The Ultimate Theft Text: Exodus 21:16
Introduction: What Is a Man Worth?
Our modern world is awash in sentimentality and confusion about the value of human life. On the one hand, we are told that man is a meaningless collection of molecules, an accidental byproduct of cosmic slime plus time. On the other hand, we are hectored with endless slogans about human rights, dignity, and self-worth, all of which are utterly baseless if the first premise is true. You cannot have infinite human value in a finite, materialist universe. It is like trying to build a skyscraper on a swamp. The foundation will not hold, and the entire structure of our ethics is collapsing into the mire.
This confusion has practical and horrific consequences. We see it in the abortion industry, which treats the unborn child as disposable tissue. And we see it in the grotesque enterprise of human trafficking, the modern incarnation of the ancient sin of man-stealing. This is a multi-billion dollar industry built on the buying and selling of human beings as though they were cattle or cordwood. It is a direct assault on the image of God, and it is a crime that our society, for all its high-minded talk, prosecutes with far less severity than it does certain financial crimes.
But God is not confused. The Scriptures are not sentimental. God's law is clear, sharp, and just. It does not mumble. In the book of the covenant, nestled among various case laws, God provides a statute that cuts right to the heart of the matter. It defines the crime, and it prescribes the penalty. And in so doing, it tells us something essential about what a man is, who he belongs to, and what his life is worth.
This is not some dusty, irrelevant law from a bygone era. This is the word of the living God, and it establishes a principle of justice that is as permanent as the God who gave it. It is a declaration that a human being is not a thing. He is not a commodity. He is not a piece of property to be stolen. To treat him as such is to commit a crime of the highest order, a crime against both man and God. It is the ultimate theft.
The Text
He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.
(Exodus 21:16 LSB)
The Crime Defined: Stealing God's Property
Let us look closely at the language. The law identifies the crime with straightforward clarity:
"He who kidnaps a man..." (Exodus 21:16a)
The Hebrew word for "kidnaps" is ganab, which is the ordinary word for "to steal." This is the same word used in the eighth commandment: "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20:15). This is crucial. God defines kidnapping not as a lesser crime, but as a form of theft. But what is being stolen? Not a wallet, not a car, not an ox. A man. This is theft of the highest magnitude because of the nature of the "property."
But wait, you say. Is a man property at all? Yes, but he is not your property. A man is God's property. Every human being is created in the imago Dei, the image of God. This is the foundation of all biblical ethics concerning human life. A man is not an autonomous, self-owning creature. He is a creature, and he belongs to his Creator. This is the fundamental Creator/creature distinction that our rebellious world is so eager to erase. Because man is made in God's image, he has a unique and sacred status in the created order. To steal a man is therefore to steal the special possession of God. It is to lay felonious hands on God's own icon.
This is why the transatlantic slave trade, for example, was such a profound abomination. It was built on this very crime of man-stealing. Men were hunted, captured, and stolen from their homes, ripped from their context, and sold as chattel. This is unequivocally condemned by Scripture, both here and in the New Testament, where "enslavers" or "men-stealers" are listed among the lawless and profane, alongside murderers, fornicators, and liars (1 Timothy 1:10). This practice is not to be confused with the forms of indentured servitude or debt-slavery that the Mosaic law regulated. Those were systems, however flawed, that recognized the personhood of the servant. Man-stealing, by contrast, reduces a person to a thing. It is the ultimate act of depersonalization.
The text then clarifies the scope of the crime. It applies whether the thief profits from his crime or is simply caught with the victim:
"...whether he sells him or he is found in his hand..." (Exodus 21:16b)
The motive and the outcome do not mitigate the guilt. The crime is in the act of stealing the man itself. Whether you sell him into bondage for profit or you are caught with him still in your possession, the nature of the transgression is the same. You have usurped God's authority. You have treated an image-bearer as a brute beast. You have laid claim to that which you have no right. The act of theft is complete when the man's liberty is stolen and he is brought under the unlawful dominion of the thief.
The Penalty Prescribed: A Just Equivalent
Having defined the crime, God's law then pronounces the sentence. And it is here that our modern, sentimental sensibilities are most offended.
"...shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:16c)
The penalty for stealing a man is death. Not a fine. Not a lengthy prison sentence. Death. This is not arbitrary or barbaric. It is perfectly just. The principle of biblical justice is lex talionis, the law of retribution. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life (Exodus 21:23-25). The punishment must fit the crime.
How does death fit the crime of kidnapping? The man-stealer has, in essence, stolen the life of his victim. He has stolen his past, his family, his vocation, his future, his freedom. He has treated his victim as though he were socially and civilly dead, a ghost with no rights, no name, and no standing. By reducing a man to a mere object, the kidnapper has functionally extinguished the man's life as a person in community. He has committed a form of judicial murder. Therefore, the just penalty is for his own life to be forfeit. He has demonstrated by his actions that he does not respect the sanctity of life that is bound up in the image of God, and so he forfeits the protection of his own.
We live in an age that recoils from capital punishment, believing it to be cruel and unusual. But this is because we have lost the biblical understanding of justice. We think of punishment primarily in terms of rehabilitation or deterrence. The Bible's primary category for civil punishment is retribution. It is about restoring the moral order of the universe by giving the offender what he deserves. When a government refuses to execute justice in this way, it abdicates its God-given duty. As I have said elsewhere, it is not a question of whether we will have the death penalty, but which one we will have. Do we execute the kidnapper after a fair trial? Or do we, by our refusal to do so, effectively "execute" his future victims? A society that will not put man-stealers to death is a society that does not truly value human life.
The Gospel for Man-Stealers
This law, like all of God's law, serves as a tutor to drive us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). It reveals a standard of perfect justice that we cannot keep and a penalty for sin that we all, in some fashion, deserve. For at the root of the sin of man-stealing is the primordial sin of Adam. What was the first sin in the garden but an attempt to steal? Adam and Eve tried to steal from God. They tried to steal His authority, His knowledge of good and evil. They tried to steal divinity for themselves.
And in our fallen state, we are all man-stealers. We are all kidnappers. We have tried to kidnap ourselves from our rightful owner. We declare our autonomy. We say, "My life is my own. I belong to me." We take the person that God created for His glory, and we sell him into the slavery of sin. We take the life that belongs to God, and we hold it captive in our own hand, for our own purposes. We are guilty of the very crime this text describes, only on a spiritual plane. And the penalty for this cosmic treason is not just physical death, but eternal death. We all stand under this sentence.
But into this hopeless situation comes the gospel of grace. The good news is that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be the great rescuer of captives. He came to seek and to save those who were lost, those who had been stolen by the great Man-stealer, the devil. Satan is the ultimate kidnapper, who holds men in bondage to fear and death (Hebrews 2:14-15).
How did Jesus rescue us? He did it by paying the ransom. And the ransom price was His own life. He stood in the place of condemned criminals. He, the only innocent man, took upon Himself the death penalty that we deserved for our cosmic treason. "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). He was handed over to lawless men, his freedom was taken, and He was put to death, so that we who were held captive by sin and death could be set free.
Therefore, the message of this text is twofold. First, it is a declaration of God's perfect justice and the immense value He places on every human life made in His image. Our civil magistrates ought to take heed and apply this principle of justice. Second, it is a mirror that shows us our own sin. It shows us our rebellion, our self-theft from God. And having shown us our desperate condition, it points us to the only one who can rescue us. It points us to Christ, who did not steal, but was stolen for us. He did not kidnap, but was kidnapped for us. He did not take a life, but gave His life, so that we might be restored to our rightful owner, and live in His house, as sons and not as slaves, forever.