What to Make of the Law about Selling a Daughter into Slavery in Exodus 21

This article was first published in French at TPSG. It is part of a series on thorny questions in the Bible and how to understand them. You’ll find essential principles for Biblical interpretation in the first article in the series.

Slavery is one of the thorniest subjects a Westerner can wrestle with when studying the Scriptures. Add to it the idea of a man selling his own daughter into slavery and you have a veritable bramble bush! Yet, as we discovered in our previous article on slavery in the Ancient Near East, when we consider this difficult topic in light of its cultural context, we discover that a good God instituted laws for the good of his people in general and women in particular. 

Exodus 21:7-11

7 “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8 If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 10 If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.

 

On first reading, this sounds appalling. No argument there. But it’s because we live in a very different era of history. We need to try as much as possible to temporarily set aside our cultural frameworks and look at the text with fresh eyes. Here are a few principles to keep in mind: 

 

Daughters and Slavery in the Old Testament

1.         The intention of this law is to protect such a daughter. Were her father to sell her as a slave to do mere servile duties without provision for marriage, he would be depriving her of her basic rights to marriage and childbearing. 

 

2.         The word Hebrew word employed here refers to a female servant who would eventually become a concubine or wife. The transaction includes the amount for her service as well as the bride price. The arrangement recognized her honour as an Israelite woman, one who could be a wife, even if she joins the household in service. The marriage is not automatic, but her treatment is safeguarded come what may. 

 

3.         While we 21st-century women may cringe at the thought of our parents selecting a spouse for us, arranged marriages are the norm in this time period. So, there is not much difference between such a contractual arrangement, broadly speaking, and that of a desperately poor family selecting a rich husband for their daughter. The intention behind the exchange is to seek a better life for their daughter. It may very well have been a matter of life and death in an agrarian society in which famines, drought, and wars render survival precarious.

 

4.         This is a choice by a poor family to ensure the survival of their daughter and to secure her a spouse. In v. 10 where it speaks of the manner in which her new husband is to provide for her, it says food in French. But in Hebrew, it literally says meat. This strongly implies that she is being sold to a wealthy family who can provide her with a diet that included meat. 

 

5.         We are to understand that he takes her for himself as a wife or gives her to his son. Either way, he must accord to her the domestic rights of a wife or daughter-in-law. This is in stark contrast to what we know was all too common in the American South during the era of slavery: women whose masters use them for their own pleasure had NO rights whatsoever. The Mosaic law in this respect, far from treating women as objects, grants them dignity, respect, and protection.

 

6.         The conditions for her being redeemed are different from those for a male slave because it behooves her to remain in the household, provided that her rights are respected. The reason she is not to go free (like the male slave) is because a woman without protection at that time period is very vulnerable and needs to be part of a household unit. If she is relieved of her duty (if for any reason she does not please her new family), her parents can redeem her. But if her new family does not keep their end of the bargain, if they do not care for her as required by the law, her parents could receive her back without having to return the sum they received in the original exchange. They do not need to redeem her. Instead, she receives complete freedom. This law, far from degrading a woman, protects the daughter of a poor Israelite from being passed from one wealthy family to the next like some piece of meat. 

Conclusion

These sorts of laws seem so foreign and strange to us. And we need to accept when we study the Bible that, while broadly applicable in all time periods and among all peoples, it is originally intended to serve a nation in a specific context. May the Lord grant us wisdom to understand and apply these truths to our own realities. (1)

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(1) The following commentaries proved invaluable in my preparation of this material:
Exodus (Believers Church Bible Commentary | BCBC) by Waldemar Janzen

A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Exodus by Johann Peter Lange; Philip Schaff; Charles M. Mead