Leviticus 25 Summary and Study Guide

A horn sounds at the close of the Day of Atonement, and across Israel people begin walking home. Some of them are going back to land their grandfathers sold. This Leviticus 25 summary and study guide takes the law that sent them, and deals plainly with the hard verses at the end.

Setting the Stage

God brought a nation of slaves out of Egypt and promised them a country of their own. They have not seen it yet. They are still camped in the Sinai wilderness, and the law is still being given to them through Moses.

So this chapter is written for land nobody in the camp has walked on. It opens with the words “When ye come into the land which I give you” (Leviticus 25:2), meaning the rules start only once Israel arrives. It is also written for people who were slaves themselves a year earlier, which is the reason God gives for half of it. For the wider frame, our Book of Leviticus Summary by Chapter sets out all twenty-seven chapters.

Comprehensive Leviticus 25 Summary

God tells Moses at Sinai that once Israel is in the land, the land itself must keep a sabbath. Six years they may sow and prune. The seventh year they leave the ground alone, and whatever grows by itself is free food for the owner, his servants, his hired workers, the foreigner living with him, his cattle, and the wild animals. Nobody may harvest it as a crop or store it up.

Then God stretches the same pattern across fifty years. Israel counts seven sets of seven years, forty-nine in all, and on the Day of Atonement a horn sounds through the whole country. The fiftieth year is the jubilee. Liberty is announced, every Israelite goes back to the land his family was given, and back to his relatives.

Because the land always returns, Israel cannot really sell it. What changes hands is a number of harvests, and the price falls as the jubilee gets closer. God knows what they will ask next, so He asks it for them: what will we eat in the seventh year? His answer is a harvest in the sixth year large enough for three.

The reason comes in verse 23. The land belongs to God, and Israel are His tenants. So a poor man who sells his field keeps the right to buy it back, and if he cannot, a relative may buy it back for him. Houses inside walled cities are the exception, and Levite houses are the exception to that.

The chapter then follows a man downhill. He grows poor, and his neighbour must support him and charge no interest. He grows poorer and sells himself, and his master must treat him as a hired worker and release him at the jubilee.

If a foreigner living in Israel buys him, his relatives may still buy him back. The last verse gives the reason: Israel already belongs to God, who brought them out of Egypt.

One Word Summary

• Release: land, debts and people all let go at a fixed time.
• Return: the chapter’s own repeated word, seven times over.
• Tenant: Israel farms ground it does not own.
• Redeem: the right to buy back never expires.

In One Sentence

God tells Moses that Israel must rest the land every seventh year, and that every fiftieth year a horn on the Day of Atonement is to send each Israelite back to his family and to the land his family lost, because the land is God’s and the people are God’s.

Theme of Leviticus 25

Leviticus 25 is about ownership. God owns the land and God owns the people, and every law in the chapter follows from those two facts. Running alongside that are three ideas the chapter keeps returning to: rest, which Israel must take on trust; poverty, which God refuses to let become permanent; and redemption, which arrives here as an obligation a relative carries out with money, long before the word ever describes salvation.

Leviticus 25 Outline

• Leviticus 25:1-2: God speaks to Moses at Sinai and says the land must keep a sabbath once Israel enters it.
• Leviticus 25:3-7: Six years of sowing and pruning, then a seventh year when the ground is left alone and its growth feeds everyone.
• Leviticus 25:8-12: Israel counts forty-nine years, sounds the horn on the Day of Atonement, and hallows the fiftieth year as the jubilee.
• Leviticus 25:13-17: Every man returns to his property, and buyers and sellers price land by the harvests left before the next jubilee.
• Leviticus 25:18-22: God promises safety in the land and a sixth-year harvest large enough to cover three years.
• Leviticus 25:23-24: God states the reason for the whole law: the land is His, and Israel are strangers and tenants on it.
• Leviticus 25:25-28: A poor man may buy back his field, or a relative may buy it back for him, and if neither happens it returns at the jubilee.
• Leviticus 25:29-31: A house in a walled city may be bought back for one year only, while a house in an unwalled village follows the rules for fields.
• Leviticus 25:32-34: Levites may buy back their city houses at any time, and the fields around their cities may never be sold.
• Leviticus 25:35-38: A brother who falls into poverty must be supported, with no interest charged on money or food.
• Leviticus 25:39-43: An Israelite who sells himself is treated as a hired worker, is not ruled harshly, and goes free with his children at the jubilee.
• Leviticus 25:44-46: Israel may buy bondservants from the surrounding nations and from resident foreigners, and may pass them on to their children.
• Leviticus 25:47-55: An Israelite sold to a foreigner may be bought back by any relative or by himself, and goes free at the jubilee either way.

The Year of Jubilee

The jubilee is the one thing in this chapter a reader stops on. It arrives every fiftieth year, a horn announces it rather than a court, and it undoes half a century of loss in a day. Jewish tradition remembers a ten-day gap at the start of it, between the new year and the Day of Atonement, in which those about to be freed were neither worked nor yet released, but ate and drank and waited for the horn. Here is what the chapter says it did.

Observations from Leviticus 25

God Announces Liberty Only After Atonement Has Been Made

The horn does not sound at the new year. It sounds on the tenth day of the seventh month, “in the day of atonement” (Leviticus 25:9), so the announcement of freedom waits until the day Israel’s sin has been dealt with. The blood came first, then the horn. God settles the sin question before He announces the release, and putting both on the same day leaves the order in plain view.

The Word the Chapter Cannot Stop Saying Is “Return”

God tells Israel to return to his possession and return to his family in verse 10, and the word comes back in verses 13, 27, 28 and 41, seven times in all. The jubilee moved property and money, and the word God keeps repeating is about people arriving home. He repeats it until nobody could mistake what the year was for.

Four Times a Man Falls Further, and Four Times God Provides a Way Back

God opens a new law with a man grown poor in verses 25, 35, 39 and 47, and each time that man has slipped one step lower. First he sells a field. Then he cannot support himself.

Then he hires himself out to a fellow Israelite. Then he passes into the household of a foreigner who has prospered among them. God attaches a way back to every step, so no stage of a man’s ruin in Israel was final.

The Word “Brother” Is What Changes the Law

God calls the poor man “thy brother” in verses 25, 35, 36, 39 and 47, and the word does real work. Verse 46 puts the contrast in one line: “but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour,” meaning Israelites owed one another gentler treatment than that.

Brotherhood binds the onlooker too: a foreign master is told to handle an Israelite servant as a hired worker, and the command lands “in thy sight” (Leviticus 25:53), which many read as putting a duty on the watching Israelite to step in rather than walk past.

The Unenforceable Commands Are the Ones Tied to the Fear of God

A man can overcharge for a field, shade the interest on a loan to a neighbour, or work a servant too hard behind his own gate, and a court would see none of it. Those are exactly the three places where God adds “thou shalt fear thy God” (Leviticus 25:17, 36, 43), which is a command to act as though God is watching what nobody else can see. The chapter’s enforcement, in the places that matter most, is God Himself.

What Happened When Israel Ignored This Chapter

Scripture never records a single jubilee being kept. It does record what Israel did instead.

• The sabbath years went unkept until the exile paid for them. God had warned in the next chapter that if Israel would not give the land its rest, He would (Leviticus 26:34-35). Chronicles says that is what the seventy years in Babylon were: “until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years” (2 Chronicles 36:21). The land got the rest Israel had refused to give it, all at once.
• The interest ban was broken among brothers. In Nehemiah 5 the people cried out that they had mortgaged their fields and vineyards and were selling their own children into service, and Nehemiah confronted the nobles for charging their fellow Jews interest. That is Leviticus 25:35-37 broken, then repented of.
• A jubilee-style release was proclaimed and then cancelled. Under King Zedekiah the people agreed to free their Hebrew servants, and then took them back again (Jeremiah 34:8-11). God turned the word liberty back on them: “behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine” (Jeremiah 34:17), meaning the freedom they withheld from their servants would reach them as judgment instead.
• The prophets name the land-grabbing this law was written to stop. Isaiah pronounces woe on those “that join house to house, that lay field to field” (Isaiah 5:8), meaning people who kept buying up neighbouring property until nobody else was left. Micah says of the same men, “they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage” (Micah 2:2), which describes families losing the inheritance Leviticus 25 was meant to guarantee them. Amos hears the merchants planning to cheat the scales “that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes” (Amos 8:6), turning ruined men into property.

One man did obey it, in the worst year imaginable. With Babylon’s army camped around Jerusalem and the city about to fall, God told Jeremiah that his cousin would come and offer him the family field at Anathoth, “for the right of redemption is thine to buy it” (Jeremiah 32:7), meaning Jeremiah was the nearest relative and the law of Leviticus 25:25 put the duty on him. He bought it, weighed out the silver, and sealed the deed, because God had told him houses and fields would be bought in that land again.

Difficult Verses Explained

Does Leviticus 25:44-46 Mean God Approves of Slavery?

The chapter permits it, limits it, and never once calls it good. Israelites who fell into servitude had to be treated as hired workers and released at the jubilee, while bondservants bought “of the heathen that are round about you” (Leviticus 25:44) could be held for life and passed to the next generation. That is what God says here, and softening it would be dishonest.

Two things belong beside it. First, the rest of the law of Moses limits the practice in ways this chapter leaves unsaid. Kidnapping a person and selling him carried the death penalty (Exodus 21:16), which forbids outright the practice that built the transatlantic slave trade. A master who knocked out a servant’s tooth had to release that servant free (Exodus 21:27).

And the foreigner living in Israel was to be loved “as thyself” (Leviticus 19:34), meaning treated as one of their own. Second, Scripture does not stop here. Paul sends a runaway servant back to his owner and asks that he be received “not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved” (Philemon 16), and writes that in Christ “there is neither bond nor free” (Galatians 3:28).

Many Bible teachers read these verses as God regulating an entrenched practice rather than approving it, and limiting it until the gospel could end it. That reading is reasonable and widely held, but the chapter itself gives no reason, and it is better to say so than to put words in God’s mouth.

Did the Sixth Year Really Produce Three Years of Food?

Yes, as a promise God attached to obedience. He raises the objection Himself in verse 20, then answers it: “Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years” (Leviticus 25:21), meaning one harvest would carry them through the sixth year, the fallow seventh, and on until the eighth year’s crop came in.

God words it as a blessing He will command, rather than as a forecast of good weather. It may also explain why three years and not two, since on the usual reading a jubilee followed straight after a sabbath year and left Israel two idle years together.

What Does “Ye Shall Not Oppress One Another” Mean in a Land Sale?

It means do not overcharge. The word behind “oppress” in verses 14 and 17 carries the sense of overreaching in a deal, not of cruelty in general. What is being sold is a number of harvests, so a fair price rises when the jubilee is far off and falls when it is near. Verse 17 then adds the check that no buyer or seller could dodge: “but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God,” meaning the man who cannot be caught is still answerable.

Common Misunderstandings

• That the jubilee cancelled all debts. It restored land and released Israelite bondservants. The seventh-year release of debts is a separate law, given in Deuteronomy 15:1-2.
• That the sabbath year was mainly good farming. Letting ground lie fallow does help it, but the reason God gives is “a sabbath for the LORD” (Leviticus 25:4), meaning the year belonged to Him.
• That the chapter’s arithmetic can date the future. Commentators have tried it, and the dates have passed. The chapter sets a cycle for Israel in the land; it does not hand anyone a calendar.

Christ Connection

The clearest link is one Jesus makes Himself. In the synagogue at Nazareth He reads from Isaiah that God “hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18), and that He was sent “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19), meaning He had come to announce a year of God’s favour.

That last phrase is jubilee language, and after reading it He says, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21), meaning the promise had arrived in the room. Israel was told to sound that horn every fifty years, and no record survives that they ever did. Jesus stood up in Nazareth and sounded it.

The rest of the chapter runs the same direction:

• The redeeming relative. Leviticus 25 gives the poor man a goel, a relative near enough to have the right and able to pay. Galatians says God “sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5), which is to say the Son became a relative in order to have the right to buy us back.
• Atonement before liberty. The order in verse 9 is the order of the gospel. The price is paid, and then the announcement goes out.
• The inheritance restored. “Ye shall return every man unto his possession” (Leviticus 25:13) points toward what Paul says the Spirit is, “the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Ephesians 1:14), meaning God has already put down a deposit on what He will give back in full.
• The rest that remains. Israel stopped sowing for a year to say out loud that the harvest was God’s. Hebrews says “there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God,” and that whoever has entered it “hath ceased from his own works” (Hebrews 4:9-10), meaning he has stopped trying to earn what God gives.

Some readers see one more thing in the arithmetic. The jubilee falls the year after the seventh, as the Lord’s Day falls the day after the sabbath, and for one year the ground was released from the labour the curse in Genesis 3 laid on it.

Paul says the creation itself “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21), meaning the world is waiting for its own release. Leviticus 25 does not claim that connection, but the shape of it is there, and it is worth holding as a picture rather than a proof.

When, Where, and Why

• When: At Mount Sinai, in the second year after Israel left Egypt, before they entered Canaan (Numbers 10:11-12). By ancient Jewish reckoning the first sabbath year would not have fallen due until roughly twenty years after they arrived, once the land had been conquered and divided.
• Where: God speaks in the Sinai wilderness about a country nobody listening had seen. The geography matters twice over. The laws apply only in Canaan, and the chapter sorts that country into farmland, unwalled villages, walled cities and the forty-eight Levite towns, giving each a different rule.
• Why: Moses writes this chapter to settle who owns Canaan before Israel ever sets foot on it. God owns it, and the rest, the release, the price rules and the redeeming relative all follow from that one fact for a nation about to hold land for the first time.

Key Verses

But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

Leviticus 25:4

The seventh year is a sabbath kept for God rather than a farming technique, and Israel keeps it by leaving the ground alone for twelve months while their neighbours plant as usual. The phrase behind “thy vine undressed” is literally a Nazarite vine, an unpruned vine likened to the Nazarite who let his hair grow while he was set apart to God (Numbers 6:5).

Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.

Leviticus 25:9

The horn goes out over the whole country on the one day of the year when Israel’s sin has just been covered. The psalmist may have this sound in mind when he writes, “Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound” (Psalm 89:15).

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

Leviticus 25:10

This is the verse the whole chapter turns on, and the one cast on the American Liberty Bell. In Leviticus it is not a political slogan: it releases Israelite servants and hands families back the ground they had lost.

The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

Leviticus 25:23

Here is the reason for every other rule. Israel cannot sell the land permanently because the land was never theirs to sell, and they live on it as guests of its owner. Centuries later Naboth refuses a king on the strength of this law: “The LORD forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee” (1 Kings 21:3), meaning the field was not his to hand over.

For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 25:55

The chapter ends where it began, with the exodus. God had already bought this people out of Egypt, so no Israelite could own another one.

Key Lessons from Leviticus 25

• God builds rest into the calendar because people will not stop on their own (Leviticus 25:4).
• Israel kept the seventh year by leaving the fields alone, so their obedience said in public that the harvest belonged to God (Leviticus 25:20-21).
• God fixed a date on poverty so that under this law no family in Israel would be ruined for good (Leviticus 25:10).
• Redemption began as something a relative did with his own money, and only later became a word for what God does (Leviticus 25:25).
• God attaches the fear of Him to the three commands no court could ever enforce (Leviticus 25:17, 36, 43).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: 28 Life-Changing Lessons from Leviticus 25.

Bible Study Questions

1. According to Leviticus 25:6-7, who was allowed to eat what grew by itself in the seventh year, and what does that list say about who God was thinking of?
2. God raises the objection of verse 20 before Israel does. What does that tell you about how He treats honest fear?
3. Verse 23 gives the reason for the whole chapter. How would owning nothing permanently change the way an Israelite farmer thought about his field?
4. Trace the four men who grow poor in verses 25, 35, 39 and 47. What does God provide at each stage?
5. Read verses 44-46 carefully. What does the chapter actually say, what does it not say, and where else in Scripture would you go before drawing a conclusion?
6. Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:18-21 and says it is fulfilled that day. What did He claim about Himself by using jubilee language?

Frequently Asked Questions

Leviticus 25, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.

3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;

4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.

6 And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee,

7 And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.

8 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.

9 Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.

10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

11 A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.

12 For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.

13 In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession.

14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another:

15 According to the number of years after the jubile thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee:

16 According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.

17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God.

18 Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.

19 And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.

20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:

21 Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.

22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.

23 The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

24 And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land.

25 If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold.

26 And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it;

27 Then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it; that he may return unto his possession.

28 But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubile: and in the jubile it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession.

29 And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year may he redeem it.

30 And if it be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city shall be established for ever to him that bought it throughout his generations: it shall not go out in the jubile.

31 But the houses of the villages which have no wall round about them shall be counted as the fields of the country: they may be redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubile.

32 Notwithstanding the cities of the Levites, and the houses of the cities of their possession, may the Levites redeem at any time.

33 And if a man purchase of the Levites, then the house that was sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out in the year of jubile: for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel.

34 But the field of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold; for it is their perpetual possession.

35 And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.

36 Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.

37 Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

38 I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.

39 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:

40 But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile:

41 And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.

42 For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen.

43 Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.

44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.

45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.

47 And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger’s family:

48 After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him:

49 Either his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself.

50 And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him.

51 If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for.

52 And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubile, then he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give him again the price of his redemption.

53 And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight.

54 And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of jubile, both he, and his children with him.

55 For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.