Another OT law

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
[b]Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew canon. Can you submit an ancient writing older than this indicating a master's God fearing sensitivity as to how he treated his slaves ?

oh, so as long as one treats his slaves well, it is ok? it is for their own good to be slaves, right? they are taken care of, fed, clothed. what more could they possibly want ...[text shortened]... ike objects.


that is how the slave is viewed in the old testament. that is what you defend.[/b]

sonship:
Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew canon. Can you submit an ancient writing older than this indicating a master's God fearing sensitivity as to how he treated his slaves ?

Zah:
oh, so as long as one treats his slaves well, it is ok?

I will take that reply as either you cannot or you won't. That is produce an ancient quotation revealing a just and fair regard for one's slave, replete with reference to God as a final impartial Universal Judge.

it is for their own good to be slaves, right?

Unlike in God's theocratic nation of Israel chattel slavery elsewhere had then and latter three characteristics:

1.) A slave was property.
2.) The slave owner's rights over the slave were total and absolute.
3.) The slave was stripped of his identity - racially, familial, marital.

This does not describe the Hebrew slave in the Old Testament. The slave laws in Israel were about controlling and regulating rather than idealizing an inferior work arrangement.

The guidelines commanded by God reveal that the slavery is not optimal. No arrangement induced by poverty could be as desirable as a situation secured by wealth and plenty. But compared to other ancient Near Eastern cultures impoverished Israelite slaves were considerably better off.

The laws were designed to combat potential abuses.
They were not designed to institutionalize servitude.

The servant laws were designed to benefit and protect the poor, those most likely to enter into indentured servitude.

A Israelite who for ANY reason, ended up with no land entered voluntarily into servitude. He "sells himself" (Leviticus 25:39,47; compare Deut. 15:12).

Granted, someone might sell a family member as an indentured servant to another's household to work until a debt was paid off. It was not an optimal arrangement. But God saw to it that the arrangement would not be oppressively taken advantage of.

This is the exact opposite of most institutions of slavery which insure that the situation CAN and WILL be exploited to benefit of the master and the detriment of the slave.

In Israel once the debt was paid off or the seven year release of all slaves came around full and unencumbered citizenship could be resumed.

A good deal of the law given by God was designed to protect the poor from even temporary indentured servitude. For example, the poor were given opportunitities to glean the edges of fields or pick the lingering fruit from fruit trees AFTER their fellow wealthier countrymen had conducted the harvest (Lev. 19:9-10; 23:22; Deut. 24:20-21).

God therefore commanded that something lingering be left for the poor to be able to be supplied.

Fellow Israelites were commanded to lend freely to the poor (Deut. 15:7-8) Therefore the divine commanded liberality was designed to prevent rampant poverty which gave rise to indentured servitude.

Such beneficiaries were not to be charged interest (Exod. 22:25; Lev. 25:36-37) .

If the poor could not afford the three times a year sacrificial animals of the more expensive type, they could offer smaller and less expensive animals (Lev. 5:7,11)

It cannot be over emphasized in this debate that debts were to be CANCELLED every seven years automatically. And when the debt servant was released it was to be done without a "grudging heart" (Deut. 15:10 NIV) .

The final analysis is that God commanded in a way that revealed He desired NO poverty with the theocratic nation. So the servant laws were designed to help the poor rather than keep them down in oppression.

Originally posted by sonship

sonship:
Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew canon. Can you submit an ancient writing older than this indicating a master's God fearing sensitivity as to how he treated his slaves ?

Zah:
oh, so as long as one treats his slaves well, it is ok?

I will take that reply as either you cannot or you won't. That is produce an ancient ...[text shortened]... on. So the servant laws were designed to help the poor rather than keep them down in oppression.

so again, excuses. "because we are doing SOME right, we have the right to do whatever the fuk else we want"


do you believe an employer, in our current time, should have the right to dock his employes pay whenever he wants, if he provides them with free coffee?



nobody cares that the slaves were better treated in israel than in neighbouring countries. nobody is putting the assyrians or egyptians on pedestals. we know they had slavery, we know they had summary judgements, we know they had social inequality. we do not care because people like you do not excuse the assyrians because of a holy book.



i don't care about ANY of these laws you submitted. they are band aids applied to a shotgun blast to the face. you might think they are mark of how merciful and enlightened the OT laws were. they are not. these are simply the bandaids that do nothing to cure the gaping wound beneath them.



we have a law that allows fathers to sell their daughters into slavery, with no regard on what that daughter wants. that is the topic. i don't give a single fuk about how good she would have been treated. the fact remains that this is a horrible law, that it comes against basic human decency, and someone who cannot agree to that is a horrible human being.


i ask again, if this law would have been in the quran, would you have defended it as you defend it now?

Originally posted by sonship
So I may seem to you to be doing "knee jerk" defense of the Old Testament. Maybe it is because I sense you are doing "knee jerk" hunting for things to be bothered about in the "ministry of condemnation" the old covenant - the Law.

I'm examining some of your bones to choke on and now reminding you that God made a [b]new covenant in the Son of God J ...[text shortened]... ve to worry about living in Canaan in strict adherence to slave laws handed down from Mt. Sinai.[/b]

then you agree that the old testament laws were horrible and evil and they should only be brought up as reminders of our shameful past as a species in order to learn from them so we never repeat them?

Originally posted by RBHILL
You can Obviously tell by my post. I have said in the past that I go for slavery. I would rather be a slave myself then die fighting.

i'ld rather die fighting

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
then you agree that the old testament laws were horrible and evil and they should only be brought up as reminders of our shameful past as a species in order to learn from them so we never repeat them?

The premise that we know why the laws were written as they were is foolish at best. Have you taken into account that the laws (during the time of Moses) were written for a group of people that had been slaves for over 400 years. And now a "free" people, anarchy would follow if the laws were not so sever. As seen when Moses went to the mountain after their release from Egypt.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi

so again, excuses. "because we are doing SOME right, we have the right ... "

They had a system of priest like judges and could not do whatever they thought they had the right to do.

Even a casual reading of the Old Testament reveals that Israel could not get away with whatever they wanted to do, to their own people or even to outsiders.

do you believe an employer, in our current time, should have the right to dock his employes pay whenever he wants, if he provides them with free coffee?

There are many instances in the Old Testament where rebuke or judgment is administered by God because of social injustice.

You might start with reading the book of Amos in which is the famous line of God rebuking His theocratic Israel

" I hate, I despise, your feasts, And I will not delight in your solemn assemblies.
For if you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your meal offerings, I will not accept them; Nor will I regard the peace offerings of your fatted animals.
Take the noise of your songs away from Me, for I will not hear the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like water, and righteousness, like an ever-flowing river." (Amos 5:21-24)

This is only one of many rebukes made by God for social injustice in their society. While you are trying to portray to me a picture of the unrighteous God setting up an unjust society, the bulk of the Old Testament history concerns His discipline of Israel for their social sins and iniquity.

Plus the fact that the most qualified person, I think, to pronounce judgment upon the Old Testament God would be Jesus Christ. He did not condemn the God of the Old Testament. He spoke of His Righteous Father.

So the new covenant overtook the old covenant. But the reason seems not at all to be because the God of the Old Testament was evil. Rather He was righteous throughout all ages.

Let me assume from your attitude about the young that you surely must be a Pro Lifer ? Are you adamantly supportive then of anti-abortion laws today since your outrage of children going into debt servitude is so pronounced?

Are you a staunch Pro Life advocate ??
Now don't let me hear " WEEEELL, Uh, uh, uh uh !! That's different !"

Are you, Zahlanzi, strongly anti-abortion ?

nobody cares that the slaves were better treated in israel than in neighbouring countries.

Those who want an realistic historical perspective before the old covenant was replaced with the new covenant, are interested.

nobody is putting the assyrians or egyptians on pedestals.

Okay. I think what YOU are doing is putting modern day Western democracies like the US on a pedestal. Isn't what you are accusing me of, you are doing yourself ?

The tone of your complaint is like this 'Well, at least WE today are not so bad as they. In all our secular and separation of church and state culture WE belong on a pedestal over against the ancient Israel, supposedly living by God's laws."

I think YOU are the one putting modern day society where you live high on a pedestal as an excuse to forget about God and the Bible.

we know they had slavery, we know they had summary judgements, we know they had social inequality. we do not care because people like you do not excuse the assyrians because of a holy book.

Of course they had social inequality. Then we also see in the Old Testament as well as the New that "ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God ..."

If your complaint is that Old Testament Israelites could be sinners then I have no argument to counter that. Nor would I want to.

Some of the laws, I think, were like some of the regulations in the US military. I have heard from soldiers that the way some military codes are set up is like a bolder at the top of a mountain. The punishment is really hard. But it first has to roll down. And on the way there are these things to stop it from reaching you. So the net effect is that you can be rescued legally if some other regulation steps in front of the more harsher ones.

But if they all step aside and let the boulder roll down, watch out.

So I view some of the Old Testament laws in a similar light. You did have judges to hear cases. You did have offerings to absolve one from offenses. You had the high priests and judges to hear "hard" cases.

You should not assume that all this worked as a kind of computer program flow chart - "GO TO here."

Did you read about the five daughters of Zelophehad in the book of Numbers?

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http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/daughters-of-zelophehad-bible

Daughters of Zelophehad: Bible

by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld

The story of the five daughters of Zelophehad provides legitimation of a limited right of Israelite women to inherit land. It also places specific marriage restrictions upon any women who inherit under this right. The story celebrates women’s boldness and at the same time offers comfort for men who have the misfortune (from the Bible’s androcentric point of view) to have no sons.

Zelophehad has five daughters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah; he has no sons. Zelophehad is part of the generation of Israelites who departed from Egypt under Moses’ leadership and died during the forty years in the wilderness. His five daughters belong to the new generation that would enter and possess the promised land. (Their mother is never mentioned.)

According to God’s decree, the promised land is to be apportioned according to the “number of names” of members of the second generation counted in the census recorded in Numbers 26 (see 26:5z-56). Since only men were counted in the census, however, Zelophehad’s daughters would be left without an inheritance.

Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah come forward to appeal this regulation, stating their case in front of the sacred tent of meeting in the presence of Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and indeed the whole community (Num 27:2). They argue that their father’s name (lineage) should not be cut off from his clan just because he had no son and that they should be permitted to inherit his land portion (v. 4) in order to avoid this potential injustice to their father’s name (and property). The story presumes a culture that recognizes a connection between landholding and preservation of a male name in a family lineage.

Moses consults God, and God announces the decision to Moses: the proposal of the daughters of Zelophehad is to be implemented (vv. 5–7). The text then moves beyond the particular case to report God’s further generalized regulation for order of inheritance: when there are no sons, daughters shall have first inheritance rights, followed by other male relatives in a set sequence (vv. 8–11).

Later on, the male relatives of the Manassite clan to which Zelophehad belonged recognize what to them appears to be a large loophole in this ruling. Their appeal to Moses is recorded in Numbers 36.

The point is that God allowed these woman to amend the law of Moses for a more equatable provision for women in a strongly patriarchal culture.

Maybe you can explain why God did not tell Moses "No WAY !! Let the women be treated unfairly. "

i don't care about ANY of these laws you submitted. they are band aids applied to a shotgun blast to the face. you might think they are mark of how merciful and enlightened the OT laws were. they are not. these are simply the bandaids that do nothing to cure the gaping wound beneath them.

All this says to me is that a NEW COVENANT was in need to come.
However your reasons are different.
I think you say the OLD COVENANT was bad because God was evil.

I agree that I would not want to take a time machine and seek a utopian existence in ancient Israel after the Exodus.

My reasons for welcoming a NEW COVENANT, however, do not have to do with faulting God for being unjust.

we have a law that allows fathers to sell their daughters into slavery, with no regard on what that daughter wants. that is the topic. i don't give a single fuk about how good she would have been treated. the fact remains that this is a horrible law, that it comes against basic human decency, and someone who cannot agree to that is a horrible human being.

To this point I will still await for you to prove to me that this was indirect KIDNAPPING. That is the coerced and forceful dragging of a young woman from her household.

I do not automatically consider that Jewish parents had absolutely zero regard for the wishes of their children when the need arose to have to accept debt servitude.

The picture of the daughter being dragged kicking and screaming from her mom and dad to be a slave for some rich family, you will have to give me a little more biblical support for.

i ask again, if this law would have been in the quran, would you have defended it as you defend it now?

First furnish me with the biblical proof that the anti-kidnapping laws did not cover the action of coercing a child to be KIDNAPPED.

Then I'll think about a Islam / Old Testament comparison.