Commentaria in Exodum
Chapter Twenty-one
Moses in Sinai receives from God judicial precepts concerning servants and handmaids, thefts, homicides, curses on parents and quarrels; and, verse 24 etc., enacts the law of retaliation both for a man who hurts and for the ox that gores. Note. As in the preceding chapter God enacted moral precepts, namely the Decalogue, so in this chapter and the two following he enacts judicial precepts; but in chapter 25 and the five following ceremonial, namely of the tabernacle, and the rest that regard it.
1. These are the judgments which thou shalt set before them: 2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve thee: in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. 3. With what raiment he came in, with the like let him go out: if having a wife, his wife also shall go out with him. 4. But if his master gave him a wife, and she hath borne sons and daughters; the woman and her children shall be her master’s: but he himself shall go out with his raiment. 5. And if the servant shall say: I love my master and my wife and children, I will not go out free: 6. His master shall bring him to the gods, and he shall be set to the door and the posts, and he shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his servant for ever. 7. If any man sell his daughter to be a servant, she shall not go out as bondwomen are wont to go out. 8. If she displease the eyes of her master to whom she was delivered, he shall let her go: but he shall have no power to sell her to a foreign people, if he despise her. 9. But if he have betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her according to the manner of daughters. 10. And if he take another wife for him, he shall provide a marriage, and raiment for her, and shall not refuse the price of her chastity. 11. If he do not these three things, she shall go out free without money. 12. He that striketh a man with a will to kill him, shall be put to death. 13. But he that did not lie in wait for him, but God delivered him into his hands: I will appoint thee a place to which he must flee. 14. If a man kill his neighbour on set purpose, and by lying in wait for him: thou shalt take him away from my altar, that he may die. 15. He that striketh his father or mother, shall be put to death. 16. He that shall steal a man and sell him, being convicted of the guilt, shall be put to death. 17. He that curseth his father or mother, shall die the death. 18. If men quarrel and the one strike his neighbour with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not but keepeth his bed: 19. If he rise again and walk abroad upon his staff, he that struck him shall be quit, so that he make restitution for his work, and for his expenses upon the physicians. 20. He that striketh his bondman or bondwoman with a rod, and they die under his hands, shall be guilty of the crime. 21. But if the party remain alive a day or two, he shall not be subject to the punishment, because it is his money. 22. If men quarrel, and one strike a woman with child, and she miscarry indeed, but live herself: he shall be answerable for so much damage as the woman’s husband shall require, and as arbiters shall award. 23. But if her death ensue thereupon, he shall render life for life, 24. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25. Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. 26. If any man strike the eye of his manservant or maidservant, and leave them but one eye, he shall let them go free for the eye which he put out. 27. Also if he strike out a tooth of his manservant or maidservant, he shall in like manner make them free. 28. If an ox gore a man or a woman, and they die: he shall be stoned: and his flesh shall not be eaten, and the owner of the ox shall be quit. 29. But if the ox was wont to push with his horn yesterday and the day before, and they warned his master, and he did not shut him up, and he shall kill a man or woman: then the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death. 30. And if there be a price set upon him, he shall give for his life whatsoever is laid upon him. 31. If he have gored a son or a daughter, he shall fall under the like sentence. 32. If he assault a bondman or bondwoman, he shall give thirty sicles of silver to their master, and the ox shall be stoned. 33. If a man open a pit, and dig one, and cover it not, and an ox or an ass fall into it: 34. The owner of the pit shall pay the price of the beasts: and that which died shall be his own. 35. If one man’s ox hurt another’s ox, and it die: they shall sell the live ox, and shall divide the price, and the carcass of the dead they shall part between them. 36. But if he knew that his ox was wont to push yesterday and the day before, and his master did not shut him up: he shall pay ox for ox, and shall take the whole carcass.
1. THESE ARE THE JUDGMENTS WHICH THOU SHALT SET BEFORE THEM.—“Judgments” he calls the judicial precepts, which God in these three chapters, namely 21, 22, 23, prescribes for governing the people justly and peacefully, and for settling the suits of the Hebrews; as ceremonial precepts are called those which were prescribed by God for rightly worshipping God by sacrifices and other sacred rites and ceremonies: in two things therefore properly consists the nature of the judicial precepts, says St. Thomas, 1–2, Question 104, article 4, first, that they pertain to the ordering of men to one another; secondly, that they have not the force of obliging from reason alone, but from the institution of God.
Note: Among these judicial precepts some moral ones also, which are of the law of nature, are mingled, chiefly as regards judges, which are therefore also rightly called “judgments”: such is that of chap. 23, verse 1: “Thou shalt not receive the voice of a lie”; and verse 2: “Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil”; and verse 7: “Thou shalt fly lying”; and verse 9: “Thou shalt not molest a stranger,” etc.
Finally at the end, namely chap. 23, verse 14, he adds certain ceremonial precepts, namely of celebrating the three principal feasts, of the phase, of leaven, of firstfruits, etc.
2. IF THOU BUY A HEBREW SERVANT, SIX YEARS SHALL HE SERVE THEE.—“Servant” he calls, not a hireling, but a bondman: for the former is wont to be hired, the latter to be bought and sold, as if to say: If thou buy a Hebrew, to be to thee as a bondman, he shall serve thee six years only, nor can he serve beyond: for in the seventh year (so I will, and say here) he is to be dismissed free.
IN THE SEVENTH (year) HE SHALL GO OUT FREE FOR NOTHING.—Note, that this seventh year is not to be counted from the purchase of the servant, but was one and the same year of release for all, just as one and the same day was the sabbath for all the Hebrews; there was therefore a fixed septennium of liberty, continually succeeding one to another (as one jubilee continually succeeded another), so that in every seventh year, this recurring, all Hebrew servants were to be manumitted: wherefore the Hebrew who was sold into servitude in the first year of this septennium had to serve six years; but he who was sold in the sixth year of this septennium went out free the following year, as being the seventh; the like was in the jubilee, as I shall say Levit. chap. 25. The mysteries of the number seven I shall recount Deuteronomy chap. 5.
LET HIM GO OUT FREE,—that you may know that he is not so much a servant as free, as one delivered from the Egyptian servitude, and bound to no servitude. See Levit. chap. 25, verse 39.
3. WITH WHAT RAIMENT HE CAME IN, WITH THE LIKE LET HIM GO OUT.—The Septuagint, Chaldee, Vatablus and moderns everywhere render: if he came with his body, that is, alone and unencumbered, with his body let him go out, that is, alone, and it is aptly opposed to what follows: “If having a wife, his wife also shall go out with him.”
But St. Jerome, most skilled in Hebrew, renders more rightly and fully, and saw more acutely that not one thing, as the earlier writers will have it, but two are here commanded, namely that the servant is not to be dismissed torn or naked, nor without his wife, so that the wife also is made free with him, and a garment is given him as he goes out as honourable as he had when he entered: for this was plainly decent and fitting. Add that in the Hebrew it is not guph, that is body, but gaph, that is wing, that is a garment, which like a wing covers the body; such metaphors are usual with the Hebrews.
4. BUT IF HIS MASTER (lord) GAVE HIM A WIFE, AND SHE HATH BORNE SONS AND DAUGHTERS; THE WOMAN AND HER CHILDREN SHALL BE HER MASTER’S: BUT HE HIMSELF SHALL GO OUT WITH HIS RAIMENT,—as if to say: The wife shall remain a servant to the lord by whom the wife had been given to the servant: consequently her offspring also shall remain to the lord; for the offspring follows the womb, as the axiom of the Jurists has it in this matter. So Oleaster, Cajetan, Lipomanus.