Commentaria in Exodum
Here, between the servant and the handmaid, the marriage seems to have been dissolved, both because the servant made a divorce from wife and offspring: for the servant went out free, but the handmaid with the children remained the servant of her master; and because it is added: “But if the servant shall say, I love my master and my wife and children (I do not wish to be torn from them by divorce), I will not go out free, his master shall bring him to the gods” (judges), who namely bore through his ear with an awl, and so he becomes a servant for ever.
Hence it is plain that in the old law marriages were very imperfect, when spouses were so easily separated, the husband going out free, loosed and clear of the care of wife and children; the wife remaining a servant of the same master, on whom therefore lay the education and care both of the handmaid and of her offspring; nor is that wonder: for marriage then had not the nature of a Sacrament, on account of which chiefly it is now in the new law plainly indissoluble, by the enactment of Christ, Matth. chap. 19.
6. TO THE GODS.—The Hebrew Elohim, which signifies God as judge and governor of all, and thence signifies angels and judges who participate this judicial and governing power of God.
So it is said Exodus chap. 22, verse 28: “Thou shalt not speak ill of the gods (judges), and thou shalt not curse the prince of thy people”; and Psalm 81:6, God says to the judges: “I have said: You are gods, and all of you sons of the most High.” Let judges think of this, and know that they are gods, so that they fear not men, but the one God, whose place they fill, and by whose authority they act.
AND HE SHALL BE SET TO THE DOOR AND THE POSTS,—namely of the master’s house; for that it must be done there, not at the gate of the city where the judges are wont to sit, is plain from Deut. chap. 15, verse 17. By this application of the servant to the door and posts of the master was signified that this servant was bound to the master’s house as it were continually and fixedly, so that he could never go out of that house without the master’s leave: so Theodoret. St. Thomas and Cajetan add that this application and the boring of the ear was appointed for this servant as a penalty and ignominy, who neglected the leisure of liberty, and therefore is said to adhere to perpetual servitude.
AND HIS MASTER SHALL BORE HIS EAR THROUGH WITH AN AWL,—that by this symbol the servant be admonished of perpetual obedience, by which he must receive and execute the master’s commands. So Theodoret. Again by this symbol the servant was admonished that he was bound to hear and perform many hard, heavy and troublesome orders of the master, which, no otherwise than an awl, would bore his ears. The same was ordained of the handmaid, Deut. chap. 15, verse 12.
FOR EVER.—The word olam signifies not only eternity, but also a very long space, which among the Hebrews was 50 years. “He shall be a servant for ever,” that is, he shall be a servant until the 50th year of the jubilee: for in the jubilee all Hebrew servants were manumitted, as appears Levit. 25:40: so St. Jerome on chap. 1 to the Galatians, where he adds that olam, that is age, is here written without vau, to signify the age of the jubilee: for when it is written with vau it often signifies eternity.
Tropologically, the servant here is he who in the active life wishes to remain in this life, that he may be made free in the seventh year, and in the heavenly jubilee; his ear is pierced with an awl when his mind is struck by the preacher with the subtlety of the fear of God: on which matter see more in St. Gregory, homily 3 on Ezechiel.
7. IF ANY MAN SELL HIS DAUGHTER TO BE A SERVANT,—namely with the promise of betrothal, whereby the master, buying a Hebrew daughter as a servant, promised to take her to wife, at least as a secondary wife.
SHE SHALL NOT GO OUT AS BONDWOMEN ARE WONT TO GO OUT,—namely as maidservants born of Gentiles, e.g., of Moabites or Idumeans; for these always remained servants, and were not freed from servitude in the jubilee unless redeemed by price, as appears Levit. 25:46; or certainly unless an eye or tooth had been knocked out by the master: then on account of the injury and hurt done to her she went out free; for this God ordains here in favour of the faith and nation of the Hebrews, that so he might provide for poor Hebrew daughters as to marriage and state.
8. IF SHE DISPLEASE THE EYES OF HER MASTER TO WHOM SHE WAS DELIVERED.—The Hebrew is, who had betrothed her to himself. Moderns render quite the contrary, who had not betrothed her, because in Hebrew it is lo with aleph, which is a negative adverb. But the interchange of the letters he and consequently aleph with vau is familiar, and the Massoretes noted several places of Scripture, namely fifteen, in which they say lo with aleph is put for lo with vau, that is to him, or to himself; and that this place is one of them, the Chaldee and Septuagint agree, nay Vatablus, and the more learned Rabbis. The sense therefore is, as if he said: If the master who bought the Hebrew girl had betrothed her to himself, but afterwards she displeased him, then the master must dismiss her free; or, as the Hebrew and Septuagint have it, he must redeem her, that is, release her from servitude, if indeed he has used her as a wife; but if not, he shall cause her to be redeemed, that is, he shall sell or hand her over to another Hebrew, on this law however that he marry her: for neither shall he be able to sell her to a foreign people, that is, the Gentiles, as follows. So Abulensis.
10. AND IF HE TAKE ANOTHER WIFE FOR HIM (for his son), HE SHALL PROVIDE A MARRIAGE, AND RAIMENT FOR HER,—that is, if the father, besides the daughter whom he bought for his son, both as handmaid and as wife, shall moreover give his son another wife, then he shall provide that to the former daughter, namely the servant, her right in the marriage be maintained; and so he shall provide for her first, the marriage, that is the use of matrimony; for thus authors sometimes distinguish nuptials from matrimony, and take them metonymically for the nuptial act or of matrimony, as if to say: The father shall provide that his son shall not deny to this his servant-wife the right of conjugal union, but render her the marriage debt; this is plain from the Hebrew. Secondly, he shall provide fit raiment for her. Thirdly, he shall provide the price of chastity, that is, the food and sustenance due to a wife. Whence the Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint clearly have: Food, raiment and cohabitation he shall not diminish for her. For God commands that, though a second wife be brought in over the first by the master or by his son, yet to the former her turn and her right be preserved in these three goods of marriage just stated; which if he be unwilling to provide, then he shall let her go free, as follows.
11. IF HE DO NOT THESE THREE THINGS (not so much the master as the master’s son), SHE (the Hebrew daughter bought by him as a servant) SHALL GO OUT FREE WITHOUT MONEY.—Take these three together. And so if the son furnished sustenance and raiment to the Hebrew servant-girl, yet denied her the third, the daughter he had bought had to be dismissed free, and that for nothing; likewise, if he furnished the second and third, but denied the first, or, the first being given, refused the second, in like manner he had to dismiss the daughter free.
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.—He treated in verse 12 of wilful homicide, here he treats of casual, nay Abulensis thinks it treats of plainly casual, which happens without fault of the slayer. But this does not sufficiently agree with what precedes and follows.
I say therefore that here is treated casual homicide, in which however some fault either of negligence, or imprudence, or even of revenge intervenes: for to such the right of asylum was given. A like law and favour of asylum in sacred places for the casual homicide the Canons among Christians ordained, and vice versa they denied the same to the wilful homicide, and ordered him to be drawn from the altar, as is here commanded verse 14, as appears chap. Inter alia, tit. _De immunit. Eccles._
Note: For “God delivered him into his hands,” that is, God made him fall into his hands, as though in him who killed, not thinking, God made the impious fall into his hand or weapon, that the badness of his crimes might pay penalty. For the discourse here is of a homicide committed by chance, or on an unforeseen occasion, where slaughter was not before devised or intended: for then Scripture in its way refers the slaughter that happened to the most high providence of God, which orders all human affairs to just punishment or reward. God kept watch in directing the chances of men to just vengeance.
Whence it follows that in such cases God’s just vengeance, especially in the old law, was wont to keep watch, and to procure that in guilty and wicked men this chance and slaughter should fall. Rightly therefore is this slaughter attributed not so much to the slayer as to God, because an effect is not wont to be attributed to a cause by accident, but to the cause per se, that is, not to chance or fortune, or to the casual agent, who intends not this effect, namely the slaughter; but to God, who directs all causes, even fortuitous, and who intends this slaughter as a penalty, and by this chance inflicted it on the impious. So Abulensis.