“When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money” (Ex. 21:20-21)

Objection. This law exacts only a financial penalty for the master. It represents the slave being treated as a commodity and not as a human being. Even granting the two distinct scenarios, the latter still seems like a light penalty for what could have been a fairly severe beating.

Reply. We can humbly acknowledge that a law such as this presents us with a difficulty. On the face of it, we recoil. Our first thought may be that all life is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). That is absolutely true. A further understandable inference would be that the life for life principle, based ultimately on the moral law revealed to all mankind (Gen. 9:5-6) must apply across the board in the Mosaic law as well.

The only explanation that seems consistent with the whole of God’s law is that verse 22 of Exodus 21 is a summary way of saying that the death of the slave was unintentional. The objection may still occur to us that the sentence is light. Our own legal system recognizes the principle of gross negligence. This concept stands in between malicious intent and ordinary negligence. The person ought to have known better, and yet did not set out to intentionally take life. In this case, the master beat the slave, deceiving himself that he could inflict such harshness without it resulting in death.

The Mosaic law more explicitly recognizes the same idea of gross negligence elsewhere, as in the case of the bull who gores a neighbor after a repeated pattern (vv. 28-29). I bring that balance in as a clue that the wording of this law in 21:20-21 may be focusing on the remedy aspect by itself.

In his commentary, Cole recognizes the same, calling this nature of the crime here “accidental homicide,” and reminding us that this law was a “great advance on ancient thinking [namely] … that a slave is considered here as a person. His master has no right to beat him to death, even though the slave may be his ‘property.’”1

I add those italics to Cole's statement in order to suggest one more possible piece to our puzzle, having to do with Hebrew grammar. Though the English translation may not capture it—the translators not necessarily having our question as their chief burden—that the connective כִּי may alternatively be rendered “that, for, or when.” Context decides. And what I am suggesting is that the context is both (1) this gross negligence and (2) the moral advance to which Cole refers. That reading would already be accounting for what the person raising the objection sees.

If we ask why God would not give more context in the stipulation itself, as he seems to in others, I cannot say. However we might remember that the duty of the judges (simply called “elders” at this time, by Jethro’s original counsel: Ex. 18:13-27) was not simply to pronounce a repetition of the letter of the law, but to interpret and apply the law (Ex. 18:16, 26; cf. Deut. 17:8-13). That is, to engage in legal reasoning. God’s word often gives principles in one place as occasions to apply wisdom from others.

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1. R. Alan Cole, Exodus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 176.