Leviticus 25:29

Summary

The verse establishes a legal rule for someone who sells a residential house located within a walled city: the seller retains a right of redemption, but only for a limited period — one full year from the date of sale.

Key words

• yimKor ("he will sell", H4376) — qal imperfect, marking the conditional/future action that triggers the case being described.
• ge'ullaTo ("its right of redemption", H1353) — construct noun with 3ms suffix ("his"), referring to the seller's redemption right over the house; it appears twice, framing the verse.
• choMah ("a wall", H2346G) — feminine singular noun in construct chain with 'ir ("city of", H5892B), together specifying "a city of a wall," i.e., a walled city.
• tom ("is finished", H8552) — qal infinitive, used with the preposition 'ad ("until", H5704) to mark the temporal boundary of the redemption right.
• shenat mimkaRo ("the year of its sale", H8141 + H4465) — construct chain with 3ms suffix, specifying the exact year the time limit is counted from.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve'Ish ki- ("and anyone if", H0376I + H3588A), a conditional construction typical of legal case formulations in this chapter, followed by the qal imperfect yimKor ("he will sell", H4376), setting up the hypothetical scenario. The object of the sale is described through a chain of construct nouns: beit-moShav ("a house of dwelling", H1004B + H4186) 'ir choMah ("a city of a wall", H5892B + H2346G) — a stacked genitive structure identifying the house as a residence within a fortified city.

The consequence is introduced with the narrative ve. + sequential perfect hayTah ("it will be", H1961), continuing the legal sequence: ge'ullaTo ("its redemption", H1353 with 3ms suffix) will exist 'ad-tom ("until it is finished", H5704 + H8552) shenat mimkaRo ("the year of its sale", H8141 + H4465). The clause is then restated with yaMim ("days", H3117I) as subject and the imperfect tihYeh ("it will be", H1961), repeating ge'ullaTo ("its right of redemption", H1353) — a syntactic repetition emphasizing the fixed one-year duration through parallel construction rather than a single continuous sentence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders beit-moShav ("house of dwelling") as οἰκίαν οἰκητήν ("a house, an inhabited one"), using two nouns rather than the Hebrew's construct-genitive chain. The Vulgate's domum intra urbis muros ("a house within the walls of the city") restructures the Hebrew's stacked constructs ('ir choMah, "city of a wall") into a prepositional phrase "within the walls of the city." The Hebrew's repeated clause structure (ge'ullaTo... ge'ullaTo) is rendered by the LXX with repeated ἡ λύτρωσις αὐτῆς ("her redemption"), preserving the doubling, while the Vulgate condenses both Hebrew clauses into a single sentence without repeating the term for redemption.