Bible Strands
Leviticus 25:14
If you make a sale to your neighbor or a purchase from him, you must not take advantage of each other.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — YHWH addresses Moses and the Israelites within the Jubilee year regulations, instructing the community on economic conduct as ancestral lands are restored.
The words — The Hebrew term עֲמִיתֶ֑ךָ ('amiṯeḵā) literally means "fellow citizen" or "neighbor," framing the buyer-seller relationship as a bound communal obligation rather than an anonymous market exchange.
The thread — This commercial prohibition reappears in Leviticus 19:13 and Leviticus 25:17, while Samuel’s courtroom defense in 1 Samuel 12:3 demonstrates the same standard of unimpeachable property dealings.
Why it lands — The text commands transparent pricing and forbids exploiting a neighbor’s vulnerability during the Jubilee transition, requiring readers to submit commercial conduct to covenantal justice rather than profit maximization.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another:
Cross-references
- Leviticus 19:13 You must not defraud your neighbor or rob him. You must not withhold until morning the wages due a hired hand.
- Leviticus 25:17 Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.
- 1 Samuel 12:3 Here I am. Bear witness against me before the LORD and before His anointed: Whose ox or donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated or oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe and closed my eyes? Tell me, and I will restore it to you.”
- Isaiah 58:6 Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?
- Ezekiel 22:7 Father and mother are treated with contempt. Within your walls the foreign resident is exploited, the fatherless and the widow are oppressed.
- Ezekiel 22:12 In you they take bribes to shed blood. You engage in usury, take excess interest, and extort your neighbors. But Me you have forgotten, declares the Lord GOD.
- Amos 5:11 Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact from him a tax of grain, you will never live in the stone houses you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted.
- Amos 8:4 Hear this, you who trample the needy, who do away with the poor of the land,
- Micah 2:2 They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance.
- Micah 6:10 Can I forget any longer, O house of the wicked, the treasures of wickedness and the short ephah, which is accursed?