Exodus 21:1-36 - Sutcliffe's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

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Exodus 21:1. These are the judgments. In this chapter we enter upon the fifty seven precepts of the civil law of the Hebrew nation. They are the laws of patriarchal society; and are here arranged and modified so as to promote order, purity and justice, in the whole community. The American Indians are found to have had many of these laws, as will be cited under the particular precept. Theodore Beza has left us a Latin work entitled Mosaycarum & Romanorum Legum Collatio, the Mosaic code collated with the Roman laws, in which many of the statutes are striking coincidents.

Exodus 21:2. Buy a Hebrew servant. In criminal cases, and in cases of debt, the magistrates had of course the power to inflict this punishment. It was allowed also in cases of insolvency. 1 Kings 4:1; Matthew 18:25. And seven years servitude was milder than long imprisonment.

Exodus 21:4. The wife her master's. The Jews affirm that this law respected aliens only.

Exodus 21:6. Bore his ear: a frequent custom among the gentiles as well as the Jews.

Exodus 21:7. If a man sell his daughter, not for δουλα, a slave, but οικετις, for a domestic, and under a promise of marriage. In all Shem's race, as in the tribes of Ham and Japhet, a man had the power of a husband over a maid that he had bought. “From the beginning,” as our Saviour says on cases of divorce, “it was not so.” Moses therefore mitigates what he could not supersede, by guarding the spotless honour of a poor virgin.

Exodus 21:13. God delivered him into his hand. That is, he proved the stronger in the fight, and his opponent died of his bruises. But neither refuge nor satisfaction was allowed for wilful murder. Numbers 35:31.

Exodus 21:24. Eye for an eye. The judges might in some cases mitigate this. If a man with one eye should do this, the punishment would exceed the crime.

REFLECTIONS.

The political laws given to the Jews are worthy the serious attention, not only of judges and magistrates, that they may conform to them as much as possible in all things that are not peculiar to the Israelites, to the land of Canaan, and to those times, but of every other person; as they contain very excellent precepts of justice and charity, and many other duties. Upon the laws concerning slaves it must be observed, that slavery is prohibited among christians; and therefore that these laws do not respect us directly. However, we may conclude from them that the will of God is, that servants should be faithful to their masters, and that masters should treat their servants with tenderness and humanity. We learn likewise in this chapter, that murderers, men stealers, and those that curse father or mother, are guilty of very enormous crimes, which the magistrates ought to punish severely; and we may judge from thence, that God will not leave them unpunished. These are crimes which ought not to be so much as known among christians, any more than several others mentioned in the laws of Moses.

From this chapter, says Ostervald, we learn that those who smite or wound their neighbour ought not to go unpunished that those who occasion any evil to their neighbour, whether wilfully or accidentally and without any evil intention, should suffer for it, and ought to repair the damage as far as possible that although slavery obtained amongst the Jews, God did not intend that they should treat their slaves cruelly or inhumanly as other nations did; from whence it appears that christians should behave with still greater meekness and gentleness towards their servants. It must also be observed, that these words, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” do not authorize private revenge, but only denote the punishment that judges were to inflict upon such as assaulted and wounded their neighbour; otherwise, we should be so far from returning evil for evil, that we ought, (as our Saviour observes, Matthew 5. where this law is mentioned) to bear injuries patiently: not to avenge ourselves, nor always insist upon what is strictly our right; but to imitate that meekness and patience which Jesus Christ our Redeemer has given us an example of.

Related Commentaries of Exodus 21:1

Exodus 21:1-36

1 Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

3 If he came in by himself,a he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.

4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.

5 And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:

6 Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.

7 And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.

8 If she pleaseb not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.

9 And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.

11 And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

12 He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.

13 And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee.

14 But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die.

15 And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.

16 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

17 And he that cursethc his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.

18 And if men strive together, and one smite anotherd with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keepeth his bed:

19 If he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit: only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.

20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.e

21 Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.

23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,

24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

26 And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.

27 And if he smite out his manservant's tooth, or his maidservant's tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake.

28 If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.

29 But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.

30 If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid upon him.

31 Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter, according to this judgment shall it be done unto him.

32 If the ox shall push a manservant or a maidservant; he shall give unto their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.

33 And if a man shall open a pit, or if a man shall dig a pit, and not cover it, and an ox or an ass fall therein;

34 The owner of the pit shall make it good, and give money unto the owner of them; and the dead beast shall be his.

35 And if one man's ox hurt another's, that he die; then they shall sell the live ox, and divide the money of it; and the dead ox also they shall divide.

36 Or if it be known that the ox hath used to push in time past, and his owner hath not kept him in; he shall surely pay ox for ox; and the dead shall be his own.