Apologetics · FaithLogic
The Bible’s Hardest Texts
Slavery, the conquest of Canaan, and hell are the passages that make thoughtful people put the Bible down. They deserve a straight answer. Some of what follows resolves cleanly; some leaves a genuine residue, and this section says which is which rather than pretending the discomfort is all a misreading.
Slavery in the Old Testament
A spectrum, heavily regulated
The Hebrew ‘ebed covers a range from debt-servitude — a way of surviving poverty, with release in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2) and again at Jubilee (Leviticus 25) — to war captives. The law regulates it in ways with no parallel in the ancient Near East: a servant injured by a master goes free (Exodus 21:26–27), a runaway must not be returned (Deuteronomy 23:15–16), and kidnapping a person to enslave or sell is a capital crime (Exodus 21:16) — which is precisely what the Atlantic slave trade was built on.
The residue
Foreign slaves could be held long-term and passed on as property (Leviticus 25:44–46), and Exodus 21:21 (“he is his money”) is hard by any reading. Scripture sets a trajectory — “no slave or free… in Christ” (Galatians 3:28), Paul sending a slave back as a brother (Philemon), and the historical fact that abolition was overwhelmingly a Christian-led movement (the Quakers, Wilberforce, the Clapham Sect). But the Old Testament permission is real, and honesty means naming it.
The conquest of Canaan
Three things are true at once
(a) Much of the language is ancient war rhetoric. “Utterly destroy… leave nothing that breathes” sits next to “but you did not drive them out” and cities still full of Canaanites a generation later (Joshua 10 vs Judges 1–3). Copan and Flannagan (Did God Really Command Genocide?, 2014) read herem as hyperbolic conventional idiom for decisive victory. (b) The stated ground is judgement, not ethnicity. It is tied to specific entrenched practices — child sacrifice above all (Leviticus 18; Deuteronomy 12:31) — delayed four centuries (Genesis 15:16), and Israel is warned it faces the same removal for the same sins (Leviticus 18:28). It is not a race war.
The residue
(c) Even granting the hyperbole and the judgement frame, the texts still picture non-combatants inside the destruction, and that is hard. Christians have answered it in different ways — God’s unique prerogative over life and death; a real but limited and non-repeatable act of judgement in redemptive history; progressive revelation reaching its standard in Christ, who never commands anything like it and dies for his enemies. Each has force; none makes the discomfort vanish entirely, and a treatment that claimed otherwise would not be trustworthy.
Hell
A real disagreement among Christians
The caricature — a vindictive God delighting in torture — is not the mainstream view. Three readings are held by serious Christians: eternal conscious torment (the traditional majority); conditional immortality / annihilationism (the lost finally cease to exist — John Stott held this tentatively, and it is a growing evangelical minority); and a minority universalist hope. The common thread in modern treatments is that hell is self-chosen exclusion — C. S. Lewis: “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” God does not drag the unwilling in.
How these texts are read
Not special pleading
Three principles, and they are the ones the New Testament itself uses on the Old: read each text in its ancient context, not as a free-standing timeless rule; follow the trajectory Scripture sets rather than freezing it at an early stage; and read the whole through Christ, treated as the fullest revelation of God’s character and the interpretive key. These were not invented to escape the hard texts.
💡 The Hardest Texts — Reasonable Summary“Old Testament servitude runs from debt-relief to war-captivity and is regulated far beyond its neighbours — injury means freedom, runaways are protected, slave-trading is a capital crime — but a real residue remains in the treatment of foreign slaves. The conquest language is largely hyperbolic war-idiom, and the stated ground is judgement on practices like child sacrifice, not ethnicity, with Israel under the same warning — yet the picture of non-combatants in the destruction stays hard, and Christians answer it in several ways without fully dissolving it. Hell, in mainstream treatments, is self-chosen exclusion, and faithful Christians differ over eternal torment vs annihilation. The texts are read in context, along Scripture’s own trajectory, and through Christ — the New Testament’s own method.”
Related Sections
• The Problem of Evil — Answered Honestly — the broader question of God and suffering.
• Where Do Right and Wrong Come From? — the standard by which these texts are judged.
• Is the Old Testament Law Still Binding? — how the OT commands relate to the Christian.
• The Bible and Science — another supposed knock-down objection, examined.
• Where Do Right and Wrong Come From? — the standard by which these texts are judged.
• Is the Old Testament Law Still Binding? — how the OT commands relate to the Christian.
• The Bible and Science — another supposed knock-down objection, examined.
This is part of the FaithLogic study library — the biblical, historical and manuscript case that Jesus is God, with every claim linked to its source. Open the interactive version for search, cross-references, read-aloud, and the full library.