Did God Really Command Slavery?
The Context Almost Everyone Ignores
Few accusations against the Bible provoke a stronger emotional reaction than this one:
“The Bible condones slavery.”
For many people, that statement alone is enough to close the case against Christianity. After all, if God is good, how could He permit, let alone command, something so deeply associated with cruelty, exploitation, and dehumanization?
Unfortunately, most people don’t take the time to research, unpack and uncover the truth. Most rely on information they were told by someone else simply because they seem confident in their views.
The slavery most people imagine when they read the Bible isn’t the slavery the Bible is actually talking about.
Once you take the time to understand the context, the picture changes dramatically. And the text does not need to be twisted to make it palatable; it just needs to be read through a historical lens.
The First Mistake: Importing Modern Images into Ancient Texts
When modern readers hear the word slavery, they typically picture the transatlantic slave trade:
Race-based chattel slavery
Kidnapping and forced transport
Lifelong ownership of persons as property
Brutal dehumanization
No legal protection
Hereditary bondage
That horrific system deserves the moral condemnation it receives. But it is not the system described in the Mosaic Law. Ancient Near Eastern societies operated under radically different economic realities. There were no bankruptcy courts, unemployment systems, social safety nets, or modern labor markets. When crops failed, debts mounted, or famine struck, survival itself was at stake. In that world, what we call “slavery” was often a form of debt servitude — a temporary arrangement for survival, not a racial caste system.
The Law Didn’t Create Slavery — It Regulated an Existing Practice
One of the most overlooked facts is that Israel did not invent servitude. It already existed across the ancient world. The question was not whether the practice would exist; the question was how it should be governed.
And the biblical laws consistently move in one direction: From exploitation toward protection.
For example:
Kidnapping someone to enslave them was punishable by death (Exodus 21:16)
Hebrew servants were to be released after six years (Exodus 21:2)
They were not to be treated ruthlessly (Leviticus 25:43)
Masters were required to provide for them upon release (Deuteronomy 15:13–14)
These laws would have been shocking in surrounding cultures, where slaves often had no rights at all. In other words, the Mosaic system functioned less like ownership of persons and more like regulated labor tied to economic survival.
“But What About Foreign Slaves?”
Critics often point to Leviticus 25:44–46, which allows Israelites to acquire servants from surrounding nations, and at first glance, this seems like a devastating passage.
But again, context matters.
Foreigners living in Israel did not participate in the same land inheritance system as native Israelites. Without land, survival options were limited. Entering a household as a long-term servant could provide stability, protection, and provision.
This was not a race-based hierarchy. It was tied to covenant membership and economic structure.
More importantly, foreign servants were still protected under Israelite law:
They were included in Sabbath rest (Exodus 20:10)
They could participate in religious life (Exodus 12:48–49)
Abuse had legal consequences
Runaway servants were not to be returned to harsh masters (Deuteronomy 23:15–16) — a law almost unheard of in the ancient world
That last one is particularly striking. Ancient law codes typically required returning escaped slaves. Israel’s law did the complete opposite.
The Trajectory of Scripture Moves Toward Freedom
Even within the Old Testament, the direction is clear. Israel’s central national story is not one of enslaving others, but rather it is one of being rescued from slavery. Israel is reminded repeatedly throughout scripture that they were once slaves and are now free. This mindset was instrumental in shaping Israel’s ethics toward compassion for the vulnerable.
By the time we reach the New Testament, the trajectory continues:
Slave traders are explicitly condemned (1 Timothy 1:10)
Masters are commanded to treat servants as brothers (Philemon)
Spiritual equality is declared: “There is neither slave nor free… for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)
Christianity did not launch a violent revolution to dismantle Rome overnight. But it introduced a radically subversive idea:
Every human being bears the image of God and possesses equal worth.
And history shows what happened when that idea took root…systems, governments, and even Christian theology started to change.
Why Didn’t God Just Abolish It Immediately?
This is the question beneath the question. Why regulate a flawed system instead of erasing it?
Scripture often shows God working within human cultures to restrain evil while gradually transforming hearts. Instant abolition in the ancient world, without alternative economic structures, could have resulted in mass starvation, chaos, or worse exploitation.
Instead, the law placed limits on power, elevated human dignity, and planted seeds that would eventually undermine the institution itself. It was not endorsement of cruelty. It was containment of it.
One could argue if these things could have been avoided, but that is besides the issue. We know historically how intricate the debt payment system was to the economy, and it is thereby reasonable to assert that a sudden and rapid change to it would have likely had catastrophic effects.
The Hard Truth We Often Miss
The Bible is not a utopian manifesto dropped into a modern society. It is God engaging real people in a brutal world. And sometimes the moral progress we wish had happened instantly unfolds across history instead. That doesn’t make the suffering trivial nor diminish it. But what it does highlight is the complexity of human brokenness and the patience of a God who chooses transformation over annihilation.
So Did God Command Slavery?
Not in the sense most people assume. The biblical text regulates a form of servitude tied to survival in an ancient economy — while consistently pushing toward dignity, protection, and eventual freedom. The tragedy of history is not that the Bible created oppressive slavery. It’s that people later used isolated passages to justify systems the Bible itself would have condemned.
A Final Thought
This topic is not just academic. Behind every discussion about slavery is real human pain, real historical trauma, and real moral concern. Those concerns deserve honesty, not dismissiveness. But they also deserve accuracy. Because sometimes the most damaging misunderstandings about Scripture don’t come from what it says but from what we assume it must mean. And when we slow down long enough to examine the context, we often discover something unexpected: Not a God who delights in oppression, but one who moves relentlessly toward redemption.
