One of the prominent New Atheists contends, “The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans.”
Let’s be clear: debt servanthood in the Old Testament is not the same thing as slavery in the antebellum South, even if your English Bible typically translates the Hebrew word ebed (servant) as slave. Anyone who takes the time to read the Old Testament carefully should see this.
Here is my summary of Paul Copan’s overview of the subject in Is God is a Moral Monster? (You can read earlier posts here, here, and here.)
“Chattel slavery,” the kind practiced in the antebellum South and also around the Ancient Near East, was characterized by three things:
1. A slave was property.
2. The slave owner’s rights over the slave’s person and work were total and absolute.
3. The slave was stripped of his identity—racial, familial, social, marital.
By contrast, note several things about debt servanthood in the Old Testament:
1. Debt servanthood was a voluntary measure induced by poverty, not man-stealing.
The Old Testament actively sought to prevent poverty. There were gleaning laws where farmers had to leave the edges of their fields unharvested for the poor. There were laws commanding Israelites to lend freely to those in need and not hold back. There was the institution of the Jubilee, where every 70 years all debts were cancelled so that every generation could get a new lease on life.
But for those who still couldn’t escape poverty, there was debt servanthood. This was a voluntary institution. Copan likens it to the indentured servitude of colonists who were able to travel to America by promising to work for several years to pay back the cost. An Israelite who had no land to sell could “sell himself,” that is, voluntarily enter himself or his family into a contractual arrangement to sustain the family through economically difficult times.
Servanthood existed because poverty existed. This is very different than the idea of kidnapping and enslavement, which were considered capital offenses in Israel:
“He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.” (Exod. 21:16)
“If a man is caught kidnapping any of his countrymen of the sons of Israel, and he deals with him violently or sells him, then that thief shall die; so you shall purge the evil from among you.” (Deut. 24:7)
2. Debt servanthood was temporary.
Debt slavery in Israel was never intended as a permanent or lifelong condition. An important passage on this whole subject is Deuteronomy 15:1-18. Read the passage carefully, especially verses 12-14:
“If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress.”
Servants could not serve more than six years, even if they hadn’t paid off all their debts. And when they were released they were not sent back into poverty. They were provided for liberally so they could pursue their own livelihood and live debt free. Lifelong service was prohibited except in once case: if a servant loved the head of the household he was serving, he could voluntarily choose to stay (Deut 15:16-18, Exod. 21:5-6).
Copan notes, “The overriding, revolutionary goal expressed in this text is to totally eradicate debt-servanthood in the land: ‘there will be no poor [and therefore no debt servanthood] among you’ (v. 4).”
3. Debt servants had dignity.
Servants in Israel were given radical rights in comparison to the status of slaves in the rest of the Ancient Near East. The Anchor Bible Dictionary’s essay on “Slavery” notes, “We have in the Bible the first appeals in world literature to treat slaves as human beings for their own sake and not just in the interests of their masters.”
Part of the dignity of servants was, for example, that they could not be mistreated. If they were, their debt was cancelled and they were released from their financial obligations. (Ex 21:26-27)
Moreover, while fugitive slave laws in the South required runaway slaves to be returned to their masters, Israelites were legally obligated to help runaway slaves who were mistreated and escaping abusive masters:
“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.” (Dt 23:15-16)
4. One more thing…
I think it’s important to add this: many laws in the Old Testament are not ideals as much as protections. They are not the ceiling, the moral perfections we are attempting to reach, as much as the floor below which society sinks into complete barbarism. This is the way Copan reminds us we ought to view laws about debt servitude in Israel:
“Israel’s servant laws were concerned about controlling or regulating—not idealizing—an inferior work arrangement. Israelite servitude was induced by poverty, was entered into voluntarily, and was far from optimal. The intent of these laws was to combat potential abuses, not to institutionalize servitude.”