Leviticus 25:29

_AND IF A MAN SELL A DWELLING HOUSE IN A WALLED CITY, THEN HE MAY REDEEM IT WITHIN A WHOLE YEAR AFTER IT IS SOLD; WITHIN A FULL YEAR MAY HE REDEEM IT._ If a man sell a dwelling house. All sales of houses were subject to the same condition. But there was a difference between the houses in villages, which, being connected with agriculture, were treated as parts of the land, and houses possessed by trading people or foreigners in walled towns, which could only be redeemed within the year after the sale; if not then redeemed, these did not revert to the former owner at the Jubilee. 'This circumstance,' says Graves, 'must have given property in the country a decided preference above property in cities, and have tended to induce every Jew to reside on and improve his land, and employ his time in the care of flocks and agriculture; which, as they had been the occupation of those revered patria...

29._And if a man sell a dwelling-house_. He here distinguishes houses from lands, providing that the power of redemption should not extend beyond a year; and also, that the purchase should hold good even in the jubilee. A second distinction, however, is also added between different kinds of houses, viz., that houses in towns might be altogether alienated, whilst the condition of those in the country should be the same as that of the lands themselves, as being annexed so as to form part of them. As regarded houses fix towns, because they were sometimes burdensome to their owners, it was an advantage that they might pass into the hands of the rich who were competent to bear the expenses of building. Besides, a house does not supply daily food like a field, and it is more tolerable to be without a house than a field, in which you may work, and from the cultivation of which you may support y...

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 29. _SELL A DWELLING HOUSE IN A WALLED CITY_] A very proper difference is put between houses in a _city_ and houses in the _country_. If a man sold his house in the _city_, he might redeem it any time in the course of a _year_; but if it were not redeemed within that time, it could no more be redeemed, nor did it go out even in the jubilee. It was not so with a house in the _country_; such a house might be redeemed during any part of the interim; and if not redeemed, must go out at the jubilee. The reason in both cases is sufficiently evident; the house in the city might be built for purposes of _trade_ or _traffic_ merely, the house in the country was built on or attached to the _inheritance_ which God had divided to the respective families, and it was therefore absolutely necessary that the same law should apply to the _house_ as to the _inheritance_. But the same necessity did...

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

AND IF A MAN SELL A DWELLING HOUSE IN A WALLED CITY,.... Which was so from the days of Joshua the son of Nun, as Jarchi: THEN HE MAY REDEEM IT WITHIN A WHOLE YEAR AFTER IT IS SOLD: any time within the year he pleased, either he or any near of kin to him; and if they would, on the day it was sold, or any time after within the compass of the year, even on the day in which the year ended; in this such an house differed from fields, which could not be redeemed under two years, Leviticus 25:15; [WITHIN] A FULL YEAR MAY HE REDEEM IT; from the time it was sold, paying what it was sold for: this is to be understood, Maimonides h says, of a solar year, which consists of three hundred sixty five days, and within this space of time such an house might be redeemed. h In Misn. Eracin, c. 9. sect. 3....

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

WITHIN. WHOLE YEAR. within days, "days" being put by Figure of speech _Synecdoche_ (of the Part), for. whole year of days. App-6....

_Law in respect to the redemption of houses_(P) Houses in a walled town, if sold, and not redeemed within a year, were (with the exception of those belonging to the Levites) to be unaffected by the Jubile, and remain the permanent possession of the buyer, but for houses elsewhere there was no restriction as to the time within which they might be redeemed, and in any case the Jubile law was to be in force....