Exodus 19:5-6

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ¹  and keep ²  my covenant, then you will be my ³  special possession ⁴  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, 19:6 and you will be to me ⁵  a kingdom of priests ⁶  and a holy nation.’ ⁷  These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”

Leviticus 25:39-46

25:39 “‘If your brother becomes impoverished with regard to you so that he sells himself to you, you must not subject him to slave service. ⁸  25:40 He must be with you as a hired worker, as a resident foreigner; ⁹  he must serve with you until the year of jubilee, 25:41 but then ¹⁰  he may go free, ¹¹  he and his children with him, and may return to his family and to the property of his ancestors. ¹²  25:42 Since they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt, they must not be sold in a slave sale. ¹³  25:43 You must not rule over him harshly, ¹⁴  but you must fear your God.

25:44 “‘As for your male and female slaves ¹⁵  who may belong to you – you may buy male and female slaves from the nations all around you. ¹⁶  25:45 Also you may buy slaves ¹⁷  from the children of the foreigners who reside with you, and from their families that are ¹⁸  with you, whom they have fathered in your land, they may become your property. 25:46 You may give them as inheritance to your children after you to possess as property. You may enslave them perpetually. However, as for your brothers the Israelites, no man may rule over his brother harshly. ¹⁹ 

Galatians 4:26

4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free, ²⁰  and she is our mother.

Galatians 4:31

4:31 Therefore, brothers and sisters, ²¹  we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman.

[19:5]  ¹ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

[19:5]  ² tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

[19:5]  ³ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ⁴ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

[19:6]  ⁵ tn Or “for me” (NIV, NRSV), or, if the lamed (ל) preposition has a possessive use, “my kingdom” (so NCV).

[19:6]  ⁶ tn The construction “a kingdom of priests” means that the kingdom is made up of priests. W. C. Kaiser (“Exodus,” EBC 2:417) offers four possible renderings of the expression: 1) apposition, viz., “kings, that is, priests; 2) as a construct with a genitive of specification, “royal priesthood”; 3) as a construct with the genitive being the attribute, “priestly kingdom”; and 4) reading with an unexpressed “and” – “kings and priests.” He takes the latter view that they were to be kings and priests. (Other references are R. B. Y. Scott, “A Kingdom of Priests (Exodus xix. 6),” OTS 8 [1950]: 213-19; William L. Moran, “A Kingdom of Priests,” The Bible in Current Catholic Thought, 7-20). However, due to the parallelism of the next description which uses an adjective, this is probably a construct relationship. This kingdom of God will be composed of a priestly people. All the Israelites would be living wholly in God’s service and enjoying the right of access to him. And, as priests, they would have the duty of representing God to the nations, following what they perceived to be the duties of priests – proclaiming God’s word, interceding for people, and making provision for people to find God through atonement (see Deut 33:9,10).

[19:6]  ⁷ tn They are also to be “a holy nation.” They are to be a nation separate and distinct from the rest of the nations. Here is another aspect of their duty. It was one thing to be God’s special possession, but to be that they had to be priestly and holy. The duties of the covenant will specify what it would mean to be a holy nation. In short, they had to keep themselves free from everything that characterized pagan people (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 171). So it is a bilateral covenant: they received special privileges but they must provide special services by the special discipline. See also H. Kruse, “Exodus 19:5 and the Mission of Israel,” North East Asian Journal of Theology 24/25 (1980): 239-42.

[25:39]  ⁸ tn Heb “you shall not serve against him service of a slave.” A distinction is being made here between the status of slave and indentured servant.

[25:40]  ⁹ tn See the note on Lev 25:6 above.

[25:41]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) can be considered to have adversative force here.

[25:41]  ¹¹ tn Heb “may go out from you.”

[25:41]  ¹² tn Heb “fathers.”

[25:42]  ¹³ tn Or perhaps reflexive Niphal rather than passive, “they shall not sell themselves [as in] a slave sale.”

[25:43]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “You shall not rule in him in violence”; cf. NASB “with severity”; NIV “ruthlessly.”

[25:44]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “And your male slave and your female slave.” Smr has these as plural terms, “slaves,” not singular.

[25:44]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “ from the nations which surround you, from them you shall buy male slave and female slave.”

[25:45]  ¹⁷ tn The word “slaves” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied here.

[25:45]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “family which is” (i.e., singular rather than plural).

[25:46]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “and your brothers, the sons of Israel, a man in his brother you shall not rule in him in violence.”

[4:26]  ²⁰ sn The meaning of the statement the Jerusalem above is free is that the other woman represents the second covenant (cf. v. 24); she corresponds to the Jerusalem above that is free. Paul’s argument is very condensed at this point.

[4:31]  ²¹ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:11.