Leviticus 25:23

_THE LAND SHALL NOT BE SOLD FOR EVER: FOR THE LAND IS MINE; FOR YE ARE STRANGERS AND SOJOURNERS WITH ME._ The land shall not be sold for ever - or, 'be quite cut off,' as the margin better renders it. The land was God's, who had dispossessed the former inhabitants, and, in prosecution of an important design, gave it to the people of His choice, dividing it among their tribes and families. They, however, held it of Him merely as tenants at will, and had no right or power of disposing of it to strangers. In necessitous circumstances individuals might effect a temporary sale. But they possessed the right of redeeming it, at any time, on payment of an adequate compensation to the present holder and by the enactments of the Jubilee they recovered it free-so that the land was rendered inalienable. (See an exception to this law, Leviticus 27:20)....

23._The land shall not be sold for ever_. Since the reason for this law was peculiar to the children of Abraham, its provisions can hardly be applied to other nations; for so equal a partition of the land was made under Joshua, that the inheritance was distributed amongst the several tribes and families; nay, in order that each man’s possession should be more sacred, the land had been divided by lot, as if God by His own hand located them in their separate stations. In fact, that allotment was, as it were, an inviolable _decree _of God Himself, whereby the memory of the covenant should be maintained, by which the inheritance of the land had been promised to Abraham and his posterity; and thus the land of Canaan was an earnest, or symbol, or mirror, of the adoption on which their salvation was founded. Wherefore it is not to be wondered at that God was unwilling that this inestimable bene...

23-34 If the land were not redeemed before the year of jubilee, it then returned to him that sold or mortgaged it. This was a figure of the free grace of God in Christ; by which, and not by any price or merit of our own, we are restored to the favour of God. Houses in walled cities were more the fruits of their own industry than land in the country, which was the direct gift of God's bounty; therefore if a man sold a house in a city, he might redeem it only within a year after the sale. This encouraged strangers and proselytes to come and settle among them....

Verse Leviticus 25:23. _THE LAND SHALL NOT BE SOLD FOR EVER - THE LAND IS_ _MINE_] As God in a miraculous manner gave them possession of this land, they were therefore to consider themselves merely as _tenants_ to him; and on this ground _he_, as the great landholder or lord of the soil, prescribes to them all the conditions on which they shall hold it. This one circumstance was peculiarly favourable to their advancement in religion, in righteousness, and true holiness; for feeling that they had nothing which they could call their _own_ upon earth, they must frequently, by this, be put in mind of the necessity of having a permanent dwelling in the heavenly inheritance, and of that preparation without which it could not be possessed....

These verses express the principle on which the law of Jubilee, as it regards the land, was based. The land belonged to Yahweh, and it was He who allotted it among the families of Israel for their use. No estate could therefore be alienated in perpetuity, by any human authority, from the family to whose lot it might fall. Leviticus 25:24 GRANT A REDEMPTION FOR THE LAND - i. e. grant power to recover the land to the original holder who had parted with it....

EXPOSITION The subject of the sacred seasons is taken up again in this chapter, after the parenthetical insertion of Leviticus 24:1. There remain the septennial festive season and that of the half-century—the sabbatical year and the jubilee. The sabbatical year was instituted not for any supposed physical benefit accruing from it to the land, but, first, as serving for a link between the sabbath and the jubilee by means of the sacred number seven—the sabbatical year being the seventh year, and the jubilee being the year following the seven-times-seventh year; and secondly, and chiefly, as enforcing the lesson of the weekly sabbath in a manner that could not be overlooked, and symbolically, teaching the universal application of the sabbatical law, even where physical needs were not concerned, and in that way suggesting the expectation of a rest to be hereafter attain

THE LAND SHALL NOT BE SOLD FOR EVER,.... That is, the land of Israel; the meaning is, any part of it, for that the whole might be sold or disposed of at once is not to be supposed, but anyone part of it, which was the property of a single man, or belonged to a family; though it might be sold in case of necessity, yet not for ever, so as never to return to the owner, or his heirs; for if it was sold for ever it returned in the year of the jubilee: the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan render the word "absolutely", simply, properly; a proper absolute sale was not to be made, but a conditional one, or for so many years, or with a view to its reversion in the year of jubilee, and so the agreement to be made according to the number of years, as before directed: the word, as Aben Ezra observes, signifies "cutting off", and the sense is, that no land should be sold entirely, so as that the propri...

4. THE SABBATIC YEAR AND THE YEAR OF JUBILEE CHAPTER 25 _ 1. The Sabbatic year (Leviticus 25:1)_ 2. The jubilee (Leviticus 25:8) 3. The jubilee and the land (Leviticus 25:13) 4. The jubilee and the dwelling houses (Leviticus 25:29) 5. The jubilee, the poor and the bondmen (Leviticus 25:35) This is the great restoration chapter in Leviticus. All is connected preeminently with Israel's land. The application, which has been made, that this chapter foreshadows a universal res

THE YEAR OF JUBILE. This law contains two large provisions, the return of estates to their original owners, and the liberation of Hebrew slaves, both in the fiftieth year. It also contains a section which refers to the sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:17) and a law against the exploitation of poor Israelites (Leviticus 25:35). Of these the second at least (as perhaps the first) belongs to H. With the law of Jubile the case is different (see p. 102). A right of redemption certainly did exist (_cf._ Ruth 3 and Jeremiah 32:7, and the reference to the year of liberty, Ezekiel 46:17); but where we should have expected a re

FOR EVER. Figure of speech _Synecdoche_ (of the Whole), App-6, as we say "in perpetuity". absolutely or beyond recovery. THE LAND IS MINE. Compare Exodus 15:17; Isaiah 14:8; Isaiah 14:25; Jeremiah 2:7; Psalms 10:16; Psalms 78:54....