Deuteronomy 15:18

Summary

The verse instructs that releasing a Hebrew servant after six years of service should not be regarded as difficult, because the value of that service equaled twice the wage of a hired laborer. It closes with a promise that Yehovah will bless the one who does this in all his undertakings.

Key words

• yikSheh ("it will be hard", H7185) — qal imperfect, describing an ongoing/future emotional state ("it will not be hard"), governing the whole first clause.
• be'eiNeikha ("in your eyes/view", H5869I + H9021) — dual noun with pronominal suffix; the idiom "hard in your eyes" expresses a subjective judgment, not physical difficulty.
• mishNeh ("double", H4932H) construct with sekhar saKhir ("hire of a hired laborer", H7939 + H7916) — a construct chain meaning "double the wage of a hired worker," the stated reason for the command.
• avaDekha ("he has served you", H5647G) — qal perfect, marking completed action: the six years of service are treated as already finished from the speaker's viewpoint.
• veveRakhekha ("and he will bless you", H1288) — piel sequential perfect continuing the narrative chain begun by the vav; it links the release of the servant to the consequence of divine blessing.

What the text says

The sentence opens with a negated imperfect verb, yikSheh ("it will be hard", H7185), followed by the prepositional phrase be'eiNeikha ("in your eyes", H5869I), forming the idiom "let it not be hard in your eyes" — a call addressed to inner perception rather than external circumstance. This is followed by an infinitive construct clause, besshallecha oto chofshi me'immakh ("when you send him free from you"), which sets the temporal condition triggering the main statement.

The causal clause introduced by ki ("for/because", H3588A) explains the reasoning: the servant's six years of labor (avaDekha shesh shanim) are equivalent to mishneh sekhar sakhir — "double the wage of a hired laborer" (H4932H + H7939 + H7916), a construct chain comparing unpaid servitude to the market wage of a paid worker. The verb avaDekha is in the qal perfect, marking the service as a completed fact at the moment of release.

The final clause shifts to a sequential piel perfect, uveRakhekha ("and he will bless you", H1288), connected by the narrative vav to the preceding action, presenting the blessing of Yehovah as consequent upon the release. The scope of the blessing is expressed through the relative clause bekol asher ta'aseh ("in all that you will do", H6213A), a qal imperfect denoting future, ongoing activity.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the opening idiom differently, using "Non avertas ab eis oculos tuos" ("do not turn your eyes away from them"), which shifts the sense from "it will not be hard" (Hebrew yikSheh, H7185) to a directive about visual attention. The LXX preserves the Hebrew's emotional nuance with "οὐ σκληρὸν ἔσται ἐναντίον σου" ("it will not be hard before you"), closer to the Hebrew idiom. For the wage comparison, the LXX uses ἐφέτιον μισθὸν ("a yearly wage") rather than reflecting the Hebrew's mishneh ("double", H4932H), producing a different quantitative claim than the Hebrew text.