What Does Deuteronomy 15:15 Mean?
And remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God ransomed you. Therefore I command you this word today.
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 thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day.THE KEY
The command to release another is rooted in holding your own bondage and the LORD’s release of you in the same memory.
THE MEANING
Your memory holds two facts together: you know bondage, and the LORD your God brings you out. The command takes shape in that joined memory, so the release you have received becomes the measure of how you meet another person’s bondage.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that being free makes your own former bondage irrelevant to how you treat someone still bound.
THE ROOT
וְזָכַרְתָּ
vezakharta
GROWS FROM
זכר
remember; call to mind
“remember” in this verse is vezakharta. Remembering is the hinge between received release and the present command. The same root forms a memorial and the act of bringing something to remembrance, keeping the former condition available in the present.
ALSO GROWS
zikkaron: memorial; remembrance
זִכָּרוֹן
The shared root gives memory a form that can be kept; here, remembrance remains a frame for the command.
hizkir: mention; bring to remembrance
הִזְכִּיר
This form makes remembering active: something is brought to mind, as the verse brings bondage and release into the present together.
עֶבֶד
eved
GROWS FROM
עבד
serve; work; be a servant
“servant” in this verse is eved. The word for the person who was bound belongs to the same root as service and labor. This keeps bondage concrete as a condition of work and dependence, held beside the fact of being redeemed.
ALSO GROWS
avodah: service; labor
עֲבֹדָה
The shared root connects the bondman’s condition with the labor that marks it.
oved: worker; one who serves
עֹבֵד
This form names one who works or serves, showing the consonants shared with the verse’s word for bondman.
THE PATTERN
Received release keeps remembered bondage present in the way release is extended to others.
You shall not press down on the sojourner, nor squeeze him; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.Should you not also have shown compassion to your fellow servant, as I also showed compassion to you?And be useful to one another, tender in the inward parts, releasing one another, just as God in the Anointed One has released you.THE THREAD
But remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God ransomed you from there; therefore I command you to do this word.The same root זכר (z-k-r, “remember”) anchors both commands. Here, as there, remembrance of bondage and the LORD’s redemption is the hinge between what has been received and what is commanded now.
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