Exodus 21a – Slave Laws in the Ancient Near East
Exodus 21:1-11 deals with slave laws (with a bit of divorce thrown in). These laws were not given in a vacuum; they were given in the context of the redemption of Israel, and they were given in the cultural context of the Ancient Near East (ANE). When we compare several other law codes to the Covenant Code found in Exodus, not surprisingly we find some strong similarities between them.
Before we examine some of these laws, I want to re-emphasize one major difference: Israel’s law code was given in the context of redemption. Hammurabi’s Code, the Hittite Laws, Lipit-Ishtar… all of these were primarily law without a surrounding narrative context. Some had a brief prologue, but none sat in a larger narrative story of God redeeming His people. They were laws given by a king in hopes of pleasing his god(s); Exodus 21-23 is law given directly by God. This sets the Israelites Law apart from any others. We are to understand it not just as a civil code, but as religious, spiritual, moral, familial – as a code that guides every aspect of life in a covenant with God.
That being said, I’d like to focus on the Code of Hammurabi, which is probably most familiar to most people. Hammurabi was the 6th of 11 kings in the Old Babylonian Dynasty, ruling from 1728-1686 BC (Theophile J. Meek in Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament [ANET], pg. 163). This means that Hammurabi’s Code antedates the Exodus Covenant Code (assuming the Exodus took place around 1446 BC).
Here are a few highlights from Hammurabi’s Code, with a few of my comments on how it relates to Exodus 21. (Translations are taken from Meek in location in ANET).
H117: If an obligation came due against a seignior* and he sold (the services of) his wife, his son, or his daughter, or he has been bound over to service, they shall work (in) the house of their purchaser or oblige for three years, with their freedom reestablished in the fourth year.
*Seignior is Meek’s translation of the general word for “man,” which in this context typically indicates a free man possibly of a higher class (ANET, pg. 166).
In Exodus, a slave (indentured servant) will work for six years and have opportunity to be released upon his seventh year (21:2). In the Code of Hammurabi, the slave works for three years, with release upon the fourth year. Notice also how Hammurabi sets up the scenario: “If an obligation came due against a seignior…” This indicates a possible (or probable) scenario in which a man might have cause to sell himself into service, or sell a family member. A financial hardship comes upon the man’s family, obligating him to pay it off with indentured service. This is a far cry from slavery in American history.
H119: If an obligation came due against a seignior and he has accordingly sold (the services of) his female slave who bore him children, the owner of the female slave may repay the money which the merchant paid out and thus redeem his female slave.
Similar to Exodus 21:8-11, we now move to laws concerning female slaves. A female slave might be “redeemed” by her owner who previously sold her into service to another person. When a man was forced to sell a family member, it was not seen as a permanent transaction, but rather a type of business contract where the family member would work for another family for a period of time until the debt was paid off. At that point the person would be released, or as here, she could be purchased back.
H146: When a seignior married a hierodule* and she gave a female slave to her husband and she has then borne children, if later that female slave has claimed equality with her mistress because she bore children, her mistress may not sell her; she may mark her with the slave-mark and count her among the slaves.
*Hierodule is Meek’s translation of a word, the exact meaning of which is unknown, but likely indicates some kind of religious functionary (ANET, pg. 168).
This law has double interest to our text. First, just like in Exodus 21:9, if a female slave marries into the family, her rights within the family are elevated. Here, however, we see that the female slave is a second “wife,” given to the seignior as a wedding present (quite the strange present!). Again, once she bears children, her rights are elevated, though she does not quite become equal in status to the first wife.
The second area of interest is in the last phrase: “she may mark her with the slave-mark and count her among the slaves.” It is not certain what it means to “mark her with the slave-mark,” but it is intriguingly similar to the ear-piercing ceremony that we see in Exodus 21:5-6 for the slave that desires permanent service within the family.
H178: …after the father has gone to (his) fate, her brothers shall take her field and orchard and they shall give her food, oil and clothing proportionate to the value of her share and thus make her comfortable; if her brothers have not given her food, oil and clothing proportionate to the value of her share and so have not made her comfortable, she may give her field and orchard to any tenant that she pleases and her tenant shall support her…
This section of a law in Hammurabi’s Code has some interpretive significance for Exodus 21:10. The Exodus passage says that a husband/master in a marriage to a slave woman and a second wife is obligated to provide for that slave wife at a bare minimum provision of food, clothing and “marital rights” (ESV). There is quite a big debate over the proper translation and interpretation of onah, “marital rights.”
Almost exclusively, the traditional interpretation has been that onah means “conjugal rights,” or sex. A husband must fulfill his sexual duty to his wife and cannot neglect this area of responsibility, even if she is a second wife and used to be a slave.
However, passages like this in Hammurabi’s Code have caused some interpreters to wonder whether “marital/conjugal rights” is the best interpretive translation of onah. Here we see that if a woman’s father has passed, and he hasn’t designated in writing that she has full control over her dowry, then her brothers must either provide for her “food, oil and clothing” or else allow her to rent her dowry property out to whomever she pleases in order to sustain herself.
Notice that Hammurabi has the trio “food, oil and clothing,” which is similar to the trio in Exodus, “food, clothing and onah.” Might onah mean “oil,” which is probably akin to cosmetics or a scented oil for perfuming oneself? We also see a similar trio in another ANE law code, Lipit Isthar #27 (see also Hos 2:7 and Eccl 9:7-9).
However, this theory suffers from a lack of etymological justification, which means that the root word used in Hammurabi’s Code and the word in Exodus have no real linguistic relationship. This makes the translation “oils” of onah a lot less likely (see Propp, Exodus 19-40, 203).
But at the very least, we see that it was not uncommon for other cultures to understand that there was a bare minimum “standard of living” within a marriage for a woman, no matter what her social status or no matter how many other wives the husband had.
This is just a selection of several laws in the Code of Hammurabi that are similar to the Exodus slavery laws. There are other law codes in the ANE with similar laws as well (Eshnunna #31, 34, Hittite Code Tablet 1 #30-33, Lipit-Ishtar #25-26, Edict of Ammisaduqa #20-21, Middle Assyrian Law Code C + G #3).
These similar laws give us a sense of the ethics and civil rule in non-Israelite but culturally, geographically and temporally close cultures. Though Israelite law bore some semblance of the surrounding cultures (which should not be a surprise, given God’s common grace), we will see that some of the Israelite laws were quite different from their neighboring legal codes.
Stay tuned for more!
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