Matthew Poole and continuators on Exodus 21:4

4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters: the wife and her children shall be her masters , and he shall go out by himself .

That being a true rule and approved both by Scripture and by heathen Authors, that the birth follows the belly, Gen. 21. 10. Gal. 4. 24, 25. and he that owns the tree hath right to all its fruit.

Quest. How was this separation of man and wife agreeable with the first institution of marriage, by which that bond is made indissoluble? Ans. 1. That bond was not necessarily dissolved by this law, both because the separation was at the mans choice, who might have stayed there, if he so pleased; and because the distinction of their habitations might consist with the right and use of matrimony, which the master also would probably permit for his own advantage. Ans. 2. God might here, as well as in the case of divorces, dispense with his own laws and institutions, especially in this case, where he might design this for a punishment to the man for marrying a stranger; which was not pleasing to God, as appears from Deut. 21. 11. Ezra 10. 2. Neh. 13. 23. And that this woman was a stranger and not an Hebrewess is manifest because then she also must have gone out free, ver. 7, 8, 9. and Deut. 15. 12.