Another "What do we do with slavery in the OT?" thread

Faith & Science Conversation
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Lets explain each in order.

Exodus 21:17: “whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death”

First off, that does not mean that the offender is a prepubescent child. A forty year old man is a “child” to his parents, and some people even in their late 60’s still have parents (rare but true). So, to assume this is proving “violence against children” claiming the verse is somehow talking about children, which it is not. Do you have parents? Then you’re capable of being an offender.

Next, we need to evaluate what “curses” means:
Qalal – be of little account, to be insignificant, to be lightly esteemed, to make despicable, to treat with contempt, bring contempt or dishonor.

They were treating their (most likely elderly, assuming this isn’t directly talking about children) with contempt and in a way to dishonor them (a horrible thing in that day and age). It also says “curse” includes to despise ones parents and make their name despicable.

I fail to understand where you get child abuse from that passage.

Leviticus 26:29: “You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters”

This is a prophecy of what will happen if they walk contrary to God. In doing so, God will remove His blessings, which includes a fruitful harvest, and they’ll eventually resort to cannibalism.

God is completely against them turning against Him, and wants everyone to turn to Him, He doesn’t enjoy seeing anyone perish. (Ezekiel 18:23) This is not a condoned action, nor is it commanded. Its a prophecy of the evil that will occur if they turn against God.

Numbers 31:17: Kill all the little boys but not the virgin girls.

According to scholars, the significance of the “virgin girls” is because they didn’t partake in the pagan sex rituals that the adults most likely did, and the little boys would eventually rebel and threaten Israel’s national security.

Another interesting thing to note, even when the Bible says “utterly destroy everything”, not everything is utterly destroyed. For example, Deuteronomy 2:34 states that “we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed the men, women and children of every city. We left no survivor”. Again, in the next chapter, we read that Israel “utterly destroyed … the men, women and children of every city” (3:6).

Do you know why? Israel attacked military forts, not general populations, in most cases. That’s why they could walk around Jericho seven times and still battle on the same day. Expressions such as “young and old”, “women” were ancient stock expressions for totality, not literal orders.
Interestingly, Deuteronomy 7:2–5 uses words like “utterly destroy” right next to “you shall not intermarry with them”

So, as we’ve seen, “utterly destroy every city” was rather a regular ancient usage of rhetorical language. Plus, the Israelites aimed to annihilate the Canaanite religion, not general population, and their military conquests were aimed towards military forts, not the general population. I’d recommend doing research into this topic, its quite interesting.

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No, that’s exactly what’s happening. There are parts of the bible that not only sanction but command atrocities that are today called genocide and crimes against humanity. These include the enslavement of other humans. It is a plain fact that parts of the bible are fundamentally indefensible.

The person of integrity who believes that the bible is a “sacred book” has just a few options. One of those options comes with other benefits, such as the avoidance of bibliolatry. One of those options preserves the person’s integrity but forces them to admit that the god of the bible has commanded his people to commit atrocities. The options do not include the dishonest manipulation of the text or its meaning.

IMO, Christians should pay more attention to what it looks like when they quibble about the meaning of “slavery” – in this case with no intellectual justification at all – to explain what happened to the women and children who survived the massacre of the men in their city. They should pay more attention to what it looks like when they ignore the fact that the women in other cities avoided becoming “plunder” (those are your god’s words, guys) by being massacred along with the men. Try it: think about what this looks like.

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According to all decent human beings, this is an appalling war crime. Do you think that butchering little boys for “national security” is defensible? Did any of those scholars fail to note that this is an atrocity?

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You are rationalizing the behavior of the ancient Israelite’s using your 21st Century American sense of morality. It doesn’t work. The stories of the OT were written and past down by an ancient near eastern culture that thought that their morals and values were right and proper and were given to them by their god as their god’s chosen people. It makes no sense in 21st century America to parse the words of an ancient society to make them fit today’s society. It is like trying to mesh the A&E story with the study of human genome diversity.

You say that it was a morally justified war aimed at “military assets.” That is not what the ancient writing say.

As for the Israelites treatment of the Canaanites, in today’s times we would call it genocide. It was not just towards the military, it was towards the general population. Look at Numbers 21:2-3 “and the Lord delivered up the Canaanites and they utterly destroyed them and their cities and the Lord called the place Hormah (destruction).”

Also Deuteronomy: If they don’t surrender, annihilate them. Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them, the Hittites, Amorities, Canaanites as the Lord your God has commanded you. It even says kill the trees!

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@David1, for you:

Leviticus 25:44-46
Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. [i.e. slaves]

Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen [slaves] for ever . . . but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor."

.As we can see, as long as you are not Israelite, you are subject to slavery … and all the slave’s descendants too!

The only way out of this dilemma is to reject the O.T. and stretch the words of Rabbis.

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Woman-stealing on the other hand, was okay. Deuteronomy 21:10-14.

I’ve already hashed out my thoughts on this on “the other” slavery thread that has been alluded to. Please let’s not pretend that everything the OT describes was a loving God’s design for people. That is sickening.

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@Patrick… since you are an atheist, I know you are just doing the best you can :slight_smile: . But to many yec’s, genocide is much more reasonable to slavery.

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  1. Hebrews became servants too. Just not forever, unless they decided to be.

  2. Entering into servitude was a voluntary decision (since man-stealing was forbidden).

  3. If a slave was mistreated, all he or she had to do was run away and they’d be free. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16).

I’m sorry, was I supposed to be surprised about those Leviticus verses?

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“According to all decent human beings”

Who is defining them as decent?

And, I find it comedic how you automatically assume the “little ones” were innocent babies.

The Hebrew term here is טַף (ṭaf) when referring to “little ones”, and it refers to anyone under the age of twenty, according to scriptural evidence regarding those allowed to enter the promised land.

So, that’s including teenagers, which would not only be involved with pagan worship, but also most likely pagan sexual rituals. Where, in Israelite society, would the teenager (whom parents were murdered in war) be comfortable and non-violent? While living among their parents killers?

So, national security was of immediate importance, yes.

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Of course I’m not saying everything in the OT was a loving Gods design, that’s not my intention at all. Polygamy, slavery, and genocide were things that occurred but none of which were a part of Gods plan, and none of which does God find pleasure in seeing occur.

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Again, I’d recommend doing research into that “utterly destroy them” verses. Because, as the Bible shows, they were not “utterly destroyed”. It was an ancient expression of totality, I have a link if you’d like further reading.

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Your responses are utterly repugnant. Or as @Christy puts it, sickening. I am not enough of a misanthrope to believe that you approve of crimes against humanity, and so must conclude that you are a prisoner of biblicism. It’s tragic.

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No, you are supposed to be aware of their implications!

  1. Becoming servants was not a choice of non-Hebrew.
  2. It was not voluntary for the non-Hebrew.
  3. Then how is it even servitude, or sensible, if the only thing one had to do to break the contract was to leave without a forwarding address?

Wow. …@David1, if this is what constitutes a refutation for you, I’m done. Have a blessed Sunday!

If you can’t get bondage right … there’s not much point in discussing the cre-tion of the whole Universe.

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Ad hominem has always been a distasteful response. How about facing reality of the Hebrew language and culture? Its not that difficult. Or, for an atheist that’s dedicated to denial, perhaps it is.

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It was a choice of the non-Hebrew… how else did they become slaves? War prisoners are exactly that, war prisoners. Foreigners were to be loved, not oppressed, and if they sold slaves to the Israelites, the slaves they sold couldn’t be stolen people.

It was voluntary for the non-Hebrew, as man-stealing was forbidden.

The only reason one would leave would be if he was being abused. If he left, his payments would end also. It would make zero sense for one to run away when they’re working to either pay off a debt, or to live under their masters roof.

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This may not be the most off-base explanation I’ve ever read… but I think it has to tie for 2nd or third.

@David1
are you seriously trying to question how those defeated in war could become slaves?

Besides that, there is still the other method… could have been defeated by someone else and brought to Israel for sale.

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Funny, you call my comments “off-base” but never seem to be able to counter any of my arguments.

The only reason Israel made their war prisoners into servants is because they had no prisons in the Torah. Where should prisoners be contained? There was no where. So, just like the current American method of putting prisoners to work, the Israelites servants (who were captured during war) worked. That’s better than death.

Did Israel buy prisoners of war from Gentiles? Not that I know of. If you can conjure up some scripture saying so, I’d appreciate it. Israel only made their prisoners of war servants because of lack of prisons, I’d say. So why would they buy prisoners of war from tribal affairs outside of Israel, that brings nothing but a risk to national security. Plus, they’d have no proof it was an actual “prisoner of war”, and it might be a “stolen man”, so they’d most likely avoid accepting an offer like that in fear of breaking Exodus 21:16.

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I sincerely hope you’re right! And I wish I shared your certainty. But given what we’ve all been willing to do to each other currently when we feel a bit threatened (and it doesn’t take much to make a privileged class feel threatened) I’m not nearly so optimistic. It does take a lot of chutzpah for us to pretend we are on some sort of moral high ground looking back at ancients whose many crimes included being honest about what war does. The only way many affluent nations experience war now is like it’s a football game on their TVs (just fine as long as it’s fought on somebody else’s soil and with somebody else’s children doing the fighting on our behalf.) But hey … ask whether it’s necessary and then watch the all the justifications and rationalizations come out of the woodwork. Only then will you see real rationalization at work. Bishop Robert Barron had an interesting take on all this in his Youtube piece titled “Extreme Demands, Extreme Mercy” The video starts off speaking about Catholic teachings on sexuality, but then a minute or two into the video he makes a lengthy and informative digression into “Just warfare” in order to make his larger point. And while many of us Mennonites may stand accused of pacifism, Catholics in general --not so much. That makes Barron’s take all the more interesting. I may still fundamentally disagree with him at the end of the day, to be sure; but his is an interesting voice of informed rationality among those who make allowance for atrocity (and that, I believe includes all of us here if we are typical citizenry of a wealthy nation – despite the protestations of some that we are now all so far above all that).

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I should hasten to add, @Patrick, that I do share in your approval that women and children (at least in … many places?) are not treated like property today. One hopes we’ve made some progress anyway.

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@David1,

As you can see, there is None of that explanation you offer. Not only are these people not in a war … but you can buy the children of strangers (non-Hebrew) that live in the land.

And not only that … but these slaves can be your slaves forever !!.. long after any war is over.

Your interpretation is off-base. Just one section of one chapter in Leviticus proves it.

Side Note: A Definition of Chattel Slavery:

“Chattel slavery is what most people have in mind when they think of the kind of slavery that existed in the United States before the Civil War, and that existed legally throughout many parts of the world as far back as recorded history. Slaves were actual property who could be bought, sold, traded or inherited.”

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