Laws about Slaves/Servants (Exodus 21:1-6)

[God is talking directly to Moses at the top of Sinai as the people have moved away, afraid to listen anymore to the divine message (20:19). As he expands on the Ten Commandment, fittingly, God talks first about the treatment of fellow human beings, especially those in vulnerable positions as slaves or servants.]

1 “Now these are the rules [laws of greater specificity than the Ten Commandments] that you shall set before them [the people]. 2 When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. [Payment could be a lump sum at the beginning or end of the six years or could be given in installments.] 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 [who would be a fellow slave allowed by the master to marry] 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 [for a ritual enacted before God that protects both servant and master], 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. [The Hebrew word “ebed” can be translated as “slave,” “servant,” “employee,” or “worker.” Any and all of these categories come under the covenant protection of God. The words translated “buy” in verse 2 “can refer to any financial transaction related to a contract, much as in modern sports terminology a player can be described as being ‘bought’ or ‘sold’ from one team to another. Players are not actually the property of the team that ‘owns’ them except as regards the exclusive right of their employment as players of that sport. Persons who were servants/slaves/workers/employees held their positions by reason of a formal contract that related primarily to the job that they had ‘signed up’ to perform, for a period of time, much as one enlists in the military today” (Stuart). This is much different than Western slavery where people were stolen from their homelands and brought in chains to a new land to be sold as property to a master who owned them and could resell them. The law did not allow for this in ancient Israel. There were various types of slaves in Israel. First were foreign-born servants whose lives were spared in war and who were allowed to live indefinitely in Israel as permanent workers. Second, there were six-year servants who contracted with an employer for six years in return for benefits and wages. At the end of six years they were released from their contracts. Third, there were servants born in the boss’s household who owed the boss something for the housing and food provided until the time they chose to leave. And forth, there were various temporary employees or hired workers or day laborers. All of these workers belonged to small businesses and households. There were no large employers as we have today. The slavery laws were antithetical to the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt, where they were enslaved for life on the basis of their ethnicity. Israelite law guaranteed the right to gain freedom and service out of love rather than necessity. God’s law implicitly condemned the Egyptian treatment of the Israelites by prohibiting the very practices the Egyptians used to suppress and weaken God’s people.]