I don’t want to go – B’har
When it is time for a servant to be released, what happens if he refuses to go? He says, “I like being here; I don’t want to leave” (Ex. 21:5-6).
The rule is that no servant may willingly embrace servitude for his lifetime. Freedom is his right but it is also his duty.
He is punished by getting what he wants. He is punished by being a servant for ever.
But Rashi says that “for ever” only means until the Jubilee Year (Lev. 25:10). When that time comes he has to go free. It is his second chance. In case he was foolish the first time round, now he has had time to live to regret his action or lack of action.
Hard as it sometimes is to be free and to have to make your own decisions, you must not choose to avoid thinking, to repress feeling, to reject deciding as a free man.
If you get to like being a prisoner or a serf you have abdicated the independence and glory which God has ordained.
