Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
Laws for Servants
Exodus 21:1-11
1 “Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them: · WEB
The first civil law given to freed slaves is about slavery, and it caps it at six years.
Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them Exodus 21:1.
What follows the ten commandments is case law — specific rulings on ordinary disputes, given to a nation that will need courts within the month. The ten state principles; these show what the principles cost when applied to a real quarrel about a bull.
The first subject is servitude, and that ordering says something. A people seven weeks out of Egypt are given, as their first civil statute, a law limiting how long one of them may hold another.
If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything Exodus 21:2.
The institution is regulated rather than abolished, and it is worth being exact about what is being regulated. This is debt bondage: a man who cannot pay works off what he owes and is released, with the term capped regardless of the size of the debt. The release costs him nothing, which means the creditor absorbs whatever remains unpaid. It is a bankruptcy law with a fixed term, in a world where the alternative was permanent servitude or starvation.
The verses that follow are harder, and two of them should not be softened. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself Exodus 21:4. And later, of a servant struck and killed, if his servant gets up after a day or two, he shall not be punished, for the servant is his property Exodus 21:21.
These are the accommodations of a legal system speaking to the ancient world in its own vocabulary, and the book does not pretend otherwise. What can be said is that the direction of every clause is protective where the surrounding cultures had no clause at all: a master who kills a servant outright shall surely be punished Exodus 21:20, and a master who destroys an eye or knocks out a tooth loses the servant altogether Exodus 21:26–27. A legal code that frees a man for a lost tooth has made ownership expensive on purpose.
But if the servant shall plainly say, "I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go out free" Exodus 21:5.
The alternative is voluntary and permanent, and the ceremony that seals it is public: the ear is pierced against the doorpost with an awl Exodus 21:6. The mark is on the organ of hearing, and it is made at the threshold of a house the man has chosen not to leave. The only lifelong service the law recognizes is the kind entered freely, out of love, by someone who had the legal right to walk away.
The daughter sold as a servant is treated separately and more carefully Exodus 21:7–11, because her position is more vulnerable. She may not be resold abroad; if the household takes another wife, her food, clothing and marital rights may not be reduced; and if any of the three is withheld, she may go free without paying any money Exodus 21:11. Her protection is not her contract. It is her right to walk out.
held with reason What this mark means