From a Slave to a Bride

“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Peter 1:17-19, ESV)

“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.” (Exodus 21:7-11, ESV)

It’s so easy to read through the Old Testament and completely dismiss the laws, or the bloodlines, or the endless lists of parameters set in place for Israel. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read through the latter half of Exodus or the books of Leviticus or Numbers with glazed over eyes, reading it for just the surface value of what was going on.

In truth, when you look below the surface value of Old Testament law, and you read it while asking yourself, “What does this show me about Jesus? Where is the cross and the gospel in this?” That’s when scripture begins to burst open and you can really see how God’s love and plan to redeem us is pouring out of every verse.

Last time, we looked at the first 6 verses of Exodus 21 and dug into what the Jewish laws around slavery were– how it was a much more dignified process than what the modern take is, and how it reveals our relationship with Christ under the New Covenant.

The next set of verses addresses the arrangement of slavery when it comes to a female servant, and it just adds another layer to God’s heart for us. 

Under Jewish law, a father could sell his daughter to another man as a servant with the intentions of having that daughter marry into her master’s family– either in marriage to the master of the house, or to one of his sons. This was most common in cases where the family of the bride could not offer a dowry for the marriage, so the bride would essentially become a servant in the groom’s household to “work off” that lack of a dowry.

Under the law, that female servant would work the standard six year agreement, and in a perfect world, be married in the seventh year. Of course, just like today, life happened back then the way it does. Seven years is a long time, and a lot could happen in that time. 

If, by the end of six years, that groom was either married to someone else or unable to marry the female servant for any number of reasons, Jewish law forbid the master from either selling her to a foreign nation, marrying her off to a gentile, or turning her out unexpectedly. Not only did this master have to continue to treat her as a daughter of his own household by continuing to feed, clothe, and help her find another suitable marriage, but only she could decide to leave the master’s household, most likely to return to her family’s household again.

The interesting part of this is that if that marriage contract between the bride and the master’s household was broken, that master had to care for her until she either left of her own free will, or until she was redeemed by a man wanting to marry her– a man willing to pay her bride price and take her as his own. 

This was common in this time, this idea of a “redeemer,” when it came to a young woman of marrying age. The best example I can think of is in the book of Ruth, when Boaz desires to marry her, but he has to clear it with her kinsmen redeemer– which is essentially the closest living relative to her deceased husband that would have conjugal rights to marry Ruth if he so wished. Boaz has to seek this family member out and work out a deal with him to relinquish his right as Ruth’s kinsmen redeemer, and purchase or redeem Ruth from that “master” before he can properly marry her under Jewish law (Ruth 4:1-10).

For us, this paints a picture of Christ’s desire to redeem us with His own life. Previously, we were slaves to our sin, our master being our transgressions against God and our flesh leading us away from Him. That master of sin could never love us in the way that we desire to be loved; could never know us in the way we all intrinsically desire to be known. We were doomed to be slaves to that sin into eternity.

But Christ came and purchased us from that slavery and sin with His own blood. The human face of God our Father came to die and purchase us through His work on the cross. That blood– that sacrifice– is worth more than silver or gold. Jesus gave His life to purchase and redeem us from our slavery to sin and make us His bride. He came to set us free from our futile and endless servitude to this world and to love us in the way we crave to be loved; to know us in the way we deeply yearn to be known.

He is the only one with the power to purchase us out of our lost hopes and broken promises. He is the only one with the ability to save us from our sin. Jesus is our redeemer, and He purchased us not with resources that are perishable and limited in their value. He claimed us with a sacrifice that can never be counterfeited, undermined, or devalued. 

You are redeemed by a God that loves you in the deepest way you could be loved– He satisfies our searching and struggling in ways that we couldn’t even begin to confront within ourselves. He seeks us out and chooses us, saves us and brings us to Himself, and that should provoke us to worship Him and love Him with our whole lives, loving Him the way a bride loves her groom, the way a soulmate cherishes their beloved.