] is an animal that may be offered as an offering to the Lord, all of it that he gives to the Lord is holy. ¹⁰^(CI)He shall not exchange it or make a substitute for it, good for bad, or bad for good; and if he does in fact substitute one animal for another, then both it and the substitute shall be holy. ¹¹And if it is any unclean animal that may not be offered as an offering to the Lord, then he shall stand the animal before the priest, ¹²and the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall be. ¹³^(CJ)But if he wishes to redeem it, he shall add a ^(CK)fifth to the valuation.