What Does Exodus 21:2 Mean?

"When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing." The first case in the Covenant Code addresses the most extreme human relationship: slavery. The opening case's subject, "when you buy a Hebrew slave", confronts the reader immediately: the covenant community permitted slavery within specific and regulated constraints. The six-year service limit and seventh-year freedom is the Sabbath principle applied to human servitude: as the seventh day is the day of rest-freedom from labor, the seventh year is the year of freedom from indentured service.

The Hebrew slave (eved Ivri) is the debt-slave or sold-slave who entered servitude through economic necessity rather than war-capture. The six-year service with seventh-year freedom is the covenant's limitation on the duration of power over another person: no Israelite should be held in permanent servitude by another Israelite. The "for nothing" (chinam, without payment, free of charge) is the release condition: the master who received six years of service gets no compensation for releasing the slave; the service rendered was the compensation for whatever debt or purchase price initiated the servitude.

Leviticus 25's Jubilee law extends this principle to the fiftieth year: every Hebrew slave regardless of service-year must be released in the Jubilee because "they are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt" (Leviticus 25:42). The covenant logic of both laws is the same: Israel's identity as YHWH's redeemed-from-slavery people (Exodus 20:2 preamble) makes permanent Israelite hereditary slavery among Israelites incompatible with covenant identity.

Isaiah 58:6 and Jeremiah 34:8-17 later condemn Israel's failure to keep this law as a covenant violation that invites divine judgment. Jesus' proclamation of "release to the captives" in Luke 4:18 takes this Jubilee-slave-release as the type of the spiritual liberation he brings.