“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything.
To allow a Hebrew bondman to go free after six years of service
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד וּבַשְּׁבִעִת יֵצֵא לַחָפְשִׁי 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 Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- 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 read it more strictly Addresses prohibition on selling Hebrew bondmen/bondwomen to Gentiles rather than the six-year manumission term directly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin 1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.79-85 rationalized it
- De Virtutibus 121-124 rationalized it
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.273 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Philemon 15-16 reinterpreted it Paul reframes the master-slave relation as fraternal, engaging the servitude tradition without invoking the six-year manumission rule directly
- Galatians 4:1-7 reinterpreted it servitude/sonship imagery deployed metaphorically to contrast bondage under the law with adoptive sonship
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 antichretic pledge: a debtor's wife, son, or daughter handed over for debt serves the creditor three years, with release in the fourth year (a shorter, narrower provision than the Israelite six-year self-sale term) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna provisions concerning slave sale, fugitive slaves, and slave status within the household economy, addressing the master-slave relation rather than a time-limited automatic manumission Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§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.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.