What Does Leviticus 25:39 Mean?

And if your brother beside you totters, and is sold to you, you shall not make him serve the service of a servant.

Leviticus 25:39 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:

THE KEY

Poverty may place a brother in your hands, but it does not turn him into a slave.

THE MEANING

The verse speaks of a brother brought low and sold to you: his need and changed circumstances do not erase the kinship named here. His labor may be received, but it must not become the labor of a slave.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that buying someone makes that person wholly yours and permits any kind of labor.

THE ROOT

עָבַד

ʿāvad

GROWS FROM

עבד

ʿ-b-d

To work or serve.

“serve the service of a servant” in this verse is ʿāvad. The Hebrew repeats this root in “serve” (⁨תַעֲבֹד⁩, taʿăvōd) and “service” (⁨עֲבֹדַת⁩, ʿăvōdat), then names the prohibited status as “slave” (⁨עֶבֶד⁩, ʿeved). That repetition draws the boundary around the kind of service: the sale does not make slave-service permissible.

ALSO GROWS

ʿeved: A person who serves; the word can refer to a servant or a slave.

עֶבֶד

This is the status the verse refuses to impose on the brother, despite his being sold.

ʿăvōdāh: Work or service.

עֲבֹדָה

The verse uses this form for the “service” of a slave, marking the labor that the sale does not authorize.

THE PATTERN

Economic dependence does not erase kinship or authorize slave-status labor.

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.

Deuteronomy 15:12 · SDVThe person sold remains a brother, and the service has a stated limit.

For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold in a servant's sale.

Leviticus 25:42 · SDVThe verse grounds the limit on slave status in a prior belonging that the sale cannot erase.

No longer as a servant, but more than a servant, a beloved brother, most of all to me, and how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord?

Philemon 1:16 · SDVThe person held as a servant is named as a beloved brother, so the relationship exceeds the labor role.

THE THREAD

For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold in a servant's sale.

Leviticus 25:42 · SDV

“Servants” here is ⁨עֲבָדַי⁩ (ʿăvādai, my servants), from the same ⁨עבד⁩ root as “serve” and “service” in verse 39. The shared root sets a limit around the sale: a human claim cannot recast the brother as slave property when the text names him as God’s servant.

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