“Put in charge” (NIV) is better translated “tutor” (NASB) or, better still, “guardian.” The slave assigned to this role would watch out for the student on his way to school and help him with his manners and schoolwork, but he was not the teacher himself. Children sometimes resented but often grew fond of their slave guardians and later freed them. Such guardians were also normally better educated than the free masses; the image is not intrinsically demeaning. But it was hardly the way most other Jewish teachers would have described the law. (They occasionally describe Moses as Israel’s “guardian” till Israel grew up. Philosophers spoke of philosophy as a “moral teacher,” and Judaism spoke of the law as a “teacher.”)
