Hello, I’m Laura. Today I’m going to talk about What Does God Think About Slavery.
I see four kinds of people who are asking this question:
- In the first group, we have people who trust God and the whole truth as it is presented by His word and creation, but find it honestly challenging to understand certain sections of the Old Testament law or New Testament admonitions. They think their own understanding is most likely the issue, because they have a clear perspective of their place before God.
- Two is a group who think certain parts of the Bible are embarrassing and maybe, probably, wrong, but still sincerely repent of their sin, and trust in Jesus Christ.
- Three are those who are sincerely curious about discovering the real God, but have trouble accepting the Bible because of issues like this and how they are presented by antagonists.
- And four, are people who have no desire to know the truth, but think they can discredit the Creator of the universe and thereby absolve themselves from the guilt of all their selfish attitudes and actions by heckling parts of the Bible that they don’t care to understand.
My discussion here, today, is for people who fall into groups 1, 2, and 3.
I’m going to cover this topic not in the way I’ve heard many other people do, which is to just go right into the issue of slavery. I want to start with some other basics that are crucial to evaluating things in the Bible.
First of all, let’s recognize two things:
The Bible was written for ordinary people. It is not meant to be an academic treatise that only a few experts with years of academic study can decipher. This is apparent in many ways, and many places in the text, not the least of which is that Jesus is constantly quoting the scripture to everyone.
The stories and message are clear enough for us to “come to Him as children,” referencing Mark 10:13 – 16. Sure, there are depths of understanding and maturity in our walk with God, but the gospel is simple and the stories that relate God’s working to set it up are raw. And clear.
Secondly, the truly unchanging character of God is obvious from the perspective of the whole Bible. Any attempt to try to understand parts that are more challenging, whether they be because we don’t understand the language or it’s just been presented to us in weird ways, needs to be done from this perspective of who God is.
So that is how we are going to start, and then we will focus in on how the references to slavery in various places make perfect sense.
But let me assure you – I am not going to dismiss passages that talk about rape, beating of a slave, or submitting to masters. There is NO reason to be embarrassed or to ignore these parts, as we will discuss.
So along those lines, you can see in the Bible that it intertwines two things:
These are God’s loving plan, since the beginning of creation, to offer mankind a rescue, a lifeline, to save anyone who will grab hold of it. And this He can do, knowing the beginning from the end, in spite of the second thing that is intertwined, which is how mankind has used the gift of free-will to choose evil and to distort the perfection, to twist and mangle the perfection, that God has made available.
And once sin and rebellion had entered the world, it infected every aspect of life. The epitome of wickedness, of man’s choice of evil, showed up right away as the intention to murder and the action to murder a fellow human being, as we have in the story of Cain and Abel.
Thus, from the introduction of corruption into the world by men’s choices, and no one in their right mind denies the existence of such corruption, God had two choices. He could, 1) immediately wipe out mankind and thus purge the earth and preemptively all, trouble, heartache, and evil that men were choosing to engage in. Or 2), He could offer a way for those who would choose to return to him, while the world continues on – people are born and die – in this fallen state, until He puts a final stop to evil when everyone who will come to Him has come to Him.
Those were His choices because He gave mankind a choice. It could not be both ways. But He also will not put up with evil of mankind forever, as I said. He WILL decidedly deal with the problem at the point He knows is right.
And very unfortunately, the choices of mankind involve slavery.
That is, however, only one variation of the many ways one person or a group of people can claim authority over other people, and, I will add here, that most, if not all, of the very people who cry foul on slavery in the Biblical account are quite willing to subjugate others in our current climate and culture. They just use different language.
The excuses of those who would oppress other people are the same at the core.
“Some people are inferior, they can’t be trusted to make their own decisions, they don’t deserve to make their own decisions, or maybe it is good for society that we limit them. We have a better idea of how they should their time and energy and money. They should submit themselves to their betters!”
These are all at the core of slavery. These are all at the core of any oppressive, non-godly authority of some men over other men.
So, most people who denounce slavery in the Bible are hypocrites. They have no problem oppressing and harassing other people.
But let’s go back to the more cheerful subject of God’s character and nature. It can be summed up in Jesus’s answer to the scribe, as depicted in Mark 12:30-34, Matthew 22: 35-40, and Luke 10:29. And that is “what are the two greatest commandments?”
Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
And then He goes on to clarify that on these two basic laws depend the whole law and the prophets.
However, the conversation is never balanced unless we talk about God’s justice, and, indeed, the two go hand-in-hand. Justice and love are two sides of the same coin.
Now, who would not be infuriated if a judge let a child molester or serial killer go based on “love.” “Oh, we shouldn’t judge, we just need to love the misguided person.” But what about the victims? What about love for them? Which means protection from such evil or justice for their suffering or death.
God exhibits His great love for us in that
- He is patient with us to return to Him so he can cleanse our hearts of this fallen nature
- He Himself subjected Himself to this evil world in order to take the weight of justice on Himself. The only caveat being that we have to let him apply that to our account.
If we refuse it, we are choosing to bear our own guilt, whether we admit it or not. As in any courtroom, a person may plea not-guilty to try to deny the crime, but if he is guilty, his plea is a lie.
So. What about slavery?
Where and how is it mentioned in the Bible? What do the words slave and slavery mean in context? Is God approving slavery? And what is God’s attitude towards slaves?
We know that if we look at the whole story, the whole picture, we see a constant theme: God wants to release people from the hardships of slavery. This is evident in everything from him rescuing the descendants of Israel, the nation of Israel, from slavery to Paul saying that a slave should rather become free if able. You can find that in 1Corinthians 7:21.
There are an incredible number of times when God tells the people of Israel that they should treat the vulnerable and unfortunate very well. God says many times that he will hold very accountable the people who are unjust, uncaring, and not just not hurting, but not taking care of those who are vulnerable in society.
He reminds the people of Israel many times that one of the main reasons they should do this is that they were delivered from slavery by God’s grace and power.
So how do we reconcile this with the many references in both the Old Testament and the New Testament about how people should treat slaves? The answer is partly in the question.
Slavery was and is entrenched in human society. You can compare it to current laws about taxes. There are those with enough human power to do us great harm if we refuse such extortion. So it basically ends up being a matter of dealing the best we can with a bad situation.
Still, the bad situation of slavery is not uniform, it’s not a uniform situation across time and culture. This is illustrated by the way the word is translated and in the context of the discussions.
Many times the word that is translated slave could also be translated servant, and it often was, and this has a bit of a softer connotation. Yes, it was lower on the socio-economic ladder, but it was not overtly harsh and lacking in humanitarian treatment of other people.
This may be partly because of the limits of our own language and partly because we just don’t do some of the things the way they did them or call them the same things as in other cultures.
There are examples of other words with these issues. Love, for instance, is not nearly as specific in English as it is in Greek New Testament language. If someone is reading the Bible, whether they are young or just inexperienced in the ideas of different kinds of love, they could be confused by this.
Then there’s the word king which is used in the Old Testament a lot, but if you look at the context, you can see that sometimes it was more like a chief or a mayor of cities, because in ancient times there often wasn’t the same population or ease of travel, or at least in those times recorded, that would later allow kingsto amass more territory.
There is also the word pray, which used to be a word used in every day language as simply meant to request and now simply has religious overtones.
Then there’s the fact that many places in the Bible, from the translation, the use of the word man or men is gender inclusive to mean all of mankind, and if you are too entrenched in the idea of the separation of men and women you might not pick that up.
Which brings us to the word slave. The word slave, or that was translated as slave, has different implications in even different parts of the Bible because of the different cultures involved.
I’m going to start with an example of the New Testament, which is set in the Roman world, that a slave could not apparently easily be set free. To do so was to put them at the risk of not having economic options for providing for themselves and possibly just being enslaved by someone else. Of course, this would also, then, depend some on exactly where they lived. Hence, Paul’s counsel, as we mentioned, in 1 Corinthians 7, about them getting free if they could.
And then there’s the letter Philemon that Paul wrote, about a slave that had escaped, but even that story is not simple because that escaped slave had stolen and some things needed to be returned to his master.
In the Old Testament, we have slaves or servants in the Bible from the time of Job and Abraham to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. And this covers several hundred years. But we can still notice a few things.
Abraham trusted his servant/slave to enough to send him on the important task of getting a wife for Isaac. The way that the servant handled this strongly indicates that the servant honored his master and loved him and wanted to serve him well.
But if you back up a little bit to where Hagar is the hand-maiden or slave of Sarah, we’re not given a clear picture of how this came about, but while Sarah holds great sway over Hagar’s life, Hagar doesn’t seem at all opposed to being Abraham’s wife or concubine. And if you look at it culturally you can understand this, and why, and understand the indication that she used the status and her child-bearing to humiliate Sarah.
So, in contrast, they did not have a good relationship, that we see with Abraham and his servant. And this is easy to assign to just her being a slave, but if you look at the whole story, you can see that it was because of problems that were distorting God’s guidelines for marriage and also a lack of trust in God’s promises.
it is also interesting to note that when Hagar was cast out, God met her, He comforted her, and He gave her promises. And she gave Him a name, which always indicates relationship.
Now, in the Old Testament the numbers of servants or slaves was a sign of prosperity, but, again, there are cultural complexities implied that make it obvious that this did not inherently mean dehumanizing or abusing them or a lack of individual autonomy.
Yet, it is obvious that from the beginning of time the degree of wickedness was great. And this is exemplified by Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers, and later the pharaoh forcing the people of Israel into hard labor and killing their infant boys.
So, their treatment was harsh, there was agony, and God heard their cries, and then He brought them out and set up laws and regulations for how they should live.
Some of these included the option for an impoverished Israelite to sell himself or herself into a limited time slavery or indentured servant kind of status.
Then there was the issue of how there might be slaves among them from other nations, which we will get to in more detail, and how women in the position of slaves were to be treated. And when slaves were to be set free.
Most people easily recognize the time limits given for the servitude of fellow countrymen. This was just one of the ways that God set up regulations to help protect and provide resources for the very poor people. One was that they were supposed to be able to go glean the fields – the Israelites were not supposed to completely clean out their fields, they were supposed to leave some for the poor people. They also were not supposed to charge interest from those who needed to borrow from them in their, if they were destitute, and they could also, these people could also sell themselves into this indentured servitude kind of things for a limited amount of time.
What is less easily understood is the physical treatment of slaves, both men and women in different instances, and the slavery of foreigner.
Again, to put things in perspective, you need to start with the very clear law about kidnapping. In both the Old and New Testaments it is made clear that this is a horrendous, horrible thing. In the Old Testament it was given the sentence of death and in the New Testament they are associated with the worst of sinners.
So then you are left with the question: how did they get foreign slaves? Well, it’s possible that there were some voluntary contracts also with them. And then there was war.
Now war is a little more complicated. It takes some explanation, but again, it’s not so difficult once you examine it. In God’s guidelines, there were two kinds of war, one that He ordered and one that He allowed. Let me explain.
He ordered some wars to subdue wickedness, which often included the death penalty for justice for those who flagrantly practiced wickedness. Hence, the Canaanites. They were THAT wicked. There was apparently some level of wickedness or corruption that meant everyone had to be killed.
That is hard for us to understand on two levels. We all know children, we see children as innocent; and we also tend to not see sin as badly as it is. I have a couple of Biblically based ideas why this might have been His order, and I’ll tell them to you, but I’m also going to preface it by saying I’m not trying to say I totally represent God, I’m just saying that based on what I know about His love and justice and people’s choices some of these things make sense.
Now, one of them is the things going on in Canaan could have been similar to what was going on in Genesis 6 where the sons of god❶ were meeting with the daughters of men and having corrupt offspring. Another thing could be that He already knew what those children were going to choose when they grew up because he does know the beginning from the end.
So it’s an example of where we need to really examine our human assumptions, the limited ideas of what we think wickedness is, and trust God for who He is.
Then there’s the kind of war where enemies were attacking or overtly threatening Israel. And they were allowed, in self defense, to fight or request surrender. Now, it makes sense that if someone was seeking to overthrow your country and looking for ways to plunder and kill your family that the option of servanthood or slavery was actually an act of mercy at the same time as providing justice and keeping them from further hurting you.
And there is actually one example given in the conquest of Canaan where it gives evidence that this was a commonly accepted way of doing things. It wasn’t just God saying, oh go take slaves. You have the example of Gibeon hearing about the way that Israelites were conquering everyone and coming to them in deceiving them and saying, “We will be your slaves.”
Now, did the nation of Israel always restrain its actions to these guidelines given by God? Obviously not, if you read the whole of scripture, but that is the context of slaves from other nations as God outlined it.
Even with that, all of the slaves were to be treated well. They could rest on the Sabbath, they could join in worship and festivals and believe in God. They were to be set free if any physical punishment was permanent, even so much as a tooth getting knocked out. So, whereas on one hand there was a recognition of the fact that physical punishment was a normal part of life, there was a restraint on how they would do that because, one, they might have to just give up their investment, whether it was an indentured servant or a lifelong servant; two, they were going to have to pay a lot of money and pay for the servant’s care while he was recuperating.
And that is also one of the parts in Leviticus, in particular, where it said if you hurt a free man you have to pay for his medical care, but if you hurt a slave, well a slave, he’s your property. Well, the idea is that you have to take care of him. It’s not just you “get to hurt him,” it’s that all of God’s other injunctions have said take care of him.
When you get to talking about female slaves, there is even more chance of misunderstanding or misdirected outrage because so much of it is spoken of in terms of selling or price, but if you remember that marriage was a very economic transaction and that the idea of the bride price or a dowry was extremely common, so when you put that in the mix with a buying or selling of a female slave and the recognition that the law told them to treat the female slaves with the rights of wives, to make sure they were taken care of and to honor them, then you realize this was there to protect the female slaves from being abused, as being treated like prostitutes or constantly raped. The women of the day would have seen this as a protection.
To put it another way, a bride price was akin to saying “prove you can afford to pay for our girl, that you’re well enough off to provide for her; and a dowry was an offer of economic advantage in the marriage, but even with that, there are some very strict guidelines about what men are allowed to do and accuse their wives of so they couldn’t take advantage of just stealing the dowry, so-to-speak.
So God regulated these things to keep the most vulnerable individuals safe, which you could say in this society was often, as a result of sin and evil in the world was often slaves and women. He regulated how those using the last resort of survival, whether it be economic survival in the nation or survival from war, were still to be protected. God in no way told them to have slaves.
And involuntary slavery is a picture of sin. Voluntary servanthood or slavery is a picture of mutual love and relationship as in marriage. Or, to quote a section in the New Testament, be you subject one to another. Freedom and mutual respect is obviously God’s standard, much as the one man plus one woman in marriage is God’s standard. Did that get regulated because of people’s poor choices and because of effects of evil in the world?
Yes. Sometimes a man taking multiple wives was just an exhibition of power or wealth. But sometimes it was a way to take care of women whose husband’s had died, such as in the Levirite marriage❷.
Does God love and bless people who make mistakes or bad choices based on what is going on in this broken world? Thankfully.
But let’s bring it back to our current time period. We can tend to get blind to the acceptable injustices of our current culture and think that we are superior to those in the past. This leaves us not only making the same mistakes, but misinterpreting what was going on in the past.
Every generation exhibits the same struggle with the sin nature and denying the truths of God. There are always groups of people or tyrants who find reasons to wipe out other people, that allow them to take their stuff and then feel comforted by their moral and intellectual superiority.
But if people really applied the two greatest commandments, they would try much harder to get along. But unfortunately, history shows that humans have always functioned with oppression going on.
Who of you can say that you are totally free to live according to your own choices? So then we’re faced with the same question: How do we, as individuals, live under the current oppression that we’re dealing with. How do we function in a society where some people have enough power to cause harm if we don’t do what they want us to do?
I would say that based on the guidelines in the Bible, that we are encouraged to get our freedom if we can, but not by violence or in anger. Self defense is not ruled out and speaking up with cogent arguments presenting our case in the system the best we can is not ruled out.
And you can take the example of Daniel for that: taken as a slave and not wanting to eat things that he thought were really wrong. The story shows him as having an attitude of trying to respectfully, but very forthrightly, state his case and push for it as best he could within his current situation.
And if we understand who we are in Christ and what the Bible promises, we realize that this life is but a blip. Yes, we want to fight for those who are oppressed and we want to stand up for what is good and we want to speak the truth. We also want to live in peace with people as much as it is possible with us, because too, much too easily does one violence lead to revenge for another violence.
So we live with this eternal perspective, making our decisions with that whole picture in mind, and it puts everything much more in balance. And I think it precludes us from being quite as angry about what is happening to us, because we do realize there is more to our existence than this short time on earth. Where we are as the flower of the field, disappearing in a moment.
But part of the beauty of it is that in the midst of the oppression, that is always going to be present on this earth, that we can, each of us, individually still apply those two basic commandments of loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. And that will make this fallen world a better place.
Just a note on references and research as I was putting together this discussion of slavery:
Most importantly, I looked up every passage that mentions slaves in the Bible that I could find, read them in context. I also listened to several audio discussions from people who had studied the Greek and different words to see if they was anything it what they would say help make sense or influence my perspective on it. And I also looked up a lot of discussion in a book I have called:
Dictionary of the Old Testament Pentateuch
It’s full of articles by several scholars, and even with that it was interesting in reading them, you could tell who was humbly following after God and who was sort of full of their knowledge in those. The point there being that while it was interesting and helpful to, in drawing all my thoughts together, to look at these resources – you still have to evaluate them all Biblically. You have to evaluate the attitude of the people, their attitude towards other men and towards the word of God as they are presenting their information.
In conclusion, I thank God that I’ve never been kidnapped and sold into the kind of bondage that some people over the generations have been by other people. But at the same time, I also thank God that he gives me His Spirit and His perspective about what is going on in the world, so that while I obviously see the sin and the horror that is going on, I do not need to live in a constant rage against people because my only hope is in this world. I can learn to love my enemy. I can learn to love my neighbor. And I can learn to trust God that He will work all things for good in the end. And in the end, He will take care of all of these hardships.
❶ The term “sons of god” here is understood to mean creatures directly created by God, as opposed to born of men, so fallen angels.
❷ Deuteronomy 25:5-10
Some of the things I read and listened to as mentioned in the podcast:
Doesn’t the Bible Support Slavery?