Exodus 21:1-11
The Law Concerning Servants (Deuteronomy 15:12–18)
1 “Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them: 2 If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. 3 If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. 5 But if the servant 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 the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.
7 “And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has betrothed her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt deceitfully with her. 9 And if he has betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. 10 If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights. 11 And if he does not do these three for her, then she shall go out free, without paying money.
In the time of Moses, servants were bought and sold, but if a servant was one of God’s people, they could only serve for seven years before being set free (Deuteronomy 15:15). This freed man would owe his master nothing and if he was paid for as an indentured servant who was already married, then he and she would be free together. If, however, his master gave him a wife, she and the children would stay behind together. The only way the man could keep that wife and children was to stay as a willing bond slave as demonstrated before a judge and having his earlobe pierced with an awl as done for an earring in modern times. He would then be a permanent servant and not go free again unless he had first sold himself due to poverty, in which case he would be set free in the Jubilee which occurred every seven times seven years (Leviticus 25:39-40, 54-55) with his family. If a man sold his daughter into such servitude, she would not be let go free as a man would; she would be married to her master or redeemed, not sold to foreigners, and either married off to his son and treated as his daughter or set free if he could not treat her well according to these options. People were enslaved as servants more than what we consider slaves in our sordid times, yet their freedom was restricted even if their circumstances were less severe. The one thing we see as those set free is the parallel to our bondage to sin and being set free in Jesus Christ after Je paid our price. We are free from enslavement to sin (Romans 6:17-18, 20-21, 22-23) yet remain servants of the Lord under the best circumstances possible for ones deserving nothing. The grace of our benevolent Master has no real comparison to the treatment of indentured servants, for we are willing to serve the One who died and rose again to set us free from our horrible bondage earned as our debt for sin that has been paid by Him. This is our eternal year of Jubilee!
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