How to read this page

An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

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Intertextuality Pair

Nehemiah 5:8 → Leviticus 25:46

Echo

Later text

Nehemiah 5:8BSB

and said, "We have done our best to buy back our Jewish brothers who were sold to foreigners, but now you are selling your own brothers, that they may be sold back to us!" But they remained silent, for they could find nothing to say.

Earlier text

Leviticus 25:46BSB

You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But as for your brothers, the Israelites, no man may rule harshly over his brother.

Significance

Leviticus 25:46 explicitly prohibits treating fellow Israelites like permanent chattel slaves. Nehemiah 5:8 exposes the bitter irony of the post-exilic community: "We have done our best to buy back (קָנָה, qanah) our Jewish brothers who were sold to foreigners, but now you are selling your own brothers, that they may be sold back to us!" The community had invested resources to redeem Jews from foreign slavery while simultaneously driving their own kinsmen into debt bondage — violating the very principle that motivated the redemption effort. Nehemiah's argument turns the Levitical distinction against the violators: if enslaving Israelites is wrong when foreigners do it, how much more when brothers do it to each other.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression — Nehemiah 5:8 turns Leviticus 25:46's brother-versus-foreigner distinction against the nobles: brothers bought back from foreign slavery are being sold by their own brothers; the Levitical standard carries forward into post-exilic covenant enforcement.

Linked Mentions 1

Trajectory Tables 1

Sabbatical Year (Land Rest and Trust) Trajectory Table