Thursday, July 9, 2020

Exodus 21:1-11 comments: Hebrew slavery




Exodus 21:1 ¶  Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. 2  If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. 3  If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4  If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. 5  And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: 6  Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever. 7  And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. 8  If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. 9  And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. 10  If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. 11  And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.
Now comes the civil law that God wants to give the Hebrews to set them apart from other cultures in the world and other nations. This will give us a clue of some of the customs the Hebrews were part of in Egypt, which God is modifying here. He starts with rules for purchasing a servant of his own people. While this would not seem to be of much relevance to us there are some important things to note. Compare the mercy and moderation called for servants to the treatment the Egyptians dealt out to the Hebrews.
Having servants or slaves was a normal part of these cultures and the world of that time. In fact, until recently, with the advent of electric appliances and gas-powered equipment for farms having slaves or servants or children to do the manual work alongside farm animals was essential for survival on anything but a subsistence scale.
God did not create culture and civilization. He permitted man to do it and He modified it. He molded and tempered societies. His purpose is His ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself, not creating something for historians to write about. As an example, Christianity’s focus moved to Europe, leavened and mixed in with pagan practices to make it more sellable. God did not call for this but permitted this corrupted Christianity but out of that milieu He drew certain people, some called heretics or nonconformists and other names like Paulicians, Henricians, Bogomils, Albigensians, Waldensians and others given their names by their enemies, each group not being perfect in doctrine or understanding but drawing closer to Him moving away from the paganism of established political churches and dying cruel martyrs’ deaths.
Constantly, signs of God’s molding and tempering of the Christian faith moved into the Reformation and beyond. Each generation saw people striving for a purer faith and one more lined up with the Bible. It is a process, a part of reconciling man to Himself but using man’s free will and man’s understanding here a little, there a little to move mankind closer to God.
Back to the Hebrews meant to be a theocracy with God as king, God tempers and constrains the customs of the Ancient Near East to make a people unique to Him. He did not simply wipe the board clean and start over but worked within the framework of culture that existed. He works like that when we are saved individually. We typically don’t quit our jobs, leave our families, and forget all that we’ve learned in the world to start over like a newborn baby with no memory. God molds and shapes us through His Bible, preaching, prayer, and our experience to make us the person He wants us to be which will never be completed on this earth and in this life.
Verse 10 gives us a hint about God’s continuing value of the children of Israel, even today. God the Father calls Israel His wife. For instance, in the book of Hosea Israel is likened to an unfaithful wife…

Hosea 1:2  The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.

…and Israel is also God’s firstborn…

Exodus 4:22  And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn:

…and the Church is Christ’s bride….

2Corinthians 11:2  For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

John 3:29  He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled.

Revelation 19:9  And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.

Revelation 21:2  And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…9  And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.

Revelation 22:17  And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

…and rules are given about a first wife and then the second wife’s children…

Deuteronomy 21: 15 ¶  If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: 16  Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: 17  But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
These verses help explain the doctrine that God has a unique place for Israel in the end times. He is not done with the people He created out of the heathen world of the second millennium BC. There are promises of their supernatural redemption all through the Old Testament.
Jeremiah 31:31  Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32  Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:33  But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jeremiah 32:40  And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.

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