Regulations for Releasing Hebrew Servants

The Regulations for Releasing Hebrew Servants set a six-year limit on the service of a Hebrew man or woman sold to another Israelite, and require the departing servant to receive a generous share of the household’s goods. By linking release to Israel’s own redemption from bondage in Egypt, the rule makes memory a basis for limiting a household’s power over a fellow Israelite.

Release and Provision

A Hebrew man or woman sold into service is to serve for six years and be released in the seventh. The release must not leave the servant empty-handed: the household is to provide liberally from its flock, threshing floor, and winepress, sharing from the produce with which the LORD has blessed it.

The rule also recognizes that a servant may choose to remain. If the servant says that he or she will not leave because of love for the household and well-being there, the master is to mark the choice by piercing the servant’s ear against the door; the servant then remains in service. The provision is explicitly extended to a female servant as well.

Memory as the Ground of the Rule

The command to release and provision the servant is grounded in a collective recollection: Israel was once enslaved in Egypt, and the LORD redeemed the people. That history is presented not simply as a past deliverance but as a reason for how Israelites must treat those serving within their households.

The rule warns against treating release as a hardship for the master. The servant has rendered six years of labor, described as twice the service of a hired worker, and the master is therefore told not to regard the departure as burdensome. The passage connects obedience with the LORD’s blessing on the master’s work.

Place in the Covenant Teaching

In Moses’s address to all Israel, the release law stands among instructions that make the community’s obligations concrete. Its concern for a needy fellow Israelite also appears in the surrounding command to lend generously rather than withhold help because the seventh-year debt release is near.

The law’s paired provisions—freedom after a defined term and material support at departure—make release more than the ending of service. The remembered experience of bondage places a limit on household authority and requires that freedom be accompanied by resources for the released person.