p. 190 | Bondmen and Bondmaids by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1862

Bondmen and Bondmaids.

By James White

QUESTION. Bro. White: Will you, or some other one, give through the Review an explanation of Leviticus xxv, 44–46? I ask for information.

ANSWER. The verses in question read as follows: "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you which they begot in your land, and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for a possesion, they shall be your bondmen forever; but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one another with rigor."

The perversion which is made of this scripture to the use of slavery, is so fully answered by Luther Lee in his "Slavery Examined," that we give his exposition of it. He says, "I now approach to the last resort of slavery within the lids of the Old Testament, to which it must be expected to cling as a man of blood to the horns of the altar, when the lifted arm of the avenger is seen near at hand. The law in question reads as follows:" He then quotes the passage under notice, Lev. xxv, 44–46, and continues:

I might grapple with slavery upon the ground of the common translation, as above, and beat it; but I am not disposed so to do, until I have exposed its hand in corrupting the translation. I have already made one correction in the common translation in the preceding text, and as I design to ground an argument upon a new translation of the present important text, I will explain the whole matter at this point. I admit there should be strong reasons for departing from the common English version of the Scriptures, a version generally approved and allowed to be correct. The translators were men of great learning, and executed their trust with great ability and fidelity, and have in general seized upon the very spirit and nerve of the original, so far as it can be represented by English words; yet I believe they were deceived by the spirit of slavery into a false translation of the text under consideration, as perhaps in a few other texts. The slave-trade was in the hight of its progress at the time the translation took place. It had previously attracted the attention of Church and State. At first it met with opposition from both. The first grant of the privilege of bringing slaves to America, was by Charles V, in 1517. This appears to have been principally secured by the representations of Las Casas a priest, and afterward a bishop. But after this, Charles repented of the countenance he gave the slave trade, and Pope

Leo X, his cotemporary, denounced the system, and declared that not only the Christian religion, but nature itself, cried out against a state of slavery. About the year 1556 Queen Elizabeth was deceived into a permit granted to Sir John Hawkins, to bring negroes from Africa; and she charged him not to carry them to America without their consent. But these scruples were overcome by the false glosses put upon this and other texts by interested priests, and by the great profit of the traffic. Here the matter rested, and all took it for granted without further examination that these pro-slavery expositions were right, and when king James' translators commenced their work in 1607, they very naturally adopted the false expositions designed to countenance the slave-trade, and translated the text under consideration, as well as some others, in the light of those false glosses by which they avoided coming in contact with the slave-trade, then in its greatest prosperity in England.

I will now notice the translation itself. The principal errors are as follows: There is nothing in the original to justify the words, "bondmen and bondmaids;" it should be man-servant and woman-servant. Both are in the singular, and not plural, in the Hebrew text. The word translated buy, is most properly translated procure. The word translated heathen, is properly rendered Gentiles, and might be rendered nations. The word translated forever, cannot bear that rendering in this case; it cannot mean longer than natural life, and that is never the sense of the English word forever. The word rendered forever, is le-o-lam, and its proper meaning is endless, and is correctly rendered forever, or to eternity, but here it cannot be understood in its full sense. It is used to denote a long period, less even than the whole of time. Many rites of the Jews were to be observed forever, which forever has passed and ended. A single text will serve as an illustration of the use of the word in a limited sense. "Bath-sheba said, Let my lord king David live forever." 1 Kings i, 31.

This can mean but a short, indefinite period, for David was then old. It can mean no more than a long time, for a man in his circumstances. But in the expression, "they shall be your bondmen forever," forever can mean no more than natural life, and yet it is never employed to express this indefinite period. Forever, therefore, does not express the sense of the text, and as the period of the jubilee was the longest time a person could be retained in service by one contract, which will hereafter be more fully shown, it is certain that forever could not extend beyond the jubilee, and it is most natural to understand it as referring to that period, or to some period to be fixed upon in the contract, but not named in the law. I will now introduce a literal translation of the text, and as I have no reputation as a Hebrew scholar to sustain one of my own, I have written to Dr. Roy, author of Roy's Hebrew and English Dictionary, for a literal translation of the text under consideration, and he has kindly furnished me with the following, which he warrants to be correct and literal:

"And thy man-servant, and thy woman-servant, shall be to thee from among the Gentiles which are round about you. From them ye shall procure a man-servant and a woman-servant.
"And also of the children of foreigners that reside with you, from them ye may procure of such families which are with them, that were born in your land; they shall be to you for a possession (service).
"And ye shall choose them for your children after you, to preside over them as their portion, unto the end of the time (specified)."—Rep.

I think no Hebrew scholar will deny that this translation is correct in all essential particulars, and if it be so, it follows not only that the translation in the common version perverts the sense of the original text to support slavery, but that nothing like American slavery is found in the law of Moses, when it is correctly understood. Take the text as it is now spread before the reader, and there is clearly no slavery in it; no human chattels are presented to the mind, no fettered limbs are seen, and no chains clank in the ear of humanity. It is certain that the text as rendered above, does not, and cannot, prove the existence of chattel slavery; but still it means something, and what does it mean? This is an important inquiry. Every law should be considered as designed to secure some important end, especially when God is the legislator. This law cannot have been designed to establish a system of human bondage like American slavery, and must have been designed to secure some other end, and not only a benevolent end, but one consonant with the general design of the whole system of which it is a part. It will give additional strength to the conclusion that the establishment of slavery was not its object, if it can be clearly shown that it was designed and calculated to secure another benevolent and important end. This I will now attempt to show. I regard the law in question, in a civil point of light, as prescribing a plan of naturalization for foreigners; and in a religious point of light, as a system of proselytism, by which heathens were to be reclaimed from their idolatry, to the faith and worship of the God of Abraham. To show this a number of plain facts need to be collected and looked at in connection with each other, and with reference to their joint bearing on this question.

(Concluded next week.)