Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
This verse is found in Leviticus, part of the ancient law code given to the Israelites through Moses. The surrounding chapter actually contains one of the most radical economic ideas in the ancient world — the Jubilee year, a divinely mandated reset every 50 years where debts were cancelled and land returned to original families. Yet this particular verse permits Israelites to purchase slaves from neighboring nations as permanent property — a different standard than what applied to Israelite servants. This is one of the genuinely difficult texts in Scripture, one that does not align with the full biblical vision of human dignity. It was used for centuries to justify the transatlantic slave trade, causing incalculable suffering. Christians are called to engage it honestly rather than look away.
God, this passage is hard, and I won't pretend otherwise. Help me read your Word with honesty — the parts that comfort and the parts that convict. Guard me from ever using Scripture to justify harm, and give me eyes to see the full arc of your love for every human being made in your image. Amen.
Some pages of the Bible are not invitations — they are mirrors. This verse was wielded for centuries by people who claimed to follow Jesus as justification for buying and selling human beings made in God's image. That history is not distant. It is written into the laws of nations, the bones of families, the memory of whole peoples. Explaining it away too quickly dishonors both the text and the people who suffered under its misuse. The honest response is to sit with the discomfort rather than sprint past it. So what do we do with a passage like this? We hold it honestly against the full arc of Scripture — a God who heard enslaved people crying in Egypt and came down to free them, a Jesus who announced his mission as "freedom for the prisoners," a Paul who wrote that in Christ "there is neither slave nor free." The Bible contains both the shadow and the light. Wrestling with the hard passages, rather than only collecting the comfortable ones, is part of what serious faith actually looks like. The question worth sitting with is this: where does your reading of the Bible lead you toward greater human dignity — and where might it be leading you away from it?
What is the Jubilee law in Leviticus 25, and how does this verse fit within — or sit in tension with — that broader context of economic justice and liberation?
Have you ever encountered a Bible passage that genuinely troubled you? How did you process it, and what did wrestling with it do to your faith?
This verse was used historically to justify the transatlantic slave trade. What does that history tell us about the danger of reading Scripture selectively or in isolation from its larger themes?
How do passages like this affect the way you engage with people whose experience of the church has been shaped by harm done in the name of Scripture?
What is one specific way you could learn more about the history of how the Bible has been misused — and why might that matter for how you read it going forward?
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
Deuteronomy 5:14
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.
Exodus 21:21
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Numbers 31:18
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.
Revelation 2:27
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.
AMP
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.
ESV
'As for your male and female slaves whom you may have-- you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.
NASB
“‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.
NIV
And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have—from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves.
NKJV
“However, you may purchase male and female slaves from among the nations around you.
NLT
"The male and female slaves which you have are to come from the surrounding nations; you are permitted to buy slaves from them.
MSG