Monday, February 6, 2012

Arachin 25 – Measuring an Ancestral Field

The laws of the Jubilee year apply only when all the Tribes of Israel live in the Land of Israel, each in its Biblical portion of the land. If one consecrated his field during this time and wished to redeem it, he paid fifty silver shekels for an area on which a measure of barley can be sown . What measure? - Chomer (same as kor, about 10 cubic feet), and this much barley was enough to sow the area of about five acres. The full fifty-shekel price applied only for the full forty-nine years of the Jubilee cycle, but in the middle of the cycle the price was adjusted for the years remaining. Thus it came out that for each year until Jubilee he paid a selah (Biblical shekel) and a pundyon – a small coin, the value of one forty-eighths of a selah. He could not pay this in installments.

If the owner redeemed his field, he had to add one-fifth, while others did not have to add one-fifth. On the other hand, the owner kept the field at the Jubilee years, while others who redeemed the field had to give it up in Jubilee, and it was divided among the kohanim. (In another version of the text it goes back to the owner.)

Art: John Constable - Wheat Field

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