Sep

Bondslaves of Christ

Chris on September 25th, 2008

Paul, a bondslave of HaMoshiach Yeshua, called to be an apostle, set apart for the good news of God

It’s not often you hear the term ’slave’ in any sort of positive light. When we think of slaves, we think of someone being bought and sold against their will, made to serve a master they do not love or care for, someone in an unfortunate circumstance that they would greatly desire to get out of. But has that always been the case? Is that the picture that the Bible actually presents?

One of the usual attacks on Scripture by unbelievers is that it promotes slavery and since we know that slavery is a horrible thing, we should assume that the Bible can’t be trusted. Perhaps having a grounded understanding of what the Bible actually says may shed some light on the misunderstandings above and help you reconcile what most people toss aside as ‘ancient ignorance.’

The Bondslave

In the New Testament, the word slave or servant seems to get thrown around on just about every page. Paul called himself a bondslave (δοῦλος; doulos) of Christ. At the top of this post is Romans 1:1 as a primary example. A lot of our English Bibles will translate this word servant or slave, depending on the context, but in its most literal definition, the term bondslave fits best and is very important as it is an antitype of a strange Old Testament practice that the Israelites were very familiar with.

In Exodus 21:2-11 we see the first laws regarding Hebrew slavery. This word that gets translated as slave or servant in English shows a consistency if we translate it as bondslave (עֶבֶד; ebed) just as in the New Testament. Once we establish that linking, we can start putting together a puzzle of something that seems to parallel a relationship that we, as believers, should have to Christ.

If we outline the passage of Exodus 21, we can get quite a bit of information about this practice from just a few verses, for instance:

· In Exodus 21:2 the bondslave can be bought but can only serve for 6 years. On the seventh year, which is a sabbatical year on the Hebrew calendar, he is to be set free.

· In Exodus 21:3-4 we start dealing with marriage and the process at that point becomes a lifelong commitment. If the slave is given a wife, he leaves his wife with the master if he leaves at the end of the 6 year term. This encourages him to stay with the house for life, married to both his wife and his master. For the slave to leave at that point, he would be divorcing his wife and committing adultery. Marriage will become an idiom even more when dealing with female bondslaves later in this passage.

· But what if the bondslave would wish to stay with his master, regardless of marital status? Exodus 21:5-6 outlines an archaic process where the bondslave makes a personal decision to become a slave to his master for the rest of his life. He has his ear pierced with an awl (an ice-pick type of tool) to the door or doorpost of his master’s house, thus symbolizing the servant as a member and slave to the house of his master for life. We’re going to come back to this soon.

· Exodus 21:7-11 outlines what to do regarding female bondslaves. A female can be sold under a different set of rules. Here her status as bondslave is for life, compared to the 6 years for the male. However, if the master is unhappy with her, he cannot sell her off; instead, she must be redeemed by the family. If the master were to wish the female bondslave out of his house, he is, in a sense, bringing shame on himself as having broken faith with her, something that would be considered adultery. This starts to look more like a marriage than a slave trade. With that line of thinking, the master may even want his own son to marry the female bondslave and now he has taken her to be his own daughter. By doing so, the master must also grant her special privileges as if she were his own. But there’s something else to notice in Exodus 21:11 that can easily be overlooked. The female bondslave must be let free if the master chooses not to provide her with any one of 3 particular items. These items are food, clothing and marital rights. Marital rights are an obligation to the master and if he does not provide them, he is now bringing shame upon his house just as if he were rejecting her as noted above, thus coming full circle to the adultery analogy.

Debts, Payments, Another Chance

The bondslave practice could be done for a number of reasons which are another important factor in understanding the master and slave relationship as outlined in Scripture. In Leviticus 25:39 we see that a person may wish to sell himself to a master because he is poor. In this respect, Leviticus 25:39-42 states that the bondslave should be treated as hired help and not a slave, until the year of the jubilee, at which point all ownership gets reset. God specifies that the bondslaves are His slaves, that He is the true master of these people. In Leviticus 25:43, God instructs the masters that they are not to rule over their slaves ruthlessly, pointing out that they are actually God’s people, not the masters. This also clarifies Leviticus 25:44-46 as only the foreigners can be kept and handed down as property. This is another discussion that we won’t get into here, but should be noted that Gentiles living among the Israelites were to in effect, adapt to the Israelites way of life and not the other way around.

If you owed a debt to someone, you could work for it. This is a part of being a bondslave. The 6 year term was considered sufficient to pay for any debt, and becoming a bondslave didn’t change your social or personal status. Once the term was completed, the slave was free to go back to his own house.¹ Likewise, in Exodus 22:3, if a thief was caught, he could make restitution by becoming a bondslave to the house he stole from. Regardless of the circumstance, the bondslave was to be treated well and fed from his masters own flock. He was to be freed at the end of his term and not sent away empty handed. We can see in Deuteronomy 15:12-15 that they were to be freed and redeemed this way because God had redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. In Deuteronomy 15:18, God instructs the masters to not consider it a hardship to let the bondslave go, but instead be grateful for his hired hand and if they are, then God will bless the master in return.

But that brings us to Deuteronomy 15:16-17. Here is another issue where the slave may not want to leave his master at the appointed time. Why would they want to remain a slave? One thing you’ll notice is that it’s completely up to the bondslave to decide to stay. It’s quite possible that he may not have anything to return to. His master may have been exceedingly kind to him, giving him a home, food, water, clothing and possibly even a wife and family. We’ve already seen that the masters were instructed by God to care for their servants and not take advantage of them. Some bondslaves could even climb to high positions in the family much like with Abraham and his servant Eliezer. Joseph is another example in Genesis 39. The point is that the masters were to treat their help well, as though they were hired, and the help was to submit to the masters as hired servants.

An Eternal Commitment

As mentioned in the outline of Exodus 21:2-11, and now Deuteronomy 15:16-17, the slave may very well wish to serve his master for life. In such an event, his ear is to be pierced to the door of the house for which he will serve. This symbolizes his commitment and servitude to the house and makes it everlasting. There will be no turning back, no sabbatical year to clear his name. If he desires to do this, it is a lifelong commitment. The pierced ear will from now on be a constant reminder that the individual is a slave to his master, that he has a responsibility to please his master and his status as such will be known to everyone he comes in contact with.

We often read Scripture pretty casually, without giving much thought and diligent study to the details of the passages. We’ve seen in just a few verses of Exodus and Deuteronomy just how much can be contained in these ancient practices. But even getting into the details can often leave them dark and without meaning, seemingly interesting but still pointless in our modern day thinking. That is, until we come across something that might catch our eye, buried in another verse, some 500 pages away. Certainly, if we hadn’t studied the bondslave in the Torah, the 5 books of Moses, we’d of passed by it without a second thought, but now when we come to Psalm 40:6 and read ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced’ there’s something that stands out. The Hebrew word translated ‘pierced’ would most literally be translated ‘digged’ or ‘dug out’. If we investigate Psalm 40 a little deeper, we might glean quite a bit more that had been missed until now. In verse 7 it reads ‘Here I am, I have come, it is written of me in the scroll.’ And further yet it reads ‘I delight to do Your will, O God…I have told the glad news of deliverance…I have not restrained my lips…I have told of your faithfulness and your salvation’. It sounds a lot like Christ speaking here. Speaking of Christ, in Philippians 2:7, Paul states that Christ made himself nothing, taking the form of a doulos, being made in human likeness. Christ was a bondslave to His Father. We don’t often think of Him as a slave, but Hebrews 3:1 notes that He was an apostle, literally, someone who was sent. Furthermore, as we see the idiom of marriage in Scripture and tie in the role of the doulos we have a twofold literary type. We are bondslaves of Christ, having given ourselves to Him for life as our Savior. He is our Master and primary example, our affection and strength, our utmost desire and as His bondslaves we are to submit to His authority as the head of the House (Ephesians 6:5-9). You’ll remember also, that as parts of the bondslave idiom seemed to paint a picture of marriage, we are the bride of Christ and as the bride of Christ, we are to submit to Him as the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the assembly, His body.

Christ Is Our Master, We Are His Bondslaves

Our ear, pierced to the door of the house, of which Christ is the Master. Hebrews 3:1-6 helps to tie it all together:

1Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Yeshua the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses — as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

Paul wasn’t ashamed of labeling himself a bondslave of Christ. He knew whom he served and that his servitude was not in vain. Paul lived as though he were running a race and it was all for the glory of his Master. When we think of slavery in Scripture, we should not be ashamed as it paints a gorgeous picture of our relationship with Christ, proving again that the Scriptures are completely prophetic and truly, the volume of the book is written of Him.