I began a brief comment on this subject and remixed it a few days later. Essentially I was commenting on the fact that certain aspects of slavery in Deuteronomy were surprisingly at odds with the surrounding laws of other Ancient Near Eastern societies. The socio-economic reality of “slavery” is remarkably liberated at least in principle in the Deuteronomic code. Yes, of course it is still there as a social institution, that is not in dispute; it is however considered in a different light.

The following phrase keeps repeating itself in Deuteronomy:“Remember you were slaves in Egypt and Yahweh brought you out”

I paraphrase slightly but that is essentially the recurring motif. It is most noticable in the Ten Commandments. These are remixed from the Exodus 20 version. Instead of the first commandment beginning with what we imagine as a command they actually begin with this repetitive idea of remembrance. Moses speaks of the giving of the law in retrospect in this way:

The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. … And he said: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.

Deuteronomy 5:4-7

Before the Law begins proper this phrase is all important, they are encouraged again and again to remember that Yahweh brought them out of Egypt. On the face of it this seems only to be a transaction in purchased loyalty but it is more than that. The memory of who, how and why they were brought out of Egypt is a crucial moral compass in Deuteronomy. It is to affect the core values of their law code. The Ten Commandments are no more different to Exodus 20 than when considering the Sabbath Law. In place of the Creation reason for sabbath in Exodus 20 (God made world in 6 days and rested thus the people rested), Deuteronomy speaks in this way:

12:”Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. 13:Six days you shall labour and do all your work, 14:but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. 15:Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

Notice the change in reasoning – from obligation based on the created order to obligation based on the memory of their own experience of slavery. This society was to treat the slave class differently precisely because they have experience in their own history and collective memory of the severe abuse of slavery. It is hard to imagine in the cultural world of the day laws like these emerging without some real or remembered experience of abusive slavery. Something dramatic and liberating, something of oppression and release has imprinted itself on the minds of nomads and though all around them think otherwise and their moral lapses will let them down, they will be a society that is at least supposed to think differently about slavery. The institution was not abolished but its abuses were remembered and its abuses were to be curbed. Their laws were built around this memory and later their prophets would call them back to the moral core of their great story.

Okay I was a little bit misleading in that last post. The verses on slaves were not “Bible” verses – I just said that I was interested in ancient slavery laws of the Ancient Near East. That is what they are, just not from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy – they were actually from the Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon found in the stele shown below dated to approx 2000 BCE. You can read the source material here.Interestingly for me on the same legal issue of runaway slaves the book of Deuteronomy is out of sync with other ancient law codes. I am not suggesting that everything in Deuteronomy is unique but simply pointing out this sore Jewish thumb. Here’s the text from a similar time period:

“15:If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master.16:Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.”Deuteronomy 23:15-16   

It is the precise opposite of the Babylonian code. The Babylonian code favoured the master and rewarded those who turned in the runaways. The Deuteronomic code favours the slave, the individual with ordinarily lesser legal “weight”. In one there is no refuge for the runaway irrespective of their reasons for running away, in the other refuge is to be given with no need to seek out the master and implicitly they are to be protected should the master come knocking. This draws two very different visions of what life in each society is to be like for the underclasses. In one the slaves must endure, in the other the masters have responsibility to provide conditions such that slaves would not runaway, for if they did legally they were protected. That is a different feel altogether.I do not pretend that these laws were upheld, they are laws after all and are thus aspirational and as good as the society that decides to keep and uphold them. I for one am glad they were recorded and preserved in this ancient document, for they were the seedlings of an alternative social vision that would grow with the tradition.Vox O’Malley – trying to say Obelisk instead of Phallus.

In my recent studies of the book of Deuteronomy I’ve been thinking about ancient laws on slavery (circa 2000 BCE). Slavery was an economic reality in the Ancient Near East, a means of getting oneself and one’s family out of debt by being bonded to a “master”or a slave as a spoil of war and used as a workforce for the victorious parties.The following verses are just one example of such slave laws:

“17. If any one find runaway male or female slaves in the open country and bring them to their masters, the master of the slaves shall pay him two shekels of silver.18. If the slave will not give the name of the master, the finder shall bring him to judgment; a further investigation must follow, and the slave shall be returned to his master.”

What do you make of these?

1. Slaves would run away for various reasons but I imagine maltreatment would certainly be one of them.

2. You could make a small amount of money (maybe a tenth the actual value of the slave) by returning them to their rightful master.

3. Detectives would be called in to ensure that a stubborn slave (they may have ran away to avoid punishment for a crime) is brought back to their master to face due punishment.

4. The rules of ownership and justice are upheld.

“When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”

Deuteronomy 6:20-21

“Dad, why do we set our slaves free? Why do we not work every day of the week, Mum?”: these are the questions Moses expects will be asked when the people settle in the promised land. Moses’ last sermons in the book of Deuteronomy are full of advice on how to cope with the new opportunity the land offers and the very real problem of how to pass the faith on to the next generation. He envisages a generation growing up who want to know why they are to live as they live, what their faith truly means. The implicit threat is that unanswered, or answered inadequately, the next generation can misunderstand and eventually neglect the faith of their parents. Moses expects questions and in so doing, he makes valid and explicit the role of questioning in the nurture of the next generation.It is true that without the opportunity to discuss, to test and to query, the next generation lose the heart of the faith. An unquizzed faith will simply be a borrowed coat from a previous generation that can be removed when it no longer seems suited to the contemporary climate. We do not want the generations that follow to cast off the faith as we cast off beehive hairdos or tartan jeans. We want them to own the faith, to wear it because it fits them and the world they see around them. Inquiry aids this ownership.”But what would I say?” you ask, as did the parents gathered in front of their leader. Moses’ advice begins not by redirecting the questioner to the religious “experts” but he expects the parents to attempt an answer themselves.More importantly Moses sets the shape and tone of the answer. The response is to be riddled with the Exodus liberation. They are to reply to the questions about the meaning of their religion by starting not with the ought of duty but the wonder of the larger social and theological vision of Exodus.To get a child to understand why their social outlook is noticeably more generous than their neighbours, they must first understand their part in the greater story of release. The first words of response are spoken not with cheap piety or the threat of punishment but with the spirit and story of the grander narrative of the release of the cosmos from bondage. The spirit and tone of the answer should woo the questioner’s imagination into the drama and worldview of Yahweh.In a few simple words Moses manages to give crucial advice to the church as we face the waning of the new generations. To stop the next generation from becoming the “Missing Generation”, Moses encourages an ethos of inquisitiveness in our liturgical life rather than oversimplified sermons. In reply, Moses advises answers which do not feel like a patronizing closure but like the first breath of salty air on the brink of a great voyage.Vox O’Malley – addicted to Exodus