Passage

Deuteronomy 23.15-16

"You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him." (Deuteronomy 23:15-16, NASB95)

Two verses in the Deuteronomic code that, read in their plain sense, prohibit Israel from doing precisely what the antebellum United States required by federal statute: returning a fugitive slave to the master from whom he had escaped. The text is one of the strongest single passages used to defeat the "the Bible endorses chattel slavery" objection, because it removes the structural mechanism every chattel-slavery system has historically depended on, the return of runaways.

Book: Deuteronomy · NASB95

Immediate context (4 PD translations)

ASV (ASV)

"13. and thou shalt have a paddle among thy weapons; and it shall be, when thou sittest down abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee: 14. for Jehovah thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy, that he may not see an unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee."

"15. Thou shalt not deliver unto his master a servant that is escaped from his master unto thee: 16. he shall dwell with thee, in the midst of thee, in the place which he shall choose within one of thy gates, where it pleaseth him best: thou shalt not oppress him."

"17. There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of the sons of Israel. 18. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the house of Jehovah thy God for any vow: for even both these are an abomination unto Jehovah thy God." (Deuteronomy 23:13-18, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"13. You shall have a trowel among your weapons. It shall be, when you relieve yourself, you shall dig with it, and shall turn back and cover your excrement; 14. for Yahweh your God walks in the middle of your camp, to deliver you, and to give up your enemies before you. Therefore your camp shall be holy, that he may not see an unclean thing in you, and turn away from you."

"15. You shall not deliver to his master a servant who has escaped from his master to you. 16. He shall dwell with you, among you, in the place which he shall choose within one of your gates, where it pleases him best. You shall not oppress him."

"17. There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of the sons of Israel. 18. You shall not bring the hire of a prostitute, or the wages of a male prostitute, into the house of Yahweh your God for any vow; for both of these are an abomination to Yahweh your God." (Deuteronomy 23:13-18, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"13. And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee: ^{wilt: Heb. sittest down} 14. For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee. ^{unclean: Heb. nakedness of any thing}"

"15. Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: 16. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him. ^{liketh: Heb. is good for him}"

"17. There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. ^{whore: or, sodomitess} 18. Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God." (Deuteronomy 23:13-18, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"13. and a nail thou hast on thy staff, and it hath been, in thy sitting without, that thou hast digged with it, and turned back, and covered thy filth; 14. for Jehovah thy God is walking up and down in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give thine enemies before thee, and thy camp hath been holy, and He doth not see in thee the nakedness of anything, and hath turned back from after thee."

"15. 'Thou dost not shut up a servant unto his lord, who is delivered unto thee from his lord; 16. with thee he doth dwell, in thy midst, in the place which he chooseth within one of thy gates, where it is pleasing to him; thou dost not oppress him."

"17. 'There is not a whore among the daughters of Israel, nor is there a whoremonger among the sons of Israel; 18. thou dost not bring a gift of a whore, or a price of a dog, into the house of Jehovah thy God, for any vow; for the abomination of Jehovah thy God [are] even both of them." (Deuteronomy 23:13-18, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Moses, delivering the second-Sinai covenant exposition to the wilderness generation about to enter the land.
Audience: Israel on the plains of Moab, immediately before the Jordan crossing.
Location: Moab, east of the Jordan, c. fortieth year of the wilderness wandering.
Time period: events c. fifteenth or thirteenth century BC (depending on early/late exodus dating); Mosaic composition with later editorial framing.

Theological reading

The Deuteronomic code consistently distinguishes itself from the surrounding ancient Near East legal codes by tilting toward the protection of the vulnerable, and v. 15-16 is one of the sharpest examples. Every comparable ANE corpus, Hammurabi most famously, mandates the return of runaway slaves and prescribes the death penalty for harboring them. Hammurabi §15-16: "If a man has helped a male slave of the palace, or a female slave of the palace... to escape... that man shall be put to death." Hammurabi §19: "If he has kept that slave in his house and afterward the slave is found in his possession, that man shall be put to death." Hittite Laws §22-24, Lipit-Ishtar §12-13: same shape, same penalties. Across the entire ANE world, Israel's rule reverses the polarity, the runaway is not returned, is not punished, is given choice of residence, and is explicitly protected from mistreatment.

The four operative clauses of v. 15-16 add up to the dismantling of chattel slavery as a stable institution within Israel:

No return. The fugitive must not be handed back. This is the core anti-chattel clause; chattel systems collapse without enforced rendition of runaways.
Resident-among-you. The fugitive integrates into Israelite civil life rather than living as a marked outlaw.
Free choice of location. "The place he shall choose, in one of your gates, where it pleases him." The fugitive's preference governs, not the receiving community's.
Anti-oppression clause. "You shall not oppress him", the same verb used elsewhere of mistreating the resident alien (cf. Exodus 22.21, Leviticus 19.33-34).

Read with Exodus 21.16 (kidnapping for slave-sale is a capital crime) and Leviticus 25.39-43 (a fellow Israelite who falls into debt-servitude is not to be treated as a slave but as a hired worker, released at jubilee), the Mosaic legal framework actively prohibits the four structural pillars of chattel slavery (see Four Pillars of Chattel Slavery): person-as-property, kidnap-acquisition, rendition of runaways, and hereditary perpetuity. What remains under the name "servitude" in the Mosaic code is a different institution: debt-bondage with mandated release, time-limited, with civil-rights protections that no other ANE code matches.

Two questions follow. First, why then does Leviticus 25:44-46 appear to permit chattel-style permanent ownership of foreign slaves? This is the long-form load-bearing tension addressed in Leviticus 25.44-46 and the Israelite Slavery Possession-vs-Ownership Defeater, the answer turns on the Hebrew property/inheritance vocabulary and the contrast between Israelite debt-servitude and foreign permanent residency, plus the v. 15-16 escape valve that any such foreign servant could trigger unilaterally. Second, what about the New Testament reception? Paul's letter to Philemon is sometimes read as endorsing the return of a runaway slave (Onesimus), but Paul's actual move is to return Onesimus as a brother, not as property (cf. Philemon 16), and to make explicit the asymmetry of authority between himself and Philemon's claim, the letter is a careful Christian recasting that softens, not reinforces, the master-slave relation.

Apologetic deployment

This is one of the highest-yield single-passage defeaters in the Biblical Slavery Objection Defeater cluster. Standard atheist objection: "the Bible endorses chattel slavery." Standard response sequence:

Define chattel slavery (the four pillars).
Cite Exodus 21.16 against pillar 2 (kidnap-acquisition is capital).
Cite Deuteronomy 23:15-16 against pillar 3 (no rendition of runaways).
Cite Leviticus 25.39-43 against pillars 1 and 4 for Israelites; cite v. 15-16 again as the escape valve for foreigners.
Comparative ANE move: every other near-eastern code mandates rendition and imposes death for harboring; the Mosaic code reverses both.
Conclude: the Bible's "slavery" institution lacks all four pillars of chattel slavery; the objection equivocates between two unlike institutions (see equivocation-defeater pattern).

Key words

H5650 - ebed, eved, "servant, slave, bondservant." The same word covers a wide spectrum: high officials of the king, debt-servants, foreign permanent servants. English "slave" maps poorly onto its range.
nuach, suggir / nuach, "shut up, deliver up." Deut 23:15 uses the hiphil of sgr, "to hand over, deliver into custody." The verb is used elsewhere of betrayal (e.g. 1 Samuel 23:20).
lachats, lachats, "oppress, mistreat." Same root family as the oppression-of-the-poor language in the prophets.

Theological themes

Protection of the vulnerable. The recurring Deuteronomic note: God's law tilts toward the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the indebted, and now the fugitive.
Holiness of the camp. v. 14 frames the fugitive-slave law inside the broader concern: God walks in the camp, the camp must be morally fit for his presence.
Israel as anti-Egypt. Israel was itself rescued from chattel slavery (cf. Exodus 20.2, Deuteronomy 5:15); the Mosaic code formalizes that experience into legal protection for any other fugitive who comes their way.
Critique of ANE law-as-baseline. The text is one of the most explicit places where the Torah departs from ANE comparative norms upward, not downward.

Cross-references

Exodus 21.16, kidnapping for slave-sale is capital; closes pillar 2 of chattel slavery.
Leviticus 25.39-43, Israelite debt-servants treated as hired workers, released at jubilee.
Leviticus 25.44-46, the apparent counterweight passage; addressed at length in Israelite Slavery Possession-vs-Ownership Defeater.
Exodus 22.21, Leviticus 19.33-34, anti-oppression of the resident alien; same verb cluster.
Philemon 16, Paul's "no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother."
Galatians 3.28, "neither slave nor free... in Christ Jesus."
1 Timothy 1.10, kidnappers / slave-traders condemned in the vice list.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.