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As for your bondservants, and your bondmaids, whom you shall have; of the nations that are round about you, of them shall you buy bondservants and bondmaids.
Verse Takeaways
1
A Practical Provision
Commentators explain this verse as a practical answer to a question: If Israelites couldn't permanently enslave their own people, who would perform necessary labor? The law permitted purchasing slaves from specific surrounding nations, like the Ammonites and Moabites, but strictly forbade enslaving the Canaanite nations who were under a ban of destruction.
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Book Overview
Leviticus
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5
18th Century
Presbyterian
Property in foreign slaves is distinctly permitted here. It was a patriarchal custom (Genesis 17:12). Such slaves might be captives tak…
19th Century
Anglican
Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen. —Rather, As for your bondmen and…
16th Century
Protestant
Both your bond-men, and your bond-maids. What God here permits regarding strangers was everywhere customary among the Gentiles, namely, th…
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17th Century
Reformed Baptist
Both your bondmen, and your bondmaids, which you shall have , &c.] Such it seems were allowed them, if they had need…
A native Israelite, if sold for debt or for a crime, was to serve only six years and to go out free in the seventh. If he sold himself because of p…
