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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Exodus 21:7 - 21:7
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The daughter of an Israelite, who had been sold by her father as a maid-servant (לְאָמָה), i.e., as the sequel shows, as a housekeeper and concubine, stood in a different relation to her master's house. She was not to go out like the men-servants, i.e., not to be sent away as free at the end of six years of service; but the three following regulations, which are introduced by אִם (Exo 21:8), וְאִם (Exo 21:9), and וְאִם (Exo 21:11), were to be observed with regard to her. In the first place (Exo 21:8), “if she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed.” The לֹא before יְעָדהֶּ is one of the fifteen cases in which לֹא has been marked in the Masoretic text as standing for לֹו; and it cannot possibly signify not in the passage before us. For if it were to be taken as a negative, “that he do not appoint her,” sc., as a concubine for himself, the pronoun לֹו would certainly not be omitted. הֶפְדָּהּ (for הִפְדָּהּ, see Ges. §53, Note 6), to let her be redeemed, i.e., to allow another Israelite to buy her as a concubine; for there can hardly have been any thought of redemption on the part of the father, as it would no doubt be poverty alone that caused him to sell his daughter (Lev 25:39). But “to sell her unto a strange nation (i.e., to any one but a Hebrew), he shall have no power, if he acts unfaithfully towards her,” i.e., if he do not grant her the promised marriage. In the second place (Exo 21:9, Exo 21:10), “if he appoint her as his son's wife, he shall act towards her according to the rights of daughters,” i.e., treat her as a daughter; “and if he take him (the son) another (wife), - whether because the son was no longer satisfied, or because the father gave the son another wife in addition to her - “her food (שְׁאֵר flesh as the chief article of food, instead of לֶחֶם, bread, because the lawgiver had persons of property in his mind, who were in a position to keep concubines), her raiment, and her duty of marriage he shall not diminish,” i.e., the claims which she had as a daughter for support, and as his son's wife for conjugal rights, were not to be neglected; he was not to allow his son, therefore, to put her away or treat her badly. With this explanation the difficulties connected with every other are avoided. For instance, if we refer the words of Exo 21:9 to the son, and understand them as meaning, “if the son should take another wife,” we introduce a change of subject without anything to indicate it. If, on the other hand, we regard them as meaning, “if the father (the purchaser) should take to himself another wife,” this ought to have come before Exo 21:9. In the third place (Exo 21:11), “if he do not (do not grant) these three unto her, she shall go out for nothing, without money.” “These three” are food, clothing, and conjugal rights, which are mentioned just before; not “si eam non desponderit sibi nec filio, nec redimi sit passus” (Rabbins and others), nor “if he did not give her to his son as a concubine, but diminished her,” as Knobel explains it.