שָׂכִיר
sa.khir (H7916)
hired
AI Word Study
# The Hebrew Word שָׂכִיר (sakhir): Understanding "Hired" The Hebrew word *sakhir* (שָׂכִיר) refers to someone who is hired—a person engaged for work in exchange for payment or wages. With 17 occurrences across the biblical text, this term represents a specific social category distinct from slaves or family members. The word denotes a voluntary labor relationship where compensation is the defining characteristic, establishing a contractual rather than coercive bond between worker and employer. The frequency of this word's appearance suggests that hired labor was a recognized and noteworthy feature of ancient Israelite society. Rather than being a marginal economic practice, the existence of a dedicated term with multiple biblical references indicates that hiring workers was common enough to warrant consistent vocabulary. This reflects a society with sufficient economic complexity to support wage-based employment alongside other labor systems such as slavery and family-based work. The significance of *sakhir* lies in its distinction from other labor categories in biblical society. By isolating hired workers as a specific group deserving their own terminology, the biblical text acknowledges different types of relationships between people and work. Understanding this word provides insight into ancient economic structures and the social recognition granted to those who sold their labor for compensation, marking an important dimension of how biblical societies organized productive activity.
AI synthesis uses only provided lexicon data -- never training knowledge.
If its owner is with it, he shall not make it good. If it is a leased thing, it came for its lease.
“ ‘You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. “ ‘The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning.
“ ‘No stranger shall eat of the holy thing: a foreigner living with the priests, or a hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing.
The Sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for yourself, for your servant, for your maid, for your hired servant, and for your stranger, who lives as a foreigner with you.
As a hired servant, and as a temporary resident, he shall be with you; he shall serve with you until the Year of Jubilee.
He shall reckon with him who bought him from the year that he sold himself to him to the Year of Jubilee. The price of his sale shall be according to the number of years; he shall be with him according to the time of a hired servant.
As a servant hired year by year shall he be with him. He shall not rule with harshness over him in your sight.
It shall not seem hard to you when you let him go free from you; for he has been double the value of a hired hand as he served you six years. Yahweh your God will bless you in all that you do.
You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the foreigners who are in your land within your gates.
“Isn’t a man forced to labor on earth? Aren’t his days like the days of a hired hand?
As a servant who earnestly desires the shadow, as a hireling who looks for his wages,
Look away from him, that he may rest, until he accomplishes, as a hireling, his day.
But now Yahweh has spoken, saying, “Within three years, as a worker bound by contract would count them, the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant will be very small and feeble.”
For the Lord said to me, “Within a year, as a worker bound by contract would count it, all the glory of Kedar will fail,
Also her hired men in the middle of her are like calves of the stall; for they also are turned back. They have fled away together. They didn’t stand, for the day of their calamity has come on them, the time of their visitation.
I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don’t fear me,” says Yahweh of Armies.