Seder 60: Exodus 21-22---Applying the Decalogue in Ancient Context

 Exodus 21-23 give a series of examples that apply the principles of the Ten Commandment in ancient Israel's ancient Near Eastern context.  Some of the examples (Exod 21:1-22:17) are stated in the form "If ..., then ......"  These are called casuistic laws.  Later examples have the form "You should do x" or "You should not do y."  These are called apodictic laws. 

I have found Exodus 21 to be one of the most challenging passages of scripture.  The examples come from a historical and cultural context very different from ours, and so there is much to learn about that context in order to make sense of some of the cases.  Each case can be the source of an interesting discussion.

Exodus 21 begins with some examples involving servitude.  The Israelites had recently left a condition of slavery, and God will forbid them from subjecting anyone else to what the Egyptians had done to them. 

 The revelation in Exodus prohibits what we would usually call "slavery."  Stealing is forbidden in general, including in particular kidnapping people and selling them---what we call "human trafficking" (Exod 21:16).  Moreover, everyone in a household was to be allowed to rest every Sabbath (Exod 23:12).  

But when people became completely impoverished, there needed to be a way for them to survive.  The way discussed in Exodus 21 is a kind of indentured servitude, where an impoverished person would work for someone else for a set period of time.  

In some cases a family might become so poor that they could not afford a dowry for their daughter.  In that case they might arrange a marriage for the daughter as both a servant (presumably for some set period of time) and a wife.  Exod 21:7-11 is meant to protect a young woman in that situation.  

One unusual case appears in Exod 21:22, where two men are fighting and one accidentally strikes a pregnant woman, apparently causing her to give birth prematurely.  There is a large literature on this verse, trying to determine what it might have to say about the issue of abortion.  

Commentaries on this section of scripture contain helpful information like the following:

• A number of the examples in these chapters have parallels in ancient Near Eastern law codes.  One thing that distinguishes the Torah from these codes is that in general, the Torah places greater value on preserving life and less value on property than other ANE sources.  Also, the Torah is more egalitarian, not according greater value to elites as other codes do.  
• A number of examples mention the death penalty.  For crimes other than first-degree murder, death is a maximum penalty rather than a mandatory one.  This claim is based on Num 35:31, which specifies that capital punishment should not be replaced by a fine in the case of first-degree murder.  Implied then, is the idea that capital punishment can be replaced by a fine for other capital crimes.  (I first learned about this principle from Walter Kaiser's book Toward Old Testament Ethics.)
• The lex talionis ("an eye for an eye", etc.) is not about personal revenge.  Instead, it is the judicial principle that the punishment for a crime should fit the crime.  Only in the case of "life for life" has it been taken literally in Jewish law.