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Judea, he came under all the protective and liberating provisions of the Hebrew law; he was encircled with the safeguards and privileges of religion, and was brought into the household and congregation of the Lord; he could flee from an unjust master; and no tribe, city, or house in Judea was permitted to arrest or bring him back as a fugitive, or to oppress him, but all were commanded to give him shelter and to protect his rights. The whole body of the Hebrew laws, as we have examined them, demonstrates the impossibility of importing slavery into Judea from the heathen nations round about the Hebrews. It is monstrous to attempt to put such a construction as the establishment of perpetual bondage upon the clause in the law of Jubilee under consideration. The respective position of the Jews and the nations round about them, renders this construction impossible. But the language itself forbids it. It is not said, "The heathen are given to you for slaves, and ye may take them and make bondmen of them;" which is the construction put, by the advocates and defenders of slavery, upon this passage; but, "Ye may procure for yourselves servants, from among the servants that may be with you from the nations round about you," pa ne, from them ye may obtain, not, them ye may take. If the word be translated purchase, nor buy, then, as we have clearly demonstrated, it means no more than an equivalent paid for services to be rendered during a period specified in the contract. Nothing more than this can possibly be drawn from this clause.

Clause Third, of Personal Liberty.

We pass, then, to the third clause, contained in the 45th and 46th verses, in our common version rendered as follows: "Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever:" Here this clause, in the

original, stops, and the next passes to a wholly different subject, the treatment of Hebrew servants bound to service till the year of Jubilee. But in our version this clause is made to take up what seems, more accurately, to be a part of the next, and verse 46 is completed with the following paragraph, as if it belonged to the preceding and not the succeeding clause: "but over your brethren, the children of Is rael, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor." There is nothing in the construction that forbids this connection, but the context, as we shall see, would seem rather to appropriate this to the next following clause.

The class here marked as the recruiting class for servants for the Hebrews, consists of the children or descendants of sojourning strangers, and of their families begotten in Judea. The Hebrews might obtain of them servants, whose service was purchased on such a contract that, up to the year of Jubilee, it lasted from generation to generation as a fixture of the household; the claim upon such service, by the original agreement or terms of purchase, constituted a possession, an inheritance, from the parents who had made the bargain, to the children for whom, until the Jubilee, it was made. That this was a voluntary contract on the part of the servants, and that it did not and could not involve any approximation to what we call slavery, nor constitute them bondmen, an examination of their condition by law, as a class of inhabitants, will clearly show.

Two classes are clearly defined in the two clauses of the law now under consideration, the second clause contained in verse 44, and the third clause in verses 45 and 46. The first class was of the nations surrounding the Hebrew territory, in our translation, the heathen round about. But because they were heathen, they were not therefore the selected and appointed objects and subjects of oppression; the Hebrews were not, on that account, at liberty to treat them with injustice and cruelty, or to make them articles of merchandise. Nay, they were commanded to treat them kindly. The fact that many of them were hired servants, proves incontestibly that they were never given to the Hebrews as slaves, and

that no Hebrew master could go forth and purchase any of them as such. They could not possibly be bought without their own consent; and, in thus selling themselves, they could make their own terms of contract. The 44th verse cannot possibly mean a purchase of slaves from third parties, but only the purchase, that is, the acquisition, by voluntary contract, for a specified consideration paid to the person thus selling his services for a particular time. There is no definition of the time. There is no qualification in this clause giving the right to hold heathen servants in any longer term of bondage or servitude than Hebrew servants; there is no permission of this kind in regard to the heathen that were round about them. There is no line of distinction, making slaves of the heathen, and free servants of the Hebrews.

How could there be? The fugitive slaves from heathen masters were free, by Hebrew law, the moment they touched the Hebrew soil. The heathen households, or families, that remained among the Hebrews, or came over into their land, were to be received into the congregation of the Lord, after the process of an appointed naturalization law, and, when so received, were in every respect on a footing of equality with the natives as to freedom and religious privileges. How then could such families, or their servants, be a possession of slaves? The children begotten of the Edomites and Egyptians, for example, were to enter into the congregation of the Lord in the third generation.

The children of Jarha, the Egyptian, the servant of Sheshan a Hebrew, were immediately reckoned in the course of Sheshan's genealogy (1 Chron. 2: 34, 35). Ruth, the Moabitess, was immediately received as one of God's people, and Boaz purchased her to be his wife. He could not, because she was a heathen, have taken her to be his slave. Nor could any heathen families, coming into the Hebrew country, engage in a slave-traffic, or set up a mart for the supply of slaves to the Hebrews. In the Hebrew land, they could no longer have slaves of their own; for by the law of God, as plain and incontrovertible as any of the ten com

mandments thundered upon Sinai, a heathen slave was free, if he chose to quit his master; no master could retain him a moment, but by his own consent. Much less, then, could such families have had slaves for sale. The Hebrews could have no heathen servants, but by contract with the servants themselves; and that renders what we call slavery impossible.

But if this were impossible in regard to servants coming to the Hebrews from the heathen round about Judea, much more in regard to the second class, namely, the children and families of the strangers sojourning in Israel, and their posterity. This sojourning was a voluntary and an honorable thing. And their condition was better ascertained, defined, and secured than that of the class named in verse 44. They were families of proselytes. They could not be tolerated in the country at all, except on condition of renouncing their idolatry, and entering into covenant to keep the law of God. They had entered into the congregation of the Lord, or would have done so before a single Jubilee could be half way in progress. In regard to this class, as also the other, express laws were passed in their favor, protecting and defending them. Their rights were guaranteed by statute. They were as free as the Hebrews, and were to be treated. as freemen. They had the same appeal to the laws, and the judges were commanded (Deut. 1: 16): "Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him,"

, between man, and his brother, and his stranger. They entered into the same covenant with God at the outset (Deut. 29: 10-13): "All the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger (7) that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water, that thou shouldest enter into covenant," etc. "that he may establish thee for a people unto himself." And again, Deut. 31: 12, 13, "Gather the people, men, women, and children, and thy stranger(), that is within thy gates, that they, and their children may hear, and learn, and fear."

The Sabbath, and all the many and joyful religious festivals, with all the privileges of the people of God in them,

were theirs to observe and enjoy. The greatest and most careful benevolence was enjoined towards them. "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt," Ex. 22: 21. "Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger," was one among the twelve curses, Deut. 27: 19. In the very chapter next preceding this chapter of the law of Jubilee, it is enacted, that "Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country, for I am the Lord your God," Lev. 24: 22. These injunctions were enforced in various forms, and with much emphasis and repetition. "The Lord your God loveth the stranger; love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt," Deut. 10: 17, 18, 19. "Thus saith the Lord, execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger," Jer. 22: 3. If, in defiance of these statutes and precepts, they had attempted to bring the strangers into subjection as slaves and articles of property, on the ground that they were heathen, it would have been regarded as man-stealing, and any single case of such crime would have been punished with death.

In Is. 66: 6, 7, the sons of the stranger are brought under a special covenant of blessing from Jehovah, to make them joyful in his house of prayer," the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants." Moreover, in the last indictment of God against the Hebrews, in which Ezekiel, just before the captivity of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem, enumerated the reasons why God finally poured out his wrath upon them, the last crime mentioned, as if it were the one that filled up the measure of their iniquities, was the oppression of the stranger (Ezek. 22: 29). "The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy, yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully." Also, in the prophecy of

Zechariah, after the captivity and destruction of the city, "the word of the Lord came to all the people of the land,"

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