A. We shall deal, first, with the pre-exUian legis- lation contained in the two sections {a) and (6). The period of service is fixed as six years ; in the seventh there is tlie year of release. The question has been asked whetlier the six years may not be regarded as a maximum period. It is certainly quite possible that when, as in the case of debt, the sum to be earned by service could be worked out in a shorter term, the six-years' period might be abridged, but we have insufficient data in the OT to guide us on this point. The legislation appears to contemplate six years as the least period for which service could be entered. So Rabbis in their interpretations have inferred. Jacob's seven years' bondage to Laban (Gn 29'") seems to point to a somewhat divergent tradition. It is evident that the six-years' period corresponds to the six days of work followed by the day of Sabbath rest. So with agricultural land, which in the seventh year is to lie fallow. Jer 34*-^^ is interesting and sig- nificant, since it shows that these laws respecting slaves were constantly ^nolated by the owners.
In the pre-exilian legislation the special cases are duly provided for. But this is more particularly true of the earlier conipend of laws (Book of the Covenant). In £x 2P-^ the case of a man who enters bond-service unmarried is distinguished from that of a married man. Under the latter case there are two varieties. If the marriage took place prior to the term of service, husband and wife become free together. But if the slave marries one of the slave-girls in his master's household, the wife and the children born to him by her do not accompany the husband in his year of release. This last stipu- lation is not mentioned in the Deuteronomic legis- lation. Are we to understand that the express provisions of the earlier legislation are tacitly assumed in the later? This is scarcely probable, since (1) the Deuteronomic legislation consistently repeats the earlier provisions of the Book of the Covenant, when adopted into its own code. Their omission, when tacitly understood, would have greatly abbreviated tne later legislation in its written form. (2) We note a striking contrast between the express provision in Dt 15'" (viz. that the ceremony described in Ex 21", Dt 15"' should apply to women as well) and the hard injunction of Ex 21' tliat the daughter who is sold as a bond- woman shall not go free as the bondman does. It is true that the case here contemplated is that of concubinage ; but, as Driver in his commentary pertinently observes, the terms in l>t 15'^ " are quite general, and we are not therefore justified in intro- ducing exceptions out of the earlier legislation. Tlie code of Deuteronomy is evidently separated from the Book of the Covenant by several centuries during which the Hebrew race advanced both socially and politically. The humanitarian ten- dency which was already conspicuous in the more primitive legislation had advanced still furtlier. It may even be true, as Driver suggests, that Deuteronomy belongs to an age so far advanced on tliat of the earlier code that the case no longer practically occurred of a woman being sold into slavery for concubinage, or at all events this was not contemplated or recognized. This could hardly have been true at a date earlier than B.C. 622.
It sometimes, perhaps not infrequently, liappened that a slave loved his master, or was impelled by
the strong motives which the sustenance and pro- tection of liis master's home ailorded, not to avail liiniself of the opportunity of the seventh year of release. Under the terms of the earlier legislation, a wife, married when lier liusband was living in bond- age in his master's household, and the family reared under these conditions could not pass into freedom with the man when the seventh year of release had come. This would furnish an even stronger in- ducement not to avail himself of the freedom wliich the seventh year permitted. The master would tlien take the slave and bring him to God (i.e. to the local priest in the nearest sanctuarj' *), and bore tlirough his ear in token of the fact that the slave was now the property of his master in perpetuity (Ex 21''). This should not be understood to mean merely until the year of jubilee, as Josephus (Ant. IV. viii. 28) and Rashi assume, since this would introduce an arbitrary qualification. The year of jubilee, as we shall have subsequent occasion to see, belongs to a later stage of national life.
■The growing humanitarian tendency which is characteristic of the Deuteronomic legislation shows itself in the addition of an express stipu- lation (Dt 15"-") that the master on releasing his slave was to provide him liberally from his flocks, his com, and his winet (cf. the modem Arabian usage cited from Doughty, above, p. 462'').
The special case must now be considered of a father selling his daughter into slavery to another. To this the Book of the Covenant refers (Ex 21'""). This was done under the stipulation that the maiden should become the master's concubine or that of liis son. If she fail to please her master (or his son) who has destined her for himself (read iS with Kere in place of ti^), she sliall be redeemed [by her father or some near relative]. Under no circumstances is she to be sold into the hands of a foreigner. If she be the concubine of the master's son, she is to be treated as a daughter of the master's household. But if another woman is married, she is in no way to be defrauded of her food, dress, or conjugal rights. If any of these three rights of food, dress, etc., be not preserved intact, she may claim her freedom and depart without any redemption money being paid as compensa- tion. As aJready stated, the case of a concubine- slave does not arise in the Deuteronomic code.