QT 3/30/2026 Exo 21:1-11, Treating people within the context of social contracts

Exodus 21:1–11 (ESV) —

1 “Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. 2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 3 If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 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 alone. 5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

7 “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves 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.

 

NOTE: While the passage discusses slavery, the concept is much closer to a contractual employee with additional rights and responsibilities of the employer. The contracted employee (the slave) has the freedom to leave the agreement after a set number of years. He does not have to take a wife from the employer, but instead pursue that on his own. The assumption is that the women is probably also on a contract. He can't take her out without her fulfilling her contract, which could be a considerable cost for a man without a job. He could wait it out.

 

In the second case, a man sells his daughter (they arranged marriages) to another person either as a wife, or as a wife for the man's son. If sold as a wife, she had to had to be treated as a wife (same as if he already had a wife), and if she was sold to be the man's son's wife, she had to be treated as a daughter. The passage describes the procedures, it does not address the issue of what the daughter wanted. She was bound, as any women, to the marriage, if it occurred. But it doesn't say that she was without say in the agreement. These were days of arranged marriages, and so it is hard to put our head around the situation and the environment. Women needed a husband to survive, and for some women, this would have been a very good outcome.

 

What do we learn? God never supported slavery or the idea of people as commodities. There would laws in place to protect people. We are made in the image of God; we are not cattle that is bought and sold. The scripture is very much against slavery as practiced by all the nations of earth throughout history. Twice in Amos, he specifically calls out the practice

 

9 Thus says the Lord:

“For three transgressions of Tyre,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,

because they delivered up a whole people to Edom,

and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.

 

Both Tyre and Gaza are judged for selling a people group as slaves to other nations. They forgot that we are all brothers, even if not related by family or tribe, we are all made in the image of God.

 

PONDER:

1. How do we treat people?
2. Do we see ourselves better that other people groups?

 

PRAYER: Father, I pray that I would treat all groups with the same kindness and love I might treat a famous individual. People are people; and people are deserving of respect.