Slavery in the OT

[ciaphas]

Why is slavery mentioned in the old testament with no attempt to deter people from it? I think everyone here would agree that slavery is immoral, it seems strange that a book meant as a moral guide would bring up such a subject without emphasising the immorality of it.

Is there a logical explanation for this? It's just that I feel uncomfortable in the knowlege that these books are taken as moral guidelines.

 

[wayseer]

Because slavery was the norm - a bit like owning a mobile phone - everyone had one, or two.

 

[martymonster]

Here is the answer to that from the new testament, but you won't like it or understand it.

Don't worry, not many people do.

1Co 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

 

[ebia]

Why is slavery mentioned in the old testament with no attempt to deter people from it? I think everyone here would agree that slavery is immoral, it seems strange that a book meant as a moral guide would bring up such a subject without emphasising the immorality of it.

Is there a logical explanation for this? It's just that I feel uncomfortable in the knowlege that these books are taken as moral guidelines.

For most of the ancient world slavery was much like fossil fuels are for us - we know the problem, but just giving them up presents enormous problems.

The Old Testment takes for granted that slavery is wrong - its single biggest theme in the light of which everything else is understood is redemption from slavery.

 

[DamianWarS]

Why is slavery mentioned in the old testament with no attempt to deter people from it? I think everyone here would agree that slavery is immoral, it seems strange that a book meant as a moral guide would bring up such a subject without emphasising the immorality of it.

Is there a logical explanation for this? It's just that I feel uncomfortable in the knowledge that these books are taken as moral guidelines.

the jews lived in a time where if you didn't have slaves then it probably meant you were a slave yourself. We see jews participating in both roles in the old testament. You can't exactly take over a land and just ignore the remaining survivors. Either you kill them, drive them out, or enslave them. Slavery is a product of defeating a people group and quite normal in that time.

the old testament actually had laws for the protecting the treatment of slaves for example:

Exodus 20:10
but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

Exodus 21:20
If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished.

Exodus 21:26-27
If a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye.
And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth.

Exodus 23:9 says You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Leviticus 19:33-34
When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.
The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 23:15-16
You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. "He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.

so from these verse we see that slaves had a day of rest once a week. If they were injured with something as simple as a broken tooth they were set free. If they were mistreated their owners were accountable for their actions and if a slave ran away from their owner the owner is to let the slave go and allow them to live where they want. We also see a general statement of how to treat foreigners and a to actually show them love not hate. hebrew slaves had even more rights so I don't see how the bible shows us immoral actions when it comes to slavery. Its not like they sailed ships to distant lands, robbed the people there, sailed them back then sold them into slavery. If that was the case it would be a different story.

 

[razeontherock]

There's also the whole cultural difference. Not having washing machines or even running water, there would've been no society w/o some employed in the menial tasks. Not too different from minimum wage earners today, eh?

 

[ciaphas]

I'm not sure how we can just say that slavery was taken for granted as wrong. For a time, the bible was a huge moral compass. For all of those people slavery was seen to be acceptable in the eyes of the lord. Even if we keep slaves well and try reeeeeeeeeeally hard not to knock out their eye or tooth, we are keeping them captive. Your lord was very adamant about people having free will, and no matter how well you keep someone it is still immoral to keep them in service against their will. If it were acceptable to keep slaves if you treated them well then why don't we have them now?

It may have been a part of life in that time, but many families survived without slaves. The lack of a washing machine is no excuse to take someone's freedom for several years of their life.

 

[ebia]

I'm not sure how we can just say that slavery was taken for granted as wrong. For a time, the bible was a huge moral compass. For all of those people slavery was seen to be acceptable in the eyes of the lord.

People will always distort to suit what suits them. The narrative of the bible is fundamentally anti-biblical if allowed to work on its own terms - in the big picture of Exodus and New Exodus, in the micro-picture of the story of Onesimus, but that doesn't guarantee everyone will read it that way. In the end, in the west at least, those narratives did do their subversive work - the men like Wilberforce who led the drive against the Anglo-American slavery system were driven to do so by those biblical texts.

Your argument, which comes around here on a regular basis, assumes that the bible is fundamentally a set of commands with a little bit of narrative glue, so that if the bible doesn't command "do not keep slaves" then it isn't anti-slavery, but the bible is primarily narrative and it is through narrative that it does its work. And its biggest single narrative that provides the lens for the rest of the narrative is - wait for it - God setting slaves free! If you wanted to describe the whole bible in four words those four would serve as good a summary as any.

It may have been a part of life in that time, but many families survived without slaves. The lack of a washing machine is no excuse to take someone's freedom for several years of their life.

A few individuals manage without consuming fossil fuels. Viritually everyone in developing countries manages with a tiny fraction of the fuel burned by an average American or Australian. We all know what those fuels are doing to the planet. Have you given them up?

 

[david_x]

Why is slavery mentioned in the old testament with no attempt to deter people from it? I think everyone here would agree that slavery is immoral, it seems strange that a book meant as a moral guide would bring up such a subject without emphasising the immorality of it.

Is there a logical explanation for this? It's just that I feel uncomfortable in the knowlege that these books are taken as moral guidelines.

Why didn't they have the cure for small pox?

We are talking about human beings, understanding takes time. Slavery was being tested in the bible times, now we see it as wrong because we have learned from past mistakes. They did not have the time we were gifted with.

We can not expect people in the past to cure small pox just as we could not expect someone today to cure amputations... but maybe in the future.

 

[ciaphas]

Our understanding takes time, but god decided to lay out a set of moral guidelines. He clearly states that killing and stealing are wrong, he could tell us that slavery was wrong and then the whole matter would have been cleared up.

 

[silence_dogood]

Why is slavery mentioned in the old testament with no attempt to deter people from it? I think everyone here would agree that slavery is immoral, it seems strange that a book meant as a moral guide would bring up such a subject without emphasising the immorality of it.

Is there a logical explanation for this? It's just that I feel uncomfortable in the knowlege that these books are taken as moral guidelines.

I know this is going to be a waste of time, but you need to understand that slavery in the Bible was profoundly different than it is in our time.

First of all, the Bible ALWAYS condemned that kind of slavery we commonly think of today when we think about slavery or see it portrayed in movies such as "Roots" or "Amistad". We see this condemnation in both Exodus 21:16 and 1 Timothy 1:8-10.

What you have to realize is that slavery in the Bible was primarily indenture based. That is, that a person agreed to act as a servent for a given number or years or until a debt was paid off. In this case, the slave entered into slavery willingly.

What's more, in many cases, the slaves were considered to be one of the family and were given the authority to carry out business and legal transactions o the part of the master, as well as often inheriting a part of the master's estate upon his death.

Don't confuse this with the African slavery you see on TV. Two completely different things.

 

[beforHim]

Some of the replies you got were rather eronious. Slavery really is a "biggie" when it comes to people and the Bible, so I truely want to be sincere here. The way I'll do this is not to try and explain it all here, but just give you the link to a reat explinaton, which will clear up MANY misconceptions.

http://christian-thinktank.com/qnoslave.html

It's rather long, and might need to be read more than once to catch all the info (because it's so long). But trust me, it's well worth your time- that is, if you're actually searching for an answer, which I'm guessing you really are.

 

[ciaphas]

My point of being here was more to see how people react and try to look at the ways different people see the bible.

Truth is, that article is a little too long for me to give a proper read to. I was glad that some sensible answers came up, but I think people will often take the bible as fact and come up with ridiculous answers to justify it. I feel that this is the wrong way to look at things. We had answers such as "because everyone did it" and "they didn't have washing machines" this is an aweful way to think act. I don't consider using a slave to be on par with using fossil fuels. That is comparing taking an man's freedom to using a finite resource.

I still don't believe that all slavery was through indentured men, and think that taking both the man and his family was immoral.

 

[david_x]

Our understanding takes time, but god decided to lay out a set of moral guidelines. He clearly states that killing and stealing are wrong, he could tell us that slavery was wrong and then the whole matter would have been cleared up.

The people were not ready for that yet, we waited until the late 1900s and it almost destroyed our nation. People were ready to see that murder and thievery were wrong, but not that slavery was wrong.

 

[stever the believer]

The Bible is not simply a moral guide; it is also recorded history. The Bible does not tell us to have slaves; it tells us that people used to have slaves.

 

[Satt]

Most of us in the world are still slaves. We just don't all realise it. We may not have "slave owners" in the traditional perspective, but anyone who owes anyone else money (like credit cards, or a mortgage) makes you become their slave. Why do you go to work every day...to pay someone else a debt you owe them...then essentially you are working for them and are "indebted" (a slave) to them. This is not true for all, but most. Just something to think about. The Federal Reserve in the USA made a lot of people become slaves without even realizing it.

 

[A_maize]

One more thing, sure God could have said 'do not take slaves at all', but we simply do not know if that was even possible for people to obey that in those times, as integrated as it was. Remember, a single bad harvest meant literally watching your family starve.

As another analogy, Jesus told his disciples that Moses allowed divorce, which pretty much meant abandoning a woman to her own survival in those brutal, brutal times, because of the 'hardened hearts' of men. Perhaps slavery falls into that category as well, a necessary evil, but each to his own opinion.

 

[ciaphas]

You are indebted to pay back money you borrowed. That isn't unfair, you are free to earn the money in whatever way you choose, you can move where you want and aren't expected to follow any order they could want to give without question. If you default on a payment you might owe more money or be declared bankrupt, these things might be unpleasant but you retain the right to freedom.

When people were writing the old testament, it wasn't intended as a historical document, although it is occasionally used as one by some people. They weren't writing about the rules of slavery just so people several thousand years in the future would know about their life. It was written for the purpose of guidance.

Many of you talk about how slaves were integrated into families. the severe beating of slaves held no punishment in the eyes of the lord.

Exodus 21:20-21 (King James Version)


20And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
21Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

 

[beforHim]

My point of being here was more to see how people react and try to look at the ways different people see the bible.

So what is it you're really trying to accomplish here:
a) "see how people react and try to look at the ways different people see the Bible"
b) rock our faith (by putting forward the usual objections about the bible and slavery, capatilizing on the bogus answers given by Christians and ignoring any real answers when finally given, as you have done here)
c) truely and sincerely seek the truth

So far, it seems b) is more what you're doing. I agree that "they're like cell phones, everyone had one or two", or "fossil fuels", or "they didn't ave washing machines" are totally bogus and wrong answers. Hence why I actually gave you a sincere, serious scholarly answer. My answer actually clears up problems like the one you mentioned:

Many of you talk about how slaves were integrated into families. the severe beating of slaves held no punishment in the eyes of the lord.

Exodus 21:20-21 (King James Version)


20And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished.
21Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

So if you really are here to seek the truth, please read the article. If you dismiss it because it's too long (yet take a lot of time to sift through all these answers you know are bogus, coming up with objections to everyone), then it seems to me that you really are not sincerely seeking after the truth.

 

[A_maize]

You are correct that the OT was written for guidance, but you have to realize to whom and when it was written. The laws you mention were declared after the Jews left 400+ years of slavery in Egypt, when they were just declaring their own nation. Life was brutal, genocide and plagues were common, and enemies were all around. There were very little transportation methods, little farming technology, almost no judicial system, and everyday life was a struggle.

The majority of those laws were written for those people of those times, to keep society afloat. People would be wrong to follow many of them today.

And again, the law you spoke of beating a slave, what do you mean that it "held no punishment in the eyes of the lord"???. It was Moses who gave that law, not God. You have to distinguish between what men did, and what God did, or wanted.

And as Jesus said later about divorce, it could easily have been Moses giving into the hardened hearts of men, but that is for another debate and discussion.

Anyway, the questions you ask are hit at the core of many peoples stance against the Bible. Keep'em coming, I'm sure many folks have the same questions as you do, and are also looking for explanations.