Exodus 21

Moses is now given a whole series of laws for all sorts of situations. The details are primarily for application to Israel, but we can learn from the spirit behind the laws, as they reflect the heart of God.

We need to remember that they were given in a totally different context to the one that we live in, so the mention of servants and slaves, and buying of them, tends to shock us. This was the way things were then, but if we look at the laws we will see that the laws provide for a more humane treatment of people than was common at the time.

First, a Hebrew slave could only be bought for 6 years, then he was to be set free. People might hit hard times, and selling themselves as slaves could be the only way out, but no one was to permanently enslave someone against his will. However, a slave could decide to be permanently attached to his master.

All this stuff about selling daughters does jar with us, but if we look more carefully at the laws, we see that God was ensuring that the daughters actually had some rights and were not totally mistreated.

The laws on personal injuries made allowance for accidents. There is also financial compensation for injuries.

We see that the death penalty operates, as does the eye for an eye. Many Christians are dead against the death penalty (pun utterly intended), other seem to relish in it! The death penalty is NOT unchristian. This does not mean that it should be used in all possible cases, and it may even be right for pragmatic reasons to not have a death penalty, but it is not wrong to have the death penalty. The key thing is that it is enacted as a matter of God's justice, not as man's revenge. Now this of course raises practical problems because every society and judicial system is very imperfect. However, not having the death penalty raises equal problems. Take the current example of the Lockerbie bomber and his release. Now, assuming the court verdict was correct, he is responsible for killing hundreds of people, but we do not have a death penalty,so we keep him alive. Then he is released on humanitarian grounds and there is uproar. So what are we to do? Keep him alive but treat him inhumanely? If we had the death penalty the problem would not arise! I am not arguing passionately for the death penalty, only pointing out that there are at least as many moral problems with not having it as there are with having it. The decision whether or not to have the death penalty is a pragmatic one.