What Does Deuteronomy 15:12 Mean?
And if your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you shall send him out from you unbound.
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 if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.THE KEY
Freedom here is an action: the person held in service is sent forth, not merely declared free.
THE MEANING
This verse does not hide the sale or the service; it puts an end date on the claim. After six years, the person is sent away free from the one who held them. Release here is a concrete separation, not merely a change in how the person is described.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that someone’s usefulness to another gives that person an unlimited claim over them.
THE ROOT
תְּשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ
teshallchenu
GROWS FROM
שלח
send, send forth; by extension, release or let go
“send him out from you” in this verse is teshallchenu. The verb means sending forth, while the next word names the free state the person enters. Release is pictured as an actual departure from the holder’s authority, not only an inward or verbal change.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: sending away, dismissal
שִׁלּוּחַ
This form shows the same root describing an enacted departure: release means someone is sent out from where they were held.
Shiloach: sent; a name associated with a watercourse or pool
שִׁלֹחַ
John 9:7 interprets Siloam as Sent; this root’s language of sending forth echoes the verse’s concrete movement out from another’s hold.
חָפְשִׁי
chofshi
GROWS FROM
חפש
be free; exist outside bondage
“unbound” in this verse is chofshi. The verse names both the act of sending the person away and the state of freedom that follows. The person is not simply no longer serving; they are free from the one who held them.
ALSO GROWS
chofesh: freedom, a free state
חֹפֶשׁ
The noun makes explicit the condition the verse’s sending away brings about.
chofshi: free
חָפְשִׁי
This is the verse’s word for the person’s state after the service ends.
THE PATTERN
Freedom becomes real through release from the authority or confinement that holds a person or people.
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.At the end of seven years, each of you shall send free his brother, a Hebrew, who has been sold to you; and when he has served you six years, you shall send him free from you. But your fathers did not hear and respond to me, nor did they bend their ear.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
And when you send him out unbound from you, you shall not send him away empty.The next verse repeats שׁלח (shalach, send forth or release) and then forbids sending the person away empty. It opens this release into a concrete transition: freedom includes what the departing person carries into life beyond service.
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