Leviticus 27:15

Summary

This verse establishes the procedure for someone who wants to buy back a house he had previously consecrated: he must pay the assessed value plus an additional fifth, after which the house legally reverts to him.

Key words

• mak.Dish ("the one who sets apart as holy", H6942H) — hiphil participle, denoting the person who performs the act of consecration; the article ha attached marks him as "the consecrator" as a defined role, not just an action in progress.
• yig.'Al ("he will redeem", H1350A) — qal imperfect, the verb of redemption itself, expressing the potential/future act of buying back.
• ya.saf ("he will add", H3254H) — qal sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), linking this action as the next required step after redemption, not a separate independent clause.
• chamishit ("the fifth part of", H2549) — construct-state ordinal number, grammatically bound to what follows (kesef 'erkekha, "the silver of your valuation"), forming a single phrase: "a fifth of the valuation-silver."
• 'er.ke.Kha ("your valuation", H6187 + H9021) — construct noun with 2nd person masculine singular suffix ("your"), unusual since the rest of the verse speaks in the third person about "the consecrator" and "his house."

What the text says

The verse opens with the conditional particle 'Im ("if", H0518A) governing the participle mak.Dish: "if the one who consecrates..." This participial construction identifies a class of person — someone who has already dedicated a house — rather than describing an action mid-occurrence. The main verb yig.'Al ("he will redeem") is qal imperfect, marking the redemption as a future or potential act contingent on the conditional clause. The direct object marker 'et introduces beito ("his house", construct + suffix), specifying exactly what is being redeemed.

The following clauses use sequential perfects (ya.saf, "he will add"; hayah, "it will belong") — a common Hebrew narrative-legal chain where each verb continues the logical sequence set up by the initial conditional. This produces a procedural chain: consecration → redemption → addition of a fifth → final ownership (lo, "to him", H9023/H9033 suffix repeated for emphasis on possession).

Notably, 'erkekha ("your valuation") uses a second-person suffix, addressing an implied "you" — likely the priest or Moses as addressee of the law — even though the rest of the verse is in third person. This shift is a feature of the Hebrew legal style, embedding a direct address within third-person narration.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders mak.Dish ("the one who consecrates") as ille qui voverat ("he who had vowed"), shifting from a participle describing an act of consecration to one framed around vowing. The LXX's ὁ ἁγιάσας ("the one who sanctified") more closely parallels the Hebrew's hiphil participle. The second-person suffix in 'erkekha ("your valuation") is not preserved distinctly in the LXX (τῆς τιμῆς, "of the value") or the Vulgate (aestimationis, "of the valuation"), both of which use third-person or impersonal phrasing rather than reproducing the Hebrew's direct address.