Bible Synapse
Does the Bible approve of slavery?
Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Noah curses Canaan: he will be a servant of servants to his brothers.
And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
A poor Israelite who sells himself is to be treated as a hired worker and freed at the jubilee; servants bought from the nations may be kept for life.
And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile: And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God. Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. …
Whoever kidnaps a man and sells him, or keeps him, is to be put to death.
And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
A servant whose master destroys his eye or knocks out his tooth goes free.
And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.
A slave who has escaped from his master is not to be handed back, and must not be oppressed.
Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him.
The fast God chooses is to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke.
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
The objection
The law of Moses lets Israelites buy slaves from the surrounding nations and pass them on to their children as property for ever, and Noah curses Canaan to be “a servant of servants”. Yet the same law makes kidnapping a capital crime, and Isaiah calls for every yoke to be broken. Does the Bible approve of slavery or condemn it?
The answer
The passages answer different questions. Genesis 9:25 is Noah’s curse on Canaan, a prediction about his descendants, not a command to enslave anyone; it says nothing about Africa, though it was later misused to defend the Atlantic slave trade. The law of Moses did not create servitude. It found it everywhere in the ancient world and regulated it, and it forbade the slave trade’s central act: “he that stealeth a man, and selleth him” was to be put to death (Exodus 21:16), and Paul lists ‘menstealers’ among the lawless (1 Timothy 1:10). An Israelite who sold himself through debt was to be treated as a hired worker, not ruled “with rigour”, and freed in the seventh year or at the jubilee (Exodus 21:2; Leviticus 25:39-43). A master who maimed a servant had to free him (Exodus 21:26-27), a master who beat one to death was to be punished (21:20), and a runaway slave was not to be handed back (Deuteronomy 23:15-16).
It is also true that Leviticus 25:44-46 let Israelites keep servants bought from other nations for life, and Exodus 21:21 says of a servant beaten by his master, “for he is his money”. Jesus said Moses allowed divorce “because of the hardness of your hearts” (Matthew 19:8), and many Christians read these laws the same way: they limited and softened an institution that the old covenant did not yet abolish. The New Testament then planted the principles that undid it. In Christ “there is neither bond nor free” (Galatians 3:28); a slave who can gain freedom should take it (1 Corinthians 7:21); and Paul asked Philemon to receive his slave back “not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved” (Philemon 16). Isaiah 58:6 and Exodus 21:16 condemn oppression and man-stealing, while Leviticus 25 regulates a servitude it permitted. The Bible is consistent with itself here, even though the permission troubles modern readers.
Other answers Christians give
Unlike chattel slavery
Many writers stress that much servitude in Israel was debt-service for a limited time, more like indenture than the slavery of the Americas. Others reply that Leviticus 25:44-46 did allow lifelong ownership of foreigners, and that Christians should not play that down.
Still open
Christians agree that kidnapping and the trade in human beings are condemned by Exodus 21:16, and most see the New Testament as pointing to the end of slavery. They differ on how to explain why the law permitted the lifelong servitude of foreigners at all; that remains a hard question.
From the classic commentators
Through this principle slavery was completely abolished, so far as the people of the theocracy were concernedC. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Leviticus 25 (quoting Oehler), at Bible Hub
In the case of the latter, if the master struck out an eye and destroyed it, i.e., blinded him with the blow, or struck out a tooth, he was to let him go free, as a compensation for the loss of the member.C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Exodus 21, at Bible Hub
Sources
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Leviticus 25, at Bible Hub
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Exodus 21, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Leviticus 25, at Bible Hub