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.”
Lol Brooks, I never said that the only slavery in Israel was the product of war prisoners. I don’t know where you drew that conclusion. Servants could be bought from foreigners, but the servants could not be “stolen” people.
I’m really not following you here… you keep talking about stolen people.
I’m not quite sure how you became someone’s Permanent Property as a servant, including your children and your children’s children … without being stolen.
But let’s suppose there is another way … you say as long as the servants were not “stolen people”.
Fine. You admit that there were permanent slaves in Israel … just not stolen people.
Were there permanent slaves in Israel? If an individual put himself into that position of lifelong servitude, I suppose so. Who am I to tell someone what to do with their life?
This sounds depressingly like all those jolly darkies singing in the fields.
Actually, one problem in ending slavery today is getting rid of the person’s “slave mentality.” Sometimes a person set free from slavery is so anxious about how he will live that he sells himself back into slavery.
What are you even talking about? “If an individual put himself into that position…”|
If the Bible lets the Hebrew buy the children of strangers… how exactly is that a choice? Are you saying those children sure are dumb for agreeing to be sold like that?
And when the children of the children are passed on to the Hebrews heirs… where is the choice? And your explanation for how to end your servitude is to “run away”. Good idea! If only someone had explained that to the slaves in the Confederate states - - we could have avoided a war!
So, I should tell an ancient poor person, or person in debt, that homelessness (death in that day and age) is better than servitude (food, water, clothes, housing, and most likely the option to start a family).
See, the issue starts when you compare biblical servitude with American chattel slavery, too drastically different things.
If children are sold, that would be the parents making the deal. So, blame the parents if anyone. Yet, it wasn’t unheard of in the ancient world for poverty stricken parents to sell their children into servitude or slavery, especially considering the alternative was starvation.
That’s exactly why you’re having so much trouble comprehending the difference between biblical and American slavery. If a slave was unhappy in biblical servitude, he could run away and live where ever his heart desired, not to be returned to his master (Deuteronomy 25:15). If a slave ran away in America, he was captured and brought back to his master, and usually punished, very severely punished.
Jesus had twelve followers (including fishermen) and, at some points in his ministry, hundreds of followers. Lets just say His public appearance didn’t go unnoticed, and He likely never went hungry with the group of fishermen and dozen of people He strolled with.
You should learn more about ancient biblical slavery and stop matching it with Trans-Atlantic involuntary slavery.
Agreed that slavery in the ancient near east and in the Roman early Christian world was not the same thing as Trans-Atlantic involuntary slavery. But that doesn’t mean it was just or right or reflective of an exemplary redeemed culture. The Old Testament repeatedly describes/mandates/regulates/normalizes situations that clearly violate modern standards of human rights, standards that in many ways are inspired and shaped by a New Testament Christian ethic.
It doesn’t get the Bible off the hook to say slavery wasn’t so bad back then, or women didn’t expect much in life, so relatively speaking, they had it pretty good. There is disturbing stuff in the Old Testament. Brushing it off with comments that imply if people really understood the situation, they would see it was no big deal is a cop out. I’ve read a lot of OT commentaries. It’s still disturbing. Why is that so hard for Christians to admit?
Honestly, to me this is the logical equivalent of saying “Stop comparing modern surgical abortion to Spartan infanticide. They are two drastically different things.” Fine. But that statement does nothing to address the ethical issues the two situations do have in common that would engender such a comparison in the first place.
Once again, I never said I support biblical slavery. I just don’t consider it immoral. The slave could run away if mistreated, it was punishable by death to be kidnapped, the law of the land was to love foreigners and sojourners like you love yourself, maiming was punishable by losing the slave (breaking of contract). I could go on. I believe God did not condone slavery, but rather regulated it because of the hardness of their hearts.
Slavery, and indentured servitude, are both not Godly. They’re, rather, allowed to have occurred for the same reason as polygamy and divorce; the hardness of the Israelites hearts. Divorce, polygamy, servitude, none of these things were things meant to have occurred from the beginning.
I do not, however, believe the Old Testament God ever condoned something “immoral”. There is disturbing stuff in the Old Testament, of course, its the history of a branch of humans, its not going to be pretty. I think if you do research into whatever you find “disturbing”, it might shed some light onto it.
As far slavery, it was NOT commanded, it was regulated in every instance of its mention. God never said “when you buy slaves”, He said “if” or “you may”. Same with divorce and polygamy. Don’t allow the people of this group to slander my name behind my back, believe me, I despise slavery, but Biblical slavery is not the type of slavery most think it is. Just my two cents.
Please don’t read this with an aggressive tone. I’m really just trying to understand how you think. Do you think morality is relative then? Or do you think that an analogous situation today (there are cultures around that are quite similar to the OT tribal culture) could be morally “regulated” in a God glorifying way? Or in other words, is there a country in the world today where Christians could morally sell their children into servitude or their daughters into marriage because of the hardness of their hearts in their cultural context?
This statement is weirdly paranoid. But I’ll reiterate what I wrote earlier: only a hopeless misanthrope would assume that a person defending the indefensible in the bible is really a person who condones slavery or genocide. What makes you hard to understand is that you actually did defend atrocities in this thread, taking the side of the murder of children when it somehow involves “national defense.” Your devotion to the bible is causing you to write things that I could not bring myself to assume that you really believe.
My sincere hope for you is that you can find freedom from biblicism, which is what I assume motivates you to write things that are frankly beyond the pale. I surmise that you believe that you should defend the bible at essentially any cost. That’s a scary place. I hope you find your way out.
Back in the day, I taught adult ESL. I found out that two of my students were mail order brides from Vietnam. They were both around 18 years old and were married to American men over fifty. They were expected to cook, keep house, and be sexually available. I was concerned about this situation so I asked them if they were okay.
One of the girls said something like. “I know this sounds bad to you American women. But you have to understand that in Vietnam I got up every day at three to sell flowers on the street. I had no dowry. The best I could expect for a husband in Vietnam would be a man who would beat me and spend all his money drinking. I had no future. But now, I have a husband who sends me home once a year to visit my parents. He is paying for me to take classes. When I am done with my GED and ESL classes, he is going to help me get a nursing degree and American citizenship. He is going to die before me, and I will be better off than I ever could have hoped in Vietnam. So I am really happy with this situation.”
So, essentially being a trafficked woman worked out well for her in her estimation. But I would still do everything I could to pressure my Congressional rep to outlaw mail order brides and I would support organizations that fought this kind of thing. I don’t think what her husband did is moral by American cultural standards or Christian standards, and even though he was treating her well, I think mail order brides should be abolished. They create a situation that is fundamentally unjust and ripe for abuse, even if it is potentially or ideally less unjust than the situations that push girls into the marriages in the first place. If someone tried to defend this kind of thing using the Bible (something that could be done),or tried to describe that situation as “God’s loving provision” for poor Vietnamese girls, I would be appalled.
I feel similarly when people try to make slavery or women as chattel or Levites having concubines they toss out to crazy rapists as not really worth fussing about. Yeah, some people had it better in life than they could have had it if Hebrew law had not regulated marriage and slavery they way they did. But lots of bad stuff happened because people were slaves and women were chattel. And if we say since God instituted those regulations, they are by default right and good and perfect, that is very problematic to me.