Leviticus 25:39-55 comments: a hired servant versus a bond servant

 

Leviticus 25:39 ¶  And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: 40  But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile: 41  And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. 42  For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. 43  Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God. 44  Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 45  Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. 46  And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. 47  And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger’s family: 48  After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: 49  Either his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself. 50  And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him. 51  If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for. 52  And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubile, then he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give him again the price of his redemption. 53  And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight. 54  And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of jubile, both he, and his children with him. 55  For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

 

Here in verses 39 and 40 we have the difference between a slave, a bondservant, and a hired servant. Like an indentured servant of Colonial America the hired servant and his family would go free in the Jubilee. In Colonial America one difference would be that the indentured servant in the early 1600s typically did not survive the first year as an early Virginia report noted much less could look forward to being freed later on.

The Hebrew could not be a slave but as a hired servant because the Hebrew belonged solely to God. Slaves could only be of non-Hebrews. Slavery was lifetime and slaves could be inherited.

If a foreigner living among them, a stranger and a sojourner, and a Hebrew sold himself to the foreigner one of his close relatives could redeem him and free him or he could do it himself, paying the price according to the number of years to the Jubilee from his enslavement for the price of a hired servant. If he could not pay the price, in any event, he would still be freed, along with his children in the year of Jubilee. The Hebrews God counted as His own servants. You can see that these regulations bear little resemblance to American slavery. Laws were even enacted in the 1800s in many places forbidding even masters from freeing slaves, as in South Carolina, unless the slave had done something special in protecting the community from a slave revolt by informing.

It is common for people who wish to use the Law given to Moses for their own purposes to pick and choose the regulations they want to apply to a certain situation and to twist them to apply them in the way they want. Europeans were not Hebrews and America was not the Promised Land and kidnapped Africans or those of African descent who were bred like beasts were certainly not Canaanites. Don’t twist the Bible to justify your social or political beliefs.

            We are purchased possessions of God, bought with a price.

1Corinthians 6:19  What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20  For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

 

            Purchased with God’s own blood.

Acts 20:28  Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.