Leviticus 25:29-34

Release of Houses

25:29 “‘If a man sells a residential house in a walled city, ¹  its right of redemption must extend ²  until one full year from its sale; ³  its right of redemption must extend to a full calendar year. ⁴  25:30 If it is not redeemed before the full calendar year is ended, ⁵  the house in the walled city ⁶  will belong without reclaim ⁷  to the one who bought it throughout his generations; it will not revert in the jubilee. 25:31 The houses of villages, however, ⁸  which have no wall surrounding them ⁹  must be considered as the field ¹⁰  of the land; they will have the right of redemption and must revert in the jubilee. 25:32 As for ¹¹  the cities of the Levites, the houses in the cities which they possess, ¹²  the Levites must have a perpetual right of redemption. 25:33 Whatever someone among the Levites might redeem – the sale of a house which is his property in a city – must revert in the jubilee, ¹³  because the houses of the cities of the Levites are their property in the midst of the Israelites. 25:34 Moreover, ¹⁴  the open field areas of their cities ¹⁵  must not be sold, because that is their perpetual possession.

[25:29]  ¹ tn Heb “a house of a residence of a walled city.”

[25:29]  ² tn Heb “shall be.”

[25:29]  ³ tn Heb “of its sale.”

[25:29]  ⁴ tn Heb “days its right of redemption shall be” (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 176).

[25:30]  ⁵ tn Heb “until fulfilling to it a complete year.’

[25:30]  ⁶ tn Heb “the house which [is] in the city which to it [is] a wall.” The Kethib has לֹא (lo’, “no, not”) rather than לוֹ (lo, “to it”) which is the Qere.

[25:30]  ⁷ tn See the note on v. 23 above.

[25:31]  ⁸ tn Heb “And the houses of the villages.”

[25:31]  ⁹ tn Heb “which there is not to them a wall.”

[25:31]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “on the field.”

[25:32]  ¹¹ tn Heb “And.”

[25:32]  ¹² tn Heb “the houses of the cities of their property.”

[25:33]  ¹³ tn Heb “And which he shall redeem from the Levites shall go out, sale of house and city, his property in the jubilee.” Although the end of this verse is clear, the first part is notoriously difficult. There are five main views. (1) The first clause of the verse actually attaches to the previous verse, and refers to the fact that their houses retain a perpetual right of redemption (v. 32b), “which any of the Levites may exercise” (v. 33a; J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 418, 421). (2) It refers to property that one Levite sells to another Levite, which is then redeemed by still another Levite (v. 33a). In such cases, the property reverts to the original Levite owner in the jubilee year (v. 33b; G. J. Wenham, Leviticus [NICOT], 321). (3) It refers to houses in a city that had come to be declared as a Levitical city but had original non-Levitical owners. Once the city was declared to belong to the Levites, however, an owner could only sell his house to a Levite, and he could only redeem it back from a Levite up until the time of the first jubilee after the city was declared to be a Levitical city. In this case the first part of the verse would be translated, “Such property as may be redeemed from the Levites” (NRSV, NJPS). At the first jubilee, however, all such houses became the property of the Levites (v. 33b; P. J. Budd, Leviticus [NCBC], 353). (4) It refers to property “which is appropriated from the Levites” (not “redeemed from the Levites,” v. 33a) by those who have bought it or taken it as security for debts owed to them by Levites who had fallen on bad times. Again, such property reverts back to the original Levite owners at the jubilee (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 177). (5) It simply refers to the fact that a Levite has the option of redeeming his house (i.e., the prefix form of the verb is taken to be subjunctive, “may or might redeem”), which he had to sell because he had fallen into debt or perhaps even become destitute. Even if he never gained the resources to do so, however, it would still revert to him in the jubilee year. The present translation is intended to reflect this latter view.

[25:34]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “And.”

[25:34]  ¹⁵ sn This refers to the region of fields just outside and surrounding the city where cattle were kept and garden crops were grown (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 177).