What is slavery?
Slavery involves the following:
- The slave is owned by his master; he is considered his property.
- A slave is a slave for life.
- The children of a slave are also slaves and are also the property of their master.
- The product of the slave’s labor belongs entirely to the master.
- The slave’s consent is unnecessary; his servitude is involuntary. There is no contract or agreement of any kind.
How does slavery differ from indentured servitude?
Indentured servants exchanged their own labor for some other benefit. Bancroft (p125) calls this conditional servitude. For example, many people paid their passage to the new world by entering into a contract where they agreed to labor for several years in exchange for the boat ride over; see p43. Thus, indentured servitude was temporary, the servant did not become his master’s property, there was a contract, and most importantly, he was entitled to the product of his labor.
You noted above that slavery was involuntary. Could not a person agree to become a slave voluntarily?
Yes, this could happen; but since this involves the consent of the slave, this is not real slavery.
Does the Bible allow slavery?
Yes, under certain conditions.
Under what conditions was slavery allowed in the Bible?
First, slavery was a punishment for certain crime. Second, Israelites were allowed to purchase foreign slaves. Third, they were allowed to make slaves of any of the persons they had captured in battle.
Where is slavery a punishment inflicted on someone for a crime?
We can see this where Ham’s son Canaan is cursed for his disrespect to his father. (Genesis 9:25) Noah pronounces, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” more Similarly, we read in Exodus 22:3 that a thief was to be punished with slavery if he was not able to repay the value of what he had stolen.
If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no bloodguiltiness on his account. But if the sun has risen on him, there will be bloodguiltiness on his account. He shall surely make restitution; if he owns nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. (Exodus 22:1-3)
There is some ambiguity about this situation. If the thief worked only until his debt was paid, then this is not an example of slavery. If this was permanent, then it is an example of slavery.
What example is there of the second kind of slavery permitted in the Bible?
We read this in Leviticus:
If a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave’s service. He shall be with you as a hired man, as if he were a sojourner; he shall serve with you until the year of jubilee. He shall then go out from you, he and his sons with him, and shall go back to his family, that he may return to the property of his forefathers. For they are My servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt; they are not to be sold in a slave sale. You shall not rule over him with severity, but are to revere your God. As for your male and female slaves whom you may have–you may acquire קָנָה male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession אֲחֻזָּה לְעֹלָם; you can use them as permanent slaves בָּהֶם תַּעֲבֹדוּ. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another. (Leviticus 25:39-46)
Explain this.
The situation is this. A Jewish person comes into circumstances where he can no longer make the payment on his debts. To pay his debts, he “sells himself” or hires himself out as an indentured servant to another Israelite. Once his debt is paid or when the year of Jubilee came, he becomes a free man; his debts are either paid or forgiven. Then God explains that no Jewish person was ever to take another Jewish person as a slave; this was never allowed. Note the distinction here between indentured servants and slaves. A fellow Jew could be an indentured servant but never a slave. Then God gives the Israelites permission to buy and own slaves from the nations around them or from the slaves who were already living among them.
Where in the Bible does God allow Israel to take slaves from persons captured in battle?
We see teaching on this twice in the Old Testament.
First, consider the battle which Israel had with the Midianites. After the battle, the Israeli army killed the Midianite kings and Balaam (Numbers 31:8), set fire to the cities and camps (Numbers 31:10), and took anything of value and set it before Moses and the other elders. (Numbers 31:12) Moses was outraged that his generals had allowed the Midianite men and women to live. He orders their death, but then tells them that they may keep the virgin girls as slaves. (Numbers 31:18) From this account, we conclude that God allowed the Israelites to make slaves of anyone they captured in war.
Second, in a war situation, God required His people to offer terms of peace to any town which Israel was attacking. If they accepted this offer, all the townspeople would become slaves. If they refused, all the males were killed and the women were made slaves.
When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
Why does God allow slavery when, in other places, He speaks so severely against oppression?
In considering this question, first consider God’s warnings against oppression. This is a constantly recurring theme throughout the entire Bible.
- You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you afflict him at all, and if he does cry out to Me, I will surely hear his cry; (Exodus 22:22-23)
- You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. (Leviticus 19:15)
- Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. Do not take usurious interest from him, but revere your God, that your countryman may live with you. You shall not give him your silver at interest, nor your food for gain. (Leviticus 25:35-37)
- He [God] executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. (Deuteronomy 10:18)
The prophets especially are constantly inveighing against this sin:
- Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, The tyrannical [or oppressive] city! She heeded no voice, She accepted no instruction. She did not trust in the LORD, She did not draw near to her God. Her princes within her are roaring lions, her judges are wolves at evening; they leave nothing for the morning. … Behold, I am going to deal at that time with all your oppressors, I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will turn their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. (Zephaniah 3:1-3, 19)
- Proclaim on the citadels in Ashdod and on the citadels in the land of Egypt and say, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria and see the great tumults within her and the oppressions in her midst. (Amos 3:9) Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring now, that we may drink!” (Amos 4:1)
- For thus says the LORD of hosts, “Cut down her trees And cast up a siege against Jerusalem. This is the city to be punished, In whose midst there is only oppression. (Jeremiah 6:6) O house of David, thus says the LORD: “Administer justice every morning; And deliver the person who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor, That My wrath may not go forth like fire And burn with none to extinguish it, Because of the evil of their deeds. (Jeremiah 21:12) But your eyes and your heart are intent only upon your own dishonest gain, and on shedding innocent blood and on practicing oppression and extortion. (Jeremiah 22:17)
- and many times in Isaiah; Isaiah 1:17; 3:12; 10:2; 30:12; 33:15; 41:17; 49:13; 51:21; 58:3, 6, 7, 10; 59:4, 13, 16.
But does God specifically condemn the oppression of foreigners?
Yes, God warned His people about oppressing the aliens:
- You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you afflict him at all, and if he does cry out to Me, I will surely hear his cry; and My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless. (Exodus 22:21-24)
- When a stranger גָּר resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 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 גָּר in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)
- For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name. (Deuteronomy 10:17-20)
The prophets repeatedly mention this sin as a ground for God’s judgments:
- Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’ For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. (Jeremiah 7:3-7)
- They have treated father and mother lightly within you. The alien they have oppressed in your midst; the fatherless and the widow they have wronged in you. … The people of the land have practiced oppression and committed robbery, and they have wronged the poor and needy and have oppressed the sojourner without justice. (Ezekiel 22:7, 29)
- Thus has the LORD of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.’ (Zechariah 7:9-10)
Furthermore, the cities of refuge were set up, not just for Israelites, but also for foreigners giving them the same right to a trial as the native born Israelites:
Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall select for yourselves cities to be your cities of refuge, that the manslayer who has killed any person unintentionally may flee there. The cities shall be to you as a refuge from the avenger, so that the manslayer will not die until he stands before the congregation for trial. The cities which you are to give shall be your six cities of refuge. You shall give three cities across the Jordan and three cities in the land of Canaan; they are to be cities of refuge. These six cities shall be for refuge for the sons of Israel, and for the alien and for the sojourner among them; that anyone who kills a person unintentionally may flee there. (Numbers 35:9-15)
To allow slavery appears to be inconsistent with these warnings against oppression.
Two things:
- First, the institution of slavery has existed in all human societies since the beginning of recorded history. Thus, when Israel became a nation, God chose to give regulations regulating slavery but did not outlaw it.
- Second, there must have been a kind of slavery that was not oppressive, and it is this that God allowed His people.
What regulations did God give for the regulating of the institution of slavery?
First, as shown above, no person, slave or free, was allowed to be oppressed or treated harshly.
Second, any slave which fled from his master was not to be returned but was to be treated kindly and allowed to live in whatever town he pleased.
You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16)
Keil says (p415) that this only applied to slaves who fled from a foreign country to a Jewish master on account of the harsh treatment which he had received from his heathen master. It didn’t apply to slaves who escaped from a Jewish master. The text, however, does not say this.
Third, Israel was commanded to give slaves the benefit of the sabbath rest:
…but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave or your female slave, or your cattle, or your resident who stays with you. (Exodus 20:10; 23:12; Deuteronomy 5:14)
Fourth, a special provision was made so that slaves could participate in the Jewish religious feasts:
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: no foreigner is to eat of it; but every man’s slave purchased with money, after you have circumcised him, then he may eat of it. A sojourner or a hired servant shall not eat of it. It is to be eaten in a single house; you are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside of the house, nor are you to break any bone of it. All the congregation of Israel are to celebrate this. But if a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. The same law shall apply to the native as to the stranger who sojourns among you.” (Exodus 12:43-49)
What about the regulations given in Exodus 21:1-11?
These are laws regulating the indentured servitude of Israelite people, not slavery.
If this passage is speaking about Jews who had become indentured servants, then why would the man’s wife and children still belong to the master after the man was set free?
This passage reads as follows:
If you buy a Hebrew slave [an indentured servant], he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment. If he comes alone, he shall go out alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone. (Exodus 21:2-4)
Clearly, the law forbids the enslaving of any fellow Jew. (Leviticus 25:39-42) We must assume, therefore, that the wife which the master had given to the man was a non-Jewish woman. This woman, being a slave, would continue as the man’s slave along with any children to whom she may have given birth. Thus the man would still be married and could still live with his wife and family, but the products of her labor would belong to her master.
Why did God not outlaw slavery permanently?
He has not told us this.
Above, you said that there must have been a kind of slavery which was not oppressive and that God approved of this kind of slavery. Does this mean that Christians are justified in owning slaves in our own day?
No, for the reason that these Old Testament civil laws are not meant for New Testament Christians. These laws were meant for Israelite society in that time and culture and not as universal laws meant for all societies in all times.
How do you know this to be true?
Because Jesus teaches us to understand these laws in this way. He took the Mosaic law concerning divorce and taught His disciples that God had not intended this as a permanent law for all times and all peoples.
They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:7-9)
Notice that Jesus sets aside the law given in Deuteronomy 24:1 and reverts back to God’s original intent for marriage given in Genesis 2:24. We make the same adjustment to the slavery laws given in the Pentateuch.
What does Jesus mean when He says that this law was given “because of your hardness of heart“?
Jesus teaches here that the Mosaic permission of divorce was not God’s original intention for the marriage state. Nevertheless, God allowed this law because of the current situation of the His people at that time. Frame writes:
That is to say, God determined that a prohibition of all divorce would be, for fallen people, unbearable, and therefore counterproductive to good social order. Sin would certainly lead to divorce; the law could not be expected to prevent that. The best thing that law could accomplish would be to regulate divorce, to mitigate its oppressiveness and maintain the rights of those cast aside. The Doctrine of the Christian Life, 770.
Grudem:
Jesus’s statement “Because of your hardness of heart…” should not be understood to mean that only “hard-hearted” people initiate divorces, but rather, “because your hard-hearted rebellion against God led to serious defilement of marriages.” The presence of sin in the community meant that some marriages would be deeply harmed by hard-hearted spouses, and therefore Moses “allowed” the other spouse to obtain a divorce. God was providing a partial remedy for the harm that a hard-hearted husband or wife could do to the other person in the marriage. Christian Ethics, 808.
Michaelis (p15):
I am therefore of opinion, that with regard to the polygamy allowed among the Israelites, we can say nothing else than what Christ has said on the subject of divorce. Moses tolerated it on account of their hardness of heart, and because it would have been found a difficult matter to deprive them of a custom already so firmly established. The Egyptian monarchs endeavoured to prevent the multiplication of the Israelites, and for this purpose, went so far as to order all their male children, as soon as born, to be thrown into the Nile; and yet Moses found polygamy among them, which of course, could not have been prohibited by the Egyptian government. A people, whose children a tyrant drowned to hinder their increase, while yet he dared not to check their polygamy, must have clung very closely to that privilege, and not have been likely to surrender it without rebelling.
Luther:
Here you see that in the case of adultery Christ permits the divorce of husband and wife, so that the innocent person may remarry. For in saying that he commits adultery who marries another after divorcing his wife, “except for unchastity,” Christ is making it quite clear that he who divorces his wife on account of unchastity and then marries another does not commit adultery. The Jews, however, were divorcing their wives for all kinds of reasons whenever they saw fit, even though no unchastity was involved. That covers so much ground that they themselves thought it was going too far. They therefore inquired of Christ whether it was right; they were tempting him to see what he would say concerning the law of Moses.
Now in the law of Moses God established two types of governments; he gave two types of commandments. Some are spiritual, teaching righteousness in the sight of God, such as love and obedience; people who obeyed these commandments did not thrust away their wives and never made use of certificates of divorce, but tolerated and endured their wives’ conduct. Others are worldly, however, drawn up for the sake of those who do not live up to the spiritual commandments, in order to place a limit upon their misbehavior and prevent them from doing worse and acting wholly on the basis of their own maliciousness. Accordingly, he commanded them, if they could not endure their wives, that they should not put them to death or harm them too severely, but rather dismiss them with a certificate of divorce. This law, therefore, does not apply to Christians, who are supposed to live in the spiritual government. In the case of some who live with their wives in an unChristian fashion, however, it would still be a good thing to permit them to use this law, just so they are no longer regarded as Christians, which after all they really are not. Works 45.30–31.
Edersheim (p334):
Incomparably as these principles differ from the teaching of Christ, it must again be repeated, that no real comparison is possible between Christ and even the strictest of the Rabbis, since none of them actually prohibited divorce, except in case of adultery, nor yet laid down those high eternal principles which Jesus enunciated. But we can understand how, from the Jewish point of view, ‘tempting Him,’ they would put the question, whether it was lawful to divorce a wife ‘for every cause.’ Avoiding their cavils, the Lord appealed straight to the highest authority—God’s institution of marriage. He, Who at the beginning [from the first, originally, מרישא] had made them male and female, had in the marriage-relation ‘joined them together,’ to the breaking of every other, even the nearest, relationship, to be ‘one flesh’—that is, to a union which was unity. Such was the fact of God’s ordering. It followed, that they were one—and what God had willed to be one, man might not put asunder. Then followed the natural Rabbinic objection, why, in such case, Moses had commanded a bill of divorcement. Our Lord replied by pointing out that Moses had not commanded divorce, only tolerated it on account of their hardness of heart, and, in such case, commanded to give a bill of divorce for the protection of the wife. And this argument would appeal the more forcibly to them, that the Rabbis themselves taught that a somewhat similar concession had been madea by Moses in regard to female captives of war—as the Talmud has it, ‘on account of the evil impulse.’ But such a separation, our Lord continued, had not been provided for in the original institution, which was a union to unity. Only one thing could put an end to that unity—its absolute breach. Hence, to divorce one’s wife (or husband) while this unity lasted, and to marry another, was adultery, because, as the divorce was null before God, the original marriage still subsisted—and, in that case, the Rabbinic Law would also have forbidden it.