2.4. Laws Concerning Levitical Holdings and Property Consecrated to Jehovah. General Conclusions

Mosaic legislation takes on a somewhat different character with respect to the houses of the Levites. But this is determined by their particular social-economic position within the people of Israel. It is well known that the entire holding of the Levites consisted of 48 cities given to them at the distribution of the land (Num. 35:1–8). These cities, with the insignificant amount of surrounding fields, were to serve as the basis of their economic well-being, in place of land plots, and for that very reason they had for the Levites the same significance that land plots had for ordinary Israelites. Hence the legislation transfers to the houses of the Levites in their cities the same provisions it makes regarding the land plots of ordinary Israelites. “As for the cities of the Levites, the houses in the cities of their possession, the Levites may redeem at any time.” The law on the return of land plots to their previous owners in the jubilee year here extends also to the houses of the Levites. “And if one of the Levites does not exercise his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in the city of their possession shall be released in the jubilee; for the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel” (Lev. 25:33). The direct meaning of the quoted text (in the Synodal translation) is clear: it speaks of the jubilee right by which sold real property, if not redeemed, reverts to the previous owner at the jubilee. But a difficulty arises in the explanation of one particular detail of the law, since in the Hebrew text it reads differently—without the negative particle “not”: et qui redimet a levitis.

A paraphrase of this text similar in meaning is offered by Saalschütz: “If anyone of the Levites themselves redeems it, then the sold house, or even an entire city, shall be released at the jubilee.” He accompanies this reading with the following explanation: “If one Levite was compelled to sell a house, or an entire family of Levites a city, and these are redeemed by other Levites, then among the Levites too there apply not the general laws on houses (Lev. 25:30), but the general laws on land ownership—that is, the holding of Levite A, which he sold out of poverty to Levite B and which Levite C redeemed from B, reverts at the jubilee year from C to the first owner—Levite A.” But such a reading and the ingenious explanation that accompanies it, despite its preponderance in ancient translations, does not fully correspond to the context of the speech and has an air of artificiality; whereas the text of the Synodal translation fully corresponds to the context and to the natural, logical flow of the argument. The law, having granted the Levites a broad right of redemption (compared with ordinary Israelites)—“the Levites may redeem at any time”—immediately makes the natural supposition that under exceptional circumstances the Levites may not avail themselves even of such a broad right of redemption. In such a case, “the house that was sold in the city of their possession” will naturally remain, until the jubilee, in the hands of the buyer, and at the jubilee, by the general jubilee right, shall “be released” to the previous owner. Accepting this reading and explanation is all the more natural in that it fully corresponds, with almost literal precision, to the reading and meaning of verse 28, which contains a similar law on the redemption and return of sold landed property.

A somewhat indefinite character is presented, furthermore, by the law on the sale of fields lying around the cities of the Levites. “The fields of the pasturelands of their cities may not be sold, for that is their perpetual possession” (Lev. 25:34), or as this law is expressed in a literal translation from the Hebrew: et ager suburbii civitatum eorum non vendetur, which may be rendered: “and the pastureland around their cities shall not be sold.” From the text it is not clear in what sense the sale of these fields is forbidden: whether in the sense that they may not be sold beyond the jubilee year, or in the sense that they may not be sold at all, not even until the jubilee year. In the first case, says Saalschütz, the law would only be a repetition of what had already been provided for ordinary Israelite land holdings. But if the latter meaning is accepted, it is again difficult to say why, with respect to Levitical land holdings, such an exceptional law was given that forbids any sale whatsoever, even for a few years, whereas it does not extend to the houses of the Levites. He thinks to resolve this difficulty as follows: “In all probability, the law here also attributes a relatively higher value to land holdings than to ownership of city houses. In that case the ascending gradation of laws would be as follows: 1) city houses of Israelites could be sold permanently with the right of redemption within one year; 2) land holdings of Israelites could be sold only until the jubilee year with the right of redemption throughout the entire interval; 3) houses of Levites are sold on the terms of the land holdings of ordinary Israelites; 4) land holdings of Levites could not be sold at all, so that a Levite could not release from his hands what barely sufficed to feed him—namely his field, of course (cf. Lev. 25:31) along with the structures belonging to it.” However orderly the gradation of laws presented may appear, it nevertheless does not explain with sufficient grounding the law on the absolute inalienability of Levitical land holdings. The categorical declaration of the law that “the fields around the cities of the Levites may not be sold,” motivated by another categorical declaration that “this is their perpetual possession”—where the epithet “perpetual” can without difficulty be understood in the sense of “permanent,” “continuous” possession—speaks entirely clearly of the absolute inalienability of Levitical fields; but the explanation of this law must be sought in the special conditions of the social-economic position of the Levites. The Levites, as a group set apart from the people for a special ministry, did not receive land plots on an equal footing with the other tribes: personal engagement in field work, with its petty everyday cares, was considered inappropriate to their special ministry—they were to be maintained by the compensation for this ministry. Nevertheless they did receive several cities with an insignificant, strictly determined quantity of adjacent fields. “The cities,” the law says, “shall be for them to dwell in, and their pastureland shall be for their livestock and for their property and for all their living needs.” If one takes into account that the chief source of the Levites’ maintenance consisted in the revenues from their ministry, that the land given to them around each city—which moreover they did not themselves cultivate—was by reason of its limited quantity unsuited to division, and that finally the law directly specifies the purpose of this land—for livestock and for grazing—one must conclude that this land was the common holding of the Levites, intended to serve as the nearest, ready-at-hand means for meeting their common everyday needs. In that case the provision of the law on the absolute inalienability of the common Levitical holding is understandable; whereas the houses, which constituted the private property of individual Levites, could be sold, though with the restriction of this sale to the jubilee year. The prohibition on selling the fields of the Levites is motivated by the communal character of their holding and the absence of private property rights over it—rights that provide the possibility of arbitrary disposal of one’s holding. In this case the law remains faithful to its fundamental view of property, according to which arbitrary disposal of a holding is progressively restricted in proportion to the degree it acquires a communal character—as was already evident above from the difference between the laws on the land and city houses of ordinary Israelites.

The law on the right of redemption and on the return of property to its previous owner in the jubilee year extends also to real estate consecrated to Jehovah, though here it undergoes certain modifications in accordance with the peculiarities of this type of disposition of property. In consecrating to Jehovah, the holding is transferred not to some “stranger and sojourner” by another “stranger and sojourner” who themselves hold this holding only by the special grace of its true proprietor, but to the true proprietor himself, and not on the terms of a sale but as a thank-offering for certain special acts of grace. Hence the difference in the right to the transferred holding. If after the sale of property to an ordinary buyer the seller retained a right over it, expressed in the free right of redemption for the same price as was obtained at the sale (with a deduction for time of use), then here this right was restricted by the raising of the redemption cost. But this restriction is explained not by the fact that the lawgiver, as Saalschütz thinks, generally viewed consecrations and vows with disapproval and by this measure wished to restrain the Israelites from them, but by elevated moral motives. An owner who had sold his estate out of need was guided, when redeeming it, by the economic calculation of personal advantage, sometimes even to the detriment of the buyer, who suddenly and perhaps with great effort found himself deprived of a property he had acquired. In the case of a consecration, however, no egotistical calculations of personal advantage were to have any place. Therefore, if the one who consecrated his holding wished for reasons of advantage to redeem the consecrated property, the raising of the redemption cost was to serve as a restraint upon him and bring him to the awareness that the consecration to Jehovah must be made with full resolution to renounce the use of the consecrated thing in favor of Jehovah. “The raising of the payment at redemption,” says Knobel, “is a kind of morally motivated penalty for the fact that the one who consecrated a thing to God does not renounce the use of it but wishes to have it back.” The consecration is made according to the evaluation of the priest: “When a man consecrates his house as a holy gift to the Lord, the priest shall value it as either good or bad; as the priest values it, so it shall stand” (Lev. 27:14). In accordance with this valuation the payment for redemption is also made, with the addition of a fifth part of the value of the consecrated thing as established by this valuation: “And if the person who consecrated it wishes to redeem his house, he shall add a fifth of the valuation price to it, and it shall be his.” Similar provisions regarding valuation and redemption extend also to a consecrated field. But here the valuation is carried out in a more precise manner, according to a legalized norm determined by the sowing of a homer. “If a man consecrates to the Lord part of his land, the valuation shall be in proportion to its seed requirements: a homer of barley seed at fifty shekels of silver” (Lev. 27:16). That is, the valuation of the consecrated field was to be made in proportion to how many homers would ordinarily need to be sown on the consecrated field; reckoning fifty shekels for each homer, the total sum of the valuation was thus determined by multiplying the number of homers by 50. The very valuation of the homer at fifty shekels is determined by the income from the harvest usually obtained from a sown homer of barley. Consequently, the total sum of valuation of the consecrated field that we have presented is only an annual sum; the full sum was determined by the number of years for which the field was consecrated. Therefore the valuation was either higher or lower depending on the number of years remaining until the jubilee year, since the consecration was valid only until that year. “If he consecrates his field from the year of jubilee, the valuation shall stand” (Lev. 27:17)—that is, if the field is consecrated in the first year after the jubilee, statim ab anno incipientis jubilaei, as the Vulgate clearly expresses it—consequently for the full fifty-year period—then the sum of its valuation should also be full, for fifty years according to the reckoning stated. “But if he consecrates his field after the jubilee, then the priest shall calculate the price for it according to the years that remain until the year of jubilee, and the price shall be reduced” (Lev. 27:18). The reduction is made according to the number of years remaining (from the time of consecration) until the jubilee. If the one who consecrated wishes to redeem the consecrated field—that is, as Knobel says, to release it from any obligation to the sanctuary in order to sell or lease it for reasons of economic advantage—he must pay the sum set by the priest at the valuation, adding a fifth part of it for the same reasons given for this addition in the examination of the law on the redemption of a consecrated house. “If the man who consecrated the field wishes to redeem it, then he shall add a fifth of the valuation price to it, and it shall remain his” (Lev. 27:19)—thus the law formulates this provision. Redemption was of course not obligatory but left to the will of the one who consecrated, and was carried out within the fifty-year period, since by the general Mosaic legislation on land ownership, land plots temporarily alienated from their owners (whether by sale or by consecration) reverted to their previous owner at the jubilee year without any redemption. Therefore in the case under examination the general principle of Mosaic legislation would also be expected to operate, but here it apparently departs from it. The right of redemption here seems to pass into an obligation, the non-fulfillment of which leads to the total loss of the consecrated holding. “But if he does not redeem the field, and if the field has been sold to another man, it shall no longer be redeemed” (Lev. 27:20). And further: “But the field, when it is released in the jubilee, shall be a holy gift to the Lord, like a field that has been devoted; the priest shall be in possession of it” (Lev. 27:21). According to the first provision, the one who consecrated loses the right of redemption of the field if it “is sold to another person.” Here it is not clear by whom it is sold. According to the Synodal translation quoted by us, the sale appears to be presupposed as occurring on the part not of the one who consecrated but of someone else, since in the first clause an active form stands and in the second a passive form. A similar form has the Vulgate: Si autem noluerit redimere, sed alteri cuilibet fuerit venumdatus. Saalschütz holds the same reading, and on the basis of it directly expresses the opinion that the sale was carried out by the priestly administrative authority. But such a reading and understanding fails to explain those serious consequences that such a sale carries for the one who consecrated—namely, the loss of the right of redemption and the jubilee right of gratuitous return of his holding. Moreover, thus understood, this law could give occasion to significant abuses on the part of the priestly administrative authority, which—in view of the fact that a consecrated field sold by it would at the jubilee year “belong to the priest as a possession”—would always in the interest of its class try to sell the consecrated field as quickly as possible, and would thus deprive the one who consecrated and his heirs of their ancestral, legally inalienable landed property. A different meaning is given by the text of the LXX: Ἐὰν δέ μὴ λυτρῶται τὸν ἀγρὸν, καὶ ἀποδῶται τὸν ἀγρὸν ἀνθρώπῳ ἑτέρῳ, οὐκέτι μὴ λυτρώσηται αὐτόν. According to this reading, the sale is presupposed as occurring on the part of the one who consecrated, to which the active form of two verbs with one subject clearly points. Such a reading and understanding conveniently explains the serious consequences of sale without redemption. If the seller here is the one who consecrated himself—that is, who had temporarily renounced all rights to the consecrated property—and if he sells the consecrated thing as his own property without having any right to do so without redemption, then the sale in this case constitutes a crime, a theft from the sanctuary of what belongs to it—sacrilege. From this point of view, the deprivation of the one who consecrated both of the right of redemption and of the jubilee right of return of the holding is understandable. Only by the gravity of the crime can one explain the grave deprivation of the one who consecrated of those rights which constitute the essence of Mosaic legislation regarding real property. And how much the law—which admitted in the examined case an exception—values the principle of the inalienability of real property is shown by the following provision, which determines the manner of consecrating to the sanctuary not one’s ancestral but purchased property: “If a man consecrates to the Lord a field that he has bought, which is not a part of his ancestral possession, then the priest shall calculate the amount of the valuation for it up to the year of jubilee, and the man shall give the valuation on that day as a holy gift to the Lord. In the year of jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom it was bought, to whom the land belongs as a possession” (Lev. 27:22–24). According to this provision, a person wishing to consecrate a field that he had bought from an “impoverished brother” had no right to transfer to the sanctuary the field itself, but only its assessed value; the field itself was to remain with him so as to revert to its previous owner at the jubilee year. The sum arrived at by valuation was transferred “on that day”—that is, on the day of consecration.

The provisions examined exhaust the content of the Mosaic laws on real property, which constitutes the principal source of economic well-being in the life of the people. The characteristic features of these laws present themselves as follows.

The land belongs in the proper sense to Jehovah, but He has given it over for possession to Israel, and in this sense it constitutes the common holding of all members of the people. As the common holding of the whole people, it is distributed among tribes, clans, and families according to the number of their members, so that upon further division each household receives an equal allotment; and thereafter in its parts it becomes the inalienable property of both the said social units—tribes, clans, and families—and of individual persons. The inalienability of the holding of these communal units is guaranteed by the laws on inheritance, which do not permit its transfer to another tribe, clan, or even family; and the inalienability of the individual’s holding is guaranteed by a restriction of his rights over the disposal of his property. The restriction is expressed in the laws on the sale of real property. But this restriction of the individual’s rights in disposing of his property is not, in the thought of the laws of Moses, a purposeless, blindly logical consequence of the communal (on the basis of the land belonging to Jehovah and to no one in particular) character of land ownership, which sacrifices the interests of the individual for the abstract benefit of the whole—as was predominantly the case in the states of the ancient world; on the contrary, it serves here for the benefit of the individual, placing him in a normal relation to the whole, since through this restriction it was achieved that every private member constantly had an independent source of economic well-being and by virtue of this constantly maintained his personal independence, without falling into economic dependence on society. A proper relation of the individual to society establishes also a proper relation of one individual to another. Such a relation between individuals under Mosaic legislation was conditioned by the greatest possible economic equality among them, which was sustained by legal provisions that excluded the possibility of the excessive rise or enrichment of one individual at the expense of another, or radically restored the disturbed equality.

Such are the laws of Moses regarding landed and real property. With regard to another type of property—namely movable property—Mosaic legislation presents no special features. As the full product of the person himself, the law does not restrict it with any special provisions and leaves its disposal entirely to the will of the owners, who act in this matter guided by ordinary experience, custom, and the calculations of personal advantage. Interesting features appear only in the laws on debts. But let us first turn to the examination of the laws on inheritance, as being closely connected with the laws on land ownership.