Leviticus 25:23

Summary

The verse states a restriction on the permanent sale of land, grounding it in a declaration of divine ownership. It then characterizes the addressees' status in relation to that land as temporary residents rather than owners.

Key words

• ha'aretz ("the land", H0776G) — feminine singular noun, the subject of the prohibition, repeated twice in the verse to frame both the negative command and its justification.
• timmakher ("it will be sold", H4376) — niphal (passive) imperfect, third person feminine singular; the passive form removes the agent, focusing on the land's status rather than who would sell it, while the imperfect aspect marks this as an ongoing or future-applicable rule.
• litzmitut ("to perpetuity", H6783) — noun with prefixed preposition li ("to", H9005), forming an idiomatic expression meaning permanently or finally; it modifies the verb timmakher to specify the kind of sale being restricted.
• gerim ("sojourners", H1616) — masculine plural noun, one of two terms (paired with toshavim) describing the addressees' legal-social status as non-permanent inhabitants.
• toshavim ("resident aliens", H8453A) — masculine plural noun paired with gerim; together the two nouns form a fixed expression describing dependent residency without landownership rights.

What the text says

The verse divides into two causal clauses, each introduced by ki ("for/that", H3588A), which functions here as a subordinating particle providing justification for the preceding statement. The first clause, ki-li ha'aretz ("for the land is mine"), places the possessive pronominal element li ("to me", H9005 + H9030) before the noun ha'aretz, a common Hebrew construction for expressing possession without a verb "to have." This front-positioned possessive phrase gives li syntactic prominence, foregrounding the claim of ownership as the reason for the prohibition just stated.

The second ki clause explains the addressees' status using two nouns in apposition, gerim and toshavim, followed by the second-person plural pronoun 'atem ("you", H0859D) and the phrase 'immadi ("with me", H5978 + H9030). This construction — noun predicate followed by pronoun subject — is a nominal (verbless) clause, common in Hebrew for descriptive or classificatory statements about identity or status, here asserting a permanent condition rather than a single event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders litzmitut ("to perpetuity", H6783) as εἰς βεβαίωσιν, a term suggesting "confirmation" or "validation," which differs somewhat from the more temporal sense of "perpetuity" in the Hebrew. The Vulgate's in perpetuum aligns more closely with the Hebrew's temporal notion of permanence. Additionally, where the Hebrew ends with 'immadi ("with me"), the LXX has ἐναντίον μου ("before me" or "in my presence"), a spatial-relational nuance not explicit in the Hebrew preposition 'im ("with", H5978).