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G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: Does the Bible Condone Slavery?
We are living in a day and age where social issues are at the front and centre of public discourse, and I think that’s part of the reason why many people view the relevance of the Bible for today based upon what the Bible has to say about a select few of social issues. And for its significance as it relates to basic human rights, the subject of slavery is almost always near the top of the list in terms of smacking the face of our contemporary sensibilities.
And little wonder! I mean, slavery is referenced all throughout the Old and New Testaments; in fact, Christians in the New Testament are called to submit to their masters. And that just doesn’t sit well with us today, living here in the 21st century, because it seems like by not denouncing slavery the Bible is implicitly endorsing something that we know to be wrong.
So what can we say in response? ‘Does the Bible Condone Slavery’?
Well, first, we need to appreciate the historical distance between the times of the Bible and the times we find ourselves in today.
As a resident of the 21st century, the word slave or slavery takes my mind to modern atrocities like the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade of African people mainly to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. We can’t escape those kinds of associations… But historians and theologians have noted that ancient slavery is quite different to modern slavery that we know all too well.
What do I mean? Well, lets take one of the, if not the most, unsettling passage in the Bible on slavery. Leviticus 25:44-46, which reads: “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever…”
Now, this law about slaves was given under the Mosaic Law, the law of Moses, as a civil regulation for the nation of Ancient Israel. And to our modern ears, it just sounds… so… wrong…
But we need to try and understand a very like this in the time and place it was given before we accept or reject it. Here’s one analogy to help us. Here in Australia we have many laws regulating the buying and selling of tobacco, but at the same time, our government is well aware of the health risks of smoking and in no way supports it at a public policy level. It’s like that here with Ancient Israel. These laws concerning slave ownership aren’t endorsements or positive statements condoning slavery, they are regulatory laws for Ancient Israel keyed into the times in which they were given and to isolate them from that historical context is to rob them of their meaning and significance for the time and place they were given. For example, in isolate that very might make us squirm. But within Mosaic Law, this instruction is, itself, governed by other restrictive laws concerning the owning of both Hebrew and non-Hebrew slaves, such as:
- Laws against kidnaping (Ex. 21:16; Lev 24:22)
- Laws concerning fugitives (Deut. 23:15, 16; Deut. 22:1-3)
- And the laws of the Jubilee concerning the liberation of all slaves (Lev. 25:10-55; Ex. 34:12, 15; Lev. 18:25; Num. 33:52-55; 2 Sam. 11:2-27; 23:39; 2 Sam. 24:18-25)
Now we may still have problems the way the Bible talks about slaves and masters but what we cannot say is that there is a one to one correlation between the slavery referred to in the Bible and the slavery we’ve had in modern times, with the stealing and selling of human beings as tools of use and abuse.
In fact, in both the Old and New Testaments that modern kind of slavery is explicitly condemned. It’s punishable by death under Mosaic Law: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” (Exod. 21:16). “If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.” (Deut. 24:7). And it is also contemned in the New Testament (1 Tim. 1:10).
But where this question really bottoms out, is when we consider the overall theme of slavery in the bible as a whole, rather than isolate individual case examples.
As we move through the unfolding drama of the Biblical narrative, we see that slavery is never promoted as a ‘good’ but is rather a symptom of the fact humanity lives in a broken sinful world. And the central message of the Christian worldview is how God meets humanity where we are. Jesus Christ– get this now – Jesus Christ took on “the form of a slave” (Phil. 2:7). How is THAT for a scandal!
You see, the bigger question in all of this is not why does the Bible contain laws regulating slavery in a sinful world, but why does the Bible contain God who HIMSELF became a slave IN a sinful world?
The answer? Well, it wasn’t for more regulation of an already broken humanity… it was for the redemption of our broken humanity in His broken humanity on the cross. Jesus said I have come to “proclaim good news to the poor… to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free…” (Luke 4:18).
