How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

In this situation, it is highly likely the father is selling his daughter because he does not want her to starve or to be abandoned. In that day, options were limited, and it was often a choice between life and death. So when the Bible gives guidance to a father about selling his daughter into servitude, the Bible is not saying this is a good thing to do. It is recognizing that if a father were to find himself in a place where this was necessary (for reasons all too common at that time), he should do it in a way that protects her and preserves her dignity. Reading the entire chapter where this verse is found, we see an attempt to flesh out ways of protecting those who were in bondservant arrangements. For a father, if he had to sell his daughter as a slave to protect her or provide for her, he could not sell her to be given as a prostitute for physical pleasure. She could not be disposed of as a piece of property the new owner no longer desired. He must treat her like a family member, and if marriage is not a possibility in the future, she must eventually be set free.