If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. The Israelite debt-slave regulation: the impoverished fellow Israelite who sells themselves in slavery is not to be treated as a permanent slave. The sell themselves communicates the depth of the poverty that the Jubilee system addresses — the community member who has lost land, home, and freedom through economic distress. The not to be treated as a slave qualification begins the graduated protection that the following verses elaborate.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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