An Acceptable Form Of Slavery?

What would you think of a country that legalized slavery under the following strict conditions:

• No one in society can be kidnapped or be the product of kidnapping. Anyone caught kidnapping (or found to be in possession of a kidnapped person) would be tried, and if found guilty, would be executed by the state.
• Slaves cruelly treated would be released. (the standards for ‘cruelty’ are lighter for citizen slaves than non-citizen slaves)
• Runaway slaves cannot be turned over to their owners (and all slaves in the country know this).
• Slaves have all the same basic rights of free citizens: property ownership, social participation (vote, marry, etc)
• Slaves cannot work 7 days a week. They must have at least one day off per week.
• A person becomes a slave by only one of 3 methods:
  • Voluntarily (some masters have nice accommodations and light work for their slaves. It can beat trying to eek out a living if you’re old and don’t have adult kids to take care of you)
  • Bankruptcy (they become a slave to their debtor until their debt is paid)
  • Criminal activity (same goes for prisoners of war where the side instigating an unjust war lost the battle)

And to make sure we’re understanding the cultural context of the country in question, here are a few particulars for that country:

• The country in question doesn’t have prisons because criminals don’t pay their debts “to society” – they pay their debts directly to the party they injured.
• A person can only become a slave (or be set free from being a slave) by official legal decision made by the courts.
• Like mortgages, debts can be sold. If a slave master wants his owed cash before the terms of work are up, he can sell his slave to another slave master for the remaining amount owed, and the slave works for Master2 until the debt is paid. Also, the slave master can set up his will so that if he dies before the debt is paid, either the slave is freed from his debt, or the debt owed by the slave is passed on to his heirs until the debt is paid.
• People who don’t like the rules of this country are free to leave (provided they’re not slaves, of course)

Moral Consistency

If the above terms are still offensive to you, then you should be morally consistent and demand the release of all prison inmates today, regardless of their crime. (I don’t want to live in a society like that. So if you go that way, let me know so I can make sure to never visit your country).

If the above terms sound strange, but are not offensive to you, you might be an open-minded rational person. And you might also realize that the above terms is what is outlined in the Old Testament. [Please note that I didn’t say “ALL slavery that appears in the Old Testament comports to it”, nor did I say “that “Jews followed the laws as outlined in the Pentateuch”; I’m saying that the laws pertaining to slavery in the Pentateuch follow what I outlined above.]

Handicapped Perspective

One of the near-unsurmountable challenges faced by 21st Century Western people is that their comprehension of “slavery” is stained by antebellum chattel slavery, where the supermajority of slaves were the product of kidnapping. Modern thinkers can’t envision any other kind of slavery. So they’re surprised when they learn that slavery across the world varied quite a bit. For example

• Greco-Roman slaves could not own property, but Hebrew slaves could.
• Greco-Roman slave masters could be cruel to their slaves. Hebrew slave masters could not.
• It was not strange for a Hebrew slave to be tasked with taking 10 camels loaded down with wealth and travel 600 miles to find a wife for his master’s son ..and return with said wife. (ie, Abraham)
• It was not strange to hear of a young Hebrew slave girl to tell her master how he could go back to her homeland, ask for a prophet, and that prophet would heal his leprosy. (Namaan, the Syrian general)

More could be said.

But the point is that slavery in Biblical Hebrew society that God allowed bears little to no resemblance to what 21st century people imagine. When modern thinkers object to it, I wonder if they really know what they’re objecting to, and what the alternative would be. Remember: for all practical purposes, ancient Hebrews had no prisons, and they didn’t believe that criminals paid debts “to society” – a rather bizarre notion that’s fairly recent in human history. They paid debts to the injured party.

Food for thought.