Slavery

[Nooj]

Torah serves a number of purposes, but on the whole providing a fully worked out perfect morality isn't one of them. It includes all sorts of 'compromises' short of the ideal. And yet still Israel never got close to keeping it.

Are you saying that Torah provides imperfect, defective morality?

It would have been so simple. The former Hebrew slaves flee from Egypt. Their 400 years of slavery is still fresh in their mind. They gather around the base of Mt. Sinai which is aflame and shaking with the might of the LORD. One could well argue that the awed Israelites will accept at that point anything that God requires.

Exodus 24:8 And he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, "All that the LORD has spoken we will do and we will heed."

And so God reveals to them: "remember your slavery in Egyptl, never will you enslave another."

He never speaks the words that he does in Exodus 21:1 "Should you buy a Hebrew slave..."

There was no compromise to be made, because the Israelites would have been acutely aware of how horrible slavery was. Enslaving others would have been the last thing on their minds, in fact they'd be ripe for a theology of abolitionism. Imagine the newly freed African American population, would they have wanted to enslave others knowing what they knew? If God had not told the Israelites to continue the practice of slavery...oh, it would have been so simple.