What Does Leviticus 25:45 Mean in the King James?
Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Here, being born in the land does not protect a child from being included in the purchase of a family.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with a rule that turns resident families into property: people living among the community and children born on its land may be bought and held as a possession. It makes ownership reach across a family, naming human beings plainly as property.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that residence or birth in a place automatically protects a person from ownership is undone here.
THE ROOT
תִּקְנוּ
tiqnu from qanah
GROWS FROM
קנה
q-n-h
Acquire, buy, or obtain.
The verb qanah can describe acquiring or possessing; English “buy” foregrounds the transaction, while the root also carries the resulting claim. With families and children named as its objects, the verse extends acquisition across kinship.
ALSO GROWS
qoneh: Acquirer or possessor
קֹנֵה
This form appears in the phrase “possessor of heaven and earth,” showing the root’s range from acquiring to possessing.
miqneh: Livestock or acquired property
מִקְנֶה
The related word can name what is accumulated as property, sharpening the verse’s language of people being acquired.
אֲחֻזָּה
achuzzah
GROWS FROM
אחז
ʾ-ḥ-z
Grasp, seize, or hold.
The word for possession grows from a verb for grasping or holding. Its root keeps a physical image beneath the legal status: these families are placed in another’s hold.
ALSO GROWS
achaz: Grasp, seize, hold
אָחַז
This is the root verb behind the noun for possession, connecting ownership with the act of holding.
ne’echaz: Caught or held fast
נֶאֱחַז
In Genesis 22:13 a ram is caught in a thicket; the same root can describe being held fast, giving the verse’s possession language a constraining edge.
הַגָּרִים
haggārîm
GROWS FROM
גור
g-w-r
Dwell or reside as a sojourner.
“sojourn” in this verse is haggārîm. The families are named as gerim, people residing among you as sojourners. The wording places them within the community’s life before it names the right to buy them.
ALSO GROWS
ger: Resident alien or sojourner
גֵּר
This noun names the people whose residence among the community frames the verse.
megurekha: Your sojournings or places of residence as a sojourner
מְגוּרֶיךָ
The related form in Genesis 17:8 keeps dwelling as a sojourner at the center of the word family.
THE PATTERN
When people are treated as property, scripture can extend ownership across families and include coerced service.
If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.THE THREAD
And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.The phrase “bought with money” uses a form from the same qanah root as “buy” in Leviticus. Genesis places those born into a household beside those purchased into it, opening the verse’s link between birth, family, and ownership.
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