Why-did-we-ever-leave-Egypt counter:2️⃣

Moses mountain climbing meter:4️⃣

Controversial scriptures incoming in 3…2…1

There are plenty of people on the internet who read laws like Exodus 21:1-11 and say, “See! The Judeo-Christian God is a monster who advocates slavery! He lets men buy women for sex and they have no rights!” I understand their anger. But a couple bits of information are very helpful:

1. OT slavery laws mainly deal with buying a person’s labor for a set period of time; not owning them body and soul in perpetuity. In Colonial America it was called being an “indentured servant” and many people paid off their passage from Europe with several years of labor to the investor.
2. The ancient world was a particularly harsh place for women. They generally did not own property (they were property). They required the protection of a man in the form of a father, husband, son, brother, or master. Did those men sometimes exploit them? Yes. But without that protection they were certain to be exploited. This says more about the wickedness of men than the cultural system itself. If the men were good, the women were protected- even in that system.
3. God encounters people within their flawed cultures. He has to. There is no such thing as perfect culture or somehow encountering God in a vacuum. If God is going to reveal Himself at all, He must do so within the context in which humans find themselves. In the OT, He knows He’s revealing Himself to a pre-scientific people who don’t know what germs are, how blood cells are made, or that the stars are are superheated balls of ionized gas. He has to start with what is- even if that’s a group of people who think a woman is worth less than a man.

I won’t do this for every regulation, but let me offer a new lens through which to consider a couple of these laws…

“Now if a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do.” Exodus‬ ‭21‬:‭7‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

Men are selling their daughters. That’s really hard for me to not go completely ballistic about. Couldn’t God have just said, “Thou shalt never sell thy daughter but shall treat her with kindness?” I suppose so. But what happens when a man is destitute and can’t feed his daughter? There are no food stamps. No welfare. Is she to starve and freeze to death for lack of shelter and clothing? He can sell her labor. She can be a domestic servant- cooking, cleaning, probably food and textile production. She at least gets to eat and have a roof over her head and clothes on her back. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but, y’all, that’s what single working females still do. We sell our labor just like a man does.) She doesn’t go out free after 7 years because then what would she do? She can’t just pick up the classifieds and fill out a bunch of job applications. She cannot advocate for herself. Setting her free is like turning her loose on the streets with nothing. This law is for her protection and stability- odd though it may seem to us.

“If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He does not have authority to sell her to a foreign people, because of his unfairness to her. And if he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. But if he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go free for nothing, without payment of money.”
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭21‬:‭8‬-‭11‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

Every single command here is to give her security. He is not allowed to treat her like a piece of property. He cannot sell her to foreigners who do not have Yahweh’s laws and where she might literally be burned alive as a sacrifice or forced into prostitution. But, he can allow her to be redeemed (ransomed by another man who will pay for her labor). If she is designated for his son, he has to treat her like a daughter. That means, he can’t take advantage of her sexually himself. He has to respect her as his son’s wife. If he takes another wife (which, by the way, the Lord isn’t suggesting or even allowing- this law just says, IF he does) he may not toss her out. He must continue to maintain her- including her conjugal rights which may result in a son who will see to her future welfare. And if the scoundrel doesn’t, she can be freely released to try to find a better situation. Without release she’s destitute but still treated like his property. With release, at least she’s destitute with the freedom to seek another situation.

I’m no expert on ancient middle eastern cultures, but it’s my understanding from those who are, that these kinds of laws protecting the (admittedly minimal) rights of women were unheard of in the ancient world.

Is it weird to our postmodern society? Sure. But God has to start within the culture as it is before He can change it.

We get laws on homicide vs manslaughter, kidnapping, property rights, aberrant sexual behavior, witchcraft, oppression of the poor and lending laws.

Here’s one of the most famous ones:

“eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭21‬:‭24‬-‭25‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

This passage has often been (mis)quoted with the derogatory spin “an eye for eye and tooth for tooth only makes the world blind and toothless.” That seems quite clever but it reveals ignorance of what this law is actually about.

This law is not demanding equal retribution. It is limiting it. In the ancient near east, if someone blinded your eye, or knocked your tooth out, in some cultures you’d be within your “rights” to kill him, burn his house, and take his wife and kids and everything he owned. (I mean, think back to the Dinah story. Shechem seduces and probably rapes Dinah. In revenge, Simeon and Levi go WAY beyond the pale and kill every male in town, plunder the city and take all the women for themselves. This law would’ve prohibited that kind of thing.) Yahweh says, “No. If someone knocks out your tooth, you can only knock out one of his teeth in return.” Which hardly seems worth the trouble.

This text is limiting revenge not requiring it.

That kind of rethinking kinda makes me feel like I’m standing on my head. 🙃

We’ll have to do more of that before it’s all over.