Applying What The Bible Says About Slavery

Jordan Cooper has an excellent discussion of what the Bible says about slavery. You need to read it all, but I’ll quote six points that he makes.

I then want to propose a way to apply these passages–not just to their historical context–but to the slavery of sin.

From Jordan Cooper, Does the Bible Support Slavery?, Just and Sinner:

Slaves were not viewed as subhuman. This much should be obvious, as the people of Israel lived in slavery in the land of Egypt. This is a fact that the civil law constantly points back to as justification for the right treatment of those who are mistreated and outcast in society (the orphan, widow, foreigner, etc.). See, for example, Deuteronomy 10:19. The New Testament explicitly places the slave and free person on the same level ground in the eyes of God (Gal. 3:28). Any system of slavery which argues that the slave is a lesser human being (such as was often the case in American slavery) is outright sin.

In Scripture, slavery had absolutely nothing to do with racism. Because of the cultural baggage that exists in twenty-first century America, we automatically connect slavery with the abuse of a particular race. This is not how slavery was treated in the ancient world, and Scripture is clear that racism is sin (Gal. 3:28). The provisions surrounding Israelites marrying only fellow Israelites had nothing to do with race, and everything to do with retaining pure worship in the nation of Israel. Worshipers of YHWH were not to marry worshipers of foreign gods.

The Old Testament law explicitly condemns the abuse of slaves. They were not to be treated as property, but as fellow human beings. If a slave is abused and injured, the law commands that they be set free (Exodus 21:26-27). The New Testament also encourages good treatment of slaves (Eph. 6:9).

The kidnapping of a human being, and consequent sale of that human being, was punishable by death in the Mosaic law (Ex. 21:16). The American slave trade is, thus, explicitly condemned by Scripture. Had this happened in the nation of Israel, God would have required all people associated with the slave trade to be put to death. This is, in fact, more harsh of a punishment than exists in parts of the world today where the slave trade unfortunately still exists.

The explicit reasons for permissible slavery in Scripture are a punishment for a crime (Ex. 22:3), or as a way for someone to repay a debt (Lev. 25:39). If one had a slave from among the Israelites, the maximum amount of time which that person could serve as a slave was six years. It is true that, like the other ancient near eastern cultures, the Israelites were allowed to keep slaves following a military victory. Several laws protected these slaves, however, in a way that differentiates the Jewish laws from surrounding near eastern cultures. These people were to be provided for and treated as humans, rather than abused.

In the book of Philemon, Paul writes to a man whose slave (Onesimus) stole from him, and ran away. Paul writes to Philemon encouraging him to take Onesimus back and treat him as a brother. He states that Philemon will do “even more than I say,” which is likely a reference to Paul’s hope that Onesimus would be set free (Phil. 21). History testifies to this, as Onesimus eventually, supposedly, became a bishop.

[Keep reading. . .]

This, I think, is a good account of the cultural and economic meaning of slavery in the ancient world. But if all Scripture is written for our instruction (Romans 15:4), what do we do with the slavery passages in a culture and an economy without slavery?

Now there is much in the Bible that seems shocking. Those who see the Bible as primarily a textbook for morality have to bend some passages to make what it says seem better than it appears. But the purpose of the Bible is not primarily a guidebook for life. Its main purpose is to drive us to Christ, or, rather, by bringing Christ to us. This it does by devastating us with God’s Law (some of the shocking passages do this by showing us just how alien and all-consuming and frightening God’s righteousness is) and then bringing us back to life and joy by communicating and conveying the Gospel of Christ’s redeeming and forgiving work on our behalf.

So how do the slavery passages, whatever their historical and cultural context, contribute to that overarching purpose? Well, there is slavery mentioned in the Bible that still exists: the slavery of sin (John 8, Romans 6).

This does NOT mean that slaves are sinners, as in blaming the victim; it means that sinners are slaves. The one we obey is our master, as both Jesus and St. Paul explain in the above texts, and our sinful nature is such that we are not free to just be good if we want to; rather, in Luther’s terms, our very wills are in bondage, so that we are slaves to our fallen flesh, to our twisted impulses, and to Satan himself. We sinners are ALL slaves, so that the slavery passages apply to us.

So the passages about historical slavery and how it was governed under the Levitical law, while mitigating the institution as it was practiced by the Canaanites and later the Romans, speak to us of our condition under sin. To apply Rev. Cooper’s points, they teach us that sinners are still human beings; that someone who leads someone else into a particular slavery to sin (a seducer, a corrupter, etc.) is guilty of a sin that deserves death and damnation, etc.

It follows that the freeing of slaves in the Bible is an image of redemption. The deliverance of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt is described in these terms (Hebrews 11:29). Jesus and St. Paul also talk that way when the latter speaks about the freedom of the Gospel (Romans 6) and when Christ says that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).