What Does Leviticus 25:44 Mean?
Both your servants and your female servants, whom you shall have, shall be from the nations around you; from them you shall buy servants and female servants.
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
Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.THE KEY
The verse calls these people servants, then names the household’s claim over them as a purchase: service and ownership meet in the same sentence.
THE MEANING
Here the household is authorized to buy men and women from the surrounding peoples and hold them as bondpeople. The verse presents their bondage as a transaction, while still naming the people being bought.
THE ROOT
עֶבֶד
ʿeved
GROWS FROM
עבד
Work, serve.
“servants” in this verse is ʿeved. The root joins the person’s status to the work imposed on them. Here, ʿeved does not mean voluntary service: the verse says these people are bought and held.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavad: To work or serve.
עָבַד
The verb shares the seed of ʿeved, linking the person’s designation with the labor or service demanded.
ʿavodah: Labor or service.
עֲבֹדָה
This related noun makes the work dimension of the root visible alongside the verse’s explicit purchase of people.
תִּקְנוּ
tiqnu
GROWS FROM
קנה
Acquire, obtain, possess.
“buy” in this verse is tiqnu. The verb names a transaction by which the household acquires these people. Its word-family includes terms for acquisition and property, bringing the claim of ownership into view.
ALSO GROWS
miqneh: Acquired property or livestock.
מִקְנֶה
This related word shows the root’s use for things acquired and held, sharpening the force of applying purchase language to people.
qinyan: Acquisition or possession.
קִנְיָן
The shared root links buying in this verse with the broader idea of something brought under a possessor’s claim.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes the purchase and sale of people visible as a transfer of power over human lives.
Then Midianite traders passed by, and they drew him up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, and they brought Joseph into Egypt.And he who steals a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, is surely put to death.You were bought with a price. Do not become the servants of humans.THE THREAD
And he who steals a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, is surely put to death.This verse in the Torah names stealing and selling a person as a capital offense, while Leviticus 25:44 authorizes buying people from surrounding nations. Read together, the verses expose a boundary in whose transfer is condemned and whose is permitted.
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