The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 39: Slavery in the Old Testament (2026)

Episode Date: February 8, 2026

Fr. Mike gives us the historical context around the commandments on slavery to help us better grasp the concept of slavery in the Old Testament. Today we read from Exodus 21, Leviticus 14, and Psalm 75. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in the year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in the year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. This is day 39. Let's keep on moving right along. We'll be reading from Exodus today, chapter 21, just one chapter in Exodus. Also one chapter in Leviticus, chapter 14. So Exodus 21, Leviticus 14, and then we'll be praying Psalm 75.

As always, I'm reading from the revised standard version, Catholic edition, and I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension, which is awesome. You can get it at ascensionpress.com or at Amazon.com, because that seems to have taken over the entire world. Is that a commentary? I don't know. It's just the truth. You can also download your Bible in a year reading plan by going to ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a year.

If you haven't yet, I invite you to subscribe to this podcast in whatever app you are listening to this podcast. Once again, today we'll be reading Exodus chapter 21, Leviticus chapter 14 in Psalm 75. Exodus chapter 21. Now, these are the ordinances which you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years. And in the seventh, he shall go out free for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her masters and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says,

I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free. Then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an all, and he shall serve him for life. When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slave. do. If she does not please her master who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt faithlessly with her. If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does

not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing without payment of money. Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee. But if a man willfully attacks another to kill him treacherously, you shall take him from my altar that he may die. Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death. Whoever steals a man, whether he sells him or is found in possession of him,

shall be put to death. Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death. When men quarrel, and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and the man does not die but keeps his bed, then if the man rises again and walks abroad with his staff, he that struck him shall be clear. Only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall have him thoroughly healed. When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod, and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. but if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished, for the slave is his money. When men strive together and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage,

yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free for the eyes' sake. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free for the tooth's sake. When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall be

clear. But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death. If a ransom is laid on him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is laid upon him. If it gores a man's son or daughter, he shall be dealt with according to this same rule. If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. When a man leaves a pit open, or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make it good. He shall give money to its owner, and the dead beast shall be his. When one man's ox hurts

another's so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the price of it, and the dead beasts also they shall divide. Or if it is known that the ox has been accustomed to Gore in the past, and its owner has not kept it in, he shall pay ox for ox, and the dead beast shall be his. The book of Leviticus chapter 14. The cleansing of lepers. The Lord said to Moses, This shall be the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought to the priest, and the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall make an examination. Then if the leperous disease is healed in the leper, the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two living clean birds and cedarwood and scarlet stuff with hyssop,

and the priest shall command them to kill one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water. He shall take the living bird with the cedarwood and the scarlet stuff and the hyssop and dip them in the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water, and he shall sprinkle it seven times upon him who is cleansed of leprosy. Then he shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird go into open field. And he who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes and shave off all his hair and bathe himself in water and he shall be clean. And after that he shall come into the camp but shall dwell outside his tent seven days. And on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head.

He shall shave off his beard and his eyebrows all his hair. Then he shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water and he shall be clean. And on the eighth day he shall take two men. male lambs without blemish, and one eulam, a year old without blemish, and a serial offering of three-tenths of an ephah, of fine flour mixed with oil, and one log of oil. And the priest who cleanses him shall set the man who is to be cleansed and these things before the Lord at the door of the tent of meeting, and the priest shall take one of the male lambs, and offer it for a guilt offering, along with the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord, and he shall kill

the lamb in the place where they killed the sin offering and the burnt offering in the holy place. For the guilt offering, like the sin offering, belongs to the priest. It is most holy. The priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering, and the priest shall put it on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed, and on the thumb of his right hand, and on the great toe of his right foot. Then the priest shall take some of the log of oil and pour it into the palm of his own left hand, and dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand and sprinkle some of the oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. And some of the oil that remains in his hand, the priest shall put on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the great toe of

his right foot upon the blood of the guilt offering. And the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed. Then the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord. The priest shall offer the sin offering to make atonement for him who is to be cleansed from his uncleanness, and afterward he shall kill the burnt offering, and the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the cereal offering on the altar. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be clean. But if he is poor and cannot afford so much, then he shall take one male lamb for a guilt offering to be waived, to make atonement for him, and a tenth of anifa of flying flower mixed with oil for a serial offering and a log of oil. Also two turtle doves or two young

pigeons such as he can afford. The one shall be a sin offering and the other a burnt offering. And on the eighth day he shall bring them for his cleansing to the priest to the door of the tent of meeting before the Lord. And the priest shall take the lamb of the guilt offering and the log of oil and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. And he shall kill the lamb of the guilt offering and the priest shall take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and on the thumb of his right hand and on the great toe of his right foot. And the priest shall pour some of the oil into the palm of his own left hand and shall sprinkle with his right finger some of the oil that is in his left hand seven times before the Lord.

And the priest shall put some of the oil that is in his hand on the tip of the right ear of him who is to be cleansed and in the thumb of his right hand and on the great toe of his right foot in the place where the blood of the guilt offering was put. And the rest of the oil that is in the priest's hand he shall put on the head of him who is to be cleansed to make atonement for him before the Lord. And he shall offer of the turtle doves or young pigeons such as he can afford one for a sin offering

and the other for a burnt offering, along with a serial offering, and the priest shall make atonement before the Lord for him who is to be cleansed. This is the law for him in whom is a leprous disease who cannot afford the offerings for his cleansing. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when you come into the land of Canaan,

which I give you for a possession, and I put a leprous disease in a house in the land of your possession, then he who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, there seems to me to be some sort of disease in my house. Then the priest shall command that they empty the house before the priest goes to examine the disease, lest all that is in the house be declared unclean, and afterward the priest shall go in to see that,

house and he shall examine the disease and if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots and if it appears to be deeper than the surface then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house and shut up the house seven days and the priest shall come again on the seventh day and look and if the disease has spread in the walls of the house then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which is the disease and throw them into an unclean place outside the city and he shall cause the inside of the house to be scraped roundabout and the plaster that they scrape off they shall pour into an unclean place outside the city, then they shall take other stones, and put them in the place of those stones, and he shall take other plaster and plaster the house.

If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, then the priest shall go and look, and if the disease has spread in the house, it is a malignant leprosy in the house. It is unclean. And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them forth out of the city to an unclean place. Moreover, he who enters the house while it is shut up shall be unclean until the evening. And he who lies down in the house shall wash his clothes, and he who eats in the house shall wash his clothes.

But if the priest comes and makes an examination, and the disease has not spread in the house after the house was plastered, then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, for the disease is healed. And for the cleansing of the house, he shall take two small birds, with cedar wood and scarlet stuff and hyssop, and shall kill one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water, and shall take the cedar wood and the hyssop and the scarlet stuff

along with the living bird and dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed and in the running water and sprinkle the house seven times. Thus he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, and with the living bird, and with the cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet stuff, and he shall let the living bird go out of the city into the open field, so he shall make atonement for the house, and it shall be clean. This is the law for any leprous disease, for an itch,

for leprosy in a garment or in a house, and for a swelling or an eruption or a spot, to show when it is unclean and what it is clean. This is the law for leprosy. Psalm 75. Thanksgiving for God's one. wondrous deeds to the choir master according to do not destroy a psalm of asaph a song we give thanks to you o god we give thanks we call on your name and recount your wondrous deeds at the set time which i appoint i will judge with equity when the earth totters and all its inhabitants it is i who keep steady its pillars i say to the boastful do not boast and to the wicked do not lift up your horn do not lift up your horn do not lift up your horn on high or speak with insolent neck. For not from east or from the west, and not from

the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment. Putting down one and lifting up another, for in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine well mixed, and he will pour a draft from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. But I will rejoice forever. I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. all the horns of the wicked he will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted. Father in heaven, we give you praise and thank you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for convicting us and for challenging us with how you reveal yourself to us.

You reveal yourself to us so slowly and incrementally. Lord, you meet us where we're at. You stoop down to us. Not to leave us there, but you stooped down to us to raise us up to you. help us to recognize your divine condescension, your gentle and humble condescension, meeting us in our brokenness, meeting us in our woundedness, and beginning where we are so that we can end up where you are. Thank you. We make this prayer and ask you to please receive our thanks in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay, so this is so good. We have some of the more challenging. challenging parts of the Bible where we recognize here in the book of Exodus, here's this law that God is giving. And in the law, he says, okay, here's what you do with your slaves. And that should make us stop and say, wait, what is what is happening right now? How is God saying this is what you do with your slaves? And I think it's really, really important because we have to realize that God revealing himself, he's not revealing himself to a people who know who he is. He's not revealing himself to a people who have incredible familiarity with them. He's not revealing himself to a people who are, for lack of better term, civilized. We would say right now in the 21st century, civilized.

He's revealing himself to people who are familiar with kind of like Wild West justice. He's revealing himself to a people who have a sense of what's right and what's wrong, but don't necessarily know how to pursue what's right and what's wrong in a way that is absolutely just and absolutely fair. I I mean, consider this. In the ancient Egypt and in the ancient Mediterranean, as well as in the Greco-Roman world, what you have is you have the gods and goddesses. And these gods and goddesses are not good. They're not just.

They're not fair. And so what you have is power. Power is what rules. What you have is a usefulness, utility. Utility is what rules. And here is God who's saying to these people, he's teaching them a new way to be. What he's teaching them is not only a new way to be. He's also teaching them his identity.

And his identity is, oh, no, I am a God of justice. I am a God who does hear the cry of the poor. I am a God who your actions matter to me. And not only do they matter, but your actions cannot be rooted merely in power or merely in vengeance or merely in usefulness, but your actions must be rooted in justice. And so what we have is God beginning to give these commandments of behavior. Here is how you live in this society. And it's based off of justice first.

he's speaking to a community that does not know him and a community that does not necessarily know that there are restrictions on what you can do to other people. Here's what I mean is you have the kind of slave labor that those Israelites themselves, those Hebrews themselves, lived under and suffered under for 400 years under the Egyptians. So slavery in that context is completely normal. In fact, it's one of the ways in which, and this is, please forgive me for saying this, but it's one of the ways in which people cared for each other. Here is someone who is, I am completely homeless. I am jobless. I have no prospects. I have nothing to sell. I have nothing to offer, but I can offer myself. I can sell my services. And so one of the things you have is a difference between what you might

call chattel slavery and this slavery that, again, it's not like I've heard other people say, oh, I mean the good kind of slavery. Well, not good kind of slavery, but also, not the same that we are familiar with in the Far East and not the same kind of slavery we're familiar with in Europe and not the same kind of slavery we're familiar with in North America. But a kind that said, I might take it upon myself with no other options to place myself in what you might call indentured servitude to someone who can care for me when I'm serving them. Again, it's not ideal, but that's the whole point, is God has to start somewhere. This is the people that does not know the Lord God in his justice.

There's the people that do not necessarily remember that in the beginning, God made them male and female. He made them in his image and likeness. This is the people that have to be taught what justice is. They have to be taught what fairness is. They have to be taught what it is to treat another human being again with justice. And so this is like lesson one. So keep this in mind because we're going to continue in the next couple days to go through some more laws. And these laws might be challenging to us in our sense.

abilities, but it's kind of like this is the last little thing. If you were taking trigonometry, or you're taking calculus in high school or college, and you looked at your little brother or little sister's homework in first or second grade, you wouldn't look at their addition and subtraction. You wouldn't look at their multiplication or division and say, that's silly. Why are you spending all this time with one plus one or three minus two? That's math can get so much more advanced in this. Well, students have to start somewhere. You have to start at the lowest possible level. Even just, here's what a number is. Let's start counting. And so that's what God is doing right here. He is starting at the lowest possible level that this people are able to accept and begin living.

He's going to call them higher, but he first has to come down to their level. He's teaching at level one, and he's calling them up ultimately to the highest levels, to the level where we say, okay, We're not going to violate justice, but we're choosing mercy over justice, but they have to first know what justice is. He's going to ultimately get them to the point where they're no, absolutely clear that a human being, a human person is making God's image and likeness and must always be treated this way. But he has to first say, I'm going to begin doing this by putting some parameters on what you can do to each other. And so here's some rules. If there's someone who is a slave, then there are some parameters. You can't do anything you want with them.

They are not truly your property, but they are a human being who's a. in your employ, essentially, at your service. Same kind of thing when it comes to if you hurt someone else. It's an eye for an eye, not a life for an eye. Hope that makes sense, because this is just the beginning. We're going to get the rest of God's lesson one in how to live with other people and how to live injustice as the days continue. Let's keep praying for each other, because especially when we hit some more challenging

portions, and maybe I don't even explain it as best as you want me to explain it. Reach out to me. Maybe I can do a better job later on. But we're going to keep praying for each other because we are not. This is not just a one-day thing. This is a 365-day thing. We're going to keep walking with each other, keep journeying with each other, and keep praying for each other. My name is Father Mike.

I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.