God’s
Stance On Slavery
The common apologetic response to the
question of how God feels about slavery is that he definitely opposed the historical tradition. The long-time practice
of holding innocent individuals against their will could very well be the worst
crime humankind has ever committed. The Hebrew god, who is purported to love
his people to a degree that we could never comprehend, would certainly have to
declare some explicit opposition to slavery, wouldn’t he? Truth be told, the
Bible contains not one mention of God’s desire to end slavery. Out of all the
“thou shalt nots” and multitude of rules that he provides for us; out of all
the chapters that God spends giving us intricate directions for making candles,
tents, and temples; and out of all the chapters that God inspires the authors
to spend on telling us who begat whom; not once does he ever take the time to abolish, admonish, or reject slavery.
Because God is omniscient, he knew a time
would arrive when the results of his silence would include the capture,
torture, castration, dehumanization, and/or murder of tens of millions of
Africans around the world. Even with his unlimited knowledge, God still
neglects to spend two seconds of his infinite time to ensure that we have his
documented denouncement of slavery. Using elementary deduction and common sense
on this scrap of information, we’re already able to conclude that it wasn’t
displeasing in the eyes of the Hebrew god for a more powerful individual to own
a lesser.
Does the presumably apathetic preference
of God toward slavery mean that we’re left with a distant ruler demonstrably
indifferent toward the institution? In such a case, perhaps he wants us to use
our judgment on whether or not it’s morally acceptable to own other people.
Regrettably, an in depth analysis of the Bible tells us that this cannot be the
case either. As hard as it may be to accept, even for those doubtful of the
Bible’s authenticity, God and the multitude of his appointed biblical authors
are strongly vocal in their advocation of slavery. In fact, prior to the
American Civil War, slaveholders worldwide used many of the passages we’ll
examine to justify their nightmarish treatment of kidnapped Africans.
The orders supposedly given by God are
clear enough that I can honestly see how a mentally conditioned Christian would
condone or support slavery. If society taught such individuals from birth that
the Bible is infallible, even when it drastically varies from their own
understanding, many slaveholders would separate from generated cognitive
dissonance by submitting to the presumably superior knowledge held by the
higher power. Those who broke free from the Christian mindset, illogically
justified their way around it, or never supported such religious hatred would
eventually coalesce as the abolitionists.
In this modern age, we’d like to pretend
that the upcoming passages couldn’t be found in the Bible. Even so, that won’t
make them go away. Again, the church often neglects the Old Testament due to
the uneasy feelings that its controversial topics, such as slavery, create.
Consequently, this chapter may be the only opportunity that Christian readers
have to investigate what information we can extract from these slavery-related
biblical passages. Certain verses will prominently show that the so-called
divinely inspired people speaking on behalf of the Hebrew god unequivocally
state that he was in support of slave ownership.
Before we start analyzing specific
passages, however, I need to clarify a bit of terminology. The 1600s King James
Version of the Bible often uses servant
in the English translation to describe people with what we’ll temporarily designate
as “freedom deprivation.” Since the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and
the Hebrew term ebed has an ambiguous
meaning of slave or servant, some passages might be too
vague to translate effectively without supplemental information. However, the
New Testament was penned in Greek; and the Greek words doulos and douloi, meaning slave(s), are most often used to describe people with freedom
deprivation. The Greeks had an alternative word, diakonos, for a hired
servant or assistant. The authors only use this term when the circumstances
obviously depict a voluntary work service.
Because the writers of the New Testament
knew exactly what they meant when using the term doulos, we can conclude that ebed
refers to a slave when spoken of under the same doulos circumstances. We also have the luxury of relying on the
enormous amount of context clues provided in Old Testament passages. Be careful
not to let the KJV Bible fool you with its use of the term servant or any derivatives of the word (bondservant, maidservant,
manservant, etc.) throughout the Old Testament unless they’re used in the
proper context. The New International Version and many other modern
translations of the Bible wisely correct most of these assuredly intentional
mistranslations.
The “Origin”
Of Slavery
The first
biblical mention of slavery occurs during the lives of Noah and his three sons.
After the flood, one of Noah’s sons, Ham, discovers the only man worthy enough
to save from the flood lying naked and drunk in a tent. As Ham informs his
brothers Shem and Japheth about their drunk and naked father, the two of them
cover him up without looking. When Noah finds out about the seemingly harmless
incident, he curses Ham’s son,
The Bible later tells us that each of
Noah’s sons went their own ways and repopulated the earth. We know Shem and his
descendants stayed in the
Although slaveowners based their
rationalizations solely on faulty premises, such deductions created a logical
conclusion once you ignore their uninformed fallacy of accepting the Bible as
indispensable truth. In this somewhat more enlightened society, most of us
obviously realize that slavery isn’t a logical or humane concept. We should say
the same about the decision to punish one person for the actions of another. I
wish we could also say that God has made similar improvements.
At one point, God even informs Abraham
that his descendents would be slaves for four hundred years sometime in the
near future (Genesis
A Slave Or
A Servant?
As I alluded to earlier, there’s a clear
distinction between a slave and a servant. We can best describe a slave as an
involuntary possession of another person. One of God’s popularized Ten
Commandments orders us to not “covet thy neighbor’s house…wife, nor his
manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is
thy neighbor’s” (Exodus
A servant is someone who chooses to do
work for another person, usually in exchange for compensation. Servants are
free to depart as they please and aren’t subject to the cruel treatment endured
by slaves. Many Christians, at least the ones who take the time to read the Old
Testament, honestly accept the KJV translation that leads them to believe that
all instances of ebed refer to a
servant or someone who volunteered to become a slave. First and foremost, no
one volunteers to be treated like a slave. The other half of this hypothesis
clearly doesn’t hold water either when Leviticus 25:39-40 is considered. Within
this passage, God informs the Israelites that there may come a time when one of
their fellow compatriots will become indigent and have no possessions left to
impound. If someone sells this hypothetical individual to pay his debts, the
owner is not to treat him like an ebed,
but as a “hired servant.”
If all the references of ebed in the Old Testament refer to a servant, as the apologetic hypothesis
maintains, the passage from Leviticus actually reads, “Don’t treat him like a
servant, but as a hired servant.” Why is there a distinction between the
treatment of a servant and this hypothetical man, who the owner should treat as
a hired servant? Since there’s no defining difference between a servant and a
hired servant, the KJV translation and Christian interpretation are 100%
redundant. On the other hand, there’s an enormous contrast between a slave and a hired servant. That must be the precise distinction
attempted by the passage because its words could not possibly serve any other
purpose. Slaveowners treated their slaves differently from the way people
treated common servants, and that’s the reason why these instructions were included.
In short, God didn’t want his chosen people treated like slaves. The
alternative conditions endured by foreigners are what follow in the next few
sections.
Your Rules
For Owning Slaves
As with everything else in the Bible, there
are rules accompanying slave ownership. You may wonder how slaveowners were
supposed to treat their slaves during their involuntary stay. Did God
explicitly allow slaveowners to beat their living property? Absolutely! If a
man hits his slave hard enough to keep him down for a day or two, but the slave
gets back up, “he shall not be punished: for he is his money” (Exodus
The only way that the law can distribute a
punishment for the physical onslaught is if it results in the slave’s death,
yet the author doesn’t list the exact punishment. However, if a slaveowner
knocks out a slave’s teeth, the slave is to go free as compensation for his
injuries. The same goes for a strike to the slave’s eye resulting in a loss of
sight (Exodus
We’ve established, at the very least, that
God condones the beating of slaves, but is the practice encouraged? The
educative Proverb 29:19 informs its reader that a slave “cannot be corrected by
mere words.” First, that’s an obvious error since there’s certainly at least
once instance in which a slave was corrected
through verbal discipline. More importantly, this verse paints one of the
darkest pictures in the Bible. If God’s book says slaveowners can’t correct
their property by verbal reprimand, what’s the prominent and likely
alternative? The Bible has already informed us which punishment is legally
substitutable.
Another right of slaveowners is to collect
a compensation of thirty shekels of silver in the event that another man’s ox
gores his property (i.e. slave). That’s the equivalent of $60 US in today’s
currency, the exact value of a woman. Sixty dollars seems like a low price for
the well-being of another individual, but after all, he is just money. As you should expect, there’s no mention of
compensation for the slave if he happens to survive the attack (Exodus 21:32).
If you buy a fellow Hebrew, you can only
keep him for six years. Once this time has elapsed, he’s free to leave.
However, there’s a catch. If the owner provided him with a wife, she has to
stay with the master because she is his property. If the couple gave birth to
children over the preceding six years, God also considers them the property of
the owner. With these factors in mind, the man has the option of staying or
leaving. If his final decision is to remain with his wife and children, the
paroled Hebrew must agree to become property of his family’s owner for life
(Exodus 21:1-6).
In a nutshell, a man can leave his wife
and kids behind in order to earn his freedom; otherwise, he can stay with them,
give up his freedom, and resign to share their fate. As hardly any honorable
man would choose to leave his family behind in such a selfish act, I must admit
that this is quite a clever ruse conjured by such a primitive mind. I’d imagine
that almost all men of moral character faced with this critical decision would
feel compelled to remain onboard as a slave. As a direct result of this
“decision,” the slaveowner can now claim that the man is staying on his own
accord.
Another regulation involves buying a
“maidservant.” If a man sells his daughter to be the wife and sex slave of
another man, she doesn’t have the inherent right to freedom after six years
that the Hebrew men enjoy. The new owner has total discretion in deciding
whether to keep her or set her free. If, however, he bought her as a present
for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. Although if you’ve
read the previous chapter in this book, you’ll realize that a daughter’s rights
can’t be overwhelmingly abundant. The only way this woman can ever be given her
freedom is to be deprived of food or clothing by her master (Exodus 21:7-11).
A counterargument often developed by
apologists references Colossians 4:1. In this verse, the author suggests that
masters should be fair to their slaves. I suppose that the Christian mind
believes this is somehow supposed to override every other instruction handed
down to us, making the slavery issue magically disappear. Besides, what is fair to them other than respecting God’s
established laws? This passage doesn’t condemn the beating of slaves; if
anything, it encourages it! As we
will later see, this isn’t the only mention of slave treatment and behavior in
the New Testament. Most of the authors order the slaves to be completely
obedient and to refrain from questioning their masters.
How You
Might Have Become A Slave
A number of unfortunate factors place an
individual at risk for becoming an Israelite’s slave in the Old Testament. The
quickest way is to be caught stealing. If the perpetrator swipes someone’s
property and can’t generate some type of restitution for it, the thief is to be
sold into slavery in order to compensate the owner for his losses (Exodus
22:1-3). Personally, I’ve always felt that we needed tougher laws to deter
shoplifting, but I hope we can all agree that God’s solution is excessive.
These obviously weren’t favorable times for people born with kleptomania,
which, by the way, is a genuine medical disorder currently believed to be
caused by a serotonin imbalance. God essentially turns a blind eye and doesn’t
make allowances for the genetically predispositioned lawbreakers that he
creates.
While Joshua is traveling across the
desert to slaughter his countless enemies, he meets a group of Gibeonites
pretending to be someone Joshua doesn’t want to kill. When Joshua solves the
reason for their curious actions, he interrogates them as to why they were
behaving deceitfully. As they respond by acknowledging their awareness of how
many people he has killed, Joshua decides to spare their lives and make them
slaves instead. When you examine the context of the passage, it appears that
the decision to make slaves out of the Gibeonite race will always apply because
that’s where these people are “even unto this day” (Joshua 9:22-27). As a
result, you would have already been a slave if you were born from Gibeonite
lineage.
Another unfortunate circumstance pushing
half the population into considerable danger of becoming a slave is to have
been born female. From the time a girl is born, she is the property of her
father. The ownership is transferred once the father sells her to another man
to become his wife or concubine. From the previous chapter, we know that the
wife is to be totally subordinate and fully submissive to the husband in every
way, regardless of extraneous circumstances. She is not to question her
husband, and the New Testament authors disallow her to participate during
worship. In essence, she has no real freedom. If you don’t feel this is an
example of slavery, I’m afraid you’ve missed the point somewhere along the
line.
If your parents were evil, you stood a
good chance of becoming a slave. Your enslavement, however, wasn’t a result of
your parents selling you for money or anything like that; it was because God
wants to punish them for their actions. He says anyone who
doesn’t obey his commandments and statutes stands to face a number of curses.
The divine hex of particular interest is “thou shalt beget sons and daughters,
but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity” (Deuteronomy
28:15,41 and Joel 3:8). This is yet another
example of God threatening to punish children for sins that their parents
committed. As I’ve alluded to several times throughout this book, God has a
strange sense of justice when deciding proper punishments. Of course, the
people who anger God also stand a significant chance of being sold into
slavery, but we’ll discuss that notion later on.
How To Go
About Acquiring A Slave
As if sending people into slavery wasn’t
treacherous enough, God also educates the Israelites on how to obtain slaves
for their own personal use. The people who God prefers that they purchase have
origins from the surrounding “heathen” nations. It’s also permissible to buy
the children of foreigners visiting the Israelite regions. God wants his chosen
people to buy only foreigners as life-long slaves because buying a fellow
Israelite to serve for more than six years is explicitly disgraceful to him.
The purchaser’s newly acquired possession is to remain in the family for as
long as the property is still breathing. If the owner dies, the male children
should inherit the slaves previously owned by their father (Leviticus
25:44-46).
Slaves are also obtainable from the spoils
of various wars taking place at the orders of God. When the almighty delivers
the enemy into the hands of his people, he orders the men to be killed, “but
the women, and the little ones…shalt thou take unto thyself” (Deuteronomy
20:13-14). From this demand, it’s reasonable to assume that the captives
wouldn’t desire for the aggressors to uproot them from their land. Even so, God
ignores their wishes because he apathetically allowed their society to become
conditioned to worship other deities. As a result, the Hebrew barbarians no
doubt raped the women and young girls while they molded the boys into laborious
slaves. I have no doubt about the absolute impossibility for anyone to provide
true justification for this occurrence. God, once again, demonstrates that he
can be pure evil.
Rules For
Slaves To Follow
The rules we’ve covered thus far were
divine guidelines on how to conduct yourself around your slaves. The slaves,
too, had rules to follow if they wanted a chance to see the glory of God in the
afterlife. Paul addresses slaves in his letter to the Corinthians when he tells
them that they shouldn’t be distressed about the time they spend as douloi (slaves) because free men are
also slaves to Jesus (1 Corinthians 7:21-22). I sincerely hope Paul wasn’t
deluded enough to genuinely think that his statement was an appropriate analogy
or a comforting message for the beaten and oppressed. Other than Paul admitting
we have no choice but to enslave ourselves to Jesus in order to avoid eternal
damnation, you may also find it deeply disturbing that the man most responsible
for starting the Christian explosion encouraged slaves not to stand up for
their basic human rights.
Any decent person knows that this
lifestyle is humiliating and demoralizing, not to mention just plain wrong,
because freedom is essential to a healthy and happy existence. I’m sure Paul
would have ceased his apathetic attitude toward their predicament if he had
switched places with one of them for a while. To be fair, however, Paul sincerely
thought Jesus was going to arrive and whisk everyone away to Heaven within a
few years. Thus, he believed that the slaves shouldn’t do anything to
jeopardize their chances for an upcoming ticket to paradise. He also thought
slaves should go free if they had that option. However, Paul’s beliefs in
Jesus’ expedited visit were incorrect, and he didn’t consider the ramifications
of being wrong. In reality, I think that Paul truly wanted people to be good to
slaves, but he was obviously under the false impression that the Old Testament
had legitimacy. However, the Christian crowd must necessarily believe that
Paul’s words are divinely inspired. In such a scenario, God knew slavery would
continue for nearly two more millennia, yet he allows Paul to encourage
suppression of rebellious feelings.
The author of Ephesians also says slaves
are to be submissive. “[Douloi], be
obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and
trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.” He orders them to
follow this rule, not only to please their masters, but also to please God
(6:5). We’ve already learned from the Old Testament that nothing indulges God
more than an obedient foreign slave; this author simply reinforces the notion.
In essence, he unwittingly used a scare tactic of which he was also a victim.
If God is pleased with obedient slaves, what does this say about his feelings
toward the practice?
The author of Colossians agrees that douloi are to be submissive to their
masters “in all things” (3:22). It’s true that the slaveowners have guidelines
as well (4:1), but are the slaves allowed to break their own guidelines if
commanded to commit immoral acts? The author does a very poor job of clarifying
this perplexity. Since an out clause isn’t provided, as was the case for the
female slaves (i.e. wives), we can only assume that the text means exactly what
it says. Thus, God wants slaves to be obedient regardless of the treatment
received.
Peter, who goes more into depth when
dispersing his orders to slaves, also reaffirms this idea. They are to be
completely obedient and to fear their masters, even the ones who mistreat them
(1 Peter 2:18). In other words, no matter how bad they beat you, abuse you,
starve you, or rape you, don’t act with disobedience. There’s no need to
pretend that Peter wasn’t aware of how some masters treated their slaves. Even
in those circumstances, he wants them to be fully submissive. We can reasonably
infer that God wants a slave to just sit and watch in the not-so-hypothetical
situation that the master is raping his wife. Why can we make such a drastic
inference? The same answer as always: divine inspiration. By this point, we
should really begin to wonder how the Bible is repeatedly able to top its own
record-setting level of disturbance.
The author of the first letter to Timothy
says that slaves should look at their masters with utmost respect (6:1). This
might be hard to do if disrespectable masters are beating and raping their family
members at will. In the last known set of biblical instructions for slavery,
the author of Titus says that slaves should be educated on how they can be
completely obedient to their masters (2:9-10). I’m afraid to ponder what he may
have had in mind.
Once again, to be fair to Paul and the
other New Testament authors, they were normal individuals unaware of the lack
of reliability held by the Old Testament. No god is going to punish slaves for
standing up to their masters, but we should expect neither the authors nor the
slaves to realize this fact because, centuries ago, superstition evidently
superseded common sense. When Christians insert the notion of divine
inspiration into the Bible, however, this rational explanation becomes
inadmissible. Christians must then accept the explicit words authored in the
New Testament as perfect representations of God’s desires.
Who Is The
Ultimate Slave Trader?
If you can’t already correctly guess the
answer to this question, you apparently haven’t been paying close attention. In
addition to the commands that God gives for the Israelites to acquire slaves,
the instructions that he provides to the Israelites on where to locate slaves,
the rules that he gives for possession of slaves, the threats that he makes to
convert people into slaves, and the times that he destines certain people to
become slaves, God allegedly trades more slaves than any known individual in
history. To be fair about it, if you wish to call it that, God often forewarned
his people about a series of curses that he would bring upon them if they
didn’t listen to his voice and follow his commandments. The hex in which we’re
interested at the moment is the promise of serving the enemy tribes as a slave
with a “yoke of iron upon thy neck” (Deuteronomy 28:48). That day certainly
came, and it did so more than once.
After Joshua dies in the book of Judges,
the Israelites turn their backs on God. Of course, this further ignites the
inextinguishable fury within God’s heart. As promised before, he sells them to
a group of raiders (2:10-14). After God feels that he taught them a sufficient
lesson, he makes them a free people once again (2:16). However, as they soon
return to their evil ways, circumstances force God to teach them a lesson once
again, which makes you wonder why he let them go free in the first place. He
then peddles them off on a King of Mesopotamia. When the people of Israel are
once again slaves, they cry out for God to save them. After letting them serve
eight years, he figures that the King has served his purpose. Now, God sends an
army led by Othniel to defeat the King and retrieve his chosen people. As long
as Othniel lives, the Israelites remain faithful to God. When Othniel dies,
however, they once again return to their evil ways of idolizing other gods.
Thus, God allows Eglon, King of Moab, to take them as slaves. Again, the people
cry out to God for freedom, and, again, he sends relief in an individual named
Ehud to kill the King and free the Israelites. Ehud lives another eight years, but
the situation changes when he dies. I hope that you’re starting to get the idea
by now.
As the Israelites once again become evil,
God sells them to Jabin, King of Canaan. For the third time, God sends relief
and frees his people (Chapters 3-4), and their subsequent freedom lasts forty
years. For the fourth time, the Israelites, who obviously didn’t learn their
lesson, become evil again. God then delivers them in a battle to Midian and the
Midianites. When the Israelites cry out for God as you might have anticipated,
he sends Gideon to free them yet again by delivering the Midianite army into
his hands (Chapters 6-7). Once Gideon dies, the Israelites return to serving
other gods again (8:28-35). I know
this story is getting old by now, but you should see the absurdity in an
omniscient God taking this route to teach people a lesson.
By this point in the tale, God seems to
ignore their misbehavior for a while before delivering them into the hands of
the Philistines and Ammonites (10:7). When they ask for help, God reminds them
that he has already freed them on four separate occasions (five, counting the
Exodus). He then suggests that they should call upon the gods that they turned
to earlier for help (10:14). Even so, God shows a hint of benevolence by setting
them free again. The chore of liberating them on this occasion falls upon
Jephthah (Chapter 11). As Jephthah dies and the Israelites become evil for an unprecedented sixth time, God delivers
them to the Philistines for forty years (Chapters 13-16).
The point of all this mess is that God
sold or delivered his own people to be slaves on six different occasions
because they didn’t want to worship him. Do people dumb enough not to stick
with a god who undeniably helps them out on such a regular and reliable basis
really have the capacity to follow directions? Doesn’t this story read more
like a fairy tale or a fable with an intended moral than an actual historical
account?
The threat of slavery didn’t end with the
Philistines though. In Jeremiah 15:14, the author reminds us that God will once
again sell people into slavery if he chooses to exercise his unlimited power.
Such a divinely inspired passage could serve as a perfect justification for
those opposing the abolitionist movement. Even so, I fail to see the point in
rewarding the Israelites for doing things that God more or less forces them to
do, such as worshiping him, when the alternative is a severe punishment of
lifelong enslavement. Yet, God does the same thing to us by allegedly offering
us eternal paradise as opposed to eternal damnation in Hell. Do believers in
these situations really have a
choice? Aren’t we also slaves to this god’s desires?
The Racist
God
I hope you realized long before reading
this chapter that enslaving the innocent is wrong. There’s a huge problem,
however, in reconciling this belief with the postulate of a “wonderful” and
“loving” biblical god because this deity repeatedly commits heinous acts that
we inherently know are immoral. Time after time, God sells slaves and orders
people to take others as their slaves. He has rules for slaveholders, and the
divinely inspired writers of the New Testament have orders for the slaves.
This is the thought that I’m hoping
Christian readers will consider among themselves: “I feel that God is a
wonderful and loving creator, yet the men who wrote the Old Testament say that
God encouraged people to make slaves of foreigners because they worship
different gods. He also allowed women to live as slaves because the men
believed that females were the inferior gender. These aren’t wonderful and
loving decisions. The Old Testament writers even say that God sold slaves and
gave rules to Moses permitting his people to beat the male slaves and rape the
female slaves. This does not seem right at all. Did God actually say and do all these horrible things, or were the
authors probably trying to advance ulterior motives by tricking a gullible
audience into believing that these ghastly commands were truly of divine origin?”
As the events of
Genesis are purported to have started taking place at least 3000 years before
we know of anyone who recorded them on hardcopy, no primary eyewitnesses were
around to testify for or against the legitimacy of these claims. If you decide
that God actually said the things written in the Bible, it certainly throws out
the notion that he’s “wonderful” and “loving.” If, on the other hand, you
decide that God would never make the aforementioned suggestions, it certainly
brings the validity of the Bible’s content into question. Think about it for a
while.