Original subtitles

Tonight on The Bible Rules, the story of slavery in biblical times.

Virtually everyone is vulnerable to becoming enslaved.

From shocking rules about bondage. The slave master is supposed to put an awl

through his ear, pierce his ear.

To inspirational tales of freedom.

The Egyptians oppressed them, enslaved them, and God hears their cry. The Bible

shed the light on one of the darkest practices in human history.

In the ancient world, one was usually born into slavery and one usually died

slavery.

What was the ancient world really like?

The answer may be hidden in thousands of rules and commandments in the Bible.

Some are shocking.

Some mysterious.

All reveal lost details about the world that was.

The past is now.

The Bible is an age -old classic, a religious guideline for millions.

And inside its pages are more than just ten commandments.

There are thousands of cryptic rules that ancient man lived and died by.

It's over 2 ,000 years ago in the holy city of Jerusalem, and a revolutionary

rule gets written into the book of Deuteronomy.

In other words, if your slave runs away, let him stay free.

It's a strange rule, full of contradictions.

On the one hand, it protects an escaped slave.

On the other hand, it seems to accept the institution of slavery.

So what's it doing in the Holy Bible?

The rule that an escaping slave would go free so undermines the slavery system

that it must have been completely nuts.

This rule might contradict the very notion of slavery, but slavery is never

prohibited in the Bible.

Nowhere in the Old Testament, or in the New Testament for that matter, is

slavery ever objected to.

And in fact, there's an entire book of the Bible devoted to the topic.

The Exodus story, the journey from slavery to freedom, is the central story

around which the Jewish story is built.

According to the book of Exodus, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for at

least 400 years, subject to hard labor and brutal conditions until God set them

free. The Egyptians oppressed them,

enslaved them, and God hears their cry. And they are set free to wander across

the desert.

To find a new land.

Perhaps the Israelites' own history as slaves has something to do with why this

rule seems to promote freedom.

God liberates Israel from slavery. He redeems them. And then he regulates

existing sinful human practices like slavery.

The most oft -repeated biblical commandment is remember that you were a

Egypt. Because, of course, the easiest thing for a people that has been

is to become enslavers.

But to truly understand the Bible's complex relationship to slavery and

we have to go back in time 10 ,000 years to the Paleolithic era, when

agriculture was first invented and slavery began.

Once the notion of private property comes in, likely they started enslaving

other and using each other as private property.

And in the time of the Bible, thousands of years after Paleolithic men started

enslaving each other, slavery wasn't considered evil. It was an accepted fact

life and an ingrained part of nearly every ancient society, including the

Israelite one.

No ancient Near Eastern culture would have conceived of a society or a social

structure that did not involve slavery.

Slavery in the ancient world wasn't racially based like slavery in the

States, but there were countless ways a person could become a slave.

Get born to the wrong person, commit a crime, or get captured in war, and you

might spend your life in bondage.

Virtually everyone is vulnerable at some point in their life to becoming a

slave.

The idea of human rights simply didn't exist.

When it came to slaves, the idea that a human being could be the possession of

the other to do with as the owner wished was the norm.

If possessing another person was so commonplace, what do we make of this

rule, letting an escaped slave go free?

A clue might lie in ancient Rome, a place where a shocking 15 to 25 percent

the population was enslaved.

and where escaping your position was a serious crime.

Slavery is a horrible feature of ancient Rome.

In the Roman system, owners of slaves owned them, owned their bodies. So, to

run away from your situation was therefore to steal yourself if you were

slave. That was illegal.

If a fugitive slave was caught, the punishment for committing this crime

be brutal.

First, the slave would be returned to his owner.

Then the owner could choose the penalty.

The owners had the right to exact punishment, to shackle them, to brand

tattoo them, so that others would know that they were liable to do this sort of

thing.

Famously, Roman slave owners branded their slaves with the letters F -U -G

fugitive.

But these dehumanizing practices weren't just relics of the deep past.

In the United States, until the abolition of slavery, slave owners would

their slaves with a blazing iron. And if their slaves ran away, they'd place ads

in the local newspaper, hoping to identify the slave by the markings, and

the fugitive to his owner.

And yet our rule seems to take another stance.

The default choice of the Bible is for human freedom.

No one is meant to be a slave.

No one is meant to serve you forever. As a matter of human destiny, you are

meant to be free.

A belief in human freedom is one explanation for this rule, but it also

might be practical.

Slaves were so widespread in the ancient world that they had strengthened

numbers. which sometimes made slave owners anxious.

Romans always had some sense of unease about their slaves. They didn't want

to develop this sense of shared suffering, shared status, and use that

springboard, potentially, for very dangerous resistance.

Various sayings of the Romans that survived to us.

However many slaves a man has, that's how many enemies he has.

In ancient Rome, it wasn't just the sheer number of slaves that made slave

owners anxious. There was a certain group of slaves who held a rare level of

power in society, the gladiators.

Much like modern prize fighters, they were valuable creatures.

It might sound counterintuitive that the fighters were slaves, but in Rome,

prisoners of war or those convicted of a crime were often forced to become

gladiators and fight to their death in packed arenas.

But not all gladiators accepted their fate.

In 73 BC, a gladiator slave named Spartacus led a band of unhappy slaves

rebellion that grew to become one of the most famous wars in Roman history,

known as the Third Servile War.

This rebellion began in a gladiatorial school.

And the owner was not living up to some sort of unspoken social code about

how gladiators were supposed to be treated.

So a rebellion was begun.

The actual outbreak was 78 or so gladiators seizing kitchen knives and so

and fighting their way out of the school, not fighting their way to a

safety on Mount Vesuvius.

For years, Spartacus and his cohort, which grew to over 40 ,000, fought for

freedom, and amazingly they managed to keep the powerful Roman army at bay.

But in 71 BC, the band of slaves was defeated.

Spartacus himself, it's not quite clear what happened to him. Certainly an

identifiable body was never brought forward for the Romans.

The last 6 ,000 captives from the Spartacan forces were crucified on the

Way between Campania and Rome.

Though the Roman army ultimately prevailed, the Spartacus rebellion

slaves were a force to be reckoned with.

It was, maybe in some sense, a wake -up call for the Romans.

And in the Middle East in the 13th century, another warrior cast of slaves,

Mamluks, did manage to seize political control and become the ruling class.

Being a slave like Mamluks came with privileges. If the Sultan became weak,

these Mamluk soldiers took over.

In some instances, they became rulers.

Qutb al -Din Abaq in India, he came from the slave caste.

And then he became the Sultan of Delhi.

And the Mamluk rulers in Cairo held extraordinary power as well.

They were famous for repelling the Mongol invasion, defeating the Mongols,

also defeating the Crusaders.

So given the shocking level of power that some slaves had in ancient times,

Bible rule makes more sense. For slave owners, it might be best to let a

go. Otherwise, there might be ugly consequences.

But there's one sector of society that doesn't have freedom as an option, as we

see in this next Bible rule.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In

you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

In other words, a woman's pain in childbirth means she has to serve her

And as we'll see, she could become a slave at a moment's notice.

Women were property who could be bought and sold for all sorts of purposes.

Slavery was a fact of life in the ancient world, and the Bible has

rules for who can and can't go free.

But according to this one in the first book of the Bible, 50 % of the

population... was always meant to be subservient.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In

you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

Is this Bible rule really stating that a woman is a slave to her husband?

A clue might lie in the origins of this text, penned into Genesis over 2 ,000

years ago.

This rule is an often forgotten part of the Adam and Eve story.

God himself plants a garden in Eden, and in that garden he creates first the

man, and then from the man he creates a woman.

And God tells the man, you may eat from any tree that is in the garden except

for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam is tempted by Eve to take a bite of the apple, and they do exactly what God

tells them not to do.

For disobeying God and eating from the tree of knowledge, this Bible verse

curses Eve and all women, condemning them to pain in childbirth and a life of

servitude.

It's a curse that might seem harsh to a modern ear.

And yet in the ancient world, people took it literally.

They're kind of halfway between men and slaves.

Yet this rule might be alluding to something far more concrete.

Property rights in the ancient world, for instance.

Women were property who could be bought and sold for all sorts of purposes.

In ancient Israel, fathers gave their daughters a way to be married, but only

for the right price.

A woman was her father's property.

until she was betrothed or engaged to another man who then paid a bride price

her father in exchange for the father's daughter.

The standard bride price, 50 shekels of silver, or compensation for the loss of

the daughter's labor.

In ancient Rome, money for brides was exchanged in a different way.

The bride's family paid a dowry to the husband, but the dowry wasn't

his to keep.

She took with her a dowry, but it was understood that her husband only had

access to the dowry and its youth. It was not permanently his property. If the

marriage ended, he would be required to pay back the dowry. It might take years

of payments to the birth family of his ex -wife.

Though women did maintain some economic leverage, the power in the family was

left to the father or the husband.

In fact, Roman marriage was called manus, which means hand, because the

was literally handed from her father to her husband.

This practice might be what our rule is referring to, but sometimes women

weren't just sold into marriage by their fathers.

They were sold into slavery.

Families can lose their property entirely, be driven into uttermost

which case...

Parents, fathers might be forced to take some dreadful actions, including the

selling of the children still under their control, sons and daughters.

In short, one way to repay a debt was for a father to sell his child into

slavery. If he didn't, he might run the risk of becoming a slave himself.

If you owed money...

And you couldn't pay your bills.

You could go to jail for not being able to keep your commitments.

Or you might become a slave until you can work off your debt.

In Athens in 600 B .C., an economic crisis sent so many people into slavery

Solon, a famed Athenian lawmaker, enacted a set of laws he called

which canceled debts and returned people to freedom.

And this biblical story from the book of Nehemiah illustrates just how serious

debt slavery was in ancient Israel.

Within the Bible, we have many examples of people selling themselves into

slavery because they cannot pay their debt.

One of the greatest examples of this is the time of Nehemiah.

There is a group of people who have lost everything. They've lost their

vineyards, their houses, and they now must sell their own children into

One of the most poignant statements there is that the young women who are

sold into slavery are being sexually abused.

In this story, the women sold into slavery by family members were forced to

sleep with their masters, which wasn't seen as illegal or even a moral failing

at the time.

One of the prerogatives of the owner of a slave in many ancient cultures was to

have sexual access to them.

So part of their enslavement included what we would call sexual slavery.

They could sexually exploit their slaves. They could hand slaves over to

party guests if that was something that they requested.

And sometimes these women worked as prostitutes too.

Women who are poor, who have no power, who...

use their bodies to make a living.

That's one way that prostitution is like slavery. My body is used to make a

living.

Sexual slavery isn't just a relic of antiquity. Throughout time and all over

world, women have been forced to sell their bodies.

And some of the worst instances of sexual violence have been in times of

During World War II, tens of thousands of Asian women and girls were forced to

become so -called comfort women, prostitutes that served the Japanese

They were treated brutally, and those who became pregnant were often murdered.

In biblical times, a sex slave wasn't killed for having a baby, but her child

was subject to specific rules.

No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the Lord.

Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly

the Lord.

In other words, a bastard child and all of his descendants aren't welcome.

And as we'll see, are subject to appalling practices.

The child's in a limbo state.

And in that zone is when you can toss him out.

The Bible opens a window into life in the ancient world where societies were

divided. In Israel, there were basically two classes. There was everyone, there

were general Israelites, and there were slaves.

Female slaves were often forced to sleep with their masters. And if these women

had offspring out of wedlock, their children were subject to a confusing and

damning law.

No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the Lord.

Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly

the Lord.

Or, children born from adulterous, incestuous, or unmarried liaisons aren't

part of the community.

This rule written in Jerusalem nearly 3 ,000 years ago seems just plain cruel.

But it's actually a portal back in time to a period when the Israelites believed

that bastard children should be kept apart.

Why is it so harsh?

Israel is so focused on ethics, on rules and laws of behavior and codes of

behavior because it is a small people. And a small people must do all the more

to take care of themselves.

A strong society is one that minimizes the number of illegitimate births.

For the Israelites, a strong society meant one with pure bloodlines. And when

this rule was written, the Israelites were an especially vulnerable and

traumatized people.

In 721 BC, the Assyrian army invaded and captured northern Israel, exiling 10 of

the 12 Israelite tribes.

These tribes never returned and are now known to us as the 10 Lost Tribes. So

maybe this rule is an attempt to keep a weak community intact.

The continuation and the strengthening of the tribe was the prime directive.

And just basically the rules served to increase the cohesiveness of that tribal

entity. It sounds to a modern ear unjust for a child born of a forbidden union

to be set apart for his entire life.

But in the ancient world, children suffered based on their parents'

Take children born to slaves. They were automatically enslaved too.

In the ancient world, one was usually born into slavery and one usually died

slavery. And sometimes, even a child born to free parents could become a

In ancient Greece and Rome, a child's status was determined in the days

following his or her birth.

The baby becomes a social being integrated in the community, not at

birth, but between a week and ten days after the birth.

A week or so, the child's in a limbo state when you can toss it out.

The term for tossing a child out was called child exposure, and this practice

was common in ancient Rome when there were no modern forms of contraceptives

people often had unplanned pregnancies.

There were some contraception methods, but these didn't necessarily work as

well, certainly as modern -day contraceptions. There was also exposure.

We know that people did practice the exposure of infants, leaving them in a

public area.

One place that was used in downtown Rome was the vegetable market, a very public

area.

Presumably the child would be exposed when the market is less busy.

Part of the point is that parents who are exposing their infants don't

necessarily want to do it in a very ostentatious way.

If a father did decide to keep his child, he'd put his baby over his knee

recognize it as his own, which is where the word genuine comes from.

The knee in Latin is G -E -N -U, genu, because when it's on the knee, then the

baby becomes genuine. It becomes yours.

We can't know for sure how many children were declared genuine and how many were

exposed.

But we do know this practice existed in Egypt, too.

Documentary evidence dating back over 2 ,000 years shows numerous Egyptian names

beginning with K -O -P -R, which is the word for dung.

They were babies left by the dung heap.

Yet not all these exposed children suffered the same fate.

If you did expose it, which is the word they use typically for casting it out

to die, It might be rescued.

But people exposed were in danger of being enslaved if somebody wanted them.

They could be treated as a slave.

If an exposed child didn't perish on the side of the road, it was sometimes

adopted by a local family to grow up as a slave.

Not an ideal upbringing, but the rights of children born to a forbidden union or

to slaves were dismal in many parts of the ancient world.

Yet according to the Bible, the cycle of slavery shouldn't continue

indefinitely.

If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or Hebrew woman, is sold to

you and works for you for six years, in the seventh year, you shall set that

person free.

In other words, if you're a Hebrew slave owner, you need to let your Hebrew

slave free in the seventh year of his enslavement.

But as we'll see, not all slaves choose freedom. If the guy decides that he

wants to stay in the household of the slave master, the slave master is

to put an awl through his ear, pierce his ear.

In ancient times, people often spent their whole lives enslaved.

But one biblical rule breaks that cycle.

If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or Hebrew woman, is sold to

you and works for you for six years, in the seventh year, you shall set that

person free.

In other words, if you're an Israelite slave owner, you need to let your

Israelite slave free after six years.

Written over 2 ,500 years ago, this rule falls under the biblical manumission

laws, a series of laws about freeing slaves.

Treat the slave as almost a member of your own home, your own household.

You have obligations to that slave.

Treating a slave as a member of your household was a radical idea in a time

most ancient cultures viewed slaves as subhuman.

But what's the significance of setting slaves free in the seventh year?

Seven is one of those perfect numbers in biblical tradition.

In the ancient world, people believed that the number seven held a mystical,

astrological power.

Astrology figures in the scripture because there was a very primitive

understanding of the universe and the workings of the universe.

And so naturally, when one looked at the sky and the stars in the sky and the

planets, there was a belief that somehow the divine was part of that luminous

vista.

Many ancient societies used numerology to explain patterns that they didn't

quite understand.

And in ancient India, the number seven featured in their belief about heaven

hell. Seven realms that extend above the earth, and eventually in Indian

mythology, they talk about the seven that extend below.

Even today, Hindus believe that a person travels through these seven spheres to

reach immortality.

And ancient Israelites believed in the power of seven, too.

Seven is a mark of completion.

In Genesis 1, it says that God created the world, working for six days, and on

the seventh day he rested.

And then it says he blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

So he's kind of built the seventh day into the structure of the universe.

That is the model for Sabbath observance in the Bible.

The Sabbath, the day of rest, was an essential Israelite tradition.

Every seventh day, work came to a halt. And even every seven years, people

stopped tilling their lands.

It's a practice meant to honor God's creation of the universe and the

Israelites' own freedom as a people.

For the ancient Jewish people, it evoked a memory of being slaves in Egypt.

There are no days off when you're a slave.

When God institutes the Sabbath day, God is saying, look, I'm not a slave

driver. I want you to have some time to rest and recharge.

It's not seven days a week. You get a day of rest.

The Sabbath was so fundamental to the Israelites that they let their slaves

observe it too.

Many slaves in Hebrew circumstances actually learned to read because that's

largely what people did on the Sabbath.

Given the holiness of the Sabbath and the sabbatical year, it makes sense that

slaves would be freed in the seventh year. When the sabbatical year rolls

around, his freedom has come, but that's his choice.

But shockingly, not all slaves chose to go free.

Many slaves in the ancient world were more financially secure than those who

worked as day laborers. A day laborer is paid for the six, seven, eight, nine

hours the day laborer works, and then is sent home.

Comes back the next morning, the employer says, I have no more labor for

away.

The day laborer says, I need it. I need to survive. I have nothing to feed my

family with. He says, it's not my problem. I only hire you when I have

have no work. Go.

You can't do that with a slave.

Economic necessity was one reason for a person to choose slavery over freedom.

But some people remained with their masters out of a sense of loyalty, too.

In ancient Rome, slaves were known to commit suicide after their masters died.

It's the ultimate act of devotion.

And in ancient Israel, if a slave chose to stay enslaved, the master would mark

him forever with a piercing.

If the guy decides that he wants to stay in the household of the slave master,

the slave master is supposed to put an awl through his ear, pierce his ear, and

then the man says an official statement, I love my master, I don't want to go

free, and he will be a slave forever.

The piercing represented the slave's choice to stay in bondage.

It might be hard to comprehend today why a slave would be so devoted to his

master, but these relationships were complicated in biblical times.

Human beings are drawn to each other.

Human beings can connect even in oppressive circumstances, even in

circumstances. So I imagine that happened, happened more than once.

And sometimes slave owners were unwilling to let their slaves go.

You have to keep control. You have to keep an assertion over your slaves in

order to provide safety and security and maintain your status as a Roman slave

owner.

In Rome in the 2nd century AD, the Emperor Augustus enacted a set of laws

govern menumission.

The goal, limit the number of slaves freed.

There were limitations on how many of your slaves you could free in your will.

Certain percentages depending on how many slaves you had. With an absolute

upward limit on 100 slaves, you would actually be selected. You wouldn't just

free all your slaves. You would choose those who actually merited freedom. The

resistance of the ruling elite to set slaves free might explain why the

rule exists at all. But according to the fine print, There are only certain

people that get to go free.

The Israelites made a distinction between Hebrew slaves, a member of their

group, and others.

Basically, going free after six years only applied to Israelite slaves. But as

we'll see, there's a loophole for non -Israelites.

They could convert and get circumcised.

The Bible is a portal into the ancient world.

where slavery was a fact of life.

But shockingly, in ancient Israel, slave owners were obligated to let their

Israelite slaves free after working for six years.

And some non -Israelite slaves went to great lengths to be covered by these

laws. They'd convert and get circumcised.

This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you

are to keep.

Every male among you shall be circumcised.

In this rule, written into the first book of the Bible nearly 3 ,000 years

God tells the ancient Hebrews that every male must be circumcised as a sign of

the bond between them and God.

Circumcision is a symbol of that sacred partnership.

But why would circumcision, or the lack of a foreskin, represent the sacred

partnership between God and the Jewish people?

Circumcision is one of many things that helps to remind us not only of who we

are but the substance of who we are.

Thousands of years ago, circumcision defined the Israelites as a tribe, but

a practice that has withstood the test of time and continues to be an important

rite of passage for Jews today.

When a Jewish boy is eight days old, his foreskin is removed in a ceremony

that's called a bris, which literally means covenant.

But it's possible this tradition originated long before this rule was

It's one of the most common assumptions that circumcision was invented and

applied only to the Israelites.

In point of fact, circumcision was not originally an Israelite custom.

It was an Egyptian custom.

In the 23rd century BC, an Egyptian named Uha describes enduring pain during

mass circumcision of 120 men.

And it was a well -known practice for Egyptian soldiers to be circumcised

leaving for battle.

When a conscript was drafted, part of the ceremony and oath -taking to the

Pharaoh was circumcision. So it was a military ritual that signified a sacred

oath or bond or covenant between the Egyptian soldier and his Pharaoh, who,

must always remember, was regarded as a god.

Some historians believe that the Israelite slaves in Egypt learned this

and took it with them once they settled in Israel. But by then, many of their

neighbors shunned the practice. of circumcision. So it's possible the

followed this rule as a way to set themselves apart from other tribes.

The Philistines were uncircumcised, so the Israelites looked down upon them.

Being circumcised certainly differentiated the Israelites from their

Roman contemporaries, who viewed circumcision as a disgusting practice.

The Greeks and Romans liked male genitalia to be a nice, neat, tidy

circumcision seemed to act against that.

circumcision was a horrifying idea to them.

It was a mutilation of the body.

The second century Roman emperor Hadrian was especially opposed to circumcision

and went as far as to ban it completely.

This caused a crisis for Jews living under Hadrian's rule.

Some attempted to restore their foreskins by tying a heavy copper weight

their penises.

This device was known as Judeus Pondum, or Jewish Burden, while others continued

to perform circumcisions in secret and ultimately rose up in a Jewish revolt

against the Roman Empire.

There is some evidence that suggests the revolt in Jerusalem began

because during a religious procession, some Roman soldiers, probably drunk,

exposed their own genitalia, which was uncircumcised, laughing at the Jews,

making fun of their own circumcision.

The result was bloody resistance, focused on the charismatic leadership of

named Simon Bar Kokhba.

The Bar Kokhba Rebellion, or the Second Roman -Jewish Revolt, was waged between

the Jews and the Romans over three years. But ultimately, Hadrian's forces

out, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed.

The people who resisted Hadrian and the Romans resisted till the very end. We

know of thousands and thousands and thousands of people killed, crushed

by Hadrian and the Romans as they smashed the Bar Kokhba Rebellion into

dust. For the Israelites, the rule of circumcision was important enough to

a bloody war over.

But it's not the only biblical commandment concerning a man's physical

attributes.

You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard.

This 5th century BC rule isn't just making a fashion statement.

It's... It's thought by some that the prohibition against trimming one's beard

or hair in a particular way has to do with Canaanite mourning practices.

The Canaanites were known to shave their beards after a death and cut themselves

till they bled. So perhaps this rule is a superstitious attempt to distance the

Israelites from a grieving practice.

Death is the ultimate impurifier in the Israelite biblical code. We want to

mirror a culture which says death can be banished from the world. Or maybe it's

just another form of tribal identification.

The Egyptians wore a distinctive goatee.

Alexander the Great ordered his Greek soldiers to be clean -shaven, and the

Romans changed their fashion every few years.

Romans traditionally wore beards until the time of Hannibal. Scipio Africanus,

who fought against Hannibal, set new trends by shaving off his beard.

People adopted Scipio's habits, and for the next 350 years, Romans habitually

were clean -shaven and had the short cut with bangs.

For the Israelites, keeping a full beard was a clear identifier, a sign you were

part of the tribe, just like circumcision.

But as we'll see, being part of the tribe comes with responsibilities about

can and can't take revenge.

Israelite slave owners set their Israelite slaves free after working for

years. But many slaves in other societies had no chance to go free. The

has something specific to say to these people.

Vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord.

In other words, don't take revenge into your own hands. God will take care of

that.

This rule, written by Paul in the first century A .D., claims that God will

bring justice to people who have been ill -treated, like slaves.

Humankind has a tendency to want to take vengeance or justice into its own

hands. It's the reminder that it is not your job.

Ultimate justice is God's job.

and not ours.

Ancient believers put a lot of faith in this idea, trusting that God would

liberate against all odds, just like he did in the Exodus story, freeing the

Hebrew slaves from Egypt by sending the ten plagues.

The ten plagues story is a fascinating one because in many ways it is really

heart of a battle between two gods, God and Pharaoh, who if not a god from the

perspective of the believers, of the Israelite nation is surely a God to his

people. According to the Bible, God defeats Pharaoh with a series of brutal

acts. He plagues the Egyptians with boils, sends an infestation of life, and

kills off all the firstborn sons.

In other words, God took revenge so the people didn't have to.

The story of the Exodus makes the audacious claim

that the creator of the universe cares about the people at the bottom and is

willing to liberate the slaves.

This extraordinarily powerful message, that God is willing to fight on behalf

the oppressed, inspired the African -American slaves in the 19th century.

Our God is on our side in this way that we are marginalized and poor.

And our God has a vision of justice.

This belief that God frees was ever -present in the slavery -era spirituals,

songs inspired by the Exodus story.

Hear this language in the spirituals. Oh, freedom, oh, freedom over me. Go

down, Moses, way down in Egypt land. Let my people go.

And Harriet Tubman, the conductor of the Underground Railroad, which funneled

over 300 slaves from slavery to freedom, was called the Moses of her people. But

the Exodus story was also used by the pro -slavery movement.

The abolitionists would use the Exodus story to say God was on the side of

liberating slaves.

The pro -slavers would say God was on the side of liberating Jews, his chosen

people, and we are his chosen people.

God is on our side. The Bible was used with equal force on both sides of the

Civil War to justify position.

Using the text of the Bible, the Confederates claimed slavery was God's

should exist forever.

But ultimately, the anti -slavery movement won out in the United States,

Bible's narrative of freedom has outlasted its narrative of slavery.

This Exodus story has been foundational to the civil rights movement in the

United States.

and the kind of testimony that our God is a God who wants us to be free. The

idea that God will make sure that justice is done is a powerful one. But

this Bible rule holds an even larger message about nonviolence. As a

you look at Jesus in the Bible, and Jesus is about peace.

Jesus is about peace and nonviolence. It's do not respond in like manner.

violence for violence in other words this rule might be stating that mankind

should resist taking revenge it's a hard one to follow in the face of suffering

and injustice but it's a message that oppressed people all over the world have

taken to heart in the last few generations from gandhi to

martin luther king jr we've begun to see

that this strategy of Jesus is far more effective at bringing peace than

invasion, occupation, revolution, and our other violent responses to

Nelson Mandela, the late anti -apartheid leader of South Africa, practiced this

ideal even after enduring 27 years in prison.

At the 20th anniversary of his release from prison, To the dinner, he invited

the very guard who said that Mandela should be put to death.

And when Mandela was asked, why would you have him here? He said he was doing

his job.

The power of forgiveness has been seen over and over again as being

the better response.

In the 1960s, Martin Luther King and African -American civil rights leaders

across the country put this strategy of nonviolence to the test.

protesting a system of segregation and racism that had existed since the time

slavery. Through peaceful marches, strikes, and rallies, King and his

were instrumental in bringing about landmark changes for African Americans

other minorities, all without taking revenge.

on violence is not a submissive act. It's not an act of meekness or mildness.

It's an act of defiance. It's an act of resolve.

Today, decades later, injustice still exists in the United States. But our

country has come a long way since the days when men and women were enslaved.

We still struggle with the scars of slavery in our nation.

But what I'm really excited about, and I think this is where I find my hope

today.

Is that Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation 150 years ago this year.

And I find my hope and inspiration in that.

And this struggle for freedom is an essential part of the Bible. And it's

thousands of mysterious rules.

A portal to a time we can scarcely imagine.