Slavery (ceremonially or figuratively)
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G1397, douleía, is the Greek noun for slavery, bondage, or the condition of being enslaved. Every New Testament occurrence uses the term figuratively, but the metaphor draws its force from the loss of freedom found in actual slavery.
Reader summary
Full entry for δουλεία (G1397) · Open the biblical lexicon
G1397, douleía, is the Greek noun for slavery, bondage, or the condition of being enslaved. Every New Testament occurrence uses the term figuratively, but the metaphor draws its force from the loss of freedom found in actual slavery.
The BSB source-word alignment has 5 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include of slavery (2), bondage (1), in slavery (1), slavery (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Romans 8:15. Its strongest book concentrations include Galatians (2), Romans (2), Hebrews (1).
G1397, douleía, is the Greek noun for slavery, bondage, or the condition of being enslaved. Every New Testament occurrence uses the term figuratively, but the metaphor draws its force from the loss of freedom found in actual slavery. Paul speaks of a spirit of slavery that returns people to fear, creation's bondage to decay, Hagar's covenantal representation of slavery, and a yoke of slavery from which Christ has freed believers. Hebrews names lifelong slavery produced by fear of death. The word is therefore stronger than inconvenience, habit, or ordinary obligation.
Romans 8 holds two kinds of bondage in view. Believers have not received a spirit that drives them back into fearful slavery; they have received the Spirit of adoption and cry to God as Father. In the same chapter, creation waits to be liberated from bondage to decay. Adoption does not promise a life without grief, trauma responses, or bodily weakness. It announces a changed relation to God and a future in which corruption itself will not have the last word. The Spirit's witness should not be weaponized to shame anxious people or to deny medical and pastoral care.
Galatians uses slavery within Paul's argument against requiring circumcision and Torah observance from Gentile believers as the basis of covenant belonging. His allegory and warning must be read within that dispute, not turned into contempt for Jewish people, Israel's Scriptures, or God's holy law. Christian freedom is life under Christ by the Spirit, expressed through love, not autonomy from every obligation. Hebrews adds that the Son shared flesh and blood, defeated the one holding the power of death, and frees people held by death's fear. G1397 thus opens gospel freedom while demanding care: do not rebuild religious bondage, do not spiritualize literal enslavement away, and do not label every struggle as proof that a person lacks adoption.
G1397 occurs five times, naming fearful slavery, creation's bondage to decay, covenantal slavery in Paul's Hagar allegory, the yoke rejected by gospel freedom, and lifelong bondage to fear of death.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Paul contrasts slavery-producing fear with the Spirit's work of adoption and filial prayer. The contrast concerns belonging to God, not a promise that Christians will never experience anxiety.
That the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
The noun describes creation's subjection to corruption and frames freedom eschatologically. The children's future glory includes the renewal of embodied creation rather than escape from creatureliness.
These things serve as illustrations, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children into slavery: This is Hagar.
Paul explicitly marks the treatment as illustrative within his dispute over Gentile covenant membership. Hagar's role in the argument does not authorize contempt for Hagar, Jewish people, or the Old Testament.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery.
Christ's liberating work grounds the command to stand firm against circumcision as a requirement for justification and covenant standing. The following chapter defines this freedom through Spirit-led love rather than self-rule.
And free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Because the Son shared flesh and blood and passed through death, death's fear no longer owns the final horizon. The text offers Christ-centered deliverance without mocking ordinary grief or fear.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Bondage condition of servitude; contrasts with freedom and adoption as God's children in Paul's theology.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
5 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
slavery, bondage
Read verseslavery, bondage
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Read verseslavery, bondage
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 2 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 4 selected witnesses from 5 lexical occurrence verses.
δουλεία is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G1397 gathers the New Testament's freedom language around conditions that hold life under a power it cannot defeat by effort alone. Romans 8 contrasts the return of fearful slavery with the Spirit of adoption, then widens the horizon to a creation bound to decay and awaiting liberation. Galatians brings the term into a contested gospel question: Gentile believers must not accept circumcision and Torah observance as necessary grounds of covenant belonging, because Christ has set them free.
Hebrews reaches beneath many human fears to death itself and proclaims that the incarnate Son entered mortality to break its enslaving claim. These uses do not make every limit oppressive or every obligation bondage. Nor do they deny the reality of trauma, anxiety, bodily decay, or literal enslavement. They announce that fear, corruption, religious boundary-making, and death are not rightful masters of those adopted in Christ.
Preaching should protect that freedom from legalism and lawlessness alike, while treating people in actual coercion with concrete solidarity.
Rom.8.15
G1397 is a feminine abstract noun related to G1398, to serve as a slave, and the G1401 word family for a slave. Its five occurrences appear in genitive or accusative forms. The surrounding expressions specify different enslaving relations: a spirit characterized by slavery, bondage belonging to decay, a covenant producing slavery, a yoke of slavery, and slavery arising through fear of death. The noun identifies a condition or regime, not merely an isolated act of service.
Israel's Scriptures remember deliverance from the house of slavery, regulate life in a world that still contained servitude, expose violated emancipation in Jeremiah 34, and promise the defeat of death. The New Testament uses that history and social reality to describe Christ's liberation, adoption by the Spirit, and creation's future. Paul's Galatians argument belongs within Israel's covenant story rather than against Jewish people, and Hebrews presents Jesus as the faithful Son who shares human mortality to release those held by death's fear.