Slavery Among The Germanic Tribes

Among the topics Roman historian Tacitus writes about regarding the Germanic tribes in Germania, he covers their form of slavery.  Even if everything Tacitus wrote about events and states of affairs is accurate, it would not mean that different forms of Germanic slavery did not come about afterward, so his words are irrelevant to anything beyond the exact timeframe he writes about.  It is not as if we can know the correctness of his historical claims regardless.  Only logical facts and introspective states of mind, themselves matters of logical truth and possibility, allow for absolute certainty.  The words of Tacitus still provide genuine but potentially misleading evidence as to what slavery was like among the Germanic tribes.  As a rationalist, I reiterate such things often because, in addition to them being important, so many people overlook such objective truths if they are not brought up to them by someone else, and even then they might deny them due to shock or discomfort.

The type of slavery he reports among the tribes is far more mild than many others that might come to mind as moderners reflect on historical examples, with one very complicating factor to be mentioned later on.  In fact, in chapter 24 of Germania, Tacitus claims that some of the tribespeople would eagerly bet their own freedom in dangerous competitions, which he calls a "bad practice" clung to out of stubbornness despite the people he writes of considering it an honor.  Then, he shifts his focus to a more general slavery practiced among these communities.  That he has just written about the phenomenon of people offering their own freedom as the stakes for competitions is why the quotation below from chapter 25 starts with a reference to "other slaves" besides the ones who consented to gamble their freedom away.

"The other slaves are not employed after our manner with distinct domestic duties assigned to them, but each one has the management of a house and home of his own.  The master requires from the slave a certain quantity of grain, of cattle, and of clothing, as he would from a tenant, and this is the limit of subjection.  All other household functions are discharged by the wife and children."

This excerpt from Germania gives the impression that the slave was to provide animals, food, and clothing to the master.  In Biblical slavery, the master has to provide the slave with sustenance and clothing, not the other way around, though the slave might labor for food or housing-related purposes for the sake of assisting the master's house.  At least, this would not Biblically be the other way around in any other kind of sense, where the slave must specifically hand over animals or clothing, as opposed to tending to the master's or mistress's animals or other resources.

Although the passage is more about the rights and obligations of spouses towards each other, Exodus 21:10-11 is relevant to this with its emphasis on provision within marriage, as the wife of the master in question once worked as his servant.  Of greater immediate clarity is a portion of Deuteronomy 15, where the slave's condition of being well off because of their master's provision is said to be a prerequisite for the optional, voluntary choice of the slave to stay with their master or mistress for life rather than automatically go free in the seventh year, even with resources of their own as a sort of severance payment that would help them establish financial independence (15:13-14).

Deuteronomy 15:16-17—"But if your servant says to you, 'I do not want to leave you,' because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, then take an awl and push it through his earlobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life.  Do the same for your female servant."

There is certainly nothing domineering or dehumanizing about the type of slavery allowed in Biblical ethics both by lack of condemnation and by expressly permitting it, as is the case in Deuteronomy 15 and elsewhere.  The Biblically permissible kind also is rigidly gender egalitarian, which is not emphasized in what Tacitus says about Germanic slavery.  All the same, the form of Germanic slavery Tacitus addresses does not seem especially demanding or confining on its own, since the master receives a proportion of the slave's own personal domestic output, which is otherwise the latter's.  This dynamic is more akin to a ruler receiving a tax from a subject than to a savage form of slavery inherently at odds with the Biblical kind.  It does not necessarily involve any element of brutality, exploitation, or even a sharp difference in economic standing between the individuals at both ends of the hierarchy.  

But the historian notes a marked exception to largely gentle Germanic servitude.  On one hand, he indicates that the striking of a slave or other harsh or punitive measures were very uncommon.  On the other hand, he expressly says that masters often killed slaves out of passion with impunity.  That is, there was supposedly no punishment for the slave killer, at least when the person they were serving killed them (perhaps it was treated differently if someone outside the household killed another person's slave).  Here are the exact words, also from chapter 25:

"To strike a slave or to punish him with bonds or with hard labour is a rare occurrence.  They often kill them, not in enforcing strict discipline, but on the impulse of passion, as they would an enemy, only it is done with impunity."

Does this mean that the masters (or mistresses) frequently killed slaves in this manner, or do the words mean that when a master killed a slave, it was often in a bout of abrupt passion and received no penalty?  The previous comment about how rare an occurrence it was for a master to strike a slave seem to point towards the latter.  It would appear from the summary of Tacitus that violence of any kind, great or small, was seldom practiced in the context of Germanic slavery.

In either case, the killing of a slave was reportedly treated with extreme lack of legal and probably moral uproar in the community.  The fairly relaxed version of service described by Tacitus still did not come with full regard for the humanity of slaves.  Such a deed going without formal punishment is sharply contrary to the human rights affirmed in the Torah's laws, according to which the murder of a slave must be punished.  As controversial as the verse is for not forbidding slavery altogether (but only emotionalism or cultural norms would ever lead someone to think all forms of slavery must be evil [1]), Exodus 21:20 fiercely emphasizes that there certainly should be no impunity when someone kills their slave.

Exodus 21:20—"'Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,'"

No exact penalty is specified here.  But, it is clear from this verse alone (along with logic; I mean this verse apart from other verses!) that to forgo punishment of the master or mistress who directly kills their slave during or as a direct consequence of, for instance, a beating, is wicked.  Perhaps Germanic masters killed their slave more spontaneously than by beating them, but the lack of consequences is unjust.  The ESV uses the term "avenged" to emphasize that the dead slave's illegitimate killing should never be ignored.  Exodus 21:12 and 14 already clarify beforehand that killing someone intentionally outside of valid capital punishment or self-defense (see Exodus 22:3) deserves death, but Genesis 9:6 affirms that murder deserves death fairly early in the first book of the Bible.  And the principles of Genesis 9:6 have no exceptions based on who the victim is.  Everyone bears the image of God according to Genesis 1:26-27 and 5:1-2, men and women equally, and should never be killed by other people outside of very specific parameters.

Exodus 21:22-23 also make it clear that negligently fighting with one person and recklessly harming an outside party, up to killing them, merits the same punishment as intentional harm of the same kind.  Also, Exodus 21:28-32 addresses how failing to take action to save a human life when one had 1) evidence of lethal danger and 2) the capacity to intervene is also a sin deserving of execution.  Beating someone to death with an instrument like a rod as used in the example within Exodus 21:20 is much less removed from intentional murder than this even if it is not purposeful.  A weak or sick person could easily show outward signs that beating them at all or with a particular severity could end their life, for one thing.  Whoever is administering the beating would have to react carefully and immediately to any evidence that the slave is about to die, or they are guilty of murder if it gets to that point.

Is beating one's slave for any reason permissible as long as it does not result in death?  No, though the verse right after Exodus 21:20 is sometimes misinterpreted that way.  Exodus 21:21 generates more dramatic controversy, as it appears to some people to dismiss the condition of a slave as trivial given that they do not die from a beating.

Exodus 21:21—"'but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.'"

Exodus 21:20-21 accomplishes several things.  It directly affirms that slaves are not exceptions to the right to not be murdered because of their social status, that murdered slaves must be avenged in the proper way by punishment of the guilty master, that the slave's death more than two days after the beating is not to be punished as careless or intentional murder, and that men and women are equal and thus should be treated identically as victims of the same acts.  Regarding the last point, Exodus 21:20 is not the only verse in Exodus that acknowledges gender equality.  Exodus 20:8-10, 12, 17, 21:4, 15, 17, 26-27, and 28-32 all do this as well, often with respect to slaves, and the same principle is the case with free men and women; Leviticus 25:5-7, 44-46, Deuteronomy 5:12-14, 12:12, 18, 15:12-18, 16:9-11, and 13-14 also affirm gender equality when it comes to the moral treatment of slaves/servants.

So many of the explicit words and logical ramifications of Exodus 21:20-21 which uplift slaves and by extension all humans are ignored because some people fixate on the assumption that the Bible permits beating slaves without restrictions as long as they do not die from it.  The latter verse is widely misunderstood to mean any treatment is permissible or at least not deserving of punishment if the slave survives.  Really, verse 21 is about how the master should not be punished for murder if the slave recovers.  If he or she died after recovering, there might be no link between the beating and the death anyway.  Unintententional killing is also not subject to the same outcome as intentional murder when free people are on the receiving end as well (Exodus 21:12-14).  Like Exodus 21:12-14, verses 20-21 are in part about when not to punish for murder.  Someone who beats their slaves only to express personal urges has no refuge in Exodus 21:21 whether or not the slave dies.

Beatings with no basis other than whim are denounced as tyrannical by Deuteronomy 25:1-3, for the recipient must have committed some genuine wrong to deserve flogging.  Deuteronomy 25 is clear that the strikes must fall on the person's back and not, among other things, their face or stomach, parts of the body where the offender would be more vulnerable to lasting injury or lethal damage.  And anything more than 40 lashes at the absolute most is a form of vile torture that no one deserves.  Elsewhere in Deuteronomy, slaves are presented as having the right to flee abusive owners and not be oppressed wherever they go (23:15-16).  Illicit beatings would certainly fall under abuse.

But within Exodus 21 itself, verses 26-27 are stark about how slaves, and anyone else for the same ultimate reasons, must be allowed to go free for mistreatment.  The examples in these two verses are permanent harm to an eye and the loss of a tooth, which a wild beating driven by a master's or mistress's emotionalistic, baseless rage could result in.  According to Exodus and broader Mosaic Law, there is no impunity for masters even in singular instances of abuse that do not kill the slave.  The slavery of the ancient Roman Empire could be far, far more cruel than anything Tacitus attributes to the Germanic tribes, so Biblical morality uplifting slaves as humans with all the actual rights thereof distances Biblical slavery from the Roman kind even more than from the relatively benevolent Germanic kind.

[1].  Maybe there is no such thing as good and evil.  Maybe Biblical morality or something very similar is true.  Or, perhaps slavery is morally required (which would render Biblical ethics incorrect on this matter since slavery is never prescribed with the exception of certain scenarios of military victory [Deuteronomy 20]).  All of these things are logical possible, so it is not obviously true that all kinds of slavery are evil.  The irrelevant feelings or intuitions some people have which make it seem as is slavery is an inherent wrong are just that: irrelevant.