Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Does the Bible Say About Slavery? | Torah | Exodus 21:1-11, 16, 26-27

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

What's up with all the rules about slavery in the Old Testament? Does God condone slavery? Doesn't God want people to be free? In today's episode, Keith looks at Exodus 21:1-11, 16, 26-27 to discuss what God's laws mean. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 21:1-11, 16, 26-27

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. My name is Keith Simon, and right now we're going through the Book of Exodus. Exodus has been an epic adventure for 20 chapters. We've had stories of midwives rebelling against Pharaoh to save baby boys' lives. We've had God speaking in a bush to Moses. We've had God delivering the Israelites from Egypt via the 10 plagues. We've seen the Israelites cross the sea on dry ground.

God has met his people on his holy mountain. He gives them his ten commandments. And now there's an abrupt change. Here's how Exodus 21 starts. These are the laws you were to set before them. Everything slows down. We're getting ready to get into the nitty gritty of life. See, God gave them the moral law in his ten commandments. And now he's going to show them how to apply it in various areas of their life. He's taught them some big truths. And now he's taught them some big truths. And now he's, he's going to teach him how to live out those truths in their day-to-day life. Most of our lives are pretty ordinary. Most of our lives are filled with mundane tasks. So if the gospel isn't affecting the mundane, it's not really affecting our life. Right? I mean, the gospel should be affecting

ruptured relationships or how we deal with disappointment or how we handle the transition of moving into a new job or how you talk to your spouse or what you do when your friend begins to share gossip with you or how you think about disciplining your kids or how you respond when you've been hurt. If the gospel isn't touching on these kind of everyday issues, it's not really touching on your real life. Well, the laws in Exodus 21 through chapter 24 have the same authority as the Ten Commandments, but they're not the same in every way. You see, the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God on stone, but Moses wrote these laws down on paper. I think this means, they're less fundamental. These laws were meant for a specific people living in a specific time

in a specific place. They were for the nation of Israel and not binding on us in the same way, and yet there's a lot we can learn from them. After God gives the Ten Commandments, he then gives them laws about how to deal with slaves. In other words, slaves are the first issue that he addresses. And I think that tells you a lot about God. If you look at all the law books and ancient near east, none of them started with protecting servants and slaves. For example, the law of Hamarabi contained 282 sections, and it doesn't deal with slaves until the very end, there at the bottom of the list, an afterthought. And then it doesn't really even protect the slaves. But God starts with slaves. It's not the last section, it's the first section.

God is always concerned about the least of those in our society. He's concerned with the vulnerable, the dispossessed and the marginalized. And I think another reason that God started with slaves is because Israel had been slaves in Egypt. Right before God gave them the Ten Commandments, he said this in Exodus 20. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. So it was unthinkable that they would treat others the way Pharaoh treated them. Look, we could have skipped Exodus 21 as it talks about slaves. That's a tough subject.

but I don't want to skip it because I think that one of the objections people have to Christianity is that they have heard that the Bible endorses slavery and therefore they don't trust the Bible's moral compass. Let's just deal with it head on. We can't read about slavery in Exodus and use the lens of slavery as practice in the United States leading up to the Civil War. The practice of slavery in Israel was nothing like what happened in America. The main things that we associate with slavery in our history, kidnapping, forced labor, beatings, splitting apart families, they're all outlawed by God from the very beginning. In Israel, what was called slavery is more like what we might call servitude.

And in Israel, most servitude was voluntary. People hired themselves into the service of others. Usually this was because they were poor and recognized that the best way to meet their needs while at the same time paying off their debts was by becoming someone's servant. They were more like hired hands or indentured laborers. They lived in their master's home where they worked for room, board, and wages. Involuntary slavery was forbidden in Israel. The Bible condemns stealing or trafficking in people.

Now, we might have expected God to abolish the institution of servitude and slavery altogether, but he doesn't do that. Instead, without ever defending the practice of slavery, The Bible assumes that some sort of servitude will continue. So God sets out safeguards to protect the welfare and the dignity of those who served. The laws in Exodus primarily protect the servant, not the master. We pick back up in Exodus 21. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years.

But in the seventh year, he shall go free without paying anything. So do you see the temporariness of the slavery? In other words, it couldn't be permanent. there had to be an end date in which the person would be free. And when that person left, they were able to leave with some money in their pocket. They didn't have to buy out their freedom. Pick it up in verse three. If he comes alone, he has to go free alone.

But if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. So in other words, this isn't splitting up families that came in together. Now, we have to be careful to not impose modern solutions on ancient problems. We're talking about voluntary servitude in unfortunate circumstances during bleak economic times. Israel's laws provided safety nets for protection, not oppression. Now, these next verses have been used to criticize the Bible as being sexist or anti-woman because it sounds like this person sells his daughter. But as I read it, I want you to listen for any kind of protections you might hear.

Verse 7. If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go for. as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing, and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free without any payment of money.

See, what's happening here is that a poor man is sending his daughter to be a servant and a household with the hopes that she would be accepted into the family of a rich man and eventually marry the master's son. This is nothing more than an arranged marriage. I know that's not our norm, but that was the cultural norm of the day. It's been the cultural norm of most of human history. But God knows there might very well be abuse in these kind of situation. situations. So he sets up protections in these verses. See, when God says that the master couldn't

free her, what he's doing is protecting her. In that cultural context for a woman to be free from a family who is to face all kinds of dangers, God wasn't seeking to restrict, but to protect. That's true of all God's laws. They're given to us to protect us and provide for us. And so in these verses, we heard three types of protection. Look, you can't sell her. That's the first one. The second one, is if she is engaged to the master's son, then she has full rights as a daughter. And the third one was that if that engagement is broken or the marriage ended in divorce,

the man was required to provide for the woman. If you understand the historical and cultural context, this passage makes sense and help you understand the heart of God for the vulnerable. The most beautiful picture of the gospel comes from the law's special provision for a slave who wanted permanently to enter into his master's service. So here's what it's.

says in five and six. But if the servant declares, I love my master and my wife and children, and do not want to go free, then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an all. Then he will be his servant for life. So after six years of labor, a slave decided that instead of going free, he wanted to continue with his master. So this was a way to publicly declare that in front of the judges of the community. The piercing of the ear to the door was symbolic. The ear was the most important part of the servant's body because that's where the servant heard and obeyed.

By having his ear pierced, the slave was committing himself to submit to the master's authority. This was completely voluntary. Anyone who saw the servant's earring would know that he had chosen to serve. Why would anyone make that choice? I mean, what could cause a person to renounce their freedom and bind themselves permanently to their master. The answer is love. Did you catch that in verse five? But if the servant declares, I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, what kind of master would engender that kind of love? The master who was kind and merciful and provided for this servant and was wise

and cared for his servant and one of the best for his servant and sacrificed for a servant. You could say that he was a loving master. The servant had found a better love. And in that, better love had found a better freedom. If a servant loves his master who takes care of him, imagine what a servant would do for a master who sacrificed his own life for him. That's the great love of the gospel. God, the king, became a servant to buy our freedom. Mark 10 tells us he did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. Seeing his great love for us, we voluntarily become his servant for life because that's where real freedom is found. We know that the only person who is truly free is the one who belongs entirely to God.

Our master loves us. He takes care of our needs. He always has our best interests at heart. Why would we want to serve anyone else? Anyone who trusts in Christ for their salvation has been delivered from sin and death. Now we are free. Free for what? Free to say, Jesus, I'm going with you. That's what Paul meant when he started his letter to the Romans and he said, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. It's what James meant when he started his letter by saying, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. A servant is owned, completely available, subject to another's will, utterly dependent on their master. A servant sought to please their master.

They say things like, not my will, but thy will be done. Because of the great love of our master, we offer not only our ear, but her heart and our whole life. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with you.

Jesus.