Slavery in the Bible

The Bible knows slavery. It meets it as a universal fact of its world, regulates it in its laws, and lays within it a principle that ruins it from within: the equal dignity of every man before God. From this principle springs a movement that runs through all of Scripture, from the laws of Moses, which soften and bound servitude, to the Gospel, which makes master and slave two brothers.

What slavery the Bible speaks of

One entered biblical servitude through debt, through the poverty that forced a man to sell himself, or through war, and one could come out of it. The Hebrew word the Bible renders by “servant” or “slave”, 'ebed (עֶבֶד), and its Greek equivalent doulos (δοῦλος), there cover a whole range, from the household servant to the war captive. Nothing here of the modern trade, which made race a title of ownership and passed slavery on to the children with no way ever out: the Law of Moses, by contrast, treats servitude as a provisional state to be loosened without cease.

The Law softens and bounds

The Law of Moses frames servitude and bounds it on every side. It limits it first by time: the Hebrew servant serves six years and recovers his freedom in the seventh. “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; in the seventh he shall go free, paying nothing.” Exodus 21:2 He is not sent away empty-handed, but provided with the means to start again. “When you send him away free, you shall not send him away empty-handed: you shall give him gifts from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress.” Deuteronomy 15:13-14 Every fifty years, the jubilee year returns each one to his family and his land. “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; each shall return to his property, each shall return to his family.” Leviticus 25:10 No Israelite, likewise, may be held as a good that one buys and sells. “For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold.” Leviticus 25:42 The sabbath rest itself extends to the servant, equally with the master. “that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as you do.” Deuteronomy 5:14 And violence turns against the one who does it: the master who maims his servant must set him free. “If a man strikes the eye of his servant and destroys it, he shall let him go free, for the sake of his eye.” Exodus 21:26

The refuge of the fugitive

One command goes further than all, and the world of that time knew none like it: the slave who flees a harsh master must not be handed back. “You shall not deliver to his master a slave who has taken refuge with you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, and you shall not oppress him.” Deuteronomy 23:16-17 Elsewhere, to shelter a fugitive was a crime punished by death; in Israel, it is handing him back that is forbidden. The law takes the side of the weak against the one who owns him, which ruins in advance the idea of an absolute ownership over a person.

Man-stealing, a capital crime

At the root of all trade lies the seizure: to capture a man in order to sell him. The Law strikes it with death. “He who steals a man, and has sold him or kept him in his hands, shall be put to death.” Exodus 21:16 The New Testament takes up this condemnation and ranks the slave trader among the worst criminals: he stands in the list of acts that sound doctrine condemns. “for the immoral, the slave traders, the liars, the perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.” 1 Timothy 1:10 The trade that deported whole peoples rested entirely on this man-stealing that Scripture already punished with death.

Israel, a people of ransomed slaves

Israel knows itself born of slavery. Its whole history begins with a deliverance: God sees the misery of an enslaved people and comes down to wrest it from its masters. “I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt, and I have heard the cry their oppressors wring from them. I have come down to deliver it.” Exodus 3:7-8 God reveals himself thus as the one who sets free, and this memory becomes the measure of the whole Law. Each time it commands gentleness toward the servant, it gives the same reason: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God redeemed you.” Deuteronomy 15:15 A people that defines itself by its coming out of servitude carries within it what condemns it.

Christ makes master and slave two brothers

The Gospel deals the decisive blow, not by changing the laws of the Empire, but by changing what founds every law: the way man is seen. Before Christ, social condition fades, for all receive the same dignity of sons of God. “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free man, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.” Galatians 3:28 A short letter of Paul shows the concrete effect. Onesimus, a slave in flight become a Christian, is sent back to his master Philemon, also a Christian. Paul asks him to receive him as a brother. “that you may have him back for ever, no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a beloved brother.” Philemon 15-16 The master remains master in law, and he now has for a brother the one he owns: this brotherhood makes ownership untenable. To this master, the Apostle recalls that he has one above him: “Masters, grant your servants what is just and fair, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven.” Colossians 4:1 And to the slave, he counsels to seize freedom as soon as he can: “if you can become free, make use of it rather.” 1 Corinthians 7:21

The seed and its fruit

There remains the question that always returns: why did Christ, and the apostles, not abolish slavery with a word? God leads men by degrees and tolerates for a time imperfect states that he will afterward set right, as hearts can bear it. Christ himself says it of the divorce that Moses had permitted: “It was because of the hardness of your hearts that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives; but in the beginning it was not so.” Matthew 19:8 It is with slavery as with divorce: Scripture begins with man as it finds him and leads him where he must go. To decree abolition in a world where slaves numbered in the millions would have been a word without grip; to sow brotherhood was to reach the root. In time, the seed bore its fruit: the Church held manumission for a work of charity, ransomed captives, condemned man-stealing and the trade in men, until it recognised that no one can be the property of another, because every man is the image of God and the brother of Christ. What the Gospel had set down in principle, history unfolded to the end.