Leviticus 25:42

Summary

The verse states that the Israelites are YHWH's own servants, whom he brought out of the land of Egypt, and therefore they must not be sold as one sells an ordinary slave. The sentence uses a possessive construction followed by a relative clause and a prohibition expressed with a passive verb.

Key words

• 'avaday ("my servants", H5650) — masculine plural construct with 1st-person suffix; literally "servants-of-me," forming a nominal clause with hem.
• hem ("they", H1992) — independent pronoun that, combined with the construct noun before it, creates the predicate "they are my servants."
• hotze'ti ("I brought out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) perfect, marking a completed act performed by the speaker ("I caused [them] to go out").
• yimmakheru ("they will be sold", H4376) — niphal (passive) imperfect, indicating an action done to the subject, here projected into future/ongoing time ("they shall not be sold").
• mimkeret ("a sale of", H4466) — feminine singular construct, forming a phrase with 'aved ("a slave", H5650) to specify the manner of selling.

What the text says

The clause opens with the particle ki ("for/that"), introducing the reason for the preceding legal instruction. The core statement is a verbless (nominal) clause: 'avaday hem — "servants-of-me [are] they" — where the construct noun 'avaday and the pronoun hem together function as subject and predicate without a copular verb, a common feature of Biblical Hebrew nominal sentences. This is followed by a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("whom"), specifying which group is meant: those whom the speaker "brought out" (hotze'ti, hiphil perfect) "from the land of Egypt" (me'eretz mitzrayim).

The prohibition uses the niphal (passive-reflexive) imperfect yimmakheru, "they will not be sold," placing the grammatical subject as the recipient rather than agent of the selling. The final phrase, mimkeret 'aved ("a sale of a slave"), is a construct chain specifying the type or manner of sale being prohibited. Notably, the noun 'aved ("slave") here is the same root (H5650) used earlier for 'avaday ("my servants"), creating a lexical connection: the same word describes both the relationship to the speaker and the type of transaction being forbidden.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders hem ("they") as οὗτοι ("these"), a demonstrative rather than a simple personal pronoun. The Vulgate splits the Hebrew's single relative clause into two coordinated clauses ("Mei enim servi sunt, et ego eduxi eos..."), using "et ego" ("and I") instead of a relative construction. For mimkeret 'aved, the Vulgate uses the plural "conditione servorum" ("condition of slaves"), where the Hebrew and LXX (πράσει οἰκέτου) preserve a singular noun for "slave."