Exodus 21:7

The words ebed and doulos (the words most often used for "servant") mean bondmen or slaves. Some were bought with money and some were taken in war… A bought servant who was circumcised could eat the Passover among the Israelites, because as one who was bought he belonged to the family; a hired servant could not. (In the same way non-Jews, though outsiders, bought with the blood of Christ, have every privilege of grace.) This kind of servitude was a result of sin, yet the law of Moses recognised it and gave rules about it, including rules to protect the slaves.

Slavery had not yet been driven out of Israel. We must always remember that the Word itself says the law could not bring perfection. Yet the law guarded and limited slavery so far that it became a different thing from the total control over another person's will that every nation around them counted as lawful.

The law did not forbid the sale of one's daughter to another man as a female slave (v.7). She would not, however, go free in the year of jubilee, because by then she might be her buyer's wife, or the wife of his son (vv. 8-9). Yet the law did protect her. If the buyer was not pleased with her, he had to let her father or another relative buy her back. But he must not sell her to a foreigner.

Verses 7-11 deal with the case of the woman who becomes a bondservant. As the weaker party she might become the victim of wrongful treatment, so her rights are clearly defined.

Though she might "not go out as the male slaves do," God in His tenderness carefully guarded her rights in the place she held. People too often treat those who are completely under them and dependent on them according to their changing moods and whims. This was not to be… He must not degrade her in her service, and he could not sell her to a foreign nation. By his dishonest dealing he had lost rights he would otherwise have had. Whether she was promised in marriage to his son or to himself, her rights were carefully kept; and if he neglected them by taking another wife, she was to go completely free. So, in His compassionate love, the Lord surrounds His weak and defenceless ones with laws that secure fair and considerate treatment for them.

…the consideration of each would yield valuable instruction as witnessing to God's gracious care and protection of those who were weak and in a position of inferiority, and, as such, might be subject to oppression, and of being unjustly dealt with by those who were stronger and in a place of authority over them.

We may note that under the law some things were allowed that Christians today would not tolerate. The Lord's own words in Matthew 19:7-8 show this. Always keep in mind that "the law made nothing perfect" (Heb. 7:19), since it set out the minimum of God's demands… Christ realizes and displays the full measure of all God's thoughts and desires.

At the start of Exodus 21 we find the picture of the servant. Nothing shows more strikingly that Christ is the constant object of the Holy Spirit than this: even in these temporary rules, God cannot help looking ahead to His Son. No doubt it was tied to the earth, and to a condition that was anything but suitable to the mind of God. It is the condition of a slave; yet even there God has Christ before Him.