A Year with God

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.

How to Treat Your Slaves

When you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for six years; then in the seventh he is to leave as a free man without paying anything. If he arrives alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrives with a wife, his wife is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and the man must leave alone.
But if the slave declares: "I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to leave as a free man," his master is to bring him to the judges and then bring him to the door or doorpost. His master must pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve his master for life.
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she is not to leave as the male slaves do. If she is displeasing to her master, who chose her for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has acted treacherously toward her. Or if he chooses her for his son, he must deal with her according to the customary treatment of daughters. - Exodus 21:2—9 HCSB

Slavery has been part of the human condition through all recorded history. God liked slavery no more than he liked divorce. But he knows the fallen condition of human beings, and so he set up regulations in order to protect the weak from the strong. In most cultures, slaves had no more rights than farm animals. In the Mosaic legislation, God required that his people treat slaves well: the need to love others extended to them too. Slavery was ordinarily a temporary status in Israel. As a person went into slavery, so they would leave slavery.

For those whose status changed while they were slaves—for instance in marriage—the slave could choose to make his condition permanent by means of a ceremony. Poking an awl through the slave's ear signified his decision to give up his freedom for good. Although piercing of ears and noses was not uncommon in ancient Israel, this piercing signified more than adornment.

A woman sold into slavery did not become a sex slave. If her master intended to use her sexually, then she had to be granted certain rights—the same rights as any other wife. If her husband married an additional wife, she retained her standing as his wife. And if she was divorced, then she had the same protections as any other divorced woman. She could no longer be considered a slave, nor did she have to pay for her freedom. It is God's desire that we act conscientiously and deal fairly with all people.