ʿebed

Semantic range

1. 1a household slave or bondservant
2. 2a subject of a king
3. 3a servant of God — an honorific, not a demotion
4. 4a worshipper (from ʿābad, to serve or to worship)

The same verb, ʿābad, means both to work and to worship; the noun spans slave and courtier. To be called "my servant" by God — as Abraham, Moses, David and Isaiah's mysterious Servant are — is a title of honour, roughly "my minister of state."

Isaiah's four Servant Songs (42, 49, 50, 52:13–53:12) hold Israel and an individual together in one figure, and the New Testament and Book of Mormon both read the last of them as Christ (Mosiah 14 quotes Isaiah 53 entire). Philippians 2:7 says Christ took "the form of a servant" — Greek doulos, the strongest available word for slave.

See also

• אָשָׁםʾāšām
• κενόωkenoō