Komentarz do Kapłańska 25:33

‎הלוים‎ מן‎ואשר יגאל ‏ ‎‎‎ ‎— This means, and if any one buys a house or a city from them, then that house that has been sold or the city that was sold shall go out in the Jubilee and shall return unto the Levite who has sold it, and not be irredeemable as are other houses in “cities that have a wall” viz., those of Israelites. According to this explanation, יגאל has here the meaning of a “sale”. Another explanation is (taking יגאל here in its usual meaning of “redeeming”): Because it is stated in the previous verse: “the Levites shall have the right of redemption at any time”, I might think that Scripture is speaking only of an ordinary Israelite purchaser who bought a house in a city of the Levites, but when a Levite bought a house from another Levite it shall be irredeemable! Scripture therefore states “[the Levites shall have the right redemption at any time]”, ואשר יגאל מן הלוים, “also if one who redeems does so from the Levites — i. e. that also one (a Levite) who redeems a house from the possession of another Levite shall have the right to do so at any time (Sifra, Behar, Chapter 6 6).

AND IF ONE OF THE LEVITES REDEEM. The plain meaning of this verse appears to be as follows: He had stated [in the previous verse], the Levites have a perpetual right of redemption, to redeem immediately [even before the period of two years after the sale of the fields, which an Israelite must wait before he is allowed to redeem], and to redeem at any time [a house in a walled city, even after the expiration of a year since the sale, after which time an Israelite cannot redeem]. But He did not explain with reference to them [the Levites] whether their relatives [also] have the right of redemption, nor whether the Jubilee applies to them. Therefore He stated again, And if one of the Levites redeem, be the redeemer the seller himself or his relative a Levite, then the house that was sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out in the Jubilee from the hand of the purchaser. He should redeem it on this understanding, that he shall reckon the years of the sale thereof and restore the overplus,¹⁹⁷Verse 27. He calculates how many years remain until the Jubilee, and divides the total purchase-price by the number of years of crops that the purchaser will have until the Jubilee. This gives the value of each crop bought. If the purchaser or his relative redeems the field before the Jubilee, he deducts from the purchase-money paid the value of the crops eaten by the purchaser during the years that the field was in his possession, and gives him the balance. meaning to say that the Jubilee does apply to them [the Levites], and the manner of their redemption shall be as He said of the Israelites, and he shall reckon the years of the sale thereof etc.¹⁹⁷Verse 27. He calculates how many years remain until the Jubilee, and divides the total purchase-price by the number of years of crops that the purchaser will have until the Jubilee. This gives the value of each crop bought. If the purchaser or his relative redeems the field before the Jubilee, he deducts from the purchase-money paid the value of the crops eaten by the purchaser during the years that the field was in his possession, and gives him the balance.
And our Rabbis have said¹⁹⁸Arakhin 33 a. that the verse speaks of a Levite who buys from a Levite. According to their word, the interpretation of the verse appears to me to be as follows: It was the custom in former times in Israel that when a man had to sell his field, the person who had precedence in his inheritance [i.e., who was the nearest relative who could inherit] would come and buy it, and it was this that was called “redemption,” as it is said, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is thine to buy it,¹⁹⁹Jeremiah 32:7. and so also is it explained there in the matter of Boaz.²⁰⁰Ruth 4:4. And it appears to me that they administered a law of precedence for him, just as our Rabbis enacted for us the law of [the prerogative of] the neighbor,²⁰¹Baba Metzia 108 a. If a man wishes to sell his field, his neighbor has the special right of pre-emption — the right of purchasing before or in preference to others. and [if other people wanted to buy it], they would acquire [the right of possession] from the “first redeemer” by the [symbolic act of] acquisition of a scarf, as did Boaz.²⁰²Ruth 4:8: So the near kinsman said unto Boaz: ‘Buy it for thyself.’ And he drew off his shoe. See Ramban on Exodus 28:41. Thus Scripture is stating here that when a Levite redeems the inheritance of a Levite, that is to say, when he buys it from him as is the law of redemption, then that [land] acquired shall go out in the Jubilee. It thus teaches that the Jubilee applies to them [the Levites] in the case of “redemption” just as in the case of any other sale [among Israelites]. Scripture did not have to mention this law in the case of a plain sale [i.e., to say that if a Levite sold his field to a non-Levite, who is not his near relative, that it goes back to its original owner, the Levite, in the Jubilee], for they [Levites] are part of all Israel [and it is self-understood that the same laws apply to them]; except that He strengthened their legal right [by giving them, as explained above], a perpetual [privilege of] redemption. This law of “redemption” applies also to Israelites [i.e., that if they bought from Levites, the Levites have an unrestricted right of redemption forever]. Scripture, however, mentioned it with reference to the Levites, in order that one should not say that the [forty-eight] cities²⁰³Numbers 35:6-7. were only given to the whole tribe of Levi [and not to any particular person], and that therefore [fields which a Levite had sold] go back from an Israelite [in the Jubilee, i.e., if the purchaser was an Israelite he must give them back], but they do not go back from a Levite [i.e., if the purchaser was a Levite he does not have to give them back, since they remain anyway in the hands of the Levitical tribe], and certainly [we might think that] from a near kinsman [i.e., a Levite] whom we have made liable to buy [the field of his poor brother-Levite, those fields surely do not go back in the Jubilee]; therefore He said that this redemption too goes back in the Jubilee, and from the [law stated in connection with the] Levite we deduce [that the same law applies] to the Israelites. It is possible also that the Levites are not permitted to sell of their cities in any transaction [i.e., whether a field or house] to an Israelite, and therefore all their purchases are termed redemption [because only other Levites, who are their kinsmen, can buy from them].

ואשר יגאל מן הלוים, as we said in verse 32 that the Levites have a right to redeem such property for an unlimited period of time, לעולם, in the event he did not have the funds at the time of the Jubilee year or any other so-called deadline.

ואשר יגאל מן הלווים, “and if someone buys a property from a Levite, etc.” Nachmanides writes that from the plain meaning of the text it appears that seeing that the Torah had already stated that the Levites have an unlimited period of time during which they can redeem property they had been forced to sell, (compare verse 32) the right to redeem his property commences immediately, i.e. as soon as he has the necessary means, and nothing is said about his relatives having the right to do this on his behalf. Neither does the Torah indicate if the laws of the Jubilee apply to the Levites, i.e. a return of their property in that year without their having to compensate the buyer of it. This is why the Torah phrases this legislation as אשר יגאל מן הלווים, “if one of his fellow Levites redeems it,” to show that since in the case of the Levites who do not own ancestral land, a Levite has fallen on hard times, it is clear that his house has to be viewed as just as basic to his needs as the field is to the ordinary Israelite. Another Levite, who is his relative, may redeem it on behalf of the one who sold it.

This “redemption” is an expression of “selling.” R. Noson wrote: I found written somewhere that the verse calls the selling here “redemption” because anything belonging to Levites once belonged to Israelites, since they received no portion or inheritance with the Israelites except the forty-eight towns the Israelites gave them in exchange for their service [in the Temple]. Therefore, when an Israelite buys from a Levite, it is as if he is redeeming it from him, as this inheritance too once belonged to the Israelites.

ואשר יגאל מן הלוים, “and if he redeems (buys) it from the Levites;” there is a special reason why purchase is called “redemption” by the Torah. The reason is that whatever the Levites sell originated with the ordinary Israelites from whose tithes, etc., they made their living. After all, they never had an ancestral share of land in the land of Israel. This means that whatever they sell had originally been owned by Israelites. The Levite therefore feels as if he had “redeemed” it from an Israelite.

ויצא ממכר בית THEN THE HOUSE THAT WAS SOLD… SHALL GO OUT [IN THE JUBILEE] — According to the second explanation of ‎'ואשר יגאל וכו‎‎ given above, this contains another command and is not a continuation of the words that precede. They mean: “but if he (the vendor) did not redeem it” then it shall go out in the Jubilee and shall not become irredeemable at the end of the first year as is the case with the house of an Israelite.

'ויצא ממכר בית וגו, whereas houses do not fall under the Jubilee rule, houses of the Levites do, seeing they have no other ancestral heritage. They get it back without having to pay compensation to the buyer.

ויצא ממכר בית וגו', “and the house shall go out in the Jubilee year, etc.;” the sale of that house will be reversed, meaning that the sale price was calculated originally on the number of years remaining till the Jubilee so that the price of the redemption will take into account the number of years the purchaser has not been able to live in that house. In other words, the redemption procedures applied to the Levites closely parallels that of the Israelites. Our sages interpret this verse as dealing with a situation where a Levite had purchased the house under discussion from a fellow Levite and the Torah would tell us that redemption involving both buyer and seller who are Levites follow the same pattern as that involving ordinary Israelites. According to their words it was assumed that whenever the need for such redemptions arose in ancient Israel, the closest family member of the impoverished person was the first one in line to act as the redeemer. This is where the meaning of the term “redemption” fulfills its truest meaning. We find this documented in Jeremiah I believe that the pattern which determined the respective rank of the redeemer was similar to the manner in which the sages determined the rights of prospective purchasers when someone’s neighbour claimed first right of refusal when his neighbour put up a property for sale which adjoined his own. The subject is called דינא דמצרא in the Talmud. If a third party not in line wished to secure the property in question, he would have had to buy it from the original redeemer. The case of Boaz not being able to marry Ruth until the more closely related redeemer had declined, illustrates this kind of procedure. (Compare Ruth 4,1-9) This is what our verse meant when speaking of someone who “redeems from a Levite, etc.” The Levite in question had redeemed the field of his fellow Levite by paying out the purchaser who had bought that house. Now, someone wishes to buy that house from that “redeemer.” [Possibly, the proceeds of such a sale must be given by the “redeemer” to the original Levite, who might have moved to another town in the meantime. Ed.] At any rate, the Torah did not find it necessary to spell out the mechanics of how the Jubilee law works to restore the original property to the one who had owned it ancestrally, and does not then have to compensate the present holder of it in order to ensure that it is legally given back to him. The Levites have a claim on using this legislation in perpetuity. While it is true that basically this legislation applies also to the Israelites, the reason that the Levite was used by the Torah as the classical example of such a situation is in order that we should not think that such property would be distributed amongst all the Levites collectively, instead of the individual original Levite who had felt himself forced to sell it. Consequently such property is redeemed from ownership by an ordinary Israelite, but not from the ownership of a fellow Levite. It will certainly not be removed through automatic redemption from the possession of the redeemer who had been commanded by the Torah to redeem it, i.e. to “rescue” it from the original purchaser. This is why the Torah had to make the point that such redemption must occur through another Levite. Only such a Levite has the right to perform such redemption for an unlimited period of time after the original sale even if the original purchaser had been a Levite, and even more so if an ordinary Israelite had purchased that property from the Levite.

An Israelite who buys a house. The “another interpretation” means as follows: ואשר יגאל means to actually redeem, an expression of actual redeeming and not an expression of buying, and it is referring to where it is written is written above, “The Levites shall have an eternal right of redemption.” This verse is telling us that not only when an Israelite buys from a Levite can the Levite redeem it forever, but even when a Levite bought from a Levite the seller has eternal right of redemption.

ויצא ממכר בית, Rashi had to choose between two different interpretations of these words, and it is clear that he chose the second alternative according to which: “then the house which has been sold will revert in the Jubilee year;”

כי בתי ערי הלוים הוא אחזתם FOR THE HOUSES OF THE CITIES OF THE LEVITES ARE THEIR POSSESSION —They had no separate property of fields and vineyards, only cities to dwell therein together with the open land surrounding them; these, therefore, in their case took the place of the fields possessed by the Israelites and should thus be redeemable just like fields, in order that their inheritance should not be alienated from them.

This is another mitzvoh. I.e., according to the “another interpretation,” it is not connected to the “eternal right of redemption” of the previous phrase, as that refers to redeeming. However, according to the first interpretation, the entire verse discusses [the] one same subject [of selling to a Yisroel].

הוא אחוזתם, a masculine mode for possession, with the vowel shuruk. We find the same construction in verse 34 אחוזת עולם הוא להם, “it is a possession in perpetuity for them.”

Like fields. When Rashi says “They have [a rule] of redemption like fields,” and does not also say, “And they go out in the jubileeJubilee year like fields,” this is imprecise, since they too go out in the jubileeJubilee year, but Rashi only mentions one of these [points]. Re’m writes: You might ask: The reasonis rationale that, “For the houses of the Levitic cities, etc.,” only applies when an Israelite buys from a Levite. However, when the buyers are Levites and this rationale does not apply, since it will remain in the hands of a Levite and their inheritance will not be removed,, perhaps [Therefore] perhaps this case has the law of houses of an Israelite walled city, etc. The answer might be: Since most people who buy from Levites are Israelites, as they are the majority, the Torah gives a rationale that applies to them and it is not concerned about the minority of buyers who are Levites. It seems to me that we learn that it makes no difference whether the buyers are Israelites or Levites from what the verse writes, “(This) is their ancestral lands among Bnei Yisroel.” Why write “among Bnei Yisroel”? This must come for us to expound that the inheritance of the Levites should remain whole as it was originally “among Bnei Yisroel.” And since you do not need this regarding Israelite buyers, you expound it regarding Levite [buyers], that they [the houses they buy] return in the Jubilee year.