What Does Exodus 21:2 Mean?
If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he serves, and in the seventh he goes out free for nothing.
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
If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.THE KEY
What was bought does not become permanent: the verse gives service a fixed end and makes freedom cost nothing.
THE MEANING
This verse places a clear limit on purchased service: six years, then the servant goes out free without paying for that freedom. Being bought does not erase the moment of release.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that purchased service can claim a person without end meets a boundary here: the service has a term, and release is not something the servant must buy back.
THE ROOT
עֶבֶד
ʿeved
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
To work or serve.
“serves” in this verse is ʿeved. עֶבֶד (ʿeved, servant) grows from the same root as עָבַד (ʿāvad, to work or serve), tying the person named in the verse to the service performed. The word’s root brings the labor into view, while the verse makes clear that this service has an end.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāvad: To work or serve.
עָבַד
It is the verb behind the servant’s six years of service, linking the person and the work to one root.
ʿavodah: Work, labor, or service.
עֲבֹדָה
This branch makes the labor within the servant relationship explicit; the verse assigns that labor a term.
THE PATTERN
Release becomes real when service ends and the bound person goes out free.
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.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.So if the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.THE THREAD
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.The word “serve” in Deuteronomy comes from the same עבד (ʿ-b-d, work or serve) root that names the servant in Exodus. The parallel spells out the exit: the servant is let go free “from thee,” making release a concrete end to the service relation.
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