21:18,19
This seems to take a very practical attitude. If a quarrel breaks out and one strikes the others, then as long as the man recovers, the other is in the clear, except that he must pay some compensation to the person that he struck. Presumably, if the person did die, then the other one would be subject to the death penalty.
21:20,21
We are back to slavery. The key point here that would be in contradistinction to the surrounding world, is that the master does not have the right to beat the slave to death. The slave still had some rights. And this applied to both male and female slaves. If the slave recovers then there was to be no penalty. “For the slave is his money”. We do, rightly, find this idea objectionable. However, v26,27 will add further instructions that do give more rights to the slave. We do have the question of why did God allow slavery at all, rather than just ameliorating the effects of slavery? I don’t think we have a clear answer, but a suggestion ( and that is all that it is) is that slavery was so endemic to all civilisations, such a fundamental part of the economic system, that they would not know how to function without it. We should also bear in mind that employers do have certain rights over employees, and these days seem to be able, in some cases, to tell employees what to think.
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