The buyer lost nothing by this, for he had fully recovered all that he paid for the annual harvests up to the year of jubilee, from the amount which those harvests yielded. Through these legal regulations every purchase of land became simply a lease for a term of years.
verses 29-30
Lev 25:29-30Alienation and redemption of houses. - Lev 25:29, Lev 25:30. On the sale of a dwelling-house in a wall-town (a town surrounded by a wall) there was to be redemption till the completion of the year of its purchase. ימים, “days (i.e., a definite period) shall its redemption be;” that is to say, the right of redemption or repurchase should be retained. If it was not redeemed within the year, it remained to the buyer for ever for his descendants, and did not go out free in the year of jubilee. קם to arise for a possession, i.e., to become a fixed standing possession, as in Gen 23:17. לא אשׁר for לו אשׁר as in Lev 11:21 (see at Exo 21:8). This law is founded upon the assumption, that the houses in unwalled towns are not so closely connected with the ownership of the land, as that the alienation of the houses would alter the portion originally assigned to each family for a possession. Having been built by men, they belonged to their owners in full possession, whether they had received them just as they were at the conquest of the land, or had erected them for themselves. This last point of view, however, was altogether a subordinate one; for in the case of “the houses of the villages” (i.e., farm-buildings and villages, see Jos 13:23, etc.), which had no walls round them, it was not taken into consideration at all.
Verse 31
Such houses as these were to be reckoned as part of the land, and to be treated as landed property, with regard to redemption and restoration at the year of jubilee.
Verse 32
On the other hand, so far as the Levitical towns, viz., the houses of the Levites in the towns belonging to them, were concerned, there was to be eternal redemption for the Levites; that is to say, when they were parted with, the right of repurchase was never lost. עולם (eternal) is to be understood as a contrast to the year allowed in the case of other houses (Lev 25:29, Lev 25:30).
Verse 33
Lev 25:33 “And whoever (if any one) redeems, i.e., buys, of the Levites, the house that is sold and (indeed in) the town of his possession is to go out free in the year of jubilee; for the houses of the Levitical towns are their (the Levites') possession among the children of Israel.”
