Exodus 21 Revived Through Endless Challenges
This message is needed now, not later
Hello again! It’s been a minute.
Work on the Exodus 21 book had stalled for a bit, as a lot of my attention focused on building prayer support for several Pulse events and launching our new ministry, Swift Hope.
But in the past few days, a lot of people have been asking questions related to Exodus 21 and what the Bible says about slavery. Responding to these questions made it clear that this not a matter to be dropped. So many people are talking about it, and so many people are hurt by it, because so many lies have been spread about the Bible.
I’ll share a few of these conversations with you to highlight the need, and to provide a teaser for what else is coming in future chapters.
Letter from A.G.:
Hi.
I saw your comments about slavery in the Old Testament, I have a question: then what is the meaning of these verses? that is, a slave can leave its owner at any moment? then what is the point of this system? Why were these laws given? What about sexual slavery in Exodus 21, 7?
Response:
Hi A.,
Great questions! Let’s dig in.
You said:
I saw your comments about slavery in the Old Testament, I have a question: then what is the meaning of these verses? that is, a slave can leave its owner at any moment?
Because God was re-defining what it means to be a worker, or to have people work for you.
Everyone in the ancient world assumed that slavery was okay. It’s what everyone did. No one questioned it. It was simply part of how the world worked.
But God wanted something different in Israel.
God forbade the Israelites from treating people as slaves. To drive this home, He filled the Torah with specific commands to destroy slavery.
Deuteronomy 23:15–16 is part of that:
“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.”
It clarifies that any servant/slave/worker/anyone-at-all is free to leave a bad work situation whenever they feel the need to. It destroys the system of slavery, because workers cannot be slaves. They can’t be kept. The Law requires that they are free as soon as they escape, as soon as they want to be free.
More than that, they can live freely wherever they choose. They aren’t second-class citizens. They are full citizens with full rights to live wherever they please. You cannot oppress them or wrong them.
God is re-writing what it means to be a worker or to hire workers. He is abolishing slavery one law at a time.
You said:
then what is the point of this system? Why were these laws given? What about sexual slavery in Exodus 21, 7?
Exodus 21:7–11 discusses arranged marriage and the hiring of handmaidens, not sexual slavery.
Many translations still say “sell his daughter as a slave,” but the text doesn’t use the typical word for slave, ebed. It uses the word for maid or handmaid, amah. This could mean either the man is hiring this young girl as a maid for his household, or that she is being married as a secondary wife, as Laban did when he gave Zilpah and Bilhah to Jacob. They served initially as handmaidens to Rachel and Leah, but they became wives in their own right.
The laws in Exodus 21:7–11 protect women in such cases:
[7] “When a man sells his daughter as an amah, she shall not go out as the male servants do. [8] If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. [9] If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. [10] If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. [11] And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
This means:
The man who hires or marries her has no rights over her. He cannot sell her as a slave if he displeases her. In any other ancient civilization, he could. In Israel, he cannot. She is a full person with full rights. He can’t sell her away if he decides he doesn’t like her.
If he doesn’t like her, he has broken faith with her. In most ancient societies, it was the other way around: she didn’t please him, so she failed him. Not so in Israel. If he hires or marries her, and he doesn’t like her, he has broken faith. He is the one failing, not her.
Handmaids, wives, or even secondary wives are not to be treated as lesser. A man who arranges a handmaiden or wife for his son must treat her as he treats his own daughters.
If he ever deprives her of her food, clothing, or marital rights, she is released from him. This protects her from abuse — she is not legally tied to a household that will not care for her. She is not a slave to be kept on a whim. She is free to leave any abusive situation.
Again, this completely re-wrote the rules. No other ancient civilization had such rules that affirmed and esteemed the woman in this situation as an equal. In this passage, God is restoring to women rights that they had been denied in virtually every other society.
God was teaching Israel: everyone is made in the image of God. Everyone has rights. Everyone is to be honored, esteemed, and respected.