What Does Exodus 21:26 Mean in the King James?
And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The law makes one destroyed eye enough to end the master’s hold over the whole person: bodily harm triggers release.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks wherever one person has power over another’s body. When a blow destroys a servant’s eye, the servant is sent out free; the injury changes the relation between them, and release becomes due. The eye is named as the reason, not a loss the servant must silently absorb.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s status as a servant makes bodily injury theirs to endure without redress.
THE ROOT
יְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ
yeshalchennu
GROWS FROM
ש-ל-ח
sh-l-ḥ
send, send forth, release, let go
“let him go free” in this verse is yeshalchennu. The verb for freeing the servant means to send him out. Freedom here is a concrete departure from the master’s control.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: to send, send forth, release, or let go
שָׁלַח
This is the root of the verse’s verb: the servant’s freedom takes the form of being sent out.
Shiloach: a stream or pool associated with waters sent forth
שִׁלֹחַ
The name carries the same send-forth root; here, as in the verse, what is released moves outward.
עֵין
ʿein
GROWS FROM
ע-י-ן
ʿ-y-n
eye; the same Hebrew word also names a spring or well
English names only the damaged organ, while Hebrew uses the same word for an eye and a spring. Here, injury to that opening is the stated hinge on which the servant’s release turns.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: eye
עַיִן
This is the servant’s actual injured eye; its destruction triggers release.
ʿeinot: springs or wells
עֵינוֹת
The related form names an opening where water emerges, placing the image of a spring beside the eye whose injury brings freedom.
THE PATTERN
When bodily harm meets bondage, scripture makes release visible and concrete.
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.To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,THE THREAD
And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty:The same root ש-ל-ח (shalach, send or release) appears in both verses: release means sending the servant out from another’s control. Deuteronomy makes that departure tangible by saying he must not go away empty.
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