"When a man sells his daughter as a slave..." Exodus 21:7-11 As One of the Worst-Translated Passages in History.
Exploring what the Bible REALLY Says About Slavery
This particular passage, perhaps more than any other in this chapter, sounds horrid, at first glance.
At the same time, it’s perhaps the easiest to untangle from all the false assumptions swirling around it.
Read this passage in a modern translation, and see how it sounds:
“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 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. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money. (Exodus 21:7-11 ESV).
To be frank, it sounds horrid.
It sounds like a man is selling his daughter into slavery.
It sounds like women are stuck in slavery and don’t go out as men do.
It sounds like she is judged on whether she is sexually pleasing to her master.
All of that sounds horrid.
But none of that is in original text.
Those are all assumptions that modern readers lay over the text. Some assumptions come from questionable translation. Some assumptions come from readers not knowing the context — and filling in the blanks from what they expect a slavery situation to look like.
For the rest of this chapter, we will untangle these assumptions from the text, exposing what was really going on in Israel.
To begin with, let’s examine this phrase: “When a man sells his daughter as a slave.”
Let’s deal with “slave.”
Unlike the rest of the examples so far, this isn’t the word ebed. Rather, it’s the word amah, typically translated “maid.”
In fact, when you examine how many translations handle this word, you’ll find something rather odd: many translations never translate this word as “slave” anywhere at all – except in Exodus 21. Which begs the question: why?
Like ebed, amah carries a range of meetings, most of them positive. People have no trouble identifying themselves as an amah:
In Ruth 3:9, the heroine Ruth calls herself an amah. When she visits Boaz at night at the threshing floor, starting him, he asks: “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth, your servant [amah].” (Ruth 3:9 ESV).
In 1 Samuel 1:16, the heroine Hannah identifies herself as an amah to Eli, the Chief Priest, just before he pronounces that God will answer her request for a son.
In Job 31, the long-suffering hero Job sees every amah as bearing rights equally as important as his own:
If I have disregarded the right of my male servants
or my female servants [amah]
when they disputed with me,
then what will I do when God confronts me in judgment;
when he intervenes,
how will I respond to him?
Did not the One who made me in the womb make them?
Did not the same one form us in the womb? (Job 31:13–15 NET).
In the Psalms, David even uses amah as a term of endearment for his mother amidst his prayers:
Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant [ebed],
and save the son of your maidservant [amah]. (Psalm 86:16 ESV).
I emphasize all of this to make the point as clear as possible: one poorly-translated word can twist an entire passage. It can create the impression of slavery in a passage that has nothing to do with it.
Such as this one — Exodus 21:7-11.
As we’ll see below, this passage makes slavery impossible. It forbids selling the young woman, because she isn’t property; it commands that she be treated well, as a “daughter,” not a slave; it mandates that she be cared for well; if she isn’t cared for, it frees her to find a place where she will be.
Slavery can’t exist in such a situation. This passage is protecting the young woman’s rights, not taking them away.
Yet the mere inclusion of the word “slave” in the first line blinds many readers to everything that follows.
Next, let’s deal with the word “sell.”
This word does, indeed, mean “sell.” But it’s referring to something we’ve long forgotten.
Again, this passage soon clarifies that she isn’t property. The next verse states that the person she works for has no right to sell her. She’s a daughter, not a slave. Further, Exodus 21:16, less then ten verses later, clarifies that selling people as property merits the death penalty.
Given this, how could the woman’s father sell her? What’s going on?
The answer is simple: marriage.
The price being paid is not a slave price for owning a person.
It’s a bride price — the money the father of the groom gives to the father of the bride when the couple agrees to be married. The bride price has fallen out of usage in many Western societies, yet the principles of honor and esteem are still recognizable.
In ancient Israel (and in many Middle-Eastern societies today), life orients around your clan. This includes your immediate family, but goes beyond it to your close blood relatives. Your clan was everything: your protection, your childcare, your education, your social circle. If a thief stole from you, there was no police to run to. Instead, you went to your clan. Your clan would take on the responsibility to track down the thief and execute justice.
The strength of your clan determined how safe you were. Larger clans could protect their people better than smaller clans.
The influence of your clan determined how well-connected you were in society. Doors opened to people from notable clans.
Your clan was everything.
In marriage, the sons stayed with their parents’ clan. The son’s children would fill out and strengthen his parents’ clan. But daughters would be married into another clan. Her children would still be related to her clan of origin, but they would serve in the new clan the daughter married into.
The leaders of the clan took marriages seriously. Because life revolved around your clan, everyone wanted their clan to be as healthy and strong as possible. They sought the best possible mates for their young men and women, in order to bring the best possible people into their clan.
A young woman would leave her clan, which weakened it. She would marry into another clan, thereby strengthening it.
The father of the groom would pay the bride price to balance this situation.
Rather than being some ghastly artifact of a bygone age, the bride price showed how highly the groom’s family esteemed the bride. They saw the greatness of her worth and how impoverished her clan would be without her. The bride price reflected their sense of her worth. It demonstrated to her birth clan that they recognized how great a sacrifice they were making in giving her away in marriage.
To a culture that isn’t at all familiar with this practice, it can sound like slavery. It can sound de-humanizing, dishonoring, and evil.
But to a culture familiar with this, a father “selling” his daughter immediately means “he’s being paid the bride price for her to marry into another clan. The clan she’s marrying into is honoring her, showing they recognize her great value as a person.”
In such cultures, a marriage without a bride price would be horrific. By withholding a bride price, the groom’s family would be saying they see no worth in the woman at all, that she was of such low value to her family that her absence would not impoverish them.
To confirm and close this matter, let’s look to how the passage itself defines this young woman’s role.
Many skeptics will read “When a man sells his daughter as a slave,” and read no further. They’ll assume the translation speaks for the rest of the passage and reject it all.
But the passage itself tells us precisely what kind of role this young woman is in — and she is no slave.
Verse 10 defends the woman’s rights, stating: “If he takes another…” Another what? Another slave? Another servant?
No — another wife: “If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights” (Exodus 21:10 ESV).
Slaves have no marital rights.
Wives and husbands possess marital rights. So does this young woman.
Which means she is a wife — not a slave.
This culture tolerated polygamy. The Bible never commands polygamy, but it was tolerated, for reasons that again can miss us, today. When the young men went off to war, many wouldn’t return. This often imbalanced societies, resulting in more young women than young men. Polygamy allowed these women to find a home. This didn’t make polygamy a good thing, but it was, perhaps, better than leaving people to struggle through life alone.
Exodus 21:10 ensures that if this happens, the husband could not neglect his first wife. If a man does marry multiple women, he must care for them all. He must give them each not only food and clothing, but also their marital rights — the right to conceive and bear children, to have a family of their own.
Which clarifies exactly who this young woman is.
If she possesses marital rights, then she is married. She is a wife. She is not a slave.
This concludes Part 1 of this chapter. Part 2 will be coming on Friday, as we work through every provision in this chapter to see how carefully God protects the rights of young women in ancient Israel.
