Posted on by Abe Austin

A Misunderstanding of Freedom

Two Kinds of Freedom)

At first glance, Genesis Chapter 38 seems like a strange anomaly in the Biblical record. It interrupts the narrative of Joseph right after he is sold into Egypt to tell the sordid tale of Judah’s family. Its plot unfolds like a trashy soap opera, culminating in Judah’s own daughter-in-law seducing him and conceiving twins. Once the chapter ends, we are whisked back to the main story of Joseph, just in time to hear about his experience in Potiphar’s house.

Genesis Chapter 38 only makes sense when it is viewed in the context of that broader narrative involving Joseph. I do not think it is a coincidence that it is placed right after Joseph is cast into slavery, and right before he rejects the advances of Potiphar’s wife and is cast further down into prison. His narrative and Judah’s provide a perfect contrast. On the one hand, Judah is physically free, but a slave to his immorality. On the other hand, Joseph is physically captive, but still the master of his own soul. Thus, the record is presenting two kinds of freedom and two kinds of slavery, and implicitly asking the reader, “which of these is truly free?” The correct answer, of course, is that Joseph is truly free, for though he is a slave an in prison, he is free in his inmost parts, while Judah is not.

Of course, the story is not presenting physical captivity as a good thing, mankind is meant to strive for all layers of freedom, but if a man wishes to be truly free, he must at the very least be the master of his own self. Any man who does not have moral control over his own appetites is fundamentally a slave, no matter the rest of his situation.

A Modern Misfocus)

Today, in our western culture, we have a great commotion of perceived shackles and demands for freedom. On the one hand, the white male is accused of still reaping the benefits of historical slavery and patriarchy, enjoying a higher freedom than women or most other races. On the other hand, we hear of blue-collar workers, predominantly white males, sick of being society’s punching bag for decades, sick of having their strings pulled by society’s elites. And then there are conspiracy theories that even those elites are for the most part powerless, their votes and influence bought and paid for by blackmail and bribery, shadowy corporations directing things from behind the scenes.

Everyone, it seems, isn’t as liberated as they would hope to be, and the majority of public discourse is set on the pursuit of freeing one class or another. It is an obsession that I believe our ancestors would find laughable, given that we are the freest people that the world has ever known. We are fighting over the slimmest margins of injustice, many of which are imagined, and we show no appreciation for the fact that our ancestors gave everything for just a fraction of the liberty that we now enjoy. Without devolving into complete lawless anarchy, we are about as free as it is humanly possible to be.

Or, at least, we are free physically. Spiritually and morally, though? We are a society that is absolutely enslaved to our appetites, to our devices, to our distractions, to our immorality, to our self-justification, to our anger and pride. We are simultaneously one of the freest and most enslaved people the world has ever known; and our focus for liberation is in completely the wrong area.

To Be Truly Free)

Perhaps we are so obsessed with our perceived injustices because our spirit accurately identifies that something is holding us down, but our heavy-lidded eyes can’t see past the physical to realize it is our lack of moral will. We settle on the assumption that it must be a physical shackle simply because we lack the imagination or the courage to consider a spiritual one. We are, therefore, a modern-day Sisyphus, doomed to an eternal effort that never achieves anything.

If we truly cared to be free, the great commotion of our time would be one of spiritual ministry. We would seek to convict the world of its sin as an act of kindness, waking up all to their true taskmaster, and the true liberation from it. We would strive as a community to abandon our shrines of distraction and learn how to rise to a collective moral mastery.

Then, and only then, we would be truly free.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 21:15-17

15 And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.

16 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

17 And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.

We have a couple more crimes for which the punishment is death. Verses 15 and 17 both have to do with one’s actions towards their father and mother. If one were to smite a parent, or even if only to curse them, then they would face a death penalty. This is demanding a higher level of respect to one’s parents than for any other person. That being said, the commandment does not require one to actively show love and affection to the parents, but it does deny showing active malice towards them. Perhaps one’s parents behaved so reprehensibly that the child cannot show them sweet devotion, the child would be justified by the law in withholding that, but the child would not be justified in harming or cursing the parent.

As a separate matter, if anyone tried to force another man into slavery, the perpetrator would also be sentenced to death. Recall that a key difference between Israelite servitude and our modern conception of slavery was that the serving party willingly elected to enter that station in return for a price. It was freely entered into, would freely be departed from after six years, and received due compensation. It was entirely different from the sorts of historical slavery where people were kidnapped, carried from their homeland, and forced into lifelong oppression. As we see in today’s verses, that form of slavery was never supported by the Lord, in fact He demanded the death of any who participated in it.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 21:2-3

2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.

Today we begin the rules that applied to an Israelite slave. As I mentioned in my last post, this subject can be shocking to us today, but we must not take our current privileges and assume that they also existed in these ancient times. The historical context matters.

As we will read in upcoming verses, an Israelite man might end up a servant by selling himself, or by being sold by his father, into that service, presumably due to immense poverty. This was, therefore, a transaction with payment, and the serving participant elected to participate in it. The relationship being described here is not chattel slavery, but probably something between our modern concept of slavery and servanthood.

Today, we might wish that that the slave/servant could have been aided by some sort of welfare program instead, but what if there wasn’t sufficient stability and wealth in the economy to provide that welfare? We might wish that the rich master would simply pay for the man’s livelihood without receiving any service in return, as an act of charity, but what if the rich men of the time would themselves become destitute unless they made some gain after paying for the man’s livelihood?

Freedom is a great good that we should all aspire to, but history has taught us that it is a concept that requires a certain level of infrastructure and stability to exist. The Israelites simply may not have had that necessary infrastructure or stability, given that they were fresh out of Egypt and living in a brutal environment. At least, not enough infrastructure or stability to support it entirely.

Because, even while God’s law was allowing for a form of slavery in this moment, it is already showing the ending of slavery as well. Defined in God’s law was that no Hebrew slave should be forced to stay in such a state for perpetuity. Every seventh year he would have the opportunity to go free, at no cost, and be a free man again. If he found the world still too hard to abide on his own he could presumably sell himself back into servitude again, though after another seven years he would have still have that guaranteed chance for freedom once more.

And if it seems unfair that this option for freedom is only offered to Hebrew slaves, and presumably not the foreign ones, remember that God had already detailed how any foreigner could become a child of the covenant, and would presumably then have the same privilege of freedom.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 6:16-20

16 And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari: and the years of the life of Levi were an hundred thirty and seven years.

17 The sons of Gershon; Libni, and Shimi, according to their families.

18 And the sons of Kohath; Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel: and the years of the life of Kohath were an hundred thirty and three years.

19 And the sons of Merari; Mahali and Mushi: these are the families of Levi according to their generations.

20 And Amram took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.

Yesterday we read a brief account of the descendants of Reuben and Simeon, but those were simply to establish the context for today’s verses, which dive more deeply into the descendants of the third son Levi. And the reason why we are going into greater detail with the descendants of Levi is because this leads us to the birth of Aaron and Moses.

So, to summarize the connection, Levi had three sons. The middle son, Kohath, had four sons. The eldest of those, Amram, was the father of Aaron and Moses. So Moses and Aaron were the great-grandchildren of Levi. This information is helpful in getting a sense of just how long the Israelites had been in bondage. Presumably they were not enslaved during the first generation of the Israelite tribes (that of Levi), but it may have occurred in the time of Kohath or Amram. Of course, if Kohath, Amram, and Aaron and Moses were all born late in the lives of their fathers, this could still represent a gap of more than a hundred years between Israel’s entry to Egypt and its exit. The fact that the Israelites had grown to such a size that the Egyptians would fear them suggests that there was some significant passage of time before they were enslaved.

In short, it seems the Israelites were not under captivity for many centuries. There are many estimates that put it around 80 years, and that makes sense with the information given in these verses. Of course, 80 years is still long enough that the vast majority of the Israelites alive at this point would have spent their entire lives in slavery. When all one has known is a singular, deprived sort of life, it really doesn’t matter whether that situation originated just before birth, or thousands of years earlier. Either way, bondage is the entirety of that person’s existence.