Shabbat for the Land

Leviticus 25:1–7 (CJB)

¹ Adonai spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai; he said, ² “Tell the people of Isra’el, ‘When you enter the land I am giving you, the land itself is to observe a Shabbat rest for Adonai. ³ Six years you will sow your field; six years you will prune your grapevines and gather their produce. ⁴ But in the seventh year is to be a Shabbat of complete rest for the land, a Shabbat for Adonai; you will neither sow your field nor prune your grapevines. ⁵ You are not to harvest what grows by itself from the seeds left by your previous harvest, and you are not to gather the grapes of your untended vine; it is to be a year of complete rest for the land. ⁶ But what the land produces during the year of Shabbat will be food for all of you—you, your servant, your maid, your employee, anyone living near you, ⁷ your livestock and the wild animals on your land; everything the land produces may be used for food.

Leviticus 25:8–13 (CJB)

⁸ “ ‘You are to count seven Shabbats of years, seven times seven years, that is, forty-nine years. ⁹ Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month, on Yom-Kippur, you are to sound a blast on the shofar; you are to sound the shofar all through your land; ¹⁰ and you are to consecrate the fiftieth year, proclaiming freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be a yovel for you; you will return everyone to the land he owns, and everyone is to return to his family. ¹¹ That fiftieth year will be a yovel for you; in that year you are not to sow, harvest what grows by itself or gather the grapes of untended vines; ¹² because it is a yovel. It will be holy for you; whatever the fields produce will be food for all of you. ¹³ In this year of yovel, every one of you is to return to the land he owns. (LY: ii)