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PROMISE, ADOPTION, AND LIBERTY And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile: And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God (Lev. 25:39-43).
The theocentric principle is clear: God is the master. He sets the terms for bondservice. What was a bondservant in Mosaic Israel? The Hebrew words used in this passage cannot be distinguished by grammar. In verse 39, the Hebrew translated as bondservant is `abodah. It is used in many ways in the Old Testament, sometimes referring to honorable labor, sometimes not. The word is found in the description of Israel's bondage in Egypt: "And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour" (Ex. 1:14). It is also used with respect to priestly service: "This is the service of the families of the sons of Merari, according to all their service, in the tabernacle of the congregation, under the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest" (Num. 4:33). It is used to describe work prohibited on the sabbath or other festival days: "And on the seventh day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work" (Num. 28:25). There is no ethical pattern here. The word simply means service.
In Leviticus 25:42-43, another Hebrew word is used, `ebed. This word is used twice: "For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God." The first sense is honorable; the second is dishonorable. Grammar does not tell us anything that would enable us to distinguish the two legal conditions: servants to God vs. slaves to men. Context must determine its interpretation. In this respect, both of these Hebrew words -- `abodah and `ebed -- are analogous to the Greek word doulos, which is sometimes translated slave and other times as servant.
We must therefore turn from grammar to context in our search for meaning. The context of this passage is twofold: poverty and permanent slavery. The preceding section in Leviticus 25 deals with zero-interest charitable loans to poor people, either Israelites or resident aliens (vv. 35-38). The succeeding section deals with inter-generational slavery: a legal condition exclusively of non-Israelites (vv. 44-46). In between is this section: how to treat a poor Israelite.
Two Forms of Bondservice In the previous chapter, I argued that the identifying mark of a person who was morally entitled to consideration for a zero-interest charitable loan was his willingness to become a bondservant if he did not repay the debt on schedule. In the sabbatical year, charitable debts were cancelled (Deut. 15:1-7). So was bondservice (Deut. 15:12). The reason for this was that the two obligations were linked judicially. When the legal obligation to repay a charitable loan ceased, so did the obligation to serve as a bondservant for having defaulted on a charitable loan.
Leviticus 25:39 states that an Israelite could be sold into bondservice. He would not automatically go free until the jubilee year. The sabbath-year release did not apply to him. I call this jubilee bondservice, in contrast to sabbatical. I argue in this chapter that both forms of bondservice were likely to have been legal penalties for personal bankruptcy. There was always the threat of debt bondage in Mosaic Israel. The differences between the two forms of bondservice were the results of two different types of loans: charitable vs. non-charitable. There was a much greater threat of long-term bondage for having defaulted on a non-charitable loan than a charitable loan. A person entered a business debt contract with open eyes. A poor man who sought a charitable loan was under greater external constraints. God imposed reduced risks of servitude on him.
Bondservice as Collateral
A man's unwillingness to bear the risk of up to six years of bondservice for his failure to repay a loan established the loan as a morally compulsory, zero-interest, charitable loan. Unless the poor borrower were willing to take this risk, he had no moral claim on the lender. Yet it is clear from the text that Israelites could lawfully be sold into servitude until the next jubilee year. This bondage was a means of debt repayment. So, if servitude of up to 49 years was possible, why did the threat of no more than six years of bondservice judicially identify a morally compulsory charitable loan?
The answer is found in the issue of legal access to the inheritance. A man who was so poor that he was willing to risk bondservice until the next sabbatical year, but who was unwilling to put up his land as collateral, had a moral claim on a zero-interest charitable loan. He had a property to return to. He was poor, but he was obviously not so present-oriented or risk-oriented that he would use his inheritance as collateral. His poverty was temporary. He had an inheritance to return to in the sabbatical year after a period of bondservice. His post-crisis goal was liberty and dominion: self-government. So, he used his own potential servitude as collateral to secure the charitable loan.
The borrower who was willing to use his inheritance as collateral in a business loan, or one who had already leased out his land until the next jubilee year, was not equally protected by the Mosaic law. He had no moral claim on a zero-interest charitable loan. Either this was a business loan, in which the element of moral obligation was not involved, or else the person was economically incompetent: he had already leased his inheritance, yet he still wanted a loan. For this person, the time limits on bondservice that were offered by the sabbatical year of release were inoperative. He could be placed into bondservice until the next jubilee year.
Access to the inheritance served as the debtor's sanctuary. If he had not leased out his land, or if he had not lost it because he had used it as collateral to secure a non-charity loan that later went bad, he could not be placed in bondservice for longer than six years. God reminded the debtor that retaining possession of his inheritance was very important in God's eyes. Debtors who were willing to place their inheritance at risk to secure a business loan, or who had already leased out their land, were regarded by the Mosaic law as second-class debtors. They had no moral claim on a zero-interest loan; they also did not possess a sanctuary from bondage: they could serve beyond six years, i.e., until the next jubilee trumpet sounded.
Bondservice and Boundaries An impoverished Israelite who had been sold into jubilee bondservice was not to be treated as a bondservant by a fellow Israelite; instead, he was to be treated as a hired servant. This passage indicates that being a hired servant was preferable to being a bondservant. An Israelite was not to compel a fellow Israelite to serve as a bondservant. We need to ask: What was the difference between a bondservant and a hired servant?
There were exclusionary boundaries on hired servants and sojourners that did not apply to bondservants: "There shall no stranger eat of the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest, or an hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing. But if the priest buy any soul with his money, he shall eat of it, and he that is born in his house: they shall eat of his meat" (Lev. 22:10-11). A sojourner and a hired servant could not eat a holy meal with a priest; the priest's household bondservant could. What was different between the two? The sojourner and hired servant were not owned, and therefore they could leave the household; the household's boundary did not restrict them. The slave could not leave; the boundary did restrict him. He therefore had legal access to the ritual meal of the priest's household. He was judicially inside the household's boundary.
The shared judicial status of sojourners and hired servants in Mosaic Israel seems to have been two-fold: first, they could leave the household of the employer; second, in some instances they were uncircumcised. We see this in the law of the Passover: it prohibited strangers and hired servants from eating, yet it allowed circumcised strangers to eat.
And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof: But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof. In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth ought of the flesh abroad out of the house; neither shall ye break a bone thereof. All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof (Ex. 12:43-48; emphasis added).
The defining judicial issue in the Passover law was an individual's circumcision, not his right of mobility. In contrast, the definition of "sojourner" and "hired servant" applicable to Leviticus 25:40 is based on the existence of a household boundary. The sojourner and the hired servant could legally leave the jurisdiction of the household at the end of their voluntary, contractual service. The bondservant could not. The jubilee law did not require the Israelite to treat his impoverished brother as an uncircumcised person; it therefore must have required the owner to treat his fellow Israelite as well as he would treat a geographically mobile person. The poor Israelite was to be protected.
We now come to the next question: Who were the poor?
Who Were the Poor in Israel? The poor man had no money or marketable assets except his labor. This is an economic definition. There is no biblical text that reveals such a definition. It is not suitable as a legal definition. The Mosaic law applied to legally identifiable classes of individuals. It prohibited certain forms of behavior regarding the treatment of the poor: "thou shalt not." But there is no economic definition of poverty offered by the Bible. This case law had a judicial definition rather than an economic definition.
A man was defined as legally poor in terms of his willingness to risk bondservice if he defaulted on a charitable loan. Access to one's inheritance assured liberation from debt servitude, either in the sabbatical year (where the land was not pledged) or the jubilee year (where the land might be pledged). The jubilee law did not make economic poverty illegal. It did not equalize wealth. It did not equalize opportunity. What it did was place maximum limits on debt servitude, and therefore maximum limits on debt: six years (zero-interest charitable loans) and 49 years (interest-bearing business loans). The jubilee law restricted the discounted market value of a loan collateralized by a man's inheritance. In year 50, the land would return to him. Lenders beware!
There was no guarantee that a plot of ground would be economically valuable through the centuries. On the contrary, population growth would guarantee that most plots of rural land would become decreasingly productive as each family's plot shrank. The jubilee law made no legal guarantee of anyone's economic condition. The Bible is not a handbook of statist wealth redistribution. It is a handbook of covenantal liberty: God's handbook for man's redemption, i.e., a transformation of his judicial status in God's court: from guilty to innocent.
If my explanation of the Mosaic law's judicial definition of poverty in this case law is correct, then this case law no longer applies under the New Covenant. The definition was tied to inheritance within the Promised Land. With the annulment of the Promised Land's special covenantal status, this case law's definition of poverty ceased to be judicially relevant.
To Buy a Brother This passage governs the treatment of an Israelite who has been sold to another Israelite. He had to serve the purchaser until the jubilee unless his kinsman-redeemer bought him out of bondage. This means that he was not under the protection of the sabbatical year of release (Deut. 15). Why not? Because he was not in his predicament as a result of his inability to repay a zero-interest charitable loan. Such loans were cancelled in the sabbatical year. Also, the person who was sold into bondage because of his failure to repay a charitable loan had to be provided with capital when he departed during the sabbatical year: "And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him" (Deut. 15:13-14). This is not specified as a requirement here: "And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return" (Lev. 25:41). Yet in both cases, the justification for the law was the former condition of the Israelites in Egypt: "And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day" (Deut. 15:15). "For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen" (Lev. 25:42).
What is the judicial distinction between the two conditions of household servitude? The Bible is not explicit, but the difference appears to relate to lawful immediate access to rural land. The poor man in Deuteronomy 15 was to be sent away with sheep, grain, and wine. This indicates that he had a home to return to. The poor man in Leviticus 25 was to be sent back to his land only with his family. Nothing is said of his buyer's responsibility to provide him with any economic resources. His judicial status as a free man was his primary resource; his landed inheritance was his economic resource; and his family went free with him. This distinguished him from both the poor man who had defaulted on a zero-interest, morally mandatory charitable loan (Deut. 15:12) and the pagan slave who never departed, and whose children became the property of the Israelite who had bought him (Lev. 25:45-46).
The poor man in Leviticus 25 had already been legally stripped of immediate access to his land. Until the jubilee, he became as a poor resident alien in the land. He did not own a home in a walled city. He was landless. But this landless condition was economic, not judicial. His judicial status as a free man was guaranteed by his legal claim to his landed inheritance. The jubilee year would reinstate him as owner and legal occupier of his family plot. He had no claim to his family's land in the present, but he had permanent title. The year of jubilee guaranteed this. But if he became a bondservant, he forfeited his judicial status as a freeman until he was released. He could no longer respond to a call to be numbered without his master's permission.
Unlike the foreign slave, who was the property of the family that bought him or inherited him, the temporarily landless Israelite in bondage had to be paid a wage by his Israelite master.(1) At the very least, he had to be treated as well as a hired man was treated. The hired man could walk away from a tyrant. The permanent slave could not. So, the master was not allowed to treat his Israelite servant in the way that he was allowed to treat his permanent heathen slaves.
But this distinction between freeman and slave does not explain why this case law required the owner to treat him as a hired servant. What was the distinguishing mark of the hired servant? Answer: he could walk away from the household of the man who hired him. To retain his services, the renter of his labor services had to pay him a wage.
Wages
This means that in order to obey this law, an Israelite master must have had to pay a wage to an Israelite bondservant. The master was to this extent not an owner but a renter of services. Yet the servant had been sold into servitude. We must examine the apparent discrepancy between these judicial conditions: owner vs. renter; bondservant vs. hired servant.
The wage was crucial to the servant. If saved, it was this money or goods that would serve as his source of re-capitalization in the year of jubilee. He did not have to be given anything at the time of his departure in the jubilee year, unlike the land-owning poor Israelite who had defaulted on a charitable loan (Deut. 15:14-15). He had to be paid a wage, also unlike the Deuteronomic (sabbatical) bondservant. The jubilee bondservant was under bondage for a much longer period than the Deuteronomic bondservant, except in the seventh cycle of sabbatical years that preceded the jubilee. He could amass more wealth through thrift because he had more years of bondservice in which to save.
This arrangement raises a significant question. If the buyer could go into the open market and hire an Israelite for a day, or a month, or a year, why would he buy a full-time hired servant? The latter had to be cared for in bad times, whereas a hired servant could be dismissed. The buyer's expected stream of net income had to reflect the costs of feeding, clothing, and housing the servant, in good times and bad, and also paying him a wage. Why would anyone bother to buy such a servant? Answer: the buyer was securing a permanent hired worker who could not legally depart in search of higher wages elsewhere or better working conditions elsewhere. What the buyer was securing was a hired servant who could not be bid away from the buyer's household. The servant could not leave at will. He was placed within a legal boundary: the household of the family that had purchased him. The buyer was buying a stream of labor services until the jubilee. The servant could not lawfully cut off this stream of service by walking away.
Did the owner-renter have to pay the bondservant a wage equal to that paid to a hired servant? The text is not explicit on this point. It says only that the Israelite must be treated as a hired servant. If a hired servant could leave at any time in response to a better offer, did the owner-renter have to match every offer? This seems unlikely, given the status of the bondservant as a member of the household until redemption. The bondservant gained security; this always comes at a price. The price of security is the loss of entrepreneurial opportunities -- in this case, the future prospects of renting one's services to another employer. So, the wages paid would have been discounted to compensate the owner-renter for the "lifetime (jubilee) employment contract" costs of employing the servant.
The legal option of liberty was always open: buying one's way out of bondage. But would he do this? This decision depended heavily on the owner's treatment. If his wages were high enough, he might do this. I conclude that wages that would not have enabled a man to buy his way out of servitude before the jubilee would have been judged as too low by a church court. But there was another factor that limited his personal exodus. The jubilee Israelite bondservant had no land to return to. He probably would have preferred the security of servitude, given the fact that his wages could accumulate to serve as his capitalization in the year of jubilee.
He was protected by law from exploitation. It is not clear whether the court with jurisdiction was civil or ecclesiastical. With respect to the requirement that he pay the servant a wage, it was ecclesiastical. The Bible does not designate the State as an agency that lawfully imposes positive sanctions. The State protects people from force and fraud by others.
"If He Be Sold Unto Thee" The passive language indicates that the individual did not sell himself; he was sold to the buyer. Who would do this? A previous owner? No; the law stipulates that "he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile." He had to be taken care of. He was not a commodity to be bought and sold at will. He had been a local resident: "thy brother that dwelleth by thee." He did not expect to be sent away from the neighborhood.
The likelihood is that the man had been sold in order to pay a debt, but not a charitable debt, which would have been governed by Deuteronomy 15. Perhaps he had moved into a walled city to live. Perhaps he got involved in a business transaction that involved debt. The venture failed, and he was sold to pay off the debt. He would have been sold to the highest bidder, but the bidders would have been restricted by the market to residents of the walled city or the immediate surrounding area, or to someone living in the neighborhood close to the man's family plot. These were the people who knew him and his capacities. There was not to be a large-scale market for Israelite servants in Israel. Servitude was personal, just as God's system of servitude is. Owners were supposed to know something about those whom they purchased.
It is possible that the man sold himself to the buyer in order to put aside money for his return to his land. This form of voluntary servitude was something like that of the voluntary servant of Deuteronomy 15: "And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee; Then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise" (Deut. 15:16-17). The difference is that the jubilee form of bondservice allowed the servant to return to his land at the jubilee.
An Exception to the Law: Criminal Trespass Wenham says that the reason why a man was sold to another was to pay off a debt.(2) I agree. He cites as proof Exodus 22:3, a case law governing a criminal trespass: "The sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him; for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft." I disagree with this proof text for Leviticus 25:39-43. The reason why I disagree is this: God does not subsidize evil.
A criminal, seeing the approach of the jubilee year, might think to himself: "If I get away with this crime, I will benefit. If I do not get away with it, I will not have to remain in another man's service for very long. The larger the value of what I steal, the better the risk-reward ratio is." The closer to the jubilee year, the better the risk-reward ratio for crimes against property, if Wenham's interpretation is correct. The criminal's victim could not expect anything like double restitution from the sale of a criminal if the jubilee year was near. The stream of expected labor services would be cut off by the jubilee. Thus, the sale price of the criminal would be low. If the criminal was to be liberated at the jubilee, this legal arrangement would not only subsidize theft, it would subsidize high-value thefts. The victims would be penalized because of the liberation aspect of the jubilee year.
My conclusion is that the year of jubilee did not apply to convicted criminals. Neither did the law mandating owners to treat Israelite bondservants as hired workers. Criminals were sold into slavery in order to repay their victims and meet God's judicial requirements. The most important issue was not the liberation of the criminal; rather, it was the maximization of the criminal's selling price, so that the victim would receive double restitution. The law of God does not discriminate against victims of crime in the name of liberation. The principle of victim's rights lies at the heart of the Bible's criminal justice system.(3) The criminal must have remained outside the protection of the jubilee, and therefore outside the judicial status of citizen, until he repaid his debt to his victim. He could regain his citizenship only when his debt was paid. His adult sons, however, could return to the family's land at the time of the jubilee. Their inheritance was not forfeited by their father's crime, for the sins of the father do not transfer to his children (Deut. 24:16). As redeemers, they might even have paid off his debt.
The biblical warrant for this interpretation is Israel's experience in the Babylonian captivity. God removed most of them from the land for 70 years. They had violated His sabbath year of release and the land's rest for 490 years (II Chron. 36:17, 21). God did not allow them to return to their individual patrimonies in the normal jubilee year. They were under criminal sanctions, repaying their victim: the land itself. They could not return to their patrimonies until the debt was repaid. They temporarily lost their judicial status as judges in the land.
The Price of Redemption
If my view is correct, then the closer the jubilee year, the larger the market for buying convicted criminals. As the legal term of service shortened for Israelite bondservants, and their market prices dropped accordingly, those in the market for long-term bondservants would have been forced increasingly to enter the market for heathen slaves and Israelite criminals.
Second, if I am correct about the unique inapplicability of the law governing the treatment of Israelite bondservants, the net return on an Israelite's investment in buying a convicted criminal would have equalled the return available to resident alien purchasers, who were not under the terms of this law. The price for criminals would have tended to be higher than the price of other Israelite bondservants, assuming that the criminal was not violent. The price-depressing aspects of buying a criminal would have been offset in whole or in part by the higher rate of return: no requirement to pay him a wage. This, too, was a benefit to the criminal's victim: a higher sale price was more likely to assure him of his double restitution payment.
The questions arise: What was the proper redemption price? How long would he have to serve? Did he become a lifetime slave? If his kinsman-redeemer wanted to buy him out of bondage, how much did he owe the buyer? The prorated price of the jubilee year did not apply if he was not entitled to go out in the jubilee.
Let us consider modern business practice. If a man buys an interest-paying instrument at face value in order to receive a guaranteed income, and the company issuing the bond possesses the right of redemption, the company must repay the face value of the bond in order to cancel the debt. The buyer has received guaranteed income from the asset in the meantime.
The economic difference between a bond and a bondservant is that the buyer is not sure how much net income the bondservant will produce. The bond pays a guaranteed rate of return. It is purchased at a discount from its face value. The discount is based on the prevailing rate of interest. The face value -- redemption price -- of the bond and today's rate of interest are known in advance. The price and the rate of return can be calculated.
There is no guaranteed rate of return for a bondservant. The buyer must estimate the future net income from a bondservant. Then he must discount this by the prevailing rate of interest. The higher the estimated net income, the higher the market price. But how long will he retain control over the bondservant? Unlike a bond, there is no fixed time period. Unlike a bondservant under the protection of the jubilee, there is no fixed time period. There must be a way to reduce the number of variables, so that the victim gets paid. But how?
The higher the estimated value of the criminal's productivity as a servant, the higher the price he will bring. This means that a criminal with a good work ethic is less likely to be able to escape servitude; his redemption price will be too high. This is contrary to biblical law: a subsidy for evil. There must be a way around this anomaly. But what?
The solution solves both problems: 1) too many variables and 2) the subsidy for evil. His legal redemption price must be limited by the payment to the victim. The kinsman-redeemer must be allowed to buy him out of servitude for this payment. If a bidding war pushes the criminal's market price above this maximum restitution payment, who receives the extra money? Not the victim; he is not entitled to it. Not the State; it is not entitled to it. It must go to the criminal's account -- money for his redemption. This puts a ceiling on the market price of criminals. A buyer is less likely to continue to bid if he knows that the criminal can use the money above the restitution payment to shorten his time of service. The extra money will make it less expensive for the man's kinsman-redeemer to put up the difference and buy him out of servitude. Conclusion: the purchase price of a convicted criminal on the competitive market for bondservants will not be significantly higher than the money owed to his victims. When this limit is reached, bidding will tend to cease as bidders drop out. This is as it should be: the punishment (servitude) should be proportional to the crime (damages produced).
But if he has no kinsman-redeemer who is willing to pay off his debt, he will remain in bondage forever. He cannot buy his way out. He has no assets and no way to earn any. The message is clear: an enslaved criminal needs a kinsman-redeemer who has both the assets and the willingness to sacrifice his own interests on behalf of his relative.
Holy War, Citizenship, and Liberty A citizen is a person who has the authority to serve as a civil judge, declaring innocence or guilt. The Israelite bondservant's judicial status as a temporary slave removed his judicial status as a citizen. He could not serve as a civil judge during his period as a man bound to another man's household. He did remain an Israelite. He did possess post-jubilee title to his land. No text says the following, but my biblical law-immersed intuition tells me that for a man to become a bondservant was judicially the equivalent of having become a minor. An Israelite had become a slave in another man's house, under another's temporary authority. Judicially, he had become a child.
Citizenship in any holy commonwealth is the legal authority to declare or bring negative civil sanctions in God's name. The pre-eminent manifestation of this authority in Israel was service in the military: God's holy army. The army had the task of defending the boundaries of the land, i.e., keeping it holy, secure from foreign invaders. The army had to keep the land from being profaned by invaders: boundary violators. To be a member of the army required the payment of redemption blood money at the time of the numbering of the nation immediately prior to a holy war (Ex. 30:12-13).(4) Circumcised Israelite males became eligible to serve at age 20 (Ex. 30:14).(5)
The Israelite slave had to treated as "as an hired servant," the text says. He had to be paid a wage by his Israelite master. He therefore had money to pay the redemption blood money to the priests. Did this give him the right to serve in the army? No; he was judicially a child even though he was over age 20. Only with his owner's permission could he serve in the army. He was not a free man; he was not a citizen.
Gentile Slaves
Was a gentile slave who paid his redemption blood money and also fought for Israel in a holy battle subsequently released from bondage? Abram had fighting men (Gen. 14:14), but they did not receive automatic freedom. However, this was before the Abrahamic covenant was established (Gen. 15). It may be that in Mosaic Israel, the willingness of a slave to risk his life in holy battle gained him his freedom, though not landed inheritance.(6) He became a citizen in a walled city. If nothing else, manumission might have been a bonus offered to him by his master. This view helps explain the considerable number of foreigners listed among David's 30 mighty men (I Chron. 12:3-6). It may also explain the presence in David's army of the most famous foreign officer of all, Uriah the Hittite.
What we do not know is whether these gentile slaves would have been required by law to wait until the jubilee year in order to receive their freedom. They surely could not have become citizens unless they continued to attend Passover, even though, as household slaves, they would automatically have been circumcised (Gen. 17:11-13). Circumcision was necessary but not sufficient to make an adult male a citizen. Attendance at Passover was mandatory. My view is that they and their families would have been released immediately after the cessation of military hostilities. This release had nothing to do with the jubilee. The release provisions of the jubilee year were uniquely associated with inheritance in the land, and the released gentile bondservant had no inheritance in the land. In any case, his owner would have had to consent in the first place to his enrollment in God's holy army.
The same rule governed the Israelite bondservant, whether a bankrupt or a convicted criminal. His owner had to consent to his military service. The owner may have had to pay his blood money fee for him -- certainly this was the case with a criminal. I do not think any bondservant could be called into service by the State unless his owner consented. He was not his own man. He was the lawful property of another man until his debt was paid.
The Basis of Liberty As New Covenant people, we have difficulty understanding the degree of importance associated with landed inheritance under the Mosaic economy. The connection between land and inheritance was extremely close. The question is: Was it unbreakable?
The section on the jubilee ends with these words: "For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" (Lev. 25:55). The legal status of later generations as God's covenantal bondservants rested on their ancestors' historical experience in the days of Moses: deliverance from bondage in Egypt. It also rested on the next generation's participation in the conquest of Canaan under Joshua. This participation was the legal foundation of landed inheritance in Mosaic Israel. From everything we find in this section of Leviticus, inheritance was the legal foundation of every aspect of the jubilee law. I see no exceptions. Even in the case of the enslavement of heathens (vv. 44-46), the judicial issue was perpetual inheritance, though not landed inheritance.
This raises a whole series of questions. Commentators rarely ask them, let alone answer them. This is why there has been so much confusion regarding the jubilee year among conservative evangelicals, and why liberation theologians have gotten away with exegetical murder.
Freemanship
First, who was a free man under the Mosaic law? There were degrees of freedom. Every resident of Israel was free from arbitrary law. The same civil law code applied to all men: "One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you" (Ex. 12:49). But it is obvious that this principle of equality before the civil law did not apply to the jubilee law. The jubilee made a fundamental distinction between the resident who did not have an inalienable legal claim to landed inheritance and the resident who did. The resident who did have such a claim was identified by God as His servant.
There was only one way that someone who had not participated in either the exodus or the conquest could become God's servant, so defined: by adoption. God adopted Abram and his covenantal heirs, but the promised inheritance was not secured until Joshua's day. That is, God's promise to Abraham was not fulfilled until Joshua's day. The fulfillment of this promise (Gen. 15:16) was God's proof in history of the reliability of His covenant and its promises. Adoption, promise, and inheritance were linked judicially in the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic Covenant.
Naturalization
Second, there were two forms of adoption: into a tribe (walled city) or into a family (rural land). The circumcised resident alien was offered the promise of citizenship for his heirs (Deut. 23:3-8): tribal adoption. The tenth-generation heir of a bastard Israelite was offered citizenship (Deut. 23:2): access into God's holy army. The supreme example was David, the ultimate holy warrior, the tenth-generation heir of Judah and Tamar (Ruth 4:18-22).(7)
Adoption for males was not automatic, except (probably) for those who volunteered for military service during a war. Presumably, three generations was the standard period of testing for most resident aliens (Deut. 23:8). This adoption must have been made in the name of the congregation, presumably by the local tribal congregation inside a walled city, but not by a specific family. Had citizenship been available only through adoption by a family, the naturalization laws would have forced a dilution of the landed inheritance of specific families. This would have been a mandatory program of economic disinheritance. No such program was mandated by the Mosaic law.Criminals
Third, what about the criminal? The criminal lost his citizenship until the debt was repaid. He could not be numbered to fight in God's holy army until his debt was repaid; hence, he was not a citizen during this period. He was not a free man; hence, he was not a citizen. Having had civil judicial sanctions brought against him, he did not possess the right to participate as a civil judge, bringing the State's judicial sanctions on others. This restriction is not found any text, but it is inferred by the nature of citizenship: the lawful authority to bring God's civil sanctions against lawbreakers. Until the victim was repaid, or the buyer whose purchase had provided the funds was repaid, the judicial status of the criminal was that of non-citizen.
I argue that he also lost his claim to his family's land, and therefore lost his right to participate in the jubilee. That is, he did not automatically return to his land at the jubilee. This legal status did not apply to his adult male children. They could go back to the land at the jubilee if they broke with him publicly regarding his crime. They could then become his kinsman redeemers, which is another reason why they were allowed to return to the family plot. In this sense, he could be adopted by his son or sons. That is, he regained access to his forfeited inheritance through an act of redemption in his behalf.(8) Otherwise, the judicial status of the criminal as an heir in the jubilee was forfeited until his debt was repaid. Because he received no wage, his kinsman-redeemer had buy him out of servitude.(9)
Possession or Confession? Another problem case is the adopted immigrant. When an Israelite adopted an immigrant, he was conveying a kind of manumission to him: manumission prior to enslavement. The covenantally faithful adopted person and his heirs could not be lawfully enslaved permanently after the adoption except on the same basis that an Israelite could lose his citizenship and his inheritance, i.e., excommunication. This act of grace cost the adopting family something: the dilution of the sons' economic inheritance. It was a major step for a father with sons to adopt another son, at least in the period in which a few acres meant something economically to the heirs. This means that if God's covenantal blessings continued, and families grew large, the economic cost of adoption would decrease, since the economic value of the dilution of acreage would have been minimal.
The circumcised immigrant could become a citizen, or his heirs eventually could, through adoption by a tribe, probably in a walled city, but he had no claim to land distributed at the conquest. Only adoption into an Israelite family could provide land. The jubilee year therefore offered no unique economic benefit for him. Did it confer any judicial benefit? Yes. The heathen slave law was part of the jubilee law. The heathen slave law expressly stated that all inheritable slaves had to be purchased from heathens (Lev. 25:44-45). This was the magna carta for the naturalized citizen. By breaking covenantally with heathendom, and by becoming a full citizen ready to serve as a holy warrior, the immigrant received a perpetual grant of manumission from inter-generational servitude. He could not be permanently enslaved inside Israel. The jubilee year therefore functioned as a year of release for every citizen, even those with no inheritable property.
The naturalized citizen could not hope to indebt himself by means of the collateral of an inheritable plot of land unless an Israelite family had adopted him. To this extent, he was less able to gain access to the market for loans. But with respect to his liberty, he could not lawfully be enslaved. Leviticus 25 does not say that the landless immigrant citizen would be released from debt bondage. The language is that of a return to the family's land. But because the slave law made it illegal to enslave an Israelite on an inter-generational basis, the jubilee year of release must have applied to the non-inheriting naturalized citizen. The trumpet announced release from bondage for every Israelite except the criminal.
Cross-Family Adoption There were three ways out of slavery for gentiles. First, there was manumission, either as payment for physical brutality by his owner or through voluntary manumission by his owner, but this would not automatically have freed his family (Ex. 21:2-4).(10) Second, there was legal adoption by his owner. This would have freed his family from the threat of bondage forever. There was a third way out: adoption by another Israelite family. This act of grace would have transferred the right of inheritance to him. He and his family would then go out in the jubilee.
This aspect of the Mosaic law is never discussed by the commentators, yet it was fundamental to the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. Adoption by one household head could liberate other men's slaves. In fact, if one man had been willing to divide his sons' landed inheritance to the point of no economic return, he could have freed every slave in Israel. He would not even have been required to purchase the liberated slaves in order for them to receive their freedom at the jubilee. The moment he adopted them, they would have become heirs of his estate, meaning heirs of his judicial status. They would have become citizens of Israel at the next jubilee. No heir of the conquest could be legally kept in slavery beyond the jubilee year. This act of universal adoption would have made the liberator very unpopular, as we can easily imagine, but it was always a legal option under the Mosaic covenant. The most likely candidate to do this was a man with abolitionist sentiments and without biological heirs.
Would he have owed the slave owners anything? Only for the time remaining until the jubilee. This prorated payment would have become progressively smaller as the jubilee year approached. In the year of jubilee, he would have owed them nothing. There was only one exception to this rule: the criminal who had been sold into slavery to pay his victim. In this case, his owner had to be repaid fully before the slave could be released. The buyer had paid a price based on the amount of restitution the criminal owed to the victim, not the prorated value of his services until the jubilee. The criminal was not protected by the jubilee. God's law does not subsidize crime. So, in order for the redemption to be secured through adoption, the adopting redeemer would have had to pay to the owner whatever the owner had paid to the criminal's victim.
It is understandable why Israel may never have invoked the jubilee. Had it been honored, almost every slave owner's investment would have been at risk. All it would have taken to free all the gentile slaves in Israel was for one lawful heir to decide that the per capita economic value of his children's landed inheritance was worth forfeiting for the sake of a single mass adoption: the ultimate abolitionist.
The Ultimate Adoption
There was such a man. His name was Jesus. He publicly declared the judicial intent of His ministry by announcing the availability of liberation through adoption into His family (Luke 4:18-21). The result was predictable: the slave-owners and their accomplices killed Him. With the death of the Testator came the inheritance: judicial liberation.(11) But because of the jubilee law, this deliverance had to await the blowing of the trumpet at the next jubilee year: on the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement (Lev. 25:9), yom kippur. I agree with James Jordan that this final jubilee year came three years after the crucifixion, in the same year as the inauguration of Paul's ministry to the gentiles.(12) On that historic yom kippur, God released from judicial bondage every gentile slave in Israel who had publicly professed faith in, and subordination to, the New Covenant's head of household.(13) Because Old Covenant Israel refused to honor this adoption, having killed the adopter instead, God destroyed Old Covenant Israel.(14)
As I said, there was one exception to manumission through outside adoption: the criminal who had been sold into slavery to repay his victim. The adopter would have had to pay the owner's purchase price plus anything still owed to the victim. In the case of Jesus Christ, He made this supreme payment to the victim, God the Father, who had placed all of mankind into servitude because of man's rebellion in the garden.
This should end the debate over whether a man needs to profess the Lordship of Christ in order to be saved. A regenerate person has no choice but to profess Christ's comprehensive lordship. He cannot lawfully partake in the jubilee inheritance without this profession. But because of God's mercy, this oath can be taken for him representatively, either by his parents when they offer him for baptism as an infant or when he voluntarily consents to baptism after infancy. Whether the oath is verbally professed or not, it is an inescapable aspect of God's covenant. There is no lawful inheritance apart from this subordination to the head of the church.(15) There is therefore no liberation apart from such a confession.
To keep Christian slaves in bondage beyond that final jubilee year was a crime. Furthermore, all slaves who claimed Jesus' universal offer of adoption into His family after this jubilee year would have to be released at the next jubilee. But the fall of Jerusalem 37 years after this final jubilee year ended the temple's Passover system and the land inheritance system established by the Mosaic covenant. There would never again be a God-authorized jubilee. There could be no authorized blowing of the ram's horn. Thus, the fall of Jerusalem ended the legality of Mosaic slavery forever.
Conclusion The jubilee law established protection for poor Israelites who were sold into servitude. This servitude was mild, requiring the masters to pay wages to their Israelite servants. It required them to treat these people as they would treat a hired servant who could leave an employer who was abusive.
The jubilee law established a legal distinction between a free man and a heathen slave. The heathen slave had no right to jubilee freedom, for he was not eligible for military service. He was outside the civil covenant. The legal basis of citizenship was adoption, either by a tribe or a family. A woman was adopted by marriage to an Israelite, e.g., Rahab and Ruth. This was adoption into a family. Citizenship was automatic with adoption.
Citizenship was possible for male gentile converts to the covenant. This judicial promise was carried out by tribes. This might take as long as ten generations (Deut. 23:2); it might take as few as three (Deut. 23:7-8). Once they became citizens, they could not be permanently enslaved (Lev. 25:44-45). The heathen slave law served as a magna carta of liberty for the naturalized immigrant. He could achieve full legal status as a citizen despite the fact that he had no inheritance in the land. Citizenship was by confession, circumcision, and numbering in the holy army. But it was not granted overnight by a tribe.
Jesus Christ was the ultimate Heir, the promised Seed (Gal. 3:16), the One for whom the Mosaic system of tribal inheritance had been created. It was He who announced the jubilee year (Luke 4:18-21). It was He who offered men adoption into His family (John 1:12). It was He who paid the debts of the criminals He adopts into His family. Instead of a hole in the ear drilled by an awl at the doorway of an Israelite's household (Ex. 21:6), baptism is the new mark of adoption. The New Covenant's jubilee year of release was the final jubilee for Old Covenant Israel.
Summary The Hebrew words for "servant" do not reveal a consistent definition; their context determines their meaning.
There were two forms of Israelite bondservice: sabbatical and jubilee.
The inheritance served as a sanctuary from bondservice: sabbatical release and jubilee release.
A poor man who offered himself as collateral, but who did not place his inheritance at risk, had a moral claim on a charitable loan.
A man who placed his inheritance at risk, or who had already leased it, could wind up as a bondservant until the next jubilee if he defaulted on a business loan.
An impoverished Israelite sold into jubilee bondage was to be treated as a hired servant: paid a wage rather than given capital at the end of the period of service.
The hired servant could leave; the bondservant could not.
There is no Mosaic definition of economic poverty.
Leviticus 25 identifies poverty for an Israelite as judicial: no lawful immediate access to the family's land.
The jubilee constituted restoration of landed inheritance.
This inheritance was more judicial than economic: the restoration of freemanship.
Such a definition of poverty no longer applies in the New Covenant.
The bondservant of Deuteronomy 15 returned to his land at the sabbatical year.
The bondservant of Leviticus 25 returned to his land only at the jubilee, unless his kinsman-redeemer bought him out of bondage, or he bought himself out.
The jubilee bondservant had to be paid a wage.
The buyer was securing the services of a servant who could not legally walk away, but at the wages of a hired servant who could.
These wages had to be high enough to enable a man to buy his freedom before the jubilee.
Israelite servants were not to be bought and sold by Israelites as commodities.
The sale into bondage would have been a one-time affair.
God does not subsidize evil; hence, a criminal would not have been released in a jubilee year.
The law did not subsidize crime in the years closer to the jubilee.
The criminal was outside the protection of the jubilee until he or his kinsman-redeemer repaid his buyer for his sale, which had paid his victim.
When Israel went into captivity, God did not allow them to return to their land in the next jubilee year: restitution to the land had precedence.
The Israelite bondservant lost his citizenship, i.e., his judgeship, until his release.
Citizenship was based on eligibility to serve in God's holy army.
The bondservant was judicially a child: ineligible for military service.
Gentile slaves were probably granted citizenship upon serving in the army.
Their owners had to authorize such service-manumission.
A free man in Mosaic Israel was called God's servant.
God's promise to Abraham regarding the inheritance of Canaan was fulfilled in Joshua's day.
Citizenship was available to resident aliens.
A criminal lost his citizenship until the debt was paid.
His citizenship could be restored by payment of his debt by his adult son: a form of adoption by his son (e.g., Adam and Christ).
An inalienable long-term inheritance was a mark of inalienable long-term freemanship.
A heathen slave remained a slave despite being circumcised unless manumitted by his owners or adopted by an Israelite family.
Any Israelite family could liberate anyone else's heathen slave by adopting him.
He then went free at the jubilee, despite protests from his former owner.
Citizenship legally accompanied this adoption.
This adoption would have diluted the economic inheritance of the other heirs.
Every slave owner's investment was at risk at all times if the jubilee was honored and if another Israelite was willing to adopt his slave(s).
Jesus Christ served as the liberator, for He announced His adoption of the gentiles, making them citizens of God's holy commonwealth.
This ended the legitimacy of Mosaic slavery forever at the final Mosaic jubilee.
Because Old Covenant Israel rejected this adoption, God disinherited Old Covenant Israel.
Footnotes:
1. The resident alien did not have to pay him a wage. This law did not apply to the resident alien, who was no brother. This gave the resident alien a competitive position in the market for Israelite servants. He could pay a higher price for the net value of expected stream of income, since the net was higher: no wage expense. This was not a civil law. Civil laws had to apply equally to all residents (Ex. 12:49).
2. Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 322.
3. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), chaps. 7, 8, 11-14. See also Gary North, Victim's Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
4. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 32: "Blood Money, Not Head Tax."
5. My presumption is that David was under age 20 at the time of his confrontation with Goliath. This would explain why his brother regarded him as an observer rather than as a warrior at risk (I Sam. 17:28). David had not paid his redemption blood money. He was then authorized by Saul to serve as the army's representative in battle, but there is no mention of the required payment. This may have been an oversight on Saul's part, or perhaps Saul paid it for him. We are not told.
6. It is one of the most interesting facts about the American Civil War (1861-65) that in its final months, Southern leaders and generals began to discuss the possibility of granting freedom to any Negro slave who was willing to enlist in the Confederate army. But the South had gone to war to defend the region's right to slavery. With this public discussion, the war effort began to collapse. If the slaves could be trusted to defend the Confederacy, then the old myth of their innate status as children in need of supervision had been ludicrous. This called into question the legitimacy of the "peculiar institution" and the war to defend it. See Richard E. Berringer, et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), ch. 15.
7. On gaps in this genealogy, see Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 149-51.
8. This is the judicial basis of the re-established inheritance of a portion of the sons of Adam. A son of Adam who was not under the negative sanction of forfeited citizenship had to break publicly with the crime of His earthly father, thereby reclaiming the inheritance on behalf of those whom He has chosen to redeem. This was the act of the supreme Kinsman-Redeemer, Jesus Christ, the last (second) Adam (I Cor. 15:45).
9. The New Covenant warns us: "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 3:23). We are in need of grace from a kinsman-redeemer.
10. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 5.
11. "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth" (Heb. 9:16-17).
12. James B. Jordan, "Jubilee, Part 3," Biblical Chronology, V (April 1993), p. 2.
13. It will not surprise me in heaven to learn that Stephen's stoning took place on the day of atonement. Christ, the slain Passover lamb, asked God to forgive His executioners (Luke 23:34). Similarly, Stephen's last words were: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7:60). If he was in fact the symbolic purification offering for the day of atonement (Lev. 16), Stephen's words would have been appropriate, paralleling the words of the symbolic Passover lamb. As required by the laws of sacrifice governing the day of atonement, the Jews killed one goat, Stephen, but the scapegoat, present at the execution, was soon to wander into the wilderness, bringing the message of liberation to the gentiles: Paul.
Lest it be thought that no execution could lawfully take place on the day of atonement, consider Joseph ibn Migash, a Jewish judge who had an informer executed on a day of atonement that fell on a sabbath. A modern Jewish legal scholar remarks that this action "shows how sacred a duty the elimination of informers was conceived by great judges." Haim H. Cohn, "Informer," The Principles of Jewish Law, edited by Menachem Elon (Jerusalem: Keter, [1975?]), col. 508. An informer is defined as "a Jew who denounces a fellow-Jew to a non-Jew, and more particularly to non-Jewish authorities, thereby causing actual or potential damage. . . . It is no defense to a charge of informing that the person denounced is a sinner and wicked, or has caused the informer grief or harm -- no informer will ever have a share in the world to come." Ibid., col. 507.
Immediately preceding his execution, Stephen had publicly charged the Jews with murder because of their betrayal of Jesus to the Romans. "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers" (Acts 7:52). In other words, Stephen charged them with having been informers to the Romans, betraying a fellow Jew to the gentiles. This is one reason -- I believe the main one -- why they took the risk of breaking Roman law by executing him themselves without a Roman trial. To have taken him to the Roman authorities would have constituted an act of informing, thereby confirming his accusation against them. As historian Michael Grant has written, they participated either in the equivalent of an unauthorized lynching or a deliberately illegal execution by the Council of Jerusalem. Grant, The Jews in the Roman World (New York: Dorset, 1973), p. 116.
14. David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
15. Some fundamentalists who have no doctrine of covenantal representation keep arguing that a person can accept Jesus as Savior but not as Lord, yet still be saved. Zane Hodges is the most prominent theologian of my day who presents this argument. This is a theological rabbit trail. The convert may fail to confess Jesus publicly as Lord, but his oath-bound confession of the Lordship of Christ is nevertheless imputed to him at the time of his conversion. Lordship is inherent in the oath by which God consigns the convert to Himself.
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