Sorry if I'm boring you. I find it fascinating and would hope that others do too.
Teacher:
Question:
"by defining just how much abuse is punishable and how much abuse is acceptable it is to enable abuse"
Your mistake is to assume that these few verses represent all the Torah has to say on the subject of a slave's legal rights. They are not the end of the story, not by a long shot.
Exodus Chapter 21
(20) If a man shall strike his slave or his maidservant with the rod and he shall die under his hand, he shall surely be avenged. (21) But if he will survive for a day or two, he shall not be avenged, for he is his property.
Capital Punishment
Understand that these verses refer only to Capital Punishment. The death penalty is the only punishment addressed in these verses.
The death penalty is applicable ONLY if the perpetrator is convicted of MURDER. And, as I previously explained, the evidentiary benchmark of INTENT TO MURDER was the fact that the victim's injuries were serious enough to cause death within 24 hours. After all, in ancient Hebrew society, there were no defibrilators, intubation tubes, transfusions, or elite surgeons to perform emergency life-saving procedures. A MURDER victim died fast. End of story.
If the death failed to meet that 24-hour benchmark, then there was insufficient legal evidence to prove INTENT TO MURDER. It then became a case of manslaughter at worst; or it was a case of the slave dying from some other subsequent cause maybe even unrelated to the assault; but it was not MURDER.
If the master could not be convicted of MURDER, then he was not liable to Capital Punishment. That is the conclusion of these verses. They say that the slave's death "shall not be avenged;" meaning, the slave's death is not a Capital Punishment case.
Legal Rights and Protections
Nonetheless, if the victim lives, then the Torah provides him with other legal recourse, discussed elsewhere in the Torah. He has legal recourse because he is still a PERSON with HUMAN RIGHTS. Remember, being a slave is an ECONOMIC relationship; it is not a statement of inferior personhood. Therefore, he has legal rights.
(Ignoring these other legal rights means that you were cherry-picking even though you did so unintentionally, since you were unaware of the other legal rights.)
It would be a delicious irony if the slave brought his master before a Jewish court of law and the court ruled that the owner must pay the slave a monetary compensation larger than the owner's financial portfolio, thereby the court would sell the owner into servitude and use the sale proceeds to compensate the slave. What comes around goes around!
So yes, the Torah is chock full of serious incentives to compel masters to treat their slaves kindly. Here is yet another incentive:
Deuteronomy Chapter 23
(16) You shall not turn over to his master a slave who is rescued from his master to you. (17) He shall dwell with you in your midst, in whatever place he will choose in one of your cities, which is beneficial to him; you shall not taunt him.
"rescued" - sometimes translated as escaped from his master.
"taunt" - sometimes translated as oppress.
The bottom line is, if your slave runs away from you, the Torah forbids anyone to return him to you. Your tough luck.
Actually, you might be glad that he ran away. Not only does the Torah legally obligate you to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide medical care for your slave - but you are also obligated to feed, clothe, shelter, and provide medical care for your slave's WIFE and CHILDREN. If you fail to properly provide, then the slave can take you to court, which will legally FORCE you to comply.
We can see that the Torah legal system provides the slave with a wide range of legal protections. If the master injures the slave, the slave can win his freedom and perhaps even additional compensation. If the master murders the slave, his death is avenged by Capital Punishment. The master is legally obligated to support the slave and his entire family in a lifestyle equal to the owner's lifestyle. And the master is legally prohibited from burdening the slave with demeaning or undignified work.
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The Bible requires that employers even treat slaves humanely. The Bible
(Leviticus 25:43) states regarding a freeman sold into slavery: "You shall not
rule over him through rigorous labor." Furthermore, his family has to be
provided for (Leviticus 25:41), and his master is not permitted to make him
perform debasing tasks (Leviticus 25:39). Although, strictly speaking, these
laws apply to a slave, logic dictates that they should also apply to any
employee. Employees, as noted above, are obligated to work to the best of
their abilities and not waste time. This does not give employers the right to
abuse workers. Righteous employers make sure that their employees are not
overworked or asked to perform degrading tasks. Indeed, Wagschal
(1990, p. 37) stresses the importance the Bible places on treating
employees well. He asks: "Is an employee worse than a slave?"
The Midrash (Sifra, Leviticus 25:39) provides examples of demeaning work
which is not permitted. In Biblical times, slaves [owned by non-Hebrews]
often followed their masters with a chair. They also carried their master’s
clothing to the bath house. These types of tasks are considered
humiliating and thus [a slave owner] is forbidden to order his servant to
perform these jobs. The Talmudic interpretation (Babylonian Talmud,
Kiddushin 22a) of the verse (Deuteronomy 15:16), "because he fares well
with you" is that the servant must have the same living standard as the
master. In the words of the Talmud: "He must be equal to you in food and
drink. You should not eat refined bread and he eat coarse bread, you drink
old wine and he drink new wine, you sleep on a mattress and he on straw."
The Talmud concludes that one who procures a servant acquires a master for himself!
~ Improving Employer-Employee Relationships:
A Biblical and Talmudic Perspective on Human Resource Management
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/relationships.html
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The American System versus the Torah System
Unlike the American slavery system (which was abolished, thank God), the Torah system of slavery is not predicated on the slave being a "subhuman other."
Rather, God designed the Torah system of slavery as a REHABILITATIVE institution, in which the master is supposed to set a GOOD EXAMPLE of BEHAVIOR (to rehabilitate thieves) and BUSINESS SENSE (to rehabilitate debtors who make monetary decisions so terrible that they descend to the point where they can't stay solvent). All throughout the rehabilitation, the master must ensure the slave and his family are completely provided with their sustenance needs. Slaves are fully human and deserving of the dignity due all humans.
This welfare system is different than the US welfare system. But I wouldn't necessarily call it "worse" than the US welfare system. In my personal opinion, the Torah system does have certain distinct advantages.
For example, the Torah system is rehabilitative and leads to indepence.
The US welfare system is non-rehabilitative and leads to dependency.
The Torah system provides a debtor with a face-saving method of
honorably working off his debt to society. The US system robs the
welfare recipient of his dignity by giving him free handouts without
expecting anything productive in return.
The Torah system keeps a thief in mainstream honest society and
rehabilitates him through honest and dignified work. The US system
places the thief in a prison, where he fine-tunes his dishonest
livelihood amongst the company of thieves, and where he is routinely
subjected to the threat of prison violence and rape with little (if any)
recourse or protection, practically ensuring a more emotionally
damaged person after release back into society.
Let's be fair when a particular Torah law appears to conflict with western sensibilities.
If your vision is narrowly focused on isolated laws taken out of the whole context, then you are viewing an incomplete system that is of course doomed to create a failed and inhumane society. If you are FAIR in your critique of Torah laws, then you must critique the WHOLE BODY of Torah law TOGETHER as an INTEGRATED SYSTEM.