Scripture Daily

Context No. 920 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 21:1-6: in context

1“Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them: 2“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything. 3If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he is married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. 5But if the servant shall plainly say, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go out free;’ 6then his master shall bring him to God, and shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

Right after the Ten Commandments, God begins giving the everyday case laws, and the very first one is about a Hebrew servant. A man sold into service works six years and goes free in the seventh, owing nothing. If he came in single, he leaves single; if his master gave him a wife and she bore children, they stay with the master and he goes out alone. But if the servant loves his master and his family and does not want to go free, the master brings him to the doorpost and bores his ear through with an awl, and he serves for life.

The law is aimed at limiting bondage: no Hebrew is to be a permanent slave by default; freedom comes automatically in the seventh year. But then it makes room for a strange and beautiful exception, the servant who chooses to stay out of love. This is not the misery of forced slavery but the freely chosen bond of someone who would rather belong to this household than be independent. He says, plainly, I love my master, I will not go out free, and his ear, the organ of hearing and obedience, is marked at the door of the house forever. The New Testament writers reach for exactly this picture. Paul repeatedly calls himself a bondservant of Christ, one who was set free and chose to belong to his master anyway, out of love. There is a freedom that consists not in having no master but in loving the right one so much you would not leave.

Do I serve God like a hired hand counting down to my own freedom, or like the servant at the doorpost who would choose to belong to him even if released?

Sources