The Bible contains many references to slavery, reflecting the common practice in antiquity. It can be confronting to come across verses that seem to put slavery in a positive light. People rightly find it difficult to reconcile the loving nature of God with a practice that subjugates one person over another, often in very cruel ways. How can a God of love approve of this? Some people resolve this contradiction by concluding that the God of the Old Testament is different to the God of the New Testament. This line of thinking is not new. It first came into prominence in the second century AD through the teachings of a theologian named Marcion. To support this dualistic thinking, not only did Marcion reject the Old Testament but he also rejected many parts of the New Testament which teach that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, (eg John 8:56-58; 10:30; 14:9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-9; Jude 1:5-6; Revelation 1:8).
Marcion’s teachings were rejected by the broader Christian church for good reason, but it did not stop him from forming his own splinter groups which promoted ideas that persist to this day. So how can we reconcile the character of God as revealed by Jesus with the reality of slavery in the Bible, without throwing out large portions of the Old and New Testaments?
First, we need to look at the term “slavery”. To us the term is often associated with pre-civil war American slavery called chattel slavery. This type of slavery did exist in ancient times, but the question is whether this is what the Bible condones. The Hebrew word translated as “slave” in the Bible is eved. Eved is better translated as “servant” as it usually refers to indentured servants. An indentured servant is someone who could not pay a debt monetarily, so they would work off their debt by labouring for their creditor. This would last for a maximum of six years because debts were cleared every seventh year. The conditions under which these people served were often so good that some servants chose to remain with the person they were serving permanently (Exodus 21:5). This is not surprising as the treatment of servants was strictly regulated by the Torah. It even allowed a servant to leave their master if they were mistreated, and furthermore, whoever they came to for help was obliged to protect them (Deuteronomy 23:15,16). This goes against the type of slavery of Antebellum America. Unlike ancient Israel’s neighbouring countries and, in more recent times, the American Fugitive Slave Act, which required slaves to be returned to their masters, the Bible obliges people to provide sanctuary for runaway servants/slaves. This means that masters would avoid mistreating their servants so that the servants would not leave them.1 This applied to Israelites and also to foreigners (Exodus 22:21; 23:9; Deuteronomy 24:14). In fact, Israelites were obliged to love foreigners (Deuteronomy 10:19). Regarding a mistreated servant, even if they did not run away, mistreatment of a servant granted them legal freedom (Exodus 21:26,27).
It is true that the buying of servants was permitted from foreigners (Leviticus 25:44-46). Unlike all the other surrounding nations of ancient Israel, stealing people to sell as slaves was strictly prohibited. It was considered such a serious crime that it attracted the death penalty (Exodus 21:16; Deuteronomy 24:7). There were allowances for buying servants of foreigners, but not fellow Israelites. There were several reasons why one could fall into servitude that did not involve being stolen and trafficked away. The most common were due to famine or other disasters that led to their inability to use their land.2 In some cases a person was placed in servitude as punishment for a crime they committed (Exodus 22:3; Genesis 50:18). Whatever the case was, servants were not to be treated as sub-human, but on the contrary, non-Israelite servants became part of the covenant community (Genesis 17:13) and looked forward to a Messianic age where they would be fully integrated into the community along with land inheritance (Ezekiel 47:22,23 c.f. Galatians 3:28,29). The realities of the ancient world were such that to be a servant in Israel was the best prospect for displaced persons when it came to quality and longevity of life. Trying to survive as a sojourner in foreign lands exposed one to all sorts of dangers. It also caused anxiety in not knowing how to appease various gods who would be fickle and capricious. This meant that the servitude of foreigners in Israel drastically improved their situation in life. It was the best solution at the time in an imperfect world.
When God came to Earth as Jesus, He did not change the indentured servant model because it was the best system possible in dealing with unpaid debts. There is nothing wrong with someone working off an unpaid debt under protected conditions (with an upper limit of six years). It is reasonable and the fair thing to do. In calling His followers to minister to others as a slave would (Matthew 20:26,27), Jesus was obviously not promoting the unjust chattel slavery that occurred outside of Israel. As He did as Yahweh in the Old Testament, Jesus spoke a lot against injustice and oppression. He identified with the prophecy of Isaiah to release the captives (Luke 4:16-18 cf. Isaiah 61:1). Jesus conquered the ultimate and most cruel form of slavery—slavery to sin (Romans 6:6,7, 11-14; Galatians 5:1). As mankind’s Redeemer, He smashed the prison doors of death and “led captivity captive” (Matthew 27:50-53; Ephesians 4:8 cf. Psalms 68:18). He proclaimed the good news which has fundamentally altered the foundations of society. People who have accepted the gospel have been transformed into better people. This was Jesus’ way to deal with the evils of bondage and oppression. The kingdom of heaven, which He is building through His followers, will be completed when He returns, and when He does, there will no longer be any debts to be repaid or oppression. Affliction and distress will not rise again (Nahum 1:9). While Christians await His return, they are called not to be idle but to actively work to free people from both spiritual and physical oppression. They are to see Jesus in the oppressed, recognising that, whatever they do for those who are suffering, they do for Him (Matthew 25:40-45). They are to spread the gospel which upholds the equal dignity and value of all people regardless of race, gender or socio-economic status (Galatians 3:28).
Some people point out that the Bible was used by slave owners in America to justify slavery. It is a sad fact of history that some people who identified as Christians misused the Bible by misquoting carefully selected verses.3 There was a special Bible printed that served their purpose: referred to as the “Slave Bible”. This Bible was published three years after the Haitian Revolution in 1804 and given to the slaves in the British West Indies to prevent a possible slave rebellion. It had 90 per cent of the Old Testament and half of the New Testament redacted.4 Only 232 of a total of 1189 chapters were included. Obviously, slave owners did not want slaves to understand the context of the passages included in the “Slave Bible”, let alone the many passages that were omitted—those that speak about the nice treatment of servants and the limited terms of servitude. In some places anti-literacy laws were passed to prevent slaves from being able to read the complete Bible should they come across one. This is because the Bible is against the type of servitude that occurred in the Americas and the slave owners knew it!
Some people wonder about the message regarding slavery in the epistle of Philemon in the New Testament. This is a letter from Paul to Philemon who seems to have owned a slave named Onesimus. Does this letter support slavery? It should be noted that runaway slaves in ancient Rome were punished severely and sometimes killed as an example to the other slaves. Onesimus’s prospects were not good as a runaway. Paul urged Philemon to take him back, not as a servant, but as a brother (v16) and to treat him as he would treat Paul himself (v17). It could be interpreted that Paul was actually advocating for Onesimus’s manumission, which could only be granted to him after he returned to his owner, Philemon.
When the Bible is read in context, it does not lead people to subjugate others, but rather it leads them on a mission of promoting social justice and emancipating bondmen. It was the Bible that compelled Christians to fight to end the evils of trafficking humans as slaves in the British Empire, the Americas and other parts of the world through the abolitionist movements. Many Christians risked fines and imprisonment in order to shelter and smuggle runaway slaves to freedom. In the United States, Adventists were instrumental in the abolitionist movement.5 Western society is indebted to its Christian heritage for the freedoms and prosperity that it enjoys, and the Bible has been foundational in establishing freedom, equality and justice. The challenge for us is to continue this work.
- Exodus 21:20,21 is not advocating for the beating of servants but on the contrary, it elevates them to being treated as other people, ie, if someone fought a servant and killed him, he would be avenged in the same way as if he had killed another person. This is in contrast to other ancient Near Eastern law codes like the Hammurabi code where killing a slave was not avenged. ↩︎
- Conquered people through distant justified warfare were treated as tributaries if they surrendered (Deut 20:10-15 cf 1 Samuel 17:8,9). ↩︎
- Eg, Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22 which, if read in context, shows that the type of servitude referred to was one where the quality of the service was largely dependent on the servant and the servants received remuneration (Colossians 4:1). In these passages, Paul addressed the social context within Roman law and advocated for just and equitable treatment of servants, aligning it with Torah principles. Most significantly, these passages explicitly affirm that God regards all individuals as equals. ↩︎
- The slave owners considered the OT more of a threat to their industry than the NT. ↩︎
- Kevin M Burton, Apocalyptic Abolitionism: How Millennialists Helped Abolish Slavery and Reform America, 2026. ↩︎
Emanuel Millen is a theology lecturer at Avondale University.
