25:23,24
In most lands the king owned the land and gave it to whoever he chose. In Israel God owned the land, and He gave it to all. So land was not to be sold permanently, it was to be handled in such a way that it could be redeemed. The fundamental point here is that the land was not theirs to do as they pleased, it belonged to the Lord, and they were stewards of the land. We should also have a similar attitude to our material goods.
25:25-28
We now get the formal system for redeeming the land. For the most part the process functioned on natural processes. So if an Israelite became poor and so sold his land, then his nearest relative was to redeem the land. Note that it says “fellow Israelite”, there is community here. What we see is neither a capitalist nor a socialist system, we see a God system. Land had value, and people could sell and buy land, but it was always “leasehold”. If the original owner later acquired sufficient funds he could buy back the land, paying a fair price for it. If all else failed, then the land would be returned in the Jubilee Year.
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