The very first Mosaic law in Exodus 21 set the tone for the care of women, taking into account the cultural customs of that time – that included a father “selling his daughter as a maid-servant” (7). To our ears that may sound a bit harsh, but what could a family do back then if they hadn’t got the money to pay off a debt, or the wherewithal to support a grown-up daughter or provide for her future?
There was a solution, however, and that was to sell her into a household that could afford to take care of her, either as a servant or because the “master has selected her for himself” (8). There was an obvious danger, that she might be treated badly and even abused, but Yahweh took care of that by instituting a law that held the man who bought her totally responsible for the full duty of her care, whether she was his servant or his spouse. That way, no woman would be treated as mere property. Nor would she have to fear abuse or neglect.
But what if the man realized the woman he’d bought for a wife wasn’t such a good purchase after all (8)? Well, since “he’s broken faith with her,” verse 8, he can’t just dump her to fend for herself, nor can he sell her on to a foreigner who didn’t know her. Nor can he hold on to her either. He is duty bound by Mosaic law to let her “be redeemed,” bought back by her own family, with no future obligations to him at all.
If, on the other hand, the man had purchased the woman for his son, she now has all “the rights of a daughter” (9). And those rights she did not lose either if the son wanted to marry a second woman. Under Mosaic law he would still be totally responsible for providing his first wife with “food, clothing and marital rights” (10), as if they were still married. And if he wasn’t prepared to do that she could “go free, without any payment of money” (11), and without any further obligations to him either.
However odd these customs may sound to our ears, Yahweh’s way of dealing with them was to guarantee a safety net in that culture for vulnerable female servants or when a husband took a second wife. It also made men seriously think twice before treating a woman as mere property to be used or discarded.
So Yahweh was setting up something utterly unique in Israel, in making the care of women a top priority. But was he also showing by this example “The inevitable issues all nations face”?….(next blog)
