Slavery

[Reepicheep]

The fact that God gives his people the green light to purchase slaves from neighboring nations; the fact that he said slaves could be raped, manslaughtered, and blackmailed; the fact that God multiple times calls slaves property, these facts should dispel the fiction of chattel slavery versus Biblical slavery. Slavery is cruel in the Bible and outside of it.

God did not give HIs people the green light. God did not say it was okay to rape, kill or blackmail slaves. God knew His people were going to do this no matter what He said.
What God did was put at least some limit on it, to reduce the cruelty involved. Consider that when God brought them out of Egypt they wailed about how hungry they were and talked about all the good food they’d had in Egypt. Exodus 16. (Which was nonsense. They had been slaves in Egypt and their babies were being murdered to keep their numbers down.) Then when God gave them manna–* literally *food falling out of the sky for them to gather-- many of them disobeyed His simple order not to keep any overnight because God would give them more each morning. Then they disobeyed the order not to gather any on one day out of the week, even though they were shown that what they gathered on the sixth day would remain fresh for the seventh day.
If they wouldn’t obey over such a simple thing how could they be trusted to obey when God told them not to take slaves from among those they defeated in war?
They would not have obeyed. But God commanded that at least they show some measure of mercy to the slaves, and that command they (usually) respected.

Consider again that Christ told the Pharisees that Moses accepted the practice of divorce *because the hearts of the Israelites were hard. * Mark 10. They would have done it no matter what. So Moses required that they at least give the divorced woman a document to prove she had been properly married in the first place. Moses was not condoning divorce, he was conceding it would happen anyway. (“But in the beginning it was not so.”)

If God were silent on the matter of slavery it would have been better than what it’s claimed he did say. He approved of its use and gave great detail on how to invoke misery and cruelty upon slaves. There is no conflict between proclaiming the Gospel and not telling people that it’s ok to own and harm slaves.

He gave detail on *reducing * the misery and cruelty upon slaves.

Here’s an example. Deuteronomy 21: 10-14. If you want that captive woman for your bed, first you’ve got to marry her. Also you give her a full month to prepare so she’s not just being grabbed out of the prisoner pool and forced into bed. And you can’t sell her off like any other slave if you get tired of her.
This is barbaric by our (21st century North American) standards, but it’s head and shoulders above the normal practice in all the other nations that surrounded Israel. And again it was not a choice between having slavery and not having slavery; the Israelites wouldn’t give up divorce because their hearts were hardened. What chance was there that they would give up slavery?

 

[katy]

1, As unfortunate as it sometimes is, a person decides to be a prostitute. One exception is SLAVERY, under which a woman born a slave becomes a “female servant” whether she wants to or not.

1. So, slavery is a metaphor of our situation regarding sin and salvation? So it’s good to allow millions of innocent human beings to be born, live and die slaves, just so others might have a visual “reminder” of sin?

That’s a great idea! I doubt it would take an all-knowing, wise, loving creator to come up with a cruel plan like that, do you? Honestly? Then why get rid of it? It might be better (spiritually) if we re-instituted slavery as it was in 1850!

I’m not able to be a theologian, but I think you are wrestling with a form of the problem of evil. Probably most people throughout history have been slaves of one sort or other. Racial slavery was a fairly recent version. God mitigated in the OT as with divorce, but free will is still operating. Jesus allowed the free will of people to treat him as a slave in the manner of his death, but then rose victorious over all kinds of evil. I don’t understand the whole thing either. Jesus’ death and resurrection leads me to believe he is worth following and that we will understand eventually just as my 46 year old son now understands why we allowed doctors to torture him regarding his ears but couldn’t when he was 2.

 

[Reepicheep]

Catholics are supposed to avoid moral relativism, not use it as an excuse for advocating the practice for millennia.

Also, and this is key, the claim that God had to consider that there was slavery all around withers under the very mildest of scrutiny:

1. When God gave his detailed instructions on how to acquire and use slaves his people hadn’t owned slaves for over four centuries.

And God knew they were going to* get *slaves just as soon as they could. Which means as soon as they won their first battle against anyone who made war upon them.
These were people who couldn’t be trusted to obey the order not to save a pot of manna overnight. Exodus 16.
How could they be trusted not to take slaves once they had the power to?

In Exodus 20-24, where God first gave those instructions to the Hebrews, they were in the desert having escaped the enslavement of the Egyptians. Depending the verse they had been enslaved for 400, 430, or 450 years. Slaves don’t own slaves, so that means they hadn’t practiced it in all of that time. Not only that, they witnessed firsthand the cruelty that comes with being enslaved.

In short, none of the people in that desert had ever owned a slave and thus God did not have to work around any ongoing enslavement.

God knew they would get slaves, so He put limits on what they could do with the slaves.

2. In numerous ways God had no trouble telling his people to not do things that other cultures did, and to do things other cultures didn’t do.
God told his people what to eat and not eat, what to wear, to honor the Sabbath, and numerous other regulations. To say God had to let the Hebrews enslave people because this tribe or that tribe ignores all the various ways God set a unique path for his people.

And yet they did these things. Again and again and again they disobeyed Him. Even in little things, like keeping jars of manna overnight or trying to gather more on the seventh day. Later, while still in the desert, they made and worshipped an idol-the golden calf- which they made out of the gold the people of Egypt had given them when they left Egypt. They could not be trusted.

3. In Leviticus 20:23 God in no uncertain terms says not to follow the practices of neighboring nations.
“You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.” Apologists always ignore this passage when the topic of Biblical slavery comes up. Either he didn’t mean what he said, or God sees no problem with slavery. Based on other passages the latter seems more likely.

Yes He told them in no uncertain terms. Yet they kept disobeying Him.
God spent more than a thousand years hammering the simplest lessons into the heads of the Israelites, till by the time of Christ He’d got them to the point where they might actually listen when Christ told them not to divorce their wives at all. Getting them to listen when He told them not to keep slaves took a while longer.

 

[GLam8833]

I used to be that ppl become slaves b/c they
are too poor to support themselves see Lev.
25:10 Others sold their daughters or sons
to help them financially. Jesus himself said
“the poor you will always have among you”
So it is economic, not social in nature in
this case, but holding captives and the
vulnerable as slaves, as in the American
slavery of African captives is wrong.

 

[Reepicheep]

(snipped)
2. So, slavery is a metaphor of our situation regarding sin and salvation? So it’s good to allow millions of innocent human beings to be born, live and die slaves, just so others might have a visual “reminder” of sin?

That’s a great idea! I doubt it would take an all-knowing, wise, loving creator to come up with a cruel plan like that, do you? Honestly? Then why get rid of it? It might be better (spiritually) if we re-instituted slavery as it was in 1850!

Non sequitur–it does not follow.
“Slavery can be used as a metaphor” most certainly does not mean that God condoned slavery in order to let it be used as a metaphor.

 

[e_c]

I’m not clear on what the problem is… Not all forms of slavery are intrinsically evil. God doesn’t sanction chattel slavery in Scripture or Tradition… This is the only intrinsically evil kind of slavery, the kind where a person is captured without any justification other than utility for the capturer.

Anyone looking for a detailed treatment on the topic might pick up Fr. Panzer’s book, “The Popes and Slavery.”

 

[Mavzylor]

Christ simply could not

Come again?

 

[pensmama87]

The idea that “slaves can’t own slaves” is a curious one to me. Social hierarchies exist on the low rungs as well as the high.

I find slavery appalling, but it has not always worked the same way in all cultures and times, and it’s important to remember that. As far as I can remember, the OT never says, “Slavery is good,” but it does say to treat slaves fairly (according to the harsh living conditions at that time), to make right wrongs against them, and that in jubilee years they were to be released.

It’s also my understanding that many aspects of the Law were added after the fact, not direct quotes from Moses.

 

[midori]

But why didn’t Jesus or the apostles say “Stop owning people,” or words to that effect, if God did not approve of it?

Slavery has been part of human existence forever-- the Greek had a Greek slave, there were the peasant-serfs of the Middle Ages, and so on. It was mostly an economic thing. Belloc has some nice writing on the subject. But if we’re talking about the Hebrew people, specifically, remember that in Deuteronomy, slavery was very strictly regulated as being a short-term thing, and if it was to transition into being a lifetime thing, it was at the slave’s personal preference:

12 If your kin, a Hebrew man or woman, sells himself or herself to you, he or she is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year you shall release him or her as a free person.

13 When you release a male from your service, as a free person, you shall not send him away empty-handed, 14 but shall weigh him down with gifts from your flock and threshing floor and wine press; as the Lord, your God, has blessed you, so you shall give to him.

15 For remember that you too were slaves in the land of Egypt, and the Lord, your God, redeemed you. That is why I am giving you this command today.

16 But if he says to you, “I do not wish to leave you,” because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, 17 you shall take an awl and put it through his ear** into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. Your female slave, also, you shall treat in the same way.

18 Do not be reluctant when you let them go free, since the service they have given you for six years was worth twice a hired laborer’s salary; and the Lord, your God, will bless you in everything you do.
**

 

[Mavzylor]

I really hope to see an answer that doesn’t just say, “Slavery was the norm, God couldn’t do anything.” God can do anything. Adultery was also “the norm”.

 

[e_c]

No one said “lead a slave revolt.”

How about* “Thou shalt not own people”*?

Or how about Jesus saying, *“You have heard it said, don’t mistreat a slave. But I say to you, do not buy and sell others at all.”
*
They say Jesus “raised the bar” on moral teaching, right?

I mean, how can God be concerned about “adultery in your heart” if you look at an attractive person but not care at all about people bought and sold like property. Exodus actually says, “…he is your property,” when referring to a slave.

???

I missed this post.

Paul says slaves should be obedient. Even if we grant the evil of that particular situation, which I don’t know that we should, the prudent thing is probably not to oppose the institution, which could have ended very badly.

Regarding the Gospel teaching, there was not the same kind of abuse of the Law in this regard apparently. But remember, the Gospels present a sliver of the public ministry, as John notes.

We still have slavery in America. Today we might call it something else, like a chain gang, but the basic reality is the same: institutional coerced labor.

 

[NeedImprovement]

NeedImprovement;14863546:

. . . Out of all slavery’s ugliness comes a very striking analogy where our personal sin is concerned ; when we become slaves to sin. We need a Redeemer.

1. So, slavery is a metaphor of our situation regarding sin and salvation? So it’s good to allow millions of innocent human beings to be born, live and die slaves, just so others might have a visual “reminder” of sin?

Metaphor : *A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. * (Oxford Dictionary)

Analogy : *A comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification. * (Oxford Dictionary)

I honestly don’t know how you came to that conclusion. No one is justifying slavery. I find your interpretation of my post somewhat skewed . . .though I’m not sure why.
I apologize, but I’m afraid I can’t see your logic. Your response above appears about as far off base as it would have been if (here’s a new analogy for you) I had interpreted your response as justification for abortion.

This is a moral theology thread. If the analogy between sin and slavery doesn’t belong here, then it doesn’t belong anywhere.

Good luck with your thread, and God bless.

---

For anyone else who may possibly be interested ( ** highlights** mine ):

All scriptural passages taken from the NAB.

John 8:34

Jesus answered them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

Romans 6:6

We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in** slavery **to sin.

**Galatians 5:1 **

For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

2 Peter 2:19

They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a person is a slave of whatever overcomes him.

 

[Reepicheep]

I really hope to see an answer that doesn’t just say, “Slavery was the norm, God couldn’t do anything.” God can do anything. Adultery was also “the norm”.

And yet adultery did not disappear.
Theft was forbidden, but theft did not disappear.
Slavery would not have disappeared had God added an eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt take no slaves”.
Why then did God have a Commandment against adultery and not one against slavery, if neither Commandment was going to end the evil it forbade?

I don’t know.

What I do know: God is wiser than I am. God was preparing to spend the next thousand years or so turning the nation of Israel into a people who could listen to Christ’s teaching and at least try to follow it.
God chose to include adultery but not slavery in the Commandments. That does not mean God condoned slavery.
One more point. Adultery was not ‘the norm’. Marriage was the norm. Adultery was an offence against that norm.

 

[Dodge_pursuit]

Metaphor : *A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. * (Oxford Dictionary)

Analogy : *A comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification. * (Oxford Dictionary)

I honestly don’t know how you came to that conclusion. No one is justifying slavery. I find your interpretation of my post somewhat skewed . . .though I’m not sure why.
I apologize, but I’m afraid I can’t see your logic. Your response above appears about as far off base as it would have been if (here’s a new analogy for you) I had interpreted your response as justification for abortion.

This is a moral theology thread. If the analogy between sin and slavery doesn’t belong here, then it doesn’t belong anywhere.

Good luck with your thread, and God bless.

---

For anyone else who may possibly be interested ( ** highlights** mine ):

You honestly don’t know where I got the idea that you were suggesting slavery was a useful analogy for sin? Maybe I got it from your post, wherein you said:

**Out of all slavery’s ugliness comes a very striking analogy where our personal sin is concerned ; when we become slaves to sin. We need a Redeemer.
**
You said slavery was an analogy for sin. How can you say you have no idea what I was speaking of? Are you serious?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The Bible says to treat slaves well

There is a general call to be nice to slaves, but once it gets to specifics show how empty the words for niceness truly are.

You can’t authorize beating a slave if you’re supposed to be nice to them.
You can’t authorize manslaughtering a slave if you’re supposed to be nice to them.
You can’t authorize blackmailing a slave if you’re supposed to be nice to them.
You can’t authorize forcing a slave to have intimate relations with your or your son if you’re supposed to be nice to them.
You can’t call them property if you’re supposed to be nice to them.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

God did not give HIs people the green light. God did not say it was okay to rape,

Exodus 21:7-9 talks about a daughter being sold to a man to be used by either him or his son. The sold daughter doesn’t have any say as to whether she will have intercourse with either the slaver or his son.

kill

Exodus 21:20-21 says in no uncertain terms that a man can beat his slave with a rod, and if that slave dies a day or two later then there is to be no punishment for the man who did the killing. God approves killing slaves so long as the death isn’t the same day as the beating.

or blackmail slaves.

Exodus 21:2-6 says male Hebrew slaves were to serve for six years. Any wife or children that came about during that time were not to be released. After the six years were up the man had a choice: Go out alone or agree to stay a slave to the blackmailer for life in order to stay with his family. That is straight-up blackmail.

God knew His people were going to do this no matter what He said.

God also knew that some people would murder even though he said not to, yet he didn’t allow it or say it would not be punishable. The same could be said for a great many things God said was wrong.

Think about this: When Moses had not circumcised his son God was this close to killing Moses. The only thing that saved him was Moses’ wife quickly circumcising their son with a rock just before her husband would have been killed. God gave no quarter on circumcision, but decided he wouldn’t speak a negative word about slavery and let the people take several thousand years to figure out it was wrong.

When the man in the Old Testament was caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath, God himself said he was to be killed. God gave no quarter with regards to honoring the Sabbath. It speaks poorly of God that these less important things had a far higher priority then treating human beings as human.

What God did was put at least some limit on it, to reduce the cruelty involved.

I’ll bring up my previous analogy: Would you call good a town that allowed for the kidnapping and rape of women but only for six days a week as opposed to seven?

Consider that when God brought them out of Egypt they wailed about how hungry they were and talked about all the good food they’d had in Egypt. Exodus 16. (Which was nonsense. They had been slaves in Egypt and their babies were being murdered to keep their numbers down.) Then when God gave them manna–* literally *food falling out of the sky for them to gather-- many of them disobeyed His simple order not to keep any overnight because God would give them more each morning. Then they disobeyed the order not to gather any on one day out of the week, even though they were shown that what they gathered on the sixth day would remain fresh for the seventh day.

We don’t tell people to do wrong because there is a chance that some of them might do wrong anyway. We tell them to do right, and then the people are responsible if they fail to do it. It’s only in things like defending Biblical slavery do we get presented with the ludicrous argument that we should tell people it’s ok to do evil if they might just do it anyway.

If they wouldn’t obey over such a simple thing how could they be trusted to obey when God told them not to take slaves from among those they defeated in war?

Little Johnny was going to hit those girls on the playground anyway, so I told him that’s it’s ok to hit girls except not in the face.

They would not have obeyed. But God commanded that at least they show some measure of mercy to the slaves, and that command they (usually) respected.

As I explained above, what God said to do was not merciful.

Consider again that Christ told the Pharisees that Moses accepted the practice of divorce *because the hearts of the Israelites were hard. * Mark 10. They would have done it no matter what. So Moses required that they at least give the divorced woman a document to prove she had been properly married in the first place. Moses was not condoning divorce, he was conceding it would happen anyway. (“But in the beginning it was not so.”)

I can point to the verse where God said that about divorce. Which verse can I point to that says the same thing about slavery?

He gave detail on *reducing * the misery and cruelty upon slaves.

Here’s an example. Deuteronomy 21: 10-14. If you want that captive woman for your bed, first you’ve got to marry her. Also you give her a full month to prepare so she’s not just being grabbed out of the prisoner pool and forced into bed. And you can’t sell her off like any other slave if you get tired of her.
This is barbaric by our (21st century North American) standards, but it’s head and shoulders above the normal practice in all the other nations that surrounded Israel. And again it was not a choice between having slavery and not having slavery; the Israelites wouldn’t give up divorce because their hearts were hardened. What chance was there that they would give up slavery?

Apologists are always the first to denounce moral relativism and the first to employ it. God can tell his people what fringes to wear on their clothes or whether to put out a fire but he (a man who can see all things from all times, including a world where slavery is illegal and considered wrong) can’t say a bad word about slavery.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Slavery has been part of human existence forever-- the Greek had a Greek slave, there were the peasant-serfs of the Middle Ages, and so on.

Was honoring the Sabbath a part of human existence forever? Was circumcision? Were gleening laws? God had his people do a lot of things other cultures didn’t, and not do things other cultures did.

Yet one of the cruelest things was left off of the list.

It was mostly an economic thing. Belloc has some nice writing on the subject.

Again God sees all things including all future cultures. He could have given his people a societal structure that allowed for prosperity/sustenance but didn’t require endorsing cruelty against men. Believers are quick to state God’s powerlessness when no other explanation is satisfactory.

But if we’re talking about the Hebrew people, specifically, remember that in Deuteronomy, slavery was very strictly regulated as being a short-term thing, and if it was to transition into being a lifetime thing, it was at the slave’s personal preference:

As I stated above, making a man choose between freedom and his family is blackmail and not a personal preference. It’s Hobson Choice.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

We still have slavery in America. Today we might call it something else, like a chain gang, but the basic reality is the same: institutional coerced labor.

According to the Bible children can be born into slavery. According to the Bible people can be purchased and remain in slavery forever. The difference is that we put prisoners to work as a punishment for their deeds. Many of the different people God allows to become slaves have commited no crime whatsoever.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

And yet adultery did not disappear.
Theft was forbidden, but theft did not disappear.
Slavery would not have disappeared had God added an eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt take no slaves”.
Why then did God have a Commandment against adultery and not one against slavery, if neither Commandment was going to end the evil it forbade?

I don’t know.

That’s the first thing you’ve said that I’ve agreed with

What I do know: God is wiser than I am. God was preparing to spend the next thousand years or so turning the nation of Israel into a people who could listen to Christ’s teaching and at least try to follow it.
God chose to include adultery but not slavery in the Commandments. That does not mean God condoned slavery.
One more point. Adultery was not ‘the norm’. Marriage was the norm. Adultery was an offence against that norm.

If a person sets out specific practices for an act, especially one who is supposed to be a moral guider, then he endorses the act. Especially since the limitlessness of God meant that he could have come up with any number of solutions to not tell his people to do evil. When defending Biblical slavery, pro-slavery Christians revel in the impotence of God and not his goodness.

 

[Dodge_pursuit]

Mike from NJ wrote:

Apologists are always the first to denounce moral relativism and the first to employ it. God can tell his people what fringes to wear on their clothes or whether to put out a fire but he (a man who can see all things from all times, including a world where slavery is illegal and considered wrong) can’t say a bad word about slavery.

Well said.

Following the protests in Virginia regarding Confederate monuments recently, a caller to a Catholic radio program said the following:

“From a Christian perspective, we should think about the value of honoring people who defended slavery. I mean, imagine what Jesus would say about people owning slaves…”

I was driving and I shouted at the radio: “Imagine? Why imagine? Read the book.”

For crying out loud. This man obviously believes slavery is wrong and, also obviously, is not getting his morality from the bible.