What Does Exodus 21:27 Mean in the King James?
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 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 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
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 thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty:Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?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 afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto 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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