Exodus - Lesson 22

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-22 
Laws for Worship and Slavery 
Lesson Transcript

So we've come to the end of the Ten Commandments, which are the part of the Old Testament law that's most familiar to Christians and the one most likely, for Christians, most likely to say positive things about, although there's certainly still a negative bias towards Old Testament law, which I hope these sessions have helped you overcome, seeing how, seeing as how the Israelites were celebrating the fact that God talked to them and told them what he expected. Most of the time when I talk to Christians about the law, they have the impression that it's done away with in Christ because Christ forgives our sin and gives us a way to be saved by grace. But we already talked in an earlier session about how the law is not given as a means of salvation, but is the mission, the parameters of Israel's mission to represent God among the nations.

So what that means for us is that the law is not so easily dismissed. If Israel is God's treasured possession and the law is part of how they live that out, and we are also God's treasured possession as followers of Jesus, then the law needs to inform the way we live that out as well. Of course, we live in a different cultural context.

We are in a different era of salvation history. We're on the other side of the cross and resurrection, and so it's not as though we can just take these laws and implement them. We also have a major cultural shift.

I don't have an ox or a donkey, and as we'll see in some of the next sections of laws, there are laws about agriculture and laws about field animals that don't directly apply to me. I'm convinced that these laws remain relevant for us because they contain principles of the character of God and what honors God in human society, and that if we pay attention to what is the principle behind this law, then we can think together about how to live them out in our context. So it's not a kind of slavish where we take one law and plug it in.

It's not a plug-and-play approach to the law, but it is one that I hope will generate good discussion about how we can live these things out. So what we're going to focus on in this session primarily is the passage in Exodus 21 verses 2 through 11 that's often referred to as the slavery laws. Before we get there, there's a little bit at the end of chapter 20 that we haven't talked about yet, and it relates to Israelite worship.

Starting in chapter 20 verse 22, Yahweh said to Moses, tell the Israelites this, you've seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven. Do not make any gods to be alongside me. Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold.

Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and cattle. Wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.

And do not go up to my altar on steps, or your private parts may be exposed. So this little collection of laws seems to relate to that first command of the Decalogue, not to have any other gods before Yahweh. And we're getting a little bit more detail, what they shouldn't make these gods out of.

And God makes clear that he's spoken to them out of heaven, and that they can expect to have ongoing communication with God and ongoing relationship with him. And so he says in the future, when you're offering sacrifices to me, I will come to you and bless you myself. This is not the sort of thing where I've brought you to Sinai, I've showed you who I am.

Now go on your way and live your best life. That is not what we have in Exodus. What we have is they're entering into a relationship with Yahweh that's going to continue.

They can expect to continually relate to God, to learn from him and to receive his blessings. This is not a one and done deal. I want to circle back to that last sentence, and do not go up to my altar on steps or your private parts may be exposed.

This is a really unusual statement. It may have to do with the robe of the Israelite priest being a wraparound style or the tunic that they're wearing. Why is it a big deal if they are exposed? It seems that here Yahweh is wanting to distinguish between the worship of Yahweh and the worship of other gods.

Often in the ancient Near East, the worship of other gods involved some kind of sexual activity where the priests were actually prostitutes and part of the worship ceremonies that happened involved sex. The reason for this is because people would come to worship gods in hopes that the gods would bless them with fertility. They wanted children and they wanted crops to grow so that they could survive as a people and survive as a family.

There was a natural association if you're praying for fertility that you would engage in sexual acts right there on the temple grounds and God says no. In my community, among my covenant people, sex is not something to provoke the gods to offer fertility and you don't have to go to other gods to try to find it. I have already committed to blessing you and as we'll see in some of the future laws, sexual activity is meant within the bounds of a committed marriage.

The priests will have nothing to do with sex with those who come to worship and so part of the reason for this statement is to distinguish the kind of worship that the Israelites will do with the worship of other nations. We'll see this again when we come to the priestly garments that the priests actually wear underwear to help prevent any kind of association that they might still retain from seeing pagans worship their gods using sexual acts. So that is the running start to chapter 21.

Beginning in 20 verse 22 running all the way through 23 19 is a body of laws known as the covenant code. It's not a code in the sense of a closed or fixed collection of laws like we might have a law code today and laws are also not the best way the best word to use to describe them because when we hear the word law we think of a court of law and we think of particular stipulations that have penalties attached with them and certain if you violate them you have to pay this fine or you do so many years in jail or whatever and the system in ancient Israel is quite different. What we have here is a collection of God's instructions more broadly and these instructions some of them can be enforced by by human authorities but others are enforced by God alone.

The idea of these laws is not that this is everything you ever need to know about pleasing God but here this is like a starter kit. Here are some things to think about and we're going to see more laws added to this if we keep on reading in the Old Testament. There's more in Numbers and more in Leviticus and more in Deuteronomy and and so this is not meant to be the final word but it's to help them begin to exercise godly wisdom as they think about their society.

As we begin in chapter 21 we immediately hit a brick wall because here we have laws that relate to servants or slaves and that seems very objectionable. After all didn't God just rescue them from slavery in Egypt and so Cheryl Kirk Duggan expresses what many people feel when they come to this passage when she says slavery was bad for the Israelites to experience but apparently acceptable for them to initiate and practice. This is a sentiment shared by many and so what I'm hoping to do in this session is to frame for you what are the parameters of Israelite so-called slavery.

Is slavery the best word for it? What might lead to someone being in this situation and what are these laws designed to do? And I think you'll agree with me by the end that we see the character in the heart of God even here and that what God is instituting here is not a return to Egypt and the kind of exploitation they experienced under Pharaoh. So we're going to break this passage into two sections. One dealing with male servants and then dealing with female servants because the laws about them are different and again many people find this objectionable.

Why is the male slave allowed to go free but the female slave is not? This makes it seem like the bible is misogynistic and it's not good for women and I've wrestled long and hard with this text and I hope to show you that actually the bible is very good for women and that this passage will show us how it is. So we'll begin by reading the the law or the instruction about male servants and then we'll note several things that come out in this account. If you hire a Hebrew evid and I'm going to just retain the word evid so that we can we can refrain from judging until we've looked at it.

How shall we translate this word? Servant, slave, what's the best way to translate it? So if you hire a Hebrew evid six years he shall serve but in the seventh he may leave freely at no cost. If he came alone he shall leave alone. If he possessed a wife his wife may leave with him.

If his master gave him a wife and she bore him sons or daughters the woman and her offspring will belong to her master and he must leave alone. But if the servant insists I love my master my wife and my children I will not go free. Then his master shall bring him to God and he shall bring him to the door or to the door frame so his master may pierce his ear with an awl and he shall serve him permanently.

Okay what do we do with this? The NIV reads if you buy a Hebrew servant he is to serve you for six years and already this this might give you a sick feeling in your stomach. Why are they buying and selling people? This seems really problematic but the fact that there is a monetary transaction here does not mean it's the same thing as going to the store and buying a loaf of bread. We think about this maybe a good illustration to to use for this would be modern day athletics.

If a team decides that they want a player from another team they might trade for it and when we use the language of trading somebody who's not familiar with athletics might feel like what is this you're treating them like an object like like we're going to trade friendship bracelets and now you're trading people this it seems objectionable but trade is a standard word to use for the way players move between teams and we don't think of them at all as objects. So I think we need to get away from the word buy here and that's why I've translated it as hire. If you hire a Hebrew avid six years shall he serve.

This is not the same thing as Egypt because in Egypt the servitude was permanent. The Israelites were at pharaoh's beck and call for as long as they shall live but here we have a limited term of service only six years and there is a financial transaction but of course a financial transaction happens anytime someone is hired to do work there's an exchange of wealth. So there it might help us to recognize that there's two main categories of servitude in ancient Egypt.

One involving fellow Hebrews and another involving foreigners and here in Exodus 21 we're just talking about fellow Hebrews. So what are the parameters or what are the situations that might lead to someone being hired in this way by one of his neighbors or by one of the members of his community? There tended to be two ways that people entered into this kind of agreement. Either they became so destitute that they could not pay their bills and so they had no other choice but to pay off their debt through labor or they stole the property of a fellow Israelite and were unable to pay it back and so they have to work it off.

So it's worth noting that this situation of hiring a Hebrew evid is not an ideal situation and God is not saying you shall hire a Hebrew evid. This is the sort of thing I want to have happening all the time in ancient Israel. No, he says if you hire a Hebrew evid.

In other words if the situation for someone becomes so desperate that their only choice is to sell their labor to one of their fellow citizens, then here are the parameters to put around it so that we ensure that exploitation does not happen. So poverty would be the impetus for this. It's not an ideal.

This is not expressing God's ideal for his society. It's putting up guardrails for it. We learn in chapter 22 verse 3 of Exodus that stealing is never appropriate.

It says anyone who steals must certainly make restitution but if they have nothing they must be sold to pay for their theft. In other words being destitute does not justify having taken something. You still have to pay it back and you have to work it off.

So if Israelite society functioned as designed there wouldn't be anybody who actually has to sell themselves as an evid. So there's several safety nets that are put into place to prevent destitution. So one of them is that the poor could harvest fallow fields.

We'll see this with the sabbath laws. They could glean behind harvesters at harvest time and they could accept interest-free loans from their fellow citizens, from those with means to offer them. Regular debt relief was offered in sabbath years and in the year of Jubilee.

So what we're looking at here is the worst case scenario when none of these other social safety nets have worked and someone is still so desperate that the only choice they have is to sell themselves to pay off a debt. So the money that's being given here is not to own the person permanently but to pay the debt. So the money is paying the debt and now my labor belongs to you but it's limited to six years.

So notice that this is a voluntary hired worker. Nobody has stolen this person and forced them to work. It's somebody who's freely offered themselves and their labor to someone else.

There is a limited term of service. It's not forever. It's just for six years.

He is free to leave and he's free to marry. So if he came alone he leaves alone. If he has a wife, his wife goes with him.

So he can come into this situation married or unmarried. If his master gave him a wife then he's not allowed to just take her and leave. And I think what's going on here is the wife that's being given to him is under her own contract to serve this master.

So getting married to this evid does not absolve her of whatever obligation she has to the master. So it's not like a get out of jail free card if she can just find a husband who's an evid on that property. No, the contractual obligations remain and so the man would have to leave without her if he wants to leave or he'd have to wait until her service is completed.

Or he can decide, no, I'm going to willingly stay. I want to be part of this household. And there were situations in which people might decide to stay with a master if they're being well treated, if they're being well fed, if the work conditions are reasonable, and if the alternative is worse.

Like say the land that they inherited is just not producing any food and they can't make a living on it. They might decide I'm going to permanently join this household. And if they voluntarily decide to do that then there's a way of publicly marking this evid with a special earring to pierce his ear with an awl.

And that signals to everyone that he has voluntarily decided to enter into this permanent contract with a master. So what is the goal of this legislation? It's to protect the vulnerable from exploitation. It's making sure that it doesn't last more than six years, that the man is allowed to leave freely, that the master can't say, well, I'm keeping your wife if he brought his wife with him when he came.

The parameters that are set up are to ensure that the one who has less power in society is not exploited. So that seems to me to be good news. The more difficult passage is the next one, the case of the female amah.

Before we talk about her, let me just make one more comment about the word evid to describe this male worker. Evid is the noun form of the verb avad, which means to serve. So the Israelites avaded Pharaoh in Egypt and then they came to avad Yahweh.

They were Yahweh's evid. So whatever role this man has in the household is similar to Israel's role in relation to Yahweh. Now we have the case of the female amah and her word is different.

It doesn't use the same word evid to describe her and her situation, the parameters are different and many people have struggled with this. So if a man sells his daughter as an amah, she may not leave as the servants leave. If she is troublesome in the eyes of her master who has claimed her for himself, then he must let her be ransomed.

He's not allowed to sell her to foreign people because he broke the agreement with her. But if he has claimed her for his son, he must treat her in accordance with daughter's rights. If he takes another wife for himself, he may not reduce her food, clothing, or marital rights.

But if he does not give her these three, then she may leave without paying any money. Okay, why is the man allowed to leave but the woman is not? What seems clear from paying attention closely to the clues in this passage is that this woman is not just coming into the household to work off a debt, say by picking cotton or by hoeing the fields or by doing the laundry. It seems that she's actually entered into a marriage contract with the master or with his son because it says if she's troublesome in the eyes of her master who has claimed her for himself.

This language implies that she hasn't just come into the family as a worker but that she's married in. And so he needs to let her be ransomed. He can't, if he acquires this woman as a wife, he can't just decide, eh, I don't like her anymore, she needs to go.

He also cannot sell her to someone else because this isn't just a financial transaction, it's a marriage covenant. He can't break this agreement with her. Now the first line is maybe the most troubling.

If a man sells his daughter as a servant or if a man sells his daughter as an ama, what kind of man would sell his daughter? Like this sounds terrible to us. But again we need to make sure that the financial language does not obscure what's really happening. He is not selling her like you sell a donkey.

In the ancient world when a marriage agreement is entered into there is an exchange of wealth from both families. Normally two families who've agreed for a couple to marry, one gives a bride price and the other gives a dowry. And so the groom gives a bride price to the father saying, I acknowledge this is a loss to you for your daughter to join my household, you're losing someone who can work as part of your family.

So he gives a bride price and she brings with her a dowry from her father. So money goes both ways and it sort of cancels each other out. But it's actually a way of the two families showing a sense of commitment and investment in the ongoing permanence of this relationship.

They've both invested and this dowry will stay with the woman. If divorce happens, if the marriage falls apart for some reason, she takes the dowry with her when she leaves. So it's a kind of security or safety net for her in case of divorce or in case of some other thing that goes wrong in the relationship.

So what's different about this situation is again prompted by extreme poverty and destitution, the father of this daughter is not able to arrange a marriage for her. He doesn't have the kind of wealth needed to send a dowry with his daughter to go to marry another man. And so someone has graciously agreed to marry her anyway, even without a dowry.

So a bride price has gone to the father, which will help him pay his debts. And she comes without a dowry into the household. And naturally then, because she came for the purposes of marriage, she can't just be set out on the street as soon as he decides he's done with her.

She's not a sexual plaything or a toy. She's not disposable. She's a dignified member of the household.

And so if he breaks agreement with her, he has to let her be ransomed by her father or a close relative so that she can return to her family of origin. Now there's two different scenarios here. One, that the master of the of the second household would be claiming her as his own partner, his own wife.

And the other is that his son, he would be claiming her for his son. If he claims her for his son, it's striking that it's we're told he must treat her in accordance with daughter's rights. She cannot be treated like a slave or like a servant.

She is now a member of the family and needs to be treated accordingly. And if for some reason another woman enters the household, another wife, and there are various scenarios by which this might happen. For example, if there's infertility, if she's unable to bear children and another wife is brought in, or if a brother of the husband has a wife and she doesn't bear children for him and then he dies, then by the laws of leverage marriage, the brother would need to take her into his household so that she can bear children on behalf of the dead brother.

And so there are various scenarios by which another woman might enter the household. But even here, there are parameters. He can't just kind of put her out on the street, the first woman out on the street, because she came in under less than ideal circumstances.

He still has to provide food, clothing, and marital rights. In other words, she still gets to get pregnant and have kids. He can't just put her on the back burner, so to speak.

And if he doesn't, if he fails to provide these, she may leave without paying any money, which means that the original payment that he made to the father does not have to be repaid because he's reneged on his commitment to her. So at first glance, this was very objectionable, but the more we spend time on it, the more we can see that an imam marries into the household. This is normal.

It's normal for fathers to arrange marriages for their daughters, and in this case, it's not an even relationship, and that's why these special parameters have been set up. A bride price is expected for the bride's family. This woman is being protected so that she's not treated like a sexual plaything and discarded.

So the goal of these laws is to guard against sexual exploitation. The reason the woman can't leave but the man can is because the man is not being brought in as a marriage partner, and the woman is. Based on the clues in this passage, that's what I think is happening.

It's really interesting to notice how this passage, chapter 21 verses 2 through 11, fits in with the larger structure of the book of the covenant. So we already looked at the worship regulations in chapter 20, and here we have the regulations for servitude, situations of servitude, and I would translate this as some kind of indentured servitude rather than slavery because there's no slave trade going on. This is voluntary service, temporary for males, permanent for females, but notice that there is a chiasm in the book of the covenant where the book of the covenant also ends with worship regulations, and on either side of that, inside of that, there are sabbath patterns for land and work.

So this actually matches up with um laws that we're going to come to in chapter 23 that are regulating sabbath patterns. That is, the point of this is not the acquisition of servants but the setting them free. Under what conditions may they be set free? So it's oriented towards freedom rather than towards servitude, and this was pointed out really beautifully by William Morrow in his book Introduction to Biblical Law.

So I think the most important takeaway that I can give you from this passage is that we need to pay attention to genre and context. This law, these laws begin with if you hire, and if the servant declares, and if a man sells his daughter. They're what we call casuistic laws.

The if-then regulate a non-ideal situation. This is not painting for us God's vision for exactly how he wants things to be, and if we carefully read the context, there are all kinds of other guardrails that are put up so that this doesn't become an exploitative situation. Yahweh brought them out of servitude, chapter 20 verse 2. The servants and foreigners get a sabbath rest along with the rest of the household.

Kidnapping is strictly prohibited in 2116, so you can't take someone against their will and make them a servant in your household. There's a death penalty for killing a servant. Their life matters.

There's a permanent release if you injure your servants. So if you mistreat them and you permanently injure them, they get to go free. So their body is still their own.

If there's an accidental death of a servant, it's taken very seriously. They're prohibited from mistreating foreigners. They're prohibited from taking advantage of the vulnerable.

You're not allowed to charge any interest on loans to the needy. So if you give a loan to someone who's needy in your community, you can't charge exorbitant interest so that they get into the position where they have to come to you crawling and ask for indentured servitude. And there's no denying justice to the poor.

That's not allowed. The Sabbath fields are left unplowed so that the poor have a source of food. So these laws introduce us to a wider vision.

If we consider their genre and if we consider this context, Esau McCulley explains this. The Old Testament and later the New Testament create an imaginative world in which slavery becomes more and more untenable. And by imaginative world, he's not saying this is fake.

He's saying God is setting forth laws that function in such a way that when we sink ourselves into it and imagine the world that God wants to create, we can see slavery is untenable. It doesn't work to have slaves and still keep these commands. William Morrow says it this way.

The biblical slavery laws were calculated to make readers uneasy about the ethics of slave owning. These laws represent an early strategy for raising readers' conscience about the institution of slavery and implicitly calling it into question. So overall, their tactics reflect an ethic of concern for the vulnerable.