Introduction
The biblical text contains a tension that critics exploit and believers must explain: slavery regulations exist alongside God’s repeated proclamation of love and liberation. Critics present this as simple contradiction. But the reality requires honesty about what the text actually says.
Defining Terms
Before proceeding, three critical distinctions:
“Command” creates duty: a divine imperative requiring action.
“Endorse” declares something good: approval of a practice as reflecting God’s character or design.
“Condone” means passive tolerance: accepting something without protest or intervention.
Throughout this article, these are key terms to note and understand in context.
The Graded System: Covenant vs. Non-Covenant
We must be clear from the start: Old Testament law established different standards for Hebrew servants versus foreign servants:
Hebrew servants: Six-year maximum term, released with capital, Jubilee provisions, explicit protections
Foreign servants: Could be held perpetually, passed to children as inheritance (Leviticus 25:44-46)
Leviticus 25:44–46 is permission, not mandate; its scope is foreigners within Israel’s economy. This reflects a consistent biblical pattern: God shows covenant mercy to His people that He does not equally extend to those outside the covenant.
Universal Principles Within the Graded System
However, and this is crucial, even within this graded covenant/non-covenant structure, God planted universal ethical principles that created tension with the graded system itself:
The love command extended to foreigners: “You shall love him [the stranger] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34 ESV)
Image of God is universal: “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). Not just Hebrews, all humans.
Sabbath rest applied equally: “Your male servant, or your female servant” (Exodus 20:10). No ethnic qualifier.
Injury freedom applied equally: “If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free” (Exodus 21:26-27). No distinction between Hebrew and foreign servants.
Asylum provision was universal in wording: “A slave who has escaped from his master” (Deuteronomy 23:15-16). No ethnic restriction in the text.
God’s Exodus identity: “I brought you out of slavery” (repeated well over a hundred times from Exodus through the prophets and into Luke 4). This created cognitive dissonance with enslaving others.
The Tension Was Deliberate
God had already given them principles that, if consistently applied, would collapse the distinction and the cultural institution:
If foreigners are made in God’s image, how can they be perpetual property?
If you must love the foreigner as yourself, how can you own them permanently?
If your foundational identity is “we were slaves and God freed us,” how can you enslave others indefinitely?
Jesus’s Hermeneutical Key
Jesus reveals the pattern in Matthew 19:8: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” This identifies the category: regulations don’t represent God’s ideals; they represent God’s patience with rebels while maintaining trajectory toward His design.
Creation shows persons, not property. Love of neighbor universalizes the circle. The graded system cannot survive that logic. This pattern hermeneutically extends to servitude, polygamy, and monarchy: in each case, the creation ideal was clear, Israel resisted, and God accommodated with protective regulations while maintaining trajectory back to the original design.
Why accommodation? Because the alternative to accommodation is judgment, and Scripture repeatedly demonstrates that unaccommodated judgment means death (Flood, Sodom, Korah’s rebellion). God chose to preserve life and work toward transformation rather than destroy in judgment.
Thesis
OT law permits a graded servitude for foreigners while planting universal constraints that destabilize ownership claims. Jesus identifies the pattern as accommodation to hard hearts. The NT universalizes neighbor-love and reclassifies slaves as brothers. Net effect: regulation without command, constraint without endorsement, trajectory toward freedom.
Concessions: The OT permitted perpetual foreign servitude. God showed preferential covenant mercy to Israel. The OT did not abolish slavery; it constrained its abuses while planting seeds for dissolution. The NT did not call for immediate civil abolition. Our argument concerns the Bible’s redemptive trajectory: the universal principles God planted even within a graded covenant system.
Part I: The Biblical Framework
God’s Self-Revelation as Liberator
God’s most frequently repeated self-identification is: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). This appears as a repeated refrain well over a hundred times from Exodus through the prophets and into Luke 4. When God identifies Himself, He says: “I am the one who freed you from bondage.”
The prophets proclaim: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me... to proclaim liberty to the captives” (Isaiah 61:1). Jesus reads this and declares: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:21). His entire mission is liberation.
Paul distills it: “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).
The Love Command and Its Implications
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is the second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:39). The scope was never limited:
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34 ESV)
Jesus makes the universality explicit in the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37), making the ethnic enemy the exemplar of neighbor-love. The love command is fundamentally incompatible with human ownership: you cannot simultaneously love your neighbor as yourself and maintain them as property. You would not want to be owned, your family separated by sale, your labor exploited, your freedom restricted. Love of neighbor, consistently applied, requires desiring their freedom as you desire your own.
Paul’s Two-Lever Strategy
Paul attacks servitude on two fronts:
Cut the supply chain: He condemns andrapodistēs (slave-dealers/kidnappers) among murderers and the sexually immoral (1 Timothy 1:9-10), striking at the violent acquisition that built chattel systems.
Collapse ownership claims: In Philemon, he redefines the slave as “no longer as a bondservant but... as a beloved brother” (v. 16). In Ephesians 5-6, he commands “submitting to one another” (5:21) and tells masters to “do the same to them” and “stop your threatening” (6:9). When masters must submit to and serve their slaves as brothers before God, ownership becomes morally incoherent.
Paul counsels slaves: “If you can gain your freedom, rather make use of that opportunity” (1 Corinthians 7:21 ESV). This treats liberation as the good to be sought.
Part II: Command, Endorse, Condone: What God Does NOT Do
Condone vs. Endorse vs. Command
“Command” creates duty. “Endorse” declares good. “Condone” is passive tolerance. Torah neither commands servitude nor endorses it as good. It permits restricted scenarios and then loads them with constraints that raise cost, protect dignity, and weaken coercion.
God Does Not Command Servitude
Scripture contains no imperative requiring ownership of servants. The provisions in Leviticus 25:44 use permissive language (”you may”), not imperative (”you shall”).
God explicitly commands against kidnapping for enslavement:
“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death” (Exodus 21:16 ESV)
Note the universal wording: “whoever steals a man.” No ethnic qualifier. This is a universal prohibition against kidnapping for slavery, carrying the death penalty.
Deuteronomy 24:7 provides a specific application within the covenant community: “If anyone is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die.” This doesn’t limit the Exodus prohibition; it’s a specific application showing how the universal principle operates within Israel. The Exodus law remains universal; Deuteronomy shows its enforcement in covenant context.
The foundational act of chattel slavery (kidnapping and trading human beings) is a capital crime.
God Does Not Endorse Servitude as Good
The Injury Law Progression
Exodus 21:20-27 presents an intentional progression from legal status language to personhood recognition:
Verse 20: “When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged.” This introduces accountability that didn’t exist in surrounding ancient Near Eastern law codes. Masters typically faced no consequences for killing their own slaves.
Verse 21: “But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is his property.” This represents accommodation language. God uses the legal categories of their fallen system to introduce protection where none existed.
Verses 26-27: “If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth.” Any permanent physical injury (even minor) triggers immediate manumission. You don’t grant automatic freedom to damaged property; you do grant freedom to persons whose dignity has been violated.
This progression moves Israel incrementally from pure property logic toward recognition of personhood.
Other Revolutionary Protections
Sabbath rest: Servants shared equally in Sabbath rest (Exodus 20:10)
Religious participation: Servants participated in worship (Deuteronomy 12:12)
Hebrew servant protections: Six-year maximum, released with capital (Deuteronomy 15:12-14). This created a graded system that planted principles (Sabbath, injury freedom, asylum) creating tension with perpetual foreign servitude.
Fundamental equality in Christ: “Neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free” (Galatians 3:28)
God Does Not Condone: He Actively Constrains
The Constraint Stack
Kidnapping earns death. Injury frees. Sabbath rests. Asylum shields. Jubilee resets. Paul cuts the trade and collapses ownership claims. Each piece narrows power. Together they redirect practice.
The Decisive Asylum Constraint (Deuteronomy 23:15-16):
“You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you... wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.”
Plain reading: The text says “a slave who has escaped from his master to you” without qualification or ethnic restriction. Some scholars limit this to foreign slaves fleeing into Israel from foreign masters, but this requires adding words not in the text. Even on the narrow reading, the enforcement cost rises substantially. You cannot sustain a property system when escape carries legal protection.
Leviticus 25:44-46: God permits acquiring foreign servants, but introduces systematic constraints:
Death penalty for kidnapping (Ex 21:16)
Automatic freedom for injury (Ex 21:26-27)
Homicide accountability (Ex 21:20)
Sabbath rest mandate (Ex 20:10)
Asylum protection (Deut 23:15-16)
Jubilee economics (Lev 25:10): periodic economic reset
This is permission hedged by constraints that raise costs, limit coercion, and constrain power.
The Household Codes
New Testament household codes (Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22-4:1, 1 Peter 2:18-25) provide pastoral guidance for surviving in unjust Roman systems, not endorsement of those systems. Paul tells slaves their work is worship to Christ (not owned by masters), then immediately commands masters to serve their slaves, stop threatening, and remember God judges them equally. This sanctifies the person while subverting the institution.
Part III: Objections and Trajectory
Objection 1: War Captive Regulations
The Challenge: Deuteronomy 20-21 and Numbers 31 describe taking war captives.
Reply: Accommodation within ANE war practice with guardrails. For women captives, Deuteronomy 21:10-14 requires a month of mourning before marriage and mandates that if the man is displeased, he must free her; she cannot be sold. The trajectory still holds: Jesus’s “love your enemies” (Matt 5:44) represents fulfillment.
Objection 2: The Hebrew vs. Foreign Distinction
The Challenge: Why allow this distinction if God planted universal principles?
Reply: The universal principles (love foreigners, equal Sabbath, equal injury freedom, universal asylum language, Exodus identity) intentionally conflicted with perpetual foreign servitude. Israel used hard-heartedness to justify the double standard, but the principles God gave them (if consistently applied) made this untenable. Jesus makes the implicit explicit: “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free” (Gal 3:28).
Objection 3: Why Didn’t the NT Call for Abolition?
Reply: Christianity was a tiny minority. Immediate abolition would have been politically impossible and likely triggered violent suppression. Paul’s strategy: transform relationships from within (brothers, mutual submission, condemning the trade, counseling freedom) while rendering ownership morally incoherent. You cannot simultaneously treat someone as a “beloved brother” before God, maintain them as property, and submit mutually in Christ.
Objection 4: Could Accommodation Justify Anything?
Reply: Jesus provides the criteria. Explicit textual markers (Matt 19:8), creation ideals as baseline (Gen 1-2), love command as filter, trajectory test (does Scripture point toward or away?), Christological fulfillment. Moral absolutes remain constant. Accommodations are identifiable by explicit markers, tension with creation ideals, protective regulations that constrain, and trajectory toward abolition.
The Complete Trajectory
From Creation: Humanity in God’s image (Gen 1:27)
Through Law: Love your neighbor, extended to all (Lev 19:18, 33-34)
In Covenant: I freed you from slavery (repeated well over a hundred times)
Through Prophets: Proclaim liberty to captives (Isa 61:1)
In Christ: I have come to set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18)
By the Spirit: Where the Spirit is, there is freedom (2 Cor 3:17)
In the Church: Neither slave nor free in Christ (Gal 3:28)
In Eternity: Every tribe and nation equal before the throne (Rev 7:9)
The trajectory runs consistently: God creates people free, identifies Himself as Liberator, and His will points toward universal freedom.
Conclusion
Finally, this article will not convince the hardened skeptic who has already decided the Bible is immoral. Some use “the Bible supports slavery” as a rhetorical weapon for dismissal, not as honest inquiry. But this article does equip the saints with a coherent biblical framework, defends the faith in love by engaging critics’ strongest arguments honestly, and tears down strongholds, demolishing false arguments raised against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). For believers encountering this attack and honest seekers willing to examine the complete evidence, the biblical answer is clear.
Regarding human-to-human servitude:
God never commands human ownership, never calls it good, and never leaves it alone; He restricts it, undermines it, and then in Christ renders it morally incoherent.
The graded system existed but contained its own seeds of dissolution. The OT established preferential treatment for covenant members while planting universal principles (image of God, love of neighbor, Exodus identity) that created tension with the graded system itself. Jesus made explicit what those principles always implied.
The regulations represent divine accommodation to hard-heartedness, not divine ideals (Matt 19:8). The alternative to accommodation is judgment and death. God chose to preserve life and work toward transformation rather than destroy in judgment.
The one form of servitude God does endorse: Voluntary bond servitude to God stands in stark contrast to coerced human servitude. Paul repeatedly identifies himself as “a bond-servant of Christ” (δοῦλος Χριστοῦ; Rom 1:1, Phil 1:1, Titus 1:1). Believers are called to be “slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:18). Jesus makes the distinction explicit: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:30). Service to God brings rest, not oppression. We are freed from the oppression of sin, free to voluntarily bond ourselves in eternal communion and love with God. This divine service (voluntary, loving, liberating) reveals by contrast what human servitude should never be: coercive ownership of another person made in God’s image.
In a world where tens of millions remain in bondage today, this biblical vision demands active pursuit of freedom for all who bear God’s image. The God who proclaims love and liberation calls His people to embody that character, working tirelessly for the freedom of all who are oppressed, while recognizing that ultimate freedom comes through the gospel’s transformation of human hearts.
As Scripture declares:
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17 ESV)
All Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.