Study Desk

'If a man sells a house in a walled city, then his right of redemption remains valid for a full year after its sale; his right of redemption lasts a full year.

'But if it is not redeemed for him within a full year, then the house that is in the walled city passes permanently and irrevocably to the purchaser throughout his generations. It does not revert back in the Year of Jubilee.

'Now if your fellow countryman becomes poor and his hand falters with you [that is, he has trouble repaying you for something], then you are to help and sustain him, [with courtesy and consideration] like [you would] a stranger or a temporary resident [without property], so that he may live among you.

'And if your fellow countryman becomes so poor [in his dealings] with you that he sells himself to you [as payment for a debt], you shall not let him do the work of a slave [who is ineligible for redemption],

and then he shall leave you, he and his children with him, and shall go back to his own family and return to the property of his fathers.

then after he is sold he shall have the right of redemption. One of his relatives may redeem him:

either his uncle or his uncle's son may redeem him, or one of his blood relatives from his family may redeem him; or if he prospers, he may redeem himself.

'Then he [or his redeemer] shall calculate with his purchaser from the year when he sold himself to the purchaser to the Year of Jubilee, and the [original] price of his sale shall be adjusted according to the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be considered as that of a hired man.

'If there are still many years [before the Year of Jubilee], in proportion to them he must refund [to the purchaser] part of the price of his sale for his redemption and release.

'And if only a few years remain until the Year of Jubilee, he shall so calculate it with him. He is to refund the proportionate amount for his release.

'Even if he is not redeemed during these years and under these provisions, then he shall go free in the Year of Jubilee, he and his children with him.

"Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, 'When a man makes a special vow [consecrating himself or a member of his family], he shall be valued according to your [established system of] valuation of people belonging to the LORD [that is, the priest accepts from the man making the vow a specified amount of money for the temple treasury in place of the actual person].

'If a man consecrates his house as sacred to the LORD, the priest shall appraise it as either good or bad; as the priest appraises it, so shall it stand.

'If the one who consecrates his house should wish to redeem it, then he shall add one-fifth of your valuation price to it, so that it may be his.

'And if a man consecrates to the LORD part of a field of his own property, then your valuation shall be proportionate to the seed needed for it; a homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.

'If he consecrates his field during the Year of Jubilee, it shall stand according to your valuation.

'But if he consecrates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall calculate the price for him in proportion to the years that remain until the Year of Jubilee; and it shall be deducted from your valuation.

'When the field reverts in the Jubilee, the field shall be holy to the LORD, like a field set apart (devoted); the priest shall possess it as his property.

'Or if a man consecrates to the LORD a field which he has bought, which is not part of the field of his [ancestral] property,

'In the Year of Jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom it was purchased, to whom the land belonged [as his ancestral inheritance].