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Day 39: Slavery in the Old Testament
Exodus chapters 21 - 23 are called "the Book of the Covenant" they are a list of ordinances that apply the basic laws found in the Ten Commandments to everyday situations that Israel will face as a nation.
Joseph Sold into Slavery (Damiano Mascagni)
- Exodus 21:2-22:16/17: Relates to civil and criminal matters. These laws are not presented as abstract legal principles but as specific rulings on hypothetical cases whose rulings are to be the jurisdiction of the courts. An important addition is the statement of imposed punishments equal to the damage caused.
Please read Exodus 21:1-11: Laws Concerning Hebrew Slaves
21:1'[And] These are the laws you must give them: 2When you buy a Hebrew slave, his service will last for six years. In the seventh year he will leave a free man without paying compensation. 3If he came single, he will depart single; if he came married, his wife will depart with him. 4If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will belong to her master, and he will depart alone. 5But if the slave says, "I love my master and my wife and children; I do not wish to be freed," 6then his master will bring him before God and then, leading him to the door or the doorpost, his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and the slave will be permanently his. 7If a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not leave as male slaves do. 8If she does not please her master who intended her for himself, he must let her be bought back: he has not the right to sell her to foreigners, for this would be a breach of faith with her. 9If he intends her for his son, he must treat her as custom requires daughters to be treated. 10If he takes another wife, he must not reduce the food, clothing or conjugal rights of the first one. 11Should he deprive her of these three things she will leave a free woman, without paying compensation.'
[..] = literal translation (Interlinear Bible: Hebrew-English, page 196; JPS Commentary: Exodus, page 118).
Exodus 21:1: [And] These are the laws you must give them: Knowledge of the law of the Torah is not restricted to the judiciary elite but is the obligation and prerogative of the entire covenant community: You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven; you gave them right rules, reliable laws, good statutes and commandments (Neh 9:13). Please keep in mind that the formulation and application of these laws were meant to address the judicial needs and provide an ethical system of social laws for an ancient people and were uniquely suited to the customs and conditions under which they lived. Also keep in mind that courts of law have already been established by Moses to judge the people's legal disputes and crimes against both individuals and the community as a whole (Ex 17:19-26).
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Commentary on Slavery and the Bible
Fr. John Whiteford
Slavery was a result of the fall of man. Because of human sin, men fought with one another, and some were forced into slavery. Prior to the 19th century, Slavery was a universal fact of life in every part of the world, including Africa.
Imagine for a moment that you were a member of an Indian tribe prior to the time of Christopher Columbus, and your tribe is attacked by a neighboring tribe. In the course of that battle, your tribe captures some members of the opposing tribe. Now what do you do with them? You don't have a prison system. You can't call for United Nations Peace-keepers to take them into custody. You really have three choices: 1). You could let them go, but then these same people would be back at war with your tribe, and perhaps will kill or capture members of your tribe next, and may not be so generous. 2). You could kill them all, but all human beings have a natural aversion to killing other human beings. 3). Your only other option is to keep them as captives. Eventually, you may trade them back to the other tribe in a prisoner exchange, but at least for some time they are now on your hands. Now your tribe is barely able to feed it's members, much less feed idle prisoners, and so you put them to work, so that they can be productive and help to earn their keep. So now you have slaves... people subjected to involuntary servitude. It is only when you have strong nation states that you begin to have other options when it comes when dealing with those captured in warfare.
And it should be pointed out that even today, though we have eliminated most forms of slavery, our Constitution still allows for involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime. We do not pay prisoners minimum wage, and yet we do put them to work to help earn their keep. We also still have the potential for a military draft -- and though many will object to this being a form of involuntary servitude, it is in fact involuntary, by definition, it does involve work, including fighting on the battlefield and risking your own life, and if you refuse to submit to the draft, you can be placed in prison, where you can still be compelled to work involuntarily.
No where in scripture do you find slavery endorsed as a good thing. No where is it mandated that anyone should own slaves. In fact, if you read the book of Exodus, you will find that Slavery is presented as an evil. The Law of Moses addresses slavery, but it put restrictions on how slaves could be treated. The law put limits on how long an Israelite could be kept as a slave, and laid down rules on how slaves could be treated. In contrast, in ancient Rome, for example, the head of a family not only could kill his slaves for any reason, but he could kill or enslave members of his own family. He had absolute power over everyone in his family, and over any slave owned by his family. Slaves were considered to be living tools, having no more rights than a shovel or a hammer.
In the New Testament, St. Paul does say that slaves should obey their masters as they would the Lord -- and this is often cited out of context to discredit Scripture. However, the context also states that masters were to treat their slaves as their brothers. Now, one may object, "How can a master treat a slave as a brother and leave him as a slave?" The answer is that a truly Christian master would have no slave in the real sense of that term. And a Christian slave would no longer be a slave if he is serving such a master out of Christian love. And a Christian slave who was serving an unbelieving master had the hope of winning his master by his love and humility.
But of course many, perhaps most Christian slave owners failed to live up to the teachings of St. Paul, but this also created the discomfort with slavery that eventually ended it.
As I said, slavery was a universal fact of life prior to the 19th century (though bans on forms of slavery in Europe and other Christian lands have a long history)... but what changed? Out of all the religions of the world, a movement to end slavery arose... and that movement was spawned by the Christian religion. Christians, like William Wilberforce of England, and Charles Finney of the United States campaigned against Slavery. A book entitled "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written by a Christian author, which appealed to the Christian sensibilities of the American public, and pointed out how even well intentioned Christian slave owners who considered their slaves to be part of their family nevertheless participated in a system that included unspeakable brutality, separated husbands from their wives, and parents from their children, and included the sexual abuse of women slaves. And in the character of Uncle Tom, who is a Christlike figure who is both humble, but also unbending when asked to participate in evil, the American public was moved to bring about the end of Slavery in America. There was also the Christian Tsar Alexander II, the Tsar Liberator, who ended serfdom in Russia, and did it without a civil war.
It is extremely ironic that Christianity should be especially attacked because of the fact that there is mention of slavery in the Bible, when it was Christianity that moved a slave-holding world to see the evils of slavery in the first place, and inspired them to end it. Islam still embraces slavery to this day, and yet Black Muslims act as if the reverse were true, and that it was Islam that was so much opposed to Slavery... when it fact the slave trade began largely with Muslim slave traders selling slaves to European Slave-traders. And if you are an atheist, there is no moral foundation for opposition to slavery... any more than you could be morally opposed to a cheetah eating an antelope. The strong make use of the weak as they see fit. And in fact, in militant atheist countries, Slave labor has always been and remains an accepted means of production.
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A Daily Defense
Day 39 The Concept of the Trinity
CHALLENGE: “The concept of the Trinity makes no sense. How can God be one and three at the same time?”
DEFENSE: The doctrine of the Trinity does not say that God is one and three in the same sense. He is one God and three Persons. “The supreme being must be unique, without equal . . . . If God is not one, he is not God” (CCC 228).
Yet God is also Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “The Trinity is One.
We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons” (CCC 253). It is not surprising that the doctrine of the Trinity is difficult to understand. God is infinite and we are finite. It is natural that our minds would have difficulty grasping what a being so far above us is like.
Our minds are designed principally to interact with the world in which we live, and in this life we do not meet beings that are trinities. That’s outside our experience. We would not even know God is a Trinity unless he had revealed it (CCC 237).
Nevertheless, God designed our minds to understand at least some aspects of his mystery, and we can see that the concept of the Trinity does not involve a logical contradiction. This is possible because the category being and the category person are distinct—something we can see in things we are familiar with (CCC 40–41).
In life, we encounter many beings, or things that exist. Some are impersonal (not persons), such as rocks and trees and snowflakes. Other beings are personal. You, me, and everyone we know are persons. This shows that there is a distinction between being and person. This distinction is important, because if some beings are less than one person (in fact, zero persons), and if some beings are exactly one person, then there is no contradiction in the idea of a being that is more than one person.
Thus God—the supreme being and thus the ground of all being—is three persons. This may be difficult to envision in this life. God is not yet part of our experience in the way he will be in the next life (CCC 163), but even now we can see that there is no contradiction.
Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist
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