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Opening
Some of the most common objections to Christianity come from passages of Scripture that make modern readers uncomfortable. Texts about slavery, polygamy, warfare, and the treatment of women can raise difficult questions, not only for skeptics but for Christians as well. This episode, we’re tackling some of these challenging passages head-on. How should Christians understand these texts? Is there a difference between God permitting something and approving it? And how does the right understanding of God’s character help us interpret passages that make us squirm? Joined once more by Dr. Smith, our goal is to think carefully, handle Scripture faithfully, and learn how to engage these questions with honesty, humility, and a confidence in who God is. A big thanks to our official sponsor Trivan for making this conversation possible. Be sure to check them out at Trivan.com.
Intro
The world’s changing fast, but what questions should we really be asking? You’re listening to Real Talk, a podcast presented by Reformed Perspective, where we take God’s Word and apply it to the nitty gritty of life. Buckle up for real questions, real answers, and real direction. This is Real Talk.
Tyler Vanderwoude
Dr. Smith, appreciate your time again. Welcome back, everybody. If you’ve listened to our previous episode about God’s unchanging nature, you’ll know that we are about to dive deep on a few more challenging texts from the Old Testament regarding some of the more controversial or hard to explain elements of what we read there, so appreciate your time again. Thanks for being willing to dive in on this one. We’re going to be talking about slavery and polygamy, and we’ll probably pull out a couple of extras at the end. Just hard specific texts, and this is a one of the more challenging things we’ve probably ever thrown at a guest.
Dr. Jannes Smith
Pleasure. I’m a little terrified.
TV
So, appreciate the study you’ve put into this already. Hopefully, this is less intimidating than having to write a sermon on it. I don’t. I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be more intimidating, but your, yeah, typically, people don’t ask you follow up questions during a sermon.
Dr. JS
You’d be surprised what happens after a service sometimes. Yeah,
TV
So maybe this is just as good. So, yeah, we touched on in our previous episode. We touched on the unchanging nature of God, and part of that when we were preparing for this, thinking about that, what would people who don’t believe or want to challenge Christianity point to in the Old Testament to show that God has changed, or that God was a vengeful, wrathful, or different type of God in the Old Testament, and I think immediately in our cultural context, slavery comes to mind. And so let’s start there. How do we understand? Did God condone slavery in the Old Testament? It seems that there was – I mean, there were still slaves in the New Testament. There’s still actually instruction to slaves in the New Testament, so I guess we’ll get there. But when we think about slavery now, and I say slavery, and all of our listeners kind of cringe or you know turn their radio down a little bit, are we talking about the same thing that we read about on the pages of Scripture in the Old Testament, and then I guess in the New Testament. Are there different contexts of what that word means?
Dr. JS
In a lot of ways, yes, I would say. The basic concept of slavery is that you are not your own person, in the sense that your freedoms are limited, your decision-making power is limited. You belong to someone else who perhaps has purchased you or inherited you, and who has certain rights over you that you don’t have over yourself. That would have been true of more modern forms of slavery, as we as we have seen it in North America in the previous centuries, and it would have been true in biblical times as well. There are differences too, because of our historical experience, we have kind of a visceral reaction to slavery, whereas in in ancient societies it was more of a reality of life. Now, then our inclination might be to say, life must have been awful back then, but not necessarily so. Certainly, Scripture doesn’t necessarily portray slavery as an awful thing, and that in itself raises questions, doesn’t it?
TV
Yeah.
Dr. JS
Because you’d think that the Bible would be idealistic in the sense that anything that smacks of slavery would be unequivocally condemned.
TV
So, what is it about the way we think about it? Is that, has that changed in recent times, or if you ask somebody even four or five generations ago about slavery, would they would they have a completely different, I guess, even emotional reaction to it.
Dr. JS
Yeah, it’s hard for me to speak historically about it in that sense, so that I could speak like in a sociological manner what has changed in our way of thinking. I don’t think that it’s a bad thing that we have a negative reaction to slavery. I think that we should. Yeah, and in a certain sense, I think that you can show that from the scriptures as well. When you take the scriptures as a whole, maybe the best place to start is just by looking at God’s original intention for mankind in Genesis 1. That’s where I would go because Genesis 1 sets the blueprint for the world as God created it in the beginning. God created humans with dignity, and He gave them a high calling. He created man in His image to be able to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the world. Right. So that was God’s original purpose for humankind. Slavery then is a reality of the fallen world, a world that has been ruined by sin, as per Genesis 3. I don’t think that you could say that slavery is something that God intended from the very beginning in a perfect world. No, it’s something that developed in a fallen world. So what happens there is that in a fallen world, you have realities where certain people become powerful and other people become weak. Certain people use their power to harm others, and some also use their power to protect others. Whereas in the beginning, God created people in His image to be able to serve Him and to be able to develop the world. All of that to say that for us to have a negative perspective on slavery is actually a good thing because we should aspire to a perfect world. The dignity of humankind is something that really is formative for our thinking. It’s why Christians want people to be treated with dignity. It’s the reason why Christians today are concerned with issues like workplace safety, are concerned about abusive relationships, are concerned about things like addictions, are concerned about issues like abortion. It’s because we believe in all of those instances as a starting point that God created humans in His image and endowed them with dignity, and that they should be treated as such. Now, then you have Genesis 3 with the fall into sin, where life becomes a struggle to survive, and human nature itself is corrupted, and people’s desires and intentions come out in their actions in the way that they treat one another, and it’s in a context like that that slavery emerges. The powerful subjugate the weak, the rich oppress the poor, victors take captives as spoils of war, kings build their empires on the backs of slaves, and so on. But there is another side to it as well, and we should be honest about that. The powerful are in a position to help the weak by giving them a roof over their heads, by providing them with work to do. When captors take captives in war, they might give them menial tasks to perform. The Bible talks about people who became hewers of wood and drawers of water, menial tasks that had to be done anyway. And the fact that you have captives of war who do those tasks mean that those jobs get done. I would maybe add to that that the powerful could offer certain protections to people. So if you think of, for instance, if someone owed a debt that they couldn’t pay off, their creditor could say, “Well, why don’t you become my slave for a time in lieu of paying off your debt?” And so that becomes a form of slavery that’s actually mutually beneficial. Odd as that might sound to say,
TV
So we don’t, like when I think of slavery, I mean, we’re thinking about like slavery in the American South, typically. I guess that’s what is most readily comes. What we’re most readily told about, learned about, we know the most history about, probably the most that were propagandized about too. So it’s hard to know, I mean, unless you were there, it’s hard to know what exactly went on. But and then, are there still good slave owners and bad slave owners through all of history? Like we see that we see that kind of reflected in the New Testament as well, where there’s instruction to masters, there’s instruction to slaves. But is that is that just a that something that we’ve been sold? Did that exist in the American south as well, in in the same sense, or is that because of the context of that and what we typically think about as slavery, we don’t think about a mutually beneficial situation. We think of, I guess, of enslavement, like of somebody acquiring somebody, but always against their will, and not this situation, I think.
Dr. JS
Yeah, I think so too. I’m sure that if you were to study the historical record of the American South, there would have been a variety of the kinds of masters that would have existed, from those who were kind to those who were cruel. So, that’s not to say that slavery is okay if you have a kind master, and slavery is not okay if you have a cruel master. No, I’m not suggesting in any way by that that we can justify slavery as a concept. No, we shouldn’t as Christians. But at the same time, we cannot tar all slavery with the same brush either and say that all aspects of it were evil all the time.
TV
Do we have a tendency, I guess, as Christians, or would there be some people who have a tendency to explain it as glorified employment, like the difference between a servant, say, and a slave, or an employee and a slave?
Dr. JS
Yeah. Yeah, just a couple of points on that. One is that, for instance, in the Greek language, you have different words that all mean servant in in various ways. There’s a word that means attendant. There’s a word that means servant. There’s a word that means minister. There’s a word that means you know bond servant or slave. So there are differences within the realm of slavery itself in the kinds of roles and responsibilities and freedoms that someone who was a servant or a slave might have, and the other thing that I would say to that is that we now live in a society where we have healthcare, where we have social security benefits and old age pensions and so on. If you imagine a world where none of that exists, then certain protections and benefits could be offered by someone who was in the position of a master or a king to people who came under their care.
TV
Right. Yeah. Like, but do we have a tendency to try to do that to try to make it like a justifiable…
Dr. JS
Yeah, and we shouldn’t do that. No, but we should be reasonable about it. And we should acknowledge, I think that it’s that it’s complicated.
TV
Well, it is because when you when you read when Joseph’s brothers sell him into slave, well, like the picture that I was taught to have, I guess as a child, or maybe I just had, maybe it was just me. When the scene that you develop in your mind of the brothers actually selling Joseph is like it’s, I mean, it’s horrible, obviously. But then it’s also you imagine the horrors when he gets there. But then when you read about how he’s treated in Potiphar’s house, it’s like, oh, that’s actually he’s treated more as an operations manager than he is as a slave, like on a warship or something.
Dr. JS
Now regardless of what we imagine the scene was like, what Joseph’s brothers did to him was nothing short of despicable. It really was. We don’t need to gloss that or white wash that in any way.
TV
It’s not that they had thought maybe he would end up like that, so that’s okay.
Dr. JS
Yeah, and truthfully, they were planning to kill him, which is even more despicable. They were motivated by, yeah, a sense of vengeance and jealousy and hatred.
TV
So we wouldn’t shouldn’t take these, I guess we shouldn’t take the story of a well-treated slave to be anything other than you know adding to the complication of the scene. They’re still degrading the value of a human.
Dr. JS
That’s it. That’s correct. Yeah. So we can easily judge the topic on the basis of the humans who went through it, and to a certain extent, I think we can because there is an amount of injustice that’s involved with that. But at the same time, it was a reality of society as well. And then you wonder to yourself, okay, what’s the solution here? Is the solution to turn society on its head and say, “Okay, we’re setting all the slaves free.” Well, if you do that, you better have a contingency plan in place because those people who were slaves do need to have cares and protections, which they did have under the system of slavery.
TV
Interesting, like a social security net.
Dr. JS
Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. So it’s easy to be critical of slavery, but to be constructive about it and to say that slavery needs to end requires more than passing a law that says the slaves are hereby free.
TV
Right, right. Which is how we think about it, I think. Yes. Like we think of the American south and we say, oh well, is it repatriation? Like it’s like, so that’s the law, and then everything will be good.
Dr. JS
I think that’s the context for the Old Testament laws that are related to slavery as well. Those Old Testament laws are given in a context in which slavery is a reality of society, and the purpose of the laws is to ensure that the slaves were treated in a dignified manner, and to a certain extent, an exit strategy was given to them as well. So slavery did not need to be a permanent reality. Certainly not for Israelite slaves. There was a way out for them.
TV
So okay, so we have a, I mean, again, we have a visceral reaction to it, but this is probably going to be a commonality between this conversation about slavery and polygamy, I guess. But why does God then not like, why are the laws accommodating, or so it seems because of like we say because of it was a reality, God put laws in place to control that reality, or manage it, or to set moral compass around that inside that reality. But then things like homosexuality or things like that were that was never like that was probably part of pagan culture. It was probably around, or definitely was around, but then that’s rejected and yet it seems as though there’s like God does condone it, or by not, like it’s almost like a condoning by silence.
Dr. JS
Yes. Okay, that’s a big question, and I think one aspect of that question is that we are often idealistic and somewhat impatient with God. We want God to simply snap His fingers and bring about a perfect world instantly, whereas God doesn’t actually do that. He works through history and time, and He brings about change over time and sets before his people the good life. He sets before them good laws, and he tells them that there will be happiness and joy in relationship with him. And it’s often people who reject that and decide to go their own way, and then misery results. So the misery of slavery is a misery that’s part of the human condition and part of man’s rebellion against God, whereas would people actually follow God’s ways and pursue the covenant life, which is the life of blessing and hope and salvation? Benefit would come, but God is working in history to bring about the time of Jesus Christ, in which the real transformation will come, and is working steadily towards the final day when He is indeed going to bring a new world in which there will not be slavery. So, yeah, we are more impatient with God than we ought to be. I think that that’s part of the answer to that question, but I think another part of the answer is to see the beautiful things that God does put in place also for slaves. One is the Sabbath day. Your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. Yeah, people were not supposed to say, “Well, look, I’m the master, you’re the slave, so you’re working on the Sabbath, and I’m not.” God said, “No, you no, you’re not. Your draft animals are going to rest, and your servants are going to rest.” Think about it this way: what that means is that on the Sabbath day, every week, servants get to experience what it’s like not to be a slave.
TV
Ah, interesting.
Dr. JS
Yeah.
TV
I don’t think I’ve ever thought about like that before. That Sabbath rest is like a foretaste.
Dr. JS
It really is a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath, which we say regularly, but I don’t think we really think about that, but that’s how the slaves would have experienced it.
TV
Interesting. That’s even a good argument to say that God wouldn’t have condoned it, because otherwise He would have said, “Well, go right ahead, let them work.” Because I think by saying does God condone it, part of the substrate of that question is: Is God, does God allow us to treat other people as subhuman? And just that point alone, He doesn’t.
Dr. JS
He doesn’t.
TV
Because, although even the animals, I guess the Sabbath is sacred.
Dr. JS
That’s it.
TV
Into all creation.
Dr. JS
You are all my creatures. You all get to experience something of the seventh day of creation, when I rested from my work, and you’re going to experience that rest once a week. You’re going to have a taste of paradise restored.
TV
Yeah, that is something I never thought about.
Dr. JS
That’s again, the Torah is instruction. God is teaching His people something here. I’m going to teach you about what a new and perfect world is like every week. You’re going to see this. You’re going to experience this. So that’s part of it. But there’s other things too. There’s the Sabbath year. There’s the year of jubilee. There’s opportunities for debt slaves to receive their freedoms again. There’s also laws of compensation. If a slave was injured, like his eye was injured or his tooth was knocked out by a cruel master, he had to let the slave go free as compensation for his injury. Yeah. So, and another example, and this is an interesting one, Deuteronomy 23:15 is a is an interesting text. There Moses says if a slave has taken refuge with you, in other words, this is a runaway slave, do not hand him back to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.
TV
So that’s that would be a foreign slave?
Dr. JS
It could be a foreign slave, yeah. It probably would be a foreign slave. I would expect so, but the passage itself doesn’t specify that that’s the case. But I find it fascinating. Think about what it would take for a slave to run away in those days. What would motivate him to do it? It’s actually kind of a risky thing to do. One is that your master is going to find you back and drag you back and punish you harshly, but another is that you’re also fending for yourself when you run away. There is no safety net around you anymore.
TV
This isn’t a cross the southern border of the state situation. Where they hand you a cell phone and fly you to New York.
Dr. JS
That’s it. You’ve lost your food source. You’ve lost your daily care. You’ve lost your shelter. You’ve lost your source of clothing. You’ve lost your place to rest and sleep, and you’re out there on your own. So you’re going to be pretty motivated if you’re going to run away. Maybe it’s because you’re fleeing from a cruel master, or maybe it’s because you just want to get back to your wife and kids. And so Moses says, if you come across somebody like that, don’t send him back, but allow him to live as a free person wherever he wants to live, and there’s something very kind about that from God’s perspective. I also love what the 4th commandment says in in in the Deuteronomy 5 version, where God says to His people, “Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt, and I brought you out.” In other words, in the way that you treat your slaves, remember that you were slaves once yourself. You know what it’s like to be treated by Egyptian taskmasters who never gave you a moment of rest and set their quotas impossibly high, and whipped you and so on. Don’t have the mindset of a slave owner. I’m the God who set you free. I’m your redeemer. So have the mindset of a redeemer and treat your servants accordingly.
TV
Yeah. It’s actually interesting that they that reminded me like they long to go back to Egypt, which to that safety net I guess exactly. So it wasn’t all, like freedom wasn’t all good like this is how we think I think it’s part of our affluence it’s like freedom good slavery bad. I mean, when you’re yeah, if you become free, there’s also a deep like there’s a governmental safety net that we’ve we have in the Western world that I guess we just we just assume everyone has our context a lot of times. We’re like, you don’t see things the way I do. Well, I’m right, so…
Dr. JS
Well, that’s it. But I think too. Although we would never speak in terms of our modern society in terms of slavery, there are there is a lot of variety in our own social context as well. Some people become business owners. They want the freedom to be able to make their own decisions and to make their own schedules and so on. It’s never totally free because you’ve got obligations as well, and you’ve got to worry the worries about the business that you’re running. Other people don’t have that same skill set, and they would prefer to be an employee because that way you’ve got a bit of more of a security around you. Someone else sets the schedule. Someone else, you don’t have to take your work home with you. You can leave your work at work and just go home and do other things, and there’s positives and negatives to each one. But in neither and in no scenario are we completely independent people who have no worries and no stresses in our life and have no obligations or anything like that. So that shows that a world without slavery is not entirely different from a world that does have slavery in it.
TV
Right. Yeah, yeah, and the master still had responsibility, and I guess even especially in Israel, they’re told to have higher standards and treat their servants well.
Dr. JS
We often get caricatures here again as well, right? Where masters could do wherever they wanted, and slaves had had no rights and couldn’t do anything that they wanted to do. And so we, yeah, we villainize masters and we become hyper-sympathetic to the situation of slaves. We should be sympathetic to the situation of slaves, and we should have a wary eye out for abusive masters, no doubt, but we shouldn’t get the perspective that masters could do whatever they wanted and slaves couldn’t do anything. That wasn’t necessarily the nature of the relationship.
TV
Right. We pulled some texts, some challenging texts. These are ones that, on the surface, look-I mean, maybe not even as if slavery is being condoned, but maybe that it’s being promoted. And so, trying to trying to put myself in the mind of an unbeliever with this challenge to accuse God of this in the Old Testament, so we gave you these texts ahead of time, just so the listener knows, but these are like if I gave the listener any of these, they would be they would likely be you know as confounded as I was. So I’m hoping you can shed some light on these. So I guess let’s start with Leviticus 25:44 to 46, which says, “As for your male and female servants, whom you may have, you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you in their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever, and you may take, sorry, you may make slaves of them, but your own brothers, the people of Israel, you shall not rule. Sorry, over your brothers you shall not rule.”
Dr. JS
There are some confronting things there, aren’t there?
TV
It looks like it. Well, I guess the first piece of the why I picked this one is it speaks of people as property, and that’s a very stark image, I guess. Yeah, and then it also just speaks of buying and selling as if it were cattle or whatever.
Dr. JS
Yeah. So I would again put this in the context of Genesis 3, rather than in the context of Genesis 1. That is to say, this is the reality of life in a fallen world. We shouldn’t get the picture that the Israelites were told, you know what, that nation over there. I know there aren’t any slaves in that nation, but you know what? You just go over there and you turn them into slaves and bring them back. No, that wouldn’t have been the reality. Countries all around the ancient Near East at that time did have slaves. That was a reality of what life was like in those days. So the Lord is telling His people here, you can buy slaves who are already slaves in those nations, and you can purchase them for yourselves, but you’re not allowed to do that for your own brothers, the Israelites. Now, why that distinction? It has something to do with the fact that Israel is the chosen nation of God. So, when the Lord makes laws for His people, He gives His own people special privileges beyond those of the nations around them. Now, to the nations around them, this would not have appeared as an offensive law. You know, can the Israelites come here and buy our slaves? Sure, why not? Our slaves are for sale. They can buy them if they want to. They wouldn’t have like, they wouldn’t have said, “Oh, those Israelites are horrible people. They’re enslaving people.” No, that that was just how life functioned in those days.
TV
Don’t accuse me of buying something that you’re selling.
Dr. JS
Yeah, and to a person living in a nation back then, to read a law like this that said, “Well, the Israelites themselves are not to be enslaved. They would have said, “Oh, must be nice to be an Israelite. It means that you’re not going to be sold as a as a slave.” There are special privileges attached. Part of it is also God’s grace to His people. The Lord had delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, so he wanted them to be able to experience freedom from slavery, and so he did not want his people to enslave their fellow brothers and sisters because otherwise they would be treating their own brothers and sisters the way the Egyptians had treated them. The Lord had delivered them from bondage, and so he wanted them to experience that delivery, that deliverance in perpetuity.
TV
Right, yeah.
Dr. JS
So that’s not to justify. This is this is great. It’s not to say, oh, the Lord is pro slavery. No. Right. But within the context of slavery, the Lord regulates it.
TV
Did they have different regulations around handing slaves down against? It mentions bequeathing the slaves to your sons.
Dr. JS
Yeah, yeah. So that’s an interesting question. So it’s certainly true that slaves were part of the property. They were part of the assets that were handed down. It’s, I mean, if you imagine that a father would hand his property down to his son, but imagine then that all the slaves were to disappear. Suddenly, the son would have to find new slaves or would have to do all the work himself. That’s not very realistic. So the slaves come with the property; they’re passed down as well. Now, to us, that feels rather cold and unfeeling. But on the other hand, think of Genesis 17 for a moment, where the Lord told Abraham that he was to circumcise all the members of his household, not just the sons, but the servants as well, and he did that. So what that means is that while on the one hand you could view slaves as people who could be bought or sold and could be regarded as part of the assets of the property. On the other hand, they were also treated as part of the household. So Abraham’s servants, of whom he had several hundred, all became part of the household of faith. They were members of the covenant community.
TV
So there is like, there is always a yeah, if they’re treated well, there is always like a more positive side to it. Yeah,
Dr. JS
Yeah, there is. They had to be circumcised too because they did not just belong to their masters as slaves or as property, but they belonged to the Lord. And so the master, from a spiritual sense, as someone who believed in God and was transformed by God, had to treat his servants well as people who were also members of the covenant. This is actually a foreshadowing of what happens in the New Testament age, when the apostles instruct church members: remember that your servants are your brothers and sisters in Christ. Yeah, so they might still be servants of yours as far as the household is concerned, but in terms of their covenantal status and their salvation in Jesus Christ, they are fully equal partners with you in that heritage of salvation.
TV
Oh, interesting. I mean that definitely, yeah, if you were a good slave owner, then you would you would treat them a lot differently, even though you would probably still speak of it of it in these stark terms that we you know make us very uncomfortable.
Dr. JS
A master would never be able to say I’m a child of God, but you’re not. I’m going to be saved and go to heaven one day, but you’re just a slave, so you’re not.
TV
It goes back to the Sabbath.
Dr. JS
It does.
TV
Yeah, okay, so that’s the kind of the buying and selling piece. Then Deuteronomy 20:10-14, although I imagine I don’t have most of this written down here says this is this speaks to when the Israelites conquered a nation. It says when the Lord your God gives into your hand, gives it into your hand, which so one of the foreign nations, you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones you may take as your spoil. Now, this we could talk about the women and little ones part of part of this too, but I imagine this would be… was this them being integrated, or was this them being enslaved to do…? There’s other passages too we didn’t pull, but where they speak of what you mentioned, carrying water, and they can be your water carriers or your wood choppers. So when the nation of Israel took over or conquered a nation, why does God allow or instruct them to, I guess, subjugate them or enslave their people.
Dr. JS
Yeah, yeah. So part of this has to do with the fact that the Israelites have been promised the promised land. It’s going to become theirs. So the wars that they’re going to be fighting are wars of taking possession of the land of Canaan. Another part of the piece is that it’s not as though the Canaanites were innocent bystanders in the piece, the Lord had had patience with the Canaanites for many years, 400 years. And Genesis 15 tells us, and Exodus tells us that the people of Israel were in Egypt for 430 years before they went through the Promised Land and then received their promised inheritance. When they were going to enter the promised land, they were told that they were not to make covenants or alliances with the Canaanite peoples, but they were rather to put them under a ban of destruction. So that’s the general context under which a law like this takes place. Now here you got a little bit more specificity. Some of those laws, some of those battles would then be fought. The men are to be killed, says the Lord, in part because they are the military, right? So by killing the men, you wipe out those armies. You make one victory a permanent victory. Part of it is also a matter of assimilation to make sure that you don’t have a situation where you have Canaanite families and Israelite families surviving alongside each other and integrating and intermarrying. The Lord does not want that to happen. He wants a
TV
He didn’t little Canaan town in downtown Jerusalem.
Dr. JS
He wants Canaanite culture to die out, and he wants Israelite culture to take over the promised land. Right. He makes provision for that here, allowing the women and the children to survive. Then, no doubt, with the view that they will become integrated into Israelite culture and society. Now, that doesn’t take away the horrors of war. No, no, but it does give it a little bit of context as to why the Lord would pass a law like this for the con- for the military context in which the people found themselves then.
TV
Right. Yeah, that does give it a bit better context. Yeah. Okay, so then again, let’s pivot a little bit to a different aspect, I guess. So Exodus 21:20 to 21 speaks about disciplining. I guess the law around disciplining slaves. So when a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod, and his slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if a slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged for the slave is his money. Now I surprise myself with how tough these are. Like, oh man, that is hard.
Dr. JS
Yeah.
TV
So, well, I guess the first question is why would the, why is it seemingly that a man is allowed to strike a slave, and then, why, if the slave survives a day or two, is he not to be avenged? Like, is that is that? I guess I don’t I don’t know, but is that a difference to how it would be if he struck another Israelite, for instance? This is obviously the treatment of poor behavior in general.
Dr. JS
Probably is yes. So corporal punishment would have been a reality of the slave world back in those days. If a slave did not carry out his duties or disobeyed his master, he would probably be beaten for that. Yeah, but this law specified that there were that there were limits put in place on that slave. A slave is still a human being. His life is still a human life. So if a master were to beat his slave so that he died, then the master would be held accountable for murder. Vengeance would be carried out on him. He wouldn’t be able to say, “Well, that slave is my property, so I can do whatever I want. No, no. If he were to kill his slave, he would be held accountable. Vengeance would then apply, which means that the master would be held accountable for taking the life of another, which in those days meant capital punishment. Now, there’s an interesting restriction here. If the slave survives a day or two, then he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money. So there are, I suppose, you could say, competing principles at play here, on the one hand, there’s the principle of the dignity of human life. The murder of a slave is still murder. On the other hand, there’s also the principle of ownership, ownership of property. So, if the slave survived, then that means that the master did not intend to murder him and did not beat him to that extent. So, the principle of the dignity of human life then is kept within the context of the competing principle of ownership.
TV
So is that to say that like, I guess similar to disciplining a child, if a child were to was this was this day or two way of putting it, a almost a, an advice on the causation of the death, like well, then we like then we can’t draw the line directly to this punishment per se, and therefore we have to assume it was maybe not that, or…
Dr. JS
Something along those lines. But I would also qualify that by saying that it doesn’t necessarily mean that the master got off scot free. So injuries would definitely have been sustained by a servant who, even if he survived for just a day or two, he would have had serious injuries, and the master would have not necessarily had to pay for that with his life, but he would have had to compensate the to compensate the slave for those injuries. Little later on in the same chapter, it says that if a slave had an eye injured by his master, then the master would have to let the slave go free out of compensation for the eye. If a slave would have had a tooth knocked out by his master, then he would have had to let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth. So it stands to reason that a slave who is seriously injured, then the master would have known that he better keep his temper in check because he risks losing his slave altogether. So again, the Lord is regulating the extent to which a master would be able to discipline his slave. He is not to take it too far. The purpose of the law then is to rein in and curtail abuse and cruelty. Now we might look at this and we might say that doesn’t go nearly far enough. And from an idealistic perspective, we would be right in saying that. But the Lord is at the very least putting some regulations in place to make sure that the people are held to a higher standard and pointed to a better way. Can you say that the law saves? No. Can you say that the law points forward to Christ and the need for Christ to bring about a better world? Yes.
TV
Yeah, and obviously these are extremely cherry-picked passages. Because, like you mentioned, if you put in that context, then this gets a new meaning a little bit, right? So, but we’re playing the, this devil’s advocate side here. So then, then in one passage that speak to the New Testament side of this, we haven’t touched on that too much. Ephesians 6:5, bond servants obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, and so that you would imagine, or some would say, well, in the New Testament that should have been abolished, and yet we see that slavery continues in the New Testament and is not. It doesn’t say earthly masters set them free, but still be treated in this manner.
Dr. JS
Yeah. Now, what the apostles are addressing are probably situations in which not necessarily a whole household would come to faith. So let’s say you had a situation where a slave comes to faith, but his master is an unbeliever. Should the slave then take the approach, “Well, I’m a believer now, therefore the master has to let me go free.” The master would be like, “Yeah, right, you’re my slave. You’re my slave. The realities of society haven’t changed because just because you happen to become a Christian.” So, from that perspective, then what Paul encourages instead: become the best servant. Your best way to witness for Jesus Christ and for the better life that He brings is to be the best servant that you could possibly be, so that your master observes in you a transformed part in life, and then if you were to run away, your master would have a negative perspective on the gospel. This is a gospel that’s overturning society and that’s making my slaves run away. Whereas if you suddenly become an exemplary slave, and you explain that as a product of your Christian faith, then your master will have a positive view of Christianity and may be attracted to the gospel too.
TV
That’s what I guess. That’s what Joseph did.
Dr. JS
That’s exactly what Joseph did, that’s exactly right.
TV
Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense.
Dr. JS
Now that’s not to say that the apostles said slaves have to stay slaves. There is another passage in 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul says the same thing. But then he adds, “But if you can avail yourself of the opportunity to become free, then do so.” So the New Testament apostles are not revolutionaries who sought to turn society on its head, but they did point the church forward to a better way, encouraging masters to remember that their servants were brothers and sisters, and encouraging servants to remember that service is actually something that Christ did for us. Christ came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many, so Christ exemplified the life of a servant even more than Joseph did, being willing to bear burdens, being where willing to die for people, being willing to take sickness and misery upon himself, and so bring the kingdom, and encouraging his apostles to do likewise, to be willing to endure suffering for the sake of the kingdom of God. Within that context, it wouldn’t be proper for members of their churches to say, “Yeah, but we’re better than that. We don’t have to behave like servants. We believe in the gospel, so we should have an easy life.”
TV
Yep. Well, I think that answers all the questions on slavery.
Dr. JS
I doubt it. It’s a good start, maybe.
TV
That is a good start. That really is a good framing. I think it’s put it in a different light for me, and made me think of the context that we think about it in, and how it was actually not an intention, but that we’re we have guidance around it for you know sort of for our own sake as sinful people. So okay, so let’s move to another really hard one, polygamy. This is another one that seems, if we’re looking at things that seem to be condoned and that are no longer acceptable in our culture, polygamy seems to be something that, in the Old Testament, God never commands against. Although maybe that’s a completely wrong thing to say, but does God ever… I guess we can start with like, does God ever explicitly prohibit or forbid polygamy? Yeah, let’s start there.
Dr. JS
If you’re looking for a passage that says, “Thou shall not marry more than one woman,” you probably will not find it in the Old Testament, and you will find plenty of counterexamples. But that’s not the only way to get at the question. I think that another way to get at the question is to go back to Genesis 1, where God sets the pattern for marriage. Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1, we learn that God created man in His own image, male and female, he created them, so that together they could be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth. So the creation order is clear: two genders equals two marriage partners. That’s the way God did it in Genesis 1, and then Genesis 2 adds more detail. There was no helper fit for Adam, singular helper. So God took one of his ribs…
TV
Right, didn’t take all the ribs.
Dr. JS
And formed it into a woman and brought her to the man, and he felt complete with her.
TV
Was it only because he could only afford one rib to give?
Dr. JS
Pretty sure that’s not the reason. No, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and this is clearly from Scripture something that God intended to become a pattern for marriage to follow. Because there’s a lesson that draws from that. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, singular, and the two shall become one flesh. So it’s very clear that God’s blueprint for marriage was monogamous. The first instance that you find in Scripture of bigamy is actually in the line of Cain, where Lamech takes two wives, Adah and Zillah. Lamech was a wicked, lawless man who set his own standards for behavior and did so in a rather arrogant fashion and that’s the context in which polygamy first arose.
TV
Right. Yeah. You speak of vengeance. That’s that man was yes one of those. I think the reason, like I mean, first of all, people don’t want to think deeply about it. They want a passage that says, “Thou shalt not do this…” otherwise, you know, is it really there? And I don’t know how much clearer you can get than the two shall become one. That’s you know, two is two not 12 or whatever. But then there’s examples of like again, we go back to our discussion about slavery, we talked about like there are things that are just prohibited. Murder, like God never says, yeah, but you can murder a little bit, but only in these contexts. And if you do murder, be nice about like this, like. But then on polygamy, it feels like there are righteous men like David after God’s own heart, Solomon, Jacob, I mean, these are in Abraham. Abraham maybe a bit of a different context, but the but those ones specifically jump out to me in the Old Testament, and God never instructs them to not, it seemingly, he doesn’t point to his creation order and say what you’re doing is wrong. So is that is that true to say that?
Dr. JS
Yes I think it’s fair to say that you have a lot of godly people in the Old Testament who did take more than one wife, and Scripture does not explicitly condemn them for doing so. Now, why did they do so, being godly people, I think, is a fair question to ask, and the answer would be that they each had their own reasons. It varied from one to another. So, if you look at Abraham, for instance, Sarah at a certain point, gave her slave girl Hagar to Abraham for the purpose of producing a child. It wasn’t really a marriage in the fullest sense of the word. She remained a slave, so she did not have the status that Sarah would have had, and her purpose was very clearly to have a child, but on that situation, they did this because they did not trust that the Lord would be able to bring forth a child from Sarah anymore, and the Lord proved their mistrust wrong by giving Sarah a child in her old age. This is a situation I think where Proverbs 3 perhaps applies: trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. They leaned on their own understanding here, and when they should have trusted in the Lord with all their heart, and it also brought strife into the family home. Hagar and Sarah did not have a good relationship from that point on, and that was a product of the choices that they made. When you look at Jacob, I think that Jacob’s original intention was just to marry Rachel. She was the one that he wanted to marry.
TV
That was sort of his father-in-law.
Dr. JS
Yeah, absolutely. It was Laban who pulled a fast one on him and gave him Leah on the wedding night, and Jacob didn’t realize it until the next morning when the lights went on.
TV
There’s all sorts of questions around that, too.
Dr. JS
All kinds of questions. Yeah, Laban’s character is a rather interesting one, isn’t it? He’s a very devious man, but in any case, Laban says, “Well, the solution is you can marry Rachel as well. Just work for me a little bit longer, and then you can have her too.” Now that led to no end of misery and strife between the two sisters. Yeah. So much so that the Lord later on in Leviticus 18 passed a law that a man shall not marry his wife’s sister while his wife is still alive, so that that’s a form of polygamy that the Lord expressly forbade in Leviticus 18.
TV
Oh, interesting I didn’t know that.
Dr. JS
Yeah, yeah. Now you know the rivalry that takes place between the sisters. On the one hand, it’s very clear that Rachel is the beloved wife and Leah is not. On the other hand Leah produces children one after the other, and Rachel does not, and so they take additional measures, and they each give their give their maid servants Zilpah and Bilhah to Jacob to produce more children. But there was no end of strife and misery in the home. So, on the one hand, you could say God did not forbid them from doing so. On the other hand, God clearly showed in the aftermath that what they brought upon themselves by departing from His pattern for marriage was misery. Right. Yeah. Then you could go to other ones: Elkanah and Hannah, Samuel’s parents.
TV
That seems like more of a mundane, like it seems like a picture into regular Israel. Yeah,
Dr. JS
Yeah, perhaps.
TV
As in not patriarchs, not kings.
Dr. JS
But the childlessness might have been another factor there as to why he married Peninnah. Hannah did not have children; she was infertile, and he married Peninnah as well, perhaps because of that. We’re not sure, but again, there was strife in the marital home. Peninnah gloated over the fact that she had children and Hannah had not. Now, that’s a really good one to think about. If Elkanah had chosen just to marry Hannah, yes, they would have been childless, but the burden of childlessness would have been a shared burden. They both would have been childless. Because he chose to marry a second wife who did have children, the childlessness became just Hannah’s burden, just her problem, not her husband’s.
TV
Oh yeah, yeah, you feel that in that story.
Dr. JS
Yeah, you do. You feel that in that story, and so there, you have what happens when there is a departure from the Lord’s pattern for marriage as well. It brings misery to the wife, and it means that burdens are no longer shared between husband and wife. Yeah, that’s a very good lesson I think to take from that one. Then you get to David and Solomon. In David’s case, it’s a matter of building up a strong royal family so that he can have a dynasty. And in one sense, you can say that the Lord had chosen David and made a covenant with him and promised to him that his sons after him would be kings on the throne as well. On the other hand, in Deuteronomy 17, we have a law for kings that explicitly says a king shall not multiply wives, because his wives may draw his heart away from the Lord.
TV
Interesting.
Dr. JS
David does multiply wives, so he follows the patterns of the nations around Israel, rather than following the Lord’s directives for what a king’s household should look like. Kings were rich and powerful. They had lots of resources to be able to maintain a large and extended family, and they might be motivated to do so as well. Because if it’s all family, then you’re less likely to be assassinated,
TV
Which might not be the case.
Dr. JS
Which might not be the case because sometimes even in David’s own household, you have the reverse taking place, but that’s kind of the thinking behind a king having a large household and keeping things in the family.
TV
But then we don’t really read in-correct me if I’m wrong-but in either David or Solomon’s case that God chastises them in the moment or later for that disobedience, then no, because is there not a passage that says even David was I don’t know not without sin he was more he was like he only erred in his…
Dr. JS
Sin with
TV
Sin with Bathsheba
Dr. JS
Right, yes.
TV
But then when he marries Bathsheba, it’s not like well, but then you shouldn’t have done that either.
Dr. JS
Yes.
TV
It’s like well, but that’s okay because now…
Dr. JS
Yes. So the egregious nature of the sin with Bathsheba is that she was married to someone else, but he took her for himself as though he could simply take someone else’s wife to be his own. Whereas the other wives that he had married, well, I suppose there too you could…
TV
He takes Michael back.
Dr. JS
Yeah, he does take Michael back, and that’s of course he was married to Michael first. And then when he was on the run from Saul, then Saul married her off to someone else, and then when David becomes king, he says…
TV
That feels like a pretty heartless story too.
Dr. JS
Yeah, it’s a terrible story. There’s nothing commendable about a story like that, no, no. It shows more about yeah the politics of power than it does anything else.
TV
But the, yeah, I guess in that passage, you don’t, you also don’t get a the impression that God condones what He’s doing either. I mean, it’s written in a way that shows the like Michael’s, I guess, second husband’s misery when she goes back to her first husband.
Dr. JS
Yeah, and there’s also a sense in which God does not approve of David’s multiple marriages either. When David does sin with Bathsheba, then he is harshly taken to task by the prophet Nathan, who tells this parable about the rich man and the poor man. The rich man had multiple sheep and lots of resources at his disposal, but when a guest comes to visit him in his home, he doesn’t take one of his. He takes the poor man’s one lonely little ewe lamb that was precious to him, that lay in his bosom, and he killed that in a heartless manner. And Nathan said to David, “You are that man. You behaved just like that rich man did.” And then it’s very striking how Nathan words it. He says, and we can talk about that in a minute. I gave you all your master’s wives, yeah, and yet you took Uriah’s wife, yeah. But then, before we get to the details of that one, Nathan goes on to say, because you did this, what you did in secret is going to be done to you in public. Your wives are going to be molested publicly by someone who takes the throne from you, and that in fact happens under Absalom. Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines. So there is a sense in which God shows His disapproval of David’s way of arranging his household, and it comes out in the misery among his children. Yeah, yeah, and I suppose the challenging text that we should talk about here is how can God say, “I gave you your serv- I gave you your master’s wives.”
TV
It’s 2 Samuel 12: 7 and 8: “I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms, and you or and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if that were too little, I would add to you as much more.” And so it seems as though he’s saying, “Well, I gave you all these wives, and if you had asked, I would have given you more wives…
Dr. JS
Yep. So this is the passage that comes closest to saying that God condones polygamy because God actually says, “I gave them to you.”
TV
Well, we found it then. That was the best. That was the best.
Dr. JS
Yeah. I don’t think that that’s the point of the passage. I think what God is saying to David here is, I already gave you so much. I gave you way more than I ever gave to Uriah the Hittite. You’re a rich man. He’s a poor man. He’s just got just the one wife.
TV
And this comes from…
Dr. JS
And his wife was very precious to him. Right. But you went and you took what was precious to him as if it was yours. That’s despicable behavior. You’re behaving like the rich, the rich man who had multiple sheep, but who took that one that that the poor man’s one pet ewe lamb. It’s so he’s pointing out the despicable and entitled nature of David’s behavior,
TV
And so not so much that if you had asked for more, I would have given you more from a that would have been correct, that would have been fine. More of a comparison to this poor guy who has nothing.
Dr. JS
Yeah, condemning David’s despotic behavior as though he’s the kind of king who can just take whatever he wants from.
TV
And yeah, that that adds a depth to that story. I think a little bit too, eh? And then I guess the same for Solomon. You see the same type of thing, right? Like he’s his wives lead him astray.
Dr. JS
Yep.
TV
he takes on like he’s 1000 wives or 700 wives and concubines. Or
Dr. JS
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
TV
300 and 700 or something.
Dr. JS
That’s exactly right. And the thing that the Lord points to here is exactly the consequence of what He warned against in Deuteronomy 17. If you do this, then your heart is going to be led astray. There’s a passage right after, right at the end of the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah 13, where Nehemiah warns God’s people against foreign marriages, and he says to them, even Solomon, who was so wise and who was loved by the Lord had his heart led astray by the foreign wives that he was married, that he married. So don’t follow in that pattern. Yeah. Now there it’s especially about marrying foreign wives who would lead their heart astray. But you know how this happens. I think that the Apostle Paul says at one point in the New Testament when he’s talking about marriage versus singleness, if you marry, then your concern is going to be with how you will please your wife. Translate that to multiple marriages. That’s a lot of divided allegiances, and that’s what happens to Solomon. The demands on his allegiance take away from his allegiance to the Lord,
TV
Right. Yeah, yeah, that’s clearly evident in Solomon’s downfall in the telling of it. It’s like it’s directly connected. Yeah. So, okay. So one, I guess, one other hard text we could go to, again from Deuteronomy. This is, I guess similar to our slavery discussion. This is in this I guess the chapter after one of those texts that we looked at. So very similar, like Old Testament law. So Deuteronomy 21:15-17: “If a man has two wives,” so again seemingly condoning it, “and love the one is loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him children, the firstborn son belongs,” or sorry, “and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved…” then he, then it goes in to explain the firstborn inheritance decrees or whatever. So this text seemingly says it’s fine if someone has two wives. However, just don’t play favorites with kids or whatever.
Dr. JS
Well, that’s it. And so I would word it a little bit differently. I don’t think that the text is saying that it’s fine to have two wives, except beyond to say, assuming that this is the situation, let’s look at a situation where there are two wives. One of them is the loved wife, and the other is the less preferred or scorned wife. But they’re both wives in the same household, and it happens to be the unloved wife who has the oldest son. You cannot, in that situation bypass the oldest son and decide arbitrarily that the son of the loved wife is going to be the primary heir. They practiced primogeniture in those days, which is to say that the firstborn received a special share of the inheritance that was larger than that of the other children. Now you can imagine that there would be pressure on a husband in that situation from his favored wife to give the biggest portion of the inheritance to her son rather than to the other wife. And God is saying, “No, you can’t do that.” That would be an injustice, and it would also create harsh relationships among the children who then have to fight over the inheritance. So it’s going to lead to no end of misery. So the Lord takes a situation in which there was polygamy and puts restraints on it to ensure that there’s going to be peace and good order in society.
TV
Yeah, and that’s I guess yeah.
Dr. JS
So it might be again be a situation where people would be inclined to disregard the proverb that says trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. God knows that people are going to lean on their own understanding. People just do this, and so they find ways to manipulate the situation so that the son of the unloved wife is the one who gets the biggest share of the property as a favor to the beloved wife, and the Lord says, “Uh, uh, no, no, not going to happen. We’re going to keep order here. We’re going to keep peace here, and make sure that the one who is regularly entitled in that society to get the largest share in the property will continue. So the fact that you have chosen to take more than one wife is not going to negate that, and is not going to give you the right to choose which son gets the property, the better share of the property.”
TV
And I guess these yeah these passages when we’re going through these commands are yeah with the starting point of a lot of these commandments is a fallen state problem when this problem arises, here’s what you are to do.
Dr. JS
Yes, now it’s also interesting to think about Jacob’s family in that regard. Jacob’s first son was Reuben. Reuben was the firstborn, so Reuben was entitled to receive the largest share of the inheritance, and Jacob acknowledges that in his blessings to the 12 sons at the end of Genesis, he says, “Reuben, you are my firstborn, the first product of my strength. But then he says, “But you sinned; you went up into my bed.” Reuben committed sexual sin with Rachel’s maid Bilha, and Jacob then said, “For that sin, you are disqualified from being my firstborn.” And then there’s a passage in 1 Chronicles 5, which says, which recalls that incident and says that Reuben was the firstborn, but he lost his firstborn inheritance rights because of that episode and now Joseph is the firstborn it Says that in 1 Chronicles 5.
TV
Judah.
Dr. JS
No, Joseph. We might think Judah, but no, 1 Chronicles 5:1 and 2 says Joseph.
TV
Oh! I got to reread my Bible.
Dr. JS
But think about it. The firstborn received a double share of the inheritance, right?
TV
Yeah. Oh, and then Manasseh…
Dr.JS
Manasseh, Ephraim. Double tribal portion in the Promised Land.
TV
Why does it skip all the other brothers? Because, like, I my mind is like well, because then Simeon and Levi are disqualified for their treatment of…
Dr. JS
There’s multiple answers that you could give to that. One is that it has to do with the electing purposes of God. God’s purposes are amazing, and He’s not bound by the things that we might expect that He would be bound to. So think of Esau and Jacob, for instance. Jacob gets the rights of the firstborn; he gets the greater blessing. Now, the way he went about it is somewhat questionable, but in the purposes of God, that was God’s intent all along. So God’s plan is fulfilled. When you look at the life of Joseph as well, Joseph has his dreams as a young lad, in which all the brothers are bowing to him, that was already in the purposes of God, and those purposes become true when Joseph becomes the manager of all of Egypt, and his brothers come bowing to him, and so Joseph, in God’s plan, receives a special status among his brothers, and he is the firstborn of Rachel.
TV
Right. Well, that’s, all right, I got I got a couple more for you. These are just to throw at your the wise mind that has given us some clarity on these two big topics. These two smaller texts are kind of random, although the I guess I want I want to hit the second one that I gave you first.
Dr. JS
Okay.
TV
Because it’s the passage seems directly before the Deuteronomy passage we just talked about, and again maybe the answer will be similar, but this one seems to have to do with the treatment of women, and then and then I want to get into one with child sacrifice, so just hang tight, everybody. So Deuteronomy 21:11-13, when they capture a group, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, you shall shave her head and pare her nails, cut her nails, I guess, and she shall take off her clothes in which she was captured, and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that, you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. And so it almost seems as though women are a woman of a foreign land is against her will being treated as property and this I guess the sole yeah like if a woman catches your eye essentially it seems to be the bar for whether or not you’re allowed to force her to be your wife. That’s this the seeming nature of this. Was that the case of how they treated the other one that comes to mind? Maybe the episode where they are, they do they do a dance or whatever, and then they just was it the Benjaminites? They take they just take wives. Yes, yes. It’s it seems like a bit of a forced marriage situation.
Dr. JS
Forced marriage situation, yes. And so is this one. We don’t get the sense that the woman has any say in whether she wants to get married to the men, yes or no. She’s a captive.
TV
Since she is a captive and is grieving.
Dr. JS
Yeah. So, yeah, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard a sermon preached on this passage before.
TV
There’s a challenge to all ministers.
Dr. JS
Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I think there’s there’d be some fear and trembling there, and rightly so. I think the first thing that I would say is that there’s nothing commendable about the situation that we have in this passage, like a lot of these
TV
Like a lot of these Deuteronomy ones that we’re pulling.
Dr. JS
That’s it. Yeah. So you have a captive woman who has lost her parents, and she’s lost her dignity. She’s lost her freedom, and she faces a marriage to her captor, and she’s got very little say in the matter. That’s not how God designed marriage in the beginning. When you read Genesis 1, it gives us the picture of God’s original intent for marriage between a perfect husband and wife, who together are going to have dominion over creation and together are going to be fruitful and multiply. That’s God’s original intent for how marriage is going to be is going to be in the world. Now all of that changes again with Genesis 3 and the fall into sin. That affects marriage relationships. It affects all kinds of things. In Genesis 3, we have not only the fall, but we also have God’s response to the fall. He speaks to the serpent. He speaks to the woman. He speaks to the man, and he tells them how life is now going to be in a fallen and broken world. It’s not going to be pretty. So it’s going to be a world where it’s still possible to serve God, but it’s not going to be easy to do so. There’s going to be spiritual warfare between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And that struggle, that spiritual warfare, is also going to manifest itself in the warfare that you have between Israel and the surrounding nations. That’s part of that spiritual warfare that God speaks about in Genesis 3. Also, the command that is given to Israel to destroy pagan religion and to take over Canaanite culture is part of that spiritual warfare of Genesis 3. There’s going to be impacts on the marriage relationship as well. It’s going to be a world where it’s still possible to get married and have children, but those marriages are going to be marked by suffering and strife, particularly for the wives, who will find that life will be difficult for them. They’re going to find themselves abused and subjugated and restricted in the kinds of choices that they have, and it’s also going to be a world where life is not going to be easy for the man either, because creation is going to be cursed. It’s still going to be possible to grow crops, but there’s going to be thorns and thistles, and there’s going to be warfare, and there’s going to be drought, and all of that will make life a struggle to survive. So that’s the fallen context in which a passage like Deuteronomy 21 takes place. So we should keep in mind as a starting point that this law in Deuteronomy 21 is not given for life in a perfect or ideal world, but it’s within the realities of life in a fallen and broken world in which there is war and captivity and subjugation and death. It’s the world that results from the fall and the misery that comes out of Genesis 3. So that’s the general perspective, just to give us some orientation here. And then we need to get into the details a little bit. I think the first thing, as far as the context is concerned, is that the Lord, generally speaking, simply forbade His people to intermarry with the Canaanites. Deuteronomy 7:3: “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods.” They were supposed to defeat the Canaanites, not intermarry and assimilate with them. They were supposed to break down their altars and destroy their gods, because otherwise they might turn away from the Lord and start worshiping Canaanite gods instead. Now it could happen in the course of such warfare with the Canaanite peoples that they would take a Canaanite woman captive, and that an Israelite man would look at this woman and say, “I want to get married to her. She’s a beautiful woman.” So then, this law deals with that. It’s an exception within the general law that you shall not intermarry with the Canaanite women. Now, you’ve decided that you really do want to. So what has to happen? Well, I would say there’s two main aspects here. One is the woman’s identity, and the other is her dignity as a person. In terms of her identity, the Lord teaches His people that the things that attracted that Israelite man to the woman in the first place, her beauty, are Canaanite things. They’re worldly things, and so he tells the Israelite man, you cannot marry her as she is for the things that attracted you to her. You are first going to have to deprive yourself of those things.
TV
Oh, interesting.
Dr. JS
Which is her beautiful hair has to be cut off. Her beautiful hands, the fingernails have to be trimmed.
TV
Because they were doing like.
Dr. JS
Her Canaanite clothing, her beautiful Canaanite clothing that she’s wearing gone. So all of those things that attracted you to a Canaanite woman, she has to lose all of those Canaanite trappings first, and her identity has to change from a Canaanite to a non-Canaanite. Otherwise, you’re simply going to be bringing Canaanite culture into your home, and I won’t have that. Then there’s her dignity. As a captor to a captive, you are going to be have to be understanding of the trauma that she has gone through, and you’re going to have to give her time to grieve the loss of her family – a full month – where she can grieve her family. The fact that she’s a Canaanite and a captive doesn’t give you the right to run roughshod over her humanity. She’s still a person. She’s still a person of dignity, and you got to respect what she’s gone through, and that concern actually for her dignity, we didn’t read verse 14, but the passage actually continues and says, “If after the marriage you change your mind and you decide, well, actually, I don’t want to be married to her after all, you have to let her go free. You cannot sell her for profit. You cannot turn her into a slave. You have to let her go and let her live wherever she wants to live. So she has to be treated as a person with dignity. Being a captive doesn’t mean that you can treat her like garbage. No, you have to respect the fact that that she is a woman, but you cannot marry her with her Canaanite identity in mind. Right.
TV
Right. Wow. If that’s not a good answer… I think we just might have heard a sermon on it. Like you could probably turn that into a sermon in 15 minutes.
Dr. JS
If I did, if I did, I’d have to say more because you have to move out of the passage to what is the enduring message for something like this, and there more has to be said. So I think that you could say that the Lord takes some limited measures here. He, the Lord holds back cruelty. The Lord kind of restrains this winner takes all mentality. I’m the captor. You’re the captive. It’s all mine, and I can do with it what I want. No, the Lord shows His people that they have to hold themselves to a higher moral standard than that. They still have to respect the dignity of a captive human being. Now, you might say there are some small mercies here. This woman is allowed to survive. She doesn’t die. She’s given a home, given a marriage. She’s brought into the context of the community of Israel and is given an opportunity to know the true God of Israel. We shouldn’t overglorify that either. They’re small mercies. They’re small mercies in a world that needs big mercies. So these are small steps that the Lord takes, puts in place to regulate what was done to captives and to restrain cruelty and violence. But think about it: this woman’s new husband and her new household and her new community-they’re never going to be able to give her the true identity and dignity that she really needs as someone who lives in the fallen world of Genesis 3. Right. And so this passage too points to the need for Christ to come and to bring a better world in which people can find their identity and their true freedom in Him. So again, I would say it’s a passage that shows that the law cannot save, but the law does give us a little snapshot of the Christ who is coming,
TV
And there’s the third point. That’s amazing. I did when I read that, and I again we trimmed it down to be as you know as restrictive as possible to make it you know make you prove a point here. But that there’s so much in there that I had not thought about.
Dr. JS
I suppose you could preach a sermon on that.
TV
I think. I think, yeah.
Dr. JS
It wouldn’t be easy, and you would have to show a lot of sensitivity with a passage like this, because yeah, yeah.
TV
And understanding the context of, like, again, all these Deuteronomy 21 passages are we’re leading with a sinful world. Pretty much like this is not an ideal situation, but… All right, you want to pivot to another one? That’s sure. This one is this one is yeah. We’re probably running out of time here, but this one I think people would want to will want to stick around for. I don’t know how this is going to go either, so I don’t know what the king’s name is anymore.
Dr. JS
Mesha.
TV
Mesha is the king of Moab.
Dr. JS
Moab, yeah.
TV
And then who’s the king who’s besieging him?
Dr. JS
Jehoram, king of Israel.
TV
Jehooram, king. Okay, so Jehoram, king of Israel, is besieging Mesha, the king of Moab. Um, and this is from 2 Kings 3:27. And it says, then he took his oldest son, who was to reign in his place. This is Mesha, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel, and they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.
Dr. JS
What’s the problem, Tyler?
TV
So, this again, seemingly, this passage is saying that through the child sacrifice that this wicked king offers while being besieged, God brings wrath on Israel, and yet we’re told that Israel should never sacrifice their children, and so there seems to be an effect in the real world of this action, where you would anticipate God bringing wrath on the king of Moab here. He brings it on Israel, seemingly affirming that, and you got to imagine the king of Moab thought, “Yeah, that worked.”
Dr. JS
Yeah.
TV
So, what are we all missing?
Dr. JS
This is a really bewildering passage. It is. It is a difficult one, you know. And there’s, there’s a lot going on. So, we got to give a little bit of historical context first. So, the context is that the land of Moab, which is on the east side of the Jordan, had been under the control of the northern kingdom of Israel for some decades. Now, during the reign of Ahab, Mesha, king of Moab, broke free from Israel, and we actually know that not just from Scripture, but we actually know this from an inscription that archeologists have found, which is called the Mesha inscription or the Moabite Stone. He actually made an inscription to commemorate the fact that he broke free from the people of Israel.
TV
Oh, interesting!
Dr. JS
Yeah, it’s currently in the Louvre Museum in Paris. You can you can go see it and you can read the beautiful Hebrew there. It’s written in a beautiful Paleo Hebrew script, and it and it tells the story. English translations of that are widely available. Anyway, that’s the general context. Now, 1 or 2 Kings 3 tells us that Ahab’s son Jehoram wanted to subjugate Moab again, and the reason is quite understandable. Mesha used to have to give 1000’s of sheep as tribute to Israel during that time, so Jehoram was losing a big economic supply chain that he wanted to put back in place again. So he approaches the king of Judah, which is Jehoshaphat, and he approaches the king of Edom further south. And the plan is that they go south, underneath the Dead Sea, and then they go back north on the eastern side and invade Moab from the south, kind of as a sneak attack. On the way, the king of Judah says, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if we seek the approval of a prophet of the Lord?” And so they meet Elisha on the way, and Elisha has no use for Jehoram because Jehoram is a son of Ahab. And Elisha said, “Look, if it were just you, Jehoram, I wouldn’t even look at you. But because Jehoshaphat is here, okay, I’ll perform a miracle.” And so he performs a miracle that causes water to flow in a desert land, and in the early morning sun, which is red, the water looks like blood, and so the Moabite troops look out and they see all this blood on the ground, or they think it’s blood, and they think these three kings that were coming our way must have had a falling out amongst each other, and they’ve killed each other. And so let’s go get ourselves some plunder. So they go for the plunder, surprise attack. They get attacked by the three armies, and they get pushed back, and all their cities get defeated. So this is actually quite a widespread war, and the people of Israel are actually quite cruel to them. They throw stones on their ground to make their lands hard to cultivate, and then they actually corner Mesha in his capital city, and they besiege that city. And it looks like that city is going to fall. In that context, in an act of desperation, Mesha performs a human sacrifice. He takes the crown prince. Now, you mentioned child sacrifice. This is probably not a child.
TV
Oh, interesting.
Dr. JS
Yeah, it’s probably an adult human being. Scholars have done the mathematical calculations and figured that, and it does say that he’s the crown prince who was supposed to take the throne after him, so he’d already been designated as the as the next king.
TV
Oh, I see. Okay, yeah.
Dr. JS
So Mesha is taking the costliest thing that he can possibly think of and sacrificing that. Now he’s not sacrificing to the Lord. No, he’s sacrificing to the God of the Moabites, Chemosh. The Moabite stone tells us that he was a worshiper of Chemosh, and then it says, then we get this baffling bit. Great wrath comes against Israel. Doesn’t say whose wrath, and it doesn’t say how the wrath manifested itself. So people have explained it in multiple ways. Was this a case of Israel just being horrified and saying okay, this is disgusting. We didn’t sign up for this, and so they go off. That’s probably not the case because the word that’s used for wrath there is almost always in the Old Testament used for God’s wrath.
TV
Right.
Dr. JS
So then you have two possible options. One is that the Lord is angry with His people of Israel, and He sees this as a war which he was willing to go along with, but when the Israelites take it to this extent that they drive Mesha to an act of desperation, whereby he’s even willing to sacrifice the crown prince, then the Lord says to Israel, “Enough! You’re not going to get this victory.” And so wrath goes out from the Lord, and the Israelites are forced to depart to their own land, shy of getting the victory. Jehoram does not get what he wanted after all, because the Lord is displeased with him. That’s one way. Another way, and I say this with some hesitation and some uncertainty as well, is that this is the wrath of the Moabite god Chemosh. Now you think that’s crazy? Chemosh is a pagan god. Pagan gods don’t exist. There is only one god, and that god is the Lord. Yahweh the God of Israel. The passage that comes to mind is 1 Corinthians 10, where the Apostle Paul writes to Christians that they should not offer sacrifices on pagan altars because pagan sacrifices are actually offered to demons. So that makes me wonder: could there be something demonic here? So that when a human sacrifice of this degree, a crown prince, an adult human being, is offered to demons, the result is that the demons are emboldened, and so that this is an instance of demonic fury that somehow breaks out against the people of Israel, such that they’re forced to retreat and go back to the Romans.
TV
So, like the opposite of what we see when God’s angels are fighting for…
Dr. JS
Yeah, this is a kind of a surge of demonic fury. Now, which it is, to be honest, I don’t know. And the passage itself is kind of vague. It says, “Great wrath came against Israel.” Doesn’t say whose wrath. Doesn’t say how that wrath manifested itself. So that’s the best I’ve got.
TV
That’s pretty good. We read this as a family at the dinner table, and I’ve got, my oldest is seven, and he picked up on this. Like it was like, well, what? Yeah, like who won that again? Yeah, and I was like, good question. I don’t know. That’s, but yeah, that. I mean, I think either…
Dr. JS
It’s horrific what happened here.
TV
I kind of thought of it as an emboldening, emboldening of the Moabites, but that doesn’t really explain the word wrath. Like as in they took courage because of that. As in, they believed that that would help them, and then they. But yeah, it does, it gave me also a sense that there was some something that God had against Israel that we’re not told.
Dr. JS
Either way, this is a horrific act. It’s one of the most despicable things that you read in the Old Testament. Human sacrifice of this kind of a of a nature and the effect that that had on the people of Israel, such that they did not win the win that victory. It’s something that is completely otherworldly for us, but I think it does show something of the spiritual war that’s at the back of warfare at that time. There, there are all kinds of spiritual dimensions to the story. Even Elisha’s sign of the water flowing through the land and so on. Yeah, it’s a spiritual dimension that we don’t always think of, where which shows that this is not purely military strategy that’s happening here.
TV
It’s funny that we commonly accept that when it’s the angels helping Israel.
Dr. JS
When you read the book of Daniel, for instance, and you read Daniel chapter 11 and the vision that’s given there, the yeah the heavenly being comes to Daniel and explains to him, look behind this war that you might see at a military level between the armies of Persia and the armies of Greece. There’s actually a military dimension. It’s angels fighting against each other, and then you come to Revelation 12, where because Christ is on the throne now, angel – the archangel Michael and his angels fight against the dragon again and push him back.
TV
Right.
Dr. JS
So 2 Kings 3 is in an earlier context where the demons have not yet been defeated and where they still have major sway all over the earth. You find more instances of that in the Old Testament. Think of Job chapter 1 as well, where God regularly calls the sons of God, the angelic beings, to account before His royal throne, and Satan also is among them.
TV
Yep.
Dr. JS
And God asks Satan, “Where have you been?” Well, I’ve been roaming the earth, and so on. And yeah, in the New Testament context,
TV
Hanging out with the king of Moab.
Dr. JS
Yeah, who knows? Yeah, yeah.
TV
Wow. Well, I mean, we’ve been doing this a while, and I don’t, I don’t have anything more for you today. But you know, well, let’s prepare some more for next time. There’s the Old Testament, I just every time we sit down, I’m encouraged by the your ability to explain some of these things because it’s it there are some just absolutely challenging passages and being able to understand like we talked about in our first episode the unchanging nature of God across the Old and New Testament, and then now, like just diving into these, like very specifically, yeah, I appreciate the wisdom on being able to shed some light on these things, or at least unpack them. I think every minister should try to preach a sermon on this. Some of these, the especially the essentially a sermon you gave us on Deuteronomy 21:11 to 13.
Dr. JS
Yeah, there’s gospel to be found all over the scriptures. I don’t recommend that ministers regularly preach sermons on obscure texts, but they are there, and you do find interesting and surprising gospel messages in passages like that as well. So from time to time, yeah, it’s well worth the effort for a minister to preach on something a little bit different from the usual.
TV
It’s encouraging though to do this, but just seeing that again, as Christians, we don’t need to shy away from what the Bible says. I think when we read some of these passages with our kids, we’re a little bit, I feel ill-equipped to read them with my kids if I get those questions, but you don’t need to shy away. Like there are, maybe we don’t understand every answer, but a lot of times the answers are more than adequate, especially if you come to Dr. Smith. So appreciate your time again.
Dr. JS
Pleasure.
TV
Thank you so much. Thanks for everyone for listening, and keep having Real Talk.