Exodus 21:2

If thou buy an Hebrew servant,.... Who sells himself either through poverty, or rather is sold because of his theft, see Exodus 22:3 and so the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases it, "when ye shall buy

If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If thou buy an Hebrew servant.

If thou buy an Hebrew servant; of which practice see . This was allowed in two cases: 1. When a man for his crimes was condemned by the judges to be sold; of which see . 2. When a man pressed by great poverty sold himself or his children; of which see ,40. The seventh year is to be numbered, either, 1. From the last sabbatical year, or year of release, which came every seventh year; and the sense of the place is, not that he shall always serve six full years, but that he shall never serve longer, and that his service shall last only till that year comes. Or rather, 2. From the beginning of his service; for, 1. It were a very improper speech to say, he shall serve six years, of one who possibly entered into his service but a month before the year of release. 2. In the law of the sabbatical year there is no mention of the release of servants, as there is of other things, Leviticus 25 Deuteronomy 15; and in the year of jubilee, when servants are to be released, it is expressed so, as ,55.

Exodus 21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.Ver. 2. In the seventh year.] No longer might they serve, because they were God’ s servants; whose privilege, see in Isaiah 65:13-14 Christ’ s "freemen."

(2) If thou buy an Hebrew servant.—Ancient society was founded upon slavery. “The ultimate elements of the household,” says Aristotle, “are the master and his slave, the husband and his wife, the father and his children” (Pol. i. 2, § 1). In any consideration of the rights of persons, those of the slave class naturally presented themselves first of all, since they were the most liable to infraction. Slaves might be either natives or foreigners. A Hebrew could become a slave—(1) through crime (Exodus 22:3); (2) through indebtedness (Leviticus 25:39); (3) through his father’s right to sell him (Nehemiah 5:5). Foreign slaves might be either prisoners taken in war, or persons bought of their owners (Leviticus 25:45). The rights of Hebrew slaves are here specially considered. Six years shall he serve.—The Hebrew was not to be retained in slavery for a longer space than six years. If a jubilee year occurred before the end of the six years, then he regained his freedom earlier (Leviticus 25:39-41); but in no case could he be retained more than six years in the slave condition, except by his own consent, formally given (Exodus 21:5). This law was an enormous advance upon anything previously known in the slave legislation of the most civilised country, and stamps the Mosaic code at once as sympathising with the slave, and bent on ameliorating his lot. It has been thought strange by some that slavery was not now abrogated; but even Christianity, fifteen hundred years later, did not venture on so complete a social revolution.

Verse 2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant] Calmet enumerates six different ways in which a Hebrew might lose his liberty: 1. In extreme poverty they might sell their liberty. Leviticus 25:39: If thy brother be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, c. 2. A father might sell his children. If a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant see Exodus 21:7. 3. Insolvent debtors became the slaves of their creditors. My husband is dead - and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen, 2Kg 4:1. 4. A thief, if he had not money to pay the fine laid on him by the law, was to be sold for his profit whom he had robbed. If he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft; Exodus 22:3-4. 5. A Hebrew was liable to be taken prisoner in war, and so sold for a slave. 6. A Hebrew slave who had been ransomed from a Gentile by a Hebrew might be sold by him who ransomed him, to one of his own nation. Six years he shall serve] It was an excellent provision in these laws, that no man could finally injure himself by any rash, foolish, or precipitate act. No man could make himself a servant or slave for more than seven years; and if he mortgaged the family inheritance, it must return to the family at the jubilee, which returned every fiftieth year. It is supposed that the term six years is to be understood as referring to the sabbatical years; for let a man come into servitude at whatever part of the interim between two sabbatical years, he could not be detained in bondage beyond a sabbatical year; so that if he fell into bondage the third year after a sabbatical year, he had but three years to serve; if the fifth, but one. See Clarke on Exodus 23:11, &c. Others suppose that this privilege belonged only to the year of jubilee, beyond which no man could be detained in bondage, though he had been sold only one year before.

2–11. The law of slavery. Cf. Deuteronomy 15:12-18, Leviticus 25:39-55 (H and P), where there are other regulations on the same subject, in some respects differing remarkably from those of Ex., and springing evidently out of a different and more advanced stage of society. The present law deals only with Hebrew slaves: the case of foreign slaves is dealt with in Leviticus 25:44-46. The conditions of society in ancient Israel were such that slavery could not be abolished: but it was regulated, and restrictions were imposed on the power of a master over his slave (see also vv. 20 f., 26 f.). An Israelite might fall into slavery from different causes: (1) he might be sold by his parents, a case of particularly common occurrence with daughters; (2) he might be sold for theft (Exodus 22:3) or insolvency (2 Kings 4:1, Amos 2:6); (3) he might be obliged by poverty to sell himself (Leviticus 25:39). Of course, also, he might be born a slave. The later legislation of Lev 25:39-46 sought to limit slavery to foreigners.

A Hebrew might be sold as a bondman in consequence either of debt Leviticus 25:39 or of the commission of theft Exodus 22:3. But his servitude could not be enforced for more than six full years. Compare the marginal references.

2. Buy a Hebrew servant — In the time of Moses slavery existed among all the nations, and commonly in most oppressive forms. The Israelites themselves had just escaped a bondage of serfdom in Egypt.