What Does Leviticus 25:41 Mean?
And he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and he shall turn back to his family, and to the holding of his fathers he shall turn back.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.THE KEY
Release takes the shape of return, carrying the man and his children into family and inherited ground.
THE MEANING
Release carries a person and his children back into family and ancestral holding. The repeated return shows belonging and place as part of freedom.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that getting out is the whole of freedom dissolves here: release has a destination in family and ancestral holding.
THE ROOT
יָשׁוּב
yashuv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
to turn back, return
“turn back” in this verse is yashuv. The same root appears twice: first he returns to his family, then he returns to his fathers’ holding. The doubled motion joins kinship and inheritance in one picture of restored belonging.
ALSO GROWS
shav: turned back, returned
שָׁב
This form of the root echoes the verse’s first return, toward his family.
teshuvah: return, turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun carries the same movement back, making the release a path into restored belonging.
אֲחֻזַּת
achuzzat
GROWS FROM
אחז
achaz
to grasp, hold, take possession
The ancestral possession is named with a word rooted in holding. Alongside the repeated return, this shows release ending in a concrete place held within the family’s inheritance.
ALSO GROWS
achaz: to grasp, seize, hold
אָחַז
The verb names the act of holding that lies beneath the inherited holding in this verse.
achuzzah: holding, possession, estate
אֲחֻזָּה
This noun shares the root of the verse’s word for possession and points to a specific inherited place.
THE PATTERN
Release restores people from exclusion or captivity into family and a place of belonging.
And you shall set apart the fiftieth year, and proclaim a free flowing through all the land to all who settle in it. It shall be a ram's horn year for you, and you shall turn back each to his holding, and each to his family you shall turn back.God settles the lone ones into households; he brings out the bound ones in chains; but the ones who turn away dwell in a parched land.So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the set-apart ones, and of the household of God.THE THREAD
And you shall set apart the fiftieth year, and proclaim a free flowing through all the land to all who settle in it. It shall be a ram's horn year for you, and you shall turn back each to his holding, and each to his family you shall turn back.The Jubilee declaration uses the same return root twice, naming return to possession and family. Verse 41 gives that doubled return a human face: the man and his children go back to their kin and inherited holding.
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