Leviticus 25:51

אִם־עוֹד רַבּוֹת בַּשָּׁנִים לְפִיהֶן יָשִׁיב גְּאֻלָּתוֹ מִכֶּסֶף מִקְנָתֽוֹ׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

אִם־ע֥וֹד רַבּ֖וֹת בַּשָּׁנִ֑ים לְפִיהֶן֙ יָשִׁ֣יב גְּאֻלָּת֔וֹ מִכֶּ֖סֶף מִקְנָתֽוֹ׃

Greek (Septuagint)

ἐὰν δέ τινι πλεῖον τῶν ἐτῶν ᾖ, πρὸς ταῦτα ἀποδώσει τὰ λύτρα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀργυρίου τῆς πράσεως αὐτοῦ·

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

Si plures fuerint anni qui remanent usque ad jubilæum, secundum hos reddet et pretium:

Spanish

Si todavía faltan muchos años para el jubileo, el precio de su rescate será en proporción a esos años y devolverá una gran parte de lo que pagaron por él.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Si aun fueren muchos años, conforme á ellos volverá para su rescate del dinero por el cual se vendió.

English

If many years remain, he must pay for his redemption in proportion to his purchase price.

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse establishes a conditional case: if many years remain (presumably until the jubilee, per context), the redemption price for a person's freedom must be calculated proportionally, based on the original purchase silver. The Hebrew grammar builds this as a protasis-apodosis structure with an idiomatic expression for "in proportion to."

Key words

'im ("if", H0518A) — introduces the conditional clause, setting up the hypothetical of remaining years.
ra.Bot ("many", H7227A) — feminine plural adjective agreeing with sha.Nim ("years"), describing the quantity of years still outstanding.
fi ("mouth", H6310K) — construct noun combined with the suffix Hen ("their", H9029) to form the idiom le-fi-hen, literally "according to the mouth of them," functioning as "in proportion to them."
ya.Shiv ("he will repay", H7725K) — Hiphil imperfect, a causative verbal form indicating the subject causes repayment to happen; the imperfect aspect marks this as future or ongoing obligation.
ge.'u.la.T-o ("his redemption", H1353 + H9023) — construct noun with possessive suffix, naming the specific object being repaid: "his redemption-price."

What the text says

The sentence opens with the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A), followed by od ("still", H5750) and ra.Bot ("many", H7227A) modifying ba-sha.Nim ("in the years", H9003+H8141) — establishing the condition: "if still many in the years." The apodosis begins with the idiomatic phrase le-fi-hen ("according to their mouth"), built from fi ("mouth", H6310K) in construct with the suffix Hen ("their", H9029). This idiom does not refer to literal speech but functions as a proportional marker — "according to them" (the years) — indicating that the repayment amount scales with the number of years remaining.

The verb ya.Shiv ("he will repay", H7725K) is Hiphil imperfect, a causative form of the root meaning "to return," here meaning "he will cause to return / he will repay." Its object is ge.'u.la.T-o ("his redemption", H1353+H9023), a construct chain meaning "his redemption-price." The source of this payment is specified by mi-Ke.sef mik.na.T-o ("from the silver of his purchase", H9006+H3701H+H4736+H9023) — a double construct chain: "the silver of his purchase," meaning the original price paid to acquire him.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders le-fi-hen ("according to their mouth") with pros tauta ("according to these things"), abstracting the idiom into a general referential phrase without preserving the "mouth" imagery. The Vulgate similarly paraphrases with secundum hos ("according to these"), also losing the idiomatic body-part construction found in the Hebrew.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.