והפדה. מלמד שמגרע פדיונה ותצא. פירש"יּ לומר שאם קנאה לשש שנים בששה מנים ועבדה שתי שנים נותנת ארבעה מנים ויוצאה. ואי קשיא מה גרוע הוי זה י"ל לפי שהשנים הבאים היא יותר גדולה וכחה מרובה לעשות מלאכה מן השנים שעברו לכך קרי ליה גרעון: והפדה, “he must help her to obtain her freedom;” the unusual phrasing means that he must do more than the law requires to give her freedom, i.e. enable her to avoid having to become someone else’s “slave” due to her being penniless. Rashi explains our verse as follows: if the servant girl had been sold for six years service, for say 600 dollars, and she had only worked for two years, she must give him 400 dollars upon her going free. If you were to ask what did her master loose in that scenario, seeing that he had received the correct percentage of the work performed? The answer is that the girl’s services becoming worth more every year she grew closer to adulthood, the master had paid her for work performed while she was too young to be worth what he had paid for. In other words, the master did sustain a financial loss by her early release.