16 Bible verses that approve of slavery
Leviticus 25:39-42 I If your brother with you becomes so poor that he sells himself to you, you are not to make him serve like a bond slave. Instead, he is to serve with you like a hired servant or a traveler who lives with you, until the year of jubilee. Then he and his children with him may leave to return to his family and his ancestor’s inheritance. Since they’re my servants whom I’ve brought out of the land of Egypt, they are not to be sold as slaves.
Deuteronomy 15:11-14 There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. If any of your people–Hebrew men or women–sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free. And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to them as the LORD your God has blessed you.
Exodus 22:3 but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed. “Anyone who steals must certainly make restitution, but if they have nothing, they must be sold to pay for their theft.
Leviticus 25:43 You are not to rule over them with harshness. You are to fear your God.”
Ephesians 6:9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Colossians 4:1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Exodus 21:26-27 An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.
Exodus 21:20 If a man beats his male or female slave with a club and the slave dies as a result, the owner must be punished.
Proverbs 30:10 Don’t slander a servant to his master or he will curse you, and you will become guilty.
Deuteronomy 15:1-2 “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a remission of debts. This is the manner of remission: every creditor shall release what he has loaned to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his neighbor and his brother, because the Lord’s remission has been proclaimed.
Exodus 21:1-3 Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them: If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.
Deuteronomy 15:16 But if your servant says to you, “I do not want to leave you,” because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, 17 then take an awl and push it through his earlobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life. Do the same for your female servant.
Deuteronomy 24:7 If someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite and treating or selling them as a slave, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you.
Exodus 21:16 Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.
1 Timothy 1:9-10 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers–and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Without any cultural-context, other than that attributed by 'Scholars', it is pretty difficult to discern the loving-God through some of the arcane, and often contradictory assertions, by pro and anti religionists. (upvoted;))
Yes, I fully agree. That is why I hesitate to read too much into scriptures. Especially, ones taken out of the context of the verses that are flanking them. Also, given the understanding of even recent history and culture by most people today, not withstanding the history and culture of ancient Jews, I have to question the relevance of the Bible to anyones life.
He didn't approve or endorse slavery. God tolerated it but made very specific provisions as to how the Israelites were to treat their servant which stands in contrast to the very harsh conditions imposed by other ancient cultures of the time such as the Egyptians.
God has ideals which he knows fallen men are not going to follow them therefore He sets parameters to mitigate the harm. I know you probably think it's a load of baloney but I appreciate your through provoking posts in any case. Take care now
Well, here is 16 verses saying that slavery was at the very least tolerated. How many can you produce to say that it was ONLY tolerated AND was really odjectionable?
Would that not be implicit in the verses relating to the golden rule?
Galatians 5:13-14 KJVS
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. [14] For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
There is also what I believe to be a related underlying principle in this verse. Note how marriage is the ideal in this instance
@anthonyadavisii
Hey thanks for the thought put into your response and the references. I gave you an upvote just for that.
The golden rule as I know it: "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you" is not what you referenced from the KJVS. If you had, I might just give you this one.
As for what you did reference, it is certainly coherent with your position but also is coherent with the position that god is cool with slavery. I must admit that I am still digesting the verses you provided. This is a huge problem with the bible. The language becomes more and more archaic as you get translations closer and closer to the original Hebrew texts. So we are left with a huge language barrier but no translation bias or a huge translation bias with a low language barrier.
Anyway, what I focus on in the material you provided was love and neighbors. So here are a couple questions. Number 1, is a slave a neighbor. I think of a neighbor as someone who has a stake in the local area, the neighborhood, equivalent to my own stake. I think of them as a peer, someone who has ownership rights somewhat on par to my own, whether it is actual ownership or ownership through a rental agreement. Therefore it is unclear is a slave qualifies as a neighbor. Number 2, these verses seem to say that you can do anything to anybody as long as you love them. This reasoning has been abused many times in the past. Such as, burning possessed people, (aka the mentally ill) at the stake on the assumption that the demon would leave them because of the pain they would experience and then the soul would be able to go to heaven. So burning someone at the stake was an an act of love.
But that was getting of topic. So to come back to the business at hand, what you need to prove your point is a passage that is consistent with your stance while at the same time inconsistent with the stance of your opponent. To clarify matters, what I see as your stance is that god tolerated slavery because he had other issues that he wished to address about human behavior that was of higher priority and he could only get so far so fast with what he had to work with (ie humans). The opposing stance is that god is cool with slavery.
So with that clarification, you got anything?
Any yet "he" managed to come out against all kinds of other things he didn't want to tolerate, like kidnapping apparently. Sounds like complete indifference by an omnipotent deity to me. He could have just added an eleventh commandment "Thou shalt not own slaves". Apparently that was just to much effort, ran out of tablets I guess?
@0101010
I think your on to something here. Trying to reign in too much bad behavior all at once can be a futile action. I give that one to @anthonyadavisii. So, lets look at the priority given to the bad behaviors. Here is 3 of the commandments (taken from wikipedia):
So from this, we can assume prohibition of graven images and taking his name in vain, and the remembrance of the sabbath are all more important than the prohibition of owning another human. I guess It is nice that it seems that the slavery is limited to 6 years and the slave cannot be beaten to death, though.
BTW, @0101010, Do many people get the reference your name is making? I must admit that I missed it at first. I just noticed that it was a binary palindrome, nothing more. However, once I looked at your profile page and seen your tag line I had the sneaking suspension that it was binary for 42. A quick binary to decimal conversion confirmed it and I had a little chuckle.
Well spotted - I don't think many people realize it at all, maybe my geeky friends of a certain age. Anyway, congratulations, you win an upvote for sure. Can't give you 42 cents but I did my best.
And yes, it's amazing that a full 40% of all commandments are about sucking up to Him exclusively (you missed "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"). It's almost as if the all powerful, all knowing Yahweh is just a proxy for a bunch of insecure impotent old men.
While I have no doubt the many of these old men are insecure as well as impotent. I think the fact that 40% of the commandments, in fact the first 4 in the list, are about 'sucking up' is more significant than the egos of the priests.
IMHO, religion is a money making enterprise and like any other enterprise it has its business model. Religion's business model is to convince everyone to pay 10% of their income for some supernatural reason. The exact rationalization is not important. The method employed to do this is to create rewards for paying up and playing along with the delusion and punishments for not paying up and for discrediting the delusion. While the coughing up of that 10% is the ultimate goal, the maintenance of the delusion is more important and therefore maintaining a ubiquitous reverence for the god is the most important goal of the religion.
In the end, it is much easier to pass the plate around and collect your 10% when all the sheep are playing along than it would be with a loud mouthed skeptic questioning the very existence of your supernatural, omnipotent, omnipresent pal. Hence, the priority given to 'sucking up' or to protecting the image of the god.
Sorry I was thinking more like "insecure about people joining other religions instead of theirs" and "impotent in their power to control others". And as you point out the 10C are a pretty effective way to address those problems.
I'm actually surprised that the 10 commandments didn't include "raise you children to be good Christians" but maybe they assumed that was a given that parents would do that and the "honour your parents" bit makes indoctrination a slam dunk. If the first rule of Abrahamic god club was "Don't talk about the ten commandments" it would never have caught on.
Meanwhile its very notable that tithing and organised religion are nowhere to be seen in the commandments (and for the most part in the entire Bible if I recall). Ergo just more sheep controlling BS to build temples and enrich the few controlling elite in ways a Jesus would turn in his tomb for.
I may not be religious or believe in any God, but I'm sure that if the Jesus of the Bible had a second coming for sure I would be pretty far down the list of people he was going to kick the ass off. There's a huge line of fakers, fraudsters and criminals ahead of me for that.
#goodwithoutgod
There is a difference between voluntary slavery and involuntary slavery. In Jewish culture slaves voluntarily served others even if there masters were oppressing them. Hence why there are laws in the Bible that protect slaves.
Exodus 21:16 "He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.
Clearly this is referring to taking people into slavery against their will.
Nowhere in the scripture will you find involuntary/forced slavery condoned. But you will find laws that protect slaves who voluntarily sold themselves and also after a certain amount of time slaves were to be given the choice to be free or remain serving their master. Think of indentured servitude.
Yes, in reading these verses there is a clear theme that there is limits to the ownership of slaves. However, selling yourself or being sold into servitude through a civil judgment (both condoned in these verses) is still a bit questionable. Today a contract can be broken and sorted out in the courts if there is a question of the legitimacy of the agreement and there is no beating someone because they are not fulfilling their end of the bargain to your satisfaction.
So, I can appreciate the protections given to slaves here. However, it is a real problem for the credibility of a book that claims to be a TIMELESS moral compass.
There so many things in this world that God does not like or want in his world. You also have to account for evil. That's why He is building a kingdom that is void of all evil that we know of. Nowhere does it say that God wants and likes slavery. The whole Bible is about the liberation of people from evil which is why those verses are there. To protect against abuse and mistreatment of people. God has a plan to ultimately deal with all of this and the best part is that everyone is invited to the party.
Slave: You guys are great, I could stay here.
Me: let me go grab my awl😄
Yeah that one was priceless, I've never heard of it before.
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