Verses 16-24 deal with fields that have been promised to God by a special vow. The first part concerns fields owned due to a family inheritance (verses 16-21), and the second has to do with land bought from another person.
In order to understand this paragraph properly, it is necessary to know what the usual practice would have been in such a case. If all the land dedicated to God, even during a limited period of time, had been given over to the priests, they would not have been able to take care of it. It is likely that, except in unusual cases, the land remained under the control of the owner. He would then fulfill his vow by the payment of a sum of money equivalent to the value of the land for the period of dedication. This had the important social consequence of allowing a poor person to keep on using the land and producing crops for a relatively small price (see the end of this verse). If this were not the case, he might have lost his land to a merciless creditor (compare 25.25 and following). In view of all this, it is easier to understand the existence of the “base price” (verses 16-18), the restrictions on the owner’s selling the land to someone else (verse 20), and the obligation to make the payment on the very same day that the price was fixed (verse 23).
By inheritance: this is left implicit in Good News Translation but should probably be made explicit with something like “part of his ancestral land” (New English Bible), or “part of his family land,” or “some of the land which his ancestors gave him.”
According to the seed for it: according to the majority interpretation of this expression, the value of the land would be determined by its size. But instead of measuring the field’s length and width, it was measured by the amount of seed required to plant the entire area. Jerusalem Bible, on the other hand, understands this expression to mean “according to its productivity” (New Jerusalem Bible has “… its yield”). That is, according to the amount of seed (or grain) it would produce rather than the amount it would require for sowing. This latter interpretation seems to be more in keeping with what agricultural experts would expect. So translators are advised to follow the model provided by New Jerusalem Bible, in which seed is understood as referring to the amount of grain produced rather than the amount planted.
Homer: according to Ezekiel 45.11 this dry measure was equal to ten “ephahs.” And it is also said to be the same as the “kor.” But this tells us nothing that the modern reader can relate to. Estimates of its value vary from 220 kilograms or 6 bushels (see New International Version note) to 400 kilograms or about 11 bushels (see Snaith, page 117). Bible en français courant has 300 kilograms, and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch has 150 kilograms. The Good News Translation rendering is based on the homer being equal to one hundred kilograms (British Good News Translation), or five bushels (American Good News Translation). But see the discussion below on the amount, fifty shekels.
Barley: a kind of grain used as food for both human beings and animals.
Fifty shekels: or “fifty pieces of silver” (see verse 3). The dynamic restructuring of Good News Translation has “ten pieces of silver per bushel” (US edition) or “ten pieces of silver for every twenty kilograms” (British edition). Given the uncertainty of the value of the homer, this may be correct, but Bible en français courant retains the figure “fifty” for the pieces of silver while translating the homer as “three hundred kilograms.” Even if we are unable to give exact equivalents for the shekel or for the homer, it seems clear that the price of fifty shekels over a period of fifty years (see verse 17), or a shekel per year, is a relatively small price to pay.
Quoted with permission from Péter-Contesse, René and Ellington, John. A Handbook on Leviticus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1990. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .