Leviticus 25:44

Summary

The verse states that the male slave ('aved, H5650) and female slave ('amah, H0519) belonging to the addressee are to come from the nations surrounding Israel. It specifies that acquisition of such slaves is to be done "from them" — i.e., from those foreign nations.

Key words

• 'avde-kha ("your male slave", H5650) — construct noun + 2nd person masculine suffix, literally "slave-of-you," marking possession.
• 'amate-kha ("your female slave", H0519) — parallel construct + suffix form to 'avde-kha, feminine counterpart.
• 'asher ("who/which", H0834A) — relative particle used twice in the verse, introducing two separate relative clauses (one about the slaves, one about the nations).
• goyim ("nations", H1471A) — masculine plural noun with definite article (ha-goyim), referring to the surrounding peoples as a collective category.
• tikNu ("you will buy", H7069) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, expressing a future or habitual action addressed to the community as a group ("you all").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two linked relative clauses. The first, introduced by 'asher (H0834A), qualifies "your male slave and your female slave" ('avde-kha ve-'amate-kha) with the verb yihyu ("they will belong", H1961, qal imperfect), meaning these slaves are ones "who will belong to you." The second 'asher clause qualifies "the nations" (ha-goyim, H1471A) with the construct noun sevivotei-khem ("the surroundings of you", H5439G), describing nations positioned around the addressees. The main clause verb, tikNu (H7069), is plural ("you all"), shifting the address from the singular "you" implied in 'avde-kha to a collective audience for the act of buying.

The construct chains 'avde-kha and 'amate-kha tightly bind possession to the noun without a separate possessive word, a feature not always visible in translations. Similarly, sevivotei-khem is itself a construct plural noun ("surroundings-of") rather than a separate preposition-noun pair, giving the phrase a slightly more nominal, less prepositional character in Hebrew than in English "around you."

Differences between versions

The LXX uses παῖς and παιδίσκη ("servant," "young female servant"), terms with a broader semantic range than the Hebrew 'aved/'amah, which denote slave status more specifically. The LXX also phrases the first relative clause with a subjunctive (ὅσοι ἀν' γένωνταί, "whoever might become"), softening the Hebrew's straightforward imperfect yihyu ("they will belong"). The Vulgate restructures the verse as a jussive statement, "Servus et ancilla sint vobis" ("Let there be for you a male slave and a female slave"), rather than preserving the Hebrew's two-part relative-clause structure, and it does not explicitly repeat the verb "to buy" as the Hebrew tikNu does.