Leviticus 25:31

_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....

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

BUT THE HOUSES OF THE VILLAGES, WHICH HAVE NO WALLS ROUND ABOUT THEM,.... As there were many in the days of Joshua, the Scripture speaks of: the Jews suppose that such are meant, even though they were afterwards walled: SHALL BE COUNTED AS THE FIELDS OF THE COUNTRY; and subject to the same law as they: THEY MAY BE REDEEMED; at any time before the year of jubilee, and if not, then THEY SHALL GO OUT IN THE JUBILEE; to the original owners of them, freely, as Jarchi says, without paying anything for them....

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

_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....

IF A MAN SELL A DWELLING-HOUSE, &C.— Great difference is here made between houses _in walled cities,_ and in the country: the former, if sold, were either to be redeemed within the compass of _a year,_ or else to return no more to the first owner, not even at the jubilee; whereas houses in the country, which had lands of inheritance annexed to them, or were themselves estates of inheritance from the first division of the country, were to be _counted as the fields of the country,_ that is, they were to fall under the same law with the lands whereof they were an appendage, and so might be redeemed at any time. See Leviticus 25:10; Leviticus 25:23. Several reasons are assigned for this distinction between houses in cities and those in villages: the principal one seems to be, that f

THE LAW OF REDEMPTION 25:23-34 TEXT 25:23-34 23 And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is mine: for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. 24 And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. 25 If thy brother be waxed poor, and sell some of his possession, then shall his kinsman that is next unto him come, and shall redeem that which his brother hath sold. 26 And if a man have no one to redeem it, and he be waxed rich and find sufficient to redeem it; 27 then let him reckon the years of the sale thereof, and restore the over-plus unto the man to whom he sold it; and he shall return unto his possession. 28 But if he be not able to get it back for himself, then that which he hath sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubilee: and in the jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return unto hi...

THE SABBATICAL YEAR. THE YEAR OF JUBILEE The matters treated in this chapter are closely related to those in Leviticus 23, and their separation is another indication that we are dealing with a book made up of different elements. Observe again the change of number in Leviticus 25:14; Leviticus 25:17 and the interruption caused by Leviticus 25:18. Cp. what is said above in intro. to Leviticus 21. 1-7. The law of the Sabbatical Year: see also Exo