went out free with him in the Jubilee (ver. 41) only if they had been born of a free Hebrew wife before his entering into servitude, whereas they remained the master's property if born of a slave whom he had given him as a wife (comp. Selden 1. c. VI.7; Mielziner 1. c. p. 34): this is merely an interpretation of our law after the analogy of Exod. XXI. 4; for a tradition on the subject did not exist. Perpetual bondmen (called no rap, as the xpusóvηtat of the Cretans, Athen. VI. 84, in contradistinction to slaves born in the house, Gen. XVII. 12, 13, 23, 27) might be bought from the surrounding heathen nations (not from the tribes of Canaan, which were meant to be exterminated, Deut. XX. 16— 18; comp. however, Judg. I. 19, 21, 27-35; II. 21-23; III. 1-5; etc.), or from the children of resident

ver. 45, or התושבים הגרים וכ') strangers

praw a ver. 47), or from their relations "who may be born in the

,אשר הולידו בארצכם)land of the Hebrews

ver. 45). The latter words describe the ordinary and most frequent case; but they are not intended to make birth in Canaan an indispensable condition for acquiring resident strangers as bondmen, since the Hebrews were permitted to take as hereditary slaves even foreigners totally unconnected with their community (ver. 44). (ver. 46) is "to appropriate to oneself as one's portion, property, or inheritance" (comp. Num.XXXII.18; XXXIII.54; XXXIV. 13; Isai. XIV. 2; Ezek. XLVII. 13),

the particle in introducing the noun as a qualification of the preceding term (as in ***? in ver. 33, see p. 566); and hence immediately afterwards alternates with ; both words are not precisely synonymous (Ewald, Alterth. p. 245), being the generic appellation, a specific class. (from to tear out, to uproot) is properly uprooting, then an uprooted and transplanted shoot, and therefore, figuratively, a foreigner, who has left his native country and settled in a strange land, in contradistinction to the N or native. The Septuagint and Vulgate do not render the word at all (ή ἐκ γενετής προς Auto, aut cuipiam de stirpe ejus); many give some general word, as stock (Luther Stamm, Engl. Vers. a. o.), or offspring (De Wette, Keil, Sprössling, a. o.), orroot (Ebn Ezra 1); but Targ. Onk. has to the Roman, that is, the heathen; and

SUMMARY.

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1, 2. "To Me the children of Israel are servants; they are My servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt": with these words, proclaiming the absolute sovereignty of God over the Hebrews, concluded the laws of the Sabbatical year and of the Jubilee. Therefore ourBook might well continue: "You shall make for yourselves no idols, nor shall you rear up for yourselves any graven or standing image to bow down before it, for I am the Lord your God" (ver. 1); and this command, in its turn, seems to point forward to the caution, that if the Hebrews still adopt heathen worship, God will "destroy their high places, and

...

cut down their images, and cast their carcases upon the carcases of their idols" (ver. 30). Again, as the institutions of the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee intensify the idea of the weekly Sabbath, and supplement the circle of annual festivals, they might well be followed by the short but allembracing command, "You shall keep My Sabbaths" (ver. 2); while this injunction, on its part, seems to prepare the reader's mind for the subsequent warning, that if the Hebrews do not observe the Sabbaths, they will be driven from their land, which shall then, in its desolation, keep the years of rest that had been neglected (vers. 34, 35, 43). And

...

lastly, as the service at the common Temple was the chief test of the people's piety, the behest to keep it undefiled and to "reverence God's Sanctuary", seems appropriately to precede the announcement of the future destinies of the nation; and it derives greater force from being apparently adverted to both among the promises and the menaces, God declaring, on the one hand, "I will set up My dwelling among you and I will walk among you" (vers. 11, 12); and on the other hand, "I will bring your Sanctuaries into desolation, and I will not smell your sweet odours" (ver. 31). Thus then the two first verses of our chapter seem fitly to occupy their place between the larger sections which precede and follow them. They contain two commands of the Decalogue on idol worship and the Sabbaths —, and a third which stands in the closest connection with one of them, since the Sabbaths were chiefly celebrated at the Sanctuary (see supra p. 431; comp. XX. 3; XXI. 12, 23).

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PHILOLOGICAL REMARKS. - We have attempted these explanations with a view of pointing out the logical thread which may possibly have guided the compiler of the Book in inserting the two verses in this place; but we confess, that even if we should have correctly interpreted his conceptions, we are by no means convinced, that the commands were originallywritten for this context. Upon every unbiassed reader they must make the impression of occupying an isolated position, belonging organically neither to the ordinances of the Sabbath-periods, nor to the announcement of the blessings and curses.

They occur almost literally in previous portions (see XIX. 3, 4, 30; and notes in locc.); and there is no cogent reason why they should here have been inserted again. This repetition, inexplicable if we assume the continuous composition of our Book by one author, may well be accounted for if we consider the gradual completion of the Book from many and heterogeneous sources. "The incorporation of the two laws on idolatry and the Sabbaths", observes De Wette (Beiträge, II. 299), "seems to be quite purposeless, and can only be accidental: the compiler found these lines; and by embodying them in his collection, he desired to prevent them from being lost". Critics will probably abide by some such conclusion. The abnormal place of these verses has indeed been generally felt, and it has been supposed, that they properly belong to the preceding chapter (Bertheau, Gruppen, p. 217); or that they form a fit conclusion to the Sinaitic legislation which, by reenjoining the purity of Divine worship and the holiness of the Sabbaths and the Sanctuary, "returns to its first beginning" (Exod. XX. 1-11; Baumgarten, Levit. p. 237); or that they were originally prefaced by some introductory formula, which the later reviser omitted when he connected them with the laws of the Jubilee (Knobel, Lev. p. 574); since both chapters were meant to be inseparably united (Ranke, Untersuch. I. 109). Yet some writers really consider them as "a proper introduction" to the blessings and the curses (Keil, Lev. p. 157; Wogue, Lev. p. 350), or as a part of a connected "speech" appropriately beginning with a few fundamental laws, which were of

special importance for the Israelites living in exile among heathen nations (Graf, Geschichtl. Bücher, p. 80): but the first verse expressly alludes to Canaan (8), and the second to the Temple ("). On

"non-entities" or idols, which word occurs nowhere else in the Pentateuch except in the nineteenth chapter (ver. 4) that has many analogies with ours, see infra on vers. 3-13; on a statue or pillar with distinct attributes of some deity,

⚫ stones with idolatrous figures or emblems, upon which () the worshippers prostrated themselves, see Comm. on Lev. I. p. 397, and p. 371 notes 18, 19, 21, 22. In Ezek. VIII. 12" chambers with figures"() are mentioned, that is, chambers the walls of which were covered with emblematic representations of idolworship (comp. ibid. ver. 10; Prov. XXV. 11). Kimchi believes the word

,(הבטה) "signifies beholding משכית

since people "look at" images; the Septuagint also renders λίθος σκοπός, but this term means "tutelary stone" placed as a protection against evil; Vulg. lapidem insignem (Rosenm. lapidem speculatorem, i. e. vigilem, custodem, ut esset прoulazizóv quiddam); but it cannot be simply "an idolor image of stone (so the Targum., Syriac, a. o.); Spencer understands obelisks, Michaelis and Mendelssohn columns with hieroglyphic inscriptions (comp. Spencer, Legg. Ritt. 1. II. c. 22, pp. 443–449; Rosenm. Schol. in loc.). Jewish tradition strangely supposes that such stones were chiefly consecrated to Mercury. It is well known, that among the earliest symbols of the sun and the moon

of

Baal and Ashtarte

were cubical and conical stones or obelisks with rude figures of the deities upon them, and many such piles with vestiges of a human face have been found in various parts of Arabia and Syria. "Monarchs have entered into a sort of rivalry with one another", observes Pliny (XXXVI. 8 or 14), “in forming elongated blocks of this stone (the syenites, a sort of red granite), known as obelisks and consecrated to the divinity of the Sun; the blocks had this form given to them in resemblance of the rays of that luminary, which are so called in the Egyptian language; Mesphres, who reigned in the city of the Sun (Heliopolis), was the first who erected one of these obelisks." In Pharae in Achaia, near a celebrated statue of Hermes, there were "about thirty square stones, each of which was worshipped by the people under the name of a different deity; and indeed in early times rough stones were throughout Greece revered as images of gods" (Pausan. VII. XXII. 4). "The Arabians", says Maximus Tyrius (Dissert. XXVIII.), “worship a deity which I cannot name; but the image I saw was a square stone; the people of Paphos pay special homage to Venus, and her statue resembles most a white pyramid"; comp. Apollon, Rhod. Arg. II. 1175, 1176 (μέλας λίθος ἱερός, μ ποτε πᾶσαι ̓Αμαζόνες ευχετόωντο); Euseb. Praep. Ev. III. 7; Herodian. V. III. 5 (describing the statue of Heliogabalus, λίθος δέ τις ἔστι μέσ ristos xt.); Amm. Marc. XVII. 4; Selden, De Diis Syris, pp. 223, 291, 292; Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, I. 391; Gesen. Monum. Phoen.

tab. 21-24; and infra on ver. 30,