Leviticus 25:30

_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...

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....

NOT GO OUT - Because most of the houses in cities were occupied by artificers and traders whose wealth did not consist in lands....

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 IT BE NOT REDEEMED WITHIN THE SPACE OF A FULL YEAR,.... Either by the seller or any man of kin to him: THEN THE HOUSE THAT [IS] IN THE WALLED CITY SHALL BE ESTABLISHED FOR EVER TO HIM THAT BOUGHT IT, THROUGHOUT HIS GENERATION; after twelve months were elapsed it was not redeemable by any, but to be held by the purchaser and his heirs for ever: IT SHALL NOT GO OUT IN THE JUBILEE; from the purchaser or his heirs, to the seller or his heirs; for houses were not like lands, the gift of God, and held under him, but were built by men, and were their absolute property, and therefore they could dispose of them, and they that bought them could hold them after the above mentioned time; nor was there any danger of confounding tribes and families by retaining them: this law was made to encourage persons to settle in walled towns, to make and keep them populous, and to make owners of them ca...

REDEEMED Hebrew, "goel," Redemption (Kinsman type). (_ See Scofield) - (Isaiah 59:20). _...

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

THE WALLED CITY. a city that hath walls....

_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....