There are some things at face value that seem troubling in chapter 21 but that I think they are resolved with proper context and understanding of language.
First, on slavery in the Bible. The terms generally in play here have a relatively wide range. There are various Hebrew words for servant, the most common being “‘ebed”. That word can mean worker, employee, servant or slave. All of these fall under the protections of Yahweh’s convenant, and often they all actually do represent the same situation. Similarly, the word for employer, ba’al, can mean boss, employer, master, or owner (and, apparently, foreign god). Even the word for “buy” like in 21:2 (“If you buy a Hebrew servant…”), can refer to any financial transaction related to a contract. For example, if one baseball team exchanges cash for a 3rd baseman named Ted, we might say that they purchased Ted. It doesn’t mean that the new team literally owns Ted and everything about him, but they do have exclusive rights to their employment as a 3rd basemen (and as such, would expect compensation of some sort if Ted were to go to another team or not fulfill his obligations to their team).
So, with that as a foundation, when the law was properly followed, folks who were servants/slaves/workers held their positions based upon a formal contract for a job that they signed up to perform. In return they would get room, board, and some kind of compensation (perhaps all up front, some little by little, or maybe all at the end.) The terms were generally 6 years (think of it like someone signing up for the military).
Other servant/slave situations might be foreign-born servants who were allowed to live indefinitely on the condition that they become permanent workers in Israel. As we’ll note, God’s covenant law often assumes that people knew what they were getting into when they started some kind of trouble (going to war) and so the consequences of coming out on the other side of that trouble with your life spared but your service bound to the man you tried to kill is entirely appropriate.
Also, servants who were born in the household of the boss who perhaps owe the boss something for their room and board who will be permitted to leave when what is owed is paid. Finally, there are various temporary employment situations, think day laborers.
For clarity, it’s worth explicitly stating that under no circumstances when you read “slave” or “slavery” in God’s law should you view it through the lens of people stealing other people out of their homeland and forcing them to do labor permanently. Although it happened in other cultures of that time (ah hem, the Israelites ended up in this position, they just happened to already be on foreign soil), God explicitly puts protections in place to ensure people are not treated like this. No one “belonged” to another person like that. They may have been bound by a debt or a contractual agreement, but it was under their own agreement. And they had the right to gain their freedom.
So, when v.2 says, “If you buy a Hebrew slave…”, don’t think purchase a person, think “when you enter into a contractual agreement with someone for them to serve and work for you at an agreed upon wage for no fewer than six years”. Makes quite a bit of difference, doesn’t it? And after six years he goes frees. Seems easy. But then comes the trouble, when there are a spouse and kids involved (although some of these will be gender specific, don’t get distracted that they use the masculine noun to orient many of these, women could be employers and servants, they could find a husband while a servant and have a similar issue, etc.)
v.4 sounds problematic, then, because it sounds like the owner is using the servant to raise more servants so he can “own” them. Again, we have to shake 18-19th century American issues from our context here. Think about what is happening. Man comes to work for farm owner, agrees to work for 6 years for given wage, etc. Two years later, woman comes to work for farm owner, agrees to work for 6 years for a given wage, etc. Man and woman fall in love, get married, have a baby. Tricky. Farm owner didn’t contract for woman to not work during that time, someone has to compensate farm owner for the lost work. (I know we don’t live in a world that keeps to this kind of consequence, we assume the farm owner should eat the cost because marriage and birth are good things. And they are good, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost the farm owner for it to occur).
Now, fast forward 4 years. Man has finished his agreement, he’s free to go. Is it right that the woman, who has two more years on her agreement with the farm owner, should just get to leave free and clear? And the farm owner has been paying the costs of feeding/housing the child. Should that be free too? The law says no, the farm owner needs to be paid back. So, man has a few options. He can wait it out, his wife will finish her contract in two years and everyone can live happily ever after. The bummer of this would be he wouldn’t be with his family or would have to pay room and board at the farm while working somewhere else.
Alternatively, he could find a job somewhere else and try to raise enough money to pay the balance to satisfy his wife’s contract. However, it might be hard to find a situation that pays enough to support himself as well as enough to make progress on buying out what his wife had committed to those fateful 4 years prior. Or, he could agree to continue to work permanently for the farm owner for the rest of his life, stay with his wife and kids, and keep earning wages and living there as he was doing before. And remember, the farm owner isn’t a ruthless plantation owner, he’s providing room, board, and contractual wages. And the law forbids mistreatment otherwise he has to let the servant out of the contract.
Now the second problems arises. Let’s say man agrees to work for farm owner permanently. What’s to keep him from just bailing at any time? This is a voluntary service on the man’s part but still requires a protection for the farm owner. So, they go in front of the town judges and express that they are making this commitment to each other. This is an important step, it protects the man to make sure he does not enter into this agreement rashly. Also, it protects him against an unscrupulous farm owner who might lie and try to keep someone beyond their initial 6 year agreement. On the other side, the action in front of the judges protects the farm owner from someone accusing him of not honoring the 6 year agreement (he’ll have witnesses that the man agreed to say permanently).
Also, the man is marked (with an awl on the ear lobe, the average 5 year old girl does it to pierce her ears, it’s not a brutal process.) This mark is understood so that if this man were to flee the farm owner for some reason, a future employer would know that this man was supposed to be in permanent employment to the farm owner. Also, it’s a reminder to the farm owner of the commitment he made to care and provide for the man on a permanent basis.
Now, on to v. 7 (sorry, I know these are long, but I’m hoping they will help us digest some of the stuff to come a little easier). Our situation, like Nathaniel noted, is not just a woman entering into a servant contract but one that combines service and marriage. The core issue is the price. The farm owner (we’ll keep him as our example master) would pay both the contract price and the bride price (they didn’t do dowry) with the intention of this woman fulfilling the contract obligations with intentions of also marrying her. Why do that? It’s possibly most relevant to the farm owner who is already married or perhaps widowed who is trying to ensure his estate goes to either the first wife or her kids. Yes, he still must provide and care for the second wife (these complications are why God’s design never was for polygamy. This tolerance comes within the context of toleration of human weakness in a considerable variety of areas. Jesus describes this covenant in those terms in Matthew 19:8. Without some means of accommodation to human frailty in any divine covenant, there can be no hope for humans to find acceptance with God, thus the importance of the forgiveness of sins in the New Covenant of Jesus).
If, for some reason, the farm owner decides he doesn’t want her as a wife (and they don’t consummate the marriage), he must allow her to be redeemed. Meaning, he’s not allowed to keep her around under false circumstances. If he doesn’t intend to keep her as a bride, she must be released at the end of the contract period or allow for the family of the woman to give the money back, redeeming her. He’s not allowed to negotiate a new bride price with someone else, he’s not to be trusted to do that because he didn’t honor his word to marry her or treat her faithfully.
The transfer of property rights notwithstanding, a second wife is not a “second-class” wife. She must be treated equally in the family to the way first wives were treated. Failure to do so would be sufficient grounds for the wife to be freed from her marriage and her service contract.
I won’t belabor the point on the rest of the chapter (unless you have a specific question) but I did have one more thing that jumped out. In v. 20, we have a situation where a man punishes a contracted worker physically. We recoil at this, of course. It’s not stated that the man’s actions are justified (the discussion assumes it isn’t, that’s why there is to be punishment or avenging going on). However, the end of the verse is difficult, “…but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two since the slave is his property (NIV).” Dang, that doesn’t sound good at all. Part of the confusion is the translation. The ESV is better, “…since the slave is his money.” The point is, for something that wasn’t enough to exact an eye for eye, tooth for tooth kind of thing, the impact is that the worker is down for some small amount of time. There is no point in asking the servant’s boss to compensate himself for the loss of his own servant’s labor. He already paid the price, his laborer can’t work (thus, the slave is his money). Again, the rest of the law protects the servant in excess of whatever this situation was, it’s not open season to be a violent jerk, it’s a recognition of the proper compensation (the assumption being that the laborer still gets paid).
