Leviticus 25:44-55 - Servants & Slaves

"44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. 46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. 47 And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger’s family: 48 After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him: 49 Either his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself. 50 And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him. 51 If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for. 52 And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubile, then he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give him again the price of his redemption. 53 And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight. 54 And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of jubile, both he, and his children with him. 55 For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." — Leviticus 25:44-55 KJV.

NON-HEBREW SERVANTS, 44-46.

44. Of the heathen… shall ye buy bondmen — Literally, man-servants and maid-servants. The “shall” is not mandatory but permissive. “Such purchase and adoption into Hebrew families was an appointed redemption from a worse state. There could not, consequently, be any sentiment of injustice, under this revealed will of God, in regard to the purchase from heathen masters of servants possessed by them as slaves, and treated as such, since they were brought from an irresponsible, unlimited slavery into a system of guardianship, protection, religious instruction, and family and national privileges. The children of such would be circumcised, adopted, and become sons of the house. In no other way than by purchase could the Hebrews redeem them, even if they had started on the emancipation of the nations. "If they had been forbidden to buy, and had been restricted to hired servants of their own race alone, they could not have gotten possession of heathen slaves, even to redeem them, except as runaways; and thus multitudes would have been kept in heathen bondage, who, the moment they passed into Hebrew bondage, passed into a state of comparative freedom.” — Dr. Cheever. The Hebrew construction of these words is not “ye shall purchase of the nations,” but of the servants that have come to you from among those nations. A slave-market was never known in Palestine, nor a slave-trader. Heathen… round about — These words exclude the Canaanite tribes in the land, who had been doomed to complete extermination. Deuteronomy 20:16-19. But since this sentence was not executed, the remnants were subjected to compulsory service. Judges 1:28, 30, note.

45. Children of the strangers… shall ye buy — It is very natural that the institution which originated in war, should be perpetuated in peace, and that the offspring of the first captives should follow the status of their parents, and that the system should embrace the children of foreigners who should offer them for sale. This often prevented the crime of infanticide, widely prevalent among the heathen. Thus was formed in the Hebrew state a sort of helot-class, mentioned especially under David (2 Chronicles 2:17, compare with 2 Samuel 20:24, note, and Solomon, 1 Kings 9:20; 2 Chronicles 8:7.) This class, which was employed on the public works, is estimated at one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred persons. As the Old Testament never mentions the importation of slaves as chattels, nor alludes to slave-markets, it is to be supposed that no slaves proper were bought in foreign lands. The Hebrews came in contact with the Phoenician slave-trade only as sufferers. Joel 3:4-6; Amos 1:9. Among the Jews the number of servants was comparatively much smaller than the number of slaves among other nations of antiquity. In Athens the proportion of slaves to citizens at one time was as high as four to one; but among the Israelites immediately after the Babylonian captivity the servants were to the masters as one to six. Ezra 2:64, 65; Nehemiah 7:66, 67. We have reason to believe that the number subsequently decreased, the influential sect of the Pharisees in particular being opposed to the system.

46. Take… as an inheritance — Rather, leave as an inheritance. Bondmen forever — Albert Barnes thus explains this: “The permanent provision for servants was not that they were to enslave or employ their brethren, the Hebrews, but that they were to employ foreigners.” In other words, עֹלָ֖ם (olam), forever, refers not to the persons bought and their children, but to the ordinance. But in case it did refer to persons there must be the following limitations: 1.) The law required the emancipation of a servant organically injured by the violence of the master. Exodus 21:26, 27. 2.) Though the ear-bored servant was to be in bondage forever, the rabbins understand that he went out free at the jubilee. Hence we see no objection to this limitation of עֹלָ֖ם (olam) in the case of all servants, Gentile as well as Hebrew, to the year of jubilee. It is certainly limited to the term of life, which is often less than the jubilee period. See verse 10, note.

THE HEBREW SERVANT AND THE FOREIGN MASTER, 47-55.

47. If a stranger wax rich — For his rights, see Leviticus 23:22, note. The ancient Hebrew master did not have a monopoly of money-making. His servant, “the stranger,” often amassed wealth. Foreigners and servants among them were in a much more privileged condition than they are at present in the same country under Mohammedan rule. A resident foreigner was allowed to purchase any pauper Hebrew who, in his distress, offered himself for sale. But no Christian or Jew in any land beneath the scepter of Islam is allowed to own a slave of any nationality, much less a Mohammedan. The latter only can enjoy the luxury of slave-holding, with the exception of some who are permitted to hold as slaves non-Mohammedan negroes. Stock of the stranger’s family — His heirs. The person sold might become a fixture of the household.

48. He may be redeemed again — At any time.

49. Nigh of kin — The Jews hold that the kindred of the enslaved Hebrew are bound, if in their power, to redeem him, lest he should be paganized, and we find that this was done on their return from the Babylonish captivity. Christians in the early centuries regarded themselves bound to ransom fellow-Christians in slavery. He may redeem himself — This indicates that the servitude was not of that rigorous kind which absorbs all the energies, and precludes all accumulation of property for the servant.

50. Unto the year of jubilee — We apply the same principles of interpretation here as in the note to verses 36, 40. It is unreasonable to suppose that the Hebrew master was required to lift the yoke from his brother at the end of six years or of the jubilee period, whichever was nearest, and that the heathen master, under Hebrew jurisdiction, could hold the poor Israelite in servitude forty-nine years. The price of his sale — Lest the master might exact an exorbitant ransom the price was fixed by an equitable law. The yearly current wages of a hired servant were to be multiplied by the number of years of service due.

53. As a yearly hired servant — He shall be treated mercifully, and all his rights shall be respected as if serving for wages. It was the duty of an Israelite when he saw his brother Hebrew abused by a Jew or by a stranger to give information to the magistrate, and it was incumbent on this officer to call the oppressor to account.

54. And his children — No child in the land of Judea, whether Hebrew or heathen, was born to involuntary servitude because the father, or mother, or both, were servants; but every child of the house was born a member of the family, dependent on the master (not owner) for education and subsistence.

55. They are my servants — The term servant here implies property. Hence the Hebrews could never rightfully sell themselves to others as merchandise. No Hebrew had a right to enslave himself. He could only sell his labour till the jubilee. This limit was fixed as a safeguard against involuntary and unlimited slavery. “This is a remarkable expression as connected with the fact of which God is always reminding the children of Israel, namely, that he brought them out of the house of bondage and out of the land of Egypt. He appears to acquire his hold upon their confidence by continually reminding them that at one period of their history they were bondmen. Now he insists that the men whom he has brought into liberty have been brought only into another kind of service. This is the necessity of finite life. Every liberty is in some sense a bondage.” — Joseph Parker.

CONCLUDING NOTES.

(1.) The verdict of Jehovah against chattelism, and in favor of freedom as the natural inheritance of all men, is found in the sentence of capital punishment inflicted on him who steals and sells a man, or retains him in his hand. Exodus 21:16. This statute lays the axe at the very root of chattel slavery by destroying its very germ, “the wild and guilty phantasy of property in man.” For both stealing and selling assume the fact of a property value. It is to be observed that this law is universal. Stealing a man is a crime. Exodus 21:7, is not a limitation of this universal prohibition to persons of Hebrew blood. The toleration and regulation of the system of servitude in Mosaism are by no means an endorsement of its abstract rightfulness, but rather a concession to the depravity of the times. “Servitude existed before Moses. It was no part of the mission of the Hebrew code to create it. Let it be forever admitted that the laws given of God through Moses cannot be held responsible for its existence. They found it existing, and proceeded, therefore, to modify it; to soften its more rigid features; to extract its carnivorous teeth; to ordain that the slave had rights which the master and the nation were bound to respect — in short, to tone down the severities of the system from unendurable slavery to very tolerable servitude.” — Cowles.

We are certainly safe in following the inspired prophets in their interpretation of the spirit of Mosaism. Isaiah says that the acceptable fast consists in letting “the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke,” and that the work of the Messiah will be to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. “No candid reader of the New Testament can doubt that if the principles of Christianity were universally followed the last shackle would soon fall from the slave. Be the following facts remembered: 1.) No man ever made another originally a slave under the influence of Christian principle. No man ever kidnapped another or sold another BECAUSE it was done in obedience to the laws of Christ. 2.) No Christian ever manumitted a slave who did not feel that in doing it he was obeying the spirit of Christianity, and who did not have a more quiet conscience on that account. 3.) To man doubts that if freedom were to prevail everywhere, and all men were to be regarded as of equal civil rights, it would be in accordance with the mind of the Redeemer. 4.) Slaves are made in violation of all the precepts of the Saviour. The work of kidnapping and selling men, women, and children, of tearing them from their homes… is not the work to which the Lord Jesus calls his disciples. 5.) Slavery, in fact, cannot be maintained without an incessant violation of the principles of the New Testament. To keep man in ignorance, to withhold the Bible, to render the marriage contract nugatory, or to make it subject to the will of a master, to deprive a man of the avails of his labour without his consent; to prevent parents from training up their children according to their own views of what is right, to fetter and bind the intellect as a means of continuing the system, and to make men wholly dependent on others whether they shall hear the Gospel or be permitted publicly to embrace it, is everywhere deemed essential to the existence of slavery, and is demanded by all the laws which rule over a country cursed with this institution.” — Albert Barnes.

(2.) Among the ameliorations of their condition were admission into covenant with God, (Deuteronomy 29:10, 13,) participation in all family and national festivals, (Exodus 12:43, 44; Deuteronomy 12:18; 16:10-16,) appeal to the laws, (Deuteronomy 1:16; 27:19,) instruction in morals and religion, (Deuteronomy 31:10-13; Joshua 8:33-35; Nehemiah 8:7, 8,) exemption from labour nearly half the time; namely, every seventh day and year, twenty-two days at the three annual festivals, also on the new moon, feast of trumpets, the day of atonement, local festivals, family feasts, as marriages, circumcisions, child-weanings, sheep-shearings, and making covenants. The servant might wholly or jointly inherit his master’s estates, (Genesis 15:3; Proverbs 17:2,) and aspire to the hand of his daughter in marriage. 1 Chronicles 2:35. He was shielded against personal injury by the requirement to set him free when the master’s smiting had knocked out a tooth or an eye. He might become naturalized, a step which sooner or later resulted in the independence of his offspring, and their complete fusion with Israel. There are no traces of prejudice among the Hebrews, as among other nations, against the servile class as inferior beings. Caste was unknown. The free spirit of Mosaism continually softened down the contrast between the condition of the master and that of the servant. Hence, in the history of the Hebrew state during fifteen centuries, there is not the first intimation of a servile war or insurrection, or dissatisfaction on the part of the servants. A great mitigation of the hardships of his condition was the right to run away from a cruel master, whether Hebrew or pagan, and to be protected in his refuge by a law not only positively forbidding his rendition, but also protecting him in his chosen abode. Deuteronomy 23:15, 16. The slave found a protecting asylum the moment he set his foot on the soil of Palestine. Hence, no better fortune could befall one destined to slavery than that he should be sold into Palestine, where the mildest lot awaited him in Hebrew servitude, the furthest possible from chattel slavery. From Abraham down there is no instance of any man or master selling a servant as merchandise. Such buying, selling, or holding, against the will of the servant, or without his voluntary contract, was an oppression threatened with the wrath of God. Amos 2:6, and 8:6; Joel 3:2-8. Nor is there an instance of the purchase of a servant from a third person, or of his sale to a third person, or of his being put away from the family of the master, except as free. A daughter sold for a wife regained her freedom when defrauded of her rights. Exodus 21:10, 11. There were also various methods of emancipation. The rabbins specify five: 1.) Will; 2.) Money payment; 3.) Gift of free papers; 4.) Adoption; and 5.) The master dying, leaving no male heir. The Jewish Essenes and Therapeutae went so far as to abolish servitude in their own sects as inconsistent with the common brotherhood of mankind. The powerful sect of the Pharisees, by their hostility to the system, must have softened its asperities and limited its spread. But the grand amelioration was the system of periodical emancipation for the Hebrew every seventh and fiftieth year, and for the non-Hebrew every year of jubilee. “To one who should read this law, ‘Ye shall proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof’ — if there were no other to conflict with it, or that made it necessary to seek a different interpretation, the plain meaning of the statute would appear to be, that all who resided in the land, from whatever motive, or whatever were their relations or employments, were from that moment to be regarded as freemen.” — Albert Barnes. Not an instance can be found in Mosaism where “all the inhabitants of the land” is a phrase restrictively used of the Hebrews alone.

The various regulations with reference to the rights of servants constitute one of the chief difficulties in the harmony of the books of the Pentateuch. It is respecting them in particular that Rationalism asserts that the legislation in Leviticus stands in absolute contradiction to that in Deuteronomy; forgetting that the discrepancies might all vanish if we had the vast volume of details of which the Mosaic books are only the synopsis. To the Pentateuch, as to the Gospel of John, may well be appended, “that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” if every one of the sayings and doings of Moses should be written. 

It has been said by sceptical anti-slavery doctrinaires that the Old Testament is a millstone upon the neck of the slave. But a candid examination of its code of servitude proves that it is so much more humane than any other that it is almost freedom itself. Professor Goldwin Smith has given the most lucid discussion of this subject in his tract, “Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery?” He justly characterizes the Old Testament legislation as “a code of laws, the beneficence of which is equally unapproached by any code, and least of all by any Oriental code, not produced under the influence of Christianity.” The purpose was not to transform society by a miracle. That is not God’s method, which aims to limit, reform, and finally sweep away the evil usages already existing. When Moses was born slavery was universal. All wars ended either in the wholesale butchery of captured cities or in wholesale slavery. Bible servitude was of the very mildest type. It was domestic; the servant was one of the family, a companion of his master, armed for his defence (Genesis 14:14) and sharing his religious privileges, worshipping his God, and resting on his sabbath. Life and limb were protected by Mosaic statutes, which forbade the master’s rigorous rule. The periodic interruptions of this servitude by years of jubilee and seventh year releases kept the servant from hopeless chattelism. The marriage code, though to us seemingly harsh, was merciful indeed when compared with the ordinary codes and customs of slavery. There were no slave markets in Palestine, nor auction blocks, nor bloodhounds. Kidnapping, and the surrender of the fugitive fleeing from his heathen master, were punished as crimes. The Hebrew is most emphatically commanded to be kind to the stranger, which generally means the slave, and not maltreat or oppress him. When his term of servitude ended he was not to go away empty.