Hello Sheng-Ta Tsai, thanks for taking the time to respond.
You said:
"Here is Code of Hammurabi:
Kidnapping another man's son is punishable by death."
This is a far cry from Exodus.
Exodus 21:16 has no limits. It doesn't care whether you're the son of a member of the elite, or you're a homeless man wandering the land. Kidnapping anyone into slavery, selling them, or possessing them all merit the death penalty.
You said:
"Hittite Laws, p. 220
https://e-edu.nbu.bg/pluginfile.php/743607/mod_resource/content/1/Hittite%20Laws.pdf
Code of Ur-Nammu, code 3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu
These are all prohibitions against kidnapping, whether the victim is a free man or another person's slave."
Again, these are a far cry from the Bible.
In most of them, the kidnapped person remains a slave:
21 If anyone abducts the male slave of a Luwian man from the land of Luwiya and brings him to the land of Hatti, and his owner later recognizes him, the owner shall only take back his own slave: there shall be no compensation.
It isn't focused on the rights of the slave, or the freedom of the kidnapped person. They focus a great deal on what kind of punishments to give the kidnapper, and the rewards given to those who recover runaway slaves, but there is precious little about any slave becoming free again.
In the Bible, Exodus 21:16 protects people from being kidnapped and made slaves.
The laws you gave focus on punishing people who steal slaves, but leave the slaves in slavery.
You said:
"Deut. laws legislate warfare, and 20:10–11 explicitly state that Israelites can enslave the target city if they surrender. That's an accepted way to get slaves."
I'm afraid not, my friend.
No one is enslaved in Deuteronomy 20:10-11.
The word normally translated "slave," ebed, isn't used.
Rather, it speaks of forced labor required as a tribute.
In other words, the people remain in their homes and cities. They don't become property. They aren't sold or auctioned off. They can still live their lives, but they must perform a certain required amount of labor as tribute, instead giving money as tribute.
You said:
"Deut. 23:15-16 could refer to slaves who escaped from foreign nations (read closely v. 16. It sounds like how a foreigner is treated.). Even if it applies to all slaves, it hardly serves as a condemnation of slavery itself. There are clear legislations of chattel slavery in the Old Testament."
It does refer to slaves who escape from other nations.
It also refers to all slaves and servants, everywhere, of every kind. It has no limits or qualifications.
There is no chattel slavery in the Old Testament law. It is forbidden in multiple ways. Deuteronomy 23:15-16 is one of the clearest, making it explicit that people are not property. If someone leaves a master they don't want to work for, they are immediately free. The Law protects their freedom, allowing them to live and travel wherever they please.
This is the exact opposite of Hammurabi and the other codes you cited.
Those law codes let the master recapture the slave, even rewarding those who capture escaped slaves and return them.
The Bible mandates that anyone who escapes is free, immediately, and the master is forbidden from ever getting them back.
Can you see the difference?
You said:
"In Israel, any "slave" was free as soon as they wanted? That's obviously not true. Even if we are talking about Israelite servants/slaves, the female ones don't have freedom to leave even after six years of service (Exodus 21:7). Leviticus 25:44–46 also state that foreign slaves can be owned for life, and be passed down to the owner's children."
Exodus 21:7 says that the women do not go out as the men do.
But then it clarifies in the following verses that they can go out earlier, and in more ways, than the men.
It also clarifies that if their needs are not taken care of, they are immediately released.
These laws are stipulating contracts, not slavery.
In slavery, the woman wouldn't be released if she wasn't cared for. She'd be the master's property to use or abuse as they wanted.
But in the Bible, if she's not cared for, she's free. If she's neglected, she's free. If the person she works for doesn't like her, he can't sell her, because he doesn't own her. He has to let her kinsman redeemer redeem her.
Leviticus 25:44-46 doesn't talk of slavery, but contract employment.
There are no slavers, no slave traders, no slave markets, no kidnapping. The only people mentioned are the landowners and the workers. The words used do not limit the process to slavery, but rather are the same words used elsewhere of hiring servants.
This is describing a hiring process, not enslavement.
Even today, a company can assign employees wherever they want. Leviticus 25 records the same: the family who is paying the worker can assign them to work for anyone in the family they want, even if the one who hired them dies.
Finally, passages like Deuteronomy 23:15-16 are written with no qualifications for a reason.
Even if a foreigner is hired to work for a family like the one described in Leviticus 25:44-46, if they want to leave, they are free to. They can live wherever they like in the land and cannot be oppressed.
This law is written without qualification to make it abundantly clear that something like chattel slavery was not tolerated within Israel.
This is why you don't find a slave class in Israel, nor do you ever find slave markets or slave traders or slave auctions anywhere within Israel during all its narratives, despite them being prevalent throughout the ancient world. Such things were outlawed in Israel.
