The Christians today tolerate and even endorse the hideous view that as every nation in ancient times kept slaves excuses Israel, the supposed people of God, doing it.
So would the fact that the other nations raped and sacrificed in temples make it understandable for Israel to do it if it were engaging in that too?I would add that Israel raped slaves by marrying them. And slaves were under the divine decree that they could be stoned to death for certain sins. So sacrifice in a sense was happening.
We must remember that since Moses, Israel claimed to be holy, ie separate and consecrated to God. It kept a firm distance from surrounding nations. For slavery to be happening was wholly inexcusable and implies actual approval from God if he set up the nation as Moses claimed.Israel complained and lamented their own years of tormenting slavery in Egypt and they went and did the same thing to others, to women and children.
The claim that God was weaning them off enslaving bit by bit is nonsense. God could decree, "I let you keep slaves but against my will. Ponder this daily and one day you may free your slaves." There was no excuse for silence. The scriptures changing the slavery rules and slavery becoming less important does not mean that God was weaning them off it. It was how things change over time.
Worse the Ten Commandments from God and which were endorsed by Jesus ban coveting slaves. The ban on stealing stopped people taking slaves from their master to free them.
The Bible God not only condoned slavery where somebody
works for nothing and is seen as a master's property. He went much
further. He protected violence against slaves.
God decreed in
Exodus that if a man's slave, woman or child even, dies two days after a
beating by their master that the master is to be unpunished. How anybody could
say God only had to put up with slavery and hated it when he made such a
dastardly evil rule is a mystery.
This rule applied to a Israelite slave. The implication is that if a non-Israelite was beaten to a pulp and killed in a frenzied attack the master would get away with it.
No protections specifically for child or women slaves were in effect. No age limit was spelled out by God. The Israelite slave system was based on the assumption that Israel was the chosen race, a people set apart. We now know from DNA and careful historical investigation that it is a mixture. People from Canaan etc went out on their own. Israel was a composite of the surrounding races and nations that it said it was no part of. God obviously did not know that!
Jesus validated monstrous Moses in Matthew 23 and even allegedly had Moses appear with him as if one sanctioned the other....
APPENDIX AI REWRITE
Many modern Christians seem to accept — or even defend — the disturbing notion that Israel’s participation in slavery was excusable simply because slavery was common among ancient nations. But if that logic holds, then would Israel also be justified in practicing rape or ritual sacrifice, as other nations did? Of course not — yet this flawed reasoning continues.
It’s worth noting that in some cases, Israel did engage in morally troubling practices that resemble those very things. For instance, enslaved women were often taken as wives — essentially institutionalized sexual exploitation under the guise of marriage. Enslaved individuals could be executed for certain offenses, which, in effect, made them sacrificial under divine law.
Israel claimed to be a holy nation — set apart, consecrated to God — since the time of Moses. It maintained a strong ideological and spiritual distance from surrounding cultures. Yet it embraced slavery — a fact that is indefensible if one takes its divine calling seriously. If God truly established Israel as His chosen people, then the presence of slavery within that system suggests not just tolerance but approval.
This is especially troubling when you consider that Israel often recalled and mourned its own experience of brutal enslavement in Egypt. And yet, once free, it subjected others — including women and children — to the same suffering. The idea that God was "weaning" Israel off slavery over time is unconvincing. If God found slavery morally repugnant, He could have issued a clear command: “Though I permit you to hold slaves for now, it is against My will. Reflect on this daily, and may you one day free them all.” But no such command exists.
The changes in biblical slavery laws over time reflect human social evolution, not divine pedagogy. The shifting norms do not indicate that God was gradually guiding Israel away from slavery. They show that practices change because societies change — not because of any divine strategy.
Even the Ten Commandments — said to come directly from God and affirmed by Jesus — indirectly endorse slavery. The commandment against coveting includes not coveting someone else’s slaves, implicitly recognizing slaves as property. The prohibition against stealing also prevented people from taking slaves from their owners to liberate them.
One of the most troubling laws comes from Exodus: if a slave dies two days after being beaten by a master, the master is not to be punished. This is a divine directive. How, then, can anyone argue that God "tolerated slavery but hated it"? Such a law is not mere tolerance — it is sanction. Worse, this rule applied even to Israelite slaves. The implication is that the life of a non-Israelite slave was even less protected — a master could beat them to death without consequence.
There were no specific protections for women or child slaves. God, according to the text, offered no minimum age for servitude, no special safeguards for the vulnerable. The entire institution of slavery in ancient Israel was built on the premise that Israel was a chosen, superior people. Yet modern genetics and history reveal Israel as an ethnically mixed society — a cultural amalgam of Canaanites and other neighboring groups. The notion of being “set apart” was more myth than reality — and apparently, God didn’t know that.
And then we come to Jesus. In Matthew 23, he affirms the authority of Moses — a figure under whose leadership these disturbing laws were delivered. Jesus even appears with Moses in the transfiguration scene, as though lending divine legitimacy to him. This association raises deep theological questions: If Jesus represents a moral ideal, why does he validate a figure tied to such grievous practices?