The High Crime of Man-Stealing Text: Deuteronomy 24:7
Introduction: What Is a Man Worth?
Our secular, materialistic age has a very confused answer to the question of what a man is worth. On the one hand, we are told that man is the measure of all things, a being of supreme dignity, possessed of inalienable rights. On the other hand, we are told he is nothing more than an accidental collocation of atoms, a cosmic orphan, a clever ape with car keys. This confusion has consequences. When you don't know what a man is, you won't know what to do with him. And when a culture forgets what a man is, it will not be long before men are bought and sold like cattle.
We see this today, not just in the obvious horrors of human trafficking, but also in the more subtle, bureaucratic ways that the modern state treats human beings. It treats them as resources to be managed, as statistics to be tallied, as cogs in a machine. The state has become the great slave-master, trafficking in the lives and futures of its citizens through debt, regulation, and the soft totalitarianism of the cradle-to-grave nanny state. It steals men, not by throwing them in the back of a van, but by promising them security in exchange for their liberty.
The Bible, in stark contrast, has a very high view of man, and consequently, a very high view of crimes committed against him. God's law is not sentimental. It is rooted in the bedrock of creation. Man is valuable because he is made in the image of God. Therefore, to steal a man is to steal a living, breathing icon of the living God. It is an act of high treason against the King of Heaven. And God's law treats it with the utmost seriousness.
The Text
"If a man is caught kidnapping any of his brothers of the sons of Israel, and he mistreats him or sells him, then that thief shall die; so you shall purge the evil from among you."
(Deuteronomy 24:7 LSB)
The Ultimate Theft
Let us break this down. The crime here is man-stealing. The Hebrew is direct; it is the theft of a soul, a person. This is not a property crime in the same category as stealing a donkey or a bag of grain. While God's law takes property very seriously, it makes a sharp distinction between property and persons. To steal property requires restitution, often multiple-fold. But to steal a man requires the thief's life. Why the dramatic difference?
"If a man is caught kidnapping any of his brothers of the sons of Israel, and he mistreats him or sells him..." (Deuteronomy 24:7a)
The parallel law in Exodus is stark: "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:16). This is not complicated. This is a capital crime. The reason is that man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). To kidnap a man, to treat him as a piece of merchandise, is to assault the Imago Dei. It is to take a being created for dominion and subject him to the ultimate degradation. It is an attempt to un-create him, to strip him of his God-given station and reduce him to the level of an animal or an object. This is why the New Testament lists "enslavers" right alongside murderers, adulterers, and liars as those who are contrary to sound doctrine (1 Timothy 1:10). It is a fundamental violation of the created order.
Notice the language here: "any of his brothers of the sons of Israel." This highlights the covenantal context. This is not just a crime against a generic human being; it is a crime against a brother. It is a betrayal of the highest order. To steal a covenant brother is to tear the very fabric of the community that God has established. It is to act like a wolf among the sheep. The story of Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery is the archetypal example of this sin. It was a sin that reverberated through generations, a poison in the family well.
The law specifies two actions: the kidnapper "mistreats him or sells him." The first word can be translated as "deals tyrannically with him" or "makes merchandise of him." Whether the thief keeps the man for his own forced labor or sells him on the open market, the crime is the same. The root sin is the illegitimate claim of ownership over a man who belongs to God alone.
The Prescribed Penalty
The penalty is not a fine. It is not a prison sentence. It is absolute and severe.
"...then that thief shall die..." (Deuteronomy 24:7b)
Modern sensibilities recoil at this. We have been conditioned by a century of therapeutic sentimentalism to believe that capital punishment is barbaric. But God's justice is not barbaric; it is righteous. The penalty fits the crime because the penalty is rooted in the principle of life for life (lex talionis). The man-stealer, by treating his victim as though he were dead, as a non-person with no will of his own, has forfeited his own right to life in a just society. He has, in effect, murdered the man's liberty and his status as a free image-bearer. Therefore, his life is required.
This is not vengeance. This is justice. It is the civil magistrate bearing the sword as God's deacon, an avenger who brings wrath on the wrongdoer (Romans 13:4). A society that will not execute a man-stealer is a society that does not truly value human life. It values the life of the criminal more than the life and liberty of his victim. It is a society that has lost its moral compass, and its laws will eventually become instruments of oppression rather than justice.
The Communal Responsibility
The verse concludes with the reason for the severe penalty. It is not just about punishing the individual; it is about purifying the community.
"...so you shall purge the evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 24:7c)
This phrase, "purge the evil," appears repeatedly in Deuteronomy. It is connected to idolatry, false prophecy, sexual perversion, and murder. Man-stealing is in that same category of high-handed, society-destroying evil. Unpunished, such a sin acts as a leaven, a spiritual pollutant that defiles the entire community. God holds the community responsible for upholding His justice. Tolerating this kind of evil is a corporate sin.
When the civil government refuses to obey God in this, the evil is not purged. It remains. It festers. And we see the results all around us. A society that tolerates the theft of human beings in the womb through abortion should not be surprised when it sees the rise of human trafficking on the streets. A society that redefines what a human is to suit its own lusts will inevitably begin to treat humans as disposable. The failure to purge this evil has consequences, and God will not be mocked. A nation that will not deal with its man-stealers will eventually be stolen itself.
Application for Today
So what does this mean for us? We are not ancient Israel, a body politic under the Mosaic covenant. True. But we serve the same God, and His character, reflected in His law, has not changed. The Westminster Confession says that the judicial laws of Israel have expired, "not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require."
What is the "general equity" here? It is the timeless principle that human beings, made in God's image, possess a dignity and liberty that is sacred. The theft of a person is an outrage against the Creator and must be treated by the civil magistrate as a crime of the highest order. A just government, therefore, should punish kidnapping and human trafficking with the utmost severity. Our modern system of catch-and-release for violent criminals is a joke, and it is a joke that God does not find funny.
But the application is deeper. The ultimate man-stealer is the Devil. Jesus tells us that the thief comes only to "steal and kill and destroy" (John 10:10). Satan stole the entire human race in the garden. He took us captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:26). He traffics in human souls, as Revelation 18:13 tells us in its description of the cargo of Babylon the Great. We were all, by nature, kidnapped, enslaved to sin, and sold under the power of death.
Into this cosmic slave market came the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not come to negotiate a price with the kidnapper. He came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He came as the great Redeemer, the kinsman-redeemer, to buy back His people. But He did not purchase us with silver or gold, but with His own precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19). He paid the price for our freedom by taking our place.
And in doing so, He executed the death penalty on our behalf. He purged the evil. The cross was the place where the ultimate penalty for sin was carried out. And now, through faith in Him, we who were stolen are restored. We who were enslaved are made free. We who were treated as merchandise are adopted as sons and daughters of the King.
Therefore, our hatred of man-stealing in the civil realm must be a reflection of our gratitude for our own redemption. We defend the liberty of others because Christ secured our liberty. We demand justice for the oppressed because Christ is the great Justifier. And we work and pray for a society where God's law is honored, where the weak are protected, and where the evil of man-stealing is purged, all to the glory of the One who came to set the captives free.