Slavery
Last week, we looked at the letter to Philemon, a letter about a slave. So this week, I thought we’d look in more depth at slavery. See, you’ll often hear this attack on the bible: the bible’s for slavery, and it’s wrong on that. So why listen to anything the bible says? If it gets something obvious like slavery wrong, we definitely can’t trust it on harder questions. How do we respond to such an attack? Well we need to understand what the bible does and doesn’t say about slavery.
I want to look at slavery in two ways. First, to summarise the Old Testament laws on slavery, and second, to see that Jesus has saved us from slavery to sin.
But let me start with a joke. You might not know that one of the world’s oldest recorded jokes is about a slave. It goes like this; A man complains that the slave he has recently purchased has died. "By the gods,’ says the slave’s former owner (not a Christian, it seems) ,"By the gods", he says, "when he was with me, he never did any such thing."
First, then, a summary and defense of the Old Testament’s slavery laws.
There are a number of ways the Old Testament allowed Israelites to become slaves. They were allowed to sell themselves into slavery. It might be necessary if they were poor, hungry or in debt, Leviticus 25:39. ’If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. So people could sell themselves. But such slaves were to be treated well, like hired workers, not working him like you might want to work a slave.
Another way to become a slave was by being a thief - thieves had to pay back as much as five times what they stole, Exodus 22. And so verse 3 of that chapter, quote: "A thief must certainly make restitution, but if he has nothing, he must be sold to pay for his theft.". Another way to enter slavery might be through assault - for example, a man who strikes a pregnant woman could be heavily fined, the fine going to the woman’s family. Exodus 21:22. If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. So if the fine is more than the man can pay, slavery may result. And other assaults were similar in terms of a fine, and so potential slavery.
Another way into slavery, is that someone might choose to sell their children as slaves - Exodus 21:7 If a man sells his daughter as a servant. Unfortunately it might be necessary for a father to do this instead of selling himself. For if he had other children, he could not leave them with no provider. A very sad situation, but it was allowed. Or you can also become a slave by being born one, as a child of a slave, or by being captured in war as a foreign enemy of Israel.
Notice however, there were some ways of becoming slaves that the bible forbids. Exodus 21:16 is against kidnapping people into slavery: 16 "Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death. Whatever you think of the death penalty, the Old Testament is very much against kidnapping slaves, very much against, for example the African slave trade of 3 centuries ago.
Nevertheless, there were a number of acceptable ways people might become slaves.
So how were slaves to be freed in the Old Testament?
Hebrew slaves served up to six years to pay back their debts. After the 6 years they had to be set free, and given sufficient assets to make a new start. Deuteronomy 15:12 And when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed. 14 Supply him liberally. This did not apply to women who when they were sold as slaves, were expected to remain with their husbands. So if she married a freeman, she stayed with him. If he divorced her, she was then no longer a slave, Exodus 21:8 If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. So that’s one route to freedom. On the other hand, if she married a slave, her husband could choose to stay with her, both as slaves, until the year of Jubilee. At that point, the whole family would be freed. Leviticus 25:40 he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41 Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. I take it the wife leaves at that point as well.
Now the bible doesn’t insist that Old Testament laws be applied by modern Christian governments. So we don’t have to apply all this. And yet we expect there was some wisdom in it all, that this was a good system in a sinful world, certainly a good system for the world of that time. So what are its good points compared to our system?
Very importantly the Old Testament law needed no prison system - they had no need for prisons at all. Having privately owned slaves was the way they avoided jails. So think about the differences to us. We put criminals all together, so our criminals teach eachother crime and bad character. We lose much productivity, because our prisoners don’t work. Or, in hard labor prisons, if we have any, the work isn’t effective, because it’s run by the government, not by private business. Further still, our prisoners lose their chance to marry and raise children, while they are prisoners. In the case of female prisoners, depending on their age in prison, they can be forced to be childless. It’s all very unproductive for our society, and is not good for the character of the prisoners. Further still, punishment in our prisons is not relational. The victim loses control. But in the Old Testament system, the victim of assault or rape of theft has a big say in whether and how the criminal might become a slave. On top of all that, modern prisons are a massive cost to the taxpayer, which was avoided in the Old Testament system. And I haven’t even mentioned the problems of our prisoner of war camps, which the Old Testament didn’t have either. There were many evils avoided by the Old Testament use of slavery.
Let me add the fact that, frankly, our prisoners are slaves anyway, they are just slaves owned by the government. It’s not as though we have removed slavery. For a good definition of a slave someone who is deprived of personal freedom and compelled to work. And that applies to our prisoners . For our prisoners may be compelled to work, if the government minister so decides. No, we haven’t removed slavery, we’ve just changed it. We’ve made it communist slavery.
Now some will say, but Mike, look at the harsh treatment the bible allows for some slaves. Look at Exodus 21:20, which we read. I’ll read it again: "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, 21 but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. At least we don’t have that brutality some might say.
And I’d respond by saying, yes, this was part of the law, but for foreign slaves only. Hebrew slaves were to be treated like hired workers.
So the best way to think about these harsher laws is the category of prisoners of war. It’s the question of Guantanamo Bay, or the Changi Prisoner Camps in World War 2. And in that context, it’s a great strength that people were to be punished for killing such slaves. Exodus 21:20 If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, Let me say that Australians would not have been nearly so angry at the Japanese after World War 2, if the Japanese followed the bible at this point. If they punished the prison guards who killed our Australian prisoners, things would have been much better. It wasn’t, they treated us terribly, and so many of our older generation remained angry at the Japanese for decades - they wouldn’t buy Toyota for decades after world war 2. Because the Japanese fell well short of this biblical instruction.
One last question I’ll address. You might be thinking, wasn’t it Christians who abolished slavery 200 years ago? Yes it was, and so we should have. For back then, all the slaves were kidnapped slaves. It was a million miles from slavery as replacement of the prison system, which is what the Old Testament gives us No, they stole their slaves from Africa and elsewhere. They didn’t capture them during a just war. They didn’t free them after 6 years or ever. It was totally immoral, the bible condemns it, and it was exactly right to free them all. We shouldn’t forget, that William Wilberforce, that evangelical bible believing Christian, was the leader as they opposed the whole world to do what the bible says is right. To free those kidnapped slaves. Praise God for William Wilberforce and abolition of that slavery. And yet, what I’m saying today, is there is wisdom in the biblical law on slavery. For what the Old Testament did was present slavery an alternative to a prison system.
Well second and finally, the bible uses this idea of slavery to explain the whole Christian message. The whole Exodus story, central to the whole bible, teaches us that God is one who loves to rescue his people out of slavery. Jesus points out that our worst slavery is slavery to sin. In John 8:34, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. We all have a master. For we all sin - we all do things which displease God, which are unloving to God and unloving to others, which are addictions that we can’t get way from. The only escape is Jesus.
I was reading the other day how some computers get taken over as slaves. The owner doesn’t know it, but somehow their computer gets used to send lots of email ads, or to try and gain credit card numbers and passwords to steal money. All sorts of evil goes on, your computer is a slave,, and you don’t even know it.
That’s a bit like slavery to sin...lots of people don’t even know they are slaves. But they are. What are you a slave to? A TV show? the internet? Some kinds of food? Chocolate? Coffee? Pornography? Clothes? Sport? Money? Chasing power? What are you living for? What are you thinking about all the time? What are you a slave to?
If we’re not living for Jesus, we’re living for something else. If we’re not a slave to Christ, we’re a slave to sin. Indeed all of us are a slave to sin in some ways. But here’s what Jesus has done. He died on the cross to be punished in our place for our evil and sin. He pours out his Spirit to the hearts of those who trust him. And that Spirit helps us to throw off our slavery. That Spirit changes us slowly, to be more like Jesus. To be following Jesus. To be making our character ready for heaven. Oh we’ll still sin. We won’t be perfect until the Last Day. But we are casting casting off sin as our master slowly, day by day.
Just like with the virus wars in our computers, it’s a fight. Fight against sin is just that, a fight. It should feel like a fight. Paul says to Timothy in. But you, man of God, flee from all this [sin], and pursue righteousness, Fight the good fight of the faith. Our faith is a fight against sin, against our slavery to sin. If you don’t feel that fight, pray to God for his Spirit, so that your fight may begin, so that you may be made ready for heaven.
For slavery does describes the Christian life. no longer slaves to sin, but now slaves to God taking up the fight against sin to be like Christ Jesus.
