The Book of the Covenant

The Ten Commandments make up the core of the Mosaic law and provide principles that underlie the rest of the legal code given to Israel. Today’s passage begins another part of the legal code that was fundamental for governing life in the old covenant community. We are talking about the Book of the Covenant, which consists of Exodus 21–23. Old Testament scholars have recognized the centrality of these laws both in further specifying how life in Canaan was to be lived and in providing examples of legal reasoning that later judges could use to apply God’s commandments to cases not explicitly covered in the Mosaic law.

Slavery is the first subject addressed in the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 21:1–6), and before we get into the specific laws, we should first note that laws about slavery are laws about people. The placement of laws about people at the start of the Book of the Covenant tells us something about the importance of human beings. Our Lord puts laws about people first in the extensive legal code because human beings are more valuable than the other creatures He has made (see also Gen. 1:26–27).

Laws about slavery can be difficult to understand because slavery is often removed from our experience and because we are tempted to read practices from slavery as practiced in other cultures back into the Old Testament. Yet, though slavery has occurred in many times and places, the form it has taken has varied. The practice of slavery in some cultures has included kidnapping, little to no restrictions on reselling slaves, and almost no way for slaves to obtain their freedom. Much of this was untrue of slavery in Israel, and in fact, kidnapping was a capital crime (Ex. 21:16).

There were various kinds of slavery in ancient Israel, and today’s passage deals with slaves who were members of the nation. Actually, “slave” is probably not the best English term to use here. The situation in view is that of an impoverished Israelite who voluntarily entered into servitude to another Israelite to pay off a debt (see Lev. 25:39–46). In these cases, the term of service was limited with mandatory release in “the year of the jubilee,” and if the Israelite married another Israelite during that time, he would take his wife, and by implication his children by her, with him into freedom (Ex. 21:1–3). Thus, the master was not allowed to break up Israelite families but had to respect the household structure of the man who was serving him.