Kidnapping
Summary
The crime of stealing or abducting a person, explicitly forbidden in Hebrew law and punishable by death.
☩Biblical Prohibition
Kidnapping, also called manstealing, was directly forbidden in Hebrew law and carried the death penalty. The law stated: "Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death." Deuteronomy further specified that if a man was found stealing one of his brothers and treating him as a slave or selling him, the thief must die, thus purging evil from Israel. This stern prohibition protected the fundamental dignity and freedom of every person as created in God's image.
☩New Testament Reference
In the New Testament, Paul includes "enslavers" or "menstealers" (andrapodistai) among those for whom the law was given—the lawless, disobedient, ungodly, and sinful. This term encompasses slave traders who kidnapped free persons to sell into slavery. The crime stands alongside murder and other serious offenses as contrary to sound doctrine and the gospel.
☩Biblical Instance
An instance of kidnapping appears in the account of the Benjamites at Shiloh, where the men of Benjamin seized women from those dancing at the annual festival to obtain wives after their tribe had been decimated in civil war. Though not punished as kidnapping, this desperate measure reflected the chaos of the period when "everyone did what was right in his own eyes."