A Rule for Slave Owners

[Paidion]

And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. (Exodus 20:22 ESV)

Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. (Exodus 21:1 ESV)

When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money. (Exodus 21:20,21 ESV)

[steve]

I'll be keeping that in mind. I've been thinking of using my tax returns to pick-up a couple of new slaves.

[mattrose]

I thought I would quote from Douglas Stuart's commentary on the Exodus 21:20-21 passage

"This law does not doubt the legitimate right of an employer to punish a servant physically (in the footnote, he reminds us that corporal punishment was basically universally accepted until the latter part of the twentieth century). But it addresses the question of how far any physical punishment could go by using the example of a 'slave' who was beaten, presumably for some sort of serious wrongdoing (e.g., stealing from his employer). What the employer could not do was beat the servant so severely as to cause either permanent injury or death, for both such eventualities are clearly forbidden by this law. If the servant died, it was murder. If the servant lost just a day or two of work, however, the owner was not obligated to do what the previous law required, that is, compensate the servant for time lost from work or for medical costs because 'he is his money'. There was, in other words, no point in asking the servant's boss to compensate himself for the loss of his own servant's labor. If the servant had been too severely punished, however, so that the servant took more than a couple of days to recover completely or was permanently injured, some combination of the terms of the prior law (18-19) and the law in 26-27 would be used to make sure the employer did not get off without penalty."

It seems to me that these are reasonable comments.

I believe that God was entering into an existing reality (people had slaves and utilized corporal punishment) and commanding Israel to take steps in the right direction (providing punishment for over-use/abuse of corporal punishment). It would not have been feasible (for the economics of the day) to simply eradicate the 'servant' component of society, nor would it have been appropriate to ban all discipline of employees failing to meet expectations. The emphasis on the end of the verse isn't on one human being owning another, but on the fact that it wouldn't make sense to compensate yourself for the loss of his own servant's labor.

He was not necessarily endorsing the idea that one human could own another,

[steve7150]

I'll be keeping that in mind. I've been thinking of using my tax returns to pick-up a couple of new slaves.











I think you meant tax refunds. Good news is that the tax filing date has been extended to April 18th! Hallelujah! Plus slaves are on sale now in Saudi Arabia.

[steve]

Yes, I did mean tax returns. You know, for years I never made enough to have to pay any taxes and did not receive refunds. Nowadays, I have to do those things, and have not yet learned the vocabulary!

[Paidion]

Hi Matt,
I agree with most of Douglas Stuart's commentary, but I think he is mistaken in his understanding that the master was not obligated if the servant "lost just a day or two of work." However, I admit that I was surprised in looking up the Hebrew word " 'amad," that it can mean sometimes mean "to stand still, stop (moving or doing)" and probably Stuart got his view from this meaning. But the word can also mean "to remain" or "to endure" hence the NKJV translation "if he remains alive a day or two."

But which is correct? I checked the Septuagint, that the New Testament writers used (or else they used the form of Hebrew that the Septuagint translators used). The Septuagint uses the Greek word "διαβιοση". Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton translated this word as "continue to live" (though he probably meant "continues to live" to agree with the singular subject.) Part of this word is "βιος", a word that means "life" in Greek ("Biology" comes from this word.)