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The Seventh Year

¹ "At the end of every seven years you must do away with debts that are owed. ² This is the way you are to do it: Every man who has loaned money must forget the debt. He cannot make his neighbor and his brother pay it because the Lord has said that all should be forgotten. ³ You may make a stranger pay what he owes, but not your brother. ⁴ Yet there will be no poor among you for the Lord will be sure to bring good to you in the land the Lord your God is giving you for your own. ⁵ But you must listen and obey the voice of the Lord your God. Be careful to do all the Law which I am telling you today. ⁶ The Lord your God will bring good to you as He has promised. You will let many nations use what belongs to you but you will not use what belongs to them. You will rule over many nations but they will not rule over you.

⁷ "In any of the towns in your land the Lord your God is giving you, if there is anyone poor among you, do not let your heart be hard and not be willing to help him. ⁸ Be free to give to him. Let him use what is yours of anything he needs. ⁹ Be careful that there is no sinful thought in your heart, saying, ‘It is almost the seventh year, the time to do away with the debt owed to me,' so you look on your brother with hate and give him nothing. Then he may cry to the Lord against you and you may be guilty of sin. ¹⁰ Give much to him, without being sorry that you do. Because the Lord your God will bring good to you for this, in all your work and in everything you do. ¹¹ The poor will always be in the land. So I tell you to be free in giving to your brother, to those in need, and to the poor in your land.

¹² "If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he will work for you six years. But you must set him free in the seventh year. ¹³ When you set him free, do not send him away with nothing. ¹⁴ Give him much from your flock, from your grain, and from your wine. Give to him as the Lord your God has given to you. ¹⁵ Remember that you were servants in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God set you free. And so I am telling you today to do this. ¹⁶ But he may say to you, ‘I will not leave you,' because he loves you and those of your house and gets along well with you. ¹⁷ Then take a sharp tool and put it through his ear into the door. And he will be your servant forever. Do the same with your woman servant. ¹⁸ It should not be hard for you to set him free for he has worked for you six years. He has been worth twice as much as a man paid to work for you. The Lord your God will bring good to you in whatever you do.

¹⁹ "Set apart for the Lord your God all the first-born males among your cattle and your flock. Do no work with the first-born of your cattle. Do not cut the wool from the first-born of your flock. ²⁰ You and those of your house will eat it every year before the Lord your God in the place the Lord chooses. ²¹ But do not kill it and give it to the Lord your God if it is not perfect, such as not being able to walk or see, or anything else wrong with it. ²² Eat it within your towns. Both the clean and the unclean may eat it, as if it were a gazelle or deer. ²³ But do not eat its blood. You must pour it out on the ground like water.