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The lexical ground must be laid with precision, for terms shape the horizon of meaning and the horizon shapes the ethical field. In the native tongue of the covenant, the word for servant or bondman, ‘eved, does not collapse a human into a thing but marks a labor status within a household and within a crisis economy, where debt relief and survival pressures give rise to temporary service. The semantic field of ‘eved emerges from roots of labor and service and is governed by covenant clocks, remedies, and restraints. The Torah fixes the rhythm and the edge of this status with release cycles, sabbath rest, injury-based manumission, and a hard wall against trafficking. The text speaks without Western gloss and without institutional smoothing, placing service inside covenant rather than empire, memory rather than forgetfulness, dignity rather than objectification. The female correspondent terms, ‘amah and shiphchah, carry the complexity of household service and marital adjacency in patriarchal settings. They are not abstractions; they are names for women whose bodies and futures require additional protections when power can be misused. The covenant establishes obligations toward food, clothing, conjugal faithfulness, and release when these obligations are violated, refusing to allow women to be treated as expendable. The lexical witnesses embedded in the inscriptional traditions force a reading where the status is neither perpetual nor race-based ownership but a constrained response to economic strain, bounded by law and judged by God. To see the shape of ‘eved in operation without gloss, the law speaks in measured lines that preserve the covenant voice.
Original: שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד וּבַשְּׁבִעִת יֵצֵא לַחָפְשִׁי חִנָּם
Transliteration: šēš šānīm ya‘ăḇōḏ; ūḇaššeḇī‘īt yēṣē’ laḥopšī ḥinnām
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): Six years: he shall serve; and in the seventh: he shall go out: to freedom: gratis. (Leningrad – Exodus – 21 – 2)
Original: וְכִי־יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ עִמָּךְ וְנִמְכַּר־לָךְ לֹא תַעֲבֹד בּוֹ עֲבֹדַת עָבֶד
Transliteration: wəkī-yāmūḵ ’āḥīḵā ‘immāḵ wenimḵar-lāḵ lō ta‘ăḇōḏ bō ‘ăḇodat ‘āḇeḏ
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): And when: your brother: becomes poor: with you; and he is sold: to you; you shall not serve in him: service of a bondman. (Leningrad – Leviticus – 25 – 39)
Original: כְּשָׂכִיר כְּתוֹשָׁב יִהְיֶה עִמָּךְ עַד שְׁנַת הַיֹּבֵל יַעֲבֹד עִמָּךְ
Transliteration: kəsāḵīr kətōšāḇ yihyeh ‘immāḵ ‘aḏ šənat hayyōḇēl ya‘ăḇōḏ ‘immāḵ
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): Like a hired worker: like a resident: he shall be: with you; until: the year of the Jubilee; he shall serve: with you. (Leningrad – Leviticus – 25 – 40)
Original: וְיָצָא מֵעִמָּךְ הוּא וּבָנָיו עִמּוֹ וְשָׁב אֶל־מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ וְאֶל־אֲחֻזַּת אֲבֹתָיו יָשׁוּב
Transliteration: wəyāṣā’ mē‘immāḵ hū’ ūḇānāyw ‘immō; wəšāḇ ’el-mišpaḥtō; wə’ell-aḥuzzat ’ăḇōṯāyw yāšūḇ
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): And he shall go out: from with you; he and his sons: with him; and he shall return: to his family; and to the holding: of his fathers: he shall return. (Leningrad – Leviticus – 25 – 41)
These lines encode the status of ‘eved within a lattice of time and return, pressing the household to remember that service runs toward freedom and toward restored inheritance. The covenant refuses to allow economic loss to calcify into permanent bondage; it beats a path back to land, kin, and name. In the household’s vocabulary for women, the text marks ‘amah and shiphchah with protections that bite into male power when duty is refused. The law strokes the grain of justice with firmness so that the house cannot disguise hunger, nakedness, or neglect as privilege. Where exploitation begins to masquerade as normal, the covenant ruptures the illusion with required release.
Original: וְכִי־יִמְכֹּר אִישׁ אֶת־בִּתּוֹ לְאָמָה לֹא־תֵצֵא כְּצֵאת הָעֲבָדִים
Transliteration: wəkī-yimkōr ’īš ’eṯ-bittō le’āmāh; lō-tēṣē’ kəṣē’ṯ hā‘ăḇāḏīm
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): And when: a man: sells his daughter: to be a female servant; she shall not go out: as go out: the male servants. (Leningrad – Exodus – 21 – 7)
Original: אִם־רָעָה בְּעֵינֵי אֲדֹנֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יַעֲדָהּ וְהֵפְדָּהּ לְעַם נָכְרִי לֹא־יִמְשֹׁל לְמָכְרָהּ בְּבִגְדוֹ־בָהּ
Transliteration: ’im-rā‘āh bə‘ēnē ’ăḏōneyhā ’ăšer lō-ya‘ăḏāh; wəhēpədāh; le‘am nāḵrī lō-yimšōl ləmoḵərāh bəḇigdō-ḇāh
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): If: she is evil in the eyes: of her master: who does not designate her; he shall let her be redeemed; to a foreign people: he shall not have power: to sell her; in his treachery: against her. (Leningrad – Exodus – 21 – 8)
Original: אִם־אַחֶרֶת יִקַּח־לוֹ שְׁאֵרָהּ כְסוּתָהּ וְעֹנָתָהּ לֹא יִגְרָע
Transliteration: ’im-’aḥereṯ yiqqaḥ-lō; šə’ērāh kəsūṯāh wə‘ōnātāh lō yigra‘
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): If: another: he takes: for himself; her food: her clothing: and her marital right: he shall not diminish. (Leningrad – Exodus – 21 – 10)
Original: וְאִם־אֵלֶּה שְׁלֹשׁ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה לָהּ וְיָצְאָה חִנָּם אֵין כָּסֶף
Transliteration: wə’īm-’ēlleh šəlōš lō ya‘ăśeh lāh; wəyāṣə’āh ḥinnām ’ēn kāseph
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Aleppo/Leningrad, SVO): And if: these three: he does not do: for her; she shall go out: gratis; no silver. (Leningrad – Exodus – 21 – 11)
These provisions do not romanticize patriarchy; they puncture it, placing weight on obligations and granting release when those obligations are denied. The covenant voice ensures that women named as ‘amah or shiphchah are treated within law as bearers of rights, not as absorbers of neglect, and that release stands as the final correction when power withdraws provision. The signals embedded across the lexicon are consistent: time limits, sabbath rest, release mechanisms, injury manumission, and asylum stand as stone pillars around the fragile space of service so that human appetite cannot make that space into a dungeon. The lexicon itself thus carries a moral architecture; the words govern the house.
The Greek language of the apostolic witness meets a different urban economy and a different set of status hierarchies, and yet the lexical field remains tethered to personhood and justice. Doulos marks a status in the Greco-Roman household where labor and ownership cohere under city law and custom; it spans conditions from heavy coercion to entrusted management. The apostolic instruction addresses that status not as ideal but as reality, placing both doulos and kyrios under one Kyrios in the heavens, thereby leveling judgment and extracting cruelty from the house. Where trade seeks to turn humans into movable profit, the language names the trade for what it is and aligns it with the catalog of lawlessness, refusing any sanctification of trafficking. The lexical witness is sharpened to pierce the veil of commerce, calling enslavers to account before the Lord and the assembly.
Original: οἱ δοῦλοι, ὑπακούετε τοῖς κυρίοις κατὰ σάρκα μετὰ φόβου καὶ τρόμου, ἐν ἁπλότητι τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν, ὡς τῷ Χριστῷ
Transliteration: hoi douloi, hypakoiete tois kyriois kata sarka meta phobou kai tromou, en haplotēti tēs kardias hymōn, hōs tō Christō
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Sinaiticus, SVO): The slaves: obey: to the masters: according to flesh: with fear and trembling: in singleness: of your heart: as: to the Anointed. (Sinaiticus – Ephesians – 6 – 5)
Original: οἱ κύριοι, τὸ δίκαιον καὶ τὴν ἰσότητα τοῖς δούλοις παρίστατε, εἰδότες ὅτι καὶ ὑμεῖς ἔχετε κύριον ἐν οὐρανῷ
Transliteration: hoi kyrioi, to dikaion kai tēn isotēta tois doulois paristate, eidotes hoti kai hymeis echete kyrion en ouranō
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Sinaiticus, SVO): The masters: present: the just and the equality: to the slaves; knowing: that also you: have: a Master: in heaven. (Sinaiticus – Colossians – 4 – 1)
Original: ἀνδραποδισταῖς
Transliteration: andrapodistais
Literal Interlinear Etymological Translation in English (Sinaiticus, SVO): To enslavers: man-stealers. (Sinaiticus – 1 Timothy – 1 – 10)
These lines stand together to frame the lexical reality within judgment and mercy. The doulos is addressed as a moral agent whose labor can be offered as service to the Anointed, but the kyrios is bound to justice and equality under the same Lord, making cruelty and partiality a betrayal of heavenly rule. The andrapodistēs is named without softening, as one who reduces persons to booty and profit, a category placed among those whose practice rejects the sound ordering under God. This language refuses to baptize bondage; it exposes and restrains it while planting seeds that break it down from within the household and within the community of faith.
Modern chattel slavery, by contrast, is perpetual, inheritable, and often race-marked ownership of persons as property, a machine made of kidnapping, violence, familial disintegration, and legal denial of personhood. Its engines run on theft of freedom and theft of lineage, on discipline that mutilates, on contracts that erase, on markets that collect profit from broken bodies. Biblical friction against this edifice appears at every load-bearing wall: anti-kidnapping law renders the initial seizure a capital crime; sabbath inclusion grants rest to those empire would deny rest; injury manumission makes violence an exit rather than simply a discipline; release cycles—six-year manumission and jubilee architecture—break time’s attempt to harden service into inheritance; asylum commands the community to absorb fugitives rather than return them to abuse. The ancient lexicon is thus not a mirror of modern bondage but a matrix of constraints and exits, a vocabulary designed to bruise and fracture the logics of ownership so that the household cannot harden into prison. Where modern chattel slavery declares that human beings can be warehoused as assets, the covenant and the gospel declare that memory, rest, release, justice, and equality stand in the doorway, and that the house belongs not to appetite but to the Lord who judges without partiality.
