Leviticus 25:40

Summary

The verse specifies the legal status of a person under this arrangement: he is to be treated ke-sakhir ("like a hired laborer") and ke-toshav ("like a resident alien"), remaining with the addressee until the shenat ha-yovel ("year of the jubilee"), at which point his service ends.

Key words

• sakhir ("a hired laborer", H7916) — masculine singular adjective, preceded by the comparative preposition ke ("like", H9004), establishing an analogy rather than an identity of status.
• toshav ("a resident alien", H8453A) — masculine singular noun, also preceded by ke, forming a second parallel comparison alongside sakhir.
• yihyeh ("he will be", H1961) — qal imperfect of the verb "to be", indicating an ongoing or future state, governing the phrase 'imakh ("with you").
• shenat ha-yovel ("year of the jubilee", H8141 + H9009 + H3104) — a construct chain: shenat ("year of") is in the construct form, bound to ha-yovel ("the jubilee"), marking the temporal boundary introduced by 'ad ("until", H5704).
• ya'avod ("he will serve", H5647G) — qal imperfect of the verb "to serve/work", parallel in form to yihyeh, describing the ongoing activity during the stated period.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two parallel qal imperfect verbs, yihyeh ("he will be") and ya'avod ("he will serve"), both governing the same prepositional phrase 'imakh ("with you"), repeated at the end of each clause ('imakh, H5973A + H9032). This repetition creates a balanced two-part structure: first a statement of status (yihyeh), then a statement of activity (ya'avod), both bounded by the same temporal marker 'ad shenat ha-yovel ("until the year of the jubilee").

The double comparison introduced by ke ("like") before both sakhir and toshav is significant: the Hebrew does not state that the person is a hired laborer or a resident alien, but that he is to be treated ke, "like," one — an analogical construction. The construct phrase shenat ha-yovel ("year of the jubilee") ties the two verbs together temporally, indicating that both the state of being and the activity of serving are limited by the same terminal point, the jubilee year.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew comparative terms with ὡς μισθωτὸς ἢ πάροικος ("as a hired worker or resident"), using ἢ ("or") where the Hebrew uses two parallel ke-clauses without a coordinating conjunction. The Vulgate similarly reads "quasi mercenarius et colonus" ("as if a hired worker and a settler"), using "et" ("and") to join the terms, differing from both the Hebrew's asyndetic parallelism and the LXX's disjunctive "or."