“He Who Steals a Man Shall Be Put to Death”
The Sin of Slavery in All Nations
The Word of God does not whisper about the crime of man-stealing—it shouts it with thunder. Exodus 21:16 delivers the judgment like a sword:
“Whoever steals a man and sells him, or if he is found still in his possession, shall surely be put to death.”
In Hebrew:
וְגֹנֵ֤ב אִישׁ֙ וּמְכָר֔וֹ וְנִמְצָ֖א בְיָד֑וֹ מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת –ve-gonev ish u-mekharo ve-nimtza ve-yado, mot yumat.
No excuses. No softening. No “contextualizing” to make the crime sound less wicked than it is. It is a capital offense in God’s Law.
And this is not about one race.
This is not about one group oppressing another.
This is about sin—the full, wretched, bloodstained sin of mankind, from east to west, ancient to modern, dark skin and light, civilized or tribal. All of them.
***
Slavery was not invented in America. It was not started by the British nor the Portuguese. Slavery began the moment Cain raised his hand against Abel and men began to rule one another by force. The Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews (Exodus 1:11), the Assyrians crushed the Israelites (2 Kings 17:6), and the Babylonians carried off Judah in chains (2 Kings 24:14). But they weren’t the first. Long before them, records from Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon show slavery baked into the very foundation of pagan society.
Africa had its own slave markets.
Tribal kings in West Africa, such as the Dahomey Kingdom (now Benin), gained enormous wealth by selling other African tribes into slavery to European and Arab buyers. These weren’t peaceful transactions. African warriors raided neighboring villages, killed the men, and marched women and children in chains to coastal ports. Blacks enslaved blacks.
The Islamic world trafficked slaves from all races.
The Arab slave trade—predating the European one by nearly a thousand years—enslaved an estimated 17 million people from Africa, Eastern Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. Young boys were castrated. Girls were sent into harems. Skin shade was not a shield. Turks enslaved Slavs. Moors enslaved Europeans. Blacks and Browns enslaved whites.
The Chinese dynasties, Japanese shogunates, and Mongol hordes used slaves.
They took Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese people as spoils of war. The Mongols enslaved Russians and Persians by the tens of thousands. The ruling elite of many Eastern empires kept human beings as property.
Native American tribes enslaved each other for centuries before European contact. Some—like the Comanche—built entire economies around raiding and enslaving others.
And yes, Europeans and Americans did it too.
With their own Bible in their hands, many of them ignored the very Word they claimed to believe. They ripped families from villages, forced them into ships, branded them like cattle, and sold them on auction blocks. And they will answer for every drop of innocent blood unless they truly repented before God.
***
This is not a skin problem.
This is a sin problem.
God’s Word calls it what it is: “You shall not steal a human life” (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7). And the Hebrew uses the term נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh, the soul, the living being, not just the body. So to steal a person is not just kidnapping their flesh, it’s violence against the image of God in them. It is soul-theft.
And the punishment? מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת – mot yumat – “he shall be put to death.”
God does not care what shade the slaver’s skin is. He cares what’s in their heart.
***
When we lie about history, we keep people in chains.
We feed bitterness in one heart, pride in another, and justice is trampled underfoot. Telling the truth isn’t cruelty—it’s the beginning of healing. Because God never hid the sins of Israel or any other nation. He exposed them, judged them, and offered mercy only to the repentant.
So we say it boldly:
- Africans enslaved Africans.
- Muslims enslaved Africans, Europeans, and Asians.
- Europeans enslaved Africans and Native Americans.
- Native Americans enslaved each other.
- Asians enslaved across tribes and kingdoms.
- And today, modern slavery still exists—in sweatshops, sex trafficking, child soldiers, and forced labor camps, in every part of the globe. It never ended. It just changed clothes.
But God sees.
“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:13)
If the Son sets us free, we are free indeed, not only from our guilt but from the lies that keep the next generation in bitterness and blindness (John 8:36). This isn’t about whose ancestors were slaves or slavers. It’s about whose hearts are now bowed before the living God, in truth.
Because in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female—only those who are redeemed, or those who are not (Galatians 3:28).
***
So let the truth speak. Not just for the past, but for today.
Because He is still the God who delivers captives.
And He is still the Judge who does not forget.
***
But if God so clearly commanded, “He shall surely be put to death”—then we must ask:
Why wasn’t that judgment ever carried out?
Why did kings, tribes, popes, caliphs, emperors, and presidents refuse to enforce it?
It wasn’t ignorance. The Scriptures were not silent.
It wasn’t confusion. The Hebrew is plain.
It wasn’t cultural misunderstanding. The justice of God does not change.
It was rebellion.
Rebellion against God’s authority.
Rebellion against His justice.
Rebellion against the worth of a human soul made in His image.
The reason slavers lived long lives, gained wealth, and were honored by society is not because God forgot. It’s because men did. They silenced His voice when it got in the way of profit. They closed their ears when obedience meant loss. They knew the commandment, and they chose the gold instead.
They feared the collapse of their economy more than they feared the judgment of God.
They feared man more than they feared mot yumat – the sentence of death the Lord pronounced.
And the preachers who should’ve thundered the truth from their pulpits chose comfort and conformity instead.
Whole nations—black, white, brown, yellow, red, and every color under heaven—stood guilty.
They enslaved, they sold, they bought, they held captive.
And then they excused it. They baptized it.
And worst of all… they refused to repent.
They should’ve wept in sackcloth.
They should’ve torn down the houses built with blood.
They should’ve cried out like Nineveh.
But they hardened their hearts like Pharaoh.
So God gave them time. But not forever.
***
The prophet Amos didn’t hold back:
“They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals… I will not turn back My wrath.” (Amos 2:6–7)
The nations are still storing up judgment.
Even today, modern slavers—the traffickers, the exploiters, the black-market merchants—continue in this ancient sin.
And still, the justice of Exodus 21:16 stands.
Still, God’s verdict thunders through time: “mot yumat – he shall be put to death.”
Not by mobs, not by vengeance—but by righteous judgment.
By the standard of THE Holy God, not by the shifting sands of culture.
And while the nations ignored it, the blood of the stolen cried out.
From cotton fields and rice paddies, from stone mines and sugar plantations, from sweatshops and brothels and battlefields—the blood has never stopped crying out to heaven.
Just like Abel’s blood did.
***
So now the question falls on this generation:
Will we continue to ignore God’s judgment just because our ancestors did?
Will we pretend He no longer sees?
Or will we finally say what should’ve been said long ago:
“Lord, we have sinned.
Our nations have trafficked the image of God.
And we did not uphold Your justice.
Forgive us. Purge us. Teach us to fear You again.”
Because if we do not humble ourselves, then when the Judge stands at the door, He will remember every soul stolen, every command ignored, and every sanctuary that turned a blind eye.
But if we return to Him—not as partisans, not as accusers, but as a people who tremble at His Word—then He will do what no government has ever done rightly:
He will redeem the enslaved.
He will judge the oppressor.
He will pour out mercy on the repentant.
And He will bring true justice to every tribe, tongue, and nation.
Because He is still the God who delivers captives.
And He is still the Judge who does not forget.
***
God never condemns the cry for justice.
But He absolutely condemns the twisting of justice into revenge.
He commands:
“You shall not pervert justice… You shall not show partiality to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:15)
That cuts both ways.
It means God forbids injustice against the oppressed, and injustice in the name of the oppressed.
He does not allow a person to claim victimhood as a weapon.
***
Nowhere in Scripture do we see God telling a generation to collect reparations for sins they did not suffer, or to exact payment from people who did not commit them.
But we do see this:
“The soul that sins shall die.The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son.The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”(Ezekiel 18:20)
That’s clear.
God holds each person accountable for their own actions—not their ancestors’.
That applies to those who enslaved… and those who were enslaved… and their children.
***
So what is this movement for reparations, really?
For many, it’s not about healing—it’s about power.
It’s about taking something that looks like righteousness, and using it as a tool of vengeance, political leverage, and financial gain.
It claims to seek justice, but it ignores God’s standards of justice.
It demands compensation, but it skips repentance.
It invokes history, but rewrites it for its own purposes.
It cries, “We are owed,” but forgets that every soul is already bankrupt before the holy God who made us.
***
What will God do about it?
He sees it for what it is.
He knows who is truly wounded—and who is just exploiting old wounds to gain new power.
He warned Israel about the same spirit, long ago. In Isaiah 58, they fasted and cried for God to hear them—but He exposed their true motives:
“Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure… Is this the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself?” (Isaiah 58:3–5)
God’s answer wasn’t silence. It was judgment on false righteousness, and mercy for those who truly sought Him in humility.
So when this generation rises up and says,
“Pay us for what your ancestors did!”
But they have no fear of God,
No honesty about their own sins,
No willingness to forgive others as they themselves have been forgiven…
Then what they demand is not reparations.
It’s recompense.
And only God has the authority to repay.
“Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)
“Do not repay evil for evil… but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:17–21)
***
God will not reward manipulative demands for compensation when the heart behind them is bitterness, pride, or self-righteousness.
And He will not allow one injustice to be “corrected” with another.
But He will remember every stolen soul.
And He will bless the humble—the one who forgives, the one who repents, the one who loves mercy and walks humbly with Him (Micah 6:8).
So to those crying out for payment…
If they do not come to the cross,
If they do not bow before the Righteous Judge,
If they do not forgive as they have been forgiven…
Then they will receive no inheritance from Him.
Not in gold.
Not in land.
Not in justice.
Not even in eternity.
***
The only true “reparation” was made at the cross.
“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities… and by His stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
There is no payment owed to anyone that wasn’t already laid on Christ.
So if a man wants what is “owed” to him, let him look to Calvary.
If he wants justice, let him come to the One who bore every injustice.
And if he demands more than that…
Then he’s not after justice.
He’s after control.
And God will deal with that spirit, not with silver or land grants,
but with judgment.
And THAT is…
