Sorry if that sounded too strong. But despite your distate for the concept, or your disbelief that a woman might want regular sex from her husband, when there is a particularly disparate match-up of age, the fact still remains that the verse is VERY CLEARLY listing sex as one of the woman’s RIGHTS, not one of her DUTIES. It’s listed together with food and clothing as something the master or his son, whichever married her, can’t withhold from her, not something she is required to provide him with.
Combining responses to both posts:
My objection to that is your use of the word “only.” Your interpretation is not ridiculous, but it’s not the only one, or IMO even the most plausible.
It is more plausible, IMO, that the text means just what it says. 21:2 says that males are freed after six years, and 21:7 says that women are not. If the sale was conditioned on marriage or concubinage, then the buyer has additional responsibilities, but nothing says that is the only type of sale.
On the contrary, 21:7 explicitly says (NIV, emphasis added), “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do.” Verses 3, 4, and 5 all contain the word “wife,” so it was certainly available for verse 7, if that was the only type of sale. Here are a couple dozen other translations,
and they all say “servant” or “slave” or “handmaid.” None of them say anything like “wife,” or even “concubine.”
People much smarter than I say that this part of Exodus comes from the Covenant Code, an ancient document that was incorporated into the Elohist source, and is much earlier than the slightly more liberal Deuteronomic text (15:12), which contradicts Exodus by saying that both men and women slaves are freed after six years, if they are Hebrews.
Which I acknowledged in my first post on the subject, albeit with sarcasm. I will agree to disagree with you on the subject of marital bliss. Because let’s face it, even if she got the ring, she was still most likely working from dawn to dusk, and while it’s conceivable to me that some women thought that sex with the old goat who bought them was a bonus, I strongly doubt that those who didn’t see it that way had the option to refuse.
Tony Sinclair:
But you’re skipping over the parts where it says that if he does not make her his wife or his son’s wife, he has to free her:
7 “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. 8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. 9 If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. 10 If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. 11 If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
I can see from the NIV translation I pasted above that verse 11 is mis-translated as a penalty for not providing her with food, clothing or sex. That’s not the way it has been traditionally interpreted in Judaic law. The word in Hebrew is not “provide”, it’s “do”, and the “these three things” are marrying her himself, redeeming her, or marrying her to his son. If the master will not do those three things to her, then when she reaches maturity, she must be let go for free (as opposed to “redeeming”, which is that the master is paid a pro-rated amount of her sale price to let her go before she reaches maturity).
I really enjoy these threads and have read them all, I think. I very much appreciate the efforts of all the contributors.
Is this where the matrilineal definition of who is a Jew comes from?
Pleonast:
No. The source for that law is the story in Leviticus 24, where the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father is considered subject to Torah law.
Really? The translations of this verse that I Googled make a point of stating that his crimeis death to Isrealite and stranger alike and he is never referred to as a Israelite, only his mother. I guess we will get to that verse eventually.
No, I’m not skipping over that. I’ve acknowledged the special cases of sale for marriage or concubinage in my posts on Ex 21, including the one you’re replying to, so I honestly don’t understand how you can say I’m ignoring it. And I’ve acknowledged that your interpretation is plausible. But you seem to refuse to entertain the notion that your interpretation isn’t the only possible one.
It’s like arguing about the Second Amendment. It says a militia is necessary to the state, but does that mean it applies only to militia members? Many people think not. Exodus 21 includes provisions for women sold for the purpose of marriage. Does that mean that’s the only reason Hebrew women can be sold, in spite of verse 7 clearly saying that they can be sold as servants or slaves, depending on the translation?
I don’t think so. I could easily be wrong. But why doesn’t verse 7 simply say, “If a man sells his daughter to be a wife,” or even, “as a betrothed servant…” Why would it say “as a slave…” if the only possible sales were for the purpose of marriage? Why would it be written and placed as a parallel to the corresponding provisions for male Hebrew slaves, where there is no question of a prearranged marriage? Why would it bother to explicitly state that she does not go free after six years, as men do, if it is talking about someone’s wife? And how do you reconcile your view with Deut 15:12, which contradicts Exodus and says that Hebrew women DO go free after six years? What possible sense would it make to talk about a six-year term of marriage, after which the woman is cast adrift? What kind of future would she have?
It makes more sense to me that verse 7 means just what it says – the default term for female servants is life, and their job is to work, not have sex, just like the male servants in verse 2. I think that the life term was intended to be a benefit, since a “free” woman without a husband would have a very hard time in that society. I interpret the subsequent verses as dealing with the special case of a sale conditioned on marriage to the buyer or his son, but for the reasons given above, I don’t think such a condition is obligatory. Like I said, I could be wrong, but I think it’s plausible, and I’ve seen scholarly commentaries that agree with me. I’ve seen others that don’t, but see below.
In any case, it’s a minor distraction from the major point, which is the treatment of foreign slaves, and which is the proper comparison for the treatment of the Israelites by the Egyptians, since the Israelites were despised foreigners in Egypt. You noted earlier that foreign slaves were chattel, and the women slaves could be used as brood mares by the Israelites. And as we’ll see later, especially despised foreigners weren’t even worthy of being chattel slaves. God orders their extermination — men, women, and children — without even giving them a chance to surrender.
This is supposed to be a discussion about the text as literature, not as sacred scriptures. IMO the proper approach is to take the text at face value, and not force an interpretation that is consistent with a different book that scholarly consensus says was written by a different author at a different time, just because the religious view is that of a single author, let alone a perfect, loving God. But if that is your perspective, I welcome it, as I welcome all viewpoints — as long as it’s presented as your opinion, and not an absolute fact, from which any deviation is a “gross misrepresentation.”
I’m as interested as anyone in the rabbinic commentaries on these texts, and I sincerely appreciate all the explanations and references given by the posters here. But let’s face it, a lot of the commentaries are turd polishing, written centuries or even millennia later, and trying to justify the unjustifiable (and I’m no scholar, but from what I’ve read, the ancient rabbis seem a lot more intellectually honest than many of the modern Christian commentators). Some of the policies given in the Pentateuch are indeed relatively enlightened for their time, but others are barbaric by any standards, including those of contemporaneous cultures. I don’t think even the Assyrians, often characterized as the most brutal of ancient civilizations, had a policy of total extermination of nations, whether or not they offered any resistance.
Sir Prize:
We’ll get to it eventually, but I feel obligated to amend my statement that a) I can’t specifically find the source which links that passage to the law of matrilineality (though I’m sure I’d read somewhere that that was the source) and b) what I DID find in the Talmud was a passage learning that law from Deuteronomy 7:3-4. The manner in which the Talmud derives it depends on very precise translation, which is not reflected in the NIV, so I’ll comment no further here unless specifically requested.
Tony Sinclair:
I’ve been delayed from responding to your last post due to the Chrome “malware” problem that has hindered my access to the boards. There are answers to many of the points which you have stated, but rather than drag out the Exodus 1 thread, in such a broken-up manner, I’ll prefer to detail it when we get to Exodus 21. One point, though:
I’ve made a point, during my responses to this thread series, to not present the viewpoint of “scripture as Holy Writ” even though it’s well known here that that’s my belief. It’s possible that I have not done a good job of this, but so far, I’ve had few complaints. All of what I’ve said above - which I will detail further when the series reaches it in its proper turn - is merely a matter of reading the text, and knowing its proper translation (not interpretation) from the original Hebrew. And while I realize that many posters in this thread believe in the “scholarly consensus” that the Bible has been cobbled together from different documents, I believe that it would be foolish, even in such a view, to intentionally choose an inconsistent interpretation simply because it can be written off as different authors, than to opt for the interpretation that is consistent. After all, the supposed different authors still came from the same original cultural stock, and ultimately, the supposed redactor felt that the source documents were of sufficient authenticity to bind them into the whole that is our Bible of today.
Let me add to cmkeller’s comment: even if there were ORIGINALLY different authors, they were certainly cobbled together by a single Editor (called the Redactor). That Redactor would certainly have been aware of “inconsistencies” and either decided deliberately to allow them, or found ways to smooth them out. So, whether you think there were different original authors or a single Author, there is certainly a finished text that we can use for discussion and analysis, that we can attribute to a single source (regardless of whether that source was the Original Author or a later Redactor.)
Sure, but so what? Most novels today are written by a single author, who has complete control over what his characters do. That doesn’t mean they don’t contain inconsistencies, contradictions, or factual errors.
I’m not trying to fight the hypothetical here. I’m totally on board, for example, with assuming for the purposes of this thread that an omnipotent, omniscient God is acting in the story, and that the miracles reported are truly miracles. You won’t see me, e.g., trying to reduce the coming plagues to the naturalistic consequences of some upstream disaster polluting the Nile, or the parting of the Red Sea to a tsunami that made the water recede for the Israelites, and then come back in a huge wave to drown the Egyptians.
And I’m totally on board with trying to reconcile apparent errors or contradictions. I freely admit that I know next to nothing about ancient Jewish culture, and I truly appreciate all the comments that help me understand.
But all that said, sometimes the most plausible explanation for an apparent error or contradiction is that it’s an error or contradiction. It doesn’t matter if there were four authors or one, although IMO an analysis that acknowledges the different sources (as many here do) is superior to one that doesn’t. I think it’s just as wrong to rely on special pleading, or to assume things that are unknown anywhere but in commentaries trying to reconcile the errors, as it is to insist on naturalistic explanations for everything.
Have you ever read any of the Sherlock Holmes commentaries? There has developed volumes (hundreds of volumes, literally) of commentary trying to explain inconsistencies. The bottom line, of course, is that Conan Doyle didn’t care when he was writing the stories. But the Sherlock fans play “The Game” – that the stories were written by Watson, that Doyle just helped get them published, and they are all accurate, and now let’s explain the inconsistencies. See: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2088/did-sherlock-holmes-really-exist 
I think that’s an excellent analogy. It sounds like it would be both fun and intellectually challenging for the contributors, and a painless way to learn more about Victorian England for the readers. Very valuable all around.
However, it would almost certainly include interpretations that the author himself did not intend, and would even disagree with. So while I would read it with interest, I don’t think it would necessarily be the best way to determine what Doyle intended, let alone the only way.
I’m always dubious about “what the author intended.” I think truly great literature transcends what the author “intended.” Shakespeare “intended” to make money by writing plays, and I don’t imagine for a moment that he “intended” all the psychological stuff that’s been written about HAMLET. I prefer to analyze what something IS rather than what the author may have intended.
Footnote: Although I think we (and certainly I) do sometimes say, “The author used the same phrase here and there, to draw a parallel” when what I mean is “The text uses the same phrase here and there, so we can draw a parallel.”
PS - cmkeller, I hope you’re not annoyed at me for using such obviously non-religious analogies. On Monday, Thursday, and Sunday, I’m a firm believer in the divine origin of the biblical text. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’m a firm believer in multiple authors. On Saturday, of course, I rest from thinking about religion. (That’s a joke.)
Don’t worry, Dex, I’m not that easy to offend.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, the mummy of Ramses I spent a century hanging in a fun-house in Niagara Falls, to scare the kiddies. 