Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished - i:e., if the slave should continue in life for some time after the chastisement, it would be sufficiently evident that the master had no intention to kill his slave; and if the slave did afterward die, the loss of his services would be punishment enough to his master.
For he is his money. Not that God accounted a slave the mere property of his master-a part of his goods and chattels-but as the master had purchased him with a considerable sum of money, and would, according to the custom and notions of antiquity, estimate him at a certain rate of pecuniary value, it could not be supposed that he had harboured any design upon the life of his slave. The words, "for he is his money," were evidently added as a reason for this conclusion; and they implied, that in a nation which recognized slavery as an existing institution, no owner of slaves would purposely deprive himself of a servant, who, independently of his services to him, would at any time bring a good price in the market.
These are the words which (Colenso declares produced a strong revulsion of feeling in the mind of an intelligent native of Africa on reading them for the first time, and to which the professor, from sympathy with that feeling, has assigned a prominent place among the proofs that the Pentateuch is unhistorical. For they express, as he alleges, 'the revolting notion that the great and blessed God, the Father of all mankind, would speak of a servant or maid as mere "money," and allow a horrible crime to go unpunished, because the victim of his brutal usage had survived a few hours.'
It is superfluous to say that this is a total perversion of the act in question. It supposes a master chastising his servant with the rod-not, it will be observed, inflicting blows upon him with any instrument or weapon which, in the moment of passionate displeasure, might be within his reach-that would have been illegal; but with the ordinary stick employed to bastinado indolent or disorderly servants. It enacted, that if the servant should expire on the spot while undergoing the correction, his death in these circumstances should be regarded as murder, without further proof; and that the judge should, in retributive justice, avenge it by pronouncing on the offender a sentence of death. Should the servant, however, survive for a few days, it was provided that a judicial inquest should be made, in order to ascertain the real cause of his death-whether it had been the result of malice or accident-whether it might not have proceeded from some natural infirmity in the constitution of the deceased. If it were proved that he had expired under the blows of his master, then it was a case of murder, which came under the cognizance of the criminal law. But if it were traceable to any other cause, or if the matter were involved in uncertainty, the master should have the benefit of the doubt; because it was clearly against his interest to destroy his own property. Such is the reasonable and proper interpretation of this passage.
It is impossible to read it without perceiving that the enactment was a merciful provision for mitigating the evils of slavery-a provision utterly unknown in any other code of laws before the advent of our Lord. It shows in a very striking light the superior wisdom and humanity of the Jewish law. For while the Greek and Roman slave had no personal rights, but was under the absolute power of his master, to brand, torture, or kill him at pleasure, the Hebrew servant was fully protected by the law, and his owner was responsible for any excess of severity in the treatment-for any injury he might do to the life or person of his dependents (see the notes at Exodus 21:26-27).