Kommentar zu Wajikra 25:29

בית מושב עיר חומה A DWELLING PLACE IN A CITY WHICH HATH A WALL — i. e. a house situated in a city which has been surrounded by a wall since the days of Joshua the son of Nun (Sifra, Behar, Section 4 1).

AND IF A MAN SELL A DWELLING-HOUSE IN A WALLED CITY. Since a man finds it very difficult to sell his house, and be disconcerted at the time of the sale, therefore the Torah wanted that he [have the right to] redeem it within the first year [after the sale]. And because man is servant to the field,¹⁹⁵Ecclesiastes 5:8. and the bread of his sustenance comes from it, the Torah wanted [that if the seller did not redeem it before the Jubilee], it should go back [to him] in the Jubilee.¹⁹⁶Verse 31. But with regard to a house [in a walled city], after [the seller] has given up hope [of regaining it], by changing his residence and staying for a year in another house, it can no longer cause him harm [if he cannot redeem it after a year], since his [source of] livelihood will not be diminished if it will be forfeited [to the purchaser]. And the houses of the villages [which have no wall round about them]¹⁹⁶Verse 31. are made for the purpose of protecting the fields, and to serve as dwelling-places for those who cultivate the earth; therefore their law [of redemption] is similar to that of the fields of the country [i.e., they may be redeemed at any time until the Jubilee, and in the Jubilee they go back without compensation].

ואיש כי ימכר בית מושב, "And if a man sells a house which is (his) residence, etc." After the Torah has described how G'd "sold" the Temple, the Torah now explains how it could happen that G'd would "sell" His heritage, the Holy Temple. This is why the paragraph starts with the word ואיש, so that we understand that the word refers to G'd, just as it had in the previous paragraph. The extraneous word מושב refers to the house in which G'd has His residence, the Holy Temple; the expression עיר חומה refers to Jerusalem, the "walled city" which is described by David in Psalms 125 ,2 as "the city ringed by mountains, (i.e. like wall)." The Torah continues by explaining that these very "walls" are why the city may be be redeemed after as little as a year already. The reason is similar to what has been revealed to us by Midrash Tehillim on Psalms 79,1. We were told there that when G'd vented His anger on the stones and timber of the city allowing it to be destroyed, this was in lieu of venting all His anger on the people inside the city. Had G'd not vented His anger on stone and wood, not a single Jew would have survived that experience. If Israel had been wiped out, there would never again have been either a Holy Temple or a city of Jerusalem.

ואיש כי ימכור בית מושב עיר חומה, “If a man shall sell a house of residence in a walled city,” Nachmanides writes that seeing that if someone is forced to sell his residence for reasons of economic distress, and this is something which the seller feels as very degrading, the Torah permitted him to exercise the right to redeem such a house even during the very first year after he has sold it. Seeing that his house is not the source of his livelihood, the rules pertaining to the reversion of a field to its original owner in the Jubilee year do not apply to the sale of a residence. Loss of one’s house is something one comes to terms with much sooner than loss of one’s primary source of livelihood, i.e. one’s ancestral field. Houses in open areas, as distinct from residential houses in walled cities, serve the owner in supervising his field and as temporary residence for his harvest workers, and therefore the legislation governing the sale of such a house is much more similar to that governing the sale of one’s ancestral field. (verse 31)

Surrounded by a wall: Explanation: It was first surrounded by a wall and then settled [with people]. He says “from the days of Yehoshua bin Nun,” because the verse is probably only speaking of a town surrounded by a wall at the time of the conquest when the land was first settled.

ואיש כי ימכור בית מושב עיר חומה, “and if a man had to sell a house (his) in a walled city, etc.” the “man” described here as a “man,” is none other than the Lord. He had been described as such in Exodus 15,3: ה' איש מלחמה, “The Lord is a man of war.” The expression is a euphemism for “Master, overlord.” We find the expression also used in Ruth 1,3, where the husband of Naomi, Elimelech, is described as איש נעמי, as opposed to בעל נעמי, to show the reader that if Naomi agreed to leave the land of Israel it was because her husband was her overlord, and she had no other choice. In our verse the expression בית-מושב, the house of his residence, is the same as if the Torah had written: מושב ביתו, his residence, i.e. his house. He sold it to gentiles. The addition of the word מושב is to alert the reader to Psalms 132,13: כי בחר ה' בציון אוה למושב לו, “for the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it as His residence.” [His people being exiled, is equivalent to His being exiled from Earth. Ed.] The previous owner of such a house has only one year during which he can redeem it and it becomes the permanent property of the person who had bought it. [Houses are not considered ancestral properties, which revert back to the original owner or his heirs in the Jubilee year. Ed.] G–d had promised to redeem His land after 70 years, (compare Jeremiah 29,10, [at which time the Babylonian Empire was replaced by the Persian Empire. Ed.]

בית מושב עיר חומה, “a dwelling house in a fortified (walled) city;” seeing that the city is walled, the land inside it clearly was not meant ever to be used for agricultural purposes. This being so, G-d did not decree that if sold it had to revert to its original owner in the Jubilee year. The Jubilee legislation refers only to land that serves as its owner’s basic source of making a livelihood. An alternate interpretation: when someone buys himself a house in a walled city, he may be presumed to have done so with the intent of keeping it permanently. Most people do not feel comfortable when living in rented homes as they are always worried that the owner would not renew their rental contract at a price they could afford. This is why the Torah adds: לא יצא ביבל, “it will not revert in the Jubilee year.” However, fields and houses bordering on fields, not walled in, are all subject to the rules of the Yovel legislation, being given back to the original owner free of any charge to be paid by that owner. Both of these kinds of property are more often leased than purchased.

והיתה גאלתו THEN IT SHALL HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE REDEEMED [UNTIL THE COMPLETION OF THE YEAR OF ITS SALE] — Because it is stated about a field that one may redeem it after two years from the date of the sale and onwards at any time he pleases, but one may not redeem it during the first two years, Scripture was compelled to state specially with reference to this (the house) that just the opposite is the case — that if one wishes to redeem it in the first year he may do so, but after that he cannot redeem it.

[Referring to] the house (בית). But it is not referring to his sale of the house. It is not like “enough for its redemption” above (verse 26), which has to be translated as “the redemption of its sale (ממכר),” and it cannot mean “the redemption of the ancestral land (אחוזה)” since אחוזה is a word in the female form. Here, however, בית is a word in the male form. In addition, the word ממכר [connoting “sale”] is not mentioned in this verse that “its redemption” could refer to it. Therefore, it must mean the redemption of the house. (Re’m)

שנת ממכרו, “not the calendar year, but the year relevant to the 50 year cycle of the Yovel, which repeats itself as if moving in a circle.” (Sifra).

והיתה גאלתו THEN THE REDEMPTION OF IT — of the house — SHALL BE [TILL THE COMPLETION OF THE YEAR].

ימים תהיה גאולתו, “the period during which it may be redeemed extends for one year.” The wording means that the 12 month period during which this house may be redeemed may be combined between so many months in one calendar year and the balance in the next calendar year. This is also what the sages meant when they described the age of the Messiah’s coming as extending over 2000 years, i.e. part in one millennium and part in another (Avodah Zarah 9).

ימים, “years.” In other words, a year is not complete until the sun reverts to its original position in the following year.

ימים YEAR (lit., days) — the days of a full year are, briefly, termed “days”. Similar is: (Genesis 24:55) “Let the damsel remain with us a year (‎‎‏."(ימים