How Torah Undermines the Very Slavery It Permits
Is the written Torah a set of ideal laws or a constitution for a people? Is it a collection of timeless principles or time-bound laws for an actual people? Is it social legislation or a set of ethical ideals?
Many people want Torah to be something it is not. Many want Torah not to have commandments about owning slaves, taking war brides, and executing non-believers. But many people need to learn to see what is in Torah theologically, with eyes for the way Torah does reveal God’s ideal ways, as a scroll bringing real people from human evil on a trajectory toward perfect justice.
Before I get into some commentary on slavery and the Torah, let me describe the idea of following a trajectory in scripture rather than simply following literally each and every commandment and idea in the Bible.
- The Bible contains law-codes, histories, wisdom, and poetry which come from a specific setting in history and geography and culture.
- Some things in the writings of the Bible are pre-ideal, accommodations to their time and setting.
- Yet in matters which concern good and evil, the ways of God, the Bible does not settle for these pre-ideal accommodations.
- The Bible sets a trajectory toward perfect justice whenever the original law-codes permitted injustice.
Slavery was permitted. Not just indentured servanthood. Not just slavery as a punishment for thieves to make restitution. Not just Hebrew slaves. Owning human beings and even being allowed to will them to your children was once permitted in Torah. I will show this below without any shadow of a doubt.
Slavery is no longer permitted. I don’t mean that human laws abolished slavery. That is true also (yes, I know slavery still exists in the world, but I am speaking in general terms). I mean that slavery is no longer permitted according to Torah. But to accomplish that statement, I have to define Torah as something more than “what was written long ago.” Torah is not unchanging. Torah is not just what is written, but it is the way the community through tradition and ongoing commentary and conversation come to understand its ways over time.
If you’d like to see a Christian theologian tackling the idea of understanding the Bible as more than what is written, of taking a relational approach to the Bible and reading it with tradition, instead of insisting on an unchanging, literal text, take a look at Scot McKnight’s The Blue Parakeet.
If you’d like to see a Jewish concept of Torah as adapting and changing over time, being read in community and through tradition, and not as an unchanging, literal text, then simply start reading Jewish literature. Because Judaism is very straightforward about Torah including tradition and being a conversation that evolves over time toward God’s ideal ways in the world to come.
SLAVERY IN TORAH
There are two basic kinds of slavery in Torah: Hebrew temporary slaves and Gentile slaves. The matter of the kind of slavery an Israelite could enter into and its duration is very difficult because Exodus 21:1-11 and Leviticus 25:39-55 seem to contradict each other. My interpretation of the Torah’s laws on slavery is based on the work of Jacob Milgrom in his commentary on Leviticus 23-27 (see below, “Appendix: Milgrom on the Exodus 21 vs. Leviticus 25 Problem”).
The Hebrew slave is chattel (property) and not just an indentured servant (see Exod 21:21). He must be set free in the seventh year, however, unless he chooses to stay. At least this is the kind of Hebrew slavery indicated in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15. Reasons for this type of slavery would include unpaid debts, extreme poverty, or (as posited by the rabbis) a court penalty for theft.
But the Hebrew slave’s condition is presented differently in Leviticus 25. He is forced to sell himself for a period of time to work off debt (vss. 39-40). He must be set free in the Jubilee year. He must be treated as a “resident hireling” (sakhir toshav) and not as a chattel slave. He is not to be treated ruthlessly, but as a brother. Nor can he be charged interest on his debt (Lev 25:36). Alternatively, following the Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 paradigm, the Hebrew bondservant must be set free in the seventh year unless he/she decides to stay.
Daughters of poor families sold as slaves (Exodus 21:7-11) were to be treated as free women. This appears to be a Torah improvement on the custom of poor girls being sold as chattel slaves (as property), whereas in Israel daughters were sold to be wives or concubines and treated as free women. This amounts to an arranged marriage for a family that cannot afford a dowry to make a match for their daughter (and in agricultural economies, it was difficult to support many daughters economically).
But there was also permanent chattel slavery in Torah. A town that makes war with Israel, if it surrenders peaceably, is subject to forced labor (Deut 20:10-11). Is this permanent? The text does not say. If it resists, its males are to be killed and its women and children taken as property (chattel slaves, Deut 20:12-14). In Numbers 31, the Midianites were subjected to genocide, but their virgin daughters were kept as chattel slaves (Numb 31:14-18). But if a man desired to take a female slave as a concubine or wife, he had to allow her a period of mourning, had to let her shave her head (and thus be undesirable until it grew back), and then could not keep her as a slave but as a free woman (Deut 21:10-14). It seems, then, that sleeping with chattel slaves was not permitted (they would have to be set free as concubines or wives before there could be sexual relations).
In case there remains any doubt that written Torah permitted owning human beings as permanent slaves (only Gentiles), this scripture should lay all doubt to rest:
“Such male and female slaves as you may have — it is from the nations round about you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also buy them from among the children of aliens resident among you, or from their families that are among you, whom they begot in your land. These shall become your property: you may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time. Such you may treat as slaves. But as for your Israelite kinsmen, no one shall rule ruthlessly over the other.”
(Leviticus 25:44-46 JPS)
Don’t miss the terrible, literal message: Gentiles you may treat as slaves. Israelites you must not rule over ruthlessly.
FREEDOM FROM SLAVERY IN TORAH
In spite of all the facts in the previous section on slavery in the Torah, everything about the Torah spells freedom and abolition of slavery. How can we see this theme of freedom and then explain it in light of the reality of slavery in ancient Israel? How can we bring these two divergent trends in Torah together into a whole?
Let’s consider the prominence of freedom in Torah (some of these are adapted from Nahum Sarna’s commentary on Exodus in the JPS series):
- Israel is enslaved to God alone: For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God (Lev 25:55).
- The first commandment emphasizes freedom: I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage (Exod 20:2).
- The Sabbath requires that slaves be given rest and not made to work: you shall not do any work — you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements (Exod 20:10).
- The Hebrew slave (though not the Gentile) is called “brother”: Lev 25:39; Deut 15:12.
- A Gentile slave can be circumcised and is then considered an Israelite (a convert, essentially): any slave a man has bought may eat of it once he has been circumcised (Exod 12:44).
- If killed by his owner, his family may avenge (a court-sanctioned execution of his slayer): When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod, and he dies there and then, he must be avenged (Exod 12:44).
- If he is injured in an assault to the point of being maimed or even losing a tooth, he must be set free (Exod 21:26-27).
- Refugee slaves must not be returned and must be allowed freedom: You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master. He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst, wherever he pleases; you must not ill-treat him. (Deut 23:16-17).
- God frequently refers to himself as the one who set Israel free from bondage and the Exodus becomes the underlying act of God on which all of Torah is based.
- Many specific commandments of social justice in Torah remind Israel to treat the needy well since they were once slaves.
- They were commanded not to oppress hired workers or needy people, Israelite or gentile, nor to pervert justice or take pledges from resident aliens, widows, and orphans “but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there” (Deut 24:14-18).
- Torah commands: “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18), which ultimately undermines slavery.
- In Exodus 11:2, “neighbor” (as in “love your neighbor”) includes Egyptians.
- Just to be clear, in Leviticus 19:34, the command is to love the resident alien “as yourself.”
How can we explain on the one hand Torah’s devotion to freedom and deeds of love for all neighbors and on the other hand its permission of and regulation of slavery?
Perhaps we can say it this way: God permitted and regulated the social evil of slavery from the beginning and at the same time he undermined it heavily with a platform in Torah of freedom, neighbor-love, and the story of God who sets free from bondage. Perhaps we can also say that God’s way of dealing with slavery works better at eliminating this social evil than if he had simply prohibited it with a commandment. In the end, those who reject the idea of owning other human beings as property do so because they recognize all people as brothers and sisters, made to be redeemed and elevated to the image of God.
Torah as law-code for ancient Israel permitted slavery. Torah as the timeless, evolving truth of God prohibits slavery. Israel was to learn this over time by experiencing the ways of “the God who brought you out of the house of bondage.” As Christopher Wright says in his excellent volume Old Testament Ethics for the People of God: “There is a link between moral ideas and law, but law tends to be a pragmatic compromise between the legislators’ ideals and what can be enforced in practice . . . ethics is much more than keeping the law” (pg. 324). He goes on to show in Nehemiah 5, Amos 2, and Isaiah 10 examples of God expecting more from his people than a literalistic justification of evil by citing the written Torah as permission.
For those who really want to get into the thorny issues, Jacob Milgrom’s proposals for understanding the changing laws of slavery in Torah are stunning . . .
APPENDIX: MILGROM ON THE EXODUS 21 VS. LEVITICUS 25 PROBLEM
If you simply read Exodus 21:1-11 and Leviticus 25:39-55 you can see the problems immediately. One posits a Hebrew slave going free in the seventh year and the other in the fiftieth year! That’s quite a difference.
Milgrom (in the Anchor-Yale Commentary on Leviticus 23-27) discusses proposed solutions. For the rabbis, all of the Torah was given by Moses and there cannot exist any un-harmonized discrepancies. They must find a way to read Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25 in harmony. Therefore, they proposed two solutions. One is that in Exodus 21 the slave is sold by the court (following theft) whereas in Leviticus 25 a person sells themselves willingly (due to debt, Kiddushin 1:2). Another harmonization suggested by the rabbis is that Leviticus 25 is not denying that the seventh year sets a slave free, but merely means that if the Jubilee year comes first, then the slave is released earlier than the seventh year.
Other solutions have been proposed over the years. Some have said that the “Hebrew” slave is not an Israelite (with Hebrew here meaning a landless person), so that Exodus 21 applies to foreign slaves while Leviticus 25 applies to Israelite slaves. Christopher Wright has proposed that the “Hebrew” of Exodus 21 is a landless Israelite and the “brother” of Leviticus 25 is a landed Israelite who has lost his land and needs a lifelong means of earning a living. But Deuteronomy 15:12 calls the slave both Hebrew and brother, which argues against Wright’s distinction.
The best solution — though one many will reject if they are not open to the Torah being the product of many generations (and thus being forced to assume that all this legislation comes from the time of Moses) — is that Leviticus 25 changes the law from Exodus 21.
This sounds like a terrible option. It seems, without considering the details, that this would mean the older part of Torah (Exodus 21) had a more lenient slavery law. Hebrew slaves were set free in the seventh year whereas in the later Torah law (Leviticus 25) they had to wait for the Jubilee (fiftieth). But the answer is Leviticus 25:40, “He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer.” Whereas the Hebrew slave in Exodus 21 (and Deut 15) was chattel (property, see Exod 21:21), in Leviticus 25 he is a hired or bound laborer (resident hireling). To put it in Milgrom’s own words:
H [Leviticus 25:39-44] rejects the septennate [7th year] manumission of Exodus because it abolishes the slave status of the Israelite outright. It insists that the Israelite who has to indenture himself must be treated as a sakhir toshav ‘resident hireling’ (vv. 40a, 53a). Moreover, since he pays no interest on his debt (reversing the Babylonian practice of personal antichresis [wherein all profit pays only interest and not principal]), all his earnings can be directed toward amortizing his debt. His family, therefore, is under no obligation to redeem him. . . . H, therefore, is a marked improvement on Exodus 21 (and Deut 15).
Main page, author/speaker:
I like this explanation a lot!
Derek, good post. Slavery is abhorrent. On the other hand, as with other horrible things that happen to humanity to this day, slavery is SOMETIMES a part of G-d’s judgement (you and I went over this once before):
“For the L-RD will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land, and sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob. And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the L-RD’s land as male and female slaves. They will take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppressed them.” (Isaiah 14:1-2)
In the above passage, we can see that either literally or figuratively speaking, oppressors of Israel (which in no way means “all nations”, but only those who mistreated Israel) will be made by G-d to repay Israel for the evil they have done through serving Israel. (Again, we are not talking about innocent people being enslaved – that is evil.) Slavery, therefore, was never to be a normal nor permanent state for humanity – it was meant to be bad as no discipline feels pleasant.
Gene:
I take Isa 14:1-2 to have been about history in the Persian period, not a prophecy of the last days. The whole section, chs. 13-23, is about judgments on nations in the time of Isaiah and his later disciples (into the Persian period, 150 years after Isaiah).
My comment on the “take captive those who were their captors” verses is as follows:
“I take Isa 14:1-2 to have been about history in the Persian period, not a prophecy of the last days”
Interesting opinion, but it (being about the past return from Babylonian exile) just doesn’t jive with the following a bit further in Isaiah (note again the references to strangers):
“Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks; foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers; but you shall be called the priests of the L-RD; they shall speak of you as the ministers of our G-d; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast. Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion; instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot; therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy.” (Isaiah 61:5-7)
I don’t take the description in Isaiah 65 to be about forced labor from Gentiles, but to be about the same righteous Gentiles who give money and assist the Jewish people in the restoration. Am I missing something, Gene?
Slavery is not necessarily abhorrent. If you are unable to feed, clothe, and house yourself you will die. The alternative is to sell yourself to a brother Jew. You are fed, clothed, housed, and then work until released or you pay off the debt gained by the sale of yourself. Take specific note that the Torah says slaves must be treated well (unlike the slavery in the US and UK, for example)…this means it was not horrific to sell yourself.
Social systems should have prevented it, but they did not always do so. The Torah allows for life in the face of a hostile environment in the ancient world.
“I don’t take the description in Isaiah 65 to be about forced labor from Gentiles, but to be about the same righteous Gentiles who give money and assist the Jewish people in the restoration. Am I missing something, Gene?”
Derek… you could be right, in part. However, since there will be punishment in the Messianic Kingdom for nations who went up (Zechariah 14:16) against Jerusalem (e.g. Egypt would be denied rain and sent a plague if they do not show up in Jerusalem – Zechariah 14:18), I doubt that only the “righteous Gentiles” will populate the earth.
We must avoid viewing history and prophecy through too much of our Western idealism. The reality is usually far more messy.
CybrSage:
There is some truth in what you are saying, that some forms of “indentured servanthood” might be a preferable alternative to destitution or debtor’s prison.
Yet think of it another way: could a righteous person hold someone as property? Could a righteous Jew own a Gentile and pass them down by inheritance to their children?
If you turned a slave into an employee, with freedom, this would be the righteous thing to do. I am saying Torah puts Israel on a trajectory toward freeing all slaves and outlawing slavery entirely.
See, now this I think was helpful. I’ve always thought of the system laid out in the Torah as being an act of divine mercy and patience, as opposed to the “evil institution” that it’s often labeled as. Whenever your dealing with human sin/evil (whether worshiping foreign Gods, or attacking the Israelites, or incurring a large debt, or what have you), it’s bound to get messy.
I think a study of slavery in the Torah and slavery in other ancient civilizations would be fascinating — the treatment of slaves by other peoples seems to be far, far more harsh then what God lays out in the Torah.
I find slavery to repay debts to be completely understandable during this time period. As opposed to simply killing an indebted person, or cutting off their hand, or locking them away in a cage, instead, an Israelite would have taken an indebted person into their home, fed them, treated them well, and allowed them to work off whatever debt they had incurred. So well, in fact, that the Torah actually gives guidance for those slaves wishing to stay on as servants (Ex. 21:5–6; Deut. 15:16–17).
Is the modern prison systems (effectively locking people up in cages and guarding them with guns) really that much more effective or superior a method of dealing with the problem of indebtedness? One wonders….
“could a righteous person hold someone as property? Could a righteous Jew own a Gentile and pass them down by inheritance to their children?”
But they did – unless none of the biblical Jews or even those living after Yeshua came (and still kept slaves) are to be considered “righteous” by this new standard. I think our perception of slavery is colored by the African slavery in the United States, where Africans were considered sub-human and were kidnapped from their homelands. There were other types of slavery in the ancient world – voluntary slavery, slavery for defeated peoples as alternative to death or starvation, or slavery as G-d’s discipline for sin (e.g. theft) or because of debt.
Slavery is bad because in one way or another it is a result of sin in this world. But sin is our reality. In either case, we ourselves are “slaves” to G-d.
Gene:
No, I think those Torah-observant Jews who owned slaves more and more would have realized that “love your neighbor” and “I am the God who freed you from slavery” rendered owning a human being sinful. That is the point of my article, Torah undermines some things it permitted originally, and the community was to realize this in time. And I believe by now it is a settled issue and I cannot imagine any rabbi authorizing the owning of a slave anywhere in the world.
It is similar to Yeshua’s saying about any-reason divorce: “Moses permitted it because of hardness of heart.”
Hi Derek,
Based on David Instone-Brewer’s analysis of Matt 19, I think Jesus corrects 7 misinterpretations of the Pharisees there and he does deny that Hillel’s “Any Matter” divorce is found in Torah, but that verse is not where he does it. If you wish to discuss further, you have my email. I teach this area in an all day class.
Excellent article, Derek. I really appreciate how you’re challenging your readers to a more sophisticated understanding of the Torah. That’s what I love about Milgrom and the other JPS scholars. They show how the Torah really had a well reasoned and humanitarian approach.
I think it’s most important to not compare indentured servants in ancient Israel who became such out of life and death necessity with kidnapped Africans of recent history. Its the same as calling even a justified killing “murder”, as modern pacifists do. According to Torah kidnapping was an offense punished by death. Thus is why African slavery was a sin, but Israel practiced nothing of the sort. Bible never approved of such a thing, and perhaps that’s why Jesus said nothing about this to his Jewish audience. Somehow I don’t see that our modern morals are so superior to those of Avraham Avinu, who himself had “slaves” (servants – Hebrew word is the same as for slaves), and I doubt he kidnapped any of them.
Don:
I am in full agreement with David Instone-Brewer on this issue. You seem to have the wrong idea of my intention in bringing up divorce as another issue in which Torah permits something by way of accommodating human sin. Even Instone-Brewer would say not all reasons for divorce justify breaking the oath and putting a spouse away.
Thank you, Lois. I have a signed book jacket by Milgrom (may his memory be a blessing) and consider me a true Milgrom fan!
Gene:
As I showed in my article, there are two kinds of slaves in Torah. The “indentured servant” is just one subcategory of the Hebrew slave. The Gentile slave is a slave in the awful sense of that word, though Torah regulates treatment of slaves. Meanwhile, even the “indentured servant” is chattel (property) and not a contracted servant. I explain this all thoroughly and encourage you to expand your understanding of slavery in Torah.
Derek, I still think that your view of how slavery was practiced and was perceived among the Hebrews is anachronistic and is through the lens of Western modern democratic ideals. Likewise, the forefathers would have much to condemn us for if they saw our present day “morals” or standards of modesty.
Thank you for this rigorous and scholarly treatment of such a subject! The back and forth discussion really stretches me, challenges me, and reveals more and more of the beauty of our Master! For me (and possibly a much more elementary approach) I see in the first books of His precious Word, Hashem reclaiming His beautiful establishment of the glory of servitude to Him as He wrests it out of the hand of the evil one! How wonderful that the evil one is vanquished yet again for by regulating slavery, the Master owns it, and by owning it He deletes Satan’s design upon it thereby lifting us into the glory and joy of being His bond servants! Through the lives of His early children, I more clearly see the horror and reality of life in bondage to death. Through their humble struggles I learn the futility of Satan’s design for my life! Hebrews 2:15 is thus irradiated and I stand no longer at the crossroads. I choose Him! I choose life! I run headlong to Him our kind and gracious Father, Master, Redeemer! Better is one day in His house serving Him than a thousand elsewhere!
Shalom Aleichem! Excellent! Haven’t had much time to comment lately, but on this one I made the time. This was an excellent explanation on the question of why slavery should never be permitted, despite the Torah leniency! Just because the Torah does permit something, the decision to implement the leniency should be left to one’s own conscience. Aleichem Shalom!
Joe:
A nice way to say it. And the community of Israel should remove some of those leniencies over time, as society progresses beyond the accommodations God made to social evil.