What Does Leviticus 25:40 Mean?
Like a hired hand, like one who settles beside you, he shall be with you, and he shall serve you until the ram's horn year.
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
But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile:THE KEY
The verse gives service an expiration date: Jubilee marks the end of one person’s labor for another.
THE MEANING
Here, service is a bounded arrangement: a hired worker may dwell with you and labor for you, but the year of Jubilee marks its limit. The text holds the person’s work within a term instead of making service a permanent identity. Release opens a path out of imposed narrowness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that receiving someone’s labor gives you a permanent claim over that person dissolves here: the term has an end set by Jubilee.
THE ROOT
וְעָבַדְךָ
ve-ʿāvadkha
GROWS FROM
עבד
to work, serve, or labor
“serve” in this verse is ve-ʿāvadkha. The root names both the work being done and, in עֶבֶד, the servant who does it. Here, the work has a term: Jubilee bounds service so it does not become a permanent claim on the person.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavodah: work, labor, or service
עֲבֹדָה
It echoes the verse’s focus on service as work performed, rather than a person’s whole identity.
ʿeved: servant or worker
עֶבֶד
The shared root links the worker to the work, while the verse’s time limit keeps that role from being endless.
שָׂכִיר
sākhîr
GROWS FROM
שכר
to hire or engage for wages
“hired hand” in this verse is sākhîr. The word carries the sense of a worker engaged for pay. Beside the root עבד, it makes the arrangement visible: labor is given for a term, and Jubilee sets the point beyond which it cannot continue.
ALSO GROWS
sāḵar: to hire for wages
שָׂכַר
It names the hiring arrangement implicit in the verse’s description of the worker.
sāḵār: wages or payment
שָׂכָר
It shows the wage-bearing relation behind the word translated “hired servant.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture names release as the point where bounded service and captivity give way to liberty.
And you shall set apart the fiftieth year, and proclaim a free flowing through all the land to all who settle in it. It shall be a ram's horn year for you, and you shall turn back each to his holding, and each to his family you shall turn back.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 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
If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he serves, and in the seventh he goes out free for nothing.The Hebrew verb for “serve” shares the עבד root in both verses. Exodus gives service a six-year term; here, Jubilee marks its limit, revealing that service does not become an endless claim on a person.
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