“Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
Parallel Translations
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“Anyone who kidnaps someone and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
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And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
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And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (5)
Passages linked to Exodus 21:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Deuteronomy 24:7 If a man is found stealing any of his brothers of the children of Israel, and he deals with him as a slave, or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall remove the evil from among you.
- 1 Timothy 1:10 for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave-traders, for liars, for perjurers, and for any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine,
- Genesis 37:28 Midianites who were merchants passed by, and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. The merchants brought Joseph into Egypt.
- Exodus 22:4 If the stolen property is found in his hand alive, whether it is ox, donkey, or sheep, he shall pay double.
- Genesis 40:15 For indeed, I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (9 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Exo 21:16 And he that stealeth a man, and…
Exo 21:16 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
Ver. 16. He that stealeth a man.] Akin to these are they that steal other men’s books, and father them, setting them out in their own names. Diagoras was so served by a plagiary, which, when he saw, and that the thief was not presently struck with a thunderbolt, he, out of stomach, turned atheist. Thus, of late, Fabricius stole Tremelius’s Syriac translation. Villavincentius stole Hyperius’s treatise, "De Ratione Studii Theologici." And Possevinus stole Dr James’s "Cyprianus Redivivus."
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain i.e. In the manstealer’s hand; q.d. though he keep…
i.e. In the manstealer’s hand; q.d. though he keep him in his own hands for his own use; for still it is a theft, and he is made that man’s slave, and it is in his power to sell him to another when he pleaseth, and therefore deserves death.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him,....…
And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him,.... One of the children of Israel, as the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, and so the Septuagint version: but though this law was given to the Israelites primarily, yet was made for men stealers in general, as the apostle observes, who plainly has reference to it, Ti1 1:9,
or if he be found in his hand; before the selling of him, as Jarchi notes, since he stole him in order to sell him, he was guilty of death, as follows:
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he shall surely be put to death; with strangling, as the same Jewish writer remarks, as on the preceding verse; and Jarchi sets it down as a rule, that all death in the law, simply expressed, is strangling.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 16. He that stealeth a man] By this…
Verse 16. He that stealeth a man] By this law every man-stealer, and every receiver of the stolen person, should lose his life; no matter whether the latter stole the man himself, or gave money to a slave captain or negro-dealer to steal him for him.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Exo 21:16. He that stealeth a man — Whether…
Exo 21:16. He that stealeth a man — Whether he keep him in his own hands for his own use, or sell him, still it is a theft of a heinous kind, and the man-stealer deserves death. It appears from 1Ti 1:9-10, that this law was not meant to be of a merely temporary nature, but of standing force.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 16, 17. Stealeth a man — Note that manstealing…
16, 17. Stealeth a man — Note that manstealing was placed on the same plane with the crime of murder. Cursing a parent was also treated as a capital offence.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 16. Man-stealing. Cf. Deu_24:7, where the present law is…
16. Man-stealing. Cf. Deu_24:7, where the present law is merely expanded, and recast in Deuteronomic phraseology.
a man] in Deu_24:7, expressly limited to an Israelite: so LXX Targ. add here, ‘of the children of Israel.’ No doubt this interprets correctly the intention of the law.
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and selleth him] into a foreign country is probably what is thought (cf. v. 8). This would not only sever the victim cruelly from his own people, and his own religion (1Sa_26:19), but also expose him to many risks of death. The Phoenicians (Amo_1:9, and, at a later time, Joe_3:4-6), to say nothing of other nations (Gen_37:36), would be ready purchasers of slaves.
or if he be found in his hand] i.e. if he has not yet actually sold him.
shall be put to death] The same punishment in Ḥamm. § 14. At Athens, the ἀνδραποδιστής, who enslaved a free man, or enticed away another person’s slave, was punished with death (Hermann, Griech. Antiq. iii. §§ xii. 12; lxii. 12: cf. Demosth. Phil. i. p. 53 end, § 47; Xen. Memor. i. 2. 62): among the Romans both the seller and the buyer of a free-born citizen were punished with death (Kn.).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain He that stealeth a man. Kidnapping, or stealing men…
He that stealeth a man. Kidnapping, or stealing men to make them slaves, was a very early and very wide-spread crime. Joseph"s brothers must be regarded as having committed it; (Gen_37:28) and there are many traces of it in the remains of antiquity. (See Heb 4:183; Strab. 7. p. 467; Sueton. Octav. etc.) Most kidnapping was of foreigners; and this was a practice of which the laws of states took no cognizance, though a certain disrepute may have attached to it. But the kidnapping of a fellow-country-man was generally punished with severity. At Athens it was a capital offence. At Rome it made a man infamous. We may gather from Deu_24:7, that the Mosaic law was especially levelled against this lena of the crime, though the words of the present passage are general, and forbid the crime altogether. Man-stealing, in the general sense, is now regarded as an offence by the chief civilised states of Europe and America, and is punished by confiscation of the stolen goods, and sometimes by imprisonment of the man-stealers.
The crime of man-stealing.
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To steal the purse of a man is a trivial crime; to filch his good name is a serious one; but the worst robbery of all is to steal his person. Civilised, refined, polished, intellectual men, happy in the enjoyment of freedom, wealth, honour, domestic happiness, have gone to sleep in comfort, peace, and fancied security, to wake up in the grip of lawless man-stealers, who have bound them and carried them into a hopeless captivity, far from any relative or friend, to become familiar with every sort of ill-usage and indignity. Cilician and other pirates did this in the olden time; Norman sea-kings in the middle ages; Algerine corsairs so late as the last century. The blood boils when we think of the sufferings inflicted on thousands of our species by these fiends in human shape, without pity, without conscience, without remorse. Death was certainly a punishment not one whit too severe for this atrocious crime, by which the happiest of the human race might become suddenly one of the most wretched. In modern times, the conscience of mankind, enlightened by eighteen centuries of Christianity, has revolted against the enormity long committed with impunity on the negro races of Western Africa, and the slave-trade has been proclaimed a form of piracy. Yet the accursed traffic still continues in the centre and in the east of the "Dark Continent;" still quiet villagers are awakened in the dead of night by the news that the kidnapper is upon them; harmless, peaceable men, together with their wives and children, are carried off in hundreds by Arab and sometimes by so-called Christian traders, driven to the coast in gangs, shipped in crowded dhows, and sold to the best bidder in the marts of Arabia and Persia. It is a subject well worthy the consideration of Christian governments, whether a revival of the Mosaic enactment is not required, to stop a trade the profits of which are so enormous, that nothing short of death is likely to deter avaricious men from engaging in it.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain He that stealeth a man.
Exo_21:16
He that stealeth a man.
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About kidnapping
The same law is repeated in Deu_24:7; from which passage it is evident that it treats of kidnapping a Hebrew. And thus the severity of the punishment, death, without the possibility of redemption, cannot appear surprising. For all Israelites are considered as free citizens with inalienable and equal rights, of which they can never be entirely divested. Now it is natural that he who steals an Israelite will, in the rarest cases, keep him as his slave or sell him to an Israelite, as the injured person could, in the Holy Land, easily find means to inform the authorities of his fate, and thus cause the punishment of his criminal master. The latter, therefore, generally sold the kidnapped individual to foreign merchants into distant lands, either to Egyptians, who commanded the land commerce to the south, or to Phoenicians, who influenced the trade to the west; and opportunities of selling must have easily offered themselves, as Palestine was situated in the exact centre of the commerce of the East. But by such sale, free Israelites became permanent slaves; they forfeited with their liberty their chief characteristic as Hebrews, and were thus lost to the Hebrew community, the more so, as the exclusive intercourse with pagans must necessarily defile the purity of their faith, and gradually accustom their thoughts to idolatry. For this reason it was in the Mosaic law, interdicted to sell even thieves into foreign countries, because thereby souls are, as it were, extirpated from Israel. Thus he who kidnapped Israelites and sold them to other countries justly deserved death, especially if we consider the most melancholy and bitter lot to which the slaves of heathen nations were generally doomed. (M. M. Kalisch, P h. D.)
Unrighteousness of slave holding
At the time slaves were held in the State of New York, one of them, escaping into Vermont, was captured and taken before the court at Middlebury by his owner, who asked the court to give him possession of his slave property. Judge Harrington listened attentively to the proofs of ownership, but said that he was not convinced that the title was perfect. Then the counsel asked what more was required. Until you bring me a bill of sale from God Almighty you cannot have this man. (J. Swinton.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.