What is onaah, and how does Leviticus 25:14 show the commandment is symmetric between buyer and seller?

Onaah means wronging or taking advantage in a commercial transaction. Leviticus 25:14 addresses both seller and buyer: 'if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, do not wrong each other.' Overcharging a buyer and underpaying a seller are equally prohibited.

How does Leviticus 25:23's 'the land is mine' ground the anti-onaah commandment theologically?

If the land ultimately belongs to God, then its price is set by covenantal reality, not by the seller's power over a desperate buyer. Exploiting a neighbor's poverty in a land sale violates not only commercial ethics but the theological claim that the land is God's gift, not the seller's to price arbitrarily.

How does Amos 8:5's picture of merchants who resent the Sabbath connect to the onaah commandment?

Amos describes merchants who short-weight their grain and falsify their balances -- onaah through false measure rather than false price, but the same wrong. They resent the Sabbath because it interrupts their profit. Amos identifies commercial exploitation as a symptom of the same faithlessness that despises the holy day.

Commandment #174 · Positive · Courts & Justice

Do Not Take Advantage of Each Other: The Laws of Onaah

Q: How does the Talmud calibrate the one-sixth threshold for actionable onaah?

Bava Metzia 49b-61a rules: more than one-sixth deviation from fair market value entitles the injured party to void the sale or demand restitution of the excess. Within one-sixth, the sale stands but the excess may be reclaimed. Less than one-sixth is treated as market variation with no legal remedy, though moral honesty remains obligatory.

Q: How does the Jubilee year's land-reversion rule (Leviticus 25:13) create an objective basis for fair pricing?

Land sales are really long-term leases of harvests, since the land reverts in the Jubilee year. Leviticus 25:15 establishes that fair price is calculated by counting remaining years of harvest until Jubilee. This makes onaah objectively measurable: a price not proportional to those years is overcharge.

אוֹנָאָה

Source: Leviticus 25:14 · Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive #250

Leviticus 25:14's prohibition of onaah — 'do not wrong each other' in buying and selling — addresses both sides of a transaction symmetrically. The same verse that forbids overcharging a buyer also forbids underpaying a seller. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 49b–61a) calibrates the one-sixth threshold that makes a price deviation legally actionable. Leviticus 25:15 provides the Jubilee-anchored formula for fair pricing in land sales — the objective standard against which onaah is measured.

Do Not Take Advantage of Each Other

וְכִי תִמְכְּרוּ מִמְכָּר לַעֲמִיתֶךָ אוֹ קָנֹה מִיַּד עֲמִיתֶךָ אַל תּוֹנוּ אִישׁ אֶת אָחִיו

"If you sell land to any of your own people or buy land from them, do not take advantage of each other."

Leviticus 25:14 — Open in Torah Reader

Leviticus 25:14's commandment is built around the word onaah — taking advantage, wronging, oppressing through an unfair transaction. The verse addresses both seller and buyer symmetrically: 'if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, do not wrong each other.' Onaah is not limited to one side of the market; it can be committed by overcharging a buyer or underpaying a seller.

The Talmud (Bava Metzia 49b–61a) develops onaah into a precise commercial law. A price deviation of more than one-sixth of the fair market value constitutes onaah: the disadvantaged party may void the transaction or demand restitution of the excess. Within one-sixth, the sale stands but the injured party may claim the overpayment. Less than one-sixth is considered market variation and carries no legal remedy, though the moral obligation to deal honestly remains. The law is calibrated — not every price disagreement is fraud; the Torah defines a threshold.

In Proportion to the Years Since Jubilee

בְּמִסְפַּר שָׁנִים אַחַר הַיּוֹבֵל תִּקְנֶה מֵאֵת עֲמִיתֶךָ בְּמִסְפַּר שְׁנֵי תְבוּאֹת יִמְכָּר לָךְ

"You are to buy from your own people on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And they are to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops."

Leviticus 25:15 — Open in Torah Reader

Leviticus 25:15 provides the anti-onaah mechanism for land sales: a fair price is not arbitrary but calculated by counting years remaining until the Jubilee, since land reverts in the fiftieth year. A land sale is essentially a long-term lease of harvests, not a permanent property transfer. This framing makes fair pricing transparent and objective — both parties know how many harvests remain, and a price not proportional to those harvests is onaah.

Leviticus 25:13 (Leviticus 25:13): 'In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property.' The Jubilee creates the objective reference point without which onaah pricing would be impossible to adjudicate. Market fairness and covenant land theology are intertwined: because the land belongs ultimately to God (Leviticus 25:23: 'The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine'), pricing that exploits a neighbor's desperation violates both commercial ethics and theological truth.

Key Figures

Ezekiel's Merchants

Ezekiel 22:12 (Ezekiel 22:12): 'In you, people accept bribes to shed blood; you take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort your neighbors. And you have forgotten me, declares the Lord GOD.' Ezekiel places onaah alongside bloodshed as sins that bring judgment. Commercial exploitation is not merely an economic error — it is a covenantal one, arising from forgetting God.

Amos and the Grain Merchants

Amos 8:5: 'saying, When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances?' Amos names the merchants who resent the Sabbath because it interrupts their profit from short-weighing customers. Onaah through false measure is the same wrong as onaah through false price — the Talmud treats both as violations of Leviticus 25:14.

Study Questions

For reflection and group study

What is onaah, and how does Leviticus 25:14's address to both seller and buyer show that the commandment is symmetric?

How does the Talmud (Bava Metzia 49b-61a) calibrate the one-sixth threshold for onaah, and what happens at each level of price deviation?

How does the Jubilee year's land-reversion rule (Leviticus 25:13) create an objective basis for fair pricing in land sales?

How does Leviticus 25:23's "the land is mine" statement ground the anti-onaah commandment in a theological claim about ownership?

How does Amos 8:5's picture of merchants chafing at the Sabbath connect overcharging through false measure to the same wrong as price fraud?

Read the full passage in the Torah reader.

Open Leviticus 25 in the Bible Reader

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