Leviticus 25:13

Summary

The verse instructs that in the jubilee year, each person is to return to his own hereditary land holding. It closes the legal unit begun earlier in the chapter concerning the fiftieth-year release of property.

Key words

• sh.Nat ("year of", H8141) — construct form linking directly to yovel, producing "year of the jubilee" rather than a standalone noun.
• yo.Vel ("jubilee", H3104) — the technical term for the fiftieth year; here definite, marked by ha- (H9009).
• ta.Shu.vu ("you will return", H7725G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, addressing the community collectively as "you (all)."
• 'ish ("each one", H0376I) — masculine singular noun functioning distributively within the plural address, singling out individuals inside the collective "you."
• 'a.chu.za.T...o ("his possession", H0272 + H9023) — construct noun with third-person masculine singular suffix, denoting a specific parcel belonging to that individual.

What the text says

The clause opens with a temporal phrase, bi-shnat ha-yovel ha-zot ("in this year of the jubilee"), fronted before the verb — a common Hebrew pattern that foregrounds the time frame before stating the action. The verb tashuvu is second-person plural, addressing the audience as a group, yet the following ish ("each one") shifts the statement to a distributive reading: the plural command applies individually to each member of the group. The final phrase el-achuzato ("to his possession") uses a construct noun with a third-person singular suffix, matching the distributive ish rather than the plural verb — so grammatically the sentence moves from plural address, to singular distribution, to singular possession, a shift not always visible in translations that render everything with a uniform "each of you" or "each one."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb tashuvu is second-person plural ("you shall return"). The Vulgate matches this collectively with a third-person plural, "redient omnes" ("all will return"), shifting from second to third person. The Septuagint instead uses a third-person singular verb, ἐπανελεύσεται ("he shall return"), aligning grammatically with the singular ish rather than the plural Hebrew verb. Additionally, the LXX renders ha-zot ("this") as σημασί᳑ αὐτῆς ("its signal" or "announcement"), a phrase not directly paralleling the Hebrew demonstrative, while the Vulgate and Hebrew both simply mark the jubilee as "this" year.