Greek word · G405

ἀνδραποδιστής

andrapodistēs

slave-trader

From ἀνδράποδον (andrapodon), a war captive or slave, literally 'man-footed thing', meaning a human treated as livestock. The andrapodistēs is the person who turns people into andrapoda: a kidnapper who seizes free people, or steals other people's slaves, in order to sell them.

Appears once in the Greek New Testament. · Updated October 22, 2026

What it means

ἀνδραποδιστής, -οῦ, ὁ

(ἀνδράποδον, a slave, captured in war)

a slave-dealer, kidnapper: 1 Timothy 1:10 (see MM, VGT, see word).†

(AS)

From G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of 1 Timothy 1:10

Range of meaning: From ἀνδράποδον (andrapodon), a war captive or slave, literally 'man-footed thing', meaning a human treated as livestock. The andrapodistēs is the person who turns people into andrapoda: a kidnapper who seizes free people, or steals other people's slaves, in order to sell them.
Against the English: KJV and YLT 'menstealers' keep the kidnapping core. BSB, WEB and NIV 'slave traders' are close but slightly broader and less pointed. The word's focus is on the seizing of a person, not simply on dealing in slaves who were already slaves.
How it drifted: Modern readers may hear 'slave trader' as a condemnation of slavery as an institution. The Greek word targets the crime of enslaving people by theft. That was a capital crime in Athenian and Mosaic law even in societies that kept slaves.
Used elsewhere in the period: Exodus 21:16 and Deuteronomy 24:7 make kidnapping for sale a capital offence. Rabbinic tradition (Mekilta on Exodus 20:15; b. Sanhedrin 86a) read the eighth commandment as forbidding 'stealing a person'. Philo, Special Laws 4.13–19, calls the andrapodistēs the worst of thieves. Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.2.62) and other Athenian sources rank him with temple-robbers and house-breakers, deserving death.

Where it appears

1 Timothy · 1

1 Timothy 1:10 ἀνδραποδισταῖς, for enslavers,

for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teaching

Here: Someone who seizes people, usually free people, and sells them into slavery. Jewish teaching read 'You shall not steal' as covering stealing a person, so this is the theft commandment in its gravest form (Exodus 21:16).

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.