Yes. We speak about slavery as it would be history but it is very much alive and well.
One common form of slavery are the bondages of debts that are often heritable. The worker is bound to work for the landlord or company owner with a small compensation to pay the debts.
Aother form of slavery is the economical utilization of immigrants or other vulnerable people. It often includes taking away passports or other documents needed for travel or dealing with the authorities. The persons work long days with minimal compensation at the mercy of others.
Some people are encouraged to travel to another country with promises of a decent job. When the person arrives, the job is something worse and there are various pressures that prevent the return.
Also chattel-type slavery still exists in some parts of the world, for example in a few very conservative Muslim societies. The slaves are often captured from outside groups that are considered to be infidels and also otherwise lower class humans. In ‘modern’ Afganisthan, the 2026 Penal Code and re-legalization utilizes the historical Arabic designation for slave (“Ghulam”) and gives the masters the legal right to physically punish their slaves (and wives).
These forms of modern slavery challence us in practical ways: what is our response to these kinds of abuse?
That is exactly one of The Bible Project’s strengths.
Tim Mackie’s framework is usually not, “Here is a one-off defense of this troubling verse.” It is more like:
The Bible is a unified, ancient, human-divine story that leads to Jesus.
That gives them a coherent way to handle difficult material:
Ancient: Scripture speaks through ancient Near Eastern categories, not modern ones.
Human: Israel’s limitations, failures, violence, and moral immaturity are genuinely present.
Divine: God is still working through that history.
Unified: the pieces belong to one canonical story.
Jesus-centered: Jesus is the decisive revelation of God’s character.
So with slavery, conquest, patriarchy, vengeance, purity laws, monarchy, etc., they tend to ask:
How does this fit into the Bible’s larger movement from disorder, exile, violence, and domination toward new creation in Christ?
That is why their approach avoids the “flat-earth treatment” problem. They are not constantly inventing little escape hatches. They are reading the Bible as a long-form narrative with development, tension, and fulfillment.
I would put their basic answer this way:
The Bible does not hide humanity’s corruption or Israel’s moral incompleteness. It narrates God entering that world, bearing with it, restraining it, exposing it, and ultimately overcoming it in Jesus.
That is a much more satisfying framework than “biblical slavery was actually fine,” which I do not think is either morally or canonically adequate.
Israel did not invent slavery. That’s a ridiculous counterfactual. It’s not only insulting to claim that I would imply it, it’s insulting to claim that I would fail if I tried.
Chattel slavery was never legal in the UK (though it was in the colonies, and there indentured servitude did exist). Slavery did not exist in Iceland. Or Australia.
A quick search suggests it did not exist in some parts of North America prior to Columbus, or in the Persian Empire.
Your inclusion of “technologically developing” is a bait-and-switch that not only dodges the question, but excludes the Hebrews from consideration.
That disease comes from loving things that can be used to bash one’s neighbor and ignoring the prophets who repeatedly say, as Nathan to David, “You are the one!”
Luther expounded on Law vs. Gospel, yet centuries later many people still revel in Law.
A line that moves towards treating everyone as human rather than as objects.
You’re trying to force Torah into being a list of regulations rather than what is was, which is a teacher aiming people towards treating others better.
Read the prophets.
According to the prophets that’s exactly what the Torah was supposed to do – nudge people towards mercy and compassion.
I agree with a point made by Oswald Hoffman: those who love the Bible as a rule book have not accepted the Gospel.
No, it’s to learn the lesson that it was never about rules, it was about loyalty – and that loyalty meant learning to be just and merciful and generous and compassionate.
It’s not a matter of making excuses, it’s a matter of asking why those prescriptions/proscriptions were given in that time and place. And that the point was to move the society towards treating people better overall isn’t an excuse, it’s what the prophets expounded.
All you have to do is search and see the passages in the prophets where they condemn people for following the Law while neglecting mercy! They were trying to hammer into the thick head of the nation that it wasn’t about rules; the rules were pointing beyond themselves, providing an arrow towards conforming to God’s own character of love and compassion and faithfulness.
It should be to call for kicking nations that practice such things to be booted from the United Nations and deprived of any of its benefits.
Of course it wasn’t fine, but it was an improvement.
Really it’s possible to sort through the 600+ ‘laws’ and put them in two camps: rituals meant to show loyalty, and behavioral rules meant to get people to behave better than before. Biblical slavery falls in the latter category, being a slight step forward with an unstated theme that all people can be God’s people.
Sure it was – you stated they helped assemble it.
I wasn’t aware that the U.K was around back about 1k B.C.
Don’t dodge – it’s an accurate distinction between societies. Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, China, indeed all the technologically developing societies had slavery. You can’t blame Israel for assisting in its assembly and be honest.
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. Read the prophets! They tell what the Torah was for, and it was not about morality except in that it was supposed to push people towards compassion and make clear that anyone could be part of God’s people.
I think we would have more reason to criticize if the Bible did not mention slavery.
The Bible does condemns trafficking (turning people into slaves) in the strongest terms: Exodus 21:16. Should the Bible condemn more than this? Should the Bible condemn Oskar Schindler?
Frankly, I look at the modern condemnation of slavery and genocide and see considerable hypocrisy – people so proud of condemning the things their own prosperity is built upon. I see too much pride in what is ultimately little more than legalisms and formality when this is frankly not where the evil really resides. It is really in how people treat other people no matter what the laws and social structures may be. The laws don’t change the realities of human cruelty and abuse – at most it only changes the targets. England is a great example of how abusive a culture can be without any slavery whatsoever.
And by the way, this not personally any kind of justification of historical ties to the slavery. Culturally, I am all Yankee and deeply suspicious of the the historical ties to slavery in some regions of the US. But I am not blind to the hypocrisy which can be found in Yankee-liberal cultural superiority as well. And then awareness of the historical context adds an even deeper level of foolishness to these accusations.
UN would include very few nations if we had that rule. Some form of slavery-type exploitation can be found from almost all countries. Much of it may be illegal but it happens. People do not realize that even the workers in a nearby restaurant or those picking berries may be victims of modern types of slavery.
The obvious follow-up question is to ask why they weren’t given in other times and places. Such as to the tribes in neighbouring areas from whom the Hebrews were to buy slaves.
Which they did, by regulating an already existing practice.
Since I have explicitly stated that “Israel did not invent slavery” and you are ignoring that in order to claim I am implying the exact opposite, there is no point continuing.
More quote-mining. Being an accurate distinction between societies doesn’t stop it being a bait-and-switch to avoid admitting that there were societies without slavery, or that it doesn’t even apply to the Hebrews because they weren’t “technologically developing”.
Except that only applies to non-family members, and possibly only to men.
Exodus 21:7 doesn’t condemn turning people into slaves.
For what? Not beating his ‘slaves’? Not selling them? Not passing them on to his son as an inheritance?
There was a recent case in England involving Chinese(?) immigrant shellfish collectors who were effectively slaves. It was illegal, the workers were ‘freed’ when their exploitation was discovered, and their situation was widely condemned.
Which is, I think, the point. The difference between legal, government/society sanctioned chattel slavery from which there is no escape, vs illegal non-chattel slavery from which the authorities release victims.[1]
Biblical slavery (and hence American slavery) was the former, when it need not have been. There is no reason I can think of why foreign slaves purchased by the Hebrews could not have been treated exactly the same as indentured Hebrew workers.
Although unfortunately economic circumstances may lead to them becoming victims again. ↩︎
Slave(y) is a translation of Awokanak,[2] the name given to the Dene by the Cree, "who sometimes raided and enslaved their less aggressive northern neighbors
God had essentially ‘divorced’ the rest of the nations; as it says, Israel was His portion. It fits with what’s called remnant theology, where God focuses on a faithful remnant which eventually narrowed down to just the Messiah.
I recommend reading The Unseen Realm by Dr. Michael Heiser.
No, it wasn’t, despite your insistence on the idea. In fact Israel wasn’t alone in limiting maltreatment of slaves, they were just (barely) in the lead.
It has been a while but I don’t think “allow” is the correct word choice here. I am pretty sure God "struck down all the first-born of Egypt.” God is described as the cause. Everything that happens God allows, regardless of whether it is something that leads to tears of joy or sorrow. Creation ex nihilo is an ongoing process. Without God’s continual sustainment, the material would cease to be.
Just to be clear, using the single term “slavery” to describe all of what happened the last 2,000 years (or 3500 years going into old OT times) is very problematic. We end up comparing apples to oranges. As moderns we think “chattel slavery” when we hear slavery and there is nothing redeemable or defensible about that. Just-title servitude is different though. So is penal servitude as in the case of being captured in a just war. Maybe not ideal, or what would happen in a perfect world, free of human sin, but not immoral in its nature like chattel slavery which strips a person of their dignity and renders a rational-souled being into a beast of burden. It is always wrong for a person or system to try to strip the image of God out of a person.
Kidnapping and selling people for profit or hedonistic pleasure is wrong. Capturing slaves in a just war in antiquity is not the same thing as just going to a land and stealing people as servants. These captives endured lifelong servitude to pay their debt (think community service on steroids in the ANE world) and/or avoid the alternative which was often death. Become someones slave, work, get housed and fed or die in war. Or if disaster struck, sell your labor to someone or starve. When many Christians (outside the Atlantic slave trade times) defend slavery in history or the Bible, they are not talking about chattel slavery but just title servitude or penal servitude. They also are not praising these things either or shouldn’t be.
I profess ignorance to a detailed history of these places but a quick AI search revealed the following:
Certainly it can be disputed whether “chattel” applies in all these cases but the same goes for the Bible. The person was not reduced to a mere beast of burden and maintained rights per the Bible as I noted above. To reiterate, women were also listed along side the property of men in the commandments but they had rights too.
Indentured Hebrew servitude (slavery) was a safety net. Basically welfare in an ancient time. If disaster struck, it allowed you to work and live. Not a perfect world but not an inherently immoral practice. The person is not owning you totally as if you are no longer a person. You still had rights even if this system is prone to massive abuse. What the person truly owned was the right to your labor. Now as for foreign slaves, it depends on where they come from. If someone ransacked a foreign land just to take slaves to sell for personal gain or amusement, that is a major moral crime. However, foreign slaves captured in a just war would be different. Capturing an enemy in a just war as a slave was considered a merciful commutation of the death penalty. They now will be fed and housed and live a live of servitude (think of it as stringent ancient community service). Not what we would want in a perfect world but that isn’t where we live. When you buy a foreign slave you are essentially buying the rights to their labor from another nation. As Exodus 21:16 states: “Whoever steals a man and sells him… shall be put to death.” A slave from a just-war is different.
The Bible takes these existing social practices and regulates them. The Old Testament is just the starting point. A covenant brother could never be permanently enslaved. The New Testament then widens what “brother” means. Togo backwards though:
Even when we look at the very jarring Exodus 21:20 we see improvement:
20 “When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. **21 **But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment, for the slave is the owner’s property.
Note that a rod is not a murder weapon, but an instrument of disciple. “Spare not the child the rod.” It is not a sword or spear. Let us compare Code of Hammurabi (CH) (laws 199, 214 and 231) to the Old testament (OT)
Beat a slave to death: CH No Punishment | OT Punishment of master. That there was any punishment to the master at all (whatever it was) is a step up.
Knocks out Eye or Tooth: CH No Punishment for master, other must pay half the slaves value (not eye for an eye) | OT: must release the slave immediately. (Ex 21:26)
Runaway slaves: CH death penalty for harboring (Law 15, 16, 19) | OT do not return, they will live among you (Deut 23:15-16)
Third Party Murders a slave: CH pay a fine | OT presumably death penalty (Exodus 21:12 and Leviticus 24:17-22 [if a man kills anyone]).
Neither just-title nor penal servitude are inherently evil. If anyone defends Biblical slavery as God working from within to change hearts this is the type of slavery they usually mean. But this system is easily corruptible in the hands of men. The Bible moves things in the right direction.
Even when Paul tells masters to treat their slaves well, a Roman would have laughed. Who are you to tell me what to do with my property? Under Roman law slaves had no rights and were full property. What Paul says here is quite radical.
Though its almost seems as if some modern people are angry that Paul didn’t single-handedly go out and overturn the practice of Roman slavery itself. The change came from within slowly over many centuries and we still have work to do. He planted the seeds.
So Hebrew slaves were more of welfare, foreign slaves were usually captives of a just war whose death sentence was mercifully commuted in favor or labor. Or they were existing slaves were purchased from a foreign nation. Why they are treated differently is kind of obvious.
Though it must be admitted the purchasing of foreign slaves would not all be from just-wars. Some probably were kidnapped. Israel was strictly prohibited from doing anything like this. And to be honest, these slaves were probably better off in a region where they had some rights as opposed to a region where they had none.
We compare apples to oranges if we compare slavery of Israelites to other Israelites vs. non-hebrews to Israelites. If we don’t call the latter ‘chattel slavery", that’s a category error. Foreign slaves were considered property. They could be bought and sold. They could be held forever and inherited by children. Children of foreign slaves could also be kept as slaves. You could buy foreign slaves at markets or obtain them during conquest.
The status of non-Hebrew slaves and the philosophical wrestling with the issues up to the time of Moses Maimonide (late 1100’s) are discussed in the link below:
One can hem and haw about foreign slaves among the Hebrews being treated better than more recent slaves (on average - there would be ‘good & caring’ and ‘horrible’ owners in any systems). The fact remains that slavery was not forbidden, but actually allowed and regulated in the Torah. Permanent, involuntary servitude. Buying and selling of slaves. Passed down with inheritance. Practically no rabbi or cleric would defend its existence today under the same laws and would treat it as a moral anathema.
Let’s consider WWII and Allied response. Prisoners that could not be transported or confined immediately could be shot. War prisoners could be confined and also worked in camps. But despite the cost of the war and the damage inflected on allied countries, we didn’t make these prisoners slaves. There was no religious conversion, there was no compulsion to adopt the local culture. They was no buying or selling of captured enemies. They went free. After some of the most brutal conflicts the world has ever witnessed, we didn’t take slaves. It would’ve been perfectly reasonable to people living under the regulations of the Torah in past Judaism, but we don’t do that now.
You are oversimplifying. The system is not ideal. I think God corrected it from within. I understand there are similarities to chattel slavery. But in Israel, foreign slaves had rights. That means they were not pure property like in Rome or the American South in the 1800’s. That is what true chattel slavery is. What was owned in Israel was the right to their labor—till death in some cases.
You don’t release property if you accidentally injure it nor do you punish an owner if he decides to kick his tent and it breaks permanently (it dies). The OT also tells Israel not to return runaway (presumably foreign) slaves. Why would it tell them not to return that property (slaves) to its rightful owners? I don’t doubt foreign slaves were looked down upon and treated worse than Hebrew servants in general (when are foreigners not shat upon?) but that is why the Bible offers them protections above and beyond what was normal at the time and forbids stealing human beings.
I’d say I guess the Bible did its job then. Praise God.
God can’t just magically erase sin from the world. That is what some seem to expect. To me this boils down to:
“God didn’t do it the way I would have in the Old Testament so that must not be God.”
Apparently to some, God can’t impose strict regulations on existing institutions in a very hard world. From our armchairs we chastise him for not issuing rules of a utopia that are impossible to maintain.
Yet our Western moral system that does the critiquing is literally steeped in Christianity and rides on the back of Jesus and the scripture that came before him. We reject slavery now because of those seeds planted 2500–3000 years ago. It’s been a long journey. Sin is real. The world sucks. It’s fallen. Jesus didn’t come because we are just a little bit bad. God is not a magician. He meets us where we are at. In the end I trust His judgment over modern moralists cutting off the branch they sit in.
The text literally says don’t steal people. The penalty for doing so is death. What did Atlantic slavers—many professing Christians—do for centuries? They stole people.
At the end of the day, God works in a broken system and the law offered protections for the marginalized. God didn’t ignore slavery nor did he think it beneficial to give a bunch of radical laws that would lead to social collapse and would not have been obeyed anyways. The law ascribes to slaves human dignity and has built into it fairness and equality. It’s not perfect nor consistent everywhere. But the general precepts are supposed to also trickle down to how Israelites treated their slaves and all other areas of life.
You are comparing “industrialized agriculture, global supply chains, international treaties, and the logistical capacity to build camps, guard millions of prisoners, feed them, and eventually repatriate them without starving their own citizens” to an ancient Agrarian society that “operated on the razor’s edge of starvation.” It lacked prisons, razor wire and a surplus economy. In an ancient world there is a war and 5,000 people surrender. What do you do?
[1] Release them (are they going to regroup and attack the next year?)
[2] Execute them (common to many ancient empires)
[3] Assimilate them via servitude (they can live, help your household, produce food needed for them and being dispersed to different homes breaks any military cohesion).
You are still comparing apples and oranges.
The Bible doesn’t say you can just abuse your slaves or do whatever you want to them. It clearly and unequivocally moves slavery away from that. If only we listened to God thousands of years ago….
thank you
