The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
The time has come; the day has arrived. Let the buyer not rejoice and the seller not mourn, for wrath is upon the whole multitude. The seller will surely not recover what he sold while both remain alive. For the vision concerning the whole multitude will not be revoked, and because of their iniquity, not one of them will preserve his life.
Earlier text
If your brother becomes impoverished and sells some of his property, his nearest of kin may come and redeem what his brother has sold. Or if a man has no one to redeem it for him, but he prospers and acquires enough to redeem his land, he shall calculate the years since its sale, repay the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and return to his property. But if he cannot obtain enough to repay him, what he sold will remain in possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. In the Jubilee, however, it is to be released, so that he may return to his property.
Ezekiel 7:12-13 declares that "the seller will not return to what was sold" even while alive, directly contradicting the Jubilee provisions of Leviticus 25:25-28 that guarantee land restoration. Leviticus ensures that no Israelite permanently loses their נַחֲלָה (nachalah, "inheritance") through the institution of the גֹּאֵל (go'el, "kinsman-redeemer"). Ezekiel announces that this entire restorative system is suspended because divine חָרוֹן (charon, "wrath") is upon the whole community. The passage reveals that covenant judgment is so comprehensive it dismantles the very economic structures designed to preserve Israel's tribal inheritance in the land. Only a divine act of restoration beyond the Levitical system itself will ultimately suffice to reverse what this judgment undoes.