The advocates of slavery and the slave trade exultingly quoted:
"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it."—Joel iii, 8.
They likewise claimed that St. Paul, while he preached the gospel to slaveholders and slaves alike in Rome, yet used his calling to enable him to return to slavery an escaped human being—Onesimus.( 1)
The advocates of domestic slavery justified it as of scriptural and divine origin.
From the Old Testament they quoted other texts, not only to justify the holding of slaves in perpetual bondage, but the continuance of the slave trade with all its cruelties.
"And he said, I am Abraham's servant."—Gen. xxiv., 34.
"And there was of the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they had called him unto David, the King said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he said, Thy servant is he. . . .
"Then the King called to Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I have given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul, and to all his house.
"Thou, therefore, and thy sons, and they servants shall till the land for him, and thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy master's son may have food to eat," etc. "Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants."—2 Samuel ix., 2, 9-10.
"I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me."—Eccles. ii., 7.