You may make them an inheritance for your children after you, to hold for a possession. Of them you may take your slaves forever, but over your brothers the children of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness.
A Canaanite bondman shall serve permanently unless freed by specific conditions
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
לְעֹלָם בָּהֶם תַּעֲבֹדוּ וּבְאַחֵיכֶם בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל אִישׁ בְּאָחִיו לֹא־תִרְדֶּה בוֹ בְּפָרֶךְ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין עבד כנעני. והוא שנעבוד בו לעולם ושאין לו חירות אלא בשן ועין והוא הדין לשאר איברים שאינן חוזרין כמו שבא הפירוש המקובל. והוא אמרו לעולם בהם תעבודו וכתיב וכי יכה איש וגו'. ולשון גמרא גיטין (דף ל"ח:) כל המשחרר עבדו עובר בעשה דכתיב לעולם בהם תעבודו ובא בתורה שהוא משתחרר בשן ועין. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו על השלמות בקדושין וגיטין. (בהר סיני, הלכות עבדים פ"ה):
That is that He commanded us about the law of the Canaanite (gentile) slave. And that is that we enslave him forever, and that he only [attain] freedom through [the master's destruction of his] tooth or eye - and the law is the same for other limbs that do not regenerate, as appears in the received explanation. And that is His saying, "you shall enslave them forever" (Leviticus 25:46); and it is written "When a man strikes, etc." (Exodus 21:26). And the language of the Gemara, Gittin (Gittin 38a), is, "Anyone who liberates his slave transgresses a positive commandment, as it is written, 'you shall enslave them forever.'" But it comes in the Torah that he is freed with a tooth and an eye. And the regulations of this commandment have already been completely explained in Kiddushin and Gittin. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Slaves 5.)
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 flat, unconditional command
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
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 Rejected
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position not stated
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 2.122-123 rationalized it Philo addresses the release of Hebrew (Israelite) debt-slaves and the seventh-year provision — the contrasting category — rather than the permanent enslavement of non-Israelites per se
Josephus
- Antiquities 4.273 reinterpreted it Josephus paraphrases the manumission rules for Hebrew slaves, the contrasting category to the permanent-non-Israelite servitude of this verse
The New Testament
- Galatians 3:28 reinterpreted it Pauline declaration that there is 'neither slave nor free in Christ' relativizes the ethnic-legal categories thematically/ideologically; it does not exegetically engage Lev 25:46 or address manumission
- Philemon 1:15-16 reinterpreted it Paul urges receiving the slave Onesimus 'no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother,' a rhetorical softening of servile status without abolishing 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 three-year limit on debt servitude before release; parallels the contrasting Israelite/debt-servant category rather than the permanent foreign-chattel provision of Lev 25:46 — illuminates the contrasting category, not the foreign-slave rule Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- hittite laws abduction/harboring of persons across territorial lines (Hatti vs. Luwiya); only loosely analogous to territorial-legal differentiation, not a direct parallel to permanent chattel status Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§19-20 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
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 4 prohibits slavery and the slave trade in all their forms; this commandment authorizes the heritable permanent enslavement of persons on an ethnic basis, which constitutes chattel slavery in the fullest legal sense.
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Article 26
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The commandment creates a two-tier system in which ethnic origin — Israelite versus Canaanite — determines whether a person is entitled to time-limited servitude or permanent heritable slavery, in direct contradiction of ICCPR Article 26's guarantee of equality before the law without discrimination on grounds of national or other status.