Exodus 21 · a question people ask
Why does the law give rules for servants instead of forbidding servanthood?
The chapter doesn't say why. It says what the rules were. A Hebrew servant served six years and went free in the seventh "without paying anything" (21:2). "Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him" was to be put to death (21:16). If a servant died under his master's rod, "the man shall surely be punished" (21:20), though if the servant "gets up after a day or two, he shall not be punished, for the servant is his property" (21:21). A master who destroyed a servant's eye or tooth had to let the servant go free (21:26-27). Later law says an Israelite who "has grown poor among you, and sells himself" is to serve "As a hired servant" (Leviticus 25:39-40), and it also lets Israel buy slaves "from the nations that are around you" (Leviticus 25:44): "they will be your property" (Leviticus 25:45), and "Of them you may take your slaves forever, but over your brothers the children of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness" (Leviticus 25:46). Christians agree that God "created man in his own image" (Genesis 1:27), and Paul tells masters, "give to your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven" (Colossians 4:1). They read the reason for these laws in more than one way.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Allowed because of hard hearts
Jesus said of divorce, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so" (Matthew 19:8). Those words are about divorce, not servants; Jesus doesn't apply them to the servant laws. Those who hold this view read the servant laws the same way: as limits the law set, like freedom for a destroyed eye or tooth (21:26-27), not a picture of what God made people for "from the beginning", when "God created man in his own image" (Genesis 1:27).
Matthew 19:7-8 · Genesis 1:27 · Exodus 21:26-27
Service with limits, for a people God set free
Those who hold this view read the Hebrew servant laws as God's terms for a kind of service the law itself bounded. The law names ways a person came to serve: one who "has grown poor among you, and sells himself" (Leviticus 25:39), or a thief who "has nothing" and "shall be sold for his theft" (22:3). The service ended in the seventh year (21:2), the one set free was not to be sent away empty (Deuteronomy 15:13), and the reason given is, "they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 25:42).
Leviticus 25:39-42 · Exodus 22:3 · Exodus 21:2 · Deuteronomy 15:13
The verses
““If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything.”
““Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”
““If a man strikes his servant or his maid with a rod, and he dies under his hand, the man shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if his servant gets up after a day or two, he shall not be punished, for the servant is his property.”
““If a man strikes his servant’s eye, or his maid’s eye, and destroys it, he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. If he strikes out his male servant’s tooth, or his female servant’s tooth, he shall let the servant go free for his tooth’s sake.”