Leviticus 25:28

Summary

The verse addresses the case where a person who sold property lacks sufficient means to redeem it. In that situation, the property remains with the buyer until the Jubilee year, at which point it is released and returns to the original owner's possession.

Key words

• matze'ah ("it has found", H4672) — qal perfect, third person feminine, agreeing with yad ("hand"); the idiom "his hand has not found sufficiency" expresses lack of financial means.
• yad ("hand", H3027H) — construct noun with pronominal suffix "his," forming the idiom for personal capacity or resources, repeated later (word 16) for "the hand of the buyer," creating a structural contrast between the seller's insufficient "hand" and the buyer's controlling "hand."
• ha-qoneh ("the one who bought", H7069) — qal participle with definite article, describing an ongoing role ("the buyer") rather than a completed act, in construct-like use with the direct object marker 'oto ("it").
• yovel ("jubilee", H3104) — appears twice (in construct shenat ha-yovel, "year of the jubilee," and independently ba-yovel, "in the jubilee"), marking the temporal boundary that triggers the return.
• achuzzato ("his possession", H0272) — construct noun with third-person suffix, naming the property class to which the land reverts, distinct from mimkar ("thing sold", H4465) used earlier for the same land while in the buyer's hand.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional (ve'im... lo') followed by a chain of sequential perfect verbs (ve-hayah, ve-yatza', ve-shav) that narrate the outcome in sequence: the sold property "will be" (hayah) in the buyer's hand, it "will go out" (yatza') at the jubilee, and the original owner "will return" (shav) to it. This verbal chain marks a legal process unfolding over time rather than a single event.

The Hebrew distinguishes the same land by two different nouns depending on whose control it is under: while held by the buyer it is called mimkar ("thing sold"), and once released it is called achuzzato ("his possession"). The repetition of yad ("hand") for both seller and buyer creates a verbal symmetry: the seller's "hand" that "did not find" enough versus the buyer's "hand" that holds the land until the jubilee.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the temporal marker as ἕκτου ἔτους τῆς ἀφέσεως ("the sixth year of release"), where the Hebrew text has simply shenat ha-yovel ("the year of the jubilee") without a numeral. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew more closely, using annum jubilaeum ("the jubilee year") without a numeral. For achuzzato ("his possession"), the LXX uses κατάπαυσιν ("resting place"), a term with different connotations than the Hebrew's more neutral "possession/holding."