Leviticus 25:47

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45 Moreover you may buy ^athe children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property.

46 And ^ayou may take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession; they shall be your permanent slaves. But regarding your brethren, the children of Israel, you shall not rule over one another with rigor.

47 ‘Now if a sojourner or stranger close to you becomes rich, and one of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor, and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner close to you, or to a member of the stranger’s family,

48 after he is sold he may be redeemed again. One of his brothers may redeem him;

49 or his uncle or his uncle’s son may redeem him; or anyone who is near of kin to him in his family may redeem him; or if he is able he may redeem himself.

50 Thus he shall reckon with him who bought him: The price of his release shall be according to the number of years, from the year that he was sold to him until the Year of Jubilee; it shall be ^aaccording to the time of a hired servant for him.

51 If there are still many years remaining, according to them he shall repay the price of his redemption from the money with which he was bought.

Commentaries:

Barnes' Notes

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Leviticus 25:48 >>

Leviticus 25:47-54

A sojourner or stranger - Rather, a foreigner who has settled among you. See Leviticus 16:29, note; Exodus 20:10, note.

Leviticus 25:54

In these years - More properly, by one of these means. The extreme period of servitude in this case was six years, as when the master was a Hebrew Exodus 21:2.

Looking at the law of the Jubilee from a simply practical point of view, its operation must have tended to remedy those evils which are always growing up in the ordinary conditions of human society. It prevented the permanent accumulation of land in the hands of a few, and periodically raised those whom fault or misfortune had sunk into poverty to a position of competency. It must also have tended to keep alive family feeling, and helped to preserve the family genealogies.

But in its more special character, as a law given by Yahweh to His special people, it was a standing lesson to those who would rightly regard it, on the terms upon which the enjoyment of the land of promise had been conferred upon them. All the land belonged to Yahweh as its supreme Lord, every Israelite as His vassal belonged to Him. The voice of the Jubilee horns, twice in every century, proclaimed the equitable and beneficent social order appointed for the people; they sounded that acceptable year of Yahweh which was to bring comfort to all that mourned, in which the slavery of sin was to be abolished, and the true liberty of God' s children was to be proclaimed Luke 2:25; Isaiah 61:2; Luke 4:19; Acts 3:21; Romans 8:19-23; I Peter 1:3-4.

Other Barnes' Notes entries containing Leviticus 25:47:

Ruth 2:20

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