Leviticus 27:24

Summary

The verse establishes that in the jubilee year, a field returns to the person from whom it was bought — identified as the one who holds the possession of the land. It closes the regulations concerning fields bought and consecrated before the jubilee cycle.

Key words

• ha.yoVel ("jubilee", H3104) — masculine singular noun with definite article, marking the specific cyclical year that triggers the return.
• yaShuv ("it will return", H7725G) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular, expressing a future/ongoing action: the field's returning is presented as what will happen at that time.
• kaNahu ("he bought it", H7069) — qal perfect with third person masculine singular object suffix ("it"), a completed action referring back to the original purchase of the field.
• achuZat ("possession of", H0272) — feminine singular construct noun, linking grammatically to ha'Aretz ("the land", H0776G) to form "possession of the land."
• 'aSher ("whom/that", H0834A) — relative particle used twice (lines 9 and 16), each time introducing a clause identifying a party connected to the field.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a temporal prepositional phrase, bishNat hayoVel ("in the year of the jubilee"), setting the moment when the described action occurs. The main verb, yaShuv ("it will return"), is qal imperfect, agreeing with hassaDeh ("the field") as its subject. The field is the grammatical actor performing the "returning," even though in practical terms the return concerns legal ownership rather than physical motion of the field itself.

The destination of this return is introduced by la'aSher ("to the one whom"), followed by kaNahu ("he bought it"), a qal perfect verb with a suffixed object pronoun referring back to the field. This clause identifies the recipient as the person who originally made the purchase. The phrase me'iTo ("from him/with him") specifies the transactional relationship — the seller from whom the buyer had acquired the field.

A second relative clause, again introduced by 'aSher with the preposition lo ("to him"), identifies this same party by another designation: achuZat ha'Aretz ("possession of the land"). This construct phrase — "possession of" + "the land" — describes the recipient as the one holding the land as ancestral or family property, rather than as a temporary purchaser. The structure thus builds an identification: the field returns to the seller, who is defined by his standing as holder of the land's possession.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hassaDeh ("the field", H7704G) as ἀγρὸς and identifies the recipient with τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ("to the man"), an explicit noun not present in the Hebrew, where the recipient is only indicated through the relative clause la'aSher. The Vulgate similarly interprets the recipient as priorem dominum ("the former owner"), an interpretive gloss not literally present in the Hebrew text, which uses the relative construction 'aSher qaNahu ("whom he bought") without a noun equivalent to "owner." The Hebrew's second clause, achuZat ha'Aretz ("possession of the land"), is rendered by the LXX as ἡ κατάσχεσις τῆς γῆς ("the possession of the land"), closely matching the construct structure, while the Vulgate condenses it into habuerat in sorte possessionis suæ ("had had in the lot of his possession"), adding the term "lot" (sorte) absent from the Hebrew.