“ ‘If your brother has grown poor among you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant, and as a temporary resident, he shall be with you; he shall serve with you until the Year of Jubilee. Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and shall return to his own family, and to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God. “ ‘As for your male and your female slaves, whom you may have from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves. Moreover, of the children of the aliens who live among you, of them you may buy, and of their families who are with you, which they have conceived in your land; and they will be your property. 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.
To treat Hebrew bondmen according to the prescribed laws
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכִי־יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ עִמָּךְ וְנִמְכַּר־לָךְ לֹא־תַעֲבֹד בּוֹ עֲבֹדַת עָבֶד׃ כְּשָׂכִיר כְּתוֹשָׁב יִהְיֶה עִמָּךְ עַד־שְׁנַת הַיֹּבֵל יַעֲבֹד עִמָּךְ׃
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)
- 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) ii The catalog describes this reception as: eschatologized (Jubilee liberty motif, not the bondservice statute)
- CD 11-12 (slave/servitude regulations) read it more strictly
Rabbinic aggadah
- Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin 1 (on Exod 21:2) expanded it homiletically
- Vayikra Rabbah 34 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.79-85 rationalized it
- De Virtutibus 122-124 expanded it homiletically
Josephus
- Antiquities 3.282 paraphrased it
- Antiquities 4.273 rationalized it
The New Testament
- Luke 4:18-19 read it spiritually Cites Isaiah 61's Jubilee 'release for captives' motif (itself drawing on Lev 25), read as eschatological liberation rather than the Levitical bondservice statute directly
- Galatians 4:1-7 read it allegorically slave/son and redemption imagery applied typologically and soteriologically, not as exegesis of the Levitical bondservice statute
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum (allegorical treatment of Leviticus) read it allegorically
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 24:33 carried a parallel, with divergence
- Q 90:13 carried a parallel
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 time-limited debt servitude of a pledged family member (three years' service, release in the fourth year) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- code of hammurabi regulation governing the sale and treatment of distrained slaves and pledged dependents; lacks the theological limit on co-national servitude that Lev 25:42 imposes Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§118-119 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- laws of eshnunna redemption provision: an owner who under distress sold his house retains the right to redeem it when the buyer resells; only loosely analogous to the redemption/release logic underlying the Holiness Code's Jubilee mechanism Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §39 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 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 substantive tension.
UDHR Article 4 prohibits slavery and servitude in all forms; while this commandment regulates Israelite bondservice more protectively than the surrounding ancient world, it institutionalizes time-limited debt slavery as a legally normative institution rather than prohibiting it.
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Article 8
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
ICCPR Article 8 prohibits forced or compulsory labour and servitude; the commandment establishes a framework for compelled labor by impoverished Israelites sold into bondservice, which falls within the scope of servitude prohibited by Article 8.