Biblical Slavery

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The Biblical Meaning of Slavery and Servitude

Today on The Rap Report, we're going to have a special for you. I was recently on a podcast called Clergy Talk. We were talking about the subject of slavery. Slavery in the Bible, a big topic that people like to criticize the Bible for.

We're going to cover that along with a ton of other topics. Coming your way right now on The Rap Report. One, two, three.

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

That being said, I'm going to let my guest take off and just fill in on what the Bible says about servitude. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. And I always enjoy watching you on Thursday nights on Apologize Live. I always see your comments coming through. You always have some good comments to add when we're doing the live show.

So thank you for that. A lot of people do get the idea of slavery wrong in the Bible. When people hear the word slavery and those who are listening think about it, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

You think of the African slave trade. You think of what we call slavery. And we make a mistake. I think last time I was on your show, we talked about some hermeneutics, how to interpret the Bible. And that's what we have to apply here.

What we end up seeing here is that when we look at hermeneutics, we see the fact that what you want to do is understand what things mean at the time they're written. What we are making a mistake of doing is reading into the Bible a different view of slavery than the slavery that's mentioned in the Bible.

Let me give some specifics. We think of the slavery that was the atrocities here in the United States where people were kidnapped, they were sold, and then they were considered property. By the way, as a side note, if anyone is against the idea of slavery because the claim that it's a property issue, this is my property, so I have the right to do what I want, they have to then consider this.

What's the difference between saying this is my property or saying this is my body? You see, for those who argue for abortion, they're arguing for an ownership issue. They're saying that they own the right to another person.

Just a side note. So people don't often think about that. But the idea of slavery that people think of is the kidnapping, which Scripture speaks against. Scripture is quite clear that there should not be the kidnapping of other people.

So right off the bat, you know that there is a case to be made against the kidnapping. But there's another thing to think about, and that is you have the ownership issue. Does the Bible teach ownership of another human being?

Well, actually, it doesn't. What we see in Scripture, when it comes to someone whose cattle just walks away, and someone else gets that cattle, finds the cattle, they don't have to return the cattle, because it's the owner's responsibility to keep an eye on that.

And it's his property, but if he lets his property go walking off onto someone else's property, and that person then takes it, they now own it. However, Scripture is also quite clear that if your slave runs away, you do not return.

So I think I said that with the cattle wrong. With the cattle, you're supposed to return it. But with a human being that's a slave who runs away from his master, and he's now with someone else, that someone is not to return him.

Why? Because he's not property. The master doesn't own him. The other thing that people think about when we think of slavery is the fact that they don't get paid, they're just their forced labor. Well, in Scripture, when it comes to slavery, they are to be paid a half-day's wage.

So they're actually working. One of the things that people often don't realize is that this was more akin to our employer-employee relationship. It was a means of providing work for those who could not run their own business.

So people who would get into financial trouble, they would sell themselves as a slave, or if they owed debt, they would become a slave to the debtor to pay off that debt. So they got paid half a day's wage, the other half went to paying off the debt.

There were also laws in Israel that in the jubilee year, you're set free. Yeah, seven years. Yeah, and so it wasn't this lifelong servitude. However, there is a clause for that. If someone wanted to remain in service, and there were cases where someone might want to do that, where you have people that they realize they're not going to be able to make money on their own or maintain it, and they know they're going to run into trouble again, and they're working for someone who's good, they may want to remain as a slave in that sense.

Right, right. And most of the laws that we think of when you look at the scriptures, most of the laws are to protect not the master, but the slave. There are rules of how the master is supposed to treat the slave.

Right. That's, again, opposite to the way people think of slavery. They think the master has the right to do whatever he wants with the slave. But the laws are there restricting the master in what he could do.

It was, in the biblical view of slavery, it is the idea of a responsibility that a master has for his slave to care for him. And that's the missing element when people talk of slavery in relation to the Bible.

Granted, slavery around the world today is not that way. No. In fact, many of the people that want to talk against slavery don't want to talk about the two most common forms of slavery in America today, human trafficking and abortion.

Yeah, exactly. As I said, abortion is an ownership issue. I own this body inside of my body. This other human being, I own. Right, exactly. And therefore, it's my body. I can do whatever I want with him.

I have ownership rights over another human being. That's the case.

And a man's not allowed to make a comment on that one. And not get thrown under the bus by today's movement.

Well, here's the problem with that argument. When someone says that, as a man, I don't have the right to speak about abortion, I usually ask the question, was abortion legalized? And they'll say yes. By who?

Oh yeah, all men. Nine men. Not a single woman. So therefore, if men are not allowed to speak on this issue, we should immediately make it illegal until enough women, which, by the way, when they do the polls, the majority of women are always against abortion.

So we should just say, that's it. It's illegal until enough women vote for it. They don't put that one out there. No, no. And they don't want to talk about human trafficking, which they'll say, well, it's illegal in this country.

It is. You think about what gets higher attention. People that are still today rebelling against the African slave trade or human trafficking.

Human trafficking doesn't get that much attention because I know there's a big problem in Georgia. I've talked to a few people who are actually advocates against it, and they said, if you're a parent in Georgia, keep your kids next to you close because they'll get snatched in a minute and you'll probably never see them again.

Well, the thing that you have to realize and think about, have you ever seen protesting, rioting, looting to make a statement against human trafficking? Because we've had seven months of that, and what was the underlying argument about the slavery?

But they don't talk about the slavery going on today. Right, right, right, right. No, that doesn't justify the slavery that happened. The Bible speaks directly against the African slave trade. So there's no way you can make a case that the Bible would support the African slave trade.

Kidnapping is wrong in the scriptures. Ownership of another human being is wrong in the scriptures. The idea of indentured servitude is condemned in the scriptures. This is exactly opposite to the African slave trade.

But the same people that want to make an issue of the African slave trade that ended years ago, many years ago, there's not a single person alive that has been kidnapped under the African slave trade or was a slave under it.

Right, right, right. But yet they're protesting about that, and there's nothing being said about the thousands and thousands of young boys and girls that are, and not even all of them young, kidnapped, forced into work or sex slavery, and nothing.

You don't see them marching on that. So are they really against slavery? Makes you wonder.

When you look at the big picture, and I did a couple of lectures on this topic myself, and what I always told people was when you look at it back then, you had three elements. You had Christians that stood against it, Christians that did nothing, and Christians that said, well, you know, it's legal, so let's keep it going.

So you want to challenge those individuals that said it was legal and ask them, well, where are they getting their information from? Are they basing that on scripture, or are they basing that on a current need?

Well, some will argue they were basing it on the Bible. Now, that may be true because here's something that maybe some of the listeners don't know, but there is a Bible called the Slave's Bible or the Slaver's Bible.

Yep. They had a Bible that slave owners in the South would have for their slaves, those slaves that could read, and it was missing whole sections of the Bible. I looked at that. Like the part that says in Exodus that you can't kidnap another human being?

Yeah, somehow that's removed. Why would that be removed? Yeah. And so they would argue that, yeah, they used the Bible, but they didn't use the whole counsel of God, right? They had to rip out parts of the Bible to justify their position.

The fact that they did that is the proof that the Bible doesn't support slavery.

Exactly, exactly. That's like giving somebody half the Constitution. Well, where's the other half?

Well, that's kind of what we do now, right? Yeah, basically. They want to say that we have the freedom of press, but no longer the freedom of religion and speech, right?

Yeah, yeah, with the Equality Act popping around now. Things are getting real scary out there now. Yes, things are going to change. And when you think about it, Abraham actually volunteered to go into the servitude to get his wife.

Yeah, there's many cases where you had people that would put themselves into slavery. And the thing is that we have to rethink what we think of with slavery. That's the whole thing. We cannot apply a 21st century thinking of slavery and apply that to the 1st century.

Now, granted, the 1st century slavery of Rome would be different than the 1st century slavery in Judaism, or actually older than that in Israel. When you look at the Israeli slavery where we have the rules, we see that the rules for slavery were different than that of the Roman system.

However, even when Paul is writing to Philemon, it's a very interesting letter to look at because he's writing to Philemon. Because here's Philemon, who had a slave that ran away. Paul comes in contact with him.

Paul leads him to Christ, realizes he's a runaway. And it even seems, as you read the book, because Paul says, if he owes anything, put it on my account. In other words, it seems that the slave may even have stolen from Philemon before he left.

Right. So he's saying, hey, if he owes you any money, put it on my account. But what is it Paul encourages Philemon... I think it's... I'm looking up the name. I'm going to look up the name because I always forget it.

But I think it's... I keep pronouncing it wrong, is the problem. Anyway, but when you look at Philemon's slave, he ends up arguing for the fact that you go back to Philemon, even though in Rome that could be a death sentence.

Right, exactly. But what is it Paul appeals to? Paul doesn't say, hey, you don't have a right under the current system, the current Roman system. He acknowledges that under the current Roman system, he has the right to punish the slave.

Because in that system, it would be an ownership type of system where you own another human being. It wouldn't be a biblical model. But Paul is saying, hey, go back to him, but let me write this letter and telling him, hey Philemon, you remember what you owe me.

You are indebted to me, and I'm indebted to him. I'm sending him back to you, and I want you to think about the indebt that you owe to me, and what he owes you, and basically clear the deck. And it seems from history that he did go back.

In fact, there's records that we believe that this slave ended up becoming a leader in the church, which would be a very interesting situation. Can you picture being in the church where here's a member of the church who's your master at home, but you're the pastor?

Right, right, right. At church, he's in charge. I never knew that part. Yeah. So, you know, but Paul doesn't tell him, you know, run away, which is an interesting thing. You know, he actually encourages Onesimus to go back to Philemon, and with a letter saying he's been valuable to me.

Right, right.

A lot of people take that chunk of scripture, they grab one verse and go, see, the Bible supports slavery, without reading the whole entire passage and taking a look at the exchange of what's actually being said there.

Yeah, because Paul's not saying slavery is right. He's not saying slavery is wrong. What he's saying is that here this person wronged his master. It seems he stole from him. He's depriving the person from the work, and he had done wrong to the person.

But what Paul is arguing for is restitution. Reconciliation. That's what he's arguing for. The restitution that you end up seeing is he's saying, hey, he owes you something, you apply that to me. Put that on my account.

That's paid now, you see. And also note that Paul's offering that. It's not anyone forcing that upon him.

Right, right, right. He's doing what a Christian should do in that situation. When we look at it from a Christian perspective, and we look at it from a Christian moral view, we see it's a whole different perspective versus a secular worldview, because a secular worldview is going to get twisted no matter how much information you give them.

Correct. You are correct. So when we actually look at it, of course, when we look at the Roman slavery, Romans, they would enslave anybody. Doctors, lawyers, it don't matter. They had everybody under that system.

The difference between being a doctor, if they conquered a country and you had to be a doctor, you were now enslaved under the Roman system to use those skills to better the lifestyle and life of Rome, versus being someone who maybe just be a plain old guy walking around in the country and got captured, it may not end too well for you then.

Well, the Roman slavery, some people don't even know, when we read the scriptures, we don't think through this as much, but Roman citizenship was hard to obtain. Yes. One of the ways to obtain Roman citizenship, obviously, if you were born a citizen, in other words, your parents were citizens, you could purchase it, but that would take a lot of money, and so the wealthy would have citizenship and then their children.

The other thing that would get it is if you were to enter into the military and you served out your time in the military, which would usually be, I think it was 20 or 30 years, you get to be a general and you retire, and then you retired with citizenship.

It's actually one of the interesting things when preaching through the book of Philippians. Philippians is a very interesting area. Rome is the one place where if you were born in Rome, you were a citizen, unless you were born of a slave family, but Roman citizenship was from Rome.

Philippi is the only other area that had that Roman citizenship status, and the reason being is Philippi was an area where many of these generals that would retire, they were not only given citizenship but given land, and many of them would take the land in Philippi, so Philippi became an area where basically you had a whole bunch of retired generals.

Right. They all had citizenship and they had the rank, and so Philippi actually became a city where it had the status of the Roman citizenship, and that's why if you ever go through the book of Philippians, especially if you look at it in the Greek, there's a lot of military language used there.

Well, why would that be? Because he's writing to military people. All right. They understand the concepts of it.

I know Paul was a Roman citizen, and when he made that statement that he's a Roman citizen, everybody got scared, didn't they?

Well, they got scared because there's limitations what the government could do with a Roman citizen. You couldn't bind him, as they did, without charge, but to anyone that's not a citizen, they could do that.

They could just imprison them without any question, and that's why when he was thrown in prison and bound, and he says, you know, you're going to just let me go, a Roman citizen, you bound me publicly, and now you're going to let me go privately?

Oh, no, you're going to escort me out publicly, you know? Exactly. And they got nervous, and if you remember, you know, the response was, well, you know, I bought this citizenship at a great price, and Paul says, I was born with it, right?

Okay. So it was the soldier saying, I had to save up a lot of money and probably do other things to get the money to be able to buy that citizenship. Exactly. Paul saying he didn't need to, you know?

And they actually worked in his behalf since they had made an oath to kill Paul, and he says, I tell you what, I'm going to use my Roman citizenship to keep me from getting killed this day anyway.

Yeah, he didn't mind. He knew the power of the citizenship and was willing to use it when needed. Right.

Well, even Roman, the Roman servitude was still completely different from the servitude that took place in the 18th century, 17th century, and so on and so forth. So you still see a different form of slavery in the ancient world versus modern era, post-modern era,.

You know, pre-modern era. Well, when we say ancient world, I mean, let's clarify. The ancient world, I would say that we see the differences with Israel. Right. Israel had different laws for slavery than other nations.

Definitely different than the Canaanites and the Babylonians and Assyrians. Correct. Assyrians definitely had some different issues altogether. That's a topic for another show, right? The Assyrian Empire.

And when you read about the Assyrians, historically, you understand why Jonah didn't want to go there.

Yeah, yeah. Well, but, you know, even with that, I mean, this is a little off topic, but, you know, most people don't understand. They read about the Ninevites, and they go, well, you know, these people are wicked.

I mean, they used to take their enemies and put them in plaster paris to keep them as, you know, like decorations for their parties, and they'd do it with, you know, force their mouth to be open and then pour hot liquids down their throat.

Wicked stuff. Right, right. I mean, just think of that. And people go, see, this is why Jonah didn't want to go there. But no, Jonah chapter 4, he tells us why he didn't want to go there. He didn't want them to have mercy.

He didn't want God to show mercy. He says, I knew if I came here, you were going to show mercy. I mean, it tells you the hatred that Jonah had for another. I mean, God's telling him to go there because he was going to show mercy.

And he goes, I knew you were going to show mercy. You didn't want that. Yep, yep, yep.

Yep, definitely, definitely. That's some serious hatred. He wanted God to write that place off the map.

Well, and what did he do? Oh, let me go to a high hill and I'll sit up there so I can watch it happen. And then he gets upset over a plant, you know. Right, right, right. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, please.

No, I was just going to say, so when we talk about slavery, the key thing that we have to do when we're reading the scripture is we have to put the concept that Israel had of slavery and not apply the Assyrian slavery, the Roman slavery, the African slave trade, none of that.

Right, right. We have to understand it in the culture that Israel had for it. Yeah, yeah, because that was for them.

That was for the most, I should say, the Mosaic Law was for the 12 tribes of Israel. Yes. And that's who they gave it to. And when we go into the New Testament, we see a new covenant. And, of course, you see a lot of the New Testament is referring back to the Mosaic Law saying, okay, y 'all had that, but it didn't work for you.

Yeah. So we got something better now, you know, salvation by grace. And then it goes into what the new covenant is all about. So when we say, whenever we talk about the Mosaic Law, I tell people all the time, who did the Mosaic Law give it to?

It was given to the children of Israel, you know, on Mount Sinai. And it was never meant for the Gentiles anyway. And when you look at the argument that takes place, well, should we circumcise the Gentiles?

Well, no, that was for Israel. That wasn't for the Gentiles. So the new circumcision is circumcision of the heart and not of the flesh. So that all falls under the Mosaic Law as well, or, you know, the law that took place with Abraham when circumcision was first introduced.

And that's one thing we got to think about whenever we start talking about, well, some people are talking about slavery is in the Bible, so the Bible supports slavery. Well, no, it doesn't really support European or Aramaic slavery It supports the servitude that was regulated under Mosaic Law for the Israelites.

The closest thing that we have to the slavery that we would see in the Bible, in the Old Testament, would be if you look at Japan back in the 1980s. In Japan in the 1980s, the Empire would, you know, the Japanese Empire would own, they would have the companies.

The company had a responsibility for the people that worked there. They owned your house. They would provide the house, so they own it. They provide your car, they own it. They provide your clothing. You know, when you go buy clothes, it's the company that paid for it.

They provided the education. They provided everything. And the idea is the better the company does, the better you do, so you're going to work harder for the company. But you didn't just pick up and go to another company.

Picking up and going to another company meant, you know, you're returning all your clothes, your car, your house, everything you own. You return all that and go to the new company, right? That's not going to happen very easily.

Right, right, right. That's the idea of the slavery that was there, that it was a working relationship where the masters had the responsibility to provide for all the needs of the slave, and the slave would work and take care of what was being asked to do.

That's the closest that we could come in our generation. Hmm.

I know I once read an article that said Japanese corporations had an outstanding daycare system for people with children.

Well, because, again, company, right? The company's responsibility to take care of everything. So, and that's why you see in Japan, it is the whole concept of, you know, their education, the families make education very important, because who are you going to go work for after you get done with your school?

You're going to go work for the company that your dad worked for. You know, it would be that sort of thing. And that was a way that they did things for quite a while. And that is the closest I think we could come to.

So if you want to look at what Old Testament slavery was like, look at Japan in the 80s. And that would be the closest I think that we could come to. Now, when we come to the New Testament, we have a slavery that would not be like the Old Testament slavery.

But you don't see Paul or anyone saying to rebel against this slavery. Right, right, right. They say if you're a slave, be the best slave you could be. Right, right, right. Give your master no reason to question your, you know, what you do.

That's a stark difference to what we see with Christians today where they want to rise up against their government if the government isn't what they want. Right, right, right, right. You know, there's a line we have to realize that the government's going to do what the government's going to do, but we have to answer to a higher authority.

Exactly, exactly. So, well, my answer to that is this, is the simple fact that the world hated Jesus. The world's going to hate you. So who are you putting your trust in? You're putting your trust in the kingdom of God or the kingdom of men.

And how many times has the kingdom of men let you down? Probably quite a few times.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I've been let down just a few times. Just a few hundred thousand.

Plus, the culture in the New Testament, that was a different culture anyway. It wasn't the same culture as the 18th century, 17th century. Different culture altogether when, like I say, the Romans, they had servants from everywhere.

Whoever they conquered got brought into the system, you know, and that's just the way it was because they were a superpower. So, when you're a superpower and conquering everybody, you can have as many slaves from many areas as you want to have.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, you mentioned something earlier that's worth highlighting as well, that one of the things that we have to do when interpreting Scripture is the fact that we have to, like I mentioned, we need to understand what things meant at that time.

Right. But there's a second thing you said, that people make the argument, but it's in the Bible, and therefore it's endorsed. There's a lot of things in the Bible that are not endorsed. We have men that marry multiple wives.

That's not endorsed. But one of the rules of interpretation is when you come to things that are historical narratives, which much of the Old Testament is, historical narratives are not telling us what should happen, but what did happen.

So, it's 100 accurate that Solomon had many wives, but nowhere does it say he should have had many wives. Exactly. It does say that he should have one wife, but it doesn't say he should have many. You see, but there's times where Scripture doesn't say, it just records what actually happened, and doesn't say whether it's right or wrong.

So, Scripture can record that slavery occurred, but unless it says it's right or wrong, you don't know. Now, in the case with slavery, there are rules that we see in Leviticus for slavery, and people will say, but look, the rules tell us what's right and wrong with the slavery.

Now, there's concepts we have. You have a case where someone that is a Hebrew, and there were different rules for slavery with the Hebrews versus the non-Hebrews. In other words, when the Israelites conquered a country, they would end up killing the men, and they would leave the women and children.

So, they would take them as slaves. Now, the way many people think of it is to say, well, see, they conquered the land, and they forced these people into slavery. Well, the reality is that they would take over the lands, and they had a responsibility to take them into slavery.

In other words, they now had the responsibility to care for them. Right, right. That's why they're not released in the seven years, because that's now a responsibility. That becomes, yeah, you've conquered this land, but now you have a responsibility to feed more people.

Right, exactly. And you're going to have to provide health care for them and anything they need. You have that. You can picture many people that say, okay, I'm going to conquer this land. Fine, I'll take the women and children, but after seven years, get out of here.

Like, I don't care if you go die somewhere, right? Right, right, right. That's what the Bible restricts. The Bible says that they have to take care of them for life. They now have that responsibility.

They have to care for them for the rest of their life. You can't just send them away to die. Right, right, right. Or just send them away to do whatever. Now, if you want to release them, they had the right to do that, but they had a responsibility to care for them.

So you also have cases, though. What do you do when you have a Hebrew who would be released in seven years because that's a debt? He goes into slavery because of a debt. Right. The woman that is captured is a responsibility to care for.

So here you have a guy, the Hebrew, enslaves himself to a master. He falls in love with a woman, marries her during his captivity, has children with her during his captivity, and then the jubilee year, and he's allowed to be released.

He's given an option. He can leave, but if he does, he has to leave his wife and children behind. Right. Well, I read that passage, yep. Or he can make himself a permanent slave. Now, many people look at that passage and go, well, see, when you look at this, it's promoting divorce maybe.

That's one argument I heard. But the argument is, no, see, you can't let the woman go and her children because they're property. No, it's not because they're property. It's because the master has a responsibility.

It's not an ownership issue. It's a responsibility issue. So the master cannot let her go. But now she's married. She has a husband. Why won't you release her? Why would God say you can't release her?

Well, let's look at that. This is a person who has gotten himself into such debt at least once that he had to sell himself as a slave. Right. When people got into debt, they could choose to sell their children, their wives, or themselves as slaves to pay off the debt.

Exactly. So if you think about this, who does this protect? It protects the woman and the children because the guy has already proven that he's a poor steward of money. He may get himself in debt again and now sell off the children or the wife that the master had the responsibility for.

Right, exactly. So you see what ends up happening is it takes the responsibility away from the master, puts it onto the husband, but the husband's already proven once that he's a poor steward. So this is a protection for the woman and her children because they can stay married.

It's just that that guy has to stay under the employment. Right, right, right, right. And this is so backwards to the way people think of slavery. Yeah, exactly.

So when you look at it, you can see the reasoning and the rationality behind it. That's just like if you think about it, if I'm showing the bank that I'm no good with money, I got a 200 credit score, why should they loan me money?

Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean. So, yeah, in that situation, you got a guy who already couldn't handle his life or had things all messed up and so he decides to sell himself into servitude so he can take care of his debt, which is already, you know, he's showing God and everyone else that he's not too good with his finances or his affairs.

So when we look at that from that perspective, you know, it makes a lot of sense. But, however, someone might still say, well, see, the Bible supports slavery. So that's like one of those situations you might not be able to win no matter how much evidence you give a person.

That's generally the case.

Generally, most people come to the Bible, unfortunately, those that don't believe the Bible, they come to the Bible with pre-concluded ideas. Exactly. It's called proof texting. They want to try to make the Bible say something it doesn't.

So what they do is they just go, well, this is what the Bible says because it mentions slavery, so it supports it. But what does it mention about slavery? Exactly. It mentions that you can't own another human being.

It mentions that you have to pay the person. It mentions you can't kidnap a person. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, there's a serious passage about not kidnapping people and stuff like that in the Bible, and for some strange reason, nobody ever brings that passage to light and never uses that when they make their case against the Bible.

I've been in quite a few different conversations where people say, you know, Mike, you believe the Bible, but the Bible supports slavery. I say, wait a minute now, are you an Israelite?