The Sabbatical Year
GOD spoke to Moses, continuing to communicate with him at the foot of Mount Sinai, saying,

“Speak to the Israelites. You must say to them in My name: ‘As I have told you, when you enter the land that I am giving you, the land must periodically rest by observing an agricultural Sabbath in honor of GOD and in acknowledgment of the fact that He created the world. Specifically –

Once you have conquered and settled the land, you must begin counting the years. You may sow your field for six years, and you may prune your vineyard for six years, gathering in the land’s produce,

but in the seventh year, the land must be given a complete rest; this is its Sabbath in honor of GOD. You must not sow your field, nor may you prune your vineyard.

During this year, you may only gather produce that has been declared ownerless. If you do not declare the produce of your fields and vineyards ownerless, you may not even reap the aftergrowth (i.e., whatever has grown on its own from the seed that fell to the ground during) your previous harvest, and you may not pick the grapes that you have set aside for yourself, for this year must be a year of rest for the land with respect to ownership, too.

Once you have declared the produce that grows during the Sabbath of the land ownerless, it will be yours to eat. It must be equally available for you, for your Jewish bondmen and bondwomen, as well as for your non-Jewish hired worker and resident alien who live with you.

All of its produce must also be made freely available to eat for your domestic animals and for the undomesticated animals that are in your land, on an equal basis.

The Jubilee Year
Each period of six years of work followed by one sabbatical year will make up one sabbatical cycle. In addition to counting the years for the purpose of observing the sabbatical year, you must count for yourself seven sabbatical cycles, i.e., seven years seven times, observing each seventh year as a sabbatical year. The time-period of these seven sabbatical cycles will thus amount to 49 years.

Regardless of whether you will have observed the sabbatical years during this 49-year period, you must proclaim the following year, the 50th, to be a special year, by means of shofar blasts: In the seventh month, Tishrei, on the 10th of that month, i.e., on the Day of Atonement, you must proclaim this year to be special by sounding the shofar throughout your land.

Although you are to blow the shofar only on Yom Kippur, you – via your representatives, the court – must sanctify the 50th year from its beginning, 10 days earlier, by declaring it to begin on that day. On Yom Kippur of this year, you must proclaim freedom throughout the land for all Jewish bondservants – whether they were indentured by the court in order to pay back what they stole or they indentured themselves out of destitution – even if their original term of service is not yet up. The release afforded by this year applies only to those bondservants who live in the Land of Israel. You must designate this year as the Jubilee, so named after the horn of the ram (yovel) blown to announce it. During this year, each of you must return to his landed property; thus, you must return any fields that you have purchased to their original owners. Together with the other bondservants who are released during this year, each of you whose term of service has been extended by having his ears pierced must also return to his family.

Agriculture in the Jubilee Year
Even though the release of bondservants begins only on Yom Kippur, the observance of the Jubilee year does not extend until Yom Kippur of the following year. You must treat only the 50th year itself as the Jubilee and not apply any of its laws to any part of the year following. Regarding agricultural work, this year must be treated just like the sabbatical year: you must not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. You must also declare this year’s produce ownerless; unless you do, you may not even reap its aftergrowth, and you may not pick the grapes that you had set aside for yourself.

It is the Jubilee year: its holiness extends to its produce, rendering its use subject to specific limitations. Among these limitations is selling the produce commercially; you may only sell small amounts in order to purchase other articles. If you do purchase something with the proceeds of the sale of this year’s produce, the sanctity of the produce (together with the attendant limitations on its use) transfers to the purchased article; however, the original produce remains holy for you – it cannot be “redeemed” out of its sanctity, as other consecrated items can. The produce of the sabbatical year possesses similar sanctity. Like the produce of the sabbatical year, you may only eat any particular type of produce of the Jubilee year that you have stored away as long as that type of produce is also available for undomesticated animals to eat from the field. Once it has ceased to be available outside, you must remove it from your property, bring it into the open field, and declare it ownerless. You may then gather it along with the rest of the people.

As just stated, during this Jubilee year, each of you must return to his landed property, meaning that all landed property that had been purchased during the previous 49 years must be returned to its original owner. This injunction includes the case of a person who purchases his father’s field from the individual to whom the father sold it; the son must return this field to his father at the onset of the Jubilee year.

Selling Movable Property
As mentioned, it is forbidden to deal commercially in produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years. If a person transgresses this prohibition, he will suffer monetary loss and eventually be forced to sell some of his personal (non-landed) property in order to pay for his sustenance. Hence, I will now review some of the laws of selling this type of property: As you have been taught, you must not cheat in business dealings, whether with Jews or with non-Jews. Nevertheless, you must show your coreligionist special consideration in this regard. Thus, when you sell some movable possession to your fellow Jew or buy something from your fellow Jew, you must not cheat one another. On the contrary, you must assist your fellow Jew by trying to buy from him and sell to him whenever possible.

Selling Real Estate
This requirement to be equitable in business applies to your dealings in landed property, as well. Therefore, when you purchase land, you must purchase it from your fellow Jew while reducing the price according to the number of years that have elapsed since the previous Jubilee year. For his part, he must sell you his land according to the number of years the land is expected to produce crops until the next such year.

Thus, the more the remaining years, the more you (as the seller) may increase your offer for its purchase price; the fewer the remaining years, the more you (as the buyer) may decrease your offer for its purchase price. The price is prorated because the landowner is selling you not the land outright – since the land must return to him in the Jubilee year – but is merely leasing the land to you so you can produce a specific number of crops. In this way, both of you will be ensured of not cheating each other. In any case, once he sells you his land, he may redeem it only after two years have elapsed since the sale.

Besides not cheating each other by buying or selling at unfair prices, none of you may taunt your fellow Jew or, as you have been told, mislead him by giving him business advice that is in your best interest rather than his, even if it is not to his detriment. Even though you may be able to deceive other people into believing that you advised him in his interest, you cannot deceive Me; you must therefore fear your God, for I am GOD, your God, who may be relied upon to punish you if you transgress this prohibition.

You must carry out My rules pertaining to the sabbatical year, and safeguard My ordinances pertaining to the sabbatical year by studying them thoroughly, and then perform them. Then, even if you are guilty of other transgressions, you will live on the land securely. If, however, you neglect the observance of the sabbatical year, you will forfeit the privilege of dwelling in your land.

God’s Blessing
Moreover, if you observe the sabbatical year properly, the land will yield its produce, you will eat to satiety, for the food will be miraculously filling, and you will live upon the land securely, i.e., without fear of drought.

If, now that you have heard these assurances of abundance and satiety, you should wonder, “What, indeed, will we eat in the seventh year? How will these blessings be materialized? We cannot sow and reap a harvest, and moreover, we cannot even gather our produce that grows by itself – such as fruit and the aftergrowth of the preceding harvest – into our homes, for it all must be declared ownerless!”

Know then, that I will command My blessing for you in the sixth year, and it will yield enough produce for the better part of three years: the second half of the sixth year, after the harvest in Nisan; the entire seventh year; and until Nisan of the eighth year, when you can harvest what you sowed in Marcheshvan of that year,

for you will sow in Marcheshvan of the eighth year, while still eating from the old, sixth-year crops. You will then harvest the eighth-year crop in Nisan of that year, but nonetheless, you will still eat mostly from the old crop while the eighth-year crop remains in the fields and granaries to dry, as usual, until Tishrei of the ninth year, which is the time of the arrival of its crop from the fields and granaries into your homes. Moreover, once every 50 years, when the 49th year – which is a sabbatical year – is followed by the Jubilee year, in which agricultural work is also forbidden – I will make the sixth year yield enough produce for four years!

Real Estate in the Jubilee Year
As stated, in the Jubilee year you must return all land you may have purchased during the previous 49 years to its original owners. This injunction is also subject to a passive commandment: The land must not be sold in such a way as to sever it permanently from its original owner. Do not feel as though you have been dealt with unjustly by having to return the land that you paid for, for the land belongs to Me. You should never consider yourselves the land’s owners, for in reality, you are transient sojourners and temporary residents dwelling with Me on My land.

For the same reason, throughout the land of your possession, you must also allow the land its redemption before the beginning of the Jubilee year, according to the following rules:

Fields
Land should only be sold on account of destitution; even under such circumstances, one should never sell all his land, but always leave some for himself to live off of. It was mentioned that it is forbidden to deal commercially with produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years, and that if a person transgresses this prohibition, he will suffer financial loss and eventually be forced to sell some of his personal (non-landed) property in order to pay for his sustenance. If he nonetheless continues to deal commercially with produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years, he will incur even greater loss and be forced to sell his landed property. Hence, I will now review some of the laws of selling landed property: If your brother Israelite becomes destitute and therefore sells some of his inherited land, this land may later be “redeemed,” i.e., repurchased: His redeemer who is related to him may, two years after the sale, come forth and redeem that which his relative had sold. The purchaser may not refuse to sell back the land.

If a man does not have a relative who has the means to act as the redeemer of his land, but he obtains sufficient means on his own to afford its redemption,

he must calculate the years for which the land has been sold, i.e., the number of years from the sale until the Jubilee year, and return the difference between the sale price and the prorated value of the years that have elapsed since the sale to the man to whom he sold it, and then he may return to his inheritance.

But if he cannot afford to repay the purchaser the full prorated amount due him, he may not redeem his land piecemeal; his land-sale must remain in the possession of the one who has purchased it until the beginning of the Jubilee year. It must go out of the purchaser’s possession in the Jubilee year and revert to the original owner’s inheritance.

Houses in Walled Cities
It was mentioned that it is forbidden to deal commercially with produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years; that if a person transgresses this prohibition, he will suffer financial loss and eventually be forced to sell some of his personal (non-landed) property in order to pay for his sustenance; and that if he continues to do so, he will incur even greater loss and be forced to sell his landed property. If, even after this, he continues to deal commercially with produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years, he will incur still greater loss and be forced to sell his home. Hence, I will now review some of the laws of selling houses: In contrast to farmland, when a man sells a residential house situated inside a city that was walled when you entered the Promised Land – even if it is no longer walled when the house is sold – its redemption may take place only until the end of the year of its sale. Thus, its period of redemption is one full year.

If it is not redeemed by the end of a complete year since its sale, then that house in the city that had a surrounding wall when you entered the land will remain permanently the property of the person who purchased it, throughout his generations. It will not leave his possession in the Jubilee year, even if the Jubilee year begins during the year of its sale.

Houses in Unwalled Cities
In contrast to houses in walled cities, houses in open cities that do not have a surrounding wall are to be considered, for the purpose of redemption, as the field of the land, and may therefore be redeemed throughout the entire period between the sale and the beginning of the Jubilee year. But whereas fields may be redeemed only beginning two years after their sale, such houses must be allowed their redemption even immediately after their sale, if the original owner or his relative can afford it; there is no two-year minimum wait. Otherwise, the house will leave the purchaser’s possession in the Jubilee year.

Houses in Levite Cities
You will be taught later that when you enter the land, you must set aside 48 cities for the Levites to live in, and that these cities are to be surrounded by a 1000-cubit-wide strip of open space, which is further surrounded by another 1000-cubit-wide strip of cultivatable land. Regarding the cities of the Levites: the Levites will have unlimited rights of redemption both of the houses of their cities and of their landed property. They will not have to wait two years to redeem their fields, and will be able to redeem their houses even after a year subsequent to the sale.

If someone purchases a house – or even an entire city – from the Levites, the purchased house or inherited city will leave the possession of the purchaser in the Jubilee year and return to the Levites, because the houses of the cities of the Levites are their sole inherited property amid the Israelites. They will not be allotted any other tribal inheritance as will the rest of the tribes. The rule that the Levites have unlimited rights of redemption applies also if the Levite who is redeeming a house or an entire city is doing so from other Levites, i.e., a Levite relative who has redeemed the house or city from a non-Levite buyer. Likewise, if the house or city is not repurchased by its original owners from the Levite redeemer by the beginning of the Jubilee year, the redeemed house or inherited city will automatically leave the possession of this Levite redeemer in the Jubilee year and return to its original owners, for the same reason.

You will be taught later that a person may consecrate his field to the Temple treasury, and if he does so, he may afterwards redeem it until the Jubilee year; and that further, if he fails to redeem it by then (or someone else redeems it before he has a chance to), it becomes the permanent property of the priests in the Jubilee year. The rules governing the redemption of a consecrated field are different for Levites, however: A field from the outer strip of land surrounding the open areas of the Levites’ cities cannot be “sold” to the priests in this manner, because it is the Levites’ eternal inheritance. It does not become the permanent property of the priests in the Jubilee year (whether or not the treasurer sold it to a third party), and the Levite may redeem it even after that year. These special rules apply only to the Levites’ original 48 cities, not to any additional cities they may build for themselves afterward, nor to any house that a Levite owns in some other city.

Charity and Interest
If, even after this, an individual continues to deal commercially with produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years, he will incur still greater financial loss and be forced to borrow money at interest. Hence, I will now review some of the laws of charity and interest: If your brother Israelite is becoming destitute, then you must take pains to support him, i.e., come to his financial aid, as soon as his “hand,” i.e., his financial power, begins to falter beside you, so that he can continue to live with you in financial solvency, for it is far easier to help him before his financial collapse than afterward. You must demonstrate this concern for him even if he be a convert, and even if he be a resident alien, who can only partially be considered your “brother.” If he ultimately does become destitute, you must loan him money or give him a gift of charity, as you have been taught and will be taught in greater detail later.

When you loan him money, you must not take interest from him, as you have been taught. This offense is so serious that I now repeat it: You must not take interest from him! I know that you will be tempted to consider interest just compensation for the earnings your funds would have produced had you not loaned them to your fellow, so I therefore admonish you: You must fear your God and resist this temptation. You might also be tempted to pretend that the money you are lending your fellow is really that of a non-Jew and that you are exacting interest from your fellow on behalf of this non-Jew; I therefore admonish you: You must fear your God, for I know the truth. Rather, enable your brother Israelite to live with you in financial solvency by loaning him money interest-free.

The prohibition against taking interest applies regardless of the form of the loan: You must not give him your money on the condition of being paid back with interest; similarly, you must not give him your food or anything else on the condition of being paid back with interest.

I am GOD, your God, who took you out of Egypt: Just as I was able to discern who was and who was not a firstborn in Egypt, so can I tell if you loan someone your money pretending that it is a non-Jew’s. Furthermore, I took you out of Egypt on the condition that you accept My commandments, even if they be difficult, such as this one, and in order to give you Canaan as your reward for fulfilling all My commandments – so rest assured that your reward will be commensurate with the difficulty of fulfilling the commandment. Finally, I took you out of Egypt to give you Canaan in order to be a God to you, for the Promised Land is more receptive to Divine consciousness than any other place in the world; therefore, relatively speaking, I consider Myself God to whomever lives in it, and consider whoever leaves it to be an idolater.

The Jewish Bondman
If, even after the above-mentioned warnings, an individual continues to deal commercially with produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years, he will incur still greater financial loss and be forced to indenture himself as a bondman, as follows: As you have been taught, the court can indenture a man (but not a woman) as a bondman if he steals something and cannot otherwise afford to pay back the value of what he has stolen. A man (but not a woman) can also indenture himself as a bondman for a period of six years if he becomes so poor that he has no other way to support himself. If your brother Israelite becomes destitute, even though he is living with you and you are commanded not to let him become destitute, and he is indentured to you as a bondman, you must nevertheless not work him with labor that makes him appear to be a bondman, i.e., publicly degrading work such as carrying your clothes behind you in public or putting your boots on you in public.

Rather, he must be employed by you as would be an employee or a hired resident: give him honorable craftwork to do and treat him respectfully. Just like a bondman who was indentured by the court in order to pay off his theft, he may only work with you until the beginning of the Jubilee year. If this year occurs in the middle of his term of service, he goes free.

When his term of service is up (or terminated by the Jubilee year), he must leave you – thereby ending your obligation to feed him and his children with him. He must return to his family and reassume the social status of his fathers. No one is allowed to despise him or belittle him on account of his having been a bondman.

For even though he was your servant for a time, they – the Jewish people – are, in reality, My servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. My deed of purchase, so to speak, predates yours. Thus, you all carry the distinction and prestige of being My servants, and therefore, when one of you is indentured as a bondman to another Israelite, it is not such an ignominy. For this reason, you may indeed be indentured as bondmen to one another, but by the same token, you must not treat your Israelite bondman as a true bondman but as an employee. Accordingly, Israelite bondmen must not be indentured as a non-Jewish bondservant is sold, i.e., publicly, publicizing their names and forcing them to stand on a platform so prospective buyers can examine them.

In addition to not shaming the bondman in public, you must not work him even privately with backbreaking, i.e., demoralizing or unusual labor, by having him do unnecessary jobs or tasks for which you specify no time-limit. Even though you may be able to deceive other people into believing that you are not working him this way, you cannot deceive Me; you must therefore fear your God and do what I say.

Non-Jewish Bondservants
You will be taught later that you must either kill or expel all members of the seven Canaanite nations currently occupying the Land of Israel. Thus, since, as just stated, you must not give your Jewish bondservants menial tasks, and you cannot employ any of the present occupants of the land for this purpose, it follows that the only bondmen or bondwomen whom you may possess for menial labor must come from the non-Jewish nations who reside not within the borders of the Promised Land but around you, outside its borders. You may only purchase non-Jewish bondmen or bondwomen from them.

National identity among non-Jewish nations is transmitted patrilineally; thus, you are not required to kill or expel children of Canaanite women if these children are fathered by men from other non-Jewish nations. Therefore, you may also purchase bondservants from among the children of female Canaanite residents who happen to live among you, as well as – if these children have their own families – from their family who happens to live among you, to whom they gave birth in your land from non-Canaanite fathers. If you purchase such bondservants, they too will become part of your estate.

You may retain ownership of them for your children after you as an inherited estate, and may thus have them work for you forever, i.e., with no limitations on their term of service. But as for your brethren, the Israelites, no man – not even a tribal prince or your king – may work his brother Israelite with backbreaking, i.e., demoralizing or unusual labor.

The Jewish Bondman, continued
If an individual indentured himself to another Jew as a bondman as a result of becoming impoverished on account of having dealt commercially in produce of the sabbatical or Jubilee years, and continues to transgress this prohibition after completing his term of service, he will again incur financial loss, but this time be forced to indenture himself as a bondman to a non-Jew, as follows: If a resident alien gains financial means, it will be on account of associating with you and coming under your influence, and if your brother Israelite becomes destitute, it may well be on account of associating with him and coming under his influence. If your brother Israelite is indentured in his destitution as a bondman to a resident alien among you, or worse, to serve as an attendant of an idol of the non-Jewish family of a convert or resident alien, the sale is valid, and the Israelite may remain in the employ of the resident alien or idolatrous cult until the beginning of the Jubilee year, even if this be more than six years from the date of the sale. If the bondman has children when he indentures himself to his non-Jewish employer, the employer is obligated to feed these children throughout the bondman’s term of service.

Nonetheless, after he is indentured, he must have unlimited rights of redemption. One of his brothers must redeem him immediately in order to prevent him from assimilating into non-Jewish culture.

If the brothers cannot redeem him immediately, then either his uncle or his cousin must redeem him; or, if they cannot, the next closest relative from his family must redeem him; or, if none of his relatives can redeem him immediately, then when he becomes able to afford it, he can be redeemed on his own.

This redemption must be conducted as a fair and equitable business transaction; whoever redeems him must calculate with his purchaser how many years elapsed from the year he was indentured to him until the Jubilee year. The purchase price will then be divided by that number of years: the result will then be considered his working rate during his term as a hired worker.

If there are still many years remaining until the Jubilee year, he must accordingly return his redemption money to his purchaser out of the money for which he was purchased.

Similarly, if only a few years remain until the Jubilee year, he must make the same calculation. He must return the redemption money to the purchaser according to his years that remain until the Jubilee year.

He must be considered by his purchaser as an employee hired on a yearly basis. The purchaser must not oppress him with backbreaking – i.e., demoralizing or unusual – labor; if the purchaser does so in your sight, the purchaser will understand any lack of response on your part as tacit approval.

If he is not redeemed through any of these ways, he must leave his non-Jewish employer in the Jubilee year – thus ending his employer’s obligation to feed him and his children with him.

He must be redeemed because the Israelites are servants to Me; they – the Jewish people – are, in reality, My servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. My deed of purchase, so to speak, predates that of any other purchaser. I am GOD, your God; we are so intimately bound that whenever you are enslaved, it is as if I, so to speak, am also enslaved.

Even if you indenture yourself as an attendant to an idol, you must not interpret this Divine providence as My implicit approval that you engage in this idol’s cult: As you have been told, you must not make idols for yourselves, nor may you set up for yourselves a sculpted image or single-stone pedestal worshiped as an idol. On the other hand, you must not attempt to remain faithful to Me while in the non-Jew’s employ by devising sham means of worshiping Me. For instance, once the Temple is built, you will be forbidden to prostrate yourselves – even to Me – on any paved surface other than the paved Temple Courtyard. Thus, you must not lay a pavement of stones on which to prostrate yourselves anywhere else in your land (and all the more so, outside of it), for I am GOD, your God, whom you must worship according to the guidelines that I have established for you.

Similarly, if you are indentured into the employ of any non-Jew, you must not interpret this Divine providence as My implicit approval that you imitate his lifestyle. You must continue to keep My Sabbaths and fear My Sanctuary throughout your term of service to him. I am GOD, who may be relied upon to reward you for observing these commandments.’”

Reward for Fulfilling the Command­ments
God continued to instruct Moses what to convey in His name to the people: “If you make sure to advance in the knowledge of My rules by studying the Torah assiduously, i.e., beyond the minimal requirement, and you make sure to study the Torah with the intent to safeguard your proper performance of My commandments, and then indeed perform them properly,

I will reciprocate by granting you material beneficence that exceeds the limitations of nature: I will give you the rains in a manner most favorable to your benefit and convenience: They will fall in their time – i.e., the time I have designated for them exclusively – nighttime, when people are not outdoors working the land. This way, you will be able to work the land by day unhindered by rain. Moreover, I will further limit the rainfall to the time most convenient for you – the Sabbath night, when no one is usually about. Miraculously, the land will yield its full produce from the rain that falls during this short weekly period. Also miraculously, the naturally barren tree of the field will give forth its fruit.

There will be so much grain that threshing will occupy you until the grape harvest, and harvesting the grapes will occupy you until the time for sowing the fields again for grain. But you will not need this overabundance for yourselves, since your food will be so miraculously satiating that you will be able to eat just a small amount of your food to satiate yourselves. You will live in security in your land, i.e., without fear of drought.

I will not only bless you with abundance, but will ensure that you can enjoy it securely: I will grant peace in the land. You will lie down at night and sleep peacefully, for there will be no cause for fear. I will even remove wild beasts from the land so you will have no fear of them, and no foreign army will even pass through your land on its way elsewhere, so you will have no fear that they will plunder you on the way.

If you go to war outside your land, you will pursue your enemies but will not have to kill them yourselves, for they will fall before you, one by the sword of the other.

Five of the weakest among you will pursue a hundred of them. But the more of you who are loyal to My Torah, the less of you will be required proportionately to pursue your enemies, so thus, a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand of them, and moreover, in the merit of the increased number of those of you who observe My Torah, your enemies will fall before you by the sword in a miraculous way.

In recompense for your assiduous study of the Torah, I will turn My attention away from rewarding all My creatures for their obedience in order to focus on you, bestowing upon you special reward for serving Me beyond what is required. I will make you fruitful by increasing your fertility and guaranteeing that all your progeny be similarly fertile, and I will make all of you and your progeny physically robust and tall. I will ultimately establish My covenant with you in a new, permanent form, by making My teachings so much a part of your nature that you will never again transgress My will.

The produce will be of such high quality, last so long, and age so well that you will eat doubly old produce (i.e., the harvest of the year before last), for it will taste better than last year’s harvest, which will in turn taste better than this year’s harvest. For the same reasons, you will have to clear out the old, already dried produce from the storehouses – since you have not had a chance to eat it yet – in order to make room for the new harvest to dry there.

I will place My permanent dwelling – the Temple – in your midst, and My soul – My Divine Presence – will not reject you by departing from you.

You will become so accustomed to My presence that in the afterlife, I will, so to speak, walk among you and you will not be afraid of Me. Nonetheless, this familiarity will not make you any less aware of My transcendence, and therefore, you will still revere Me: I will be your God and you will be My people.

You should not hesitate to trust that I can perform all these miracles, for, after all, I am GOD, your God, who miraculously took you out of Egypt, from being slaves to them; I broke the crossbars of your yoke and led you upright into freedom.

Threats and Consequences
But if you commit the following sevenfold train of misdeeds: you purposely do not listen, i.e., do not study My Torah assiduously, intending thereby to affront Me; and consequently you do not perform all these commandments;

and if you consequently despise those who do follow My rules; reject the sages, who teach you My ordinances; prevent others from performing the commandments; deny that I gave the Torah and that its rules are all My commandments; and finally break My covenant with you by denying My very existence,

then I too, will do likewise to you, punishing you with a sevenfold train of calamities. I will set upon you disorientation, consumption and blisters, fever, diseases that dash the hopes and depress the soul of the sufferer’s family, who longs in vain for his recovery. You will sow your seed in vain, for it will either not grow, or if it does grow, your enemies will eat it.

Besides the above seven punishments, which are mainly for not studying the Torah and performing My commandments (the first two sins), I will turn toward you, according you special attention in punishing you for hating and forsaking Me beyond this (the last five sins). You will be smitten before your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you. You will flee, although no one will be pursuing you. These same words contain additional, more serious threats: I will angrily do the same to you. I will cause the following punishments to assail you in overlapping succession – before one is finished, the next will begin: disorienting pestilence, which will confine you to bed but not afflict your skin; but this will progress to consumption and blisters, which will damage your skin but not give you a fever; but this will progress to fever, which will make you feel ill but not destroy your hopes of recovery; but this will progress to diseases that dash your hopes of recovery but still allow others to entertain the hope that you will recover; but this will progress to diseases that depress the soul by depriving others, as well, of any hope for your recovery. One year you will sow your seed in vain, but the next year it will grow, but before you can harvest it for yourselves, your enemies will lay siege to your city, and, finding your crops waiting for them in the field, they will eat it, while you have nothing stored up in your city from the previous year to eat. Allegorically, you will sow your seed, i.e., your children, with great effort, but sin, your enemy, will consume them. I will turn toward you, according you special attention in punishing you for your disloyalty to Me. You will be smitten by pestilence within your cities before your enemies, who are laying siege outside the city. Those among you who hate you – traitors from among your own ranks – will rule over you. In contrast to foreign enemies, who only seek to plunder you of your observable wealth, traitors – who are privy to your secrets and harbor more deep-seated hatred for you – will plunder you of your hidden wealth, as well. You will flee in panic, although no one from among these traitors will actually be pursuing you, since they, just like you, will be starving as a result of the enemy’s siege.

The Results of Stubbornness
If, during these punishments, you do not listen to Me and repent, I will add another seven punishments for your above-listed seven sins that you continue to commit:

I will break, i.e., destroy, the magnificent edifice of the holy Temple, the pride of your strength. I will make your skies dry like iron, which does not sweat, meaning that there will be no rain to water new crops, and your land moist like copper, which does sweat, causing any existing produce to rot.

Your strength will be expended in vain, making you frustrated over the futility of your work. Your land will not even yield a quantity of produce equal to the amount of seed that you planted in it. The tree will be debilitated by the lack of nutrients in the earth, and will therefore not give forth any ripe fruit in season, and it will drop its fruit before ripening it.

If, in your stubbornness, you continue to walk with Me – i.e., perform My commandments – irregularly, and you do not wish to listen to Me, I will add seven more punishments, corresponding to your above-listed seven sins that you continue to commit:

I will incite both the wild beasts of the field and your domesticated animals against you, both of which will bite you (miraculously, in the case of the domesticated animals that do not usually bite) lethally. They will bereave you of your young children. They will attack both you and your other livestock, but whereas they will utterly destroy your livestock, which, being outside in the fields, will be unable to escape their attack, they will only diminish you, since you will be able to seek refuge inside your homes. All your roads, both major and minor thoroughfares, will become desolate.

If, in your continued stubbornness, you will not be corrected by these punishments enough to return to Me, and you therefore continue to walk with Me – i.e., perform My commandments – irregularly,

then I, too, will treat you stubbornly: I will smite you reciprocally sevenfold for persisting in your above-listed seven sins, as follows.

I will bring an army against you that will avenge your disloyalty to the covenant that you made with Me; it will avenge your disloyalty only with the punishments that I am presently describing in this covenant. As this army approaches, you will gather into your cities. I will send an epidemic into your midst, and those of you who remove the corpses from the city in order to bury them will be delivered into the enemy’s hands.

When I eliminate your every source of food, ten women will bake your bread in one oven because of the lack of wood for fuel. Moreover, the grain will rot, causing the bread to crumble in the oven. The women will therefore weigh and divide the crumbs among themselves, and will bring back your bread by weight. Your food will be so miraculously unsatiating that no matter how much you will eat, you will not be satisfied.

If, despite all this, you do not listen to Me, and you therefore continue stubbornly to walk with Me – i.e., perform My commandments – irregularly,

then I will treat you with furious stubbornness: I will chastise you reciprocally sevenfold for persisting in your above-listed seven sins, as follows.

You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters.

I will demolish your tall and fortified edifices and thereby cut down your idols that you place on their roofs. I will make your corpses fall upon the ‘corpses’ of your smashed idols. My soul – the Divine presence – will reject you by departing from you.

I will destroy your cities so completely that even passersby will find no reason to enter them. Inasmuch as your cities will be razed, I will by that very fact make your holy places desolate, devoid of the throngs of pilgrims that used to visit them. I will therefore not be able to derive any pleasure from your sacrifices, which you would have offered up to please Me.

God’s Mercy
Despite all these punishments, I will still have mercy on you: Although I will indeed make the land desolate of its inhabitants, it will be deserted also by your enemies, who will try unsuccessfully to live in it. Thus, they will have no desire to claim it as their own.

I will scatter you among the nations, spreading you so thinly that you will not be able to take comfort in one another in your exile. I will unsheathe the sword after you persistently, allowing your enemies to harass you constantly. Since you will not return to it quickly, your land will be persistently desolate; since you will despair of returning to it, you will view your cities as being truly destroyed.

Then, the land will appease Me over its unobserved sabbatical years. During the entire time that it remains desolate while you are exiled in the land of your enemies, the land will rest and thus appease Me over its unobserved sabbatical years.

I will be appeased in this way because during the entire time that the land remains desolate, it will rest the way it should have rested during your sabbatical years, when you lived upon it.

The Fate of the Survivors
As for those of you who survive the harassment you will suffer in exile, I will bring chronic timidity into their hearts for as long as they are exiled in the lands of their enemies. They will be so paranoid that the sound of a rustling leaf will pursue them; they will flee as if fleeing the sword, and they will fall, even though there is in fact no pursuer.

Each man will stumble over his brother Israelite, fleeing as if from the sword, although there is no pursuer. You will not even be able to stand up to face your enemies. Furthermore, you will – at that time – be held accountable for each other’s wrongdoings, so each of you will figuratively ‘fall’ because of the other’s faults.

You will become lost to one another, due to having been scattered among the nations. The land of your enemies will figuratively consume you as you die and are buried in it.

Those of you who survive will, on account of their iniquity, waste away in the lands of your enemies. If the iniquities of their fathers are still with them, in that they persist in the same misbehavior their forebears were guilty of, they will waste away on that account also.

Repentance
They will then confess both their own iniquity and their fathers’ iniquity, namely, their unfaithfulness by which they betrayed Me, and also how they stubbornly walked with Me – i.e., performed My commandments – irregularly,

for which I will have treated them reciprocally with stubbornness and brought them into the land of their enemies. Even though they will have only confessed their sins but not yet regretted them or resolved not to repeat them, I will, in this merit, send them prophets and teachers to remind them that they remain My people, in order that they not be tempted to assimilate into their host nations. Perhaps then, their clogged heart will become humbled, and they will at least regret what they have done (even if they are not yet ready to resolve not to repeat their misdeeds in the future). If so, their sufferings will appease Me for their iniquity – whereas had they repented fully, that itself would have appeased Me.

The Merit of the Patriarchs
Since, as stated, they will still not have repented fully, I will have to invoke the merits of their forbears in order to redeem them: I will remember first My covenant with Jacob, who foresaw your exile and took pains to ensure that you would be redeemed. It is true that he accrued the least merit of all the forefathers, since he did not have to oppose the influences of his milieu as they did. But since all his children became progenitors of the Jewish people – whereas not all of Abraham’s or Isaac’s children did – his merit should be invoked first, in order that it be channeled specifically to your aid. If his merit proves insufficient to redeem them, I will also add to his merit My covenant with Isaac, the memory of whose binding as a sacrifice is in any case always in the forefront of My consciousness, as Abraham requested. If their combined merit proves insufficient, I will also remember My covenant with Abraham and add his merit to theirs. I will also remember the empty, desolate Promised Land,

for, as mentioned previously, the land will have been forsaken by them in order to thereby appease Me over its unobserved sabbatical years by being devoid of them. Through this, too, they will appease Me for their iniquity. This was all in retribution for their many sins, as mentioned above, but only in retribution for their having despised My ordinances and for their having rejected My rules; I exacted no retribution for their having rejected Me.

For despite doing all this to them while they are in the land of their enemies, I will nevertheless neither despise nor reject them, i.e., proceed to annihilate them, thereby breaking My covenant with them, for I am GOD, their God. I can be relied upon to keep My promise.

Therefore, I will remember, for their benefit, the covenant I made with their forbears whom I took out from Egypt in sight of all the nations, to be a God to them. I am GOD.”

The contents of the Book of Leviticus up to this point are the rules, ordinances, and laws – both written and oral – that GOD gave between Himself and the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai, through Moses. The following laws, in contrast, apply equally to Jews and non-Jews.

GOD spoke to Moses, saying,

“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When a person, whether Jew or non-Jew, articulates a vow, pledging an endowment of lives – i.e., of a living person or a vital organ of a living person – to GOD, i.e., to the Tabernacle treasury,

Donating the Value of Human Life
the fixed monetary endowment he will have thereby obligated himself to pay for having pledged the life of a male person will be dependent solely upon the age of the person whose value he pledged, as follows: If the person whose life is being pledged is from 20 to 60 years old, the endowment will be 50 shekels of silver, the shekel being valued according to the weight of the sacred shekel, i.e., the shekel I have designated for use in all holy purposes: 20 gerah per shekel [by which 50 shekels equals 800 g or 1.76 lb].

If the person whose life is being pledged is a female, the endowment will be 30 shekels [480 g or 1.05 lb].

If the person is from five to 20 years old, the endowment for a male will be 20 shekels [320 g or 11.2 oz], while that for a female will be 10 shekels [160 g or 5.6 oz].

If the person is from one month to five years old, the endowment for a male will be five shekels [80 g or 2.8 oz] of silver, while the endowment for a female will be three shekels [48 g or 1.68 oz] of silver.

If the person is 60 years old or over, then for a male, the endowment will be 15 shekels [240 g or 8.4 oz]; and for a female, it will be 10 shekels [160 g or 5.6 oz]. Thus, you see that in their advanced years, the woman’s endowment-value approaches that of the man, for women naturally mellow with age more than men.

If the person who made the pledge is too poor to pay the above-stated endowment for whatever type of person whose life he has pledged, the pledger must present the person whose life he pledged before the priest, and the priest must evaluate this person in accordance with how much the pledger can afford, leaving him only his bare necessities and the tools of his trade so he can earn his livelihood.

Exchanging, Substituting, and Redeeming Sacrifices
If a person pledges part of an animal whose type is fit to be brought as an offering to GOD (i.e., cattle, sheep, or goats), the value of whatever part of it the person is donating to GOD will become holy: The said animal must be sold to someone who needs to offer up such an animal as a sacrifice; the proceeds of the sale are given to the pledger, minus the value of the limb he pledged, which is given to the Tabernacle treasury.

Once someone has consecrated an animal by designating it to be offered up as a sacrifice, he must not exchange it with someone else’s animal nor substitute one of his own animals for it, whether he proposes to exchange or substitute a good (i.e., unblemished) unconsecrated one for a bad (i.e., blemished) consecrated one, which cannot be sacrificed – thereby seeking to provide the institution of the Tabernacle with an animal that can be sacrificed; or whether he proposes to exchange or substitute a bad (i.e., blemished) unconsecrated one for a good (i.e., unblemished) consecrated one – thereby appropriating for himself the more valuable animal. Since it is forbidden to exchange or substitute sanctified animals even when doing so would be to the advantage of the institution of the Tabernacle, it is self-evident that it is forbidden to do so when there is no such advantage, i.e, to exchange or substitute a blemished unconsecrated animal for a blemished consecrated one or an unblemished unconsecrated animal for an unblemished consecrated one. If he nevertheless does substitute one animal for another animal, both it and its replacement will be holy. If the original animal was consecrated as an ascent- or peace-offering, its replacement must be also offered up as an ascent- or peace-offering. If the original was consecrated as a sin-offering, its replacement must be left to die. If the original was consecrated as a guilt-offering, its replacement must be set out to pasture until it develops a blemish, after which it must be sold and the proceeds used to purchase animals that will be offered up as ascent-offerings when the Altar is idle. If a replacement for any of these types of offerings is blemished, it, too, must be sold and the proceeds used to purchase animals that will be offered up as ascent-offerings when the Altar is idle.

Although it is forbidden to exchange or substitute an unconsecrated animal for a consecrated one, it is permitted to redeem a consecrated animal, but only if it is a ‘defiled,’ i.e., blemished animal, which by virtue of its blemish may not be brought as an offering to GOD. If someone wishes to redeem this animal, he must present the animal before the priest.

The priest must then evaluate it, deciding whether it is good (i.e., of high monetary value) or bad (i.e., of low monetary value), or in between. According to the evaluation of the priest, so will be its redemption value. The person wishing to redeem the animal will then pay this amount to the priest. The money will thereby become sanctified in that it must be used by the Tabernacle treasury to purchase animals for sacrifice, and the animal will revert to being unconsecrated, permitted for any non-sacred use by its redeemer.

But if the animal’s original owner redeems it, he does not simply pay the value attached to it by the priest; he must add its fifth to its value.

Donating and Redeeming Property
A person is allowed to consecrate his house to the Tabernacle. In such a case, the house becomes the property of the Tabernacle treasury, which can then sell (‘redeem’) the house. The sale (‘redemption’) money must be used for the upkeep of the Tabernacle, whereas the redeemed house reverts to its original, non-consecrated status. The full procedure is as follows: If a man consecrates his house to be holy to GOD, and someone else then wishes to redeem it, the priest must evaluate it, deciding whether it is good (i.e., of high monetary value) or bad (i.e., of low monetary value), or in between. Its monetary value will be established in accordance with how the priest evaluates it, and this is the value that must be paid by anyone wishing to redeem the house from the Tabernacle treasury.

But if the person who originally consecrated it redeems his own house, he does not simply pay the value attached to it by the priest; he must add to it a fifth of its valuation money, and only then will it be his.

The following donation-laws only pertain to Jews, but since these donations, too, are subject to the rule that a fifth of their value must be added in order for them to be redeemed by their original owners, their laws are placed here. Similar to a house, a person is allowed to consecrate his field to the Tabernacle. In such a case, the field becomes the property of the Tabernacle treasury, which can then redeem the field. The redemption money must be used for the upkeep of the Tabernacle, whereas the redeemed field reverts to its original, non-consecrated status. The full procedure is as follows: If a man consecrates a part of his inherited field to GOD and someone then wishes to redeem it, the value he must pay will not reflect its market value but will be determined solely according to its capacity for sowing: An area that can be sown with a chomer [248 liter, or 7 bushel] of barley seed [i.e., 75,000 cubits2, 17,280 m2, or 4.27 acres] will be valued at 50 shekels [800 g or 1.76 lb] of silver.

Now, a person may only consecrate his inherited field until the next Jubilee year, as will be explained presently. Therefore, if he consecrates his field immediately after the Jubilee year has ended, and someone else wishes to redeem it from the Tabernacle treasury immediately, it will retain its full redemption value, i.e., 50 shekels per area that can be sown by a chomer of barley seed.

But if he consecrates his field more than a year after the Jubilee year has ended, and someone else wishes to redeem it immediately, the priest must calculate the money that the person redeeming the field must pay in accordance with the remaining years until the next Jubilee year, and thus the proportionate value from the Jubilee year until the year of redemption will be deducted from the full value in order to arrive at the amount that he has to pay. Similarly, if the field remains in the possession of the Tabernacle treasury for a number of years, its redemption price must be adjusted accordingly. Thus, if a is the number of areas sown by a chomer of barley seed involved in the transaction, and b is the number of years left until the Jubilee year when the field is redeemed, the redemption value of the field is given by the formula (50/49)ab, or (1.02)ab. (Since this uneven multiplier will almost invariably result in the product including some small fraction of coinage, the redeemer must round up his payment to the nearest actual coin. This extra amount will be the Temple treasury’s consideration for having to eventually change these small coins into larger ones.)

If the person who consecrated it redeems the field, he must add to it a fifth of the prorated valuation money, and only then will it be his.

If the person who consecrated it does not redeem the field by the next Jubilee year, or if the Tabernacle treasurer has sold the field to someone else in the interim, it may no longer be redeemed by the person who consecrated it.

Nor does it revert to its original owner in the Jubilee year. Rather, when the field leaves the possession of the Tabernacle treasury or the purchaser in the Jubilee year, it will be holy to GOD like a segregated field, which means, as will be explained, that the original owner’s inherited property will belong to the priest. The field will be divided up among the priestly division serving during the week in which the Day of Atonement of the Jubilee year occurs.

Similarly, if someone consecrates to GOD a field that he had purchased, which is not one of his inherited fields, and then either he or someone else wishes to redeem it,

the priest must calculate for him the amount of the field’s value remaining until the Jubilee year according to the same formula given above for an inherited field. The redeemer must give the priest the value as calculated on that day in order to redeem the field. The money given to the Tabernacle treasury for the field will be holy to GOD, i.e., it must be used for the upkeep of the Tabernacle.

Whether or not the consecrated field is redeemed, the field must revert in the Jubilee year to the one from whom the person who consecrated it bought it, namely, the one whose inherited land it was originally. Unlike an inherited field that was consecrated, it is not divided up among the priestly division serving during the week in which the Day of Atonement of the Jubilee year occurs.

Every valuation in these laws must be made according to the sacred shekel, whereby one shekel is the equivalent of twenty gerahs.

Firstborn Animals
Although in general, when you consecrate an animal, you may designate it to be any type of sacrifice you wish, no man may consecrate a firstborn animal as any other type of sacrifice, since it must by law be sacrificed to GOD only as a firstborn. Thus, whether it be an ox, a sheep, or a goat, it belongs to GOD from birth and, as such, is not yours to consecrate.

Redeeming Consecrated Entities
If someone consecrates a spiritually defiled animal (i.e., an animal forbidden for consumption), he may redeem it by paying its value, but he must add its fifth to it. If it is not redeemed by its original owner, and the Tabernacle treasury wishes to sell it, it must be sold according to its value alone; the buyer does not need to pay the additional fifth. In either case, the money paid by the owner or the buyer must be used for the upkeep of the Tabernacle.

Segregating
Although it is generally possible to redeem something that has been consecrated to God, anything that a person segregates for GOD from any of his property – whether it be the person of his non-Jewish bondservant, an animal, or part of his inherited field – if he segregates it for the priests, it may neither be sold nor redeemed until it comes into their possession. Any segregation of animals that have been designated as sacrifices, whether sacrifices of superior holiness or lesser holiness, must be given to GOD.

If someone segregates to the Tabernacle treasury the value of a person who has been condemned to death by the court, his declaration has no legal import. Any segregation of the value of such a person who has been so segregated cannot be redeemed and paid to the Tabernacle treasury. Since the person is to be put to death, he has no monetary value in this regard.

Redeeming the Second Tithe
You will be taught later that every year (except for sabbatical and Jubilee years), you must tithe the grain you grow and the wine and oil you produce and give these tithes to the Levites. From what remains after this first tithe, you must then remove a second tithe; in the first, second, fourth, and fifth years of the sabbatical cycle, you must take this second tithe to the Temple city and consume it there while ritually undefiled. All such produce that you must set aside as the second tithe of the land – whether it be from the seed of the land, i.e., grain, or the fruit of the tree, i.e., wine or oil – belongs to GOD. He requires you to consume it in the Temple city while ritually undefiled; it is thus holy to GOD and must be consumed in this way.

If someone redeems some of his own second tithe, he must add its fifth of its value to the redemption money. If, however, someone redeems another person’s second tithe, he does not need to add the additional fifth.

Tithing Animals
Just as you are required to tithe every year’s produce, so must you tithe all cattle, sheep, and goats born every year. Gather all such animals (each species separately) in a pen, open the gate enough to allow them to exit single file, and as they leave, mark with red paint every tenth animal as a tithe. All tithes of cattle or flock – i.e., all that pass under the red-painted rod – every such tenth animal will be holy to GOD, meaning that you must bring it to the Temple city, sacrifice it, and have its fats burned up on the Altar, similar to a peace-offering. However, unlike regular peace-offerings, you do not have to give the priests any of its meat; you, your family, and your guests may eat all its meat yourselves, as long as you do so in the Temple city. Furthermore, you must not use these animals (before they are sacrificed) to do work in your field, nor may you shear them for their wool.

When tithing his animals, the owner must not select a choice one to be the tithe, even though you will be instructed later on to offer up your choicest animals as sacrifices. Furthermore, you may not even distinguish between a good (i.e., unblemished) one or a bad (i.e., blemished) one, because the tenth animal must be treated as “holy” even if it is blemished. Although, as you know, you are not permitted to offer up a blemished animal as a sacrifice, and you are not required to eat it in the Temple city, you must otherwise treat it as holy: until you slaughter it, you may not use it to do work in the field or shear it; you must eat it with the intention to thereby fulfill the commandment to eat the animal tithe; and if you cannot eat all its meat yourself, you may not sell it by weight, but only according to its estimated value. Whether it is blemished or unblemished, as is the case with all consecrated animals, the owner may not substitute another animal for it. If he nevertheless does substitute another animal for it, then both it and its replacement will be holy; both must be treated as tithed animals. Finally, although, like the second tithe, if it is unblemished it must be eaten in the Temple city, unlike the second tithe, it may not be redeemed.’”

These are the commandments that GOD commanded Moses to tell the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai.