“ ‘If your brother has grown poor among you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him to serve as a slave.
Not to compel a Hebrew bondman to do demeaning slave labor
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לֹא־תַעֲבֹד בּוֹ עֲבֹדַת עָבֶד
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
שהזהירנו מעבוד בעבד עברי בעבודה שיש בה ענוי גדול ושפלות כעבודת עבד כנעני. והוא אמרו יתעלה לא תעבוד בו עבודת עבד. ובספרא שלא יטול אחריך בלינטא ולא יטול לפניך כלים במרחץ, ולינטא היא מחצלת קטנה שיושב עליה כשייגע ויקחה העבד וילך בה אחר אדוניו. וכן כל מה שדומה לזה העבדות מוזהר להעבידם בעבד עברי, אבל יצוה במה שיצוה השכיר והאומן במה שהסכים עמו לעשות דבר מלאכה אחת, והוא אמרו יתעלה כשכיר ותושב יהיה עמך. (בהר, הלכות עבדים פ"א):
He prohibited us from working the Hebrew (Jewish) slave with work that involves great affliction and lowliness, like the work of a Canaanite (gentile) slave. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "you may not work him like a slave" (Leviticus 25:39). And in the Sifra (Sifra, Behar, Chapter 7:2): "He shall not carry a linta after you, and he shall not carry your things after you to the bath-house." And a linta is a small mat that he sits upon when he is tired, such that the slave takes it and walks upon it behind his master. And likewise is one prohibited from doing anything that is similar to this servitude to a Hebrew slave. Rather he commands him about that which he would command a worker or a craftsman, to do a particular job that he agreed with him about. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Like a worker or resident laborer shall he be with you" (Leviticus 25:40). (See Parashat Behar; 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 prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
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
- Lashes (malkot)
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 Binding
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite 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.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.79-85 rationalized it
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 debt-servitude with release after three years of service (in the fourth year the distrainee goes free); §§115-116 concern the death of a distrainee; no reclassification to wage-laborer status Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of eshnunna regulation of seizure of persons for debt Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§22-24 Roth, Law Collections 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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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
The commandment prescribes thirty-nine lashes as the enforcement sanction for imposing demeaning slave labor on a Hebrew bondman; post-Enlightenment criminal law prohibits corporal punishment for any offense.
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Article 7
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
ICCPR Article 7 prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; the imposition of judicial flogging (malkot) as the sanction for violating this commandment constitutes cruel and degrading punishment under that standard.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the authority to impose malkot lapsed with the dissolution of the ordained Sanhedrin; the flogging sanction is de jure operative but has not been enforced for approximately two millennia.