Leviticus 25:54

Summary

The verse states the consequence for a person who has not been redeemed through any of the preceding methods (described earlier in the chapter): such a person, together with his sons, is to go free in the year of the jubilee.

Key words

• yi.ga.'El ("he will be redeemed", H1350A) — niphal imperfect, giving the verb a passive sense ("be redeemed") and marking the action as not-yet-completed or hypothetical, fitting the conditional clause introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A).
• 'Eleh ("these", H0428) — demonstrative particle referring back to the redemption procedures previously named in the chapter; combined with the preposition be ("in", H9003) it forms "by these [means]."
• ya.Tza' ("he will go out", H3318H) — qal sequential perfect, connected to the preceding verb by the narrative ve ("and", H9001); this verb form carries the sentence forward as a consequence following the conditional yi.ga.'El.
• ha.yo.Vel ("the jubilee", H3104) — masculine singular noun with the definite article, naming the specific year in which release occurs; it stands in construct with sh.Nat ("year of", H8141).
• va.Na ("sons of", H1121A) — masculine plural construct noun with the third-person suffix ve ("his"), specifying that the release includes his sons together with him.

What the text says

The verse is built as a conditional-consequential pair. The protasis, ve'im lo' yiga'el be'eleh ("and if he is not redeemed by these"), uses the niphal imperfect yi.ga.'El to express a passive, potential situation — the subject does not perform the redemption himself but could be the object of it. The demonstrative 'Eleh ("these") points back to the specific redemption arrangements laid out earlier in the chapter, without restating them.

The apodosis begins with the sequential perfect ya.Tza' ("he will go out"), a verb form that in Biblical Hebrew narrative typically continues a preceding action in temporal or logical sequence — here marking the release as the automatic outcome if redemption by those means does not occur. The phrase bi-shnat ha-yovel ("in the year of the jubilee") specifies the fixed temporal boundary for this release, independent of whether redemption happened. The clause closes with hu' u-vanav 'immo ("he and his sons with him"), where the construct form va.Na ties the sons directly to the subject, indicating that the release applies to the household unit, not the individual alone.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders ha.yo.Vel ("the jubilee") as "τῷ ἔτει τῆς ἀφέσεως" ("the year of release"), describing the year by its function rather than transliterating the term. The LXX also translates be'eleh ("by these") as "μετὰ ταῦτα" ("after these things"), shifting from a means/manner sense to a temporal one. Both the LXX ("παιδία", "children") and the Vulgate ("liberis", "children") render va.Na ("sons") with a broader term for "children" rather than the more specific "sons" found in the Hebrew.