Comentário sobre Êxodo 21:27

ואם שן עבדו….יפיל, And if he smite a tooth of his slave…. so that it falls out, etc. Kidushin 24 explains why the laws concerning destroying a slave's eye or tooth are not lumped together by the Torah in one verse but have been divided into two separate laws. Rabbi Sheshet says if the eye of a slave was already blind but the master gouged it out, the slave has to be freed. Accordingly, we have two separate laws concerning how to free a slave. One applies when the eyesight of the slave has been impaired as a result of the master hitting him, the other if even a blind eye has been scratched out by his master. Had the Torah lumped these two kinds of injuries together in a single verse, we would have concluded that the same yardstick is applied in either kind of injury. Just as the tooth becomes useless only when it is knocked out, so we would have thought that an eye becomes useless only when it is gouged out. We would not have assumed that destroying merely the sense of sight in an eye was sufficient reason to let the slave go free seeing the slave did not lose a limb.

ישלחנו, he will release him. The expression שילוח, is similar to the when we read in Deuteronomy 24,3: ושלחה מביתו, “he sends her away from his house;” the reason that the word: חנם, “without any compensation is absent here is the reason why the word: חנם “without compensation,” is absent here in our chapter, [as opposed to verse 11 in our chapter, where automatic release of slaves after 6 years service is discussed Ed.], is to teach us that the release must be accompanied by a document just as the document of divorce to a wife.

תחת שינו, “on account of his tooth.” The Torah teaches us that even though the master owns the slave bodily, this does not mean that each body part of that slave is his to do with as he likes. G-d did not consent to slaves being owned in order for their masters to be able to mutilate them when they are angry at them. The Torah singling out the word: his “tooth” (sing), teaches that even if the slave lost only one tooth through his being beaten this suffices to his master having to free him unconditionally. In the event that the master had caused the slave to lose an eye, and before releasing him he caused him to also lose a tooth, he will have to compensate him financially for the loss of the tooth, as by that time, halachically, he did not own that slave’s body anymore, even though he was still under his physical control. According to our author, the rule that a gentile slave receives his freedom in return for losing a limb, is arrived at by simple logic. If he gains his freedom at the hands of heaven when he becomes unable through disease to perform his duties, how much more does he qualify for his freedom when he has been abused by a human being owning him. [Rabbi Chavell in his glossaries, cites a statement from the Talmud B’rachot 5 according to which the logic is precisely the reverse, i.e. “if a gentile slave receives his freedom in return for having lost a limb as a result of punishment by his master, how much more so must G-d forgive sinners whose entire bodies have been punished by Him with painful sickness and disease!” This is whatDavid asked for when he said in Psalms 118,18: 'יסור יסרני קה ולמות לא נתנני, “the Lord punished me severely but did not hand me over to the angel of death.” Surely, if someone had to endure man’s inhumanity to man, he would be entitled to his release in exchange.]