#STRask - Why Does the Bible Teach You How to Be a Proper Slave Owner?

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Question about why it seems like the Bible teaches you how to be a proper slave owner rather than than saying, “Stop it. Give them freedom.”   It seems like the Bible teaches you how to be a proper slave owner rather than saying, “Stop it. Give them freedom.”

Welcome once again. This is Amy Holland, Greg Kokel, and you're listening to Stand to Reason's hashtag STRSk podcast. And this is the podcast where we collect your questions. You send them on X with the hashtag STRSk or you go to our website at STR.org. And you send us your questions. And then we collect your questions. You send them on X with the hashtag STRSk or you go to our website at STR.org and you send us your questions. And then we send us your questions. and then we try to respond as well as we can. Is that sum it up for you, Greg? That's good. Okay. Here's a question from Vonny. Bonnie? Vonne.

V-O-N-I. Okay. It seems like the Bible teaches you how to be a proper slave owner rather than stop it, give them freedom. Yep. Next. Well, there are some insight in that observation, but there has to be a clarification here.

that's made. And I actually make this clarification in street smarts. So I'm just going to jaw from this chapter where I deal with, and the heading here is lost in translation, but most Christians, and most people actually are not aware that in their modern translations, the word slave and servant come from the exact same Hebrew word. most of the time. And what's curious about this is that the translations have changed over the years. So I got this insight from PJ Williams, the New Testament scholar that we've mentioned in the past over at Cambridge. And I heard a presentation that he gave, well, it was a number of years

ago in Hungary, actually. And he was talking about this particular word in how prior to of the 20th century, the advent of the 20th century, this Hebrew word that's anglicized, E, B, E, D, so it looks like EBED, but I think it's pronounced Avad, or something like that. In any event, this word was almost always translated servant, or bond servant. In fact, I did my own analysis, and I looked in my young's concordance of the Bible. That's key to the King James. and it turns out there's not a single time where Avad is translated slave. Instead, it renders Avad bond men or bond man 20 times, man servant 23 times, and servant

716 times. And it was only in the beginning, late 19th century, beginning of 20th century, you see this trend now to translate this word avad instead of servant into, slave. Now, the difficulty here is that Americans have a very particular understanding of what the word slave means. They go back immediately to slavery in our culture in the earlier part of this time, up until abolition, and all of the excesses that were involved with that. And so when Avad is translated slave instead of servant, it freaks people. out. Look at all the slavery, chattel slavery like we had here in this country, you know,

that's kind of what they think of, is approved of in scripture. That's not what's going on. Even in a case where it says, well, some people characterize it, the father sold his daughter into slavery kind of thing. And that isn't what the text actually says. said, that's in Exodus chapter 21. And what essentially, in many cases, is dad is getting his daughter a job. She's an indentured servant. That's the way it worked. There are all kinds of regulations there in chapter 21, verse 7 to 11, that regulate how that takes place. That is, the individual who now has this avad, has to comport with all of these. regulations on the treatment of their avad. And so it turns out that it's nothing like, in most

cases, it's nothing like the slavery that we experienced here in Western society, the 18, 19, 17, 17, 1800s, nothing like that. Kidnapping, murder, rape. By the way, all three of those things done to anybody is a capital crime under the Mosaic law. So what we're talking about here is something entirely different. And I go into some of the detail of that in street smarts, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that this word translated slave usually means bond servant or servant. It's curious, and PJ Williams pointed this out,

when you read about Moses, Moses was the servant of God, the Abad, Servant of God, translated servant, and he had Abad's slaves. Why the shift? Why didn't I say Moses was the slave of God and he had servants? Or Moses was the servant of God and he had his own servants. It doesn't say that. And so because it would be ignoble probably to think of Moses as a slave. No, he was a servant of God.

But then why is I say he has slaves when he delivered the slaves from slavery? It's an odd thing, and I don't know the answer of why that shifted, but it's really important when anybody approaches this particular question that they understand the linguistics of this issue. Avaad could be translated and was translated almost universally as servant, and And nowadays, it's almost, well, I don't know, universally, but frequently translated as slave, and that gives the wrong impression about what's going on. And if you need to read the texts with the cultural eyes of the ordinary audience of the time to have a sense of what's going on here. And that most people certainly don't have that patience nowadays, especially if they're looking for something to crab about in the Bible. I think a good place to start with this, too, to try to understand is by looking at Jesus' interaction with the Pharisees on the issue of divorce.

because the Pharisees say, well, Moses commanded divorce, so can we divorce for any reason? Is that, is that okay? And then, and then Jesus says, look, that, that, what's the word I'm looking for? It wasn't, yeah, it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't that God wanted you to get divorced. It's that it was because of your hardness of heart, that he allowed it and he regulated it. But, And then he goes to the ideal, and he says, but look at Adam and Eve. God made male and female. And they came together and what God joined together, let no man separate. So what you see there is that the regulations making divorce, humanizing what was going on there and protecting the woman, didn't indicate the ideal. It was there to deal with the sin that was present in the society. the ideal you see by looking back at the creation. So now we've already seen that the law doesn't recommend, I mean, doesn't indicate exactly what God wanted.

So how can we see how God feels about slavery? Well, this is a really easy one because the main thing that happens in the Old Testament is God's rescue from slavery of the Israelites. Clearly, slavery is not the ideal. God rescued them out of that and said, I am the God who takes you out of slavery and gives you freedom. The entire Bible is about either freedom from the slavery for the Israelites or freedom from sin. And actually, the whole idea of slavery is used as an illustration to help people understand their slavery to sin. And throughout the New Testament, that is the image that's given that's there to help. them understand slavery to sin. So we see that God's position is freedom. And in fact, all you have to

do is look at who outlawed slavery. It was the West. It was those who were influenced by Christianity who ultimately freed the slaves. Why? Because of the worldview that was set up. Now, why didn't God just say that from the beginning? Well, I think that it's the same question as, why didn't God take an entire nation and just come to that entire nation and say, hey, I'm God. And now I'm going to give you all these laws you have to follow so that you will act out my ideal. That's not what he did. He started with one man. Abraham, right. One man. And then he built that up through a family into a culture that would reflect him to the world. But you cannot just give people all the sinners who have an entirely different culture and give them all these

laws to demand the ideal and then have that work. They will reject the law. You're not going to get anywhere. God works so meticulously over such a long period of time to change, to turn the ship around, so to speak, and to take people who, at Noah's time, it was all evil all the time, he took the people who had no knowledge of God's law, and he moved that over time into a people after Jesus' time who got rid of slavery. Because there was an actual trajectory that was happening, and because those regulations weren't the ideal. Now, an important thing to remember here is that, again, like you said, this is not the slavery that we are familiar with. They weren't allowed to steal people. They weren't allowed to mistreat people. If they even knocked out a

tooth, they had to let the slave go free. There are all of these regulations, which were important. I'd like to say they had union representation with Moses and the law. And all of these things, there was no sense. And I think when people would, the slaves would either be people who owed a debt and had to pay it off or they would be a captive. from war. So there was an actual purpose that it was fulfilling in the society, even though it's not the ideal. And so God's trying to protect them in the midst of that. But the important thing to remember is they did not think of the slaves as being less than human. And I can prove that because way back in Job, which Job is pre- Abraham. Ancient, yeah. Here's what he says in Job 31, 13 through 15.

if I have rejected the claim of my male or female slaves when they filed a complaint against me, what then could I do when God arises and when he calls me to account? How am I to answer him? Did he who bade me in the womb not make him and the same one create us in the womb? In other words, aren't we all made in the image of God? Therefore, because we are all equally valuable made in the image of God, I owe them justice. I can't mistreat them. I have to treat them. well. So there was no sense that they are inhuman or they're by nature less than anyone else. So it's a completely different picture that God creates. So now what you have is you have the

Israelite nation and then you have the other nations. And you can look at laws for other nations and how they deal with slaves. And they don't have the same punishments if you kill a slave as if you kill a free person. So you can see now God has set up the nation that reflects him and the nation that doesn't, and you can see the way they treat their slaves, and you can see that this God cares about them. Now, it could be, like, why didn't he get rid of it right away? It could be that it wasn't possible at that time in that culture, and they wouldn't have been able to follow it for whatever reason, I don't know. It could be that this is, he wanted it to remain for a purpose, just like he allowed divorce for a while for a purpose. Maybe he wanted to demonstrate that

difference between the nations. Maybe he wanted to have everyone have an understanding of slavery so that when he talked about sin, that would make sense to us. So maybe that was the purpose of it. maybe he wanted to show how his word eventually led to the destruction of slavery. I don't know why. It's kind of the same reason as a question as why doesn't God remove all evil right now. It's because he has a purpose for it. But we know for a fact it's not his ideal. So the reason why he left it there, even though he's not a fan of it, clearly indicated by saving his people

from slavery, we just know there's a reason for it. And we may not know exactly the reason for it. It could be any of the reasons I gave or it could be none of the reasons I gave. But ultimately, we know that the regulations don't indicate the ideal. And we can look at God's character on the cross and know who he is. And then we can say, well, I don't know why he left it for a while, but I know he had a purpose. Well, there's actually a historical precedent for this point. of incrementalism, and this is the complaint that a lot of people now will raise against the founders. Why is it, if they say all men are created equal, that some of those founders had slaves themselves and did not deal with slavery right then?

And the reason is, is they explicit, because they wrote about this. They realized their circumstance was an ideal, and they wanted to eventually have a slave-free. country. But in order to do that, they had to have a country. And this was the founding of the country, and they could only do so much at one time. And it was hard enough to get the American experiment going without making a requirement about slavery. And in fact, if slavery had been abolished like, you know, 1776, or that was the attempt, there would be any 1776. There wouldn't be any constitutional convention following that. There would be a United States of America, because that couldn't happen under those circumstances if they dealt with that

issue. That issue got dealt with 50 years later to begin, and it happened in England. And it's interesting with William Wilberforce that his approach was incremental. His first goal was to stop the slave trade, not stop slavery. It was to stop the slave trade. and once the trade was stopped, now you can't traffic in slaves anymore. We've got to stop this. Now, that, of course, eventually would have ended slavery because if you can't traffic in slavery, then the slaves that are still under slavery eventually will die and there will be no slavery. But he took another step.

Once you've got that step, and now people got this idea in their own mind, if you see the movie Amazing Grace, it's a good chronicle of how that is. took place, except for how it treats John Newton, who is not like that character at all in the movie, swabbing the deck with bare feet, you know, doing penance for his sins in a monastery somewhere. That's nonsense. But in any event, he informs the conscience of the nation by ending slavery, the slave trade, and then his next step is to end slavery.

And now he starts fighting for that. and he was able to end slavery, what, three days before his death, they finally voted on it. But the whole conscience and demeanor, manner of the nation had changed as a result is his efforts over time. And we see the same kind of thing. One last thing I want to add here is I want to read from Exodus 21 versus 7 through 11 because this is an, it's interesting how this text deals with the issue of selling a daughter into slavery. That's the way it's characterized. A father's going to sell his daughter into slavery, and that's what's promoted in the Bible? Please, okay, listen to what it says. If a man sells his daughter as a female avad, which is here in my Numeric Standard translated slave,

but also could be a servant. That's indentured servitude, by the way. He's getting his daughter a job, which people need that, women need that, unless they go to prostitution. In any event, if, then under those circumstances, she is not to go free as the male slaves do. I'm not sure what that means. But if she is displeasing in the eyes of her master, who designated her for himself? Is that like a marriage? That's what I think that's about. I'd have to look that up for sure. But then he shall let her be redeemed, purchased. He does not have authority to sell her to foreign people because of his unfairness to her. If he designates her for his son, which is normal back then, I mean, they had nothing to

slavery. He shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. If he takes her to himself, if he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, her conjugal rights. If he will not do these three things for her, then he shall go out for, she shall go out for nothing without payment of money. So, so these are all, if this happens, then here are all the restrictions that are involved. That's why I mentioned those who have servanthood responsibilities and other house have union representation. The law makes these kinds of And notice that because I think it's like that is like a wife or a concubine or something because he's talking about conjugal rights. But he's not allowed. The reason why she doesn't go free is because he's not allowed to just get rid of her. Once he takes her as a wife or a concubine or whatever this particular thing is, he has to either treat her as a daughter or treat her as a wife. And he's not allowed to take anything away from her or treat her less than any other woman he takes as a wife.

this is all to protect her, and God isn't commanding that this is how they run their lives. He's saying that if this happens, this is what you have to do. So we're right back to what's the ideal. The ideal is Adam and even the garden, as Jesus explained. But because the cultures were such a mess, God was moving it in the direction towards himself, towards his character, towards his ideal, which, by the way, we're never going to get to until the end. There are always going to be things that we need. to change. And there were more at the beginning than there are now. But we could easily we could easily fall back into that. There are certainly cultures that are more pagan and less influenced by the Christian worldview who have more things like this. But you can see even the fact that someone would complain about slavery, you can see the evidence of the influence of Christian thought on that person. That's the whole reason why people are against it now. So I think you have to keep all of these things in mind and look at God's character and look at the purpose of the law and how God was using it and what his ideal was. And when you look at all those things, you can start

to understand a little more what's going on here. Yeah. Read the text. Yeah. That's also really important. Well, thank you, Vani. That's a thorny one. And I'm sure we've talked about this before. You can always go on our website at STR.org. We have more. I mean, this was just 20. minutes that we've been talking about this. But we have articles about did God condone slavery, did the Bible condone slavery? And we've talked about it on other podcast episodes. So make sure you go and look at that because there's certainly more to talk about. But hopefully that gives you a place to start. All right. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate hearing from you and we look

forward to having you as a listener in the future. So thank you so much for listening. This is Amy All in Great Cocoa for Stand to Reason.