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This week we cover Exodus 21:3 – 21:13. The discussion includes further analysis of the Eved Ivri (Hebrew “Slave”) and Amah (“Female Maidserveant”). Towards the end of class we begin discussing the theme regarding: What to do with murderers?
Here are the relevant verses from the beginning of Exodus Ch. 21:
1“These are the laws you are to set before them:
2“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
5“But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ 6then his master must take him before the judges.a He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.
7“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,b he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
12“Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. 13However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate.
