What Does Exodus 21:27 Mean?
And if he ruins his manservant's tooth, or his maidservant's tooth, he sends him free for the sake of his tooth.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.THE KEY
The lost tooth makes the master’s next act a sending out: injury to the enslaved body becomes the point at which ownership must end.
THE MEANING
The verse puts a hard limit on another person’s power over your body: when that power knocks out your tooth, the bond must end. The injury is not treated as the price of being owned; you are sent out free. Freedom is named as the concrete consequence of harm.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Your body can be damaged without changing your status because you are owned. This verse says bodily harm is serious enough to end the bond.
THE ROOT
יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ
yeshalleḥennu
GROWS FROM
שלח
send forth, send away, release
“sends him free” in this verse is yeshalleḥennu. The verb behind “let him go free” means “he shall send him away.” English can make freedom sound like a state granted; the Hebrew pictures the master actively sending the injured servant out, severing the bond.
ALSO GROWS
shilluaḥ: sending away, dismissal
שִׁלּוּחַ
The release here is enacted as sending the servant away; freedom changes the relationship, not just the servant’s inner state.
Shiloach: Shiloach, the “sent” waters
שִׁלֹחַ
The same send-forth image appears in water moving outward; here it is the injured person who is sent beyond the master’s control.
THE PATTERN
When a person is held under another’s power, justice takes concrete form as release from the bond.
And when you send him out unbound from you, you shall not send him away empty.Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.The command “Let my people go” uses שַׁלַּח (shallach), “send forth, release”, the same root as the sending out in this verse. In both, release means ending the grip one person holds over another.
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