Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, June 27, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
You know, when a man just decides to sell his child into slavery, that’s cool, right? Ugh. I’m often flabbergasted by the wild swings between just and life-giving laws, like sabbath and sabbatical, and laws like this that accept and even encourage the practice of slavery—even to selling one’s own daughter! It’s moments like these that I entirely discard out of hand any attempts by anyone to convince me that the Bible is to be taken literally at face value for our world today. Just stop.
Slavery. Is. Wrong. Selling your daughter into slavery—which assumes sexual slavery, by the way—is wrong. Men owning their wives and children as property to be disseminated with as they please is wrong. Patriarchy. Is. Wrong.
I simply cannot make it any clearer. The laws of Moses concerning slavery—and any biblical passage that allows, condones, encourages, or otherwise validates the practice of slavery should be discarded out of hand. End of story.
What passages of scripture trouble me the most? How do I discern what is God-given and what is deeply flawed human construct?