I’m interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?
To become president of the United States you have to be one thing first of all: very wealthy. This presumably goes for West Wing’s fictional president as well who feigns an interest in making more money by selling his youngest daughter into slavery. Her virtues, he suggests, will fetch a good price.
This is very far removed from the situation envisaged in Exodus 21:7. Selling your daughter into slavery was not a choice within a free-market economy designed to maximise profit. Many in ancient Israel lived much closer to subsistence levels than modern despisers of the Old Testament. There was no such thing as a single-person household. Everyone was attached to a family – for a woman this meant being a daughter (and/or sister), a wife (and hopefully mother), or a widow (hopefully with children).
Exodus 21:7 concerns the transition from daughter to wife. This would usually involve a reciprocal financial transaction which binds two households together. The father of the bride pays a dowry which is meant to offer financial security for his daughter (if she were to be divorced she would receive back this dowry rather than be left destitute) and the groom’s family pays a bride price (which compensates the woman’s first family for lost labour).
Exodus 21:7 has a situation in view in which a father is unable to pay a dowry for his daughter. His household may struggle to feed everyone, e.g., if the poverty is the result of a series of bad harvests. But even if the extra labour of his daughter would make it possible for her to survive within her father’s household in the short run, her long-term security is under threat. The following verses indicate that she is bought as a wife or concubine either for the master of the household (verse 8) or his son (verse 9). In other words, someone will pay the bride price but no dowry is received.
Given that the dowry is a back-up for the daughter, getting married without one presents a risk. The regulation in Exodus 21 seeks to minimise this risk by forbidding the master to sell her on, as if she were his possession over which he could freely dispose. (The text specifies “sell her to a foreign people” because within the covenant community slavery was essentially only permitted for defaulting debtors.) If he wants to be rid of her, he is not allowed to receive any payment. In this case, the woman would be free to leave without owing the master anything.
The example is taken from case law and regulates a situation in which an attempt by a poor man to provide a better life for his daughter might put her at risk by specifying an arrangement which preserves her honour as an Israelite woman. Insinuating here a parental permission to maximise profits by selling one of their daughters is bearing false witness to the text.
