In the text "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass makes several allusions to biblical subjects. These allow him to develop the main ideas in the text.
For example, Douglass talks about the plight of the Jews who were living in exile. He refers to psalm 137, which describes how the Jews suffered when thinking about Jerusalem, and were unable to sing in a foreign land. He compares this to his giving a speech on the 4th of July:
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Douglass also refers to the Bible when he discusses how Americans claim to be religious and pious while denying the freedom of slaves. This shows that they care about the rituals, but not the essence of Christianity. He argues that the Bible condemns such behaviour:
"The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”"