Study Desk

'You may also acquire them from the sons of the foreign residents who reside among you, and from their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession.

'You may also pass them on as an inheritance to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.

'Now if the means of a stranger or of a foreign resident with you becomes sufficient, and a countryman of yours becomes poor in relation to him and sells himself to a stranger who is residing with you, or to the descendants of a stranger's family,

'He then, with his purchaser, shall calculate from the year when he sold himself to him up to the year of jubilee; and the price of his sale shall correspond to the number of years calculated. It is like the days of a hired worker that he will be with him.

but if few years remain until the year of jubilee, he shall so calculate with him. In proportion to his years he is to refund the amount for his redemption.

'He shall be with him like a worker hired year by year; he shall not rule over him with severity in your sight.

'Even if he is not redeemed by these means, he shall still leave in the year of jubilee, he and his sons with him.

'I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down, with no one to make you afraid. I shall also eliminate harmful animals from the land, and no sword will pass through your land.

'So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm My covenant with you.

'Yet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me,

then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I for My part will punish you seven times for your sins.

'So those of you who may be left will rot away because of their wrongdoing in the lands of your enemies; and also because of the wrongdoing of their forefathers they will rot away with them.

'But if they confess their wrongdoing and the wrongdoing of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me—

I also was acting with hostility against them, to bring them into the land of their enemies—or if their uncircumcised heart is humbled so that they then make amends for their wrongdoing,

then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land.

'Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so loathe them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God.

'But I will remember for them the covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, so that I might be their God. I am the LORD.'"

"With you, moreover, there shall be a man of each tribe, each one head of his father's household.

"These then are the names of the men who shall stand with you: of the tribe of Reuben, Elizur the son of Shedeur;

These are the ones who were numbered, whom Moses and Aaron counted, with the leaders of Israel, twelve men, each of whom was of his father's household.