Silly Uncle Wayne
Well-Known Member
- Oct 28, 2017
- 1,332
- 598
- 57
- Country
- Ireland
- Faith
- Charismatic
- Marital Status
- Single
I'm going to address them when I address them and not before. Unlike you I have a life outside these forums and if I am going to tackle a subject I like to to do it in detail, not piecemeal. This means looking at the whole thing - all of the relevant passages as well as the whole process. Once the whole has been assimilated the the details can be covered. So far I've only looked at Exodus, with asides to Deuteronomy where there a parallel passages. I am also, at present, ONLY looking at Hebrew slavery because so far that is the only thing that has been covered.Were you going to address the rest of post #500?.?.?.? Here are the missed/skipped highlights:
- God seems to favor one race of people. Which is a trait humans have absolutely no control over.
- The slave master gets to keep slave bread offspring.
- God seems to write laws which humans are already doing, rather than expressing His disagreement for such practices. Which must mean God is okay with 'slavery' in general.
- The rules of 'slavery' differ between men and women.
- The Bible condones the beating of your slaves, with virtually no regards to what is and is not an acceptable 'justification' for doing so.
- The entire topic of 'slavery' is quite vague, rendering justification for virtually any form of slavery practices.
Some thoughts, though. The laws in Exodus aren't what people are already doing since at that point in time they are still wandering in the wilderness. The laws, based on comments I have read, are unique in that they exist at all. Contemporary laws seem to have nothing to say about slavery so anything goes.
The rules of slavery differ between men and women, but then men and women are different, with different requirements and those differences were exacerbated by the cultural norms of that period.
The laws in Exodus seem to fall into the following categories:
a) This is what you should be doing, e.g Treat the foreigners among you in the same way as yourselves.
b) This is what you shouldn't be doing, e.g. don't boil a kid in its mother's milk
c) if you do something there will be consequences, e.g if you fight and someone gets hurt you have to pay for them, whether by a a life, or financially compensating them.
The only passages so far about damaging slaves have fallen into c). And this style of law is common in both our cultures. If you speed in your car, you will be fined/have points added to your licence. Because there are consequences you wouldn't say that such laws 'condone' speeding, rather the opposite because they clearly shows some form of punishment for the transgression. The same is true for beating slaves. That it happens is accepted, but it clearly isn't turning a blind eye to it - on the contrary it is telling you that there will be punishments for this transgression (though possibly not enough in one case).
I agree the topic is quite vague, but then, unlike you, I get the impression that they were expected to apply a bit of common sense in the application of laws. If the law is specific then there are loopholes, whereas when the law is vague there principles and those principles need to be interpreted and they would have been (read the other laws in Exodus, there are some interesting things about witnesses and accusations and how they were to be applied).
It seems to me that the Ten Commandments are at the heart of the law and these 'additions' are explanations of the practice of the Decalogue. The principle seems to be attacking someone deliberately that ends in decisive death is murder. Attacking someone where injury occurs has a cost (punishment) and someone dying after an attack where the death is not necessarily as a result of the attack is not murder. The latter might seem overly cautious but the implications are that if there is uncertainty in the case of murder then to err on the side of caution lest the judge ends up being party to murder when it is unwarranted.
Nevertheless I don't think it is quite as vague as you seem to make out. I, so far, appear to have understood the process going on, the general principles and the pros and cons of it. It has already been pointed out by you that the laws in Exodus don't apply to foreign slaves. I'm not sure I agree, but I haven't read far enough to be certain, but that is irrelevant at the moment. If these rules don't apply to foreign slaves and the do apply to Hebrew 'slaves', then all the laws apply, because they are Hebrew - whether they are slave or free. Being a cruel slave-beating master does not exempt them from the law in any way.
Now if you will remain patient, I will continue to study and draw appropriate conclusions from the whole law, not just a few verses here and there.
Upvote
0