“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything.
To judge according to the laws of a Hebrew bondman
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד וּבַשְּׁבִעִת יֵצֵא לַחׇפְשִׁי חִנָּם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין עבד עברי. והוא אמרו יתברך כי תקנה עבד עברי. וכבר התבארו רוב דיני מצוה זו בפירוש בתורה והתבארו דיני מצוה זו כלם במסכת קדושין. (ואלה המשפטים, הלכות עבדים פ"א):
That is that He commanded about the law of a Hebrew (Jewish) slave. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "When you acquire a Hebrew slave" (Exodus 21:2). And [while] most of the laws of this commandment have already been explained explicitly in the Torah, all of the laws of this commandment are explained in Tractate Kiddushin. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Slaves 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Binding in the land of Israel
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Not binding
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Not binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- CD 12:10-11 The catalog describes this reception as: related restriction
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Mishpatim (Neziqin) 1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Spec. Leg. 2.79-85 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.273 The catalog describes this reception as: paraphrased/harmonized
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi fixed-term release of debt-pledged dependents after three years Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of lipit ishtar fugitive-slave and slave-status provisions; no fixed-term manumission parallel Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§12-14 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna transactions in slaves and recovery of fugitive servants; no manumission provision paralleling the six-year release Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§49-52 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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Article 4 (prohibition of slavery and servitude)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The commandment presupposes and regulates a form of debt bondage — involuntary labor for up to six years as satisfaction of a debt — which contemporary international law treats as a prohibited form of servitude.
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Article 8 (prohibition of forced or compulsory labour)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 8(3) prohibits forced or compulsory labour; the Hebrew bondman institution involves court-ordered sale into involuntary service to satisfy an obligation, a mechanism that falls within the categories of labour coercion that Article 8 is designed to prohibit even when bounded in time.