Focused Passage
Sabbath for the Land, Jubilee Release, and the LORD's Ownership of Israel
The LORD speaks to Moses at Mount Sinai and commands that the land itself must observe a Sabbath to the LORD every seventh year. After seven Sabbath years, the fiftieth year is consecrated as Jubilee, announced with the trumpet on the Day of Atonement. Property is returned, liberty is proclaimed, and economic transactions are governed by the number of harvest years remaining until Jubilee. The chapter then provides laws for trusting the LORD's provision during the Sabbath year, redeeming land, selling houses, protecting Levitical towns, helping poor Israelites, prohibiting interest exploitation, regulating Israelite servitude, and redeeming Israelites sold to resident foreigners. The chapter closes by grounding everything in the exodus: Israelites belong to the LORD as His servants.
Berean Standard Bible, Public Domain - Translation notes - Reference sources
44 Your menservants and maidservants shall come from the nations around you, from whom you may purchase them.
45 You may also purchase them from the foreigners residing among you or their clans living among you who are born in your land. These may become your property.
46 You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But as for your brothers, the Israelites, no man may rule harshly over his brother.
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