Did God condone slavery?

I think attempting to say whether God condoned or didn't condone salvery is a very simplistic question on a very complex idea. 

It's well and good to say that God could have simply put into the Bible - "don't own slaves."  He didn't, therefore, he condones slavery. I think that is a very weak argument. 

The number one problem that people have with slavery is stealing people, kidnapping free people against their will and making them slaves.  God ABSOLUTELY condemns kidnapping people - whether they be Jew or Alien.   So I think it is right to say that God does not condone slavery in the way that slavery is conducted in our world today. 

1. The Hebrew word in Exo 21:16 is ish, I believe, which usually referred to an adult male Israelite in the Covenant Code. Almost certainly did not apply to aliens -- you can read this more clearly in Deut 24:7.
   
2. The number one problem I have with slavery is that I think owning another human being is wrong. Whether they were kidnapped, indentured, what have you.
   
3. Seems to assume most slaves were sourced via kidnapping. That isn't true. Slaves could be bought from surrounding nations, captured via conquest, or even pressed into involuntary debt slavery (see 2 Kings 4, where the creditors are coming to take the woman's children as slaves). Girls could be sold into sexual slavery by their fathers. There were many tragic ways people could become slaves without being stolen off an Israelite street. And of course Israel had no way to regulate how slaves were sourced in the nations they purchased from.
   

Another part of the complexity is that in the time that Leviticus was written, EVERY nation on the face of the earth supported slavery. And in every nation apart from Israel, this slavery could arise from kidnapping. So there was already a clear distinction between Israel and other nations.

 Also, back in those days, and interestingly, even in the world in some places today, people would sell themselves to others for a time, known as an indenture. Even the Jews could do this for 7 years. This is a type of slavery. The idea is based on the notion that "we own ourselves". And an important part of those ownership rights of our body, was the right to sell it to someone else.  Today - people don't own their own bodies. (not that the abortion movement cares) The State owns our bodies - and it has done so - since it legislated the idea that no property rights can exist in a human body.  Removing the ownership of property in body, removed the ability to privately sell your body to someone else - but it also effectively proved the point that we are slaves to the State. It owns our body and it tells us what rights we have. 

In those times - people from other cultures could sell their bodies to another person - even to a Jew. In a sense it was a form of welfare. Or perhaps a bank mortgage. 

The Israelites, however could not go looking for people in other cultures to buy slaves. And the reason for that is because the predominant manner in which people became slaves was by kidnapping. 

The other time when Israel needed to consider slavery was in times of war.  What were they to do with the foreigners they captured? If they released them - then they would form part of a group to try and get rid of them. Or they would go back and join the families they came from and start fighting again. The Jews were disliked then probably in the same way they are now. didn't have welfare in those times, so people had to make money somehow to get food.  So they had to do something with them. I suppose they could kill them. But they were captured in war - and unless God said to destroy them - then they couldn't. 

Overall, I think the matter is far too a complex matter to come up with a simplistic answer. 

• Earth never shakes/moves in any true sense. Eartquakes are internal not the Earth entirely shaking. There are 4 different verses explicitly saying this, if you want I can show you a source that clarfies.
  
• Earth is a circle. Modern Catholics and many other sects say circle and round meant spherical, I say that is impossible. Hewbrew had a different word for ball-shape than circle. Multiple verses talk of the circle.
  
• There are verses clarifying Earth has edges. The verse about corners is probably metaphorical but the edges around Earth cannot be metaphorical given how the verses went.
  

Empire rubs

We don't know the thickness.

NASA... not accidentally take 4 letters of SAtAN in its name.

Flat earth map is circular not rectangular. 

Do you have free will or not? A God who wants slaves would have never allowed us to know evil and become sinners.

Does God condone slavery? “Condone”, if you consider the origin of the word and its Latin translation (it has the same meaning in Italian), strictly means to forgive or absolve.

God may forgive slavery among His people. However, he does not wish for there to be slaves. God allows sin, although he wants us to not sin. Allowing sin does not mean he accepts it. Yet, he may allow or forgive it. Hebrews were permitted to be servants if they were impoverished, and permitted to own Hebrew slaves to punish. The foreign slaves were treated with mercy, and could sometimes better themselves. Slavery was a common practice by the time Moses received the Torah. What was God to do? 

Mankind is very flawed because God chose for us to have free will, and to not be enslaved. In having free will, we have enslaved others. God wants us to be absolved of all of our sins. God himself is a very complex character. What is for certain is that he wants us to pick the right path, but that not everyone is destined for the right path. The others are on the path, or they are lukewarm. 

Slavery is an issue among men. When Adam and Eve were created, did God grant them a slave? He did not. They were supposed to do their own work. The idea of sexual slavery was foreign, as Adam was only given one woman, and she was to be his wife. What happened? Satan, who too had been given free will as an angel, tempted Eve who tempted Adam. God told them to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, alas, they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Our descent into hell begins here. 

What kind of God would He be if he did not give us a choice? We would be slaves.

This assumes God views the practice of slavery as evil. What passage supports this?

This is the etymological fallacy -- the idea words can be reduced to their etymology. I am using the common understanding of "condone" -- "accept and allow to continue." The words "you may" from God meet that definition.

Again, where does the Bible say slavery is a sin? And if it's a sin, why are you arguing it was beneficial to the slave?

And are you really making the argument that God lacked the power to overturn common social practice?

Cutting off the end of your penis wasn't too big of an ask, but "stop owning people" was?

Many of God's commands in the Bible are hard to follow and against the currents of common practice. Who can easily love their enemies? How many would really turn the other cheek if struck? Who would give their coat to someone who sued the shirt off their backs? Is it so easy to not covet your neighbor's things? Yet you're making the argument that God wrung his hands and said, "Oh well, they're just so gosh-darned determined to own people, what can I do? I guess I'll just bend my rules to their preferences..." No. This is not God's character in the Bible.

God also never intended us to murder, steal, and cheat. Yet we fell from the garden, and we began to do those things, and he told us it was wrong. But not slavery. Slavery he told us we could continue, if we practiced it with ethnocentric favoritism.

So to be clear, you are saying that owning a human being is not wrong/sinful, in and of itself. Is your argument that God is okay with slavery as long as slaves are treated fairly?

My argument is that God has to deal with the sinful nature of humans. I believe He dislikes slavery, but may have tolerated it among the Hebrews for reasons I don't quite know. Maybe He wanted to appease the Hebrews? God knows how flawed we are.

What I do know is that God has made numerous covenants, with the final being the covenant of Christ. Although slavery is mentioned in the New Testament, the emphasis is on giving, which seems to be something we all have to do. Most importantly, God gave us free will, which I interpret as Him being for freedom and not slavery. While it is true God wants us to submit to Him, He is not willing to take from us the choice. A slave owner does not consider this. It is a human creation resulting from human sin, that exists across the world in significant ways to this day.