This is especially relevant today, when debt-bondage continues to be a major form of slavery. It is also relevant to note that later rabbis eliminated the category of the Eved Ivri. Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran, the 14thth century Spanish and North African authority known as the Tashbetz, ruled that this legal category ceased to exist after the exile of the 10 northern tribes of Israel:.
Today, when the Jubilee [a year in which all debts were to be forgiven] is not in effect, in the case of one who loses all of his possessions, the Torah does not give this person permission to sell him or herself such that he would be like a Hebrew slave—that is, that his body should be acquired by another. If a person borrowed money, he carries this debt, but his body has not been acquired at all by the lender.
Rather, he should pay back the loan when he is able, or he may pay it back with labor—taking out of his earnings enough to pay for his own food, but not enough for food for his household.
Tashbetz Our Leadership. Contact Us. Join Us! Media Resources. Position Statements. Public Policy. Washington Office. Donate Now. Does the Bible Endorse Racism and Slavery? September 24, If that slave should refuse to identify his owner, he shall lead him off to the palace, his circumstances shall be investigated, and they shall return him to his owner. If he should detain that slave in his own house and afterward the slave is discovered in his possession, that man shall be killed.
Imagine that you are an ancient Israelite—the head of a household. You spend all day farming and keeping a small flock of sheep and goats, helped by everyone in your extended household. What do you do if you have a bad year, and are unable to feed your family?
The answer is that you borrow from someone who has enough surplus grain or some other commodity to lend you. Under Israelite law, this loan would be interest-free Lev —37 , but you still need to pay back what you borrowed.
But now imagine that you have another bad year, and so you need to borrow again. Year after year, your debt accumulates, and you have no way to pay it back. Unless your intention is to default on the loan—effectively stealing from the one who lent to you at no interest rather than selling his grain—your only option is to repay your debt with your only means available, the labor of the people in your household.
The term of service that an Israelite could serve another under these conditions was six years. In the seventh, he had to be released Exod This is an upper limit; smaller debts could presumably be paid in less time.
Under the care of a wealthier family, he would have been better fed, better clothed, and able to engage in work that was probably more rewarding. Then, at the end of their six-year term,[4] Israelite slaves had two options: They could return to their household.
If this is chosen, the master would be obligated to follow Deuteronomy — If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, sells himself 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. The Israelite slave was not expected to start over from scratch after he was released from service.
They could remain permanently in the house of their master. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever. Deuteronomy , which addresses the same situation, adds an additional reason why a slave might choose to stay: "Since he is well-off with you. The passage at the beginning of Exodus 21 continues with a stipulation that requires some comment.
At first blush, this seems misogynistic, denying the woman of the same rights given to the man in the previous verse. A man can be released after six years, but not a woman? This is emphatically not what is going on here. Notice that the woman in question was given to the male slave as a wife during his time as a slave.
This woman would have been a female slave. In such a case, his options would have been either to wait for her to be freed or to ransom her, perhaps with some of the provisions that he received at the time of his release. As for the children, these would all be young, a maximum of five years old assuming the woman entered service a year after the man and was married to him immediately , an age at which they need their mother, not their father.
This law probably would have influenced how often marriage between slaves would have taken place and would have prevented women from foolishly entering into a marriage only to gain an early manumission. The following paragraph also prevents a puzzling case: When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do [that is, she shall not be released from her service at the end of six years].
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 broken faith 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 Exod — If the notion of a father giving her daughter in marriage to man in order to pay off debt seems disturbing, it should be remembered that the practice of arranged marriage has been the norm in many cultures, even in our own day, and often results in marriages that are just as happy and fulfilled as ones that are not arranged.
At any rate, such an objection is not to the institution of Israelite debt-slavery per se, but to the practice of arranged marriages. Should the master desire to divorce her i. Since it was illegal to sell an Israelite to another Israelite see above , only foreigners are mentioned here. No Israelite could deprive another of their membership in the covenant people of God.
Instead, he was to permit her to be redeemed v. The second situation, mentioned in verse 9, is that if she has been given to in marriage to his son. Here she must be treated as a full-daughter, which means that her children would be legitimate heirs with full inheritance rights, not second-generation servants.
Finally, in the event that a second wife is taken polygamy was sometimes practiced in Israel, always with disastrous results , her status is not to be lower than the second wife. If the idea of debt servitude strikes us a primitive, we need to remember that many of the options that are available to us today were not available in the ancient world, for better or for worse.
This system in ancient Israel was intended to maintain incentives to lend to the poor, where interest is not an option and when the risk of default werenoften quite high.
These are the kinds of situations addressed by Old Testament law in a society that differed greatly from our own. Difficult Passages The laws that we have considered so far have shown a high degree of concern for the rights of Israelite slaves, and for their dignity as human beings created in the image of God. Out of the more than three quarters of a million words in the Bible, Christian slaveholders—and, if asked, most slaveholders would have defined themselves as Christian—had two favorites texts, one from the beginning of the Old Testament and the other from the end of the New Testament.
These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole world overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. Despite some problems with this story—What was so terrible about seeing Noah drunk?
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