Non-Hebrew slaves did not have to be treated "less severely", were slaves for life as were their children? Yahweh endorsed the slave trade by telling Israelites they could aquire slaves from the heathen around them.
Atheists are people who understand there is no good evidence to believe in any of the stories about any God or Gods. Why would a universal God make it look like he came from a copy of Mesopotamian myths and later borrowed Persian and Greek myths?
Also God of love? Yahweh ordered every living thing killed in 6 entire cities when going to war. In all others if a peace offer of forced labor is refused kill all the men and women and children are taken as "plunder".
Love? Yahweh wasn't even a God of love he was a warrior deity?
Exodus 15:3:
Yahweh is a man of war;
Yahweh is his name.
Isaiah 42:13:
Yahweh goes forth like a mighty man;
like a man of war(s) he stirs up his fury.
Zephaniah 3:17: Yahweh, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory.
Psalm 24:8:
Who is the King of Glory?
Yahweh, strong and mighty;
Yahweh, mighty in battle.
In these passages Yahweh is explicitly called a warrior or directly compared to a warrior. If one
moves out from simple designations to actual functioning, the metaphor or image is even more
extensively present. Yahweh is the subject of many verbs that belong to the sphere of warfare.
Slaves
Slavery in the Bible - RationalWiki
Non-Hebrews, on the other hand, could (according to
Leviticus 25:44) be subjected to slavery in exactly the way that it is usually understood by slavery-advocates. The slaves could be bought, sold and (when their owner died) inherited. This, by any standard, is race- or ethnicity-based, and
Leviticus 25:44-46 explicitly allows slaves to be bought from foreign nations or foreigners living in
Israel. It does say that simply kidnapping Hebrews to enslave them is a crime punishable by death (
Deuteronomy 24:7), but no such prohibition exists regarding foreigners.
War captives could be made slaves, assuming they had refused to make peace (this applied to women and children — men were simply killed), along with the seizure of all their property (
Deuteronomy 20:10-15).
Hereditary slaves were born into slavery and there is no apparent way by which they could obtain their freedom.
Non-Hebrew slaves[edit]
Leviticus 25:44-46 (NASB) suggests how Israelites can utilize the full human resources of slaves:
44As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. 45Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. 46You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.
There is clearly no way out for these slaves: they were truly slaves for life. And not just for the life of their owner. They were "property" and would be inherited along with the rest of their deceased owner's possessions.
Hereditary Slaves[edit]
The children of slaves were born into slavery.
Exodus 21:4d (NASB):
If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone.