Does the Old Testament Expect Us to Keep Slaves?

Terre Owens

1/2/2017 03:43:45 pm

Alisa Childers

1/2/2017 10:05:11 pm

These are great questions, Terre. It’s tough to cover all the nuance in one blog post, but if you continue reading the Leviticus 25 verse, you will see that even the foreigner had a chance to work himself out of debt and become prosperous. The “foreigner” was more like an illegal immigrant who wasn’t willing to abide by Israel’s covenant with God. This did put them in a lower social rank than Israelite servants, but overall, Leviticus 25 was concerned with stopping generational cycles of poverty within Israel. Granted, it wasn’t a perfect system, but it was completely unique among the surrounding cultures in that it showed concern for the well-being of foreign servants. Compared with other Near Eastern law codes, the Old Testament guidelines are exponentially more humane and merciful.

In regard to polygamy, I will dedicate a blog post to this subject in the near future. For now, consider that not everything the Bible records, it approves of. Nowhere in the Scripture does God commend polygamy, although he does seem to tolerate it at times in the Old Testament. (I’ll go into more detail in a future blog post). The result is never positive—note the in-fighting between Rachel and Leah, the corruption of Solomon’s heart by his many wives, and the misery brought upon Abraham and the line of Ishmael. We know from creation (Genesis 2:24) and affirmed by Jesus Himself (Matthew 19:4-6) that God’s original and best intention for marriage is one man, one woman, one flesh, for one lifetime.

Dolphy

7/12/2017 11:07:36 am

Hey Alisa,
Just read this article. You are a solid and thorough writer and an even more compelling speaker. I give you props.

This article, however, soft-shoes and dodges the stark OT position of slavery, in a way that utterly belies your decidedly conservative, more literalist approach on other topics. It’s always interesting to see the ducking and evasion on issues like slavery or ethnic cleansing in the OT, when on other more convenient topics you demand minimal wiggle room.

Nowhere does scripture condemn slavery as immoral or evil, and the OT contains tacit approval of both chattel slavery and what we might call an ancient variation on the concept of indentured servitude.

Exodus 21:7-11, allowed the sale of daughters to other men as “maidservants”, Yahweh declared it perfectly acceptable to enslave people of other nations and they were to be regarded strictly as one’s “possession” (Lev. 25:45)– the very essence of “chattel”. Even the Decalogue references this in Exodus 20:17 when it lists slaves and wives as a man’s possession along with barnyard animals.The Jews were instructed not to rule over their own people with the same kind of callous severity that they imposed on foreign nations (Lev 25:46) These foreign slaves were to be inherited by a Master’s descendants after his death (Lev 25:45,46) Both male and female slaves could be beaten, but if they were beaten to death, it was a punishable crime– if they survived in a beaten state and later died from their wounds a few days later, it was not a punishable offense in God’s eyes (Exodus 21:21-21)

Yahweh also gave instructions for the regulation of slave wives (Deuteronomy 21:10-14), i.e. were allowed to pick any “hot” virgin (v.11) they wanted from a defeated tribe and make her a slave wife. The fact that Yahweh allowed her a period to mourn her family or her actual husband, doesn’t somehow make the concept more “enlightened” or humane. Also, presumably if the man found her unappealing after having sex with her a few times, he could simply cut her loose with no penalty. Yahweh didn’t think this was humiliating or degrading in the slightest– and only prohibited her being resold as a slave to someone else (Deut. 21:14). Gotta draw the line somewhere, right? The fact that fundamentalists point to verses like this as some kind of evidence of Yahweh’s compassion, boggles the mind and shows the level of moral relativism and cognitive dissonance at play in more literalist strands of Evangelicalism.

As a former evangelist/worship leader, I have been where you are. (I actually went to your home church when I first moved to Nashville in the 90’s) The point is, that if one yields their reason, cognitive faculties and moral sense to the absolute authority of literal interpretations of the OT, one ends up with a very twisted sense of morality and ethics. The Bible’s teaching on slavery is congruent with ancient beliefs of that region, but does not demonstrate for us a remotely moral position, let alone represent the work of transcendent, omniscient being.

Alisa Childers

7/12/2017 11:53:13 am

Thanks Dolphy. I’m very intrigued by this comment you made about the “moral relativism and cognitive dissonance at play in more literalist strands of Evangelicalism.”

Literalist? Wooden literalism is what has led certain hyper-fundamentalist sects into heresy. I am a student of good hermeneutics, which requires a consideration of genre, cultural context, grammar, and literary devices such as poetic language, metaphor etc…

In the couple of comments you’ve left on my blog, you seem to appeal to a “general sense of morality,” with which you use to accuse God of immorality in the Bible. (Have I characterized that correctly?) Doesn’t that make *you* the moral relativist?

Dolphy

7/12/2017 12:28:09 pm

Thanks for responding Alisa!

I would not dare accuse an omniscient, all-loving God of being immoral. But I would argue that based on the evidence provided by the text alone, there is no good reason to ascribe those laws regarding slave-keeping to any Divine Being. In order to skew them even *remotely* moral (as you have courageously endeavored to do), one would have to make some incredibly elastic accommodations to the texts– the very same kind of expandable accommodations commonly found among the progressives you criticize. (It’s worth noting: I see the same kind of infinitely elastic tautology among Islamic apologists too, when trying to explain the Quran and Hadith’s more brutal texts.) The plain reading of the texts in English or Hebrew is morally repugnant. It smells suspiciously man-made.

I do appeal to a common, shared and innate morality. I believe the available evidence; that this basic morality predates religion and that religion merely riffs on the main themes hard-wired from birth in most human beings.

Any human being with average moral faculties knows innately that taking a child by force from her home and family and having sex with her is immoral and wicked, but the notion of sending this same young girl away after having sex with her, is evil. Ascribing divine permission (Deuteronomy 21:10-14) to those acts is despicable.

What is concerning, is that you know this just as well as I do. And yet for reasons having largely to do with fear of apostasy or of questioning divine authority or the desire for in-group acceptance, you refuse to simply side with morality and ethics. I know not personally know whether my considerations here are “progressive” or heretical, and I frankly don’t care. I want to stand on the side of what is good– of morality and virtue.

Alisa Childers

7/12/2017 12:41:54 pm

Thanks Dolphy. You wrote, “I do appeal to a common, shared and innate morality.” Where does that come from? Is it objective or subjective?

Dolphy

7/12/2017 01:31:27 pm

According to a great deal of scientific research on the subject, it appears that these behavioral boundaries are objective realities in all but a very small segment of the population (psychopaths, sociopaths and some with severe cognitive disorders). But didn’t Paul at least infer this, in a primitive sense, in Romans 2?

One never needs to instruct small children not to stab their playmates to death or tell them not to hack them into pieces. Those that don’t have this impulse tend to be suffering from severe forms of mental illness. Some recent studies have shown very young infants responding strongly to acts of unfairness. There is every indication that these internal boundaries alerting us to injustice/fairness and harm reduction/revulsion at causing suffering, are innate (Ethologists Frans de Waal has been studying primate behavior for over 40 years and his research has demonstrated quite resoundingly that higher primates have their own moral frameworks as well and that such behavioral boundaries that tend to promote the solidarity and general health of the group, appear to be largely innate)

Alisa Childers

7/12/2017 01:42:05 pm

Dolphy

7/12/2017 02:13:15 pm

Well, now we are debating language. “Objective” is defined most simply as “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts” Perhaps you wish to use another definition? That one works for me.

As I referenced earlier, we have every evidence that morality is innate and that while cultural and societal ethics have some fluidity and experience mutations in degrees over time, the most essential human concepts of right and wrong appear hard-wired and consistent among general populations over the millennia. I would argue that such hard-wiring occurs “under the hood”, as an almost autonomic response, in the vast majority of people. Of course we rationalize our violation of those rules as the need and our desire present themselves. I am not arguing that man is innately good. I am arguing that man is innately *aware* and that we by and large tend to avoid the farthest edges of immorality.

I think the question I have is, why do you allow ancient purity codes and religious considerations to bypass your innate boundaries of right and wrong? To be more specific, why is it that when you read verses permitting men to take young girls that catch their eye, away from their husbands/families and to keep them against their wishes (with a no-fault clause to kick them to the curb later), do you half-step and fudge the lines? What consideration allows a short-circuit of your moral sense– to both explain that away and not express moral outrage?

.

Alisa Childers

7/12/2017 02:24:12 pm

Dolphy

7/12/2017 02:47:30 pm

That is incorrect. I mean innate as in inborn, biological.

Basic morality, as I have outlined previously, is an objective verity. This is confirmed empirically in human history by anthropology, more recently in ethology and moral philosophy and understood clearly through modern psychology and neuroscience.

Alisa Childers

7/12/2017 05:03:53 pm

Ok thanks… that’s what I was trying to get at. So we both agree that morality is objective. (Even though all your descriptions so far have fallen under the definition of subjective morality.) Yes the fact that we all have this innate sense is true (as in Romans 2)…. BUT that isn’t the *standard.* That’s the *definition* of what people believe to be moral. It can’t be the *standard,* because the minute two people disagree on what that standard is, it becomes subjective. Your opinion vs. my opinion.

For example, you wrote, “Any human being with average moral faculties knows innately that taking a child by force from her home and family and having sex with her is immoral and wicked.” BUT the pederasty that was common in the Roman Empire is not a far cry from what you’ve described here… and most everyone in culture thought this was perfectly fine. So is your “average moral faculty” correct, and the Roman one was wrong?

For something to be called “good,” there has to be an objective standard by which to determine which behaviors are morally good or morally evil. For example, you can’t know a line is crooked unless you know what a straight line looks like. My question for you is… By what objective standard do we measure good and evil?

Dolphy

7/12/2017 06:59:12 pm

Yes morality and the subject of good and evil are objective. I have explained several times how we understand morality, objectively, in the world. It isn’t fuzzy.

If you take a steamroller and run over either a cockroach or a box of kittens, the separate moral valuation of those acts is rooted in objective ideas. The moral view of both acts will be as close to universal as one can find. For example, Humans are objectively repelled by the thought of committing murder. Conversely, humans are NOT repelled by the idea of smashing a rock in pieces. This view is also universal and objective. The capacity of a living thing or being to suffer and the capacity of someone to inflict degrees of suffering, is all based on an objective standard.

Knowing this is emotionally detached as knowing that you, as a sentient being, have consciousness or that our nervous systems have an autonomic “regulator” that adjusts body temps and heart rate without us ever even realizing it’s happening.

As I stated earlier, chimps and bonobos have nearly universal moral frameworks too. And They have no holy book, no ancient texts, no oral traditions upon which to base this framework. It is wired. How and why it is wired is another discussion perhaps, but its existence is an objective fact.

You don’t need the Bible to know objectively that murder is evil, or that stealing and perjury are wrong. You don’t need the Bible to tell you that rape is heinous and that owning other human beings is a very immoral idea.

Remember, I was an evangelist — a neo-Puritan at one point– so I know the gospel “hook” is to preach the moral law of God, which is based on his eternal nature, as a means to bring conviction of sin to the reprobates. The fact is though, that the deeper I got into apologetics and evangelism over the span of nearly 20 years, the more I saw that the Commandments contained many injunctions which were not moral at all – wicked even. It also became clear to me that most Christians, including good folks like yourself, employ hermeneutical systems that are very much subjective and conveniently selective. Which brings me back to this, which was left unanswered:
Why is your “moral compass” fine tuned on the issues of homosexuality and consensual teen sex, but you have no moral objection to Yahweh’s command that a man may rape a young girl, without impunity, IF he found her attractive and let her mourn her family for a little while. According to you the God of the universe said it, probably meant something else, and rather than look squarely and honestly at the text, you consult professional apologists to explain it away. This is subjective reasoning at its most duplicitous.

Dolphy

7/12/2017 07:12:00 pm

PS) my valuation of why this act I described is in fact evil, is not based on my fear of being labeled a heretic if I question the Bible (subjective fear of being abandoned or ostracized by a community)

Taking a child away from her family and keeping her as a sex toy is always evil because it violates and destroys the most basic human right to autonomy and inflicts the highest degree of suffering, short of murder, that can be inflicted on another human. (Germans use a word for the abuse of children that interpreted literally means “soul murder”) Human beings are wired to minimize human suffering at all costs, because it a) helps secure the safety and survival of our species and 2) allows for maximum human solidarity and sets the conditions whereby we may flourish. Those that historically have disregarded their own hard-wired facilities, and have chosen to maximize human suffering have simply ceased to perpetuate on the planet.

Alisa Childers

7/12/2017 10:38:17 pm

You keep describing what humans agree is moral (“how we understand morality,”) but haven’t yet answered my question… what is the objective standard outside of humans by which they come to those conclusions. You are describing the “what” but not the reason for the “ought.” Not sure we’re gonna get anywhere unless you can answer that.

To answer your question: “why do you allow ancient purity codes and religious considerations to bypass your innate boundaries of right and wrong? To be more specific, why is it that when you read verses permitting men to take young girls that catch their eye, away from their husbands/families and to keep them against their wishes (with a no-fault clause to kick them to the curb later), do you half-step and fudge the lines? What consideration allows a short-circuit of your moral sense– to both explain that away and not express moral outrage?”

Ancient purity codes don’t determine my morality. Those were a part of a covenant that God made with Israel, fulfilled in Christ. God’s moral law, however, is eternal, unchanging, and binding on all people. I have no problem identifying the standard by which morality is determined—it’s God’s nature and character. The text is not commanding or condoning rape. (Rape was condemned by Mosaic law at every turn.) You are taking massive leaps and liberties with the text that sidesteps good hermeneutics. (I recommend reading the Paul Copan book I cited in my article.)

By saying that standing under biblical authority is “short-circuiting my moral sense” you are basically saying, “I think such and such is immoral and you don’t, so YOU must be short-circuited.” It’s your opinion vs. my opinion unless there is an objective standard outside of us to make the call. There can be no law without a Lawgiver.

I truly understand and appreciate your view, Dolphy. I’m sure we aren’t going to land in the same spot on this, but I will pray for you, and hope this has been helpful.

Dolphy

7/13/2017 09:02:28 am

Good discussion, Alisa and thanks again for responding. These are important subjects.

You asked me:
>”What is the objective standard OUTSIDE (emphasis mine) of humans by which they come to those conclusions (?)”

You are introducing a new question here and acting as if you’ve been asking it the whole time. Your initial question concerned the “objective” standard for morality. I answered that question repeatedly. Humans have objective standards for morality, independent of Mosaic Law. Now you are wanting to know what EXTERNAL, NON-HUMAN standard I use to reach that conclusion. Separate issue. Objectivity doesn’t necessarily require an External, immovable “absolute”. I believe that morality has both internal and external standards, and that the subject is not an “either/or” equation. I would highly recommend checking out Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind”, where he describes at least five external foundations for moral behavior in humans. I won’t regurgitate them here for you, but I find them compelling. Here is a link to his peer-reviewed study on the topic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116962/

As someone who still considers himself a theist and a follower of the core teachings of Christ, I have no problem with the philosophical Judeo/Christian premise that God’s very nature is the ultimate template for our human conception of right and wrong. This premise is a conclusion reached only via faith — a faith that I actually do share–but I think it’s important to accept it as such. It’s actually a very beautiful idea. The premise breaks down, however, when you try to shoehorn this non-objective, metaphysical belief into an authoritative assertion that the Old Testament texts represent God’s mind. I see the argument falling apart, at precisely THAT point, using objective criteria. (We can know objectively, for example, that the case for a literal, historical Moses has as much empirical, archaeological support as Joseph Smith’s ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in upstate New York. There is not only zero support for a historical Moses and 2 million enslaved Jews, all the evidence we DO have about ancient Egypt essentially excludes the possibility that the Exodus story is actually a literal historical account.)

Re: Our debate about OT rape and abuse of women—you said:
“It’s your opinion vs.my opinion unless there is an objective standard outside of us to make the call.”

Let’s clarify. The passage in question (Deuteronomy 21:10-14) contains several indisputable things:

1) The words allege to be spoken by Yahweh Himself to Moses. They are not presented as Moses’ opinion or personal views.

2) These commands by Yahweh give permission for a certain kind of behavior that would, if practiced today, likely land someone in prison, in any civilized country on the planet .

3) The commands allow for an Israelite to capture and take any woman by force that he finds attractive, from their vanquished foreign enemies, and make her his wife WITHOUT her consent.

4) If he was no longer attracted to her, after “humbling her” (some translations use “humiliate”) he was free to release her without fear of retribution. In other words, God Himself allowed Israelite men to pick any foreign woman they desired, have sex with them and eventually kick them out of the house if they didn’t find them appealing anymore.

I simply ask you how you can possibly view THIS as acceptable moral behavior and how you reconcile the idea of the same transcendent God who created DNA and foundations of the Universe in his omnipotence and omniscience, uttering such statements from His mouth.

Lest you think this debate is merely me cherry-picking a single offensive passage and making an issue of it, I would be more than happy to continue by citing similar passages allegedly spoken by Yahweh in the books of Moses.

Alisa Childers

7/13/2017 09:53:33 am

I did not ask you a new question, Dolphy. The definition of “objective” is that it is outside of a person, independent of any kind of opinion or preference. I’m glad you are open to viewing that objective standard as God’s nature, but by definition, that is independent of faith—not a conclusion reached by faith. You don’t seem to understand what an objective moral standard is, and I’ve tried to the best of my ability to explain. Even atheists understand that if they don’t appeal to a standard outside of themselves, objective morality doesn’t exist. I’ve watched many debates in which they’ve been forced to admit this. Even Sam Harris tries to define that standard as “human flourishing,” but again, that is simply a description of morality, not a reason for the “ought.”

Regarding your list… obviously you and I interpret these verses differently. I see them within their cultural context in which the Hebrew Bible was astoundingly more pro-woman than any other surrounding nation. I see God working in a nation, mercifully, patiently, and slowly moving them toward a better way. The level at which women were protected, provided for, and given rights in Israel was unheard of in the ancient world. Regarding specific verses, I’ll refer you again to Paul Copan’s book, as I don’t have time to debate those ad nauseam here. (And these things have been debated and written about ad nauseam by others as well.)

Peace to you, Dolphy.

Dolphy

7/13/2017 12:03:16 pm

Thanks for the dialogue, Alisa. You are one stubborn lady, and for that I give you major props!

Re: Objective vs. “External”:
Well, as I mentioned earlier, this is not a traditional definition of “objective”. Which is fine, just recognize that you are working from a definition that is apparently compiled from various arguments you’ve heard on the topic. Nevertheless, Haidt is worth reading and has some compelling research on the topic of morality (FYI: Haidt is a theist and has taken quite a bit of heat from Sam Harris and some on the far left for his stand on traditional religious views and certain conservative/centrist issues) I think you may really get a kick out of reading his stuff.

The notion of objective morality is most certainly proposed by moral philosophers and behavioral psychologists, just not in the way you demand (i.e. an actual authoritative codex to reference) This is not an either/or proposition and Evangelicals don’t get to frame the conditions of the argument and upturn the tables just because the opposition believes objective morality exists apart form Hebrew Scriptures. Saying “That’s not possible!” over and over, doesn’t make it so. That’s silly.

You said:
“Regarding your list… I see them within their cultural context in which the Hebrew Bible was astoundingly more pro-woman than any other surrounding nation.”

I actually agree with this! I knew we would get there eventually!!! I actually DO read these passages within the ancient cultural context in which they appear. In them I see many forward-thinking ideas, compared to what we know of other regional belief systems of the general time period.

However, I make that generous accommodation based on the fact that fallible men created these rules and legends and handed them down faithfully over the ages. If you are going to claim that these words are uttered from the very mouth of the Omniscient, Thrice Holy, Supreme Creator of the Cosmos, then I think such accommodations for human ignorance can go right out the window. If God spoke those words, then we can emphatically conclude that he wasn’t much smarter or morally elevated than the people he was addressing.

Alisa Childers

7/13/2017 12:17:55 pm

Thanks Dolphy. I’ll end with this:

I’m not working from a definition cobbled together by arguments I’ve heard. I’m working from the definition that philosophers (both Christian and non-Christian) hold: http://www.iep.utm.edu/objectiv/

And I never said the Hebrew Scriptures were the objective standard of morality.. I said the nature and character of God is. (Which is revealed in the inerrant and infallible Scripture.)

Take care….

Dolphy

7/13/2017 12:44:59 pm

Dolphy

7/14/2017 08:17:58 am

Alisa,
The definition provided on that page doesn’t state that objective moral conclusions demand an EXTERNAL source or subject. There IS a proposition that objectivity implies independence from emotions and consciousness, but I have stated that already multiple times, in likening innate moral parameters as functioning like our nervous system’s autonomic activity.

You still have utterly avoided the issue of Deuteronomy 21:10-14 and God’s command about slave wives/beautiful foreign women. How do you reconcile a Divine Being speaking the way he does in that passage, with your own moral views and sense of womanhood?

I will be blunt: as a warm-blooded male, there is a base, more animalistic part of my instincts that thinks this passage is TERRIFIC and wants to high-five a Deity that would talk like this. I mean, the whole passage smacks a bit of the “pick a girl” element of the Bunny Ranch– a sentiment that resonates wonderfully with my less-evolved, simian self but runs contrary to my higher, cognitive functioning. My point is, I know “guy talk” and this totally sounds like a regular guy wrote this, who was probably about 4% morally-enlightened (the letting the woman mourn her dead husband and dead family, before sex, was a warm touch)

Alisa Childers

7/14/2017 08:59:06 am

I’m not avoiding it.. I’m trying to show you that you are trusting your own subjective sense of morality to stand in judgment over God—who is the very standard by which we can even know good or evil. But I’ll indulge you.

You are grossly misrepresenting and misinterpreting this text. You are reading it through modern eyes. If you considered Scripture as a whole, you would know that rape was punishable by death (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). Rape was simply not an option. Jewish men knew the law. So in the case of war, when a woman’s means of survival (her husband or father) was gone, God had mercy on those women by allowing them to be integrated into Israelite society with all the rights and privileges of Israelite wives. You are reading a lot into the text by saying this was all against their will. The expectations of women in the ANE was that they would have likely starved to death and died horrible deaths if the men were all killed in battle.

Regarding your characterization of Deuteronomy 21:14, again, you are grossly misrepresenting this text. This verse is not saying that the man can “try her out” sexually, and send her away if he is pleased with her. Marriage is a serious committment in the Hebrew Bible, and not something to enter into lightly, and the *only* situation in which sex is allowed is within the context of marriage. So in the case of divorce, the woman is protected in that her social status is not reduced. To interpret this verse as an allowance of rape is to completely ignore the law that God had given them. Remember that these are the people to whom God gave the 10 commandments.

Dolphy

7/14/2017 01:54:15 pm

There are a LOT of gymnastics required to explain away the plain meaning of that text.

Numbers 31:7-18 shows us the kind of prevalent thinking of that culture. Even though this passage describes Moses speaking, his authoritative commands are totally congruent with the words the Israelites had already heard Yahweh speak via Moses in Deuteronomy 21:
(Moses said, re: the Midianites) “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” — Numbers 31:17,18

The virgins (young girls) were for sex and for pleasure. This is not a progressive reading of the text. This is a human reading of the text.

Your arguments about God being “merciful” to these women by allowing them to be taken captive by a soldier from an enemy tribe who would be able to provide a life for them that they wouldn’t normally enjoy with their own tribe, is not only conjecture it also sounds suspiciously like the argumentation I’ve heard some Christians use to somehow soften the brutal reality of the African slave trade. This is more of the elastic accommodations made, in order to safeguard the innerant view of the Bible. It’s very, very hard work!

Re: “being against her will”– Well, the injunctions seem to blatantly accept the natural reality that the captive woman wasn’t going to be thrilled with this arrangement, given the fact that she was allotted time to mourn and get over her dead husband (whom her NEW hubby may very likely have killed), dead family and homeland. The text tells us, this captive woman was entitled to her mourning period before the new hubby got to have sex with her (Deuteronomy 21:13)

As someone whose foreign-born grandmother was “married” in a very similar manner in the early 20th century, I can tell you she wasn’t very thrilled about being taken and even the promised benefits of life in the U.S. NEVER mitigated the pain she felt about being literally grabbed and ushered without consent at a very young age, away from her family and home. I could be much more personal about the suffering and emotional toll this type of heinous act has on women, as lived firsthand thru my interactions with this wonderful woman, but suffice to say it is traumatic and it never heals. By suggesting that women may have somehow welcomed such an act, is not only a violation of the text which explicitly ADMITS the reluctance and grief of the captive, it’s an insult to women who have endured similar violations of their autonomy at the hands of men.

“Marriage” in the Hebrew Bible meant a man could enjoy multiple wives in a variety of permutations and flavors– both foreign and domestic (Again, there’s not a hetero man that I know, that doesn’t think this sounds like a GREAT idea– at least on paper!) The Deuteronomy passage allows men to kick the foreign wife to the curb with NO PENALTY AND NO FINANCIAL OBLIGATION. Are any relational criteria given to justify this no-fault divorce? YES, there is!!! “If you no longer delight in her” It hardly matters that this is referring to sex and/or male pleasure, because to say “If you no longer delight in her cooking”, doesn’t make it any more moral.

All of this underscores my initial point that the words of “Yahweh” in this passage have all the hallmarks of someone distinctly human, male, sociopathic regarding female suffering and sexually permissive. There’s no evidence of anything morally virtuous in this passage, let alone divine.

Meg

11/30/2020 02:21:03 pm

Hi Alisa,

Thank you for addressing this issue. Things like these get so twisted in our modern culture and limited understanding and study of historical context.

My comment here is in response to Dolphy (above). I appreciate the conversation you’ve been having, and the critical thinking. Dolphy, the context of that Numbers 31:17-18 passage (just like the context for any passage of course) is crucial for understanding. I found this article, along with several other scholarly commentaries on the passage, really helpful in addressing it. https://carm.org/why-were-only-virgins-left-alive-among-midianites

Dolphy, it seems like you keep bringing up new things, so that it would take a close study of each passage, to really understand its meaning (I would argue that simple “human understanding” includes critical thinking, examination of historical data, original text, etc. – God gave us the resources and ability to reason with these things to correctly understand his word). When I get caught up in specific passages like this, I look up what the leading textual critics say, from both theistic and non-theistic perspectives, and compare the most commonly understood contextual meaning. Like you say, yes it is a lot of work, but nothing is more worthy of our efforts if we believe it is the word of God. I feel lucky to be able to glean information from the people who have dedicated their lives and careers to these topics, both Christian and non-Christian.

If Jesus rose from the dead, we know that he is who he claims to be (God). That means we can also trust what he says to be true, that the Bible is the word of God, and that God is perfectly just and loving simultaneously. If we believe that God is perfectly moral and just, then we can trust that He alone knows every person’s heart, and is able to act justly be lovingly in every specific circumstance.

I’m sure you will have more passages and details to bring up, but I would encourage you to do what I’ve been doing, and try to do the hard work of really unpacking the history and context of these difficult passages, because God has given us that history and ability to truly dive into those things one at a time.

Much love,
Meg

Love Joy

5/7/2021 11:37:19 pm