Behar

At Sinai, the law of the land's own Sabbath: six years of sowing and pruning, and in the seventh a complete rest for the land — no sowing, pruning, reaping, or gathering, though what grows of itself feeds household, servant, hired worker, stranger, and beast alike.

Seven sabbaths of years are counted, forty-nine, and the shofar sounds on Yom Kippur of the fiftieth: the Jubilee. "Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." Every person returns to their holding and their family; land is neither sown nor reaped that year. Because of the Jubilee, land is never sold permanently — "for the land is Mine; you are strangers and sojourners with Me" — so sale prices are reckoned by the years of harvest remaining, and wronging one another in such dealings is forbidden. A kinsman may redeem what a poor brother sold, or the seller himself when he prospers; houses in walled cities may be redeemed only within a year, while village houses and the cities of the Levites keep their redemption always.

The chapter descends step by step with the poor brother: uphold him as he falters, take no interest or increase from him — "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt." If he sells himself to you, he serves not as a slave but as a hired worker, and goes free with his children at the Jubilee, "for they are My servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt." Bondservants may be acquired from the nations around; a brother sold to a resident stranger may be redeemed at any time by kin, or freed by the Jubilee. The portion ends where it began: no idols, keep My Sabbaths, revere My sanctuary.