One of the criticisms often levelled at the Bible, in particular the Old Testament, is that it condones slavery and is generally rather barbaric. Such criticisms are, in fact, unfounded. There are two main errors. The first is to fail to take account of the context within which the Law was given, and the context of the surrounding cultures. Paul Copan is his book, Is God a Moral Monster, demonstrates that the Law is actually incredibly liberal when measured against the culture of the times.
Christopher Wright in his book Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament highlights several examples of this. In Deut 23:15,16 it says:
If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand them over to their master. Let them live among you wherever they like and in whatever town they choose. Do not oppress them.
Under all surrounding cultures a runaway slave would be returned to their master and treated most harshly.
Deut 21:10-14 has rules for dealing with women and girls taken captive in war. The norm at the time (and in many places it isn’t that much different today) they would be treated as sex slaves, objects to be used. The Law says that if a victorious soldier fancies the woman then he must take her as a wife. Even then, she must first be given time to mourn her loss (her parents presumably having been killed in the war). If he later decides he doesn’t want her any longer then he must not sell her as a slave, she must be free to go, and he has dishonoured her.
Now our first reaction might be that all this is terrible, we need to give full rights to women etc. But first of all compare it with the norm. Then see what is happening. She is given time to mourn, she is valued as a person. The man had to take her as a wife, ie he cannot just use her for pleasure, but he has responsibilities towards her. If he does get rid of her, he cannot sell her. And see that it says “he has dishonoured her”. The victorious soldier is seen as the moral transgressor.
The second error is to misunderstand the purpose of the Law (and in this article we are just looking at some aspects of the civic side of the Law, there is much more to it than that). This is something that apostle Paul in Galatians and Romans argues that the Law could not make anyone righteous. It could do nothing to change the sinful heart of man, but only expose our sinfulness and act as a restraint (there are many other aspects to the Law as well). To understand what I mean by this consider the question of divorce. Jesus was confronted with a question on divorce. Moses had given a law that said if a man divorces his wife he is to send her away with a certificate of divorce. Let’s consider two questions. What was God doing here? What did man do? Some people took this law as giving a man the right to divorce their wife if she displeased him, and they would use this as an excuse to divorce their wives if they fancied someone else. What was God doing? He was giving a law to limit the effects of man’s sinfulness, as Jesus said, “because your hearts are hard”. God was protecting the woman. Now someone might argue that God should have introduced a better law, but this would actually have changed nothing. God did not tell men to divorce their wives, but men took this law as a sanctioning their immoral behaviour. They do this because the root of sin is in our hearts, and no amount of laws will change our hearts. Likewise, the laws on slaves, treatment of foreigners, wars etc are limiting the damage that man’s sin can do.
Now when we look at the Law we should (i) realise just how liberal the Law was (in some ways far more liberal than some laws we have today!); and (ii) recognise the purpose of these parts of the Law, which were to limit the effects of sinfulness.
The Law itself could not change anyone, and God never intended it to do so. That is why He sent His Son to die on a cross for us, to be raised from the dead, and then to send the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. That way we can be given a heart of flesh, rather than a heart of stone.
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