Slavery and the Bible

If the Bible and Jesus are so holy and wise how is it that both are so complicit with slavery? What defense or explanation can defenders of Christianity offer to intelligent modern critics?

Well for starters we need to remember that slavery in the Old Testament and through the time of Jesus, though cruel, was not like the slavery we in the modern world are accustomed to reading about.

Slavery in the ancient world was a universal expedient and in an age of wars of conquest or of revenge, slavery was the milder of two cruel options for dealing with captives; kill them or enslave them. Slavery in such an age was a species of labor relations, masters (=employers) and slaves/servants (=employees).

To be sure compensation hardly rose above lodging, clothing and food but… Slavery in the ancient world of the Old Testament could not practically be prohibited. The best that a society could do was to regulate its operation.

In this regard critics and even Christians miss the uniqueness of the Bible’s approach to slavery. In the fundamental regulations that governed ancient Israel —the Mosaic Law—master-slave relations are humanely regulated.

Exodus 21. 2-11 as societal legislation “is concerned about the rights, limits of control, and personhood of slaves…” (Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Toward Old Testament Ethics, 1991, 98). There are also societal injunctions re slaves in Lev. 25. 39-43, Deut. 15. 12-18 and Jer. 34. 8-22, all designed to limit the master’s power over his slaves.

The maximum length of service of a Hebrew slave was six years (Ex. 21.2; Deut. 15.12) and when released such a slave had no financial obligations to the master and indeed the master was expressly commanded “And when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed. ¹⁴ Supply him liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to him as the LORD your God has blessed you.” (Deut. 15. 13-14, NIV). This approximates our modern bonus, gratuity or a “golden handshake”.

In the Mosaic code there are regulations re a master striking his slave (Ex. 21. 20-21), or causing permanent injury to a slave (Ex. 21.26-27).

Slaves, whether Hebrew or a foreigner, had a weekly day of rest on the Sabbath (Ex. 20.10; Deut. 5.14).

We ought to ponder the poignant societal ethical implications of a passage like Job 31.13-15, 13 “If I have denied justice to my menservants and maidservants
when they had a grievance against me, ¹⁴ what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account? ¹⁵ Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?” (New International Version, NIV)

Our Lord’s radical ethic of love transformed individual lives and progressively revolutionized human relations.  Paul’s letter to the slave owner Philemon draws on this ethic of love and was radically counter-cultural to the mores of first century AD Greco-Roman society. Paul asks the owner of the run-away slave Onesimus  “I appeal to you on the basis of love…I appeal to you for my son Onesimus…I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you…Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.” (vv.9, 10, 12, 15, NIV).

Read properly with awareness of the ethics of the age the Bible’s approach to slavery is astute and subtly radical. What prohibition could not achieve at the time,  progressive ethical regulation and personal transformation accomplished over time —the abolition of slavery and the ongoing improvement of industrial relations informed by Jesus’ ethic of love.