The Bible on Slavery
What the Christian Scholars say
By
I have
already documented slavery in the Bible in a couple articles of
mine, which can be found here:
https://www.answering-christianity.com/book_with_no_limits.htm
https://www.answering-christianity.com/terrorinthebible.htm
In this
latest article of mine, I shall repost the biblical verses on
slavery, this time providing what the Christian scholars have to
say about these verses, basically Christian commentary on the
Bible (tafsir).
By doing this
it will strengthen the Muslims arguments, and will not allow
Christians to claim that we are mis-interpreting
these verses or twisting them around.
With that
being said, we now post the biblical verses on slavery, I shall
post them one by one, followed with the commentary from
Christian scholars.
However, you may purchase male or female
slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may
also purchase the children of such resident foreigners,
including those who have been born in your land. You may treat
them as your property, passing them on to your children as
a permanent inheritance. You may treat your
slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must
never be treated this way.
Leviticus 25:44-46
These verses
are not just cruel, since they let the Israelites make a slave
for life, they are also racist since Israelites are not allowed
to become slaves, only if someone is not an Israelite can they
be your slave and property.
The New John Gill
Exposition of the Entire Bible:
Both thy bondmen, and thy
bondmaids, which thou shalt have,
&c.] Such it seems were allowed them, if they had need of them;
but if they had them, they were to be not of the nation of
Israel, but of other nations; this is an anticipation of an
objection, as Jarchi observes; if
so, who shall I have to minister to me? The answer follows, they
[shall be] of the heathen that are round about thee, of
them shall ye
buy bondmen and bondmaids;
that is, of the Ammonites, Moabites,
Edomites, and Syrians, as Aben
Ezra, that were their neighbours,
that lived round about them, of any but the seven nations, which
they were ordered utterly to destroy; wherefore
Jarchi observes it is said, "that
are round about thee"; not in the midst of the border of your
land, for them they were not to save alive, (Deuteronomy
20:16) .
Moreover, of the children of
the strangers, that do sojourn
among you…
The uncircumcised sojourners as they are called in the
Targums of
Onkelos and Jonathan, proselytes of the gate, such of the
nations round about who came and sojourned among them, being
subject to the precepts given to the sons of Noah respecting
idolatry… but were not circumcised, and did not embrace the
Jewish religion: of them shall ye buy;
for bondmen and bondmaids: and of their families that
[are] with you, which they begat in your
land;
but, as the Targum of Jonathan adds,
are not of the Canaanites; though the Jewish writers
F24 say, that one of the nations that lies with a
Canaanitish woman, and begets a son
of her, he may be bought for a servant; and so if a
Canaanitish man lies with one of the
nations, and begets a son of her, he may also be bought for a
servant: and they shall be your possession;
as servants, as bondmen and bondmaids, and be so for ever to
them and their heirs, as follows.
And ye shall take them as an
inheritance for your children
after you…
Which they might leave them at their death to inherit, as
they did their estates and lands; for such servants are, with
the Jews
F25, said to be like immovable goods, as fields,
vineyards, to inherit [them for] a possession;
as their property, as
anything else that was bequeathed to hem, as negroes now are in
our plantations abroad: thy shall be your
bondmen for ever;
and not be released at the year jubilee, nor before nor after;
unless they obtained their liberty, either by purchase, which
they might make themselves, or by the means of others, or else
by a writing under their master's hand dismissing them from his
service
F26; or in case they were maimed by him, then he was
obliged to let them go free, (Exodus
21:26,27) ; but over your brethren, the children of
Israel, ye shall not rule one
over another with rigour;
which repeated for the confirmation of it, and for the fuller
explanation and description of the person not to be ruled over
with rigour; and that it might be
the more taken notice of, and to make them the more careful in
the observance of it and though this peculiarly respects
masters' treatment of their servants, yet
Jarchi thinks it comprehends a prince over his people,
and a king over his ministers, whom he may not rule with
rigour.
So note what this Christian
commentator is saying! He is saying the way Israelites treat
their slaves and pass them on is the same as how the whites
treated black slaves!!!! WOW! So if you ever wonder why racism
was so high by white American Christians on black Africans, now
you know! It is because their Bible allowed them to do such
acts.
Also a reminder to the readers,
this commentator is CHRISTIAN, and I am quoting from A CHRISTIAN
SOURCE. Furthermore, even Sam Shamoun
of Answering-Islam used John Gill’s Biblical commentary in one
of his articles:
The New
John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible
That all
men should honour the Son…
This is the end of all judgment, and the exercise of all
authority, and power being committed to him; namely, that he
might have the honour given him by
men that is due unto him:
even as
they honour the Father;
that the same honour and glory may
be given to the one, as to the other, which must never have
been done was he not equal with him, since he gives not his
glory to another, (Isaiah 42:8) (48:11). Indeed, all men do
not honour the Father as they
should; the Gentiles, who had some knowledge of God, glorified
him not as God; and the Jews, who had an external revelation of
the one, true, and living God, which other nations had not, yet
were greatly deficient in honouring
him
http://www..net/Responses/Osama/zawadi_honor_jesus.htm
So this commentary
is used by Answering-Islam. And John Gill’s Bible commentary is
one the widely used commentaries for the Bible, it isn’t a weak
commentary.
Moving on:
Exodus 21:7-11
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she
will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If
she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to
be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to
foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her.
And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son,
he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat
her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes
another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to
sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three
ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.
John
Gill’s commentary:
Exodus 21:7
And if a
man sell his daughter to be a maidservant…
That is, if an Israelite, as the Targum
of Jonathan, sells his little daughter, as the same
Targum, and so
Jarchi and Aben Ezra, one
that is under age, that is not arrived to the age of twelve
years and a day, and this through poverty; he not being able to
support himself and his family, puts his daughter out to
service, or rather sells her to be a servant:
she
shall not go out as the menservants do;
that are sold, before described; or rather, according to the
Targum,
``as the
Canaanitish servants go out, who are
made free, because of a tooth, or an eye, (the loss of them, (Exodus
21:26,27) ) but in the years of
release, and with the signs (of puberty), and in the jubilee,
and at the death of their masters, with redemption of silver,''
so Jarchi.
If she
please not her master…
"Be evil in the eyes of her master"
F16; and he has no liking of her, and love to her, not
being agreeable in her person, temper, or conduct, so that he
does not choose to make her his wife:
who hath betrothed her to him;
but not completed the marriage, as he promised, when he bought
her, or at least gave reason to expect that he would; for,
according to the Jewish canons, a Hebrew handmaid might not be
sold but to one who laid himself under obligation to espouse her
to himself, or his son, when she was fit to be betrothed
F17; and so Jarchi says,
he ought to espouse her, and take her to be his wife, for the
money of her purchase is the money of her espousals. There is a
double reading of this passage, the Keri, or marginal reading we
follow; the Cetib, or written text,
is, "who hath not betrothed her", both may be taken in, "who
hath not betrothed her to him", as he said he would, or as it
was expected he should; for, had she been really betrothed, what
follows could not have been done:
then shall he let her be
redeemed;
she being at age, and fit for marriage, and her master not
caring to marry her, her father shall redeem her, as the
Targum of Jonathan; it was incumbent
on him to do that, as it was on her master to let her be
redeemed, to admit of the redemption of her; or whether, as
Aben Ezra says, she redeemed
herself, or her father, or one of her relations, if she was near
the six years (the end of them), they reckoned how many years
she had served, and how many were yet to the seventh, or to the
time that she is in her own power, and according to the
computation was the redemption: thus, for instance, as it is by
others
F18 put, if she was bought for six pounds, then one
pound is the service of every year; and if she redeemed herself,
her master took off of the money for the years she had served;
or thus
F19, if she was bought for sixty pence, and had served
two years, he must pay her forty pence, and so free her:
to sell her unto a strange
nation, he shall
have no power; that is, to another man, as both the
Targums of
Onkelos and Jonathan, even to an Israelite that was of
another family, to whom the right of redemption did not belong;
for to sell an Israelite, man or woman, to a Gentile, or one of
another nation, was not allowed of in any case, as Josephus
Finally:
Exodus 21:20-21
When a man strikes his male or female slave
with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall
be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two,
he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property
John Gill’s
commentary:
And if a
man smite his servant or his maid with a rod…
A Canaanitish servant or maid, as
the Targum of Jonathan, and so
Jarchi; and that only with a rod for
the correction of them, and not with a sword or any such
destroying weapon, which would seem as though he intended to
kill, yet nevertheless:
and
he die under his hand;
immediately, while he is smiting or beating him or her, on the
same day, as the above Targum
interprets it:
he
shall be surely punished;
or condemned to the punishment of being slain with the sword, as
the said Targum and
Jarchi explain it: this law was made
to deter masters from using severity and cruelty towards their
servants.
Notwithstanding, if he
continue a day or two…
And does not die immediately, or the same day, but lives twenty
four hours, as the Jewish writers interpret it; so
Abendana
F24 explains the phrase, "a day or two";
``a day which is as
two days, and they are twenty four hours from time to time,''
that is, from the
time he was smitten to the time of his continuance; and so it is
elsewhere explained
F25 by a day we understand a day, which is like two
days, that is, from time to time, the meaning of which is, from
a certain time in one day to the same in another:
he
shall not be punished;
that is, with death;
for he [is] his money;
is bought with his money, and is good as money, and therefore it
is a loss sufficient to him to lose him; and it may be
reasonably thought he did not smite his servant with an
intention to kill him, since he himself is the loser by it.
So as you can see, if the slave
doesn’t die, then there is no punishment, it is just a loss for
the owner since the slave is too hurt to work! WOW! So this
means, you can hurt your slave as much as you want, just make
sure IT doesn’t die, and the reason I say IT is because it is
clear the Bible regards slaves as mere processions, an object,
like land, and not a human being.
Adam Clarke’s commentary writes:
Verse 21. If the slave
who had been beaten by his master died under his hand, the
master was punished with death; see
Genesis 9:5,6. But if he survived
the beating a day or two the master was not
punished, because it might be presumed that the man died through
some other cause. And all penal laws should be construed as
favourably as possible to the
accused.
So
again, as you see, if the slave does not die, there is no
punishment, meaning it is legit to beat your slave as much as
you want to.
So as
you can see, the Bible’s slavery in the OT is no different than
the slavery inflicted upon black people by white Americans and
white Europeans, they got these racist slavery attitudes
straight from the bible, even the Biblical commentator said they
are the same!
