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statutes, judicial laws, or rules of judg
ment, by which their civil government
was to be conducted, and according to
which the magistrates were to give
judgment in disputed cases or differ-
ences arising between man and man.
Gr. dixaιopara, just judgments.
their government was a Theocracy,
their entire legislation was from God.
No part of their code, whether civil or
ecclesiastical, originated with them-
selves, or was left to be modified by
the dictates of human prudence.

2.

Laws respecting Servants.

CHAPTER XXI. This and the two following chapters contain the record of what God spake to Moses when he 'drew near to the thick darkness,' after the people had retired from their close vicinity to the sacred mount. Their contents relate, for the most part, to the judicial or political regulations which God, as the Theocratical sovereign of the chosen people, was pleased now to enact and impose upon them. These 'judgments,' however, though in themselves mainly of a temporal character, having respect to matters between man and man, which might become the subject of judicial If thou buy an Hebrew servant, decision, still involved moral consider. &c. Heb. ɔpo ki tikneh, when ations, and were in fact based upon some thou shalt purchase, procure, acquire; one or other of the express precepts of a term of which the general import is the Decalogue. They are, therefore, that of acquisition or possession in very properly introduced in this con- whatever manner obtained. See Notes nexion, immediately after the moral on Gen. 4. 1.-14. 19: The following code, to which they have continual instances of the use of the term will go reference. In our estimate of the polity to show that its sense is modified by of which these laws form a part, we the subjects to which it is applied, and must have regard to the circumstances that it does not by any means necessaof the people, and the period for which rily convey the idea of Hebrew serv. they were designed, and though we may ants' being bought and sold as goods admit that it would be very possible and chattels, as they are under the sysfor God to have given a code intrinsic- tem of modern slavery, especially in ally more excellent and holy, yet we our own country. Eve said, Gen. 4. 1, shall be ready to conclude that no bet- 'I have gotten ( kanithi) a man ter one could have been given in the from the Lord.' And she accordingly then circumstances of the Jewish race. named him Cain ( kayin), that is, 1. These are the judgments, &c. Heb. gotten, acquired. Prov. 15. 32, 'He that mishpotim; from sha- heareth reproof getteth ( koneh) phat, to judge, and here signifying the understanding.' Is. 11. 11, 'The Lord

in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were

possessed of a brother Hebrew, so as to have a right to command his services (in consequence of which right alone he becomes a 'servant'), retain him not in a state of servitude more that six years.'¶ In the seventh year. In what sense 'the seventh year' is to be understood here is not obvious; whether

land lay fallow, or as the seventh year from the time when the servant was bought. Maimonides was of the latter opinion, and this appears on the whole the most probable; for Moses uniformly calls it 'the seventh year,' without using the term 'sabbatical year,' or ap

shall set his hand again to recover (3 liknoth) the remnant of his people.' Ps. 78. 54, 'He brought them to this mountain which his right hand had purchased (p kanethah). Neh. 5. 8, 'We of our ability have redeemed ( kaninu) our brethren the Jews, that were sold unto the heathen.' Prov. 8. 22, The Lord possessed me (as the sabbatical year, in which the kanani) in the beginning of his way.' Here, as the service among the Hebrews was for the most part voluntary, the 'buying an Hebrew servant' may as legitimately imply the buying him from himself, that is, buying his services, as any other mode of purchase. Indeed, as there is no positive proof that He-parently at all alluding to it. And bebrew servants were ever made such or sides, when he describes the sabbatical kept in that condition by force, against year in Lev. 25. 1-7, he says nothing their own consent, except as a punish- about the manumission of servants. Yet ment for crime, the decided presump-it is to be presumed that if the jubilee tion is, that such is the kind of 'buying' year should occur before the six years' here spoken of. As to the term 7 service had expired, his manumission obed, servant, it comes from abad, would take place of course in virtue of to serve, which is applied variously to the general law, Lev. 25. 40, unless the serving of worshippers, of tributa- he had been sold for a crime. ries, of domestics, of Levites, of sons to a father, of subjects to a ruler, of hirelings, of soldiers, of public officers, &c. With similar latitude, the derivative noun is applied to all persons doing service for others, irrespective of the ground or principle on which that service was rendered. Accordingly it embraces in its range of application, tributaries, worshippers, domestics, subjects of government, magistrates, public officers, younger sons, prophets, kings, and the Messiah himself. To interpret it 'slave,' or to argue, from the fact of the word's being used to designate domestic serv. ants, that they were made servants by force, worked without pay, and held as articles of property, would be a gross and gratuitous assumption. The meaning of the present passage undoubtedly is, 'If thou dost in any way become

He shall go out free for nothing. That is, without being required to pay his master any thing as a consideration for the shortened term of service. Being made free by law he was to pay nothing for his liberty. Nor was he required to pay for any thing else. Although he might during the period of his service have labored under sickness, and put his master to cost, yet no compensation was to be expected from him at the time of his release; for a man's servant was during his servitude as his own possession for which he was bound to provide at his own charges. - One cannot but be struck with admiration at perceiving what kind provisions were made for the Hebrew bondman; how carefully he was guarded from violence, injustice, and wrong. The cir cumstances under which a native He.

married, then his wife shall go out with him.

4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons

or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.

If a free-born Hebrew, who had sold himself for a bondman, had previously had a wife, this relation was not disturbed by his servitude, at the expiration of which her freedom was to be restored along with her husband's. But a different case is supposed in the next verse. There the marriage is one that takes place during the continuance of the servitude, and seems to be of the same nature with the 'contubernium,' cohabitation, of the Romans, which, instead of 'conjugium,' wedlock, was the

brew might become a slave were the following; (1.) When under the pressure of extreme poverty he sold his liberty to preserve himself or his family from suffering; Lev. 25. 39, 'If thy brother be waxen poor and be sold unto thee,' &c. (2.) When sold for a like reason by a father; v. 7, 'If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant,' &c. Comp. Neh. 5. 5. (3.) Insolvent debtors might, as a punishment, be sold for servants, or, by way of payment, put into the hands of their creditors as slaves; 2 Kings, 4. 1, 'My husband is dead-term applied to the marriages of slaves. and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.' (4.) A thief who was unable to make restitution for what he had stolen, according to the proportion required of him by the law, was sold by way of requital to him whom he had robbed; Ex. 22. 3, 4, 'If he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.' (5.) Slaves were acquired by the issue of the marriages of slaves. The condition of slavery, however, is undoubtedly regarded in the Scriptures as an evil, yet, as it was an evil that had prevailed in the world long before the establishment of the Jewish polity, infinite wisdom did not see fit at once to root it out, but enacted such meliorating laws in respect to it as would tend to divest it of its most aggravated and cruel fea tures, and render it as tolerable as a state of bondage could well be. In like manner he regulated without extirpating polygamy.

3, 4. If he came in by himself. Heb. 1 begappo, with his body. That is, with his body only; in his single person; having neither wife nor children. Gr. avros povos, himself alone. It is evidently used in contradistinction to the being married in the next clause.

A master gave his servant a wife during the period of his service, but retained her and her children after he regained his liberty, the connexion being of course dissolved by a divorce. But it is generally maintained by commentators, that the wife thus given was to be a heathen or Gentile bond-maid, and not a Hebrewess, which they gathered from Lev. 25. 44, 'Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about thee; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.' This pas sage, however, does not of itself make it certain that such was the case, although the idea is undoubtedly countenanced by v. 7-11, of the chapter before us, which would seem to intimate that if a Jewish woman were given in marriage at all, it must be to her master or his son. Moreover, as it appears from Deut. 15. 12, that Hebrew bondmen and bondmaids came under the same law of manumission at the end of six years, we cannot perceive on what lawful grounds such a wife, if of the Hebrew stock, should be detained in servitude after the close of the allotted time. The Jewish critics adopt the same view. The children produced from

5c And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:

6 Then his master shall bring him

c Deut. 15. 16, 17.

unto the judges: he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall e bore his ear through with an awl and he shall serve him for ever.

d ch. 12. 12. & 22. 8, 28. e Ps. 40. 6. when one is summoned to the place of justice is in these words, 'Thou art invited to the tribunal of God.' It would seem that they regarded a judge or magistrate in the administration of justice as such a lively image of the Deity that they were led to apply to him in that capacity a divine title.—It is easily

uch a contubernium were regarded as being also slaves, and constituted the class called 'born in the house,' Gen. 14. 14.-17. 23; 'sons of the house,' Gen. 15. 3; or 'sons of the handmaid,' Ex. 23. 12. Of those Abraham had 318; and as it might naturally be supposed that servants thus forming a part of the household, and imbibing attach-conceivable that a servant, who had a ments to their master from their earliest years, would be more deserving of confidence than strangers, he puts arms into their hands, when his service required it; a measure, by the way, entirely inconsistent with the genius of American slaveholding, which will not admit of masters' putting swords or fire-arms into the hands of their slaves.

5, 6. And if the servant shall plainly say, &c. Heb. amar yomar, saying shall say. That is, shall say it again and again, so that his purpose shall become a matter of notoriety. This is intimated in order that there might be evidence of such an intention being in the highest degree voluntary and unconstrained.- -T Then his master shall bring him unto the judges. Heb. 3 el ha-Elohim, to the gods. That is, to the magistrates, who are called 'gods,' Ps. 82, 1, 6. John, 10. 34, 35. Chal. 'Before the judges.' Gr. πроS TO кρITпOLOV Tоv Оcov, to the judgment, or tribunal, of God. The phraseology is remarkable, but the prevalent sentiments of the Orientals in regard to sovereignty of all sorts tend to illustrate it. The Egyptians, according to Diodorus Siculus (B. I. c. 90), looked upon their kings in the light of divinities; and from the travels of Arvieux we learn that among the modern Arabs the usual form of citation,

good master, might wish to remain with
him permanently during life, particu-
larly if he had lived in contubernio
with one of his master's female slaves
and had children by her, for whom he
would naturally cherish a strong affec
tion, and from whom he must separate
if he accepted his freedom. In such a
case he was permitted to bind himself
forever to the service of the master;
but in order to guard against all abuse
of this permission, and especially that
it might appear that he was not fraudu
lently or forcibly detained against his
will, it was ordained that the trans-
action should be gone about judicially,
and with appropriate formalities. For
this purpose, after being brought before
the magistrate, and declaration probably
made of his intention, he was taken back
and his ear bored through with an awl at
the door of his master's house, in token of
his being, as it were, affixed to it hence-
forward the rest of his days. This bor-
ing of ears was in the eastern countries,
a badge of servitude. Thus Juv. Sat. I
102, 'Why should I fear or doubt to de.
fend the place, though born upon the
banks of the Euphrates as the tender
perforations in my ear evince?' upon
which the ancient scholiast remarks,
'that this was a sign of slavery.' It is
supposed that the Psalmist, Ps. 40. 6,
speaking in the person of the Mes-

and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant: But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubi lee: and then he shall depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as bondmen.' The drift of the enactment here cited is entirely different from that of the one under consideration. The latter speaks of one who was in the fullest sense of the Jewish law a 'bondservant' or slave; the former of one who was not to be made a 'bond-servant,' but only a hired-servant.' The latter relates to one who was sold for his crimes; the former to one who dis posed of his services on account of his poverty, which was no crime. The term of servitude appointed by the law before us was invariably six years; the period fixed by the other was till the next jubi lee, which might be any number of years from one to fifty. The design of the law in Exodus, in ordaining that the thief should be made a slave for six years, was that he might thereby he punished for his crime, and that the money given for him should make some compensation to the person he had injured; while the object of the law in Leviticus was that the poor man should be received as a menial into an Israelitish family, not to punish him, but that he might find the means of comfortable support in his necessities. The design of the statute giving the slave his option, at the end of six years, either to leave his master or to remain with him 'forever,' could not possibly be that he should 'return to his own family and to the possession of his fa thers,' for as long as he lived in bondage he could not do this, and his crime was supposed to have cut him off from

siah alludes to this custom; 'Mine ear hast thou opened.' Heb. 'dug, pierced through;' expressive of his entire devotion to his father's service. Michaelis remarks, 'That this statute of Moses made boring the ears in some degree ignominious to a free man; because it became the sign whereby a perpetual slave was to be known, and that for this reason he would have been very glad to have procured the abandonment of the practice of servants' thus permanently adopting a state of vassalage.'¶ He shall serve him for ever. That is, as long as he or his master lived. Some make it to be till the period of the next ensuing jubilee, but the other sense is probably more correct. Thus, 1 Sam. 1. 22, 'That he may appear before the Lord, and thus abide for ever;' i. e. as long as he lives. This will appear still more evident by supposing a case that might easily have happened. A slave was sold three years before the beginning of the jubilee. What was to be done with him at the expiration of that time? If he were then released by the law of the jubilee, how was it possible for him to serve the six years here prescribed in the law? This brings us to so palpable an inconsistency in the law, that we are on the whole forced to the conviction that the regulation before us had no respect whatever to the jubilee. Let the grand object of that institution be considered. It was, that every man might return to his possession'-which could not be alienated for a longer time-and to his family; Lev. 25. 10-24. But it does not appear that the privilege extended alike to every class of servants. A difference would naturally be made between the case of one made a slave by his crimes, and one who became such by his misfortunes. Consequently the law contained, Lev. 25. 39-42, seems to have no reference to cases like that before us; And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor,

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