Leviticus 25:39

"And if thy brother be waxed poor with thee, and sell himself unto thee; thou shalt not make him to serve as a bondservant. As a hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee; he shall serve with thee unto the year of jubilee: then shall he go out from thee, he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear thy God. And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt have; of the nations that are round about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they have begotten in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall make them an inheritance for your children after you, to hold for a possession; of them shall ye take your bondmen forever: but over your brethren the children of Israel ye shall not rule, one over another, with rigor."

The great import of these verses is that "no Jew could be a bondslave." As McClaren stated it:

"No Jew was to be a slave. To that broad principle, there were exceptions, as when one voluntarily gave himself up to his creditors, but even he could not be treated as a slave, but as a hired servant, and at Jubilee he went free."[16]

"The Jubilee law was a guarantee that no Jew would ever again be reduced to the type of slavery that oppressed Israel in Egypt."[17] Non-Jewish persons could be reduced to slavery, and the Jubilee did not apply to them. There is a distinction that should be noted in "the nations that are round about you" (Leviticus 25:44), and "strangers ... that sojourn among you ... that are with you" (Leviticus 25:45). The reason for this lay in the fact that Israel was commanded to destroy the nations that dwelt in Canaan, thus these would only have existed beyond the borders of Israel, that is, if Israel had obeyed God's command in this matter.