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Obvious Symbolisms: Awls in Ears
When you acquire a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; in the seventh year he shall go free, without payment. … But if the servant declares, “I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not wish to go free,” his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall then remain his servant for life.
When we read this, we first think of piercing an ear, or a permanent change to a person because they choose servitude over freedom. But there is more provocative meaning in just this one verse alone.
For starters, we are talking about someone who chooses servitude over freedom. We used to think such a choice would be rare, or at least unlikely. But we see in the safety-first culture around us a great many people who would rather have a secure life where they are told what to do, rather than have to make their own decisions, suffer their own consequences, and deal with the vagaries of risk. The decision to remain a servant does not seem quite as unusual as it did before Covid.
But think further on the imagery: piercing the ear of the servant says that the servant will listen to his master forevermore. Freedom means choosing what we want to hear, making decisions based on weighing inputs from different sources. Piercing that ear means that the servant no longer has to weigh different options: he listens to his master.
The door or doorpost in use is that of the servant’s master’s home. Impaling the ear into the doorpost tells us that the servant’s blood is being infused into the symbolism of that door: the physical structure of the home as well as the spiritual structure of that particular family. The servant is choosing to become, for the rest of his life, part of what constitutes the structure that protects and houses the family within.
Going further: the word for “doorpost” is the very same one that we marked with the blood of the sheep at the Passover: identifying a Jewish home for the Destroyer so he would not kill the first-born within. Marking the doorpost with blood is a core identifier for the Jewish people: it advertises who we are, and what our mission on this earth is.
So to impale the servant’s ear means that the servant is identifying with that same mission, aligning himself with the sheep whose blood was used to mark the doors in Egypt. This aligns with the mezuzah (the same “doorpost” word) that Jews put on our homes, reminding us of the words of the Torah when we go out and when we come in. Jews already constrain our lives with the mezuzah, because these scrolls are constant reminders of our shared background, and our aspirations to be G-d’s emissaries in this world.
Bringing it all together, it helps show how a servant who chooses to stay is doing more than merely choosing servitude over freedom. The symbolism tells us that the servant is choosing to be part of something greater than himself, the entire home and family within that structure, along with the mission that comes along with being part of a family dedicated to serving G-d.
[an @iwe, @susanquinn and @blessedblacksmith production]
Published in General
““I love my master, and my wife and children”…from this part of the sentence, it sounds to me like if he goes free, then his wife and children must stay with the master. Is this a correct reading?
I would much rather have voluntary enslavement over voting for all of us being enslaved :/
Not everyone wants freedom.
Yes.
As an Evangelical Presbyterian, I really appreciate these lessons from the Old Testament. I’m now starting through the Bible again in my daily devotions, and you interpretations are a very helpful addition to my Ryrie Study Bible. Thank you all.
You can search by any word at all on my blog at creativejudaism.org. And if you have questions for which you do not have a good answer, please do not hesitate to ask me! I am always looking for new questions to ask the text.
Given that reading, the passage would imply that a person choosing freedom over slavery may not only involve taking personal risk…but abandoning those he loves.
This has certainly been the case with the totalitarian regimes of our own times, where speaking or acting against the regime involves grave consequences for an individual’s family and, often, his friends. We also see some of this in the age of Wokeness, where some people are afraid to speak out because they fear the damage to the careers and friendships of their friends and children.