Awake September 8, 2001 Page 20-21
The Bible's viewpoint
Did God condone the slave trade?
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The real question should be "did God condone slavery?"
Problem being that The Awake would have to admit more and refute less so that question might have been, how should I put it, out of the question or at least far more troublesome.
What the Awake has done is, although they do admit God condoned slavery, is that they claim that it was a "vastly different" kind of slavery that the Jews and early Christians were up too.
I will therefore attempt to see as to weather or not the Awake has been completely truthful in answering this rather delicate question.
"Dark sweating bodies bent almost in two shuffle up gangplanks under the crushing burdens of enormous bales of cotton. Ruthless overseers drive them on with rawhide whips. Screaming children are torn from the arms of weeping mothers and sold to the highest bidder in auctions. These are likely the stark, brutal images that come to mind when you think of slavery.
Ironically, it is said that many slave traders and slave owners were deeply religious individuals. Historian James Walvin wrote: "There were hundreds of such men, Europeans and Americans, who praised the Lord for his blessing, giving thanks for profitable and safe business in Africa as they turned their slave ships into the trade winds and headed for the New World."
Some people have even asserted that God condoned the slave trade. For example, in a speech to the General Conference of the Methodist Church in 1842, Alexander McCain stated that the institution of slavery was "ordained by God Himself." Was McCain correct? Did God approve of the kidnapping and raping of girls, the heartless separating of families, and the cruel beatings that were part and parcel of the slave trade of McCaine's day? And what of the millions who were forced to work as slaves under brutal conditions today? Does God condone such inhumane treatment?"
These questions are really good unfortunately no real attempt is made by the Awake to answer these questions so we shall have to consult the ultimate authority on this namely the Bible.
*** Rbi8 Numbers 31:7-17 ***
7 And they went waging war against Mid'i·an, just as Jehovah had commanded Moses, and they proceeded to kill every male. 8 And they killed the kings of Mid'i·an along with the others slain, namely, E'vi and Re'kem and Zur and Hur and Re'ba, the five kings of Mid'i·an; and they killed Ba'laam the son of Be'or with the sword. 9 But the sons of Israel carried off the women of Mid'i·an and their little ones captive; and all their domestic animals and all their livestock and all their means of maintenance they plundered. 10 And all their cities in which they had settled and all their walled camps they burned with fire. 11 And they went taking all the spoil and all the booty in the way of humans and domestic animals. 12 And they came bringing to Moses and El·e·a'zar the priest and to the assembly of the sons of Israel the captives and the booty and the spoil, to the camp, to the desert plains of Mo'ab, which are by the Jordan at Jer'i·cho.
13 Then Moses and El·e·a'zar the priest and all the chieftains of the assembly went out to meet them outside the camp. 14 And Moses grew indignant at the appointed men of the combat forces, the chiefs of the thousands and the chiefs of the hundreds who were coming in from the military expedition. 15 So Moses said to them: “Have YOU preserved alive every female? 16 Look! They are the ones who, by Ba'laam’s word, served to induce the sons of Israel to commit unfaithfulness toward Jehovah over the affair of Pe'or, so that the scourge came upon the assembly of Jehovah. 17 And now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has had intercourse with man by lying with a male.
*** Rbi8 Numbers 31:25-47 ***
25 And Jehovah proceeded to say this to Moses: 26 “Take the sum of the booty, the captives both of humankind and of domestic animals, you and El·e·a'zar the priest and the heads of the fathers of the assembly. 27 And you must divide the booty in two between those taking part in the battle who went out on the expedition and all the rest of the assembly. 28 And as a tax for Jehovah you must take away from the men of war who went out on the expedition one soul out of five hundred, of humankind and of the herd and of the asses and of the flock. 29 From their half YOU should take it and you must give it to El·e·a'zar the priest as Jehovah’s contribution. 30 And from the half of the sons of Israel you should take one out of fifty, of humankind, of the herd, of the asses and of the flock, of every sort of domestic animal, and you must give them to the Levites, the keepers of the obligation of Jehovah’s tabernacle.”
31 And Moses and El·e·a'zar the priest went doing just as Jehovah had commanded Moses. 32 And the booty, the rest of the plunder that the people of the expedition had taken as plunder, amounted to six hundred and seventy-five thousand of the flock, 33 and seventy-two thousand of the herd, 34 and sixty-one thousand asses. 35 As for human souls from the women who had not known the act of lying with a male, all the souls were thirty-two thousand. 36 And the half that was the share of those who went out on the expedition amounted in number to three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred of the flock. 37 And the tax for Jehovah from the flock amounted to six hundred and seventy-five. 38 And of the herd there were thirty-six thousand, and the tax on them for Jehovah was seventy-two. 39 And the asses were thirty thousand five hundred, and the tax on them for Jehovah was sixty-one. 40 And the human souls were sixteen thousand, and the tax on them for Jehovah was thirty-two souls. 41 Then Moses gave the tax as Jehovah’s contribution to El·e·a'zar the priest, just as Jehovah had commanded Moses.
42 And from the half belonging to the sons of Israel, which Moses divided from that belonging to the men who waged war: 43 Now the half of the assembly from the flock amounted to three hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred, 44 and of the herd, thirty-six thousand, 45 and the asses, thirty thousand five hundred, 46 and human souls, sixteen thousand. 47 Then Moses took from the half belonging to the sons of Israel the one to be taken out of fifty, of humankind and of domestic animals, and gave them to the Levites, the keepers of the obligation of Jehovah’s tabernacle, just as Jehovah had commanded Moses.
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:10-23 ***
10 Hence the assembly proceeded to send twelve thousand of the most valiant men there and to command them, saying: “Go, and YOU must strike the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad with the edge of the sword, even the women and the little ones. 11 And this is the thing that YOU should do: Every male and every woman that has experienced lying with a male YOU should devote to destruction.” 12 However, they found out of the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad four hundred girls, virgins, that had not had intercourse with a man by lying with a male. So they brought them to the camp at Shi'loh, which is in the land of Ca'naan.
13 And all the assembly now sent and spoke to the sons of Benjamin that were on the crag of Rim'mon and offered them peace. 14 Accordingly Benjamin came back at that time. Then they gave them the women that they had preserved alive from the women of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad; but they did not find enough for them. 15 And the people felt regret over Benjamin because Jehovah had made a rupture between the tribes of Israel. 16 Consequently the older men of the assembly said: “What shall we do to the men that are left over as to wives, for womankind has been annihilated out of Benjamin?” 17 Then they said: “There should be a possession for those who have escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe might not be wiped out of Israel. 18 As for us, we are not allowed to give them wives from our daughters, because the sons of Israel have sworn, saying, ‘Cursed is the one that gives a wife to Benjamin.’”
19 Finally they said: “Look! There is a festival of Jehovah from year to year in Shi'loh, which is to the north of Beth'el, toward the east of the highway that goes up from Beth'el to She'chem and toward the south of Le·bo'nah.” 20 So they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying: “Go, and YOU must lie in wait in the vineyards. 21 And YOU must look, and, there now, when the daughters of Shi'loh come on out to dance in circle dances, YOU must also come out from the vineyards and carry off for yourselves by force each one his wife from the daughters of Shi'loh, and YOU must go to the land of Benjamin. 22 And it must occur that should their fathers or their brothers come to conduct a legal case against us, we also shall certainly say to them, ‘Do us a favor for their sakes, because we have not taken for each one his wife by war, for it was not YOU that did the giving to them at a time when YOU would become guilty.’”
23 Accordingly the sons of Benjamin did just that way, and they proceeded to carry off wives for their number from the women dancing around, whom they snatched away; after which they went off and returned to their inheritance and built the cities and took up dwelling in them.
Okay, the first story really tells it all and so does the second. God does not mind at all the heartless separation of families in-fact he makes absolutely sure they are separated from each other for ever by commanding that they kill every one except the women. The Israelites didn't do their job properly though, notice how Moses gets upset when he learns that all women and children were kept alive, he didn't want that, he only wanted the little girls who were still virgins. So now these poor little girls lost the remaining part of their families and further they had become kidnapped victims of the Lord and slaves to the Israelites. The really ugly part is that some of these girls ended up being human sacrifices and I guess one might say that that more than matched McCaine's era. The second story is equally cruel and more girls end up kidnapped and forced into being the wife's of complete strangers which in my book constitutes rape perhaps on a scale unheard of, the word sex-slave comes to mind rather easily.
Lets see how the Awake deals with the questions at hand.
Slavery and the Israelites"The Bible states that "man has dominated man to his injury." (Ecclesiastes 8:9) his is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the oppressive forms of slavery that have been devised by man. Jehovah God is not indifferent to the suffering that slavery has wrought.
For example, consider a situation that developed with the Israelites. The Bible tells us that the Egyptians "kept making their life bitter with hard slavery at clay and mortar and bricks and with every form of slavery in the field., yes, every form of slavery of theirs in which they used them as slaves under tyranny." The Israelites "continued to sigh because of the slavery and to cry out in complaint, and their cry for help kept going up to the true God." Was Jehovah indifferent to their plight? On the contrary, "God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Furthermore, Jehovah told his people: "I shall certainly bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from their slavery."---Exodus 1:14; 2:23, 24; 6:6-8.Clearly, Jehovah did not approve of 'man dominating man' through abusive slavery. But did not God later allow slavery among his people? Yes, he did. However, the slavery that existed in Israel was vastly different from the tyrannical forms of slavery that have existed throughout history.
God's law stated that kidnapping and selling a human was punishable by death.
Furthermore, Jehovah provided guidelines to protect slaves. For example, a slave who was maimed by his master would be set free. If a slave died because his master beat him, the master could be punished by death. Women captives could become slaves, or they could be taken as wives. But they were not to be used for mere sexual gratification. The gist of the law must have led right-hearted Israelites to treat slaves with respect and kindness, as if these were hires laborers. ---Exodus 20:10; 21:12, 16, 26,27; Leviticus 22:10, 11; Deuteronomy21: 10-14."Some Jews voluntarily became slaves to their fellow Jews in order to repay debts. This practice protected people from starvation and actually allowed many more to recover from poverty. Furthermore, at key junctures in the Jewish calendar slaves were to be released if they so desired.* (Exodus21:2; Leviticus 25:10; Deuteronomy 15:12) Commenting on these laws regarding slaves, Jewish scholar Moses Mielziner stated that a "slave could never cease to be a man, he was looked upon as a person possessing certain natural human rights, with which the master even could not with impunity interfere."
What a stark contrast to the abusive systems of slavery that mar the annals of history!*( The fact that provision was made to allow some to remain with their master clearly indicates that Israelite slavery was not abusive.)
The example that the Awake uses to show that God does not approve of slavery is nothing but a big strawman. They attempt to make out that one form of slavery is okay because it is not abusive whereas the other one's (all non-Jewish types) are.
This is also where the article starts becoming deceitful because the guidelines they talk about only refer to Hebrew slaves and not to any others. It may well be the case that Hebrew slaves were set free and possibly even treated with some form of respect and kindness but try and tell that to the Midianite girls who lost everything and probably only regained their freedom through death, try telling that to the girls who were forced to live as "sex-slaves" in the story of Judges 21. The other thing the Awake does when referring to the laws that governed slaves is that they only picked out the laws supporting their argument and omits the rest, this is what the law really say's:
Exodus 21:
*** Rbi8 Exodus 21:1-36 ***
21 “And these are the judicial decisions that you are to set before them:
2 “In case you should buy a Hebrew slave, he will be a slave six years, but in the seventh he will go out as one set free without charge. 3 If he should come in by himself, by himself he will go out. If he is the owner of a wife, then his wife must go out with him. 4 If his master should give him a wife and she does bear him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will become her master’s and he will go out by himself. 5 But if the slave should insistently say, ‘I really love my master, my wife and my sons; I do not want to go out as one set free,’ 6 then his master must bring him near to the [true] God and must bring him up against the door or the doorpost; and his master must pierce his ear through with an awl, and he must be his slave to time indefinite.
7 “And in case a man should sell his daughter as a slave girl, she will not go out in the way that the slave men go out. 8 If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master so that he does not designate her as a concubine but causes her to be redeemed, he will not be entitled to sell her to a foreign people in his treacherously dealing with her. 9 And if it should be to his son that he designates her, he is to do to her according to the due right of daughters. 10 If he should take another wife for himself, her sustenance, her clothing and her marriage due are not to be diminished. 11 If he will not render these three things to her, then she must go out for nothing, without money.
12 “One who strikes a man so that he actually dies is to be put to death without fail. 13 But where one does not lie in wait and the [true] God lets it occur at his hand, then I must fix for you a place where he can flee. 14 And in case a man becomes heated against his fellow to the point of killing him with craftiness, you are to take him even from being at my altar to die. 15 And one who strikes his father and his mother is to be put to death without fail.
16 “And one who kidnaps a man and who actually sells him or in whose hand he has been found is to be put to death without fail.
17 “And one who calls down evil upon his father and his mother is to be put to death without fail.
18 “And in case men should get into a quarrel and one does strike his fellow with a stone or a hoe and he does not die but must keep to his bed; 19 if he gets up and does walk about out of doors upon some support of his, then the one who struck him must be free from punishment; he will make compensation only for the time lost from that one’s work until he gets him completely healed.
20 “And in case a man strikes his slave man or his slave girl with a stick and that one actually dies under his hand, that one is to be avenged without fail. 21 However, if he lingers for a day or two days, he is not to be avenged, because he is his money.
22 “And in case men should struggle with each other and they really hurt a pregnant woman and her children do come out but no fatal accident occurs, he is to have damages imposed upon him without fail according to what the owner of the woman may lay upon him; and he must give it through the justices. 23 But if a fatal accident should occur, then you must give soul for soul, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 branding for branding, wound for wound, blow for blow.
26 “And in case a man should strike the eye of his slave man or the eye of his slave girl and he really ruins it, he is to send him away as one set free in compensation for his eye. 27 And if it should be the tooth of his slave man or the tooth of his slave girl that he knocks out, he is to send him away as one set free in compensation for his tooth.
28 “And in case a bull should gore a man or a woman and that one actually dies, the bull is to be stoned without fail, but its flesh is not to be eaten; and the owner of the bull is free from punishment. 29 But if a bull was formerly in the habit of goring and warning was served on its owner but he would not keep it under guard, and it did put a man or a woman to death, the bull is to be stoned and also its owner is to be put to death. 30 If a ransom should be imposed upon him, then he must give the redemption price for his soul according to all that may be imposed upon him. 31 Whether it gored a son or gored a daughter, it is to be done to him according to this judicial decision. 32 If it was a slave man or a slave girl that the bull gored, he will give the price of thirty shekels to that one’s master, and the bull will be stoned.
33 “And in case a man should open a pit, or in case a man should excavate a pit and should not cover it, and a bull or an ass does fall into it, 34 the owner of the pit is to make compensation. The price he is to return to its owner, and the dead animal will become his own. 35 And in case a man’s bull should hurt another’s bull and it does die, then they must sell the live bull and divide the price paid for it; and also the dead one they should divide. 36 Or if it was known that a bull was in the habit of goring formerly but its owner would not keep it under guard, he should without fail make compensation with bull for bull, and the dead one will become his own.
Well, I don't know if you can say 'not abusive' about these 'guidelines'. You could beat the crap out of your slaves so long as he or she could get up again in a couple of days, no worries.
The next part of the article goes under the sub heading of "Slavery and Christians" and this is where the Awake takes the opportunity to equate the relationship between master and slave with employer and employee, read for your self:
Slavery was part of the economic system of the Roman Empire, under which first century Christians lived.
Hence, some Christians were slaves, and others had slaves. (1Corinthians 7:21, 22) But does this mean that disciples of Jesus were abusive slave owners? Hardly! Regardless of what Roman law permitted, we can be confident that Christians did not mistreat those under their authority. The apostle Paul even encourages Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus, who had become a Christian, as "a brother." *---Philemon 10-17.The Bible gives no indication that the enslavement of humans by other humans was part of God's original purpose for mankind. Furthermore, no Bible prophecies allude to humans owning fellow humans through slavery in God's new world. Rather, in that coming paradise, righteous ones "will actually sit, each under his own vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one making them tremble."---Micah 4:4.
Clearly, the Bible does not condone the ill-treatment of others in any form. On the contrary, it encourages respect and equality among men. (Acts 10:34, 35) It exhorts humans to treat others the way that they would like to be treated. (Luke 6:31) Moreover, the Bible encourages Christians humbly to view others as superior, regardless of their social standing. (Philippians 2:3) These principles are totally incongruous with abusive forms of slavery practiced by many nations, especially in recent centuries.*( Similarly, some Christians today are employers; others are employees. Just as a Christian employer would not abuse those working under him, disciples of Jesus in the first century would have treated servants according to Christian principle.---Matthew 7:12
The fact that no Bible prophecies allude to humans owning fellow humans in God's new order is that by this time God would have killed off everyone that is not quite up to scratch in the great battle of Armageddon, you know! The ones that would otherwise make good slaves. As for McCaine I am afraid he was correct when he said that slavery was "ordained by God himself."
THP