The Covenant Reaches the Doorway, the Sickbed, and the Open Pit

The Hebrew heading is mishpatim, “judgments”, the name Jewish readers still give to chapters 21–24. Rashi pictured “set before them” as a table laid ready to eat from. Scholars call the whole block from 20:22 to 23:33 the Book of the Covenant, after the phrase in 24:7.

“For nothing” is chinnam, gratis, the word Laban used when he told Jacob he should not serve “for nought” (Genesis 29:15). Deuteronomy 15:12–14 revisits this law and adds that the released servant must not be sent away empty but furnished from flock, floor and winepress.

“By himself” translates begappo, a rare word found only here and in the next verse; it seems to mean with his body alone, bringing nothing and no one. The rule keeps a household together that already existed before the service began.

The wife given by the master stays because she and her children were never under the six year term. An inference often drawn is that she was not a Hebrew, since Deuteronomy 15:12 extends the seventh year release to a Hebrew woman as well.

“Plainly say” doubles the Hebrew verb, saying he shall say, marking a formal declaration rather than a passing remark. The order of the three he loves is worth reading slowly: master, then wife, then children.

The word for “judges” is ha-elohim, which can mean God; the King James reads a court, others a bringing before God at the sanctuary. The doorpost recalls the blood of 12:7. Rabbinic reading, citing Leviticus 25:40, held that “for ever” ran only until the Jubilee.

Selling a daughter was what debt did to poor families. Nehemiah 5:5 records Judeans protesting that “some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already” to pay their creditors. The law begins from that reality and regulates it.

The Hebrew text is written “who hath not betrothed her”, lo with an aleph, while the reading tradition says lo with a vav, “to himself”; the King James follows the latter. “Dealt deceitfully” is bagad, the verb Malachi 2:14 uses of husbands who break faith with the wife of their youth.

Designated for the son, she gains the standing of a daughter of the house, in effect a daughter-in-law with the rights of a freeborn girl. The purchase does not stay a purchase once it becomes a marriage.

The third item, onah, occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament. The traditional reading is conjugal rights, the sense the King James gives with “duty of marriage”; some modern scholars suggest oil or lodging instead. Either way the first wife’s provision may not shrink when a second arrives.

“Without money” means she owes no redemption price. The rabbis built part of the Jewish marriage contract, the ketubah, on these three obligations of food, clothing and marital rights, reading them as owed by every husband.

The Hebrew mot yumat, “dying he shall die”, appears here and again in verses 15, 16 and 17: four capital cases in six verses. The formula marks where the collection turns from household arrangements to crimes against life.

An accident is phrased as providence: “God deliver him into his hand”. Deuteronomy 19:5 gives the classic example of an axe head flying off its handle in the woods. The promised place becomes six cities of refuge in Numbers 35.

“Presumptuously” is from zid, to boil or seethe, the heat of insolence. The rule was applied in Solomon’s reign: Joab fled to the tabernacle and caught hold of the horns of the altar, and was struck down there (1 Kings 2:28–34).

A blow to a parent is capital even when no one dies, while verses 18–19 treat a blow to a neighbour as a matter of damages. Placed between murder and kidnapping, the offence is ranked with the gravest crimes on the list.

Joseph’s brothers did exactly this, and Joseph later tells Pharaoh’s butler, “I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews” (Genesis 40:15), with the verb ganav. Deuteronomy 24:7 repeats the law, and 1 Timothy 1:10 lists “menstealers” among the lawless.

“Curseth” is qalal, whose root sense is to make light of. It is the direct opposite of the kabbed, to make heavy, of the command to honour father and mother in 20:12. Leviticus 20:9 repeats the penalty, and Jesus quotes this verse in Mark 7:10.

The word for “fist”, egroph, appears only here and in Isaiah 58:4, where fasting ends in smiting “with the fist of wickedness”. A stone and a fist are ordinary weapons of a quarrel, not tools brought to kill.

“Loss of his time” is literally his sitting, the days he lies idle. “Thoroughly healed” doubles the verb for healing, so the striker pays the physician’s fees as well. The Talmud cited this verse as permission for physicians to practise at all.

The rod is the shebet of household discipline, not a weapon. “Surely punished” is literally “avenged, he shall be avenged”, the language of blood vengeance; some rabbinic interpreters read it as a capital sentence, others as a lesser penalty.

“Continue” is literally “stand”, survive on his feet for a day or two. A rabbinic line of reading took the delay, with a rod rather than a sword, as evidence that the master did not intend to kill. That is an interpretation; the verse itself gives only the reason about money.

The word behind “as the judges determine”, pelilim, is rare and suggests assessment or arbitration. The Greek translation of the third century BC read the verse as distinguishing a foetus not yet formed from one fully formed, an early interpretation of a line still disputed.

The word for “mischief” is ason, serious harm. Its only other uses are in Genesis 42–44, where Jacob fears that “mischief befall” Benjamin on the road to Egypt. Life for life is nephesh tachat nephesh, soul in place of soul.

Leviticus 24:19–20 and Deuteronomy 19:21 repeat this formula. By the time of the Talmud (Bava Kamma 84a) the rabbis read it as a rule of monetary compensation equal to the injury, arguing that literal maiming could never be exact.

“Stripe” is chabburah, a weal or bruise, the same word as Isaiah 53:5, “with his stripes we are healed”. The list descends from life to eye to the lightest mark a blow leaves on skin, and every level is given a measure.

The Laws of Hammurabi (199) pay a slave’s owner half the slave’s value for a destroyed eye. Here the compensation goes to the slave, and it is freedom. The master who damages the body loses the person entirely.

The tooth is the smallest permanent injury in the list of verse 24, set beside the eye, the gravest. The pairing covers the range: any lasting damage the master inflicts sets the servant free, whether manservant or maidservant.

The ox is stoned like a murderer, which applies the principle of Genesis 9:5: “at the hand of every beast will I require it.” Forbidding its flesh means the owner cannot recover the carcass as meat.

“Testified” is a formal term: the owner has been legally warned. The Laws of Eshnunna (54) and of Hammurabi (251) contain the same case of a known goring ox, but punish the owner with a payment of silver, not with his life.

The ransom is a kopher, the word used for the half shekel census money in 30:12, “a ransom for his soul”. Numbers 35:31 forbids a ransom for a murderer, so the allowance here marks the owner’s guilt as negligence, not intent.

Hammurabi’s law (230) put the son of a builder to death if a collapsed house killed the owner’s son. This verse rules that kind of vicarious punishment out: if a child is gored, the judgment falls on the owner himself, not on his own children.

Thirty shekels is the price Zechariah’s shepherd is valued at (Zechariah 11:12–13), and the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas in Matthew 26:15. The ox still dies, whatever the status of the one it killed.

Two cases are named: uncovering an old pit or digging a new one. These are cisterns cut into rock to hold rainwater, the same kind of bor Joseph was thrown into, empty and dry (Genesis 37:24).

“Make it good” is shallem, from the same root as shalom: to make whole again. The pit owner pays the full value and takes the carcass, so the loss lands where the hazard was made.

The Laws of Eshnunna (53), older than Moses, give almost the same ruling: the live ox is sold, both owners divide the price, and they divide the dead ox too. Neither owner was at fault, so the loss is shared evenly.

This time the owner was on notice, so the shared loss of verse 35 no longer applies. He pays a whole live ox and keeps the dead one, the carcass being all that is left to him of the exchange.