servant / slave

While the Greek term doulos in the New Testament and ‘ebed in the Old Testament refer to slightly different concepts (unlike in New Testament Judea in Old Testament Israel and Judah, Hebrew servants/slaves were required to be released after six years of labor and, regardless of when they started their servitude, all Hebrew servants were to be automatically freed during the year of Jubilee), translation issues are somewhat similar.

Joel Baden (2025, p. 65ff.) says this about the Hebrew term used in the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible:

“The English words ‘servant’ and ‘slave’ have decidedly different connotations. ‘Servant’ has the sense of ‘employee.’ ‘Slave,’ by contrast, carries with it the ideas of an owned and controlled body, of violence and dishonor. The connotation of ‘servant’ can verge on the positive; ‘slave’ is predominantly negative. How a reader of the Bible understands the identity of a character or the relationship between one character and another or the world of ancient Israel depends significantly on whether the word ‘servant’ or ‘slave’ is used. In Hebrew, however, there is but one word underlying every occurrence of ‘servant’ and ‘slave’ in our modern translations. The distinction between the two exists only on the level of interpretation.

“It is not a matter of mere nomenclature. Take the story of Genesis 24, in which Abraham sends his servant off to find a wife for Isaac. The servant — though the main character of the passage — has no name and is identified only by his title, which he even uses to introduce himself: ‘I am Abraham’s servant,’ he says (Genesis 24:34, Jewish Publication Society). This is often read as a warm story about a devoted servant — usually imagined to be relatively old — who carries out the elderly patriarch’s final wishes. How does it change, how do we reimagine it, when we read all thirteen mentions of Abraham’s servant as, in fact, Abraham’s slave? We know Abraham has slaves: His ‘servant’ even says so in this very chapter in the very next verse: ‘The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich: he has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and asses’ (24:35, JPS). Yet generations of translators, interpreters, and readers have failed to connect the slaves (the property with which God has blessed Abraham) and the servant — the slave who is the protagonist of this same story.

“When slaves are turned into servants, the Bible itself is changed. Our revulsion at the institution of slavery is kept at a distance from the biblical text that stands as our religious heritage. The Bible is protected, albeit from itself. Slavery is minimized, or worse: The King James Version, notably, does not translate ‘ebed as ‘slave’ a single time. The result? Some KJV readers have denied that there is any slavery in the Bible whatsoever. Yet the word ‘ebed appears around 800 times in the Bible. That’s 800 moments when a slave, and the existence of slavery in ancient Israel and the biblical text, has been erased.

“The social role that we associate with the term ‘servant’ didn’t exist in ancient Israel. Slaves, however, did. Israel knew what it was to be a slave, and Israel knew, too, what it was to own a slave. And thus Israel uses the language and metaphor of slavery again and again to express the basic notions of obedience, of power disparity, of bodily control and the absence of agency. Samuel says to Yahweh upon being called, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’ (1 Samuel 3:9, JPS). ‘Let my lord go ahead of his servant,’ Jacob says to Esau in Genesis 33:14 (JPS). Rendered as ‘servant’ in every translation, this is a sort of formally obsequious, self-abnegating speech. While literal slavery is not at stake in these sorts of expressions, the metaphorical reference to the relative status of slave and master is lost when it is translated as ‘servant.’

“So, too, when those figures who are the ‘ebed to a king are referred to as ‘courtiers,’ ‘officials,’ ‘attendants,’ ‘soldiers,’ ‘subjects,’ ‘envoys,’ ‘ministers,’ or even sometimes simply ‘men,’ of the king. These are all translations of the same word, and the instinct to specify their distinctive roles in the royal court is understandable. Yet in doing so, translations obscure the actual language with the connotations that it presents: subordination, threat of violence to one’s person, absolute control over will and agency. And so, too, when it is not a human king but God to whom one is said to be ‘ebed. In the book of Joshua, God states, ‘My servant Moses is dead’ (1:2, JPS) — we are relatively comfortable with the idea of serving God but perhaps less so with the idea of being God’s slave. Yet the qualities of obedience, subservience, and loyalty — and the implicit threat of punishment for the lack thereof — are part of this picture as well. One might point to the way this language is picked up in the New Testament in the phrase ‘slave of Christ’ in 1 Corinthians 7:22.

“If ‘servants’ and ‘slaves’ are not understood to be equivalent — and in modern English it is safe to say that they are not — then every time that the word ‘ebed appears, a choice has to be made by the translator. The diminishment of the very word ‘slave’ in English translations of the Hebrew Bible results in the diminishment of the idea and reality of slavery in the Bible and in the world that produced it. Though there is no debate to be had about whether there was slavery in the Bible and in ancient Israel, a lay reader of the text in translation might well wonder.

“Our ears, and eyes, have become accustomed to seeing the word ‘servant’ in the Bible. ‘Slave’ often sounds wrong, inapt, almost harsh. Yet it is just this discomfort that signals how important the change is. Whenever we encounter the word ‘servant’ in our English translations, we should be obliged to ask why it says ‘servant’ and not ‘slave’ — and what difference it would make to our reading of the text as an individual, as a community, and as a culture if we were instead to read ‘slave.’”

Ruden (2021, p. lviii) says this about the Greek term in the New Testament:

“In Judea, servitude was sui generis and could be complicated, and accordingly the Greek vocabulary in scripture is varied. But there appears to be no basis for sugarcoating the word meaning a chattel slave in nearly all Greek literature, doulos. It is unlikely that the internationally oriented authors of the Gospels didn’t mean what their peers meant by the word — ‘slave.’ Also, the English word ‘servant’ is too vague for the array of servitors (including trusted house slaves and personal attendants), military and administrative subordinates, and ritual helpers the Greek of the Gospels distinguishes.”

Some English New Testament translations (Ruden 2021, Hart 2017, The Orthodox New Testament 2004) have consistently used slave for the Greek doulos but no Old Testament translation consistently translates ‘ebed with only one term.

In a number of leading German translations, including the Catholic Einheitsübersetzung (1980 / 2016) and the Protestant Elberfelder Bibel (1871 / 2006), BasisBibel (2021), as well as the translation by Luther (all editions) use the term Knecht throughout. Knecht is an old-fashioned term for a low-class, often agricultural servant with little or no social mobility, a position that is somewhat located between Diener (“servant”) and Sklave (“slave”). The only times these versions specifically don’t use Knecht is where slavery is specifically in the focus (such as Leviticus 25:44 or Philemon 1:16).

complete verse (Job 7:2)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Job 7:2:

  • Kupsabiny: “(It is) like a slave who wants to find a cool shadow,
    like a hired laborer waiting to be given his pay.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Like a slave who seeks a cool evening shadow,
    or like a servant who is impatiently waiting for his wages.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “or like a slave who longs for the afternoon already so-that he now can rest, or like a worker who eagerly waits for his wages.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)

Translation commentary on Job 7:1 - 7:2

Verse 1 takes the form of a rhetorical question. Job speaks of man in a universal sense, which would include himself. Has not man a hard service upon earth: the term translated man is general and inclusive, referring to all people, everyone. Hard service translates a word meaning “army” and is extended to refer to the term of military service, as it does in Numbers 1.3, where all males were counted for military service. Life in a military camp suggested continuous hard labor. Good News Translation‘s “forced army service” expresses the idea well. Instead of rhetorical questions Good News Translation has used two statements employing similes, “Human life is like….” In some languages man can be shifted to the more general idea of life, as in Good News Translation, or as in Bible en français courant “Life is hard….” It may also be necessary to say “People have to work hard,” or “Everyone is forced to do hard labor…,” or using a simile, “The life of people is like doing hard army duty….” Upon earth, which is not translated as such by Good News Translation, does not refer to the earth in contrast to another place, but serves to draw attention to man’s physical existence in the sense of “as long as he is alive” or “in this life.” Upon earth may be rendered, for example, “As long as people are alive,” “During life,” or “While they live.” In some languages, if the rhetorical question form is used, a reply may be required; for example, “They certainly do!”

Are not his days like the days of a hireling?: this line does not parallel the first one in structure but in word association, in which hireling is associated with hard service. A hireling is a person who is hired to work for daily wages. The term is also used of a mercenary or soldier who serves for money, as in 2 Samuel 10.6, where the Ammonites hired Syrians and others to fight Joab. The hireling or day wage earner was to be paid daily (Deut 24.15; Matt 20.8), and his wages were not to be kept from him until the following morning (Lev 19.13). Every day consisted of hard labor, with the uncertainty of being paid at the end of the day. Days of a hireling may refer to the working days, or more generally, to the life or way of life of the worker. In situations where people are not familiar with the idea of day labor, it may be necessary to say, for example, “a person who works each day for someone else” or “a person who gets money by working for an employer.” His days refers to the suffering struggle of the person in line a of the verse, and to make this clear it may be necessary to say “Isn’t what he does like the things a day laborer does?” In some languages it will be best to shift his days to something like “Is not his suffering like the suffering of the day laborer?” or “Does he not endure the same pain as the day laborer?” Good News Translation shifts from his days in line b again to “like a life,” which gives balance to the two lines.

Verse 2 continues the chain of similes begun in verse 1b. The two lines of this verse are parallel in structure; and there is a shift of images from military service and daily wage earner in verse 1 to slave in this verse.

Like a slave who longs for the shadow: shadow is taken in the sense of “cool shade,” as in Good News Translation. Like a hireling who looks for his wages: the word hireling is the same as in verse 1b and can refer to the mercenary soldier or to the day laborer. He looks for his wages in the sense that he anticipates, is anxious for, is expecting his daily pay. In the thought of the author, to exist is to be enslaved, and only the end of life brings freedom. It is important in continuing the simile that the subject man from verse 1 be clearly indicated; for example, “People’s (or, Human) life is like a slave longing for the shade.” Or “Our lives on earth are….”

In languages in which the word slave is unknown, it may be necessary to use a descriptive phrase; for example, “a poor person who has been sold to someone” or “a person whom an owner has bought (or, captured).” The reason the slave longs for the shade is that his labor is in the hot sun. This may not be clear, and that information may need to be given, as in Bible en français courant “A slave in the sun who would like some shade.” It may be necessary to say, for example, “As a slave who works in the hot sun wants to rest in the cool shade.”

Looks for his wages does not mean that the worker has lost them and is searching for them, but rather as in Good News Translation “waiting for his pay.” In some languages it will be necessary to shift to a verb, “waiting for the boss to pay him” or “… to give him what he has earned.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .