What is there to say about slavery and the Bible? Especially the Old Testament? (MERGED)

[Achilles6129]

A few times in your response you mentioned how my reading of the passages as-written was undercut by other parts of the Torah. First, I’d like to see which passages you are referring to. Second, as I demonstrated with Exodus 21:28-32 that when the Old Testament (if not the whole Bible) refers to “man or woman” it is not referring to slaves. To repeat that, Exodus 21:29 says “…and it kills a man or woman…” then immediately after in Exodus 21:32 says “…gores a male or female slave…” showing that male and female slaves are not men and women when it comes to the law. So any passage you quote from the Torah had best specifically refer to slaves.

Every passage in the Torah that I quote doesn’t necessarily have to refer to slaves at all. That one passage that you quoted sets the slave apart from the Israelite, but that’s an exception, not a rule.

“15 “You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has [l]escaped from his master to you. 16 He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your [m]towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.” Deut. 23:15-16 (NASB)

This passage is sometimes taken to be referring strictly to foreign slaves, although that may be questionable. It’s also possible it was referring to slaves that the Israelites owned. If so, it certainly allows a slave to leave his master without being returned.

Again what did they do wrong to be treated like prisoners?

I’ve explained this now several times. Whoever disobeys God’s commands is monstrously evil to God. This is all over Scripture.

Then maybe God should do the punishing. I don’t trust anyone who does harm to another under the auspices of God wanting to punish the victim.

In this case God, through Israel, is doing the punishing.

One final thing, I want to ask again something I brought up earlier and haven’t gotten much of an answer: Was God unable to conceive of a set of morals to give to his people in the desert (who at the time hadn’t owned slaves for four centuries) that didn’t include slavery?

Not at all. He gave them slavery because slavery, in this context, is good.

 

[ALoveDivine]

Christ himself has slaves in the NT

Do you have a reference? The only sense in which Christ has “slaves” is as a metaphor for his disciples, which is actually better rendered “bond slave”. Other metaphors include “children” and “friends”. All terms used to describe our relationship with him in terms we can understand.

And Paul himself talks about slavery in the NT, and exhorts slaves to be obedient to their masters.

Yes, slavery was the economic system of the time, though as others have stated it was nothing like early American/European slavery. Paul exhorts masters to treat slaves with benevolence and compassion, and urges slaves to be obedient yes. St. Paul is encouraging peaceful and compassionate relations between two different classes in a stratified economic system. What exactly is immoral about that?

 

[Achilles6129]

Do you have a reference? The only sense in which Christ has “slaves” is as a metaphor for his disciples, which is actually better rendered “bond slave”. Other metaphors include “children” and “friends”. All terms used to describe our relationship with him in terms we can understand.

The point is that these slaves are the subjects of Christ in the NT. You’re not on equal footing with Christ nor is it ever portrayed as such. A similar relationship might be described in the OT in the relationship between a slave and his master.

Yes, slavery was the economic system of the time, though as others have stated it was nothing like early American/European slavery. Paul exhorts masters to treat slaves with benevolence and compassion, and urges slaves to be obedient yes. St. Paul is encouraging peaceful and compassionate relations between two different classes in a stratified economic system. What exactly is immoral about that?

The point is that the Apostle Paul is not abolishing slavery nor is he saying that it’s wrong. He could very easily have done so.

 

[Tomdstone]

And why the racism?

Because in the southern USA it was the white European slavemaster who beat and whipped the black slaves forcibly kidnapped from Africa. The white slavemaster bought and sold black African slaves at the auction block. The white slavemaster held his black slaves at the point of a gun. I disagree with Scripture passages that say that slaves should have to obey their slavemasters.

 

[ALoveDivine]

The point is that these slaves are the subjects of Christ in the NT. You’re not on equal footing with Christ nor is it ever portrayed as such

Yes, our relationship with God is hierarchical, not egalitarian. He is our creator afterall.

The point is that the Apostle Paul is not abolishing slavery nor is he saying that it’s wrong. He could very easily have done so.

Sure. I could also make the case that capitalist economic relations are wrong and should be abolished. Afterall, employers pay their employees as little as they can get away with (minimizing labor costs) and the workers submit to their employers out of economic necessity which itself is a form of compulsion. This isn’t exactly egalitarian and is arguably exploitative.

But here’s the thing. God is not all that concerned with our fallen, unjust economic systems. He’s not concerned with liberation of oppressed classes. He is concerned with the salvation of our souls. Paul was not a political activist because God is not concerned with changing the socio-economic systems. Paul was a messenger of the Gospel, he didn’t go beyond that.

 

[juliamajor]

Let me ask you: why would you say that God allows these things to happen today? And when is he going to intervene to stop them?

By free will we have gotten here. By free will we get out of it. Since the beginning of time free will has gotten humans into a lot of trouble.
When your child gets into trouble , how many times do you pull their fat out of the fire.?
If God got rid of evil ,where would our free will go? God is way generous than humans and keeps giving us more chances to improve, than we deserve. And through free will we grew to understand that slavery was an evil.
Just as alchemists morphed into scientists eventually, and began to understand base metal cannot turn into gold, they already learned many lessons in science. So people began to see , particularly in American slavery, how contrary to Jesus’s way it was. We grew into this knowledge , because times change and so do viewpoints. God may not change his mind
(God does actually change his mind when Moses intervenes for the Hebrews after Golden Calf incident) but we do. We are bound to this world good or bad, and are effected by time and place. So we cannot but change along with our view of God and the world.

 

[francisca]

I doubt many can take confort in the idea that one group of people weren’t allowed to be enslaved. How does this teach people not to sin, to live peacably, to love one another?

To have covenant with God is to have His protection.
The word of God is power. God was/ is trying to explain how His Power works through His Law (OT) and His Mercy (NT).

One thing that non-Christians tell Christians is that the God the Father seems completely different than God the Son. Statements like yours that suggest that God the Father was only concerned with the Israelites, as opposed to Jesus, reinforce such statements.

You seem to confuse God The Father as God of The OT, God The Son is God of the NT.

God The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit are all present in OT and NT.

You think that God of the OT only concerned with Israel, as opposed to Jesus teaching. This is not the case. Jesus teaching sourced from the OT too.

In this passage, Jesus called a gentile woman and her daughter “dogs”

Mark 7
26.* Now the woman was a Gentile, of the Syrophoenician race. And she kept asking Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter.
27.* And Jesus answered her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Please compare the above with:

Leviticus 19
34.* `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.

Exodus 23
9.* "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.

Please note that “a stranger” in the above context is compared to being “foreigners” in the land of Egypt.
I am trying to show God also ask Israelites to treat foreigners among them EQUAL with Israelites.

But the inequality is inevitable, because of POVERTY. This is todays reality too. The rich oppress the poor.

And even if you were correct, God is calling on his people to expand the number of slaves by telling his people to purchase them and that the children they make are also slaves.

Understand that this call to eliminate Israelite-on-Israelite slavery won’t convince people that this was all a plan to eliminate slavery in total.

I hope you will understand better in this way: God also give Israel “redemption right” to redeem their closest relatives if these close relatives sold themselves as slaves.

Leviticus 25
then he shall have redemption right after he has been sold. One of his brothers may redeem him,
49.* or his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or one of his blood relatives from his family may redeem him; or if he prospers, he may redeem himself.

God teach us to free people who are close to us. If we can’t free our brothers and sisters, how do we free other nations from slavery?

How do you believe “freedom” and/or “freedom from slavery” was revealed to us?

The teaching “freedom from slavery” is the central teaching of God’s slavivic plan both in OT and NT. It’s hard to understand that we “miss” this teaching. But it is a fact that we still have modern day slavery. We need God to free us. Freedom from slavery is not only about the law as in our natural state of being, but also spiritual matters. We need God’s power to free us from spiritual oppression as much as the inequality between the rich and the poor as in our physical reality.

Your idea of equality is the fruit of our modern day world order. But this world order owes the bible: God teach Israel to free their kinsmen, and they failed for thousands of years. How do you think they were capable of freeing their pagan slaves? We have been freed by Jesus, but the law against slavery only after the US civil war, then other nations followed. Would this happens without the bible? I really can’t imagine how. Until today we still have modern day slavery, despite we claim that we believe in equality.

The teaching reveal that Jesus need to come as HUMAN, so that He has redemption right over us. Jesus is our brother, our close relative who come to redeem us. This right gave to Jesus God’s rightful authority to redeem us, according to the law. What if there are other gods who also want to redeem us? Can they? If other gods can redeem us, then we will become theirs and not Gods. Other gods cannot redeem us because they’re not our close relatives. Other gods can have power over us only if we give them our God’s given authority.

Biblical teaching is this: in Genesis1:26-28, God gave all of His authority to Adam to rule the whole world. Adam then gave up this authority to the serpent (the serpent = “the murderer of men, the father of lies”, as Jesus call it in John 8:44). So then God’s given power has fallen into the lie of this world. God salvivic plan is to “snatch back” those who are lost, using God’s power through our faith. Our faith is important because God has given the authority to us, it’s a matter to believe it (Adam and Eve lost it when they disbelieved God’s word).

The bible can’t “sugarcoat” the word “slave”. Slave means inequality. But He also teach the way out of it. The fact that we have authority, and riches of this world has authority, then the rich oppress the poor… this is reality. Spiritual reality is also the same. If we sell our soul to it, it has power over us, no master will tell the slave “equality”. Only God in Jesus name give that equality (He gave his authority to Adam}. He wanted to be Adam and Eves’ friend, He wanted Adam and Eve to become equal friends. These shows our God wills equality.

 

[francisca]

To teach redemption right, and to not allow slavery among kinsmen also has something to do with God trying to build a family who forgive each other’s debts. Instead of Master- Slave relation as in the enemy of God’s plan. But since the fall, Adam and Eve has become slaves. So God has to buy us back. Even so, we do not belive His Plan, in a similar way with Israelites we prefer to live in Egypt as slaves than to serve God in the dessert. Moses (represent the law) chose to live in the dessert instead of entering the land flowing with milk and honey (the land of believe = the promised land)

Let’s compare “family” as compared to “adultery/ porn”. Family is love in equality. Adultery believe in oppression towards women and children. God want us to become HIS FAMILY, to inherit heaven. The enemy tempt us to believe in other gods (to commit adultery/ idolatry).

To build/ become part of God’s family is to be free from slavery.
To commit adultery/ idolatry is to become slaves (of sin).

There are other examples too related to “unability to pay debts” as equivalent to “unability to pay our sins”, so then “being sinful” is equivalent to somebody who is “poor” and selling himself/ herself as a slave. Real life examples: prostitutes, adulterer man/ woman, addictions, and so on.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Maybe, just maybe…not everything the Jews wrote down as the words of God were in fact the words of God. Perhaps these passages reflect the Jews fallible and incomplete understanding of God at that time. Compare what you see as God’s words in those “law” books to God’s words in the books of the prophets.

I have a litmus test. If words attributed to God agree with the words of Christ (who is the fullness of the revelation of God), then we can take them as verbatim words of God. If they contradict Christ in any way, we can attribute them to the ancient Hebrew understanding of God.

I could be wrong of course, but this is how I kind of see it. We Catholics are not fundamentalist protestants, and we are not bound by a literalist hermeneutic.

The Catechism teaches that while everything in the Bible isn’t literally true it is true in some way. None of these spiritual senses work in trying to make it seem that the Israelites had a misunderstanding of what God wanted them to do. On top of that, the verses from Exodus 21:20 through 21:24 are a single conversation – including the first spelling out of The Ten Commandments. Most of what is written is tort law, all very literal in nature.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

why did God allow slavery in the bible? why is it permitted now? what’s your excuse? Most moderns just pretend it doesn’t exist.

There are actually a great many people and groups today that are fighting against human trafficking.Here are several. Notice that a vast majority of those listed are not specifically religious in nature.

they’d rather talk about Biblical “shortcomings” than the do something about it. they turn a blind eye to the 'horrible deaths being perpetrated against Christians ( it’s probably because they are christians that they are left to the wolves, because, you know they probably deserved it!) .

You know there is a rule against bearing false witness, even if doing so would prop up Christianity in some way. There are many people concerned with cruel acts being performed against Christians (such as Mariam Yahia Ibrahim) as well as those who are non-Christians (such as Raif Badawi and Sanal Edamuruku)

So instead of getting your panties in a twist over something that may or may not have instituted whynot concern yourselves with the here and now or the multitude of blood during the 20th and 21st centuries . the body count for both these centuries far outnumber anything in the biblical past. So why the superior attitude? Rapes and murders still occur and injustices happen in abundance.

Two reasons immediately come to mind. One, it’s telling in these discussions when people living in the 21st century endorse cruel acts to people for not being Christian. I’m not saying that you, Julia, are but there are others I’ve spoken to in this and previous slavery threads who have. Often they don’t see the acts as evil and some of the reasons they don’t call for such acts today are logistical and that they would garner poor public opinion and not due to them being immoral. Two, there are some pro-slavery Christians who claim that they derive their morality from the Bible yet have to go to great lengths to defend those positions (e.g. twisting word meanings, going deep into moral relativism).

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Mike, your ideas of slavery simply aren’t Biblical.

I’m actually referencing the Bible yet my views aren’t Biblical?

While the Israelites did unquestionably have slaves, they did not treat them unjustly or cruelly.

Buying people is unjust. Restraining people is unjust. Raping people is cruel. Beating people is cruel. Killing people is cruel.

That’s something that you’re adding into Scripture.

More accurately I’m not dishonestly adding to Scripture to give an untrue impression that the Scripture doesn’t call for cruel and unjust acts against others.

The idea, over and over again in Scripture, is that people outside of God are evil. That’s the reason why God tells the Israelites to take them as slaves and, in some cases, to exterminate them.

Those whom God has chosen are to seek out and punish those who do not follow his practices. Is that from the Bible or ISIS?

I’d like to hear you address this instead of running around in circles making claims that aren’t in the Torah and that are in fact contradicted by the Torah.

The Torah and Bible, as I’ve noted and you’ve been unable to show differently, shows that rules for people don’t count towards slaves. So your repeated assertions that this was contradicted by the Torah fails now as it failed before.

I’ve already addressed that if God with the acts of other peoples he was more than capable of enacting punishment. It’s an example where some believers treat God as impotent in act and must rely on the acts of his followers. God is all-powerful yet he needs humans to restrain and beat foreigners (including children). Does that make any sense at all?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Every passage in the Torah that I quote doesn’t necessarily have to refer to slaves at all. That one passage that you quoted sets the slave apart from the Israelite, but that’s an exception, not a rule.

Why on earth (beside trying to force a particular meaning that runs counter to the written word) would you assume this is an exception and not a rule? You’re ignoring evidence against your argument in favor of the complete lack of evidence for your argument.

“15 “You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has [l]escaped from his master to you. 16 He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your [m]towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him.” Deut. 23:15-16 (NASB)

This passage is sometimes taken to be referring strictly to foreign slaves, although that may be questionable. It’s also possible it was referring to slaves that the Israelites owned. If so, it certainly allows a slave to leave his master without being returned.

So (assuming it includes slaves owner by Israelites) instead of making it a rule not to own slaves, God makes a game of it where the slaveowners can do what they need to keep his slaves from escaping; but if they do they don’t have to go back. Also that doesn’t tell slaveowners to be kind to their slaves, but tells people to be kind to fugitive slaves they don’t own.

By the way the passage that you quoted counters your earlier assertion that slaves didn’t treat their slaves curelly or unjustly. The fact that they are trying to escape (even ignoring all the beating, and raping, imprisonment, harsh labor, and manslaughter) shows that slaves were not treated with kindness or fairness.

I’ve explained this now several times. Whoever disobeys God’s commands is monstrously evil to God. This is all over Scripture.

God could not have come up with a way to teach those who were unaware of his commands? God could not have presented himself to other peoples as he had with the Israelites? God couldn’t give a “punishment” to those people relative to their knowledge of such “crimes” and allow for them to “atone” for them in ways besides eternal servitude to those who were lucky enough to be aware such commands?

In this case God, through Israel, is doing the punishing.

Again, some Christians revel in having a God impotent in enacting his will. To non-believers it appears more clearly as an unverifiable (and heinous) excuse well after the fact.

Not at all. He gave them slavery because slavery, in this context, is good.

Slavery is NEVER good. To call good that which is evil is a sick parody of justice and goodness.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

To have covenant with God is to have His protection.
The word of God is power. God was/ is trying to explain how His Power works through His Law (OT) and His Mercy (NT).

There is no reason why someone can’t impose a law while simultaneously being merciful. Just as sure as he could say not to kill he could have also said not to enslave.

You seem to confuse God The Father as God of The OT, God The Son is God of the NT.

God The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit are all present in OT and NT.

You think that God of the OT only concerned with Israel, as opposed to Jesus teaching. This is not the case. Jesus teaching sourced from the OT too.

In this passage, Jesus called a gentile woman and her daughter “dogs”

Mark 7
26.* Now the woman was a Gentile, of the Syrophoenician race. And she kept asking Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter.
27.* And Jesus answered her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard the Jesus Was Cruel Too Defense. God is infinite yet he chose to interact personally with only a very select group, and to hell with the others. Correct?

Please compare the above with:

Leviticus 19
34.* '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.

Exodus 23
9.* "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.

Please note that “a stranger” in the above context is compared to being “foreigners” in the land of Egypt.
I am trying to show God also ask Israelites to treat foreigners among them EQUAL with Israelites.

And yet God himself tells his people to purchase these foreigners, to enslave them and their children in perpetuity. That is quite the contradiction.

But the inequality is inevitable, because of POVERTY. This is todays reality too. The rich oppress the poor.

In many cases, yes. Still it’s not hard to figure that if God’s commands were true that there would have been less oppression in biblical times if the oppressors had been given commands that were not evil, that did not tell them that it was good to do such harm to the oppressees, to reflect a lawgiver that is alleged to be both infinite in mercy and love.

I hope you will understand better in this way: God also give Israel “redemption right” to redeem their closest relatives if these close relatives sold themselves as slaves.

Leviticus 25
then he shall have redemption right after he has been sold. One of his brothers may redeem him,
49.* or his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or one of his blood relatives from his family may redeem him; or if he prospers, he may redeem himself.

God teach us to free people who are close to us. If we can’t free our brothers and sisters, how do we free other nations from slavery?

To be redeem one must have committed a wrong. Yet, for many the only wrong they committed was not running fast enough to escape their captors. Slaves are not criminals, no matter what the Bible would have us think.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The teaching “freedom from slavery” is the central teaching of God’s slavivic plan both in OT and NT. It’s hard to understand that we “miss” this teaching.
But it is a fact that we still have modern day slavery. We need God to free us. Freedom from slavery is not only about the law as in our natural state of being, but also spiritual matters. We need God’s power to free us from spiritual oppression as much as the inequality between the rich and the poor as in our physical reality.

God had the power to free a great many form the physical oppression of slavery while working to free them from spritual oppression. He just had to tell his people what is simple truth: Slavery is wrong. I don’t know if you’re suggestion that God perpetrated the physical oppression to maintain this analogy of spiritual oppression, but if you are it doesn’t hold water.

Your idea of equality is the fruit of our modern day world order.

And thank goodness for it!

But this world order owes the bible: God teach Israel to free their kinsmen, and they failed for thousands of years.

God telling his people to be relatively less cruel to Israelite slaves and that it’s ok to be very cruel to non-Israelite slaves doesn’t lead anyone to think that God was in anyway against slavery. The Bible is owed nothing in terms of slavery except a spotlight to reflect what it truly says without an Orwellian spin on it.

How do you think they were capable of freeing their pagan slaves?

The Romans?

We have been freed by Jesus, but the law against slavery only after the US civil war, then other nations followed. Would this happens without the bible? I really can’t imagine how.

Jesus was not against slavery. The idea of people being “freed” by Jesus in a spiritual sense in NO WAY shape or form led to freedom in a not-enslaving people way. You’re equivocating the two things.

Until today we still have modern day slavery, despite we claim that we believe in equality.

As I noted above, there are a great many people fighting against modern-day slavery. The people that are for equality have harsh things to say to those people who try to justify it. Slavery, whether modern-day. 19th century, or ancient times is unjustifiable – no matter if the deity invoked is Yahweh, Allah, or someone else.

The teaching reveal that Jesus need to come as HUMAN, so that He has redemption right over us. Jesus is our brother, our close relative who come to redeem us. This right gave to Jesus God’s rightful authority to redeem us, according to the law. What if there are other gods who also want to redeem us? Can they? If other gods can redeem us, then we will become theirs and not Gods. Other gods cannot redeem us because they’re not our close relatives. Other gods can have power over us only if we give them our God’s given authority.

Mercy, justice, and wisdom have done more to free the slave than any god (yours or any another) have done.

Biblical teaching is this: in Genesis1:26-28, God gave all of His authority to Adam to rule the whole world. Adam then gave up this authority to the serpent (the serpent = “the murderer of men, the father of lies”, as Jesus call it in John 8:44). So then God’s given power has fallen into the lie of this world. God salvivic plan is to “snatch back” those who are lost, using God’s power through our faith. Our faith is important because God has given the authority to us, it’s a matter to believe it (Adam and Eve lost it when they disbelieved God’s word).

The bible can’t “sugarcoat” the word “slave”. Slave means inequality. But He also teach the way out of it. The fact that we have authority, and riches of this world has authority, then the rich oppress the poor… this is reality. Spiritual reality is also the same. If we sell our soul to it, it has power over us, no master will tell the slave “equality”. Only God in Jesus name give that equality (He gave his authority to Adam}. He wanted to be Adam and Eves’ friend, He wanted Adam and Eve to become equal friends. These shows our God wills equality.

Again, God is all-powerful and all-wise and yet he could not fathom a plan or wasn’t powerful enough to “snatch back” those lost without resorting to telling the Israelites that slavery was good? Analogies are one thing. Having one’s ribs crushed by a slaveowner’s rod is quite another.

 

[ericc]

God had the power to free a great many form the physical oppression of slavery while working to free them from spritual oppression. He just had to tell his people what is simple truth: Slavery is wrong. I don’t know if you’re suggestion that God perpetrated the physical oppression to maintain this analogy of spiritual oppression, but if you are it doesn’t hold water.

And thank goodness for it!

God telling his people to be relatively less cruel to Israelite slaves and that it’s ok to be very cruel to non-Israelite slaves doesn’t lead anyone to think that God was in anyway against slavery. The Bible is owed nothing in terms of slavery except a spotlight to reflect what it truly says without an Orwellian spin on it.

The Romans?

Jesus was not against slavery. The idea of people being “freed” by Jesus in a spiritual sense in NO WAY shape or form led to freedom in a not-enslaving people way. You’re equivocating the two things.

As I noted above, there are a great many people fighting against modern-day slavery. The people that are for equality have harsh things to say to those people who try to justify it. Slavery, whether modern-day. 19th century, or ancient times is unjustifiable – no matter if the deity invoked is Yahweh, Allah, or someone else.

Mercy, justice, and wisdom have done more to free the slave than any god (yours or any another) have done.

Again, God is all-powerful and all-wise and yet he could not fathom a plan or wasn’t powerful enough to “snatch back” those lost without resorting to telling the Israelites that slavery was good? Analogies are one thing. Having one’s ribs crushed by a slaveowner’s rod is quite another.

I am late to the party. But would just want to add my 2 cents.

For the most part of human history, slavery was the norm. In the Bronze Age, even before the rules of conduct for slaves were mentioned in Exodus, slaves already existed. Slavery could be self-initiated or spoils of war sourced. There was no social security in those days. If your country/city was defeated by your enemies, being kept alive could be seen to be a better alternative than be killed. And to remain alive one has to provide economic value to your master, because he has to feed/cloth/shelter you. From that aspect, slavery increases the overall good.

For a nomadic tribe like the Israelites, what do you do with these captive enemies when you won your wars? If you abandon them to the wild or natural elements or expose them to other enemies, they meet certain death and you probably would tag the Israelites with even worse name calling . The tribe doesn’t have the resources to operate social security to feed the enemies or to raise their enemy children. There are not that many good options for the victorious because setting the captives free so that them may come back for another round of war is not the answer either. If you have a better proposal for how to deal with these captives, you may wish to share and tell God how to do it better.

On bad treatment of slaves by the Israelites, I am puzzled on the selection criteria that you quoted. Are you selectively picking out verses that put the Israelites in a bad light or are you portraying the whole slave management process in general? I got confused by Ex 21:20. It says the person who commit manslaughter of his slave is to be punished. Are you arguing that the killer should not be punished? Compared to other societies of that time, it is unheard for the owner of the slave to be punished for causing the death of his slave. That is revolutionary! The norm was you can do whatever you like with your property. And that verse didn’t even say what circumstances did the slave owner meted out such a fierce punishment to the slave. Perhaps the slave did something really bad? In today’s society, capital punishment still exist but means of death has been technologically improved. I failed to see the point you are trying to make here. A master meting out justice/disciplinary action to a slave. Elsewhere I read that in Ex 21:26-27, he is compelled to set his slave free if he caused injury to the slave’s eye or tooth. Totally revolutionary! The master get to lose his property if he mistreated them or punished them which resulted in a knocked tooth. If you look in totality, given the circumstances, that was a tremendous improvement in slave management. In general, God has started the notion that slaves must be treated in certain ways which was a vast improvement over existing mindset. I would say it puts the Israelites in a poor light vs their peers. They could be viewed as “soft”. Obviously, I am not privy to God’s timetable as to how quick he let human civilization evolve. Do you have a superior solution for the Bronze Age on how to deal with slavery? Arm chair critics are many but with few feasible solutions suitable for the times.

Trade in slaves. An exchange of masters. And if slave management under the Israelites is better for the slave, then there is an increase in the greater good.

But if your issue is that God should have done slavery your way, let us hear about it. Rather than criticising God is not smart/powerful enough to do it a different way. If your solution is not superior, then we should let his evolution plan for us stand.

Eventually, it falls back to the problem of Evil and why think you have a superior way to deal with it.

 

[JDGaney]

I know the New Testament taught to for slave owners to treat their slaves like their own children, coming from Philemon, but what about in the Old Testament? I know this seems like a tired argument of somebody pointing out justice and vengeance in OT but love and mercy in NT. But I’m a little concerned.

It came from this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=2MFmC6BD1B4

 

[ericc]

I know the New Testament taught to for slave owners to treat their slaves like their own children, coming from Philemon, but what about in the Old Testament? I know this seems like a tired argument of somebody pointing out justice and vengeance in OT but love and mercy in NT. But I’m a little concerned.

It came from this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=2MFmC6BD1B4

Unfortunately the quote from the video poster already makes it clear he didn’t understand the fundamental differences between Bronze Age slavery vs America slavery. I didn’t bother to watch the video. I feel the main difference lies in this:

In ancient times, slaves were mainly a result of war, the defeated. Some could be self-initiated to pay off debts. In American type pre-war slavery, there are raiding parties that went into Africa, rounding people up using superior weaponry and intense cruelty, breaking up families, wiping out whole villages, for the sole purpose of feeding the labor requirement of farms and sugar plantations etc. In ancient times, slavery were based upon victorious/defeated. American style slavery, race. There could be more differences. but these 2 are the main ones based upon a few hours of research.

 

[francisca]

There is no reason why someone can’t impose a law while simultaneously being merciful. Just as sure as he could say not to kill he could have also said not to enslave.

Slavery in the bible is about someone who fall into the hand of other-power becouse he decide to sell himself to it. The reason is poverty. Poverty means somebody who is hungry (this can mean both physically and/ or spiritually).

God command not to kill is more straightforward and is easier to see the reason why.

Not to enslave is harder to understand because

1. the slaves “desire” slavery by selling themselves to it.
2. slaves can’t free themselves. somebody must free them. hence inequality towards equality.
3. To top the complexity, the teaching is both natural and spiritual languange: God is in war with idol worship by the other nations. Idol worshipers are slaves of their idols.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard the Jesus Was Cruel Too Defense.

Jesus was not being cruel. He was trying to obey the order of the law set before His coming.

God is infinite yet he chose to interact personally with only a very select group, and to hell with the others. Correct?

And yet God himself tells his people to purchase these foreigners, to enslave them and their children in perpetuity. That is quite the contradiction.

If all peopla are slaves, isn’t this equality? We are all slaves in perpetuity unless somebody free us.

Slaves can’t free themselves. Somebody must free them. Hence inequality towards equality. And the way to go is the-free must set the slaves free.

It is for a fact that there are people who are poorer and richer. God teach the rich (the powerful) to set free the slaves (the ones fall into others power).

In many cases, yes. Still it’s not hard to figure that if God’s commands were true that there would have been less oppression in biblical times if the oppressors had been given commands that were not evil, that did not tell them that it was good to do such harm to the oppressees, to reflect a lawgiver that is alleged to be both infinite in mercy and love.

I guess Israel believed in slavery at the time. They wanted to stay in Eqypt instead of following Moses. After they settle and became strong, they enslave their own brothers and sisters. How do you expect that they won’t enslave their enemies? They fail to free their own kins. Read Jeremiah I quoted in this thread how angry God was because of this.

To be redeem one must have committed a wrong. Yet, for many the only wrong they committed was not running fast enough to escape their captors. Slaves are not criminals, no matter what the Bible would have us think.

Well, the torah understanding of slavery is somebody who sold themselves because of poverty. This is the definition, not as you put it above.

A person who captures people to sell them-- he himself by definition is a slave too. He is in no way a master according to the torah, this man-- who capture people to enslave them-- is a slave, because he do it for financial gain too-- hence he has fallen into his own fear of poverty so he does what he does.

Somebody who need redemption is somebody who cannot free themselves. Doing wrong or not it is for a fact that they has fallen under others power.

 

[francisca]

God had the power to free a great many form the physical oppression of slavery while working to free them from spritual oppression. He just had to tell his people what is simple truth: Slavery is wrong. I don’t know if you’re suggestion that God perpetrated the physical oppression to maintain this analogy of spiritual oppression, but if you are it doesn’t hold water.

And thank goodness for it!

God telling his people to be relatively less cruel to Israelite slaves and that it’s ok to be very cruel to non-Israelite slaves doesn’t lead anyone to think that God was in anyway against slavery. The Bible is owed nothing in terms of slavery except a spotlight to reflect what it truly says without an Orwellian spin on it.

The Romans?

Jesus was not against slavery. The idea of people being “freed” by Jesus in a spiritual sense in NO WAY shape or form led to freedom in a not-enslaving people way. You’re equivocating the two things.

As I noted above, there are a great many people fighting against modern-day slavery. The people that are for equality have harsh things to say to those people who try to justify it. Slavery, whether modern-day. 19th century, or ancient times is unjustifiable – no matter if the deity invoked is Yahweh, Allah, or someone else.

Mercy, justice, and wisdom have done more to free the slave than any god (yours or any another) have done.

Again, God is all-powerful and all-wise and yet he could not fathom a plan or wasn’t powerful enough to “snatch back” those lost without resorting to telling the Israelites that slavery was good? Analogies are one thing. Having one’s ribs crushed by a slaveowner’s rod is quite another.

OK, I think your central question is: Why God doesn’t declare slavery as a sin. God declared many times in the bible that slavery is a sin among those whom He has freed. As for those whom God has not freed, they were slaves of other gods (these nations worship idols).

The tricky part is this: If you worship God, you’re free because God sets you free. If you worship other gods, you are a slave because other gods enslave.

The bible try to express both natural and spiritual matters in this teaching. We by default are idol worshippers (after the fall), we worry about what we eat and what we wear. So we worship ouf fear and worry, so we toil with sweat on our head to earn our bread. We worship our job, we follow fear and worry. (This is idol worship). To worship God is to be set free from this.

In the natural world, people who sold themselves as prostitute (the easiest example) are in needy state. Nobody will sell themselves as prostitute unless they’re oppressed by some belief that causes them to do what they do. The pimps are slaves too. They worship financial gain. Those who doesn’t worship God, they’re by default are slaves. Those who are free (masters) believe in freedom: they believe in setting the people free.

 

[Thorolfr]

OK, I think your central question is: Why God doesn’t declare slavery as a sin. God declared many times in the bible that slavery is a sin among those whom He has freed. As for those whom God has not freed, they were slaves of other gods (these nations worship idols).

The tricky part is this: If you worship God, you’re free because God sets you free. If you worship other gods, you are a slave because other gods enslave.

If slavery is only for those who worship false gods and idols, then why does it say in Ephesians 6:5-8:

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; 6 not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.7 Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women,8 knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free.

Or what about 1 Peter 2:18-21:

18 Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. 19 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20 If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

Both passages are talking about Christians who are slaves and if these passages are inspired, God seems to be saying that it is OK for Christians to be slaves.