In what context is Exodus 21:20-21 good?

Caliban said:

Are not laws implicitly telling of what is good and right. Laws are not promoted which encourage harm (not intentionally). Why would a morally upright God include laws to which he knew were bad or harmful to another human if he had the foresight to know how humans would one day apprehend slavery? Laws are not dispassionate as you suggest. Human laws may be--I'd agree with that. But you are suggesting that God is dispassionate about his laws and actively commands injunctions that are harmful to people. The entire institution of slavery is evil--in any form it takes--and everyone knows it. Pushing the date back a few thousand years does not make it more moral.

How could an all knowing God not know this? Can someone please answer this???

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How is God telling them they would be punished for killing their slaves bad or harmful? The point of the law was to stop them from killing their slaves.
If you want God to bring down laws for every sin that people commit then be prepared for things you currently do yourself to be outlawed.

Kees Hogenbirk said:

Okay, so I'm not going to pretend that I've thoroughly studied the book of exodus.

But I'm still curious. I'm going to make 2 assumptions here. Please let me know if any of these 2 are wrong.
1: The entire Bible is the word of God, the creator of everything.
2: God is purely good.

Question: can you explain to me in what context the quote that beating a servant without the servant dying in 1 or 2 days without being punished for it is, or has ever been good in any situation?

I've not copied the verse so you can look it up in your preferred Bible version. As far as I'm aware, they don't differ on a crucial level.

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In a lot of cases the biblical command in the Torah tends to be a way of reigning things in. From modern sensibilities, yeah, it's heinous. But within the context of an ancient bronze age society? Punishing someone for killing their own slave is rather progressive. Like "an eye for an eye" is about curbing and restricting vengeance. It means that if you injure me I can't go and kill you, your family, and your little dog too--there is instead an exaction of justice through a court of law that must happen--the "eye for an eye" statement establishes the limits of what can be exacted out in the court of law in ancient Israel. It's the same reason why the same basic law is also found in Hammurabi's Code.

As such, that bronze age historical context is important for things like this. This is about the instructions God gave to the ancient Israelites for how they were to function as a society, as a nation.

You'll notice that the one religion in the world that observes the Torah--Judaism--doesn't involve people being owned as slaves, or taking people's eyes out. It's because Judaism has a three millennia long tradition of how to observe, apply, and understand the Torah.

Christianity does not teach that the Torah is applicable to us; the point of the Torah in Christianity is as part of the ongoing story that ultimately leads to Jesus. It's why Christians also don't have problems wearing mixed fabrics, or eating a bacon cheeseburger, etc. The Torah isn't for us, and the people that it was given to have their own history and traditions for how to observe it.

Just because something is in the Bible doesn't mean it's to us or for us. Or that it is prescriptive. The Bible isn't a list of divinely ordained prescriptions for Christians.

The point of the Bible in Christianity is Jesus.

-CryptoLutheran