What kind of slavery is in the bible

Instead, we are to motivated by a real unselfish compassion for the needs of others agape. This is more radical than one might guess at first blush.

No social station can keep us from Jesus, nor should his church make such distinctions Col , Gal There can be neither "slave nor free" in the Body of Christ. Consider what it says to a slave to be fully included in the life of the church, for example, to be able to teach, rebuke, correct, or love someone who is a master.

To be afforded membership in the Body of Christ is to be afforded the full rights and responsibilities of family cf. Philemon Rather, Jesus is again using this historical and cultural reality to speak of ethical and spiritual conditions Lk Likewise, when Paul enjoins slaves to be obedient to their masters, and masters not to mistreat their slaves Eph , Col 3: , I Tim , he is not commending such a system; rather, he is appealing for Christians to exemplify Christ in those situations.

The Exodus and the Babylonian Captivity Ex , Ps , Jer 29, Daniel : The Jewish experience of slavery both in Egypt and later in Babylon illustrates the national curse of large-scale bondage in a foreign land.

Israel had tight social and legal controls on servanthood in part because of their memory of Egypt Lev , Deut In a similar manner, the Jewish captivity was understood as punishment for national sin, including that of enslaving other Hebrews cf. If he fails her in these three ways, she shall go free, without payment. When you set him free, do not let him go empty-handed: Furnish him out of the flock, threshing floor, and vat, with which the Lord your God has blessed you.

Bear in mind that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I enjoin this commandment upon you today. When you do set him free, do not feel aggrieved; for in the six years he has given you double the service of a hired man. The later, Deuteronomic text is more humane than that of Exodus; this is moral progress. I would now like to take this discussion a step farther. To the texts concerning slavery in Exodus and Deuteronomy, I will now add the laws of manumission in Leviticus He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you only until the jubilee year.

Then he and his children with him shall be free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his ancestral holding. For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly; you shall fear your God.

Just as an Israelite was obligated to protect, redeem, and avenge his brother, he also had these obligations to a kinsman Exodus ; Judges ; Isaiah This is a breakthrough of earthshaking proportions. If one of them falls into destitution, I must do everything I can to raise him out of his desperate straits. No Israelite may become a slave. All Israelites are servants of God. Cruelty on the part of the owner resulted in immediate freedom for the slave Exod.

This made male Hebrew slavery more like a kind of long-term labor contract among individuals, and less like the kind of permanent exploitation that has characterized slavery in modern times.

Female Hebrew slavery was in one sense even more protective. As wife, she became the social equal of the slaveholder, and the purchase functioned much like the giving of a dowry.

Moreover, if the buyer failed to treat the female slave with all the rights due an ordinary wife, he was required to set her free. Yet in another sense, women had far less protection than men.

Potentially, every unmarried woman faced the possibility of being sold into a marriage against her will. Although this made her a "wife" rather than a "slave," would forced marriage be any less objectionable than forced labor?

You spend all day farming and keeping a small flock of sheep and goats, helped by everyone in your extended household. What do you do if you have a bad year, and are unable to feed your family?

The answer is that you borrow from someone who has enough surplus grain or some other commodity to lend you. Under Israelite law, this loan would be interest-free Lev —37 , but you still need to pay back what you borrowed. But now imagine that you have another bad year, and so you need to borrow again. Year after year, your debt accumulates, and you have no way to pay it back.

Unless your intention is to default on the loan—effectively stealing from the one who lent to you at no interest rather than selling his grain—your only option is to repay your debt with your only means available, the labor of the people in your household. The term of service that an Israelite could serve another under these conditions was six years.

In the seventh, he had to be released Exod This is an upper limit; smaller debts could presumably be paid in less time.

Under the care of a wealthier family, he would have been better fed, better clothed, and able to engage in work that was probably more rewarding. Then, at the end of their six-year term,[4] Israelite slaves had two options: They could return to their household. If this is chosen, the master would be obligated to follow Deuteronomy — If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, sells himself to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.

And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress.

The Israelite slave was not expected to start over from scratch after he was released from service. They could remain permanently in the house of their master. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

Deuteronomy , which addresses the same situation, adds an additional reason why a slave might choose to stay: "Since he is well-off with you. The passage at the beginning of Exodus 21 continues with a stipulation that requires some comment.

At first blush, this seems misogynistic, denying the woman of the same rights given to the man in the previous verse.

A man can be released after six years, but not a woman? This is emphatically not what is going on here. Notice that the woman in question was given to the male slave as a wife during his time as a slave.

This woman would have been a female slave. In such a case, his options would have been either to wait for her to be freed or to ransom her, perhaps with some of the provisions that he received at the time of his release. As for the children, these would all be young, a maximum of five years old assuming the woman entered service a year after the man and was married to him immediately , an age at which they need their mother, not their father.

This law probably would have influenced how often marriage between slaves would have taken place and would have prevented women from foolishly entering into a marriage only to gain an early manumission. The following paragraph also prevents a puzzling case: When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do [that is, she shall not be released from her service at the end of six years].

If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people since he has broken faith with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money Exod — If the notion of a father giving her daughter in marriage to man in order to pay off debt seems disturbing, it should be remembered that the practice of arranged marriage has been the norm in many cultures, even in our own day, and often results in marriages that are just as happy and fulfilled as ones that are not arranged.

At any rate, such an objection is not to the institution of Israelite debt-slavery per se, but to the practice of arranged marriages. Should the master desire to divorce her i.

Since it was illegal to sell an Israelite to another Israelite see above , only foreigners are mentioned here. No Israelite could deprive another of their membership in the covenant people of God. Instead, he was to permit her to be redeemed v. The second situation, mentioned in verse 9, is that if she has been given to in marriage to his son.

Here she must be treated as a full-daughter, which means that her children would be legitimate heirs with full inheritance rights, not second-generation servants. Finally, in the event that a second wife is taken polygamy was sometimes practiced in Israel, always with disastrous results , her status is not to be lower than the second wife.

If the idea of debt servitude strikes us a primitive, we need to remember that many of the options that are available to us today were not available in the ancient world, for better or for worse. This system in ancient Israel was intended to maintain incentives to lend to the poor, where interest is not an option and when the risk of default werenoften quite high.

These are the kinds of situations addressed by Old Testament law in a society that differed greatly from our own. Difficult Passages The laws that we have considered so far have shown a high degree of concern for the rights of Israelite slaves, and for their dignity as human beings created in the image of God.

Later in Exodus 21, however, there are two other laws that are much more liable to confusion. Yet, as we will see, any offense taken at these laws owes more to our unfamiliarity in reading biblical law than it does with anything inherently immoral the laws themselves.

We will consider the latter law first, since a good understanding of it will have a bearing on how we understand the former.