Behar/Bechukotai

Blessed are You, God, Sovereign of the Universe, who sanctified us with Mitzvot and commanded us to be engrossed in the words of Torah.

(13) In this year of jubilee, each of you shall return to your holding. (14) When you sell property to your neighbor, or buy any from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. (15) In buying from your neighbor, you shall deduct only for the number of years since the jubilee; and in selling to you, that person shall charge you only for the remaining crop years: (16) the more such years, the higher the price you pay; the fewer such years, the lower the price; for what is being sold to you is a number of harvests. (17) Do not wrong one another, but fear your God; for I יהוה am your God.

(18) You shall observe My laws and faithfully keep My rules, that you may live upon the land in security; (19) the land shall yield its fruit and you shall eat your fill, and you shall live upon it in security. (20) And should you ask, “What are we to eat in the seventh year, if we may neither sow nor gather in our crops?” (21) I will ordain My blessing for you in the sixth year, so that it shall yield a crop sufficient for three years. (22) When you sow in the eighth year, you will still be eating old grain of that crop; you will be eating the old until the ninth year, until its crops come in.

(23) But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. (24) Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

(25) If one of your kin is in straits and has to sell part of a holding, the nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what that relative has sold. (26) If any party has no one to be redeemer but prospers and acquires enough to redeem with, (27) the years since its sale shall be computed and the difference shall be refunded to the party to whom it was sold, so that the person returns to that holding. (28) If that person lacks sufficient means to recover it, what was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the jubilee; in the jubilee year it shall be released, so that the person returns to that holding.

(29) If any party sells a dwelling house in a walled city, it may be redeemed until a year has elapsed since its sale; the redemption period shall be a year. (30) If it is not redeemed before a full year has elapsed, the house in the walled city shall pass to the purchaser beyond reclaim throughout the ages; it shall not be released in the jubilee. (31) But houses in villages that have no encircling walls shall be classed as open country: they may be redeemed, and they shall be released through the jubilee. (32) As for the cities of Levi, the houses in the cities it holds: Levi shall forever have the right of redemption. (33) Such property as may be redeemed from Levi—houses sold in a city it holds—shall be released through the jubilee; for the houses in the cities of Levi are its holding among the Israelites. (34) But the unenclosed land about its cities cannot be sold, for that is its holding for all time.

(35) If your kin, being in straits, come under your authority, and are held by you as though resident aliens, let them live by your side: (36) do not exact advance or accrued interest, but fear your God. Let your kin live by your side as such. (37) Do not lend your money at advance interest, nor give your food at accrued interest. (38) I יהוה am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God. (39) If your kin under you continue in straits and must be given over to you, do not subject them to the treatment of a slave. (40) Remaining with you as a hired or bound laborer, they shall serve with you only until the jubilee year. (41) Then they, along with any children, shall be free of your authority; they shall go back to their family and return to the ancestral holding.— (42) For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude.— (43) You shall not rule over them ruthlessly; you shall fear your God.

(44) Such male and female slaves as you may have—it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves. (45) You may also buy them from among the children of aliens resident among you, or from their families that are among you, whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property: (46) you may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves. But as for your Israelite kin, no one shall rule ruthlessly over another.

(47) If a resident alien among you has prospered, and your kin, being in straits, comes under that one’s authority and is given over to the resident alien among you, or to an offshoot of an alien’s family, (48) [your kin] shall have the right of redemption even after having been given over. [Typically,] a brother shall do the redeeming, (49) or an uncle or an uncle’s son shall do the redeeming—anyone in the family who is of the same flesh shall do the redeeming; or, having prospered, [your formerly impoverished kin] may do the redeeming. (50) The total shall be computed with the purchaser as from the year of being given over to the other until the jubilee year; the price of sale shall be applied to the number of years, as though it were for a term as a hired laborer under the other’s authority. (51) If many years remain, [your kin] shall pay back for the redemption in proportion to the purchase price; (52) and if few years remain until the jubilee year, so shall it be computed: payment shall be made for the redemption according to the years involved. (53) One shall be under the other’s authority as a laborer hired by the year; the other shall not rule ruthlessly in your sight.

(54) If not redeemed in any of those ways, that person, along with any children, shall go free in the jubilee year. (55) For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt—I, your God יהוה.

(13) Now there was no bread in all the world, for the famine was very severe; both the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine. (14) Joseph gathered in all the money that was to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, as payment for the rations that were being procured, and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s palace. (15) And when the money gave out in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us bread, lest we die before your very eyes; for the money is gone!” (16) And Joseph said, “Bring your livestock, and I will sell to you against your livestock, if the money is gone.” (17) So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for the horses, for the stocks of sheep and cattle, and the asses; thus he provided them with bread that year in exchange for all their livestock.

(18) And when that year was ended, they came to him the next year and said to him, “We cannot hide from my lord that, with all the money and animal stocks consigned to my lord, nothing is left at my lord’s disposal save our persons and our farmland. (19) Let us not perish before your eyes, both we and our land. Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh; provide the seed, that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become a waste.” (20) So Joseph gained possession of all the farmland of Egypt for Pharaoh, all the Egyptians having sold their fields because the famine was too much for them; thus the land passed over to Pharaoh. (21) And he removed the population town by town, from one end of Egypt’s border to the other.