According to Lev. xxv. 8-12, at the completion of seven sabbaths of years (i.e. 7 × 7 = 49 years) the trumpet of the jubilee is to be sounded "throughout the land" on the 10th day of the seventh month (Tisri 10), the great Day of Atonement. The 50th year thus announced is to be "hallowed," i.e. liberty[1] is to be proclaimed everywhere to everyone, and the people are to return "every man unto his possession and unto his family." As in the sabbatical year, there is to be no sowing, nor reaping that which grows of itself, nor gathering of grapes. As regards _real property_ (Lev. xxv. 13-34) the law is that if any Hebrew under pressure of necessity shall alienate his property he is to get for it a sum of money reckoned according to the number of harvests to be reaped between the date of alienation and the first jubilee-year: should he or any relation desire to redeem the property before the jubilee this can always be done be repaying the value of the harvests between the redemption and the jubilee. This legal enactment, though it is not found (nor anything like it) in the earlier collections of laws, is evidently based on (or modified from) an ancient custom which conferred on a near kinsman the right of pre-emption as well as of buying back (cf. Jer. xxxii. 6 sqq.). The tendency to impose checks upon the alienation of landed property was exceptionally strong in Israel. The fundamental principle is that the land is a sacred possession belonging to Yahweh. As such it is not to be alienated from Yahweh's people, to whom it was originally assigned. In Ezekiel's restoration programme "crown lands presented by the 'prince' to any of his officials revert to the crown in the year of liberty (? jubilee year)"; only to his sons may any portion of his inheritance be alienated in perpetuity (Ezek. xlvi. 16-18; cf. Code of Hammurabi, § 38 seq.). The same rule applies to dwelling-houses of unwalled villages; the case is different, however, as regards dwelling-houses in walled cities. These may be redeemed within a year after transfer, but if not redeemed within that period they continue permanently in possession of the purchaser, and this may well be an echo of ancient practice. An exception to this last rule is made for the houses of the Levites in the Levitical cities.