No Chattel Slavery

The Old Testament does not support the widespread practice of chattel slavery, where slaves are treated as the property of the slave owner. This practice is anathema to God, who created all people free.

Exodus 21:21 was often used in the past by Christians who owned slaves to argue that the Old Testament did support chattel slavery. A literal translation of the Hebrew is,

He is his silver (Ex 21:21b).

Some translations say,

He is his owner’s property.

But this goes beyond the meaning of the Hebrew text.

Reading this half-verse in isolation makes it seem like the law supports slavery, but that takes it out of context.

The context is that in Moses’ time, there were no state-funded social welfare benefits or unemployment insurance. So, if a person got into financial difficulties, lost their land, or took on debts they could not repay, they had to rely on members of their wider family to rescue them.

If no one in their family could afford a rescue, the only alternative was to bond themselves to a wealthy person, who would pay their debts in return for their commitment to work for them for a number of years. The bondservant was paid in advance for work they would do in the future. The bondholder was required to provide them with free food and shelter until the agreed term was complete. The bondholder gained the income produced by the bondservant in excess of the cost of food, clothing and shelter for him and his family.

The bondservant lost their freedom, but the practice was not always a good deal for the bondholder because most of what the bondservant produced would go to his food, closing and shelter. However, the law required wealthy people to undertake this role as part of being a good neighbour.

The law of Moses put tight restrictions on the practice. The poor person had to be released after seven years, no matter how much they owed. The bondholder was expected to send them out with sufficient goods to live on until they got back on their feet. If they were mistreated, the bondservant was free to leave immediately. This practice is the background to the text under consideration here.

Exodus 21:18-21 deals with situations where a person gets agitated during an argument and strikes the person that they were arguing with. The previous passage (Ex 21:12-14) had dealt with situations where one person deliberately assaulted another. In the case where an angry argument turns into a fight, the law says that if the person struck recovers quickly, the violent person is not guilty. The reason is that the person they struck is partly culpable because they helped stir up an angry argument. However, the person who was violent must compensate the other for any income lost while they were in bed. If the assault causes permanent damage, the law specifies that sufficient compensation must be paid to compensate for the harm.

The case of the person who has bound himself as a bondservant is different. If the wealthy person strikes the servant and does physical harm, they are to be set free, and their debt is to be cancelled (Exodus 21:26-27). If the servant dies from the assault, the wealthy person is guilty of murder (Exodus 21:20).

The situation is tricky if the assaulted servant recovers after two or three days. If they were a free person, they would be entitled to financial compensation for the income they lost while they were laid up. This is not necessary for the bondservant because the wealthy person has already paid them for their labour when they settled their debt (Exodus 21:21). They are already committed to providing food and shelter for the bondservant, so they have to continue providing it while their servant is unwell.

The wealthy person is the one who loses income while his bondservant is in bed recovering, because servant produces nothing for him, but still needs to be fed. That is why Exodus 21:21 says that it is “his own silver (money)”. It is not saying that the bondservant was his property, because God does not allow people to be bought and sold. Rather, if he did provide financial compensation to the injured bondservant, it would come back to him because he was already entitled to what the bondservant produced. The person who harmed his bondservant is doing economic harm to himself.

Exodus 21:21 does not justify chattel slavery.