Dependency and Slavery in the Hebrew Bible and its Repercussions on the Image of God

The common perception of biblical liberation in the Hebrew Bible is challenged by the recognition that freedom does not culminate in personal liberty, but rather in a deeper dependency on God. Through a close examination of slavery laws and divine metaphors, this interpretation highlights a theological paradox: God is portrayed both as the liberator from Egypt and as the ultimate master of Israel. This provocative perspective reframes key biblical narratives, emphasizing asymmetrical dependency over traditional notions of emancipation.

See also Justice and Righteousness in the Old Testament: Reflecting on Slavery in the Hebrew Bible (De Gruyter, 2025).

By Ulrich Berges
Emeritus Professor, Old Testament Exegesis
University of Bonn and University of Pretoria
July 2025

Slaves and Slavery in the Hebrew Bible

The question of the position of slaves in ancient Israel, as they are mentioned in the Old Testament, is not a new one. On the contrary, it is assumed that the Hebrew Bible, as the basis of Judaism and Christianity, represents a view that was particularly lenient, i.e., rather humanizing in the ancient Near Eastern world (differently, Hezser 2005). It is often added apologetically that ancient Israel took some steps in the right direction, but of course remained a child of its ancient environment. Basically, it insinuates that the question of justice for slaves is an anachronism that did not arise in the Old Testament. It is correct that the direct connection between justice (here: mišpaṭ) and slaves is only laid in the so-called purification oath of Job. In it, he rejects the possible charge that he disregarded the rights of his slaves. But this is not the case, for he is well aware that God created both him and them (Job 31:13–15). As far as I know, this is the only text in the Old Testament in which the treatment of slaves is approached in recourse to the theology of creation. The fair treatment of slaves is not derived from the Exodus event, not from the liberation of all Israel from the slave house of Egypt, but from the human existence, which owes itself to the one and only Creator. But isn’t the exodus the liberating basic event, which is also reflected or should be reflected in the treatment of slaves? Without any doubt the liberation from the house of slavery in Egypt precedes the Ten Commandments as a basic tenor and hermeneutical perspective (Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6). But neither here nor anywhere else in the Old Testament is slavery rejected as anti-divine. The Ten Commandments are explicitly addressed to those Israelites who possess male and female house slaves. Otherwise, the prohibition of coveting the slaves of one’s neighbor would be pointless (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21). In most cases, these slaves will have been victims of the interest trap since they could no longer meet their payment obligations to the lenders (Hudson 2018, 50–51). It has to be pointed out that humanizing regulations like the time limit of bondage apply exclusively to Hebrew slaves; foreigners could be kept in slavery for life. Therefore, these provisions cannot be taken as a preliminary stage to the abolition of slavery (Snell 2011, 17; Avalos 2013, 74–75). But why has the paradox of the liberation from the slave house of Egypt and the possession of slaves that is legitimized in God’s own words of the Ten Commandments not been noticed by the authors or simply been tolerated by the listeners?

            To answer this question, two aspects are decisive: Firstly, slaves were not regarded as persons, but as temporary or even indefinite property values. The provision on the bodily injury of slaves in Exodus 21:20–21 makes this clear. If the slave dies directly from the blows of his master, he is also to be killed. However, if the slave survives another day or two, the talion rule does not come into force, because the manslayer has only damaged his own property. The category determining the slave is not that of a person, but that of property (Patterson 1982), which the owner can even dispose of without restriction in the case of foreign slaves. This is also the reason why slaves never belong to the triad of the personae miserae. They fall out of the ethical demand for justice that otherwise applies to the poor, widows, orphans, and strangers. Their status as property, which only exceptionally allows them to be treated as subjects with personal rights dominates the discourse (e.g., a slave girl as a concubine of the owner or his son in Exodus 21:7–11). As assets of their owners, they are also solely responsible for them. Therefore, slaves fall completely out of society’s duty of care.

            The other and hitherto unnoticed reason why the liberation from Egypt and the possession of one’s own slaves could be thought together in the writings of ancient Israel lies on the level of the concept of God. Nothing makes this clearer than the late post-exilic slave provision in Leviticus 25:38–42. According to this, the plight of Hebrew comrades should no longer bring them down into debt slavery, but they should work as hired or bound laborers for the creditors until the jubilee year. The strong ideological character of this provision, which probably originated from the priestly pen, can be seen in the fact that the dismissal is not to take place in the seventh (Exodus 21:2; Deuteronomy 15:12) but only in the fiftieth year. With the generally low life expectancy, this meant a lifelong dependence in the vast majority of cases. More important than this observation, however, is the justification given for the prohibition of possessing Hebrew dependents as slaves. It does not consist in the fact that God has freed all Israelites from the slave house of Egypt and therefore no one would be allowed to be another one’s slave. It is not liberation, and certainly not freedom, that justifies the prohibition, but the fact that all Israelites are God’s slaves: “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). This translation of the NRSV obscures the theological sharpness of the reasoning, because it renders the same Hebrew word ʿabadim first with “servants,” then with “slaves.” This change within a verse is not justified by anything except the fear of the clear statement that the God of Israel is the slaveholder of his people. That this is indeed the case is proven by the late post-exilic concluding speech of Moses at the end of the Pentateuch: “YHWH will bring you back in ships to Egypt, by a route that I promised you would never see again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer” (Deuteronomy 28:68). The liberation from Egypt is reversed and the hardship still heightened for there is no worse thing for a slave than to find no buyer for himself on the market. The imagery of slavery also permeates Judges 3:8 where YHWH sells (mkr) his disobedient people to a foreign king in order to work for him as a slave (ʿbd) for eight years. The sequence of selling and serving as a slave is otherwise only found in the slave regulations in Leviticus 25:39 and Deuteronomy 15:12 (cf. Jeremiah 34:14). The same background plays a role in Isaiah 43:3 (cf. Isaiah 50:1; 52:3) and especially in Isaiah 44:5b where some of the deportees to Babylon engrave on their hands lyhwh, i.e., “belonging to YHWH.” This affirmation stems without doubt from a slavery context too (Berges 2020, 324).

Liberation Does Not Lead to Liberty, but to Dependency on God

It is not freedom, but asymmetrical dependence that characterizes both the social reality of the ancient Near East and the religious worldview in which Israel participates situated at the edge of the eastern Mediterranean. One speaks of asymmetrical dependency when one actor controls the actions of other actors in a way that can grant or deny them access to vital resources. Asymmetrical dependency is always institutionally secured so that the dependent party cannot escape from it by fleeing or protesting (Winnebeck 2023, 7–8). On the social level, the relationship between slaves and free persons (the Roman servus vs. liber) is the most extreme form of asymmetrical dependency. On the religious level, i.e., on the level of Old Testament exegesis and theology, the topic of dependency plays up to now no or only a marginal role (for exceptions: Bridge 2010, 2013; Fretheim 2015). This is all the more astonishing because the image of God in the Old and New Testaments is characterized by biblical metaphors that attempt to put the divine into words implying a strong asymmetrical dependency: father/parent vs. children, shepherd vs. flock, king vs. people, creator vs. creation, potter vs. vessel, judge vs. the accused, master vs. slave, and so on. This perception of the divine as mastership over humans as slaves, servants, handmaidens that runs through the books of both Testaments, can be described as “doulology,” from the Greek doulos for slave or servant (De Wet 2018, 8). This is by no means just a play on words, but opens the eyes to a reality that has so far been closed to exegesis and theology. It concerns the thought structure or, in modern terms, the DNA of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religion. The irreversible divide, the asymmetry between the divine Lord and the human subjects, characterizes the Hebrew Bible as the founding document of Judaism and Christianity in such a powerful way that it is surprising that scholars have so far paid only little attention to this phenomenon. Radical dependency on YHWH, which applies to every individual human being as well as to all peoples of all times and places, cannot just be categorized as a relationship. It is equally not sufficient to think of God only as the one who stands between human actors and their asymmetrical relationship as a kind of mediator because his position is far too dominant for this (differently Winnebeck 2023, 25). YHWH does not only mediate between the different actors but is himself the ultimate performer. He is not only the liberator of his people from the house of slavery of Egypt, from Pharaoh’s domain, but he also becomes the owner of the liberated, who are his slaves (Leviticus 25:42) (Assmann 2018, 99). It is no coincidence that the Hebrew Bible lacks a word for freedom although there are many verbs for the act of liberation (e.g., Hifil yṣʾ [“to lead out”]; gʾl [“to redeem”]; pdh [“to ransom”]). The Hebrew noun ḥerut (“freedom”) stems from Roman times, much later than the formative phase of the Old Testament. In ancient Greece the concept of eleutheria (“freedom”) emerged in the course of Athens’ wars of liberation against Persian rule in the 5th century BCE (Patterson 2008, 116; Jim 2022, 3). Getting back to biblical Hebrew, the translations are somewhat misleading because they render the expression laḥopši yṣʾ simply “to go out freely” (Exodus 21:2) or with šlḥ, “to set free” (Exodus 21:26–27; Deuteronomy 15:12–13:18). Although supported by the ancient versions (LXX eleutheros; Vulgate liber), it is very likely that ḥopši does not refer to a free but to a freed person since in all ancient cultures of the Near East there has been a class of semi-free (Mendelsohn 1941; Lemche 1975; 1976; Bartash/Pottorf 2025). Looking for an equivalent in Biblical Israel, ḥopši would be the most obvious term, which does not refer to the freeman (Latin liber), but to the freedman (Latin libertus). Even if not de iure, the ḥopši continued to live de facto in a form of dependency. It comes as no surprise that his precarious social status could not serve to express the relation between the liberating God and the liberated Israelites. Therefore, the word ḥopši  is not used in the narratives of the release out of Egypt.

            The lexeme that indicates the epitome of asymmetrical dependency in biblical Hebrew is the noun ʿebed in the singular and ʿabadim in the plural (Berges 2025). It covers a wide range of real dependencies and is used extensively in a metaphorical-theological way. The lexeme is known in many Semitic languages and can refer to any form of work or labor. The noun is of particular importance, since it ranges from the designation of a male slave (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 23:16) to that of a minister who stands in the service of his king (e.g., 2 Kings 5:6; 22:12; 2 Chronicles 34:20). The connecting element is always the dependent position of the ʿebed in relation to its master, be it an ordinary owner, a king, or even YHWH himself. For example, the notion that a person has been born into slavery is used metaphorically in the religious realm. Thus, a petitioner prays: “Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your male servant (ʿbd); save the child of your serving girl (ʾmh)” (Psalm 86:16; cf. 116:16). This self-designation is not simply a very pious one but stems from a severe social reality that is mostly overlooked in exegetical and theological interpretations. The children born in slavery are home-born slaves (cf. Exodus 21:4) and as such they were considered particularly reliable, because they had never known a life outside the absolute disposal of their master. Certainly, the slave vocabulary is not always consciously applied by the biblical authors and it has rightly been pointed out that the root ʿbd (“slave/servant/to serve”) implies a dynamic concept of relations (Riesener 1978, 268). But it should be added that it carries always an asymmetrical gradient, which is to be expected in thoroughly hierarchical societies like those of the ancient Near East, including biblical Israel. In such societies, power relations are always unequal, a fact that is reflected in the use of slave-master terminology in the Old Testament. In biblical Israel as in the neighboring civilizations, personal freedom could simply not be imagined. Liberation from bondage did not lead to liberty but in the best case to a lesser strict form of dependency. This ambiguity also concerns the root ʿbd in the Old Testament, along with its derivatives. In metaphorical-theological usage, the root points to a strong asymmetrical dependency between YHWH and his people (Menke 2022, 356). This must be taken into account much more than it has been so far. Anyone who denies the ambiguity between the biblical affirmations of YHWH as liberator and the severe dependency on him, is guilty of an unhistorical-ideological one-sidedness. More so, those who study these texts, teach them, and preach about them, should develop a deep awareness of the way the concepts discussed here are [mis-]used, concealing simply human claims to status and power.

Bibliography

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Berges, Ulrich. “The Semantics of Dependency in the Book of Isaiah and Beyond.” Pages 27–44 in Control, Coercion, and Constraint: The Role of Religion in Overcoming and Creating Structures of Dependency. Ed. Wolfram Kinzig and Barbara Loose. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025.

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