Discovery BoxLeviticus 25:39-43 
Context25:39 “‘If your brother becomes impoverished with regard to you so that he sells himself to you, you must not subject him to slave service. 1 25:40 He must be with you as a hired worker, as a resident foreigner; 2 he must serve with you until the year of jubilee, 25:41 but then 3 he may go free, 4 he and his children with him, and may return to his family and to the property of his ancestors. 5 25:42 Since they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt, they must not be sold in a slave sale. 6 25:43 You must not rule over him harshly, 7 but you must fear your God.
1 tn Heb “you shall not serve against him service of a slave.” A distinction is being made here between the status of slave and indentured servant.
2 tn See the note on Lev 25:6 above.
3 tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have adversative force here.
4 tn Heb “may go out from you.”
5 tn Heb “fathers.”
6 tn Or perhaps reflexive Niphal rather than passive, “they shall not sell themselves [as in] a slave sale.”
7 tn Heb “You shall not rule in him in violence”; cf. NASB “with severity”; NIV “ruthlessly.”
