It’s better to be a SLAVE in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!

[tonychanyt]

Before Moses parted the Red Sea, New Living Translation, Exodus 14:

10 As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them. They cried out to the LORD, 11 and they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? 12 Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves [H5647] to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’”

Some Israelites preferred being slaves over death.

Why didn't God ban slavery entirely?

We should distinguish between the general system of ancient slavery and the Colonial system of slavery. The Bible did not condone colonial slavery. Slavery existed in various forms throughout the ancient world. It was part of the ancient system of economy. The concept was so ingrained that it showed in their language. The word H5647 was ambiguous.

Strong's Hebrew: 5647. עָבַד (abad) — 289 Occurrences

English Standard Version:

Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Brown-Driver-Briggs:

1. labour, work
2. work for another, serve him by labour.
   personwork by means of another, use him as slave, Exodus 1:14; Leviticus 25:39
3. serve as subjects
4. serve God
5. serve with Levitical service

Genesis 31:

41 These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times.

At the burning bush in Exodus 3:

12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

To the ancient people, working hard labor for someone was like being a slave to him. H5647 was used in a positive as well as negative sense.

 

[tonychanyt]

Put your trust in Him! Not in men, or technologies or vaccines, or sciences.

What kind of machine did you use to write the above?