Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Leviticus 25:44-46
Regulations Regarding Foreign Bondservants (Leviticus 25:44).
Foreign bondservants were necessarily in a different position for they had no hope of a future restoration of land. It may be asked why foreign bondservants were allowed at all. The answer is because of demand by the foreign bondservants. They came to Israel poor, hungry and with nothing, seeking and begging for a permanent position. They bound themselves to work for the keep of themselves and their families. They did not want to be hired servants who could be taken on and fired. They wanted permanent security, and they received that in bondservice. Had there been no provision for this they would simply have gone away empty and hungry, and starved. The Law was practical. It was for running a country as it was, not a Utopian ideal which could never work in practise because of the condition of men's hearts.
Israel was not a bad place to do bondservice compared with some other places. They had kinds of protection under the Law which few other countries gave them. And it would not have been a kindness to ban such bondservice. For any theoretical alternative would simply have been redundant, and they would have had to go elsewhere where conditions were worse. The Israelites were not angels. Their behaviour in the wilderness revealed that. As we know they were not very faithful in keeping the covenant as it was. Thus they had to be catered for as they were. And poor aliens needed the security of bondservice. For them it was not an option, it was a necessity. It was in fact a way of life often taken by choice. They would not want it banned.
“And as for your bondmen, and your bondmaids, whom you shall have, of the nations that are round about you, of them shall you buy bondmen and bondmaids.”
So permission was given for Israelites to buy bondservants of the nations who were to be round about them. But they were to love them as they loved themselves (Leviticus 19:34). They were to protect their interests (Leviticus 19:20; Exodus 20:10; Exodus 21:20; Exodus 21:26; Exodus 21:32). If they were Habiru (wandering, unattached peoples) they would have the normal Habiru seven year contracts with generous provision for when they left (Exodus 21:2; Deuteronomy 15:12 - note the implication that many would want to stay longer) as also at Nuzi. But the standard of their lives would in the end not depend on the law but on the kindness or otherwise of their masters. And many of them had no other option before them. A general manumission would have done them no good. They would simply have had to seek bondservice elsewhere, usually under worse conditions.
“Moreover of the children of the strangers that sojourn among you, of them shall you buy, and of their families that are with you, which they have begotten in your land. And they shall be your possession.”
Again they could ‘buy' bondservants of resident foreigners living among them, that is enter into a contract with them of permanent service in return for permanent shelter and keep for them and their families. And they would belong to them to be treated with all the care shown for valuable assets. We should remember that life was in fact hard for all. Survival was a struggle for all.
“And you shall make them an inheritance for your children after you, to hold for a possession; of them shall you take your bondmen for ever, but over your brethren the children of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with rigor.”
These bondmen and bondwomen became a permanent part of the ‘household' and would therefore continue on from father to son. They were there in perpetuity. They had nowhere else to go. But this was never to be true of ‘Israelites' within the covenant. They were to be treated in a much more ‘brotherly fashion', remembering that at the year of Yubile they would return to their own land.
In the nature of what human beings are necessary distance had to be kept between a master and his bondservants so that they would retain respect of him and not take advantage of what they saw as ‘softness'. There are always some who will do so. The path of a godly master is not always an easy one. But he must still have respect for those beneath him.
(We must not read back into their way of life our ideas of slavery. We should remember, for example, that in Egypt all men were slaves. Even the Grand Vizier. They were slaves to Pharaoh. Only the priests were ‘free', but they were bound by their own rigid hierarchy. Everything Egyptians possessed they had from Pharaoh, and owed to him, and he had the power of life and death over them. There was a sense in which Israel were like that with Yahweh. They were slaves to Yahweh. So they did not see the concept of ‘slavery' as the cruel thing that we see it as. It was a way of life for all, a matter of degrees. They would have understood no other. In the end all men were slaves, slaves to their gods, slaves to the king, slaves to their tribe, slaves to their family. There were levels of slavery but all were slaves. What mattered was how it was handled. ‘Freedom' was limited to the very few and was a concept that would take thousands of years to grow into. They could not in fact have coped with ‘freedom'. We can only enjoy freedom because of the framework that has taken hundreds of years to put in place. The concepts in this chapter were a genuine beginning to freedom).