Rabbi Yishmael taught a sobering principle about Canaanite bondservants: a Canaanite bondservant can never be redeemed by an outside party. The only path to freedom is the master's voluntary consent.
The proof comes from (Leviticus 25:46): "And you shall hold them as an inheritance. You shall make them serve as bondsmen forever." The Torah uses the language of permanent inheritance — the same language applied to ancestral land holdings. Just as a "field of holding" remains in the family's possession permanently, reverting to its original owner in the Jubilee year, a Canaanite bondservant is considered a permanent holding.
The phrase "bondsmen forever" is not hyperbole. Rabbi Yishmael understood it literally. Unlike a Hebrew bondservant, who goes free after six years, or in the Jubilee year, a Canaanite bondservant has no automatic release date. No one can purchase his freedom against the master's will. No calendar event triggers his liberation. The master's voluntary decision to free him is the sole mechanism of manumission.
This teaching reveals the stark legal distinction between Hebrew and Canaanite servitude in Jewish law. The Hebrew bondservant was a temporary worker with a built-in expiration date. The Canaanite bondservant was treated as heritable property. The same legal system that carefully protected Hebrew bondservants and ensured their timely release applied fundamentally different rules to non-Israelite bondservants.