Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Leviticus 25:13
In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.
13. See introd. note.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
13. ye shall return every man untohis possession, &c.Inheritances, from whatever cause, andhow frequently soever they had been alienated, came back into thehands of the original proprietors. This law of entail, by which theright heir could never be excluded, was a provision of great wisdomfor preserving families and tribes perfectly distinct, and theirgenealogies faithfully recorded, in order that all might haveevidence to establish their right to the ancestral property. Hencethe tribe and family of Christ were readily discovered at his birth.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
In the year of this jubilee,…. In the beginning of it, as Aben Ezra, though not on the first day of Tisri, but the tenth day, the day of atonement, when the trumpet was blown:
ye shall return every man unto his possession; which is repeated from
Le 25:10; the reason of which, the Jews say, is to include gifts, and which, according to them, are like sales, and returned in the year of “jubilee”; that is, if a man gave his estate in possession to another, he returned to it, in the year of jubilee, equally as if he had sold it; and therefore they observe the same phrase is twice used by Moses, to include gifts y: but perhaps the truer reason is, because this was a special business done at this time, and of great importance; the word “return” being so often used, may serve to confirm the sense of the word “jubilee”, given previously, [See comments on Le 25:9].
y Misn. Becorot, c. 8. sect. 10. & Bartenora in ib.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(13) Ye shall return every man unto his possession.In the year of jubile every man is to be restored to his landed property, whether he had disposed of it by sale or by gift.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Lev 25:13 In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession.
Ver. 13. Ye shall return every man unto his possession. ] So shall all saints to the paradise of God, at the sound of the last trumpet.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
man. Heb ‘ish. App-14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Lev 25:10, Lev 27:17-24, Num 36:4
Reciprocal: Lev 25:28 – and in the Gal 4:10 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
The effects of the year on the possession of property 25:13-34
The people were to buy and sell property in view of the upcoming year of jubilee since in that year all property would revert to its original tribal leasees. This special year reminded the Israelites that they did not really own the land but were tenants of God, the true owner (Lev 25:23).
"The relationship of land and people under God is of fundamental importance for understanding the Old Testament and the Jewish people. . . . The Promised Land was a gift from God, not an inalienable right of anyone’s to sell or incorporate as they wished." [Note: Walter Riggans, Numbers, p. 200.]
Only extreme hardship was to force a tenant-owner to release (redeem, Lev 25:24) his land. Moses gave three cases in Lev 25:25-28 that explain how the people were to do this. A kinsman redeemer could recover the lost property, the seller himself could do so, and the year of jubilee would return it to him. God granted exceptions to the normal rules of release in the cases of property in a walled city (Lev 25:29-30) and property of the Levites (Lev 25:32-34).
There are three Old Testament references to the responsibilities of a human kinsman redeemer (Heb. goel) in Israel. Additionally the psalmists and other prophets also referred to Yahweh as Israel’s redeemer.
1. When a person sold himself or his property because of economic distress, his nearest kinsman should buy back (redeem) the person and or his property if he could afford to do so (Lev 25:25).
2. Perhaps an Israelite could not afford to pay the ransom price so that he could keep a first-born unclean animal for his own use. In this case his nearest kinsman could do so for him if he could afford it (Lev 27:11-13).
3. When someone killed a person, the victim’s kinsman redeemer could take the life of the killer under certain circumstances (Num 35:10-29).
Bible students sometimes confuse the levirate marriage custom with the kinsman redeemer custom. Levirate marriage involved the marriage of a widow and her husband’s brother or nearest relative. This provision existed so God could raise up a male heir who could perpetuate the family line of the widow’s former husband (cf. Genesis 38).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE JUBILEE AND THE LAND
Lev 25:13-28
“In this year of jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession. And if thou sell aught unto thy neighbour, or buy of thy neighbours hand, ye shall not wrong one another: according to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the crops he shall sell unto thee. According to the multitude of the years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of the years thou shalt diminish the price of it; for the number of the crops doth he sell unto thee. And ye shall not wrong one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the Lord your God. Wherefore ye shall do My statutes, and keep My judgments and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for the three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat of the fruits, the old store; until the ninth year, until her fruits come in, ye shall eat the old store. And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine: for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. If thy brother be waxen 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. And if a man have no one to redeem it, and he be waxen rich and find sufficient to redeem it then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it; and he shall return unto his possession. 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 his possession.”
The remainder of the chapter (Lev 25:13-55) deals with the practical application of this law of the jubilee to various cases. In Lev 25:13-28 we have the application of the law to the case of property in land; in Lev 25:29-34, to sales of dwelling houses; and the remaining verses (Lev 25:35-55) deal with the application of this law to the institution of slavery.
As regards the first matter, the transfers of right in land, these in all cases were to be governed by the fundamental principle enounced in Lev 25:23 : “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is Mine: for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.”
Thus in the theocracy there was no such thing as either private or communal ownership in land. Just as in some lands today the only owner of the land is the king, so it was in Israel; but in this case the King was Jehovah. From this it follows evidently, that properly speaking, according to this law, there could be no such thing in Israel as a sale or purchase of land. All that any man could buy or sell was the right to its products, and that, again, only for a limited time; for every fiftieth year the land was to revert to the family to whom its use had been originally assigned. Hence the regulations (Lev 25:14-19) regarding such transfers of the right to the use of the land. They are all governed by the simple and equitable principle that the price paid for the usufruct of the land was to be exactly proportioned to the number of years which were to elapse between the date of the sale and the reversion of the land, which would take place in the jubilee. Thus, the price for such transfer of right in the first year of the jubilee period would be at its maximum, because the sale covered the right to the produce of the land for forty-nine years; while, on the other hand, in the case of a transfer made in the forty-eighth year, the price would have fallen to a very small amount, as only the product of one years cultivation remained to be sold, and after the ensuing sabbatic year the land would revert in the jubilee to the original holder. The command to keep in mind this principle, and not wrong one another, is enforced (Lev 25:17-19) by the injunction to do this because of the fear of God; and by the promise that if Israel will obey this law, they shall dwell in safety, and have abundance.
In Lev 25:24-28, after the declaration of the fundamental law that the land belongs only to the Lord, and that they are to regard themselves as simply His tenants, “sojourners with Him,” a second application of the law is made. First, it is ordered that in every case, and without reference to the year of jubilee, every landholder who through stress of poverty may be obliged to sell the usufruct of his land shall retain the right to redeem it. Three cases are assumed. First (Lev 25:25), it is ordered that if the poor man have lost his land, and have a kinsman who is able to redeem it, he shall do so. Secondly (Lev 25:26), if he have no such kinsman, but himself become able to redeem it, it shall be his privilege to do so. In both cases alike, “the overplus,” i.e., the value of the land for the years still remaining till the jubilee, for which the purchaser had paid, is to be restored to him, and then the land reverts at once, without waiting for the jubilee, to the original proprietor. The third case (Lev 25:28) is that of the poor man who has no kinsman to buy back his landholding, and never becomes able to do so himself. In such a case, the purchaser was to hold it until the jubilee year, when the land reverted without compensation to the family of the poor man who had transferred it. That this was strictly equitable is self-evident, when we remember that, according to the law previously laid down, the purchaser had only paid for the value of the product of the land until the jubilee year; and when he had received its produce for that time, naturally and in strict equity his right in the land terminated.