Does the Bible teach that slaves can be beaten and mistreated? I have seen this written on the internet. Let’s break this down:
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Does the Bible teach – we should never be so broad in examining ancient texts. Let’s focus. The
question is narrower than the whole Bible. It’s narrower even than the Old
Testament. If we narrow it down to the Pentateuch (the five books from Genesis
to Numbers) we are getting warmer and need to start paying more attention. If
we narrow down further to the Torah (Moses’ law) we are zooming in and
adjusting our focus better still. If we narrow it down to the book of Exodus,
we are getting very warm. If we narrow it down to a few chapters, that will be about
right for our most detailed work. If we zoom in on only a couple of verses, or
a few words, that’s too close – we wouldn’t be able to see the wood for the
trees. We need to get to about the right distance to read the verses in
context, but ready also to turn an eye to anything especially relevant from
broader contexts. I’ll do that: focus on context in Exodus, with relevant broader
stuff referred to.
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that slaves – always define terms. In the case of Israelite “slaves,” these are
really indentured servants, not chattel slaves. In the case of non-Israelite
slaves, these are more like chattel slaves, but not like the industrialised
slavery of the Roman Empire or the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The world of
Moses’ law is more ancient, more inward-looking, more about what goes on within
one’s own clan and one’s own wider family. If for example, an Israelite sends
his son or daughter into indentured servitude, they won’t be shipped off and
cut off from the protection of their kinsfolk. They are probably not far from
their family networks, where concerned relatives can keep an eye out for them.
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can be beaten – that’s what this article is about.
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and mistreated – the Bible never says “mistreat.” Whatever we might think according to
our values, those who preserved Moses’ law didn’t think it was a charter for
mistreatment. They believed it was fair, so we need to understand what was
going on in their reasoning.
So vague statements like “the Bible says slaves can be beaten and
mistreated” are misleading on multiple levels, and we need a more scientific
discourse than that. That’s what I am aiming to do here. And the first thing is
to look at what verses say in context, and in more than one translation,
and with an eye on meanings found in the original languages. (Hebrew in this
case.) Why assume we have the right to give poorly informed opinions and
conclusions?
Eden
I said we were getting warmer when we narrow down to the Pentateuch, the
first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. The first pages of it (in Genesis)
set an agenda for everything that follows. They have a vision of God’s perfect
world: the garden of Eden. It’s so foundational that when we get to the end of
the New Testament, they are talking about spiritually getting back to Eden, a garden-like
new earth and a new heaven. If these are God’s ideas of perfection, then ask
yourself what would God allow in Eden? What would God allow in the New Heavens
and the New Earth? Eden is a place where people are not at first fallen from
perfection. There would be no assaults there anyway, but could Israelites
imagine assault in Eden without punishment? Hardly. They maintained a dream
of perfection free from violence, amidst the chaos of the world.
In Genesis, after Eden, people are fallen from perfection, and so when
it comes, Moses’ law is a law for the fallen. You can't discover all God's
ideals from laws for the fallen. Judge God's ideals by his ideals where clearly
pictured, such as Eden. Don't defend what God would not ideally have wanted.
When I see that Christians have tried to defend slavery because they have
thought it is part of God’s perfect law, I feel like tearing my hair out.
Moses’ law is not God’s perfect law. It is a law for a fallen world. There was
a higher standard than Moses’ law according to Jesus, and it was the perfect
world of Eden. After the fall comes Moses’ law, and for this I turn to slave
laws in Exodus. Moses’ law was a guidebook, a legal manual for ancient Israel’s
legal experts and priests. It’s more than a list of do’s and don’ts. It’s a
lesson in how to think justly for Israel’s legal experts.
Exodus 20-21
I said we are getting into the right area when we zoom in on
Exodus. Does Exodus 21:20 really mean that if a master strikes his slave with a
rod and they die the master will be punished, but if they don't die the
master won't be punished for beating his slave? Actually, no, Exodus 21 isn’t
saying that at all.
What it is: an example of how these are illustrations for the
jurist - the legal expert - in how to determine proportionate justice for a
crime of assault. It doesn’t say beating with rods isn’t assault. It says
non-fatal beating with rods won’t incur the death penalty but a different
punishment. The judge is meant to think about illustrations
such as this to teach him how to decide on real cases of assault and murder. Thus, we need to understand why it says that if the injured
slave doesn't die within a day or two the injured slave is not to be “avenged”
– i.e. the master is not to be executed.
In the hypothetical case, the judge already knows it was assault
(and is allowed to punish the slave master proportionately). The explanatory
context is found in Exodus 20 and following. Fundamental and well known are
these prior verses: Exodus 20:13 "thou shalt not murder"; and Exodus
21:23-24 "you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for
tooth". These are illustrations of proportionate justice for training
judges. That doesn't literally mean that an eye-gouging villain’s own eye
always has to be gouged out too. It means the judge should come up with a
punishment proportionate to an offence. It’s a lesson, not a fixed statute. It
does give a jurist permission to apply it literally to a guilty eye-gouger, but
the jurist is allowed to think for himself and handle it proportionately in
other ways too. That’s the point.
The proportionate penalty for murder is execution: "a life
for a life." The idea is to affirm the value of a life. Nothing less than
a life is equivalent in value to a life. So the death penalty applies for
murder. If a master murders a slave, the punishment is death for the master (Exodus
21:20).
The master will be executed. The slave's life is a life like
anyone else's. We may or not agree with the death penalty, but we should agree
with Exodus that the slave's life is a life worth no less than any other.
Remember, these chapters are training for judges in learning to
reason about justice, not an exact set of laws to be followed rigidly without
thinking.
Back to justice for beaten slaves. As we will see, a correct
reading of Exodus 21:21-27 is that the slave-beating master either forfeits his life
or else forfeits certain “property”, depending on whether the slave survives or not.
It’s punishment either way.
Punishment for assault generally is guided by the principle
"an eye for an eye." If a master assaults a slave and the slave loses
an eye, the law suggests to the judge to think like this: the master isn't to
lose his eye, he is to lose his property, that is, lose ownership of his slave.
The slave master is punished for beating his slave in that way (Exodus 21:26-27).
Thus verse 26 “An owner who hits a male or female slave in the
eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye."
In that case, instead of “a master’s eye for a slave’s eye”,
it’s “a slave’s freedom for his eye.” This is seen as proportionate and more
remedial in this illustration.
Thus, the slave master actually is still supposed
to be punished if his beaten slave recovers. There is a switch from verse 21 to
verse 26, but it is concealed by bad translations.
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A common translation of
verse 21: "they [slave owners] are not to be punished if the slave
recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property." (Note
that “not punished” is the bad translation and I’ll come back to that.)
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Verse 26: “An owner [slave-owner]
who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave
go free to compensate for the eye.”
These two verses would contradict each other if “not punished”
were the right translation. "Not punished" is obviously a bad
translation. This is clear because there is punishment for the master and it is
set out in v. 26 - the master loses his property, the slave goes free.
So what would be a better translation of v. 20-21?
"Avenged" is a better translation. If a slave dies, the dead slave is
avenged, a life for a life. The murdering slave master will be executed.
If the slave recovers, he is alive obviously, so a life is not to be avenged. Rather
the punishment is that property is forfeited. The slave master loses his
property. For his crime of assault he is punished, but a life is not “avenged.”
This is why the translation “not avenged” makes sense and the translation “not
punished” simply does not.
The point is this. The judge is taught to punish the slave-beating master
where it hurts him - in his pocket – and in a way that gives the slave a just
remedy. The slave was property. Now the slave is free. Loss of human property
is the master's punishment for assaulting his slave.
This is how the judge is being taught to think. It doesn't need
a literal eye to be lost or a literal tooth to fall out. These are
illustrations. It just needs proportionate justice for an offence. Assault your
slave causing bodily harm and your slave ceases to be your property. A good
remedy for the injured slave.
Following this illustration, a jurist could also consider that such would be a proportionate remedy for a beaten slave who had witnesses but no
injuries to show for it.
Another illustration
Therefore, it is important to understand how the law of Moses
was intended to function in its ancient context. Another illustration to help
get our minds around this comes in the mistaken mis-reading of Moses’ law that
assumes a raped woman must marry her rapist. The ancient background which this
mis-reading completely overlooks is that when a woman married a man, this was
seen as two whole families being married together. The woman’s father was not
obliged to have his family married to a rapist’s family. He could say “no,” and
the raped woman could ask her father to say “no.” I mention this example to emphasise
that this was a world different to ours and we may have difficulty
understanding it. I highly recommend this article – on that particular question
- which helps us to understand that ancient world better: https://hebraicthought.org/deuteronomic-law-women-marry-rapists/