Welcome to the book by Rev. Theodore D. Weld, The Bible Against Slavery (1837).
To go at once to the "Table of Contents," click here. Before the 1861-1865 War, a number of Christian abolitionists opposed slavery. They included Rev. George B. Cheever, Rev. Beriah Green, Harriet B. Stowe, Rev. John G. Fee, Rev. Stephen S. Foster, Deacon James Birney, Rev. William W. Patton, Rev. Parker Pillsbury, etc. Nowadays, their Bible-based reasons are generally unknown. This series of websites educates by making texts of their writings accessible. Whether or not you agree with their position, it is at least a good idea to know what it was! This site in the series reprints this 1837 book by abolitionist Rev. Theodore D. Weld (1803-1895). Rev. Weld rebuts pro-slavery “eisegesis” (imposing a predetermined meaning on words) as opposed to “exegesis” (deducing word meaning from context) with respect to the Bible. Pro-slavers did “eisegesis,” i.e., imposed their pre-determined 'minds-made-up-in-advance' pro-slavery views on the Bible. Rev. Weld later published details of slave conditions in 1839. Rev. Weld's book assumes the reader is familiar with Biblical Israel. Ancient Israel was an agricultural society. Background data is at pp 72, 88, 122, 124, 125, and 132. “The economy envisaged for . . . Israel by the laws of the Pentateuch [God] was purely agricultural. The Holy Land [Palestine] was to be divided according to [extended family] areas and each family . . . was to receive its portion . . . . To such an extent was [agriculture] regarded as the essential occupation of the [Hebrews] in biblical times that the term 'Canaanite' was regarded as synonymous with 'trader' [businessman, merchant] (Zech. 14:21; Hos. 12:8),” says the entry for “AGRICULTURE” in Dr. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Dr. Geoffrey Wigoder (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965), p 17. Biblical Israel had about 8 - 12,000 square miles (5,120,000 - 7,680,000 acres). This acreage was divided, distributed (Joshua 13-22) by the governing authorities among about 600,000 families (Numbers 2:32, 26:51). Each "farmette" or "homestead" averaged at most 12.8 acres. Each family received a family-sized acreage. The classless society was inherently equality-oriented (Exodus 16:18, 2 Corinthians 8:14-15 [sustenance], Leviticus 25:10 [land restoration], Acts 2:44-45, 4:32 [all in common]). This was pursuant to divine intent [Genesis 1:28, Matthew 20:1-15, Micah 4:4, 3 John 2]. The Bible economic system is not amenable to slavery. Thus nobody would reasonably abandon their own land! to become a mere servant, employee, with the negative connotations thereof (Exodus 21:6). Nor would anyone even want employees, no need! no value! Numerous guaranteed (commanded) vacations took place about 46% of the year (as religious holidays, p 44, plus family time days off, p 134). Debt cancellation was mandatory every seven years (Deuteronomy 15:1-11). Charging interest (usury) on loans was banned by law (Exodus 22:25). Prosperity for all was systemically established per divine intent (3 John 2 and Micah 4:4). The result was wealth for all so great that silver was spurned (like stones!), as gold was had in such significant abundance (1 Kings 10:21 and 27 and 2 Chronicles 1:15). Thus, neither motivation, authorization, opportunity, nor financial necessity existed, for slavery (a state of war). Biblical Israel was governed by the Bible Society-Management Laws. Those laws had significant social / life-lifestyle ramifications, and were designed to keep Israel in that agrarian equality-oriented prosperous state of affairs, as agriculturalists, This agrarian system institutionalizing divine purpose (3 John 2 and Micah 4:4) had numerous benefits. It provided health and prosperity for all. It prevented typical societal evils such as recurring unemployment, economic cycles of recessions and depressions. It prevented crime, big business, homelessness, institutionalized banking, economic disparities, the employee/jobs system whereby a "boss" takes a disproportionate rather than equal share of the value created, long-term debt, foreclosures, and results such as high divorce rate and family breakdown, etc. Israel was to be the model nation for others to imitate, Deuteronomy 4:6-8, so all peoples would have the benefit of good laws, vs the abuses, sorrows, instability, and pitfalls of politician laws, 1 Samuel 8:11-17 and Hosea 8:4. The New Testament system is even stricter, (a) establishing the spirit of the law as well as the letter, see examples in Matthew 5:31-48, and (b) a different lifestyle, involving comprehensive sharing, see, e.g., Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-35, even further precluding anyone's enslavement. Essential to understanding these concepts and background is the trait of teachability, p 134. This 1837 book was later reprinted in 1864, during the Civil War. |
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by Rev. Theodore D. Weld (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837) THE events of the last year [1863]—the President's Proclamation of Emancipation to Three Millions—the actual freeing of hundreds of thousands by the advance of our armies—the turning of sixty thousand slaves into soldiers—the [Confederate] rebellion grown desperate and raving in the frenzy that precedes collapse—these, with thick-coming events, already revealing the sole, sure basis of reconstruction, all combine to confront us anew with the question of slavery, its fundamental discussion and final adjustment; summoning all to such work for the hour as befits freemen and Christians. To discharge, in part, their own responsibilities imposed by the crisis, the Board of Publication of the United Presbyterian Church reprint this [1837] work. The argument was published twenty-seven years ago, in the [1837] Anti-Slavery Quarterly Magazine. It was afterward stereotyped [type-set] and passed through four editions, the last in 1838. Soon after that the [printing press] plates were destroyed, and for twenty years it has been out of print. When first published, many copies were sent through the post-office into the Slave States. Most of these were publicly burned at their places of delivery. A copy that escaped the flames in Charleston, South Carolina, fell into the hands of Rev. Wm. H. Brisbane, a slaveholding Baptist clergyman and editor in that city. He sat down to confute the argument, but before his first number [writing] was ready for the types [type-setting], he found that the faith [anti-slavery doctrines] he scouted [opposed] had become his own [i.e., he was converted, he repented of having been pro-slavery]. He left his native state, made his slaves free, settled them in Ohio, and published an able work [in fact, several], vindicating the Bible from pro-slavery perversions. The present [1864] edition of this valuable work has been prepared for the press by the author [Rev. Theodore Weld], who has made some slight changes and abbreviations where such could be made witbout obscuring the sense, so that we are confident this [1864 revised] edition will be found more perfect than any of its [1837-1838] predecessors. In hopes that through the blessing of God it may exert some influence in freeing our beloved land from the blight of slavery, and ushering in that happy day now dawning when every yoke shall be broken, and the oppressed go free, we have concluded to issue the present edition [i.e., immediately after the Emancipation Proclamation]. PITTSBURG, PA., January, 1864.
SLAVERY seeks refuge in the Bible only in its last extremity. It seizes the horns of the altar in desperation, rushing from the terror of the avenger's arm. Like other unclean spirits, it "hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved." [John 3:20.] Goaded to frenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sense, denied all quarter, and hunted from every covert, it vaults at last into the sacred inclosure and courses up and down the Bible, "seeking rest, and finding none." [Matthew 12:43]. THE LAW OF LOVE, glowing on every page, flashes through it anguish and despair. It shrinks from the hated light, and howls under the consuming touch, as demons recoiled from the Son of God, and shrieked, "Torment us not." [Mark 5:7; Luke 8:28; cf. 1 John 4:18.] At last, it [slavery] slinks away under the types of the Mosaic system, and seeks to burrow out of sight among their shadows. Vain hope! Its asylum is its sepulchre; its city of refuge, the city of destruction. It flies from light into the sun; from heat into devouring fire; and from the voice of God into the thickest of His thunders. If we would know whether the Bible sanctions slavery, we must first determine what slavery is. An element is one thing; a relation, another; an appendage, another. Relations and appendages presuppose other things to which tbey belong. To regard them as the things themselves, or as constituent parts of them, leads to endless confusion. Political disabilities are often confounded with slavery; so are many relations and tenures indispensable to the social state. We will specify some of these. 1. PRIVATION OF SUFFRAGE. Then minors are slaves. 2. INELIGIBILITY TO OFFICE. Then females are slaves. 3. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Then citizens in the District of Columbia are slaves. 4. PRIVATION OF ONE'S OATH IN LAW. Then in some States atheists are slaves. 5. PRIVATION OF TRIAL BY JURY. Then all in Russia are slaves. 6. BEING REQUIRED TO SUPPORT A PARTICULAR RELIGION. Then the people of England are slaves. 7. APPRENTICESHIP. The rights and duties of master [employer-trainer] and apprentice [employee-student] are correlative. The claim of each upon the other results from his obligation to the other. Apprenticeship is based on the principle of equivalent for value received. The rights of the apprentice are secured, equally with those of the master. Indeed, while the law is just to the latter, it is benevolent to the former; its main design being rather to benefit the apprentice than the master. To the master it secures a mere compensation—to the apprentice a compensation and a virtual gratuity, he being the greater gainer. The law recognizes the right of the apprentice to a reward for his labor, prescribes the wages, and enforces the payment. The master's claim covers only the services of the apprentice. The apprentice's claim covers equally the services of the master. Neither can hold the other as property; but each holds property in the services of the other, and BOTH EQUALLY. 8. FILIAL SUBORDINATION AND PARENTAL CLAIMS. Both are nature's dictates, and elements of the social state, the natural affections which blend parent and child in one, excite each to discbarge those offices incidental to the relation, and are a shield for mutual protection. The parent's legal claim to the child's services is a slight return for his care, toil, and outlays for support and education. This provision is, with the mass, indispensable to the family state. The child, in helping his parents, helps himself—increases a common stock, in which he has a share; while his services do but acknowledge a debt that money cannot cancel. 9. CLAIMS OF GOVERNMENTS ON SUBJECTS. Governments owe their subjects protection; subjects owe just governments allegiance and support. The obligations of both are reciprocal, and the benefits, mutual. 10. BONDAGE FOR CRIME. Must innocence be punished because guilt suffers penalties? True, the criminal works for the government without pay; and well he may. He owes the government. A century's work would not pay its drafts on him. He will die a public defaulter. Because laws make men pay their debts, shall those be forced who owe nothing? The law makes no criminal, PROPERTY. It restrains his liberty, and makes him pay a fraction of his debt to the government; but it does not make him a chattel. Test it. To own property is to own its product. Are chiidren, born of convicts, government property? Besides, can property be guilty? Can chattels deserve punishment? 11. RESTRAINTS UPON FREEDOM. Children are restrained by parents, pnpils by teachers, patients by physicians, corporations by charters, and legislatures by constitutions. Embargoes, tariffs, quarantine, and all other laws keep men from doing as they please. Restraints are the web of civilized society, warp and woof. Are they slavery? then a government of LAW is the climax of slavery! 12. INVOLUNTARY OR COMPULSORY SERVICE. A juryman is empanelled against his will, and sit he must. A sheriff orders his posse; bystanders must turn in. Men are compelled to remove nuisances, pay fines and taxes, support tbeir families, and "turn to the right as the law directs." Are they therefore slaves? To confound slavery with involuntary service is absurd. Slavery is a condition. The slave's feelings toward it cannot alter its nature. Whether he desire or detest it, the condition is the same. The slave's willingness to be a slave is no palliation of the slaveholder's guilt. Suppose he should believe himself a chattel, and consent to be treated as one, would that make him a chattel or make those guiltless who hold him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that [he] stabs me; is he any the less a murderer? Does my consent to his crime atone for it? my partnership in his guilt blot out his part of it?
The slave's willingness to be a slave, so far from lessening the guilt of his "owner," aggravates it. If slavery bas so palsied his mind that he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, to hold him as such confirms his delusion, and reasserts the impious falsehood. Such feelings and convictions of the slave would increase tenfold the guilt of his master, in refusing to recognize him as a MAN, and thus to break the sorcery that cheats him out of his birthright—the consciousness of his worth and destiny. Many of the foregoing conditions are appendages of slavery, but no one, nor all of tbem together, constitute its intrinsic element. ENSLAVING MEN IS REDUCING THEM TO ARTICLES OF PROPERTY—making them chattels—converting persons into things—turning immortality into merchandise. A slave is one held in this condition. In law "he owns nothing, and can acquire nothing." His right to himself is abrogated. If he say my hands, my body, my mind, MYself, they are figures of speech. To use himself for his own good is a crime. To keep what he earns is [according to demonized slavers] stealing. To take his body into his own keeping is [according to slavers] insurrection. In a word, the profit of his master is made the END of his being, and he, a mere meansany of its [his/her] rights is oppression; to take away the foundation of its rights is slavery. In other words, whatever sinks man from an END to a mere means, just so far makes him a slave. MAN, sunk to a thing! the intrinsic element, the principle of slavery; MEN, bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped as cargoes, stored as goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at public outcry! Their rights, another's conveniences; their interests, wares on sale; their happiness, a household utensil; their personal ownership, a serviceable article or a plaything, as best suits the humor of the hour; their deathless nature, conscience, social affections, sympathies, hopes—marketable commodities! We repeat it, THE REDUCTION OF PERS0NS TO THINGS! Not robbing a man of privileges, but of himself; not loading him with burdens, but making him a beast of burden; not restraining liberty, but subverting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating personality; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking man into an implement of labor; not abridging human comforts, but abrogating hnman nature; not depriving an animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational being of attributes—uncreating a MAN to make room for a thing! That this is American slavery is shown by the laws of slave States. Judge Stroud, in his "Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery," says, "The cardinal principle of slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, bat among things, obtains as undoubted law in all of these [the "slave] States."
The law of South Carolina says, "Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to ALL INTENTS, CONSTRUCTIONS, AND PURPOSES "WHATSOEVER."—Brev. Dig., 229. In Louisiana, "A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs; the master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master."—Civ. Code, Art. 35. This is American slavery. The eternal [divine] distinction between a person and thing, blotted out—the crowning distinction of all others—alike the source, the test, and the measure of their value—the rational, immortal principle, consecrated by God to universal homage in a baptism of glory and honor, by the gift of his Son, his Spirit, his Word, his presence, providence, and power; his shield, and staff, and sheltering wing; his opening heavens, and angels ministering, and chariots of fire, and songs of morning stars, and a great voice in heaven proclaiming eternal sanctions, and confirming the word with signs following. Having stated the [demonized] principle of American slavery, we ask, DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION SUCH A PRINCIPLE?* "To the law and the testimony!" [Isaiah 8:20].
Two of the ten commandments deal death to slavery. "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL," or, "Thou shalt not take from another what belongs to him." All a man's powers are God's gift to HIM. Each is a part of himself. All else that belongs to man is acquired by the use of these powers [God-granted rights]. The interest belongs to him, because the principal does; the product is his, because he is the producer. Ownership of anything is ownership of its use. The right to use according to will is itself ownership. The eigbth commandment presupposes the right of every man to his powers [bodily and mental abilities], and their product. Slavery robs of both. A man's right to himself is his only absolute right-his right to anything else is relative to this, is derived from it, and held only by virtue of it. SELF-RIGHT[self-ownership] is the foundation right-the post in the middle, to which all other rights are fastened. Slaveholders, when asserting their RIGHT to their slaves, always assume their own right to themselves. The slaveholder knows it to be a self-evident proposition, that a man belongs to himself-that the right is intrinsic and absolute. In making oui his own title, he [the slaver] makes out the title of every huœan being. As being a man is itself the title, all men have a common title deed. If one man's title is valid, all are valid. If one is worthless, all are. To deny the validity of the slave's title is to deny the validity of his own; and yet in making a man a slave, the slaveholder asserts the validity of his own title, while he seizes him as his property who has the same title to himself. Further, in making him a slave, he does not merely disfranchise of humanity one individual, but UNIVERSAL MAN. He destroys the foundations. He annihilâtes all rights. He attacks not only the human race, but all rational being, and rushes upon [attacks] JEHOVAH. For rights are rights; God's are no more—man's are no less. The eighth commandment forbids the taking of any part of that which belongs to another. Slavery takes the whole. Does the Bible which prohibits the taking of any thing, sanction the taking of every thing? Does it thunder against the man who robs his neighbor of a cent, yet commission him to rob his neighbor of himself? Slaveholding is the highest [worst] possible violation of the eighth commandment.
To take from a man his earnings, is theft. But to take the earner is a compound, life-long theft—supreme robbery that vaults up the climax at a leap—the dread, terrific, giant robbery, that towers among other robberies a solitary horror. The eighth commandment forbids the taking away, and the tenth adds, "Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor's;" thus guarding every man's right to himself and his property, by making not only the actual taking away a sin, but even that state of mind which tempts to it. Who ever made human bcings slaves, without coveting them? Why take their time, labor, liberty, right of self-improvement, their right to acquire property, to worship according to conscience, to search the Scriptures, to live with their familles, and their right to their own bodies, if they do not desire them? They COVET them for purposes of gain, convenience, lust of domin- ion, of sensual gratification, of pride and ostentation. THEY BREAK THE TENTH COMMANDMENT, and pluck down upon their heads the plagues that are written in the book. Ten commandments constitute the brief compend of human duty. Two of these brand slavery as sin. The giving of the law at Sinai immediately preceded the promulgation of that body of laws called the "Mosaic System." Over the gateway of that system, dread words were written by the finger of God—"HE THAT STEALETH A MAN AND SELLETH HIM, OR IF HE BE FOUND IN HIS HAND, HE SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH."* Ex. XXI. 16. The oppression of the Israelites in Egypt proclaims the reason for such a law at sach a time. They had just been emancipated. The tragedies of their house of bondage peopled their memories with thronging horrors. They had just witnessed God's testimony against oppression in the plagues of Egypt—the burning blains on man and beast; the dust quick-
ened into loathsome life, and swarming upon every living thing; the streets, the palaces, the temples, and every house heaped up with the carcases of things abhorred; the kneading trougbs and ovens, the secret chambers and the couches, reeking and dissolving with the putrid death; the pestilence walking in darkness at noonday, the devouring locusts, and hail mingled with fire, the first-born death-struck, and the waters blood; and last of all, that dread high band that whelmed the monarch and his hosts, and strewed their corpses on the sea. All tbis their eyes had looked upon; earth's proudest city, wasted and tbunder-scarred, lying in desolation, and the doom of oppressors traced on her ruins in the hand-writing of God, glaring in letters of fire mingled with blood—a blackened monument of wrath to the utmost against the stealers of men. No wonder that God, in a code of laws prepared for such a people at such a time, should uprear on its foreground a blazing beacon to flash terrer on slaveholders. "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." Ex. xxi. 16. Deut. xxiv. 7.* God's cherubim and flaming sword guarding the entrance to the Mosaic system!
The word Ganabh here rendered stealeth, means, the taking of what belongs to another, whether by violence or fraud; the same word is used in the eighth commandment, and prohibits both robbery and tbeft. The crime specified is that of depriving SOMEBODY of the ownership of a man. Is this somebody a master? and is the crime that of depriving a master of his servant? Then it "would bave been "he that stealeth" a servant, not "he that stealeth a man." If the crime had been the taking of an individual from another, then the term used would have been expressive of that relation, and most especially if it was the relation of property to a proprietor! The crime is stated in a threefold form—man stealing, selling, and holding. All are put on a level, and whelmed under one penalty—DEATH* This somebody deprived of the ownership of a man, is the man himself, robbed of personal ownership. Joseph said, "Indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews." Gen. xl. 15. How stolen? His brethren sold him as an article of merchandise. Contrast this [above-cited death] penalty for man-stealing with that for property-stealing, Ex. xxii. 1, 4. If a man had stolen an ox and killed or sold it, he was to restore five oxen; if he had neither sold nor killed it, two oxen. But in the case of stealing a man [any human], the first act drew down the utmost power of punishment. The fact that the penalty for man-stealing was death, and the penalty for property-stealing the mere restoration of double, shows that the
two cases were adjudicated on opposite prmciples. The man stolen might be diseased or past labor; consequently, instead of being profitable to the thief, he would be a tax [loss]; yet death was still the penalty, though not a cent's worth of property-value was taken. The penalty for stealing property was a mere property-penalty. However large the theft, the payment of double wiped out the score. It might have a greater money value than a thousand men, yet death was not the penalty, nor even stripes, but double of the same kind. Why was not the rule uniform? When a man was stolen, why was not the thief required to restore double of the same kind—two men, or if he had sold him, five men? Do you say that the man-thief might not have them? So the ox-thief might not bave two oxen, or if he had killed it, five. But if God permitted men to hold men as property, as well as oxen, the man-thief could get men with whom to pay the penalty, as well as the ox-thief oxen. Further, when property was stolen, the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a man was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender money would have been to repeat the outrage with intolerable aggravations. Compute the value of a MAN in money! Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled against such supreme insult and impiety. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double would have been making the repetition of crime its atonement. But the infliction of death for man-stealing exacted the utmost possibility of reparation. It wrung from the guilty wretch [slaver] as he gave up the ghost [was killed], a testimony in death-groans, to the infinite dignity of man—a proclamation to the universe, voiced in mortal agony, "MAN IS INVIOLABLE!"—a confession shrieked at the grave's mouth—"I die accursed [for attempting/committing slavery] and God is just!" If God permitted man [people] to hold man [other people] as property, why did he punish for stealing that kind of property infinitely more than for stealing any other kind of property? Why punish with death for stealing a very little of that sort of property, and make a mere fine the penalty for stealing a thousand times as much of any other property—especially if, by his own act, God had annihilated [abolished] the difference between man [people] and property, by putting him on a level with it? The guilt of a crime depends much upon the nature and condition of the victim. To steal is a crime, whoever the thief, or whatever the plunder. To steal bread from a full man is theft; to steal it from a starving man is both theft and murder. If I steal my neighbor's property, the crime consists not in altering the nature of the article, but in taking as mine what is his. But wben I take my neighbor himself, and first make him property, and then my property, the latter act, which was the sole crime [sin] in the former case, dwindles to nothing. The sin in stealing a man is not the transfer from its owner to anotber of that which is property, but the turning of personality [human-ness] into property. The attributes of man [human-ness] remain, but the rights and immunities which grow out of them are annihilated [destroyed]. It is the first law of reason to regard things and beings as they are; and the sum of religion, to feel and act toward them according to tbeir value. Knowingly to treat them otherwise is sin; and the degree of violence done to their nature, relations, and value, measures its guilt. When things are sundered which God has indissolubly joined, or confounded in one, which he has separated by infinite extremes; when sacred and eternal distinctions are derided and set at nought, then sin reddens to its "scarlet dye." The sin specified is that of doing violence to the nature of a man. In the verse preceding, and in that which follows, the same principle is laid down. Verse 15, "He that smiteth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." Verse 17, "He that curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." If a Jew smote his neighbor, the law smote him in return; but if the blow were given to a parent, the law struck the smiter dead. The parental relation is the centre of human society. To violate that, is to violate all. Whoever tramples on that, shows that no relation has any sacredness in his eyes—that he is unfit to move among human relations who violates one so sacred and tender. Therefore the Mosaic law uplifted his corpse, and brandisbed the ghastly terror around the parental relation to guard it from inroad. Why is there such a difference in penalties, for the same act? Answer. In this case, death was to be inflicted not for smiting a man, but a parent. In the next verse [Ex. 21:16], "He that stealeth a man," &c., the SAME PRINCIPLE is wrought out in still stronger relief. The crime [sin] to be punished with death was not the taking of property from its owner, but violence to an immortal nature, the blotting out a sacred distinction—making MEN "chattels" [blurring the distinction between people/humans and chattels/things]. With [great care] incessant pains the Bible exalts the distinction between persons and things. "In the beginning" God proclaimed it to the universe as it rose into being. Creation stood up at the instant of its birth to do it homage. It [the universe] paused in adoration while God ushered forth its crowning work. Why that dread pause and that creating arm held back in mid career, and that high conference in the godhead?
Then, while every living thing, with land, and sea, and firmament, and marshalled worlds, waited to swell [participate in] the [happy] shout [praise] of [the Job 38:7] morning stars—then “God created man IN HIS OWN IMAGE; IN THE IMAGE OF GOD created he him.” [Gen. 1:27.] This solves the problem, IN THE IMAGE OF GOD CREATED HE HIM. This distinction is often repeated. In Gen. i. 26-28, it is expressed in various forms. In Gen. v. 1, we find it again, “IN THE LIKENESS OF GOD MADE HE HIM.” In Gen. ix. 6, again. After giving license to shed the blood of “every moving thing that liveth,” it is added,
As though it had been said, “All these creatures are your property, designed for your use—they have the likeness of earth, their spirits go downward; but MAN has my own likeness: IN THE IMAGE OF GOD made I man; an intelligent, immortal agent, invited to all that I can give and he can be.” So in Lev. xxiv. 17, 18, 21,
So in Ps. viii. 5, 6, is an enumeration of particulars, each separating infinitely MEN from brutes and things! ________________________ * In Gen. i. 28, God says to man, “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth,” thus vesting in every human heing the right of ownership over the earth, its prodncts and animal life, and in each human being the same right. By so doing God prohibited the exercise of ownership by man over man; for the grant to all men of equal ownership, forestalled the exercise of ownership over each other, as whoever is the owner of a man, is the owner of his right of property—in other words, when one man becomes the property of another his rights become such too, his [God-given] right of property is transferred to his “owner,” and thus as far as himself is concerned, is annihilated [destroyed]. Finally, by originally investing all men with dominion or ownership over property, God proclaimed the right of all to exercise it, and pronounced every man who takes it away a robber of the highest grade [worst sort]. Such is every slaveholder. works—yea, beneath them. Who, but an impious scorner, dare thus mutilate the IMAGE of his Maker, and blaspheme the Holy One, who saitb, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto ME?” [Matthew 25:40]. In prosecuting tbis inquiry, the Patriarchal and Mosaic systems will be considered together, as each reflects light upon the other, and as many regulations of the latter are mere legal forms of institutions previously existing. Whatever were the usages of the patriarchs, God has not made them our exemplars.* The question to be settled by us is not what were Jewish customs, but what were the rules that God gave for their regulation.
Before analyzing the condition of servants under these two states of society, we will consider the import of certain terms which describe the mode of procuring them.
As the Israelites were commanded to “buy” [hire, pay vs not-pay] their servants, and as Abraham had servants “bought [hired] with money,” it is argued that servants were articles of property! The sole ground for this belief is the terms themselves! What a gain [he says sarcastically], if, in discussion, the thing to be proved were always assumed! To beg the question in debate saves the trouble of proving it. Instead of investigation into Scripture usage to settle the meaning of terms, let every man interpret the oldest book in the world by the usages [word-meanings] of his own time [era] and place, and the work is done! Every man would have an infallible clue to the mind of the Spirit, in the dialect of his own neighborhood! Suppose we take it for granted that the sense in which words are now used is the inspired sense. [Example:] David says, “I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried.” [Psalm 119:147.] What, stop the earth in its revolution [tracks]! Two hundred years ago, prevent was used in its strict Latin sense, to come before, or anticipate. David's expression in the English of the nineteenth century, would be, "Before the dawning of the morning, I cried." In the Bible [with vocabulary of from about 1400 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.], many words are used in a sense now nearly, or quite obsolete, and sometimes in a sense totally opposite to their present meanning. A few examples follow: “I purposed to come to you, but was let (hindered) hitherto.”[Romans 1:13]—“And the four beasts (living ones) fell down, and worshipped God.”[Revelation 19:4]—“Whosoever shall offend (cause to sin) one of these little ones.”[Matthew 18:6]—“Go out into the highways, and compel (urge) them to come in.”[Luke 14:23]—“Only let your conversation (habitual conduct) be as becometh the Gospel.”[Philippians 1:27]—“The Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick (living) and the dead.”[2 Timothy 4:1]—“They that seek me early (earnestly) shall find me.”[Proverbs 8:17]—“So when tribulation or persecution ariseth by and by (immediately), they are offended." [Matthew 13:21]. Nothing is more mutable than language. Words, like bodies, are always throwing off particles, and absorbing others. So long as they are mere representatives, elected by universal suffrage, their meaning will be a perfect volatile, and to cork it up, expecting to keep it from evaporation for centuries, is an employment sufficiently silly for slaveholding doctors of divinity. Was there ever a shallower conceit than that of establishing the sense [meaning] attached to a word centuries ago, by showing what it means now? Pity that fashionable mantuamakers were not a little quicker at taking hints from some [vile] Doctors of Divinity! How easily they might save their pious customers all qualms of conscience about fashionable exposures, by proving that the last importation of Parisian indecency, now showing off on promenade, was the very style of dress in which the modest Sarah kneaded cakes for the angels!
The inference, tbat the word buy, used to describe the procuring [hiring] of servants [employees], means procuring them as chattels, assumes that whatever costs moneyis money; that whatever or whoever you pay money for, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it proves it property.
45-51; Ex. xiii. 13; xxxiv. 20. This custom still exists among the Jews, and the word buy is still used to describe the transaction. Does this prove that their first-born were, or are held as property? They were bought as really as were servants.________________________ * In the verse preceding, Boaz says, "I have bought all that was Elimelech's * * * of the hand of Naomi." In the original, the same word (kànà) is used in both verses. In the 9th, "a parcel of land" is "bought," in the l0th a Hosea bought his wife. “So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer [eight bushels] of barley, and an half homer [four bushels] of barley.” Hosea iii. 2. That the purchase of wives, either with money or by services, was the general practice, is plain from such passages as Ex. xxii. 17, and 1 Sam. xviii. 25. Among tbe modern Jews this usage exists, though now a mere form. Yet among their marriage ceremonies is one called “marrying by the penny.” The similarity in the methods of procnring wives and servants, in the terms employed in describing the transactions, and in the prices paid for each is worthy of
* This custom still prevails in some eastern countries. The Crim Tartars, when poor, serve an apprenticeship for their wives, during which they live under the same roof with them, and at the close of it are adopted into the family. notice. The highest price of wives (virgins) and servants was the same. Comp. Deut. xxii. 28, 29, and Ex. xxii. l7, with Lev. xxvii. 2-8 [50 shekels]. The medium price of wives and servants was the same. Comp. Hos. iii. 2, with Ex. xxi. 32 [30 shekels]. Hosea seems to have paid one-half in money [15 shekels] and tbe other half in grain [12 bushels of barley]. Further, the Israelitish female bought-servants were wives, their husbands and masters being the same persons. Ex. xxi. 8, Judg. xix. 3, 27. If buying servants proves them property, buying wives proves them property. Why not [he asks sarcastically] contend that the wives of the ancient fathers of the faithful were their “chattels,” and used as ready change at a pinch; and thence deduce the rights of modern husbands? This use of the word buy is not peculiar to the Hebrew. In the Syriac, the common expression for "the espoused" is "the bought." Even so late as the 16th century, the common record of marriages in the old German Chronicles was, "A BOUGHT B." The word translated buy is like other words, modified by the nature of the subject to wbich it is applied.
taken out of it. Prov. viii. 22. “The Lord possessed (bought) me in the beginning of his way.” Finally, to buy is a secondary meaning of the Hebrew word kànà. Even at this day [1830's], the word buy is used to describe the procuring of servants, where slavery is abolished. In the British West Indies, where slaves became apprentices in 1834, they are still (1837) “bought.” This is the current word in West India newspapers. Ten years since servants were “bought” in New York, and still are in New Jersey, as really as in Virginia, yet the different senses in which the word is used in these States put no man in a quandary. Under the system of legal indenture in Illinois, servants now are “bought.”* Until recently, immigrants to this country were "bought" in great numbers. By voluntary contract they engaged to work a given time to pay for their passage. This class of persons, called "redemptioners," consisted at onc time of thousands. Multitudes are "bought" out of slavery by themselves or others. Under the same roof with the writer is a “servant bonght with money.” A few weeks since [ago], she was a slave; when “bought,” she was a slave no longer. Alas! for venal politicians; if “buying” men makes them “chattels.” The histories of the revolu-
tion tell us that Benedict Arnold was “bought” by British gold, and that Williams, Pauldings, and Van Wert could not be “bought” by Major Andre. When a nortbern clergyman marries a rich southern widow, country gossip thus hits it off, “The cotton bags bought him.” Sir Robert Walpole said, “Every man has his priee, and whoever will pay it can buy him,” and John Randolph said, “The northern delegation is in the market; give me money enough, and I can buy them.” Yet we have no floating visions of “chattels personal,” man-auctions, or coffles. In Connecticut, town-paupers are “bought” by those who become responsible to the town for their support. If these “bought” persons labor for those who “buy” them, it is wholly voluntary. They are in no sense the “property” of their purchasers.* The transaction between Joseph and the Egyptians gives a clue to the use of “buy” and “bought with money.” Gen. xlvii. 18-26. The Egyptians proposed to Joseph to become servants. “Buy us,” said they. When the bargain was closed, Joseph said,
“NOTICE—The poor of the town of Chatham will be SOLD on the first Monday in April, 1837, at the house of F. Penfield, Esq., at 9 o'clock in the forenoon.”—Middleton Sentinel, Feb. 3, 1837. “Behold, I have bought you this day.” Neither party regarded the persons bought as property, but as bound to labor on certain conditions, to pay for their support during the famine. This buying of services (in this case it was but one-fifth part) is called in Scripture usage, buying the persons.
This case [of people hiring themselves out] claims special notice, as it is the only one where the whole transaction of buying servants is detailed—the preliminaries, the process, the mutual acquicscence, and the permanent relation resulting therefrom. In all other instances, the fact is stated without particulars. In this, the whole process is laid open.
The [pro-slavery] objecter [to this analysis] takes it for granted [assumes, pretends, falsely asserts without evidence] that servants were bought of third persons; and thence infers that they were articles of property. Both are sheer assumptions. No instance is recorded, under the Mosaic system, in which a master sold his servant. That servants who were “bought” sold themselves is a fair inference from various passages of Scripture.*
In Leviticus xxv. 47, the case of the Israelite, who became the servant of the stranger, the words are, “If he SELL HIMSELF unto the stranger.” Yet the 51st verse informs us that this servant was “BOUGHT,” and that the price of his purchase was paid to himself. The same word, and the same form of the word, which, in verse 47, is rendered sell himself, is, in verse 39 of the same chapter, rendered be sold; in Deut. xxviii. 68, the same word is rendered “be sold.”
How could they "be sold" without being bought? Our [pro-slavery] translation makes it nonsense. The word Màkar rendered “be sold” is used here in the Hithpael conjugation, which is generally reflexive in
Where did the sellers get their right to sell? God, by commanding the Israelites to BUY, affirmed the right of somebody to sell, and that the ownership of what was sold existed somewhere; which riqht and ownership he commanded them to recognize. Where then did the heathen sellers get their right to sell, since they were doomed to slavery equally with those whom they sold? Did God's decree vest in them a right to others while it annulled their right to themselves? If one part of “the heathen round about” were already held as slaves by the other part, such of course were not doomed to slavery, for they were already slaves. So also, if those heathen who held them as slaves had a right to hold them, which right God commanded the Israelites to buy out, surely these slaveholders were not doomed hy God to be slaves; for, according to the objector, God had himself affirmed their right to hold others as slaves, and commanded his people to respect it. its force, and, like the middle voice in Greek, represents what an individual does for himself, and [so Deut. 28:68] should manifestly have been rendered [translated], "Ye shall offer yourselves for sale, and there shall be no purchaser." For a clue to Scripture usage on this point, see
See also, Jer. xxxiv. 14; Rom. vii. 14, vi. 16; John, viii. 34, and the case of Joseph and the Egyptians, already quoted. In the purchasc of wives, it is generally stated that they were bought of third persons. If servants were bought of third persons, it is strange that no instance of it is on record.
Let us now inquire into the condition of servants under the patriarchal and Mosaic Systems. The design of the laws defining the relations of master [employer] and servant [employee] was the good of both parties—more especially that of the servants [employees]. While the master's [employer's] interests were guarded from injury, those of the servants were promoted. These laws made a merciful provision for the [hypothetical] poorer classes, both of the Israelites and strangers, not laying on burdens, but lifting them—they were a grant of privileges.
I. BUYING SERVANTS WAS REGARDED AS A KINDNESS TO THE PERSONS BOUGHT [hired], and as establishing between them and their purchasers [employers] a bond of affection and confidence. This is plain from the frequent use of the custom to illustrate the love and care of God for his people. Deut. xxxii. 6 ; Ex. xv. 16; Ps. lxxiv. 2; Prov. viii. 22. II. NO STRANGER COULD JOIN THE FAMILY OF AN ISRAELITE WITHOUT BECOMING A PROSELYTE. Compliance with this condition was the price of the privilege. Gen. xvii. 9-14, 23, 27. In other words, to become a servant was virtually to become an Israelite.* Was then the relation of a proselyted servant to his master a sentence consigning to punishment, or a ticket of admission to privileges? III. EXPULSION FROM THE FAMILY WAS THE DEPRIVATION OF A PRIVILEGE, IF NOT A PUNISHMENT. When Sarah took umbrage at the conduct of Hagar and Ishmael, “She said unto Abraham, Cast out this bond-woman and her son.”
Calmet, Art. Proselyte, says, “They were admitted to all the prerogatives of the people of the Lord.”
Mohommed doubtless borrowed from the laws and usages of the Jews, his well known regulation for admitting proselytes to all civil and religious privileges. took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar and the child, and sent her away.” Gen. xxi. 10, 14. In Luke xvi. 1-8, our Lord tells us of the steward or head servant [executive employee] of a rich man who defrauded his master, and was [about to be] excluded from his household. The servant, anticipating such a punishment, says, “I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.” The case of Gehazi appears to be similar. He was guilty of fraud and of deliberate lying, on account of which Elisha seems to have discarded him. 2 Kings v. 20-27. If a servant neglected any ceremonial rite, and was on that acconnt excommunicated from the congregation of Israel, it excluded him also from the family of an Israelite. In other words, he could be a servant no longer than he was an Israelite. To forfeit the latter distinction involved the forfeiture of the former privilege. IV. THE HEBREW SERVANT COULD COMPEL HIS MASTER TO KEEP HIM. When the six years' contract had expired, if the servant demanded it, the law obliged the master to retain him permanently, however little he might need his services. Deut. xv. 12-17; Ex. xxi. 2-6. This shows that the system was framed to advance the interests of the servant. V. SERVANTS WERE ADMITTED INTO COVENANT WITH GOD. Deut. xxix. 10-13. VI. THEY WERE GFESTS AT ALL NATIONAL AND FAMILY FESTIVALS. Ex. xii. 43-44; Deut. xii. 12, 18, xvi. 10-16. VII. THEY WERE STATEDLY INSTRUCTED IN MORALITY AND RELIGION. Deut. xxxi. 10-13; Josh. viii. 33 -35; 2 Chron xvii. 8-9, xxxv. 3, and xxxiv. 30; Neh. viii. 7, 8. VIII. THEY WERE RELEASED FROM THEIR REGULAR LABOR NEARLY ONE-HALF OF THE WHOLE TIME. During which tbey had their support, and the same instruction that was provided for the other members of the Hebrew community. The law secured to them—
there were three festivals in the year, the main body of the servants would be absent from their stated employments at least nine weeks annually, which would amount in forty-two years, subtracting the Sabbaths, to six years and eighty-four days.These two feasts would consume not less than sixty-five days not rcckoned above. Thus it appears that those who continued servants during the period between the [50-year] jubilees were by law released from their labor, TWENTY-THREE YEARS AND SIXTY-FOUR DAYS OUT OF FIFTY YEARS.
In this calculation we have left out those numerous local festivals to which frequent allusion is made, Judg. xxi. 19; 1 Sam. ix. 12, 22, etc., and the various family festivals, such as at the weaning of children; at marriages; at sheep shearings; at circumcisions; at the making of covenants, &c., to which reference is often made, as in 1 Sam. xx. 6, 28, 29. Neither have we included the festivals instituted at a later period—the feast of Purim, Esth. ix. 28, 29; and of the Dedication, which lasted eight days. John x. 22; 1 Mac. iv. 59. Finally [bottom-line], the Mosaic system secured to servants an amount of time which, if distributed, would be almost ONE-HALF OF THE DAYS IN EACH YEAR. Meanwhile, they were supported, and furnished with opportunities of instruction.
The service of national servants or tributaries was regulated upon the same benevolent principle, and secured to them TWO-THIRDS of the whole year. “A month they were in Lebanon, and two months they were at home.” 1 Kings, v. 13-15. Compared with 2 Chron. 11, I7-l9, viii. 7-2; 1 Kings, ix. 20, 22. The regulations for the inhabitants of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth and Kirjah-jearim (afterwards called Nethinims), must have secured to them nearly the whole of their time. If, as is probable, they served in courses corresponding to those of the priests whom they assisted, they were in actual service less than one month annually. IX. THE SERVANT WAS PROTECTED BY THE LAW EQUALLY WITH THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY. Proof.—“Judge righteously between every man and his brother, and THE STRANGER THAT IS WITH HIM.” “Ye shall not RESPECT PERSONS in judgment, but ye shall hear the SMALL as well as the great.” Deut. i. 16, 19. Also Lev. xix, 15; xxiv. 22. “Ye shall have one manner of law as well for the STRANGER, as for one of your own country.” So Num. xv. 29. “Ye shall have ONE LAW for him that sinneth through ignorance, both for him that is born among the children of Israel and for the STRANGER that sojourneth among them.” Deut. xxvii. 19. “Cursed be he that PER- VERTETH THE JUDGMENT 0F THE STRANGER.”* Deut. xxvii. 19. X. THE MOSAIC SYSTEM ENJOINED AFFECTION AND KINDNESS TOWARDS SERVANTS, FOREIGN AS WELL AS JEWISH. “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.” Lev. xix. 34. “For the Lord your God * * REGARDETH NOT PERSONS. He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and LOVETH THE STRANGER, in giving him food and raiment: LOVE YE THEREFORE THE STRANGER.” Deut. x. 17, 19. “Thou shalt neither vex a STRANGER nor oppress him.” Ex. xxii. 21. “Thou shalt not oppress a STRANGER, for ye know the heart of a stranger.” Ex. xxiii. 9. “If thy brother be waxen poor, thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a STRANGER or sojourner, that he may live with thee: take thou no usury of him or increase, but fear thy God.” Lev. xxv. 35, 36.
“Question. Does holy writ anywhere make a difference between the Israelite and the other who is no Israelite, in those laws and prohibitions which forbid us the committal of anything against our fellow men?” “Answer. Nowhere do we find a trace of such a difference. See Lev. xix. 33-36. “God says thou shalt not murder, steal, cheat, &c. In every place the action itself is prohibited as beîng an abomination to God without respect to the persons against whom it is committed.”
XI. SERVANTS WERE PLACED UPON A LEVEL WITH THEIR MASTERS IN ALL CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS. Num. xv. 15, 16, 29; ix. 14; Deut. i. 16, 17; Lev. xxiv. 22. To these may be added that numerous class of passages which represents God as regarding alike the natural rights of all men, and making for all an equal provision. Such as, 2 Chron. xix. 7; Prov. xxiv. 23, xxviii. 21; Job. xxxiv. 19; 2 Sam. xiv. 14; Acts x. 35; Eph. vi. 9. Finally—With such watchful jealousy did the Mosaic Institutes guard the rights of servants, as to make the fact of a servant's escape from his master presumptive evidence that his master had oppressed him; they annulled his master's authority over him, gave him license to go wherever he pleased, and commanded all to protect him. Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. We argue that they became servants [employees] of their own accord, because, 1. TO BECOME A SERVANT WAS TO BECOME A PROSELYTE. He was required to abjure idolatry, to enter into covenant with God,* be circumcised in token of
“Whether a servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be purchased [hired] from the heathen, the master is to bring them both into the covenant. “But he that is in the house is entered on the eighth day, it, be bound to keep the Sabbath, the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and to receive instruction in the moral and ceremonial law. Were the servants forced through all these processes? Was the renunciation of idolatry compulsory? Were they dragged into covenant with God? Were they seized and circumeised by main strength? Were they compelled to eat the flesh of the Paschal lamb, while they abhorred the institution of the Passover, spurned the laws that enjoined it, detested its author and its executors, and, instead of rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemorated, bewailed it as a calamity, ________________________ and he that is bought with money, on the day on which his master receives him, unless the slave be unwilling. For if the master receive a grown slave, and he be unwilling, his master is to bear with him, to seek to win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year. After which, should he refuse so long, it is forbidden to keep him longer than a year. Aud the master must send him back to the strangers from whence he came. For the God of Jacob will not accept any other than the worship of a willing heart."—Maimon., Hilcoth Miloth, Chap. 1, Sec. 8. The Jewish Doctors [theologians] assert that the servant from the strangers who at the close of his probationary year, refused to adopt the Jewish religion and was on that account sent back to his own people, received a full compensation for his services, besides the payment of his expenses. But that postponement of the circumcision of the foreign servant for a year (or even at all after he had entered the family of an Israelite) of which the Mishnic doctors speak, seems to have been a mere usage [tradition of men]. We find nothing of it in the regulations [laws] of the Mosaic System. Circumcision was manifestly a rite strictly initiatory. Whether it was a rite merely national or spiritual, or both, comes not within the scope of this inquiry. and cursed the day of its consummation? Were they driven from all parts of the land three times in the year to the annual festivals? Were they goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the technics of a creed rank with loathed abominations? Did God authorize his people to make proselytes, by the terror of pains and penalties? by converting men into merchandise? Were proselyte and chattel synonymes in the Divine vocabulary? Was a man to be sunk to a thing before taken into covenant with God? II. THE SURRENDER OF FUGITIVE SERVANTS TO THEIR MASTERS WAS PROHIBITED. “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.” Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. As though God had said, “To deliver him up would be to recognize the right of the master to hold him; his fleeing shows his choice, proclaims his wrongs and his title to protection; you shall not force him back, and thus recognize the right of the master to hold him in such a condition as impels him to flee to others for protection.” It may be said that this command referred only to the servants of heathen masters in the surrounding nations. We answer: the terms of the command are unlimited. Besides the [pro-slavery] objection merely shifts the difficulty. Did God require them to protect the free choice of a single servant from the heathen, and yet authorize the same persons to crush the free choice of thousands from the heathen? Suppose a case. A foreign servant escapes to the Israelites; God says, “He shall dwell with thee, in that place which he shall choose.” Now, suppose tbis same servant, instead of coming into Israel of his own accord, had been dragged in by some kidnapper who bought him of his master; would He who forbade such treatment of the stranger, who voluntarily came into the land, sanction the same treatment of the same person, provided in addition to this last outrage, the previous one had been committed of forcing him into the nation against his will? To commit violence on the free choice of a foreign servant is, forsooth, a horrible enormity, provided you begin the violence after he has come among you! But if you commit the first act on the other side of the line, by buying him from a third person, and then tear him from home, drag him into the land of Israel, and hold him as a slave—ah! that alters the case, and you may perpetrate the violence now with impunity! Would greater favor have been shown to this new comer than to the old residents—those who had been servants in Jewish families perhaps for a generation? Were the Israelites commmanded to exercise towards him, uncircumcised and out of the covenant, a justice and kindness denied to the multitudes who were circumcised, and within the covenant? But suppose that the command respected merely the fugitives from the surrounding nations, wbile it left the servants of thc Israelites in a condition against their wills. In that case, they would adopt retaliatory measures, and become so many asylums for Jewish fugitives. As these nations were on every side of them, and in their midst, such a proclamation would have been an effectual lure to men held against their will. Besides, the command which protected the servant from the power of his foreign master, protected him equally from that of an Israelite. It was not merely, “Thou shalt not deliver him unto his master,” but “he shall dwell with thee, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best.” What was this but a proclamation, that all who chose to live in the land and obey the laws were left to dispose of their services at such a rate, to such persons, and in such places as they pleased? Besides, grant that this command prohibited the sending back of foreign servants only, there was no law requiring the return of servants who had escaped from the Israelites. Property lost and cattle escaped they were required to return, but not escaped servants. These verses contain, ________________________ * Perhaps it may be objected that this view of Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, makes nonsense of Ex. xxi. 27, which provides that if a man strikes out his servant's tooth he shall let him go free. Small favor indeed if the servant might set himself free whenever he pleased! Answer—The former passage might remove the servant from the master's authority, without annulling the master's legal claims upon the servant, if he had paid him in advance aud had not received from him an III. THE SERVANTS HAD PECULIAR OPPORTUNITIES AND FACILITIES FOR ESCAPE. Three times a year, all the males over twelve years were required to attend the national feasts. They were thus absent from their homes not less than three weeks at each time. As these caravans moved, were there scouts lining the way, to intercept deserters?—a guard at each pass of the mountains, sentinels pacing the hilltops, and light-horse scouring the defiles? The Israelites must have [Weld says sarcastically] had some safe contrivance for taking their "slaves" three times in a year to Jerusalem and back. When a body of slaves is moved in our republic, they are handcuffed and chained together, to keep tbem from running away, or from beating their drivers' brains out. Was this the Mosaic plan, or an improvement introduced by Samuel, or was it left for the wisdom of Solomon? The usage, doubtless, claims a paternity not less venerable and biblical! Perhaps they were lashed upon camels, and transported in bundles, or caged up and trundled on wheels to and fro, and while at the Holy City, "lodged in jail for safe keeping," the Sanhedrim appointing special religious services for their benefit, and their "drivers" officiating at "ORAL instruction."
Meanwhile what became of the sturdy handmaids left at home? What hindered them from stalking off in a body? Perhaps the
Israelitish matrons stood sentry in rotation round the kitchens, while the young ladies scoured the country, as mounted rangers, picking up stragglers by day, and patrolled the streets, keeping a sharp lookout at night! IV. WILFUL NEGLECT OF CEREMONIAL RITES DISSOLVED THE RELATION. Suppose the servants from the heathen had, upon entering Jewish families, refused circumcision; if slaves, how simple the process of emancipation! Or, suppose they had refused to attend the annual feasts, or had eaten leavened bread during the Passover, or compounded the ingredients of the anointing oil, or had touched a dead body, a bone, or a grave, or in any way had contracted ceremonial uncleanness, and refused to be cleansed with the “water of separation,” they would have been “cut off from the people;” excommunicated. Ex. xii. 19; xxx. 33; Num. xix. 16. V. SERVANTS OF THE PATRIARCHS NECESSARILY VOLUNTARY. Abraham's servants are an illustration. At one time he had three hundred and eighteen young men “born in his house.” His servants of both sexes and all ages were probably MANY THOUSANDS. How did [elderly] Abraham and Sarah contrive to hold so many servants against their wills? Probably [Weld says sarcastically] the Patriarch and his wife “took turns” in surrounding them! The neighboring tribes, instead of constituting a picket guard to hem in his servants, would have been far more likely to sweep them and him into captivity, as they did Lot and his household. Besides, there was neither a “compact” to send back Abraham's fugi- tives, nor a truckling [subservient] police to pounce upon them [in disregard of the Constitution], nor gentlemen-kidnappers, suing for his patronage, boasting their blood-hound scent, and promising to hunt down and deliver up, provided they had a description of the “flesh marks,” and were suitably stimulated by pieces of silver.* Abraham seems also to have lacked all the auxiliaries of family government, such as stocks, hand-cuffs, yokes, gags, and tbumb-screws. Yet he faithfully trained “his household to do justice and judgment,” though so destitute of the needful aids. Job seems to have had thousands of servants [employees]. See Job. i. 3, 14-19, and xlii. 12. That they stayed with him of their own accord, the fact of their staying shows.
Suppose the whole army [all his employees] had filed off before him, how could the patriarch have brought tbem to a halt? With his wife, seven sons, and three daughters, how soon he would have outflanked the fugitives,
and dragged each of them back to his wonted chain and staple. Besides, we have his own testimony that he had not “withheld from the poor their desire.” Job. xxxi. 16. Of course he could hardly have forced them to work for him against “their desire.” When Isaac sojourned in the country of the Philistines, he "had great store of servants." [Genesis 26:14]. And we have testimony that the Philistines hated and “envied” him. Of course, they would not volunteer to organize patrols to keep his servants from running away, and to drive back all found beyond the limits of his plantation without a “pass?” If Isaac's servants were held against their wills, who held them? The servants of the Jews, during the building of the wall of Jerusalem, may be included under this head. That they remained of their own accord we argue from the fact that circumstances made it impossible to compel their service. The Jews were few in number, without resources, defensive fortifications, or munitions of war, and surrounded by a host of foes, scoffing at their feebleness and inviting desertion. Yet the Jews put arms into the hands of their servants, and enrolled them as a night-guard, for the defence of the city. By engaging in this service, when they might all have marched over to the enemy, and been received with shoutings [rejoicing], they testified that their condition [employment] was one of their own choice. Neh. iv. 23. VI. NO INSTANCES OF ISRAELITISH MASTERS SELLING SERVANTS. Neither Abraham nor Isaac seems ever to have sold one, though they had “great store of servants.” [Genesis 26:14]. Jacob had a large number of servants [employees]. Joseph invited him to come into Egypt, and to bring with him all that he had—“thou and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST.” Gen. xlv. 10. Jacob took his flocks and herds, but no servants. Yet we are told that he “took his journey with all that he had.” Gen. xlvi. i. Joseph said to Pharaoh, “My father, and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have, are come.” Gen. xlvii. 1. The servants, doubtless, served under their own contracts, and when Jacob went into Egypt, they chose to stay in their own country. The [thecratic, Mosaic] government might [after judication by designated priest(s)] sell [hire out] thieves, until their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine. Ex. xxii. 3. But masters seem to have had no power to sell their servants. To give the master a right to sell his servants would annihilate the servant's right of choice in his own disposal. But, says the objector, “to give the master a right to buy a servant, equally annihilates the servant's right of choice.” Answer. It is one thing to have a right to buy [hire] a man [by paying him], and quite another thing to have a right to buy him of another man [paying somebody else]. Young females were bought of their fathers. But their purchase as servants was their betrothal as WIVES. Ex. xxi. 1, 8. “If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please not her master WHO HATH BETROTHED HER TO HIMSELF, he shall let her be redeemed.”*
We infer that all the servants from the strangers were voluntary, since we have direct testimony that some of them were, “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, OR OF THY STRANGERS that are in thy land within thy gates.” Deut. xxiv. 14. We learn from this that some of the servants from the strangers, were procured by the offer of wages to their free choice. Did the Israelites, when they went among the heathen to procure servants, take money in one hand and ropes in the other? Did they ask one man, and drag along another, in spite of his struggle? Knock for admission at one door, and break down the next? Did they go through one village with friendly salutations, offering wages as an inducement to engage in their service—while they prowled through the next, with a kidnapping posse, tearing from their homes all they could get within their clutches? We infer that the Hebrew servant was voluntary in COMMENCING his services, bccause he was so IN CONTINUING it. If, at the year of release, it was the servant's choice to remain with his master, the law required his ear to be bored by the judges, and his master was compelled to keep him. [Exodus 21:6]. X. INCIDENTAL CORROBORATIVES. Various incidental expressions corroborate the idea that servants became such by their own contract. Job xli. 4, is an illustration, “Will he (Leviathan) make a COVENANT with thee? wilt thou take him for a SERVANT forever?”
So Isa. xiv. 1, 2. “The strangers shall be joined with them (the Israelites), and they shall CLEAVE to the house of Jacob, and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids.”
The transaction which made the Egyptians the SERVANTS OF PHARAOH was voluntary throughout. See Gen. xlvii. 18-26. “There is not aught left but our bodies and our lands; buy [hire] us;” then “We will be Pharaoh's servants [employees].”
Our Lord's declaration in Luke xvi. 13, loses its pertinence on the supposition that servants did not become such by their own choice. “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” Our Lord was a Jew. Wherever he went Jews were around him: whenever he spake, they were his auditors [audience]. His preaching and
To make this clear, he refers to their own institution of domestic service [employment]. He reminds them of the impossibility of any person being the servant [employee] of two masters, as he will choose the service of the one, and spurn that of the other. “He shall hold to the one and despise (reject) the other.”
As though our Lord had said, “No one can become the servant of another, when his will revolts from that service, and the conditions of it tend to make him hate the man.”
Since the fact that the servant spurns one of two masters, makes it impossible for him to serve that one, if he spurned both, he could not serve either.
So, also, if the fact that an individual did not “hold to” or choose the service of another, proves that he could not become his servant, then the question, whether he should become the servant of another was suspended on his own will. The phraseology of the passage shows that the choice of the servant decided the question. “He will HOLD TO the one”—hence there is no difficulty in the way of his serviug him; but “no servant can serve” a master whom he does not “hold to,” or cleave to. This is the sole ground of the impossibility asserted.
The last clause of the verse is an application of the principle, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” In what does the impossibility of serving both God and the world consist? Solely in the fact, that the will which chooses the one refuses the other, and the affec-
XI. RICH STRANGERS DID NOT BECOME SERVANTS. Indeed, they bought and held [hired] Jewish servants [employees]. Lev. xxv. 47. Since rich strangers did not become servants, we infer that those who did [if any], became such not because they were strangers, but because they were poor—not because being heathens, they were compelled to become servants, but because on account of their poverty, they chose to thus better their condition.
XII. INSTANCES OF VOLUNTARY SERVANTS. Mention is often made of persons becoming servants who were manifestly VOLUNTARY. As the Prophet Elisha. 1 Kings xix. 21; 2 Kings iii. 11. Elijah was his master. 2 Kings ii. 5.
The word translated master, is the same that is so rendered in almost every instance where masters are spoken of.
See also the case of the Gibeonites who voluntarily became servants, and performed service for the "house of God" throughout the subsequent Jewish history, were incorporated with the Israelites, registered in their genealogies, and of their own accord remained with them, and "clave" to them. Neh. x. 28, 29; xi. 3; Ez. vii. 7.
Finally, in all the regulations respecting servants no expression is used indicating that servants were made, and held such by force. Add to this the
Yoluntary service is in keeping with regulations which abounded in the Mosaic system, and is sustained by a multitude of analogies. Compulsory service could have harmonized with nothing, and would have been the solitary disturbing force, marring its design, counteracting its tendencies, and confusing and falsifying its types. The directions regulating the performance of service for the public lay great stress on the willingness of those employed. For the spirit of the Mosaic system in this respect, see 1 Chron. xxviii. 21; Ex. xxxv. 5, 21, 22, 29; 1 Chron. xxix. 5, 6, 9, 14, 17; Ex. xxv. 2; Judges v. 2; Lev. xxii. 29;
2 Chron. xxxv. 8; Ezra i. 6; Ex. xxxv.; Neh. xi. 2.*
The voluntariness of servants is a natural inference from the fact that the Hebrew word ebèdh, uniformly rendered servant, is applied to many classes of persons, all of whom were voluntary and most of them eminently so. It is applied to persons rendering acts of worship about seventy times, whcreas it is applied to servants not more than half that number of times.
The illustrations drawn from the condition of servants, and the ideas which the term is employed to convey when applied figuratively, would, in most
As the servants became and continued such of their own accord, it would be no small marvel if they chose to work without pay. Their becoming servants presupposes compensation as a motive. That they were paid for their labor, we argue—
I. BECAUSE GOD REBUKED THE USING OF SERVICE WITHOVT WAGES. “Wo unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; THAT USETH HIS NETGHBOR'S SERVICE WITHOUT WAGES, AND GIVETH HIM NOT FOR HIS WORK.” Jer. xxii. 13.
The Hebrew word reà, translated neighbor, means any one with whom we have to do—all descriptions of persons, even enemies while fighting us. See Deut. xxii. 26; Prov. xxv. 8; Ex. xx. 16; Ex. xxi. 14, &c. The doctrine inculcated in this passage is, that every man's labor, being his own property, he is entitled to the profit of it, and that for another to “use” it, without payiug him the value uf it, is “unrighteousness.” The last clause of the verse, “and giveth him not for his work,” reaffirms the same prin-
This is verbatim one of the laws of the Mosaic System. Lev. xix. 18. Moses applies this law to the treatment of strangers:
If it be loving others as ourselves to make them work for us without pay; to rob them of food, and clothing also, would [sarcastically] be a still stronger illustration of the law of love! And if it be doing unto others as we would
In Lev. xxv. 47-49, where a servant, reduced to poverty, sold himself, it is declared that he may be redeemed, either by his kindred or by HIMSELF. Having been forced to sell himself [hire himself out] from poverty, he must have acquired considerable property after he became a servant.
If it had not been common for servants to acquire property, the servant of Elisha would hardly have ventured to take a large sum of money (nearly $3000) from Naaman: 2 Kings v. 22, 23. As it was procured by deceit, he wished to conceal the means used in getting it; but if servants could “own nothing, nor acquire anything," to embark in such an enterprise would have been consummate stupidity. The fact of having in his possession two talents of silver would, of itself, convict him of theft.* But since it was com-
We find the servant of Saul having money, and with it relieving his master in an emergency. 1 Sam. ix. 8.
Arza, the servant of Elah, was the owner of a house. That it was somewhat magnificent would be a natural inference from its being a resort of the king. 1 Kings xvi. 9.
When Jacob became the servant of Laban, it was evidently from poverty; yet Laban said to him, Tell me, “what shall thy wages be?” After Jacob had been his servant for ten years, he proposed to set up for himself; but Laban said,
The case of the Gibeonites, who, after becoming servants, still occupied their cities, and remained in many respects a distinct people for centuries;* and that of the 150,000 Canaanites, the servants of Solomon, who worked out their “tribute of bond-service” in levies, periodically relieving each other, are additional illustrations of independence in the acquisition and ownersbip of property.
Again. The Israelites often hired servants from the strangers. Deut. xxiv. 17.
Since then they give wages to a part of their Canaanitish servants, thus recognizing their right to a reward for their labor, we infer that they did not rob the rest of their earnings.
If God gave them a license to make the strangers work for them without pay, what fools to pay wages when they could make the strangers work for nothing! Besides, by refusing to avall themselves of this “Divine license,” they despised the blessing, and cast contempt on the giver! But [writing sarcastically] perhaps the Israelites seized all the Canaanites they could lay their hands on, and forced them to work without pay, but not being able to catch enough, were obliged to offer wages in order to eke out the supply!
1. Their lord at a set time proceeded to “take account” and “reckon” with his servants; the phraseology showing that the relations between the parties were tbose of debt and credit.
2. One of his servants was found to owe him ten thousand talents. From the fact that the servant owed this to his master, we infer that he must have been the owner of that amount, or of its substantial equivalent; that having sustained the responsibilities of legal proprietorship, he was under the liabilities resulting therefrom.
3. Not having, then, wherewith to pay, he says to his master, “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.” If the servant were his master's property, his time and earnings were [already] the master's; hence the promise to earu and pay that amount was virtually saying, “I will take money out of your pocket [paychecks] to pay my debt to you.” The promise to pay the debt, on condition that the payment should be postponed, proceeds upon the fact
The supposition that the master was the owner of the servant would annihilate [abolish] all legal claim upon him; and that the servant was the property of his master would absolve him from all obligations of debt, or rather forestall such obligations—for the relations of owner and crediter would annihilate [abolish] each other, as would these of pro-
† But, says the objector, if servants received their pay in advance, and if the Israelites were forbidden to surrender the fugitive to his master, it would operate practically as a motive to servants to make contracts, get their pay in advance, and then run away. We answer, the prohibition, Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master,” &c., sets the servant free from his authority, and, of course, from all those liabilities to injury, to which, as his servant, he was subjected, but not from the obligation of legal contracts. If the servant had received pay in advance, and had not rendered an equivalent for this “value received,” he was not absolved from his obligation to do so [i.e., to repay the fraudulently obtained funds], but [only] from all obligation
This [non-repayment of the prepaid lump-sum advance pay] regulation is founded upon the right of the servant to the use of all his powers, and consequently, his just claim for remuneration upon him, who should, however unintentionally, deprive him of the least of them. If the servant had a right to his tooth and the use of it, he had a right to the rest of his body and the use of it. If he had a right to the fraction to hold, use, and have pay for, he had a right to the sum total.
* Among the Israelites, girls became of age at twelve, and boys at thirteen years.
The object of the law was not mainly to enjoin tenderness towards brutes, but to inculcate the duty of rewarding those who serve us; and if such care be enjoined, by God, for the ample sustenance and enjoyment of a brute, what would be a meet [proper, fair] return for the services of man? MAN with his varied wants, exalted nature, and immortal destiny! Paul says that this principle underlies the statute.
In the context, Paul enumerates the four grand divisions of labor among the Jews in illustration of the principle that the laborer is cntitled to a reward. The priests, Levites, and all engaged in sacred things—the military, those who tended flocks and herds, and those who cultivated the soil.
As the latter [agrarian] employment engaged the great body of the Israelites, he [Paul] amplifies his illustration under that head, and enumerates the five great departments of agricultural labor among the Jews—vine-dressing, plowing, sowing, reaping, and threshing, as the representatives of universal labor. In his epistle to Timothy—1 Tim. v. 18—Paul quotes again this precept of the Mosaie law, and connects with it the declaration of our Lord. Luke x. 7: “The laborer is worthy of his hire”—as
This topic has been somewhat anticipated, but additional considerations remain to be noticed.
1. SERVANTS WERE NOT SUBJECTED TO THE USES NOR LIABLE TO THE CONTINGENCIES OF PROPERTY.
But no servants were given as presents, though it was a prevailing fashion in the surrounding [heathen] nations. Gen. xii. 16, xx. 14. In the last passage we are told that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, “took sheep, and oxen, and men-servants, and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham.” Not long after this Abraham made Abimelech a present, but gave him no servants. “And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech.” Gen. xxi. 27.
It may be objected, that Laban “GAVE” handmaids to his daughters, Jacob's wives. Suffice it to say that the handmaids of wives were regarded as wives, though of inferior dignity and authority. That Jacob so regarded his handmaids is proved by his curse upon Reuben. Gen. xlix. 4, and 1 Chron. v. 1; also by the equality of their children with those of Rachel and Leah. But had it been otherwise—had Laban given them as articles of property—then, indeed, the example of this “good old slaveholder and patriarch,” Saint Laban, No wonder that slavery, in its Bible-navigation, drifting dismantled before the free gusts, should scud under the lee of such a pious [heathen] worthy, to haul up and refit; invoking his protection and the benediction of his “GODS!”
Again, it may be objected, that servants were enumerated in inventories of property. If that proves servants property, it proves wives property.
In inventories of mere property, if servants are included, it is in such a way as to show that they are not regarded as property. Eccl. ii. 7, 8. But when the design is to show, not merely the wealth, but the sway of any one, servants are spoken of, as well as property. If riches alone are spoken of, no mention is made of servants; if sway, servants, and property. Gen. xiii. 2, 5. “And Abraham was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” Yet we are told, in the verse preceding, that he came up out of Egypt “with all that he had.” “And Lot also had flocks, and herds, and tents.” In the seventh verse servants are mentioned: “And there was a strife between the
In immediate connection with this, we find Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, saying to him, “Thou art much mightier than we.” Shortly after this avowal, Isaac is waited upon by Abimelech, Phicol, the chief captain of his army, and Ahuzzath, who say, “Let there now be an oath betwixt us and thee, that thou wilt do us no hurt.” Gen. xxvi. 13, 14, 16, 26, 28, 29. [That is] A plain concession of the power which Isaac had in his “great store of servants;” that is, of adherents to him as a just and benevolent prince.
When Hamor and Shechem speak to the Hivites of the riches of Abraham and his sons, they say, “Shall not their cattle, and their substance, and every beast of theirs be ours?” Gen. xxxiv. 23.
See also Josh. xxii. 8; Gen. xxxiv. 23; Job. xlii. 12; 2 Chron. xxi. 3; xxxii 27-29; Job. i. 3-5; Deut. viii. 12-17; Gen. xxiv. 35; xxvi. 13; xxx. 43.
Jacob's wives say to him, “All the riches which God has taken from our father that is ours and our childrens.” Then follows an inventory of property— “All his cattle,” “all his goods,” “the cattle of his getting.” His numerous servants are not included with his property. Comp. Gen. xxx. 43, with Gen. xxxi. 16-18.
When Jacob sent messengers to Esau, wishing to impress him with an idea of his state and sway, he bade them tell him not only of his RICHES, but of his GREATNESS; that he had “oxen, and asses, and flocks, and men-servants,
As flocks and herds were the staples of wealth, a large number of servants presupposed large possessions of cattle, which would require many herdsmen. When Jacob and his sons went into Egypt, it is repeatedly asserted that they took all that they had. “Their cattle and their goods which they had gotten in the land of Canaan,” “their flocks and their herds” are mentioned, but no servants.
And as we have, besides, a full catalogue of the household, we know that he took with him no servants. That Jacob had many servants before his migration into Egypt, we learn from Gen. xxx. 43; xxxii. 5, 16, 19. That he was not the proprietor [owner] of these servants is a probable inference from the fact that he did not take them with him, since we are told that he did take all his property. Gen. xlv. 10; xlvi. 1, 32; xlvii. 1.
When servants are spoken of in connection witb property, the terms used to express the latter do not include the former. The Hebrew word mikné is an illustration. It is derived from kânâ, to procure, to buy, and its meaning is, a possession, wealth, riches. It occurs more than forty times in the Old Testament, and is applied always to mere property, generally to domestic animals, but never to servants.
In some instances, servants are mentioned in distinction from the mikné.
Many will have it [allege] that these souls [people] were a part of Abraham's substance [property] (notwithstanding the pains here taken to separate them from it)—that they were slaves taken with him as a part of his family effects.
Who but slaveholders, either actually or in heart, would torture into the principle and practice of slavery, such a harmless [innocuous] phrase as “the souls that they had gotten?” Until the African slave trade breathed its [psychotic and demonized] haze into the eyes of the Church [altering, corrupting it], commentators saw no slavery [meaning] in [words] “the souls that they had gotten.”
In the Targum of Onkelos* it [the Genesis 12:5 wording] is rendered, “The souls whom they had brought to obey the law in Haran.”
Jerome [340 B.C.E. - 420 B.C.E.], one of the most learned of the Christian fathers, “The persons whom they had proselyted.” The Persian version, the Vulgate, the Syriac, the Arabic, and the Samaritan, all render it,
II. THE CONDITION AND SOCIAL ESTIMATION OF SERVANTS MAKE THE DOCTRINE THAT THEY WERE COMMODITIES, AN ABSURDITY. As the head of a Jewish family possessed the same power over his wife, children, and grandchildren (if in his family) as over
Paul's testimony in Gal. iv. 1, shows the condition of servants: "Now I say unto you, that the heir, so long as he is a child, DIFFERETH NOTHING FROM A SERVANT, though he be lord of all."
That the interests of Abraham's servants were identified with those of their master's family, and that the utmost confidence was reposed in them, is shown in their being armed. Gen. xiv. 14, 15.
When Abraham's servant went to Padanaram, Rebecca did not disdain to say to him, “Drink, MY LORD,” as “she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink.” [Gen. 24:18].
Laban, the brother of Rebecca, “ungirded his camels, and brought him water to wash his feet, and the men's feet that were with him.” In the arrangements of Jacob's household on his journey from Padanaram to Canaan, we find his two maid-servants provided with the same accommodations as Rachel and Leah. Each of them had a separate tent appropriated to her use. Gen. xxxi. 33.
The social equality of servants with their masters is an obvious deduction from Ex. xxi. 7, 10, from which we learn that the sale of a young Jewish female as a servant was also her betrothal as a wife, either to her master, or to one of his sons. In 1 Sam.
A servant invited by the chief judge, ruler, and prophet in Israel, to dine with a select party, in company with his master, who was at the same time anointed King of Israel! This was “one of the servants” of Kish, Saul's father [1 Sam. 9:3]; not the steward or the chief of them; any one that could be most easily spared.
David seems to have been for a time in all respects a servant in Saul's family.
He [David] was Saul's personal servant, went on his errands, played on the harp for his amusement, bore his armor for him, and when he wished to visit his parents, asked permission of Jonathan, Saul's son. Saul also calls him "my servant." 1 Sam. xvi. 21-23; xviii. 5; xx. 5, 6; xxii. 8.
Yet David sat with the king at meat [meals], married his daughter, and lived on terms of the closest intimacy with the heir apparent.
Abimelech, king of Shechem, who afterwards reigned over all Israel, was the son of a MAID-SERVANT. His mother's family seems to have been of note in the city of Shechem, where her brothers held sway. Judg. ix. 1-6, 18.
Jarha, an Egyptian, the servant of Sheshan, married his daugbter. [1 Chron. 2:34-35].
Tobiah, “the servant,” and an Ammonite, married the
We find Elah, the King of Israel, at a festive entertainment in the house of Arza, his steward, or head-servant. 1 Kings xvi. 8, 9.
See also the [social] intercourse between
The fact that servants were invited guests at public and social festivals, shows also the [high] estimation in which they were held by the Israelites.
Job "was the greatest man of all the men of the east." Job i. 3. After asserting his integrity, his justice, and equity, and declaring, “I delivered the poor,” Job adds, “I was eyes to the blind and feet was I to the lame;” “I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out;” * * * he says, “If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or my maid-servant when they CONTENDED with me * * * then let mine arm fall from the shoulder blade.” Job xxix. 12, 15, 16; xxxi. 13, 22.
This is the phraseology applied in judicial proccedings to those who implead [sue] one another, and shows that Job and his
“If I did despise the cause of my man-servant,” &c. In other words, if I treated it lightly, as though servants had not a claim for just dues and just estimation as human beings. “When they contended with me,” that is, when they claimed what was due to them, or questioned the justice of my dealings with them.
In the context, Job virtually affirms that his servants had the same [human, legal, pre-Mosaic] rights that he had, and were entitled to equal consideration with himself. By what language could he more forcibly utter his conviction of the identity of their common nature, necessities, and rights? He adds, “What then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? Did not he that made me make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?” [Job 31:15].
In the next verse, Job declares that he has not “withheld from the poor their desire.” [Job 31:16]. Is it the “desire” of the poor to be compelled to work without pay?
So far from being distributed among the Israelites, they remained a separate community for many centuries. When attacked by the Amorites, they applied to the Israelites for aid—it was rendered, their enemies routed, and themselves left unmolested in their cities. Josh. x. 6-18.
Long afterwards, Saul slew some of them, and God sent upon Israel a three years' famine [in punishment] for it [that oppression]. David inquired of the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you, and wherewith shall I make tho atonement?” At their demand he delivered up to them seven of Saul's descendants. 2 Sam. xxi. 1-9.
The whole transaction was a recognition of the Gibeonites as a distinct people. There is no intimation that they served either families or individuals of the Israelites, but only the "house of God," or the Tabernacle. This was established first at Gilgal, a day's journey from their cities; and then at Shiloh, nearly two days journey from them; where it continued about 350 years. During this period, thc Gibeonites inhabited their ancient cities and territory. Only a few could have bcen absent at any time in attendance on the
Tabernacle. Wherever allusion is made to them, the main body are spoken of as at home. It is preposterous to suppose that all the inhabitants of their four cities could find employment at the Tabernacle.
It is probable that the men were divided into classes, ministering in rotation. As the priests, whose assistants they were, served by courses in rotation a week at a time, it is not improbable that their periods of service were so arranged as to correspond. This service was their national tribute for the privilege of residence and protection under the [Mosaic] government. No service seems to have been required of the females. As these Gibeonites were Canaanites, and as they had greatly exasperated the Israelites by imposition and lying, we might expect that they would reduce them to the condition of chattels, if there was any case in which God permitted them to do so.
Throughout the Mosaic System, God warns the Israelites not to hold their servants in such a condition as they were held in by the Egyptians. How often are they pointed back to the grindings of their prison-house! What motives to the exercise of justice and kindness towards their servants are held out to their fears in threatened judgments; to their hopes in promised good; and to all within them that could feel, by those oft repeated words of tenderness and terror! "For ye were bondmen in the land of Egypt"—wakening anew the memory of tears and anguish, and of the wrath that avengeth them. But what was the bondage of the
1. They were not dispersed among the families of Egypt * but formed a separate community. Gen. xlvi. 34. Ex. viii. 22, 24; ix. 26; x. 23; xi. 7; iv. 29; ii. 9; xvi. 22; xvii. 5; vi. 14.
2. They had the exclusive possession of the land of Goshen,† "the best part of the land" of Egypt. Gen. xlv. 18; xlvii. 6, 11, 27; Ex. viii. 22; ix. 26; xii. 4. Goshen must have been a considerable distance from tbose parts of Egypt inhabited by the Egyptians; so far, at least, as to prevent their contact with the Israelites, since the reason assigned for locating them in Goshen was, that shepherds were "an abomination to the Egyptians;" besides, their employments would natually lead them out of the settled parts of Egypt to find pasturage for their flocks and herds.
3. They lived in permanent dwellings. These were houses, not tents. In Ex. xii. 7, 22, the two side posts, and the upper door posts, and the lintel of the houses are mentioned. Each family seems to have occupied a house
†The land of Goshen was a large tract of country east of the Pelusian arm of the Nile, and between it and the head of the Red Sea, and the lower border of Palestine. The probable centre of that portion, occupied by the Israelites, could hardly have been less than sixty miles from the city. The border of Goshen nearest to Egypt must have been many miles distant, see "Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt," an able article by Prof. Robinson, in the Biblical Repository for October, 1832.
4. They owned "flocks and herds," and "very much cattle." Ex. xii. 4, 6, 32, 37, 38. From the fact that "every man" was commanded before the people left Egypt, to kill either a lamb or a kid, one year old, for the Passover, we infer that even the poorest of the Israelites owned either sheep or goats. Further, the multitude of their flocks and herds may be judged of from the expostulation of Moses with Jehovah. Num. xii. 21, 22.
As these six hundred thousand were only the men "from twenty years old and upward" that were able to go forth to war," Ex. i. 45, 46, the whole number of the Israelites could not have been less than three million and a half. Flocks and herds to "suffice" all these for food might surely be called "very much cattle."
5. They had their own form of government, and preserved their tribe and family divisions, and their internal organization throughout, though still a province of Egypt, and tributary to it. Ex. ii. 1; xii. 19, 21; vi. 14, 25; v. 19; iii. 16, 18.
6. They had, to a considerable degree, the disposal
7. They were all armed. Ex. xxxii. 27.
8. They held their possessions independently, and the Egyptians seem to have regarded them as inviolable. No intimation is given that the Egyptians dispossessed them of their habitations, or took away their flocks, or herds, or crops, or implements of agriculture, or any article of property.
9. The females seem to have known something of domestic refinements. They were familiar with instruments of music, and skilled in the working of fine fabrics. Ex. xv. 20; xxxv. 25, 26; and both males and females were able to read and write. Deut. xi. 18-20; xvii. 19; xxvii. 3.
10. Service seems to have been exacted from none but adult males. Nothing is said from which the bond-service of females could be inferred; the hiding of Moscs three months by his mother, and the payment of wages to her by Pharaoh's daughter, go against such a supposition. Ex. ii. 29.
11. Their food was abundant, and of great variety. So far from being fed upon a fixed allowance of a single article, and hastily prepared, "they sat by the flesh-pots," and "did eat bread to the full." Ex. xvi. 3; and their bread was prepared with leaven. Ex. xii. 15, 39. They ate "the fish freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic." Num. xi. 4, 5; xx. 5. Probably but a small portion of the people were in the service of the Egyptians at any one time. Thc extent and variety of their possessions, together with such cultivation of their crops
Besides, when Eastern nations employed tributaries, it was as now, in the use of the levy, requiring them to furnish a given quota, drafted off periodically, so that comparatively but a small portion of the nation would be absent at any one time. The adult males of the Israelites were probably divided into companies, which relieved each other at stated intervals of weeks or months. It might have been during one of these periodical furloughs from service that Aaron performed the journey to Horeb. Ex. iv. 27. At the least calculation, this journey must have consumed eight weeks.
Probably one-fifth part [20%] of the proceeds of their labor was required of the Israelites, in common with the Egyptians. Gen. xlvii. 24, 26.
Instead of taking it from their crops (Goshen being better for pasturage), they exacted it of them in brick making; and labor might have been exacted only from the poorer Israelites, the wealthy being able to pay their tribute in money. The fact that all the elders of Israel seem to have controlled their own time (see Ex. iv. 29; iii. 16; v. 20), favors the supposition. Ex. iv. 27, 31.
Con-
True, "all the service wherein they [Egyptians] made them [Israelities] serve was with rigor." But what was this when compared with
† See law of Louisiana, Martin's Digest, 6, 10.
What was the bondage of Egypt when compared with this? And yet for her oppression of the poor, God smote her with plagues, and trampled her as the mire, till she passed away in his wrath, and the place that knew her in her pride knew her no more. Ah!
HE DTD COME, and Egypt sank a ruinous heap, and her blood closed over her. If such was God's retribution for the oppressions of heathen Egypt, of how mnch sorer punishment shall a Christian people be thought worthy, who cloak with religion a system, in comparison with which the bondage of Egypt dwindles to nothing?
Did God commission his people to rob others of all their rights, while he denounced against them wrath to the uttermost, if they practised the far lighter oppression of Egypt—which rohbed them of only the least of their rights [via a 20% exaction], and left the females unplundered even of these?
Is God divided against himself? When He had just turned Egypt into a funeral pile; while his curse yet blazed upon her unburied dead, and his bolts still hissed amidst her slaughter, and the smoke of her torment went upward because she had "ROBBED THE POOR," did He license the VICTIMS of robbery to rob the poor of ALL?
As Lawgiver, did he create a system tenfold more grinding than that for which he had just hurled Pharaoh headlong, and overwhelmed his princes and his hosts, till "hell was moved to meet them at their coming!"
The advocates of slavery are at their wit's end in pressing the Bible into their service. Their ever-varying shifts and forced constructions proclaim both their cause desperate, and themselves. Mean while, their invocations for help to "those good old slaveholders and patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,"* avail
"Resolved, That slavery has existed from the days of those GOOD OLD SLAVEHOLDERS AND PATRIARCHS, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are now in the kingdom of Heaven."
Abraham receives abundant [libelous] honor at the hands of slave-holding divines. Not hecause he was the "father of the faithful," and forsook home and country for the truth's sake, for all this he gets faint praise; but then he had "SERVANTS BOUGHT WITH MONEY!!!" This is the finishing touch of his character. Prose fledges into poetry, eulogy rarifies into panegyric, aud goes off in rhapsody.
In their ecstasies over Abraham, Isaac's paramount claims are lost sight of. No slaveholder casts loving glances at Gen. xxvii. 29, 37, where Isaac, addressing Jacob, says, "Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee." And afterwards, addressing Esau, he says, speaking of the birth-right immunities confirmed to Jacob, "Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I GIVEN TO HIM FOR SERVANTS."
Here is a "Divine Warrant" for a father holding his children
How often has it been bruited that the color of the negro is the Cain-mark! Cain's posterity started an opposi-
One patriarchal example is quite overlooked by slaveholders. Isaac informs Jacob that those "given to him as servants" were "HIS BRETHREN" (twice repeated). True, it would be an odd codicil to a will for a slaveholder, after bequeathing to some of his children all his slaves, to inform them that certain of them were their brothers and sisters. It might be at first a sore trial; but what pious slaveholder would not follow thus in the footsteps of his patriarchal predecessors!
Great reformers must make great sacrifices; and if the world is to be brought back to the purity of patriarchal times, to whom will all failing eyes turn, if not to slaveholders, who have reproduced the "patriarchal institution" of concubinage, and faithfully stamped their own image in variegated hues, upon a swarming progeny!
OBJECTION 1. "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." Gen. ix. 25.
This prophecy of Noah is the vade mecumof slaveholders, and they never venture abroad without it; it is a pocket-piece for sudden occasion, a keepsake to dote over, a charm to spell-bind opposition, and a magnet to draw to their standard "whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie." Yet "cursed be Canaan" is but a mocking lullaby to unquiet tossings. Those who justify negro slavery by the curse on Canaan assume, as usual, all the points in debate.
Perhaps it may be argued that Canaan includes all Ham's posterity. If
First, they were put to tribute by the Israelites; then by the Medes and Persians; then by the Macedonians, Grecians, and Romans, successively; and finally, by the Ottoman dynasty, under which they yet remain. Thus Canaan has been for ages the servant mainly of Shem and Japhet, and secondarily of the other sons of Ham.
It may still be objected, that though Canaan alone is named, yet that the 22d and 24th verses show the posterity of Ham in general to be meant.
It is argued that this "younger son" cannot be Canaan, as he was the grandson of Noah, and therefore it must be Ham. We answer, whoever that "younger son" was, Canaan alone was named in the prophecy.
Besides, the Hebrew word Ben signifies son, grandson, or any one of the posterity of an individual.*
Further, Ham was not the “younger son.” The order of enumeration makes him the second son. If it be said that Bible usage varies, the order of birth not always being observed; the reply is, that enumeration in that order is the rule [the norm], in any other order the exception. Besides, if a younger member of a family takes precedence of older ones in the family record, it is a mark of pre-eminence, either in endowments or providential instrumentality.
Abraham, though sixty years younger than his eldest brother, stands first in the family genealogy. Nothing in Ham's history shows him pre-eminent; besides, the Hebrew word hâkkâtân, rendered “the younger” means little, small. The same word is used in
Further, even if the Africans were the descendants of Canaan, the assumption that their enslavement fulfils this prophecy lacks even plausibility; for, only a fraction of the inhabitants of Africa have at any time
But if the servant “die under his hand,” then the unfitness of the instrument is point blank against him; for, striking with a rod so as to cause death presupposes many blows and great violence, and these kept up till the death-gasp, showed an intent to kill. Hence, “he shall surely be punished.” But if he continued a day or two, the length of time that he lived, the kind of instrument used, and the master's pecuniary interest in his life, (“he is his money”), all made a strong case of presumptive evidence, that the master did not design to kill.
Further the word nàkàm, here rendered [translated as] punished, occurs thirty-five times in the Old Testament, and in almost every place is translated “avenge,” in a few, “to take vengeance,” or “to revenge,” and in this instance ALONE “punish.”
As it stands in our [1830's era] translation, the pronoun preceding it refers to the master; whereas it should refer to the crime, and the word rendered punished should have been rendered avenged. The meaning is this: If a man smite bis servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, IT (the death) shall surely be avenged, or, literally, by avenging it shall be avenged; that is, the death of the servant shall be avenged by the death of the master. So “If he continue a day or two,” his death is not to be avenged by the death of the master, as in that case the crime was to be adjudged manslaughter, and not murder.
In the following verse, another case of personal injury is
Now, just the discrimination [different penalty for different offenses] to be looked for where GOD legislates is marked [evident] in the original [wording].
If the advocates of slavery will take this principle of interpretation into the Bible, and turn it loose, let them stand and draw in self-defence. If they indorse it at one point, they must stand sponsors all around the circle [consistently]. It will be too late to cry for quarter when its stroke clears the table, and tilts them among the sweepings beneath.
The Bible abounds with such [metaphoric “is”] expressions as the following:
But let us look at the [pro-slavery] objector's inferences.
Even in excusable homicide, where an axe slipped from the helve and killed a man, no sum of money availed to release from confinement in the city of refuge, until the death of the High Priest. Num. xxxv. 32.
The doctrine that the loss of the servant would be a penalty adequate to the desert of [the murder by] the master, admits
In short the [pro-slavery] objector annuls an integral part of the system—makes a new law, and coolly metes out such penalty as he thinks fit. The master who struck out his servant's tooth, whether intentionally or not, was required to set him free. The pecuniary loss to the master was the same as though he had killed him.
Contrast the two cases. A master beats his servant, so that he dies; another accidentally strikes out his servant's tooth; the pecuniary loss of both masters is the same.
If the loss of the servant's services is punishment sufficient for the crime of killing him, would God command the same punishment for the [mere] accidental knocking out of a tooth? Indeed, unless the injury were done inadvertently, the loss of the servant's services was only a part of the punishment—mere reparation to the individual for injury done; the main punishment, that strictly judicial, was reparation to the community.
To set the servant free, and thus proclaim his injury, his right to redress, and the measurc of it, answer not the ends of public justice. The law made an example of the offender, that
Finally, if a master smote out his servant's tooth, the law smote out his tooth—thus redressing the public wrong; and
OBJECTION III.
“Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 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.” Lev. xxv. 44-46.
The points in these verses, urged as proof that the Mosaic system sanctioned slavery, are,
1. “BONDMEN.” The fact that servants from the heathen are called “bondmen,” while others are called “servants” is quoted as proof that the former were slaves. As the caprices of King James's translators were not inspired, we need stand in no special awe of them. The word here rendered bondmen is uniformly rendered servants elswhere. The Hebrew word “èbèdh,” the plural of which is here translated “bondmen” is often applied to Christ.
The word is used to
In fine, the word is applied to all persons doing service for others, and that merely to designate them as the performers of such service, whatever it might be, or whatever the ground on which it might be rendered.
To argue from the fact of this word being used to designato domestic servants, that they were made servants by force, worked without pay, and were held as articles of propcrty, is such a gross assumption and absurdity as to make formal refutation ridiculous.
We repeat that the word rendered bondmen in Lev. xxv. 44, is used to point out persons rendering service irrespective of the principle on which that service was rendered. It is applied indiscriminately to tributaries, to domestics, to all the subjects of governments, to magistrates, to all governmental officers, to younger sons—defining their relation to the
If any inference as to the meaning of the term is to be drawn from the relations of the various classes of persons, to whom it is applied, the legitimate one would seem to be, that the term designates a person who renders service to another in return for value received. The same remark applies to the Hebrew verb âbâdh, to serve. It is used in the Old Testament to describe the serving of tributaries, of worshippers, of domestics, of Levites, of sons to a father, of younger brothers to the elder, of subjects to a ruler, of hirelings, of soldiers, of public officers to the government, of a host to his guests, &c. Of these it is used to describe the serving of worshippers more than forty times, of tributaries, about thirty-five, and of servants or domestics, about ten.
If the Israelites not only held slaves, but multitudes of them, if Abraham had thousands, and if they abounded under the Mosaic system, why had their language no word that meant slave? That language must be poverty-stricken which has no signs for the most familiar objects and conditions. To represent by the same word property, and the owner of that property, is a solecism. Ziba was an “èbèdh,” yet he “owned” (!) twenty èbèdhs!
In our [English] language, we have both servant and slave. Why? Because we have both the things, and need signs [words] for them. If the
But the [pro-slavery] objector asks, “Would not the Israelites use their word èbèdh, if they spoke of the slave of a heathen?” Answer. Their national servants, or tributaries, are spoken of frequently, but domestic servants so rarely that no necessity existed, even if tbey were slaves, for coining a new word. Besides, the fact of their being domestics, under heathen laws and usages, proclaimed their liabilities; their locality made a specific term unnecessary. But if the Israelites had not only servants, but a multitude of slaves, a word meaning slave would have been indispensable.
Further, the laws of the Mosaic system were so many sentinels on the outposts to warn off foreign practices. The border ground of Canaan was quarantine ground, enforcing the strictest non-intercourse in usages between the without and the within.
2. “BUY.” The buying of servants is discussed at length, pp. 17-23. We will add but a single consideration. This regulation, requiring the Israelites to “buy” servants of the heathen, prohibited their taking them without buying. Buying supposes two parties, a price demanded by one and paid by the other, and, consequently, the consent of both buyer and seller to the transaction. Of course, the command to the Israelites to buy servants of the heathen prohibited their getting them, unless they first got somebody's consent to the transaction, and paid to somebody a fair equivalent. Who were these some-
3. “FOREVER.” This is quoted to prove that servants were to serve during their lifetime, and their posterity from generation to generation.* The word “forever,” instead of defining the length of individual service, proclaims the permanence of the regulation laid down in the two verses preceding, namely, that their permanent domestics should be of the strangers, and not of the Israelites [agrarians]; it declares the duration of that general provision. As if God had
That “forever” [in Lev. 25:46] refers to the permanent relations of a community, rather than to the services of individuals, is a fair inference from the form of the expression,
Besides, perpetual service cannot be argued from the term forever. The ninth and tenth verses of the same chapter limit it absolutely [to 50 years maximum] by the [50 year] jubilee.
It may be [has been] objected [by the pro-slavery side] that “inhabitants” here means Israelitish inhabitants. In the sixth verse [Lev. 25:6], there is an enumeration of the different classes of the inhabitants, in which servants and strangers are included; and in all the regulations of the jubilee and the sabbatical year, the strangers are included in the precepts, prohibitions, and promises.
Again: the year of jubilee was ushered in by the day of atonement. [Leviticus 23:27-32]. What did these institutions show forth? The day of atonement prefigured the atonement of Christ and the year of jnbilee, the gospel jubilee. And did they prefigure an atonement
To deny that the blessings of the jubilee extended to the servants from the Gentiles makes Christianity Judaism.* It not only eclipses the glory of the Gospel, but strikes out its sun. The refusal to release servants at the jubilee falsified and disannulled a grand leading type of the atonement, and was a libel on the doctrine of Christ's redemption.
But, even if forever did refer to individual service, we have ample precedents for limiting the term by the jubilee. The same word defines the length of time which Jewish servants served who did not go out at the end of
As forever, in the 46th verse, respects [concerns] the [agrarian society's] general arrangement, and not individual service, the objection does not touch the argument. Besides, in the 46th verse, the word used is Olam, meaning throughout the period, whatever that may be; whereas in the 23d verse it is Tsemithuth, meaning, a cutting off, or to be cut off; and the import of it is, that the owner of an inheritance shall not forfeit his proprietorship of it; though it may for a time pass from his control into the hands of his creditors or others, yet the owner shall be permitted to redeem it, and even if that be not done, it shall not be “cut off,” but shall revert to him at the jubilee.
4. “INHERITANCE AND POSSESSION.” “Ye shall take them as an INHERITANCE for your children after you, to inherit them. for a POSSESSION.” This refers to the nations, and not to the individual servants procured from these nations. The holding of servants as a possession is discussed at large, pp. 73-93. To what is there advanced, we here subjoin a few considerations. We have already shown that servants could not be held as a property-possession and inheritance; that they became such of tbeir own accord, were paid wages, released from their regular labor nearly half the days in each year, instructed and protected in all their personal, social, and religious rights, equally with their masters. All remaining,
Alas, for that melodious circumlocution, “OUR PECULIAR species of property!” Yerily, emphasis would be cadence, and euphony and irony meet together! What eager snatches at mere words and bald technics, irrespective of connection, principles of construction, biblical usage, or limitations of meaning by other passages—and all to eke out such a sense [meaning] as sanctifies existing usages!!
The words nahal and nahala, inherit and inheritance, by no means necessarily signify articles of property.
The question whether the servants were a PROPERTY-“possession” has been already discussed,
pp. 73-92; we need add but a word. As an illustration of the condition of servants from the heathen that were the “possession” of Israelitish families, and of the way
We learn from these verses,
In the passage under consideration, “they shall be your possession,” the original word translated “possession” is ahuzza. The same word is used in Gen. xlvii. 11. “And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt.” Gen. xlvii. 11. In what sense was Goshen the possession of the Israelites? Answer, in the sense of having it to live in, not in the sense of having it as owners. In what sense were the Israel-
The design [intent, meaning] of the passage is manifest from its structure [to keep Israel agrarian]. So far from being a permission to purchase slaves, it was a prohibition to employ Israelites for a certain term and in a certain grade of service, and to point out the class of persons from whicb they were to get their supply of servants, and the way in which they were to get them.*
OBJECTION IV. “If thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto [work as an employee for] thee, thou shalt
As only one class is called “hired,” it is inferred [by slavers] that servants of the other class were not paid for their labor; and that God, while thundering anathemas against those who “used their neighbor's service without wages,” granted a special indulgence to his chosen people to force others to work, and rob them of their earnings.
The inference that “hired” is synonymous with paid, and that those servants not called “hired” were not paid for their labor, is a mere assumption. The meaning of the verb to hire is to procure temporary service for wages. That is also the meaning of the Hebrew word “ saukar.” It is not used when the procurement of permanent service is spoken of. The every-day distinctions in this matter are well known. In many families, the domestics perform only the regular work.
Whatever is occasional merely, as the washing of a family, is done by persons hired expressly for that purpose. The familiar distinction between the two classes, is “servants” and “hired help.” Both classes are paid. One is permanent, and the other occasional and temporary, and therefore called “hired.”* A variety of particulars are recorded distinguishing
The tenderness exercised towards home-born servants or the children of handmaids, and the strength of the tie tbat bound them to the family, are employed by the Psalmist to illustrate the regard of God for him and his own endearing relation to him, when in the last extremity he prays, “Save the son of thy handmaid.” Ps. lxxxvi. 16. So also in Ps. cxvi. 16. “Oh Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thy handmaid.” Also Jer. ii. 14: “Is Israel a servant? Is he a home-born?* WHY IS HE SPOILED?”
No such tie seems to have existed between hired servants and their masters. Their untrustworthiness was proverbial. John x. 12, 13. They were reckoned at but half the value of bought servants. Deut. xv. 18.
None but the lowest class of the people engaged as hired servants, and the kinds of labor assigned to them required little knowledge and skill. No persons seem to have become hired servants, except such as were forced to it from extreme poverty. The hired servant is called “poor and needy,” and the reason assigned by God why he should be paid as soon as he had finished his work is,
* Our translators, in rendering it “Is he a home-born SLAVE,” were wise beyond what was written.
The bought servant is manifestly the master's representative in the family, sometimes with plenipotentiary powers over adult chiidren, even negotiating marriage for them. Abraham abjured his servant not to take a wife for Isaac of the daughters of the Canaanites. The servant himself selected her.
Servants had discretionary power in the management of their masters' estates: —And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, for all the goods of his master were in his hand.œ Gen. xxiv. 10. The reason assigned is not that such was Abraham's direction, but that the servant had discretionary control. They had the same power in the disposal of property. Gen. xxiv. 22, 30, 53. The condition of Ziba, in the house of Mephibosheth is a case in point. So is Prov. xvii. 2.
Distinct traces of this estimation are to be found in the New Testament, Matt. xxiv. 45; Luke xii. 42, 44 . In the parable of the talents, the master seems to have set up each of his servants in trade with a large capital. The unjust steward had large discretionary power, was —accused of wasting his master's goods,œ and manifestly regulated with his debtors the terms of
The inferior condition of hired servants is illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son [Luke 15:11-24]. When he came to himself, the memory of his home, and of the abundance enjoyed by even the lowest class of servants in his father's household, while he was perishing with hunger among the swine and husks, so filled him with anguish that he exclaimed, “How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” His proud heart broke. “I will arise,” he cried, “and go to my father;” and then to assure his father of the depth of his humility, resolved to add, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.”
If hired servants were the superior class—to bespeak the situation savored little of that sense of unworthiness that seeks the dust with hidden face, and cries “unclean!” Unhumbled nature climbs [exalts itself, is arrogant]; or if it falls, clings fast where first it may. Humility sinks of its own weight, and in the lowest deep digs lower.
The design of the parable was to illustrate, on the one hand, the joy of God as he beholds afar off the returning sinner, “seeking an injured father's face,” who runs to clasp and bless him with an unchiding welcome; and on the other, the contrition of the penitent, turning homeward with tears from his wanderings, his stricken spirit breaking with its ill-desert he sobs aloud, “The lowest place! I can abide no other!” Or in those inimitable words, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy HIRED servants.” The [pro-slavers'] supposition that hired
It is manifest that one class of servants was on terms of equality with the children and other members of the family. Hence the force [power, impact] of Paul's declaration, Gal. iv. 1, “Now I say unto you that the heir, so long as he is a child, DIFFERETH NOTHING FROM A SERVANT, though he be lord of all.”
If this were the hired class, the prodigal was a sorry specimen of humility. Would our Lord have put such language upon the lips of one held up by himself as a model of humility, to illustrate its deep sense of all ill-desert? If this be humility, put it on stilts, and set it a strutting, while pride takes lessons, and blunders in aping it.
Israelites and strangers belong indiscriminately to each class of the servants, the bought and the hired. That those in the former class rose in tho family to honors and authority, which were not conferred on hired servants, has been shown.
It should be added, however, that in the enjoyment of privileges merely political, the hired servants from the Israelites were more favored than the bought servants from the strangers. No one from the strangers was eligible to the highest office, nor could he own the soil. This last disability seems to have been one reason for the different periods of service required of the two classes of bought servants. The Israelite was to serve six years—the stranger until the jubilee.
As the strangers could not own the soil, nor houses, except within walled towns, they would naturally attach themselves to Israelitish families. Those who were
In a word, such was the political condition of the strangers, that the Jewish polity offered a virtual bounty to such as would become permanent servants, and thus secure those privileges already enumerated, and for their children in the second generation a permanent inheritance. Ezek. xlvii. 21-23. None but the wealthy would be likely to decline such offers.
On the other hand, the [agrarian] Israelites, owning all the soil, and an inheritance of land being a sacred possession, to hold it free of incumbrance was with every Israelite a point both of family honor and personal character. 1 Kings xxi. 3. Hence, to forego the control of one's [agrarian] inheritance, after the division of the paternal domain, or to be kept out of it after having acceded to it, was a burden grievous to be borne. To mitigate as much as possible sucb a calamity, the law released the Israelitish servant at the end of six* years; as, during that time
So, while strong motives urged the Israelite to discontinue his service as soon as the exigency had passed which made him a servant, every consideration impelled the stranger to prolong his term of service;* and the same kindness which dictated the law of six years' service for the Israelite assigned as the general rule, a much longer period to the Gentile servant, who had every inducement to protract the term.
It should be borne in mind that adult Jews ordinarily became servants, only as a tcmporary expedient to relieve themselves from [financial] embarrassment, aud ceased to be such when that object was effected. The poverty that forced them to it was a calamity, and their service was either a means of relief or a measure of prevention; not pursued as a permanent business, but resorted to on emergencies—a sort of episode in the main scope of their [agrarian land-owning] lives; whereas with the strangers it was a permanent employment, pursued both as a means of bettering their own condition, and that of their pos-
* The stranger had the same inducements to prefer a long term of service that those who cannot own land have to prefer a long lease.
We see from the foregoing why servants purchased from the heathen are called, by way of distinction, the servants (not bondmen).
Another distinction between the Jewish and Gentile bought servants was in their kinds of service. The servants from the strangers were properly the domestics, or household servants, employed in all family work, in offices of personal attendance, and in such mechanical labor as was required by increasing wants and needed repairs.
The Jewish bought servants seem almost exclusively agricultural. Besides being better fitted for it by previous habits, agriculture, and the tending of cattle, were regarded by thc Israelites as the most honorable
The Israelites were permanent fixtures on their soil. To be agriculturists on their own patrimonial inheritances was the grand claim to honorable estimation.
When Ahab proposed to Naboth to buy his vineyard, king though he was, he might well have anticipated from an Israelitish freeholder, just such an indignant outburst as that which his proposai drew forth! "And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee!" 1 Kings xxi. 2, 3.
Agriculture being pre-eminently a Jewish employment, to assign an Israelite to other employments as a business was to break up his habits, do violence to cherished predilections, and put him to a kind of labor in which he had no skill, and which he deemed degrading.*
In short, it was, in the earlier
In other words, thou shalt not put him to servant's work—to the business and into the condition of domestics.
The same substantially may be said of the sojourner, though he was not the owner of the land which he cultivated, and, of course, had not the control of an inheritance [of land]; yet he was not in a condition that implied subjection, or that demanded the surrender of any right, or exacted from him any homage, or stamped him with any inferiority; unless it be supposed that a degree of inferiority would naturally attach to a state of dependence, however qualified.
While bought servants were associated with their master's families at meals, at the Passover, and at otber family festivals, hired servants and sojourners were not. Ex. xii. 44, 45; Lev. xxii. 10, 11. They were not subject to the authority of their masters in any such sense as the master's wife, chiidren, and bought-servants. Hence the only form of oppressing hired servants spoken of in the Scriptures as practicable to masters, is that of keeping back their wages.
To have taken away such privileges in the case under consideration would have been pre-eminent “rigor;” for it was not a servant born in the house of a master, nor a minor, whose minority had been sold by the father, neither was it one who had not yot acceded to his inheritance; nor, finally, one who had received the assignment of his inheritance, but was working off from it an incum-
Still one consolation cheers him in the house of his pilgrimage—he is an Israelite—Abraham is his father; and now in his calamity he clings closer than ever to the distinction conferred by his birth-right. To rob him of this were “the unkindest cut of all.” To have assigned him to a grade of service filled only by those whose permanent business was serving, would have been to “rule over him with” peculiar “rigor.” “Thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant,” or, literally, “Thou shalt not serve thyself with him, with the service of a servant,” guaranties his political privileges, and a kind and grade of service comporting with his character and relations as an Israelite.
And “as a hired servant, and as a sojourner, shall he be with thee,” secures to him his family organization, the respect due to its head, and the general [respectful] consideration resulting from such a station. Being already in possession of his inheritance, and the head of a household, the law so arranged the conditions of his service as to alleviate the calamity which had reduced him from independence and authority to penury and subjection. The import of the command which concludes this topic in the forty-third verse (“Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor”) is manifestly this: Thou shalt not disregard those differences in previous associations, station,
The same command is repeated in the forty-sixth verse, and applied to the distinction between servants of Jewish and those of Gentile extraction, and forbids the overlooking of distinctive Jewish peculiarities, the disregard of which would be rigorous in the extreme.*
The construction commonly put upon the phrase, “rule with rigor,” and the inference drawn from it, have an air vastly oracular. It is interpreted to mean, “you shall not make him a chattel, and strip him of legal protection, nor force him to work without wages.”
The [pro-slavery] inference is like unto it, viz., since the command forbade such outrages upon the Israelites, it permitted and commissioned their infliction upon the strangers! Such a construction [violates the one-law rule, p 45, supra, and] captivates [panders to] scoffers and libertines; its blasphemy, and loose-reined license, work like a charm upon them. What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities [perverted desires, lusts]! In Ex. i. 13, it is said that the Egyptians “made the chiidren of Israel to serve with rigor.” This rigor is affirmed of the amount of labor extorted, and the mode of the exaction. The expression, “serve with rigor,” is never applied to the
We are now prepared to review the condition of the different classes of servants, with the modifications peculiar to each class.
In all findamental rights, all classes of servants were on an absolute equality;
In all these respects, all classes of servants among the Israelites formed but ONE CLASS. The different classes, and the differences in each class, were,
A marked distinction obtained also between different classes of Jewish bought servants. Ordinarily, they were merged in their master's family, and, like his wife and children, subject to his [Bible-limited] authority; and, like them, protected by [Bible] law from its abuse. But the freeholder was an exception; his family relations and authority remained unaffected, nor was he subjected as an inferior to the control of his master, tbough dependent on him for employment.
It should be kept in mind that both classes of servants, Israelites and strangers, not only enjoyed equal, natural, and religious rights, but all the
This gratuity at the close of the service shows the principle of the relation; equivalent for value received.
Further, the disabilities of the servants from the strangers were exclusively political and national.
Finally, the strangers, whether servants or masters, were all protected equally with the descendants of Abraham. In respect to political privileges, their condition was much like that of unnaturalized foreigners in the United States; who, whatever their wealth or intelligence, or moral principle, or love for our institutions, can neither vote, nor own the soil, nor be eligible to office. Let a native American be thus suddenly loaded with the disabilities of an alien, and what to the foreigner would be a light matter, to him would be the severity of rigor.
The recent condition of the Jews and Catholics in England is another illustration. Rothschild, the late London banker, though the richest private citizen in the world, and perhaps master [employer] of a score of English servants [employees], was, as a subject of the government, inferior to the lowest among them. Suppose an English millionaire were by law deprived of power to own the soil, of eligibility to office, and of the electoral franchise, would he think
FINALLY. As the Mosaic System was a great compound type, ripe with meaning in doctrine and duty, the practical power of the whole depended upon the exact observance of those distinctions and relations which constituted its significancy. Hence, the care to preserve inviolate the distinction between a descendant of Abraham and a stranger, even when the stranger was a proselyte, had gone through the initiatory ordinances, entered the congregation, and become incorporated with the Israelites by family alliance.
The regulation laid down in Ex. xxi. 2-6, is an illustration. In this case, the Israelitish servant, whose term expired in six years, had married one of his master's permanent female domestics; but her marriage did not release her master [employer] from his part of the contract for her whole term of service, nor from his legal obligation to support and educate her children.
Neither did it do away that distinction which marked her national descent [foreign national origin] by a specific grade and term of service, nor impair her obligation to fulfill her part of the [already-pre-existing] contract. Her relations as a permanent domestic grew out of a distinction guarded with great care throughout the Mosaic system. To render it void would have been to divide the system against itself. This God would not tolerate. Nor, on the
By this law, the children had secured to them a mothers' care. If the husband loved his family he could compel his master to keep him, whether he had occasion for his services or not. If he did not love them, to be rid of him was a blessing; and in that case, the regulation would prove an act for the relief of an afflicted family.
The release of the servant in the seventh year neither absolved him from the obligations of marriage, nor shut him out from the society of his family. He could probably procure a service at no great distance from them, and might often do it, to get higher wages, or a kind of employment better suited to his taste and skill.
The great number of days [46% of the time, see p 44, supra] on which the [Bible-agrarian-based society] law released servants [employees] from regular labor would enable him to spend much more time with his family than can be spent by most of the agents of our benevolent societies with their families, or by many [employees] merchants, editors, artists, &c., whose daily business [job] is in a city, while their families reside from five to fifty miles in the country.
Grant that all the Canaanites were sentenced to unconditional extermination; how can a right to enslave them be drawn from such premises? The punishment of death is one of the highest recognitions of man's moral nature. It proclaims him rational, accountable, deserving death for having done his utmost to cheapen human life, when the proof of its priceless worth lived in his own nature.
But to make man a slave cheapens to nothing universal human nature, and, instead of healing a wound, gives a death-stab. What! repair an injury to rational being in the robbery of one of its rights, by not only robbing it of all, but by annihilating their foundation, the distinction between persons and things? To make a man a chattel is not the punishment, but in principle the
Here a question arises of sufficient importance for a separate dissertation; but it must, for the present, be disposed of in a few paragraphs. WERE THE CANAANITES SENTENCED BY GOD TO INDIVIDUAL AND UNCONDITIONAL EXTERMINATION?
The directions as to the disposal of the Canaanites are mainly in the following passages: Ex. xxiii. 23-33; xxxiv. 11; Deut. vii. 16-24; ix. 3; xxxi. 3-5. In these verses, the Israelites are commanded to “destroy the Canaanites,” to “drive out,” “consume,” “utterly overthrow,” “put out,” “dispossess them,” &c.
Did these commands enjoin the universal destruction of the individuals, or merely of the body politic? The word hàràin, to destroy, signifies national as well as individual destruction; the destruction of political existence equally with personal; of governmental organization equally with the lives of the subjects.
Besides, if we interpret the words destroy, consume, overthrow, &c., to mean personal destruction, what meaning shall we give to the expressions, “drive out before thee,” “cast out before thee,” “expel,” “put out,” “dispossess,” &c., which are used in the same and in parallel passages? In addition to those quoted above, see Josh. iii. 10; xvii. 18; xxii. 5; xxiv. 18; Judg. i. 20, 29-35; vi. 9.
Here “all their enemies” were to turn their backs, and “all the people” to be “destroyed.” Does this mean that God would let all their enemies escape, but kill their
In Josh. xxiv. 8 , God says, speaking of the Amorites, “I destroyed them from before you.” In the 18th verse of the same chapter, it is said, “The Lord drave out from before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land.” In Num. xxxii. 39, we are told that “the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, went to Gilead, and took it, and dispossessed the Amorite which was in it.”
If these commands required the destruction of all the individuals, the Mosaic law was at war with itself [full of contradictions]; for directions as to the treatment of native residents form a large part of it. See Lev. xix. 34; xxv. 35, 36; xxiv. 22; Ex. xxiii. 9; xxii. 21; Deut. i. 16, 17; x. 17, 19; xxvii. 19.
We find, also, that provision was made for them in the cities of refuge, Num. xxxv. 15;—the gleanings of the harvest and vintage were theirs. Lev. xix. 9, 10; xxiii. 22;—the blessings of the Sabbath, Ex. xx. 10;—the privilege of offering sacrifices secured, Lev. xxii. 18; and stated religious instruction provided for them, Deut. xxxi. 9, 12.
How does this same law require the individual extermination of those whose lives and interests it thus protects? These laws were given to the Israelites long before they entered Canaan [at Mt. Sinai]; and they must have inferred from them that a multitude of the inhabitants of the land were to continue in it, under their government.
Again, Joshua was selected as the leader of Israel to execute [carry out, enforce] God's threatenings upon Canaan. He had no discretionary power. God's commands were his official instructions. Going be-
If God [had] commanded the individual destruction of all the Canaanites, Joshua disobeyed him in every instance. For at his death the Israelites still “dwelt among them,” and each nation is mentioned by name, Judg. i. 27-36; and yet we are told that Joshua “left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses;” and that he “took all that land.” Josh. xi. 15-22. Also, that “there stood not a man of all their enemies before them.” Josh. xxi. 44.
How can this be if the command to “destroy,” “destroy utterly,” &c., enjoined individual extermination, and the command to drive out, unconditional expulsion from the country rather than their expulsion from the possession or ownership of it, as the lords of the soil?
That the latter is the true sense to be attached to those terms we argue further, from the fact that the same terms are employed by God to describe the punishment which he would inflict upon the Israelites, if they served other gods. “Ye shall utterly perish,” “be utterly destroyed,” “consumed,” &c., are some of them. See Deut. iv. 26; viii. 19, 20;* Josh. xxiii.
Multitudes of the Canaanites were slain, but not a case can be found in which one was either killed or expelled who acquiesced in the transfer of the territory and its sovereignty from the inhabitants of the land to the Israelites. Witness the case of
Rahab All these, with other similar threatenings of destruction, are contained in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deut. See verses 20-25, 45, 48, 51.
In the same chapter, God declares that, as a punishment for the same transgressions, the Israelites shall “be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth,”—thus showing that the terms employed in the other verses, “destroy,” “perish,” “perish quickly,” “consume,” &c., instead of signifying utter, personal destruction, doubtless meant their destruction as an independent nation.
In Josh. xxiv. 8, 18, “destroyed” and “drave out,” are used synonymously.
The Canaanites knew of the miracles wrought for the Israelites; and that their land had been transferred to them as a judgment for their sins. Josh. ii. 9-11; ix. 9, 10, 24. Many of them were awed by these wonders, and made no resistance. Others [unrepentant idolaters] came out to battle. These last occupied the fortified cities, were the most inveterate heathen—the aristocracy of idolatry, the kings, the nobility and gentry, the priests, with their crowds of retainers that aided in idolatrous rites, and the military forces, with the chief
Many facts corroborate the general position [of no general command to kill all Canaanites]. Witness that command (Deut. xxiii. 15, 16), which not only prohibited the surrender of the fugitive servant to his master, but required the
Israelites to receive him with kindness, permit him to dwell where he pleased, and to protect and cherish him. Whenever any servant, even a Canaanite, fled from his master to the Israelites, Jehovah, so far from commanding them to kill him, straitly charged them,
The Canaanitish servant, by thus fleeing to the Israelites, submitted himself as a dutiful snbject to their national government, and pledged his allegiance.
Suppose all the Canaanites had thus snbmitted themselves to the Jewish theocracy, and conformed to the requirements of the Mosaic institutes, would not all have been spared upon the same principle that one was?
Again, look at the multitudes of tributaries in the midst of Israel, and that, too, after they [Israelites] had “waxed strong,” and the uttermost nations quaked at the terror of their name—the Canaanites, Philistines, and others, who became proselytes—as the Nethenims, Uriah the Hittite—Rahab, who married one of the princes of Judah—Jether, an Ishmaelite, who married Abigail, the sister of David, and was the father of Amasa, the captain of the host [commanding general] of Israel. Comp. 1 Chron. ii. 17, with 2 Sam. xvii. 25.—Ittai—the six hundred Gittites, David's body guard. 2 Sam. xv. 18, 21.
[Note also] Obededom the Gittite, adopted into the tribe of Levi. Comp. 2 Sam. vi. 10, 11, with 1 Chron. xv
Jephunneh, the Kenezite, Josh. xiv. 6, and father of Caleb, a ruler of the tribe of Judah. Numb. xiii. 2, 6—the Kenites registered in the genealogies of the tribe of Judah, Judg. i. 16; 1 Chron. ii. 55, and the one hundred and fifty thousand Canaanites employed by Solomon in the building of the Temple.*
Besides, the greatest miracle on record [prolonging daylight] was wrought to save a portion of those very Canaanites, and for the destruction of those who would exterminate them. Josh. x. 12-14.
Further—the terms employed in the directions regulating the disposal of the Canaanites, such as “drive out,” “put out,” “expel,” “dispossess,” &c., seem used interchangeably with “consume,” “destroy,” “overthrow,” &c., and thus indicate the sense [meaning] in which the latter words are used.
As an illustration of the meaning generally attacbed to these and similar terms, we refer to the history of the Amalekites. “I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” Ex. xvii. 14. “Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.” Deut. xxv. 19. “Smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep.” 1 Sam. xv. 2, 3. “Saul smote the Amalekites, and he took
In 1 Sam. xxx. 1, 2, we find the Amalekites marching an army into Israel, and sweeping everything before them—and this in about eighteen years after they had all been "UTTERLY DESTROYED!" In 1 Kings ii. 15-17, is another illustration.
We are informed that Joab remained in Edom six months 'with all Israel, "until he had cut off every male in Edom. In the next verse we learn that Hadad and "certain Edomites" were not slain.
Deut. xx. 16, 17, will probably be quoted against the preceding view. We argue that the command in these verses did not include all the individuals of the Canaanitish nations, but only the inhabitants of the cities (and even those conditionally), because, only the inhabitants of cities are specified—"of the cities of these people thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth."
Cities then, as now, were pest-houses of vice; they reeked with abominations little practised in the country. On this account, their influence would be far more perilous to the Israelites than that of the country. Besides, they were the centres of idolatry—there were the temples and altars, and idols, and priests, without number. Even their buildings, streets, and public walks were so many visibilities of idolatry.
The reason assigned in the 18th verse for exterminating them, strengthens the idea—"that they teach you not to do after all the abominations which they have done unto their gods."
The 10th and 11th verses contain the general rule prescribing the method in which cities were to be summoned to surrender. They were first to receive the offer of pcace—if it were accepted, the inhabitants became tributaries—but if they came out against Israel in battle, the men were to be killed, and the women and little ones saved alive. The 15th verse rcstricts this lenient treatment to the inhabitants of the cities afar off. The 16th directs as to the disposal of the inhabitants of the Canaanitish cities. They were to save alive "nothing that breathed."
The common mistake has been, in supposing that the command of the 15th verse refers to the whole system of directions preceding, commencing with the 10th, whereas it manifestly refers only to the inflictions specified in the 12th, 13th, and 14th, making a distinction between those Canaanitish cities that fought, and the cities afar off that fought—in one case, destroying the males and females, and in the other, the males only.
The offer of peace, and the conditional preservation, wrre as really guarantied to Canaanitish cities as to otherd. Their inhabitants were not to be exterminated, unless they came out against Israel in battle.
Whatever be the import of the commands respecting the Canaanites, the Israelites did not utterly exterminate them. If entire and unconditional
That is, if they had not come out against Israel in battle, they would have had "favor" shown them, and would not have been "destroyed utterly." The great design [divine plan] was to transfer the territory of the Canaanites to the Israelites, and along with it, absolute sovereignty in every respect; to annihilate their political organizations, civil polity, and jurisprudence, and their systems of
All had the choice of these alternatives, either free egress out of the land; * or acquiescence in the decree, with life and residence as tributaries, under the protection of the [Mosaic] government; or resistance to the execution of the decree, with death.
THE foregoing work, as may be seen, is confined to an examination of the Old Testament. It was the design of the author at one time to include an inquiry into the teachings of the New Testament on the same subject, and the alleged sanction of slavery in the example and teachings of our Lord and his Apostles; but he [Weld] was deterred from entering upon this, lest what he intended for a tract should swell into a large volume.
As some may, however, think the work incomplete without some notice of the teaching of the New Testament, we have subjoined a few extracts from an excellent address issued by the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, in 1835.
After pointing out the enormity of the evils of slavery, the Synod proceeds to say:—
"The reply is often made, 'God's word sanctions slavery, it cannot therefore be sinful. It cannot be our duty to relinquish our power over our sîaves, or the Bible would have enjoined it upon us to do so.'
"We will not attempt to elaborate argument against this plea for slavery—it needs no such answer. A few observations will suffice to show its utter fallacy.
"We are told that the apostles gave to Christian masters and Christian servants directions for the regulation of their mutual conduct. True; and these directions will be valuable while the world lasts—for so long, we doubt not, will the "If so, then the fact that rulers at that time were generally tyrants, and the people vassals, should have prevented them [the apostles] from laying down the duties of rulers and people. In the precepts of holy writ, neither political tyranny nor domestic slavery is countenanced, Nay, if masters complied with the apostolic injunction to them, and gave their servants, as they were directed to do, "that which is just and equal," there would be at once an end of all that is properly called slavery.
"The divine right of kings to tyrannize over their subjects, and the unlawfulness of resistance to their authority on the part of the people, were formerly maintained by the very same kind of scriptural arguments which are now advanced in support of slavery. The arguments drawn from the Bible in favor of despotism, are, indeed, much more plausible than those in favor of slavery. We despise the former—how then should we regard the latter?
"It has sometimes been said, that the 'New Testament does not condemn slaveholding in express terms.' And the practice has been advocated, because it has [supposedly] not been denounced. If this assertion were true, and if the Bible only virtually denounced it, it would be a sin. No man can righteously continue a practice which God disapproves of, no matter in what form the disapproval is expressed.
"But the assertion is not true. THE NEW TESTAMENT DOES CONDEMN SLAVE HOLDING, AS PRACTISED AMONG US, IN THE MOST EXPLICIT TERMS FURNISHED BY THE LANGUAGE IN WHICH THE INSPIRED PENMEN WROTE.
"If a physician, after a minute examination, should tell a patient that his every limb and organ was diseased—if he should enumerate the various parts of his bodily system, the arms, the legs, the head, the stomach, the bowels, &c., and should say of each one of these parts distinctly that it was unsound; could the man depart and say, 'After all, I am not diseased, for the physician has not said, in express terms, that my body is unsound? Has he not received a more clear and express declaration of his entirely diseased condition, than if he had been told, in merely general terms, that his body was unsound? Thus has God condemned slavery. He has specified the parts "In the English language we have the term servant, which we apply indiscriminately both to tbose held in voluntary subjection to another [employees, apprentices, etc.], and to those whose subjection is involuntary. We have also the term slave, which is applicable exclusively to those held in involuntary subjection.
The Greek language had a word corresponding exactly in signification with our word servant; but it had none that answered precisely to our term slave.*
"How then was an apostle, writing in Greek, to condemn our slavery? Could it be done in the way in which some seem [profess] to think it must be done, before they will be convinced of its sinfulness?
"How can we expect to find in Scripture the words 'slavery is sinful?' when the language in which it is written contained no term which expressed the meaning of our word slavery? Would the advocates of slavery wish us to show that the apostles declare it to be unchristian to hold servants (douloi)? This would have been denouncing, as criminal [sinful], practices far different from slaveholding.
"But inspiration taught the holy penmen the only correct and efficacious method of conveying their condemnation of this unchristian system. They pronounce of each one of those several things which constitute slavery, that it is sinful—thus clearly and forever denouncing the system, wherever it might appear, and whatever name it might assume.
"If a writer should take up each part of our federal constitution separately and condemn it article by article, who would have the folly to assert that, after all, he had not expressly condemned the constitution? Who would say that this thorough and entire disapproval of every part of the instrument of confederation must pass for nothing, and is no proof of the writer's hostility to it, because he has never said exactiy in so many words, 'I disapprove of the Constitution of the United States?' We see that he could condemn it most explicitly and thoroughly without even mentioning it by name.
"Further, human language is so fluctuating that words often, in the lapse of time, change their meaning. The word tyrant expresses now a very different idea from that which it once
“It is true wisdom, then, when we wish to perpetuate our condemnation of a system or institution, to express our sentiments of the various things that constitute the system or institution, and not of the mere name by which it is now known. Thus our sentiments will be guarded from the misconceptions that may arise in the fluctuation of language. So that even if there were words in Greek, specifically set apart to designate the idea of slavery, inspiration would probably still have guided the apostles to their present form of expression in its condemnation.
“Had they [the apostles] used such language as this, 'slavery is sinful,' some modern apologists for the system might have alleged that our slavery was not such as existed among the Greeks—that slavery here was a different thing from that which the apostles denounced.
“But the course [writing style] they [the apostles] pursued leaves no room for such a subterfuge.
“We have received the command, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' and we are conscious that we are violating the whole spirit as well as letter of this precept, when, for our own trifling pecuniary gain, we keep a whole race sunk in ignorance and pain.
“We are commanded to give our servants 'that which is just and equal,' and no sophistry can persuade us that we fulfil this towards those whom we deprive of the reward of their labor. We know that the idea of a bondman receiving a just and equal remuneration for his labor, never enters the minds of slaveholders. The precepts against fraud, oppression, pride, and cruelty, all cut directly through the heart of the slave system.
“Look back at the constituents and the effects of slavery, and ask yourself, 'Is not every one of these things directly at variance with the plainest commands of the gospel?' The maintenance of this system breaks not one law of the Lord, or two laws—it violates the whole code—it leaves scarcely one precept unbroken.
“And will any one, then, contend that slavery is not reprobated by God, and, that he may participate in the system, and assist in its perpetuation, without deep criminality [sinfulness]? Forbid it, conscience—forbid it, common sense!
“Gaming, horse-racing, gladiatorial shows in which men were hired to butcher each other, the selling of children by their parents, which was often practised in ancient days—all these things are condemned by the Scriptures, not by name, but (as slavery is condemned) by denouncing those crimes [sins] of which these acts are modifications and illustrations.
“These views of the sinfulness of slavery place it beyond all “How is this to be done? Certainly not by merely treating our slaves kindiy, and thus mitigating the evils of their condition. You may say you have already, in the case of your own slaves, abolished the worst evils of the system, and that in every way you promote their comfort and welfare.
“Still duty absolutely requires at least one more step—a guarantee that their future happiness, and that of their children, shall not be at the mercy of another's caprice. And this can be effected only by a legal provision for their release from bondage.
“It is probable that the Romans were in a better condition under Titus than they would have been had they governed themselves. But the gentleness of his sway only aggravated the horrors of their situation, under his dark and bloody successors. Granting all that any man may urge in favor of his own [personal] kindness to his dependents, still he is, contrary to the laws of nature and of God, retaining them in a condition which is tolerable oniy under the most rare and favorable circumstances—which inevitably works woe and ruin, unless prevented by the singular virtue and generosity of an extraordinary master.
“Would we be willing that we and our chiidren should be thus held? And remember that the fundamental principle of Christian morality is, that 'what things soever ye would that others should do unto you, do ye even so to them.' Are we complying with our Saviour's injunction, when w thus leave our fellow beings exposed to all the future miseries, which avarice, caprice, and cruelty may inflict?
“Yet we profess subjection to Christ's laws—'He that knoweth my will and doeth it,' says the divine Redeemer, 'he it is that loveth me.' The very best condition of a slave for life is like the condition of those unfortunate men that we sometimes read of, who have been unjustly condemned to die—but mercy or policy arresting the execution of the sentence, they have, for a time, been permitted to go at large, yet liable every moment to be remanded to prison and to death.
“This is the situation of a slave, at his best estate—and who will say that either mercy or justice permits us to retain him in such a situation?
“It is often urged that slaves are better off than our free negroes. If mankind had considered this plea for continuing to hold slaves a valid one, the whole world would have been still in slavery—for all nations have been at one time or other in some kind of slavery—and all despots urged this plea against their emancipation. Besides, no man ought to "[The pro-slavery allegation] That our negroes, if emancipated, will be worse off, is, we feel, but the specious pretext for lulling our own pangs of conscience, and answering the argument of the philanthropist. None of us believe that God has so created a whole race, that it is better for them to remain in perpetual bondage. One mode of emancipation may be preferable to another—but any mode is preferable to the perpetuation, through generations to come, of a degrading bondage. History, with a hundred tongues, testifies that, as a general rule, to emancipate is to elevate.
"And it is vain for any man to argue against such a general law of nature by adducing the occasional departures [exceptions], which have fallen under his own personal observation. We plant ourselves down on the broad and acknowledged principle, that God created all men [people] capable of freedom—if, then, they have become unfit for this condition, it is by our fault they have become so; aud our exertions, if we are willing to do our duty, can easily restore to them that fitness of which we have deprived them.
"As the conclusion of all that has been advanced, we assert it to be the unquestionable duty of every Christian, to use vigorous and immediate measures for the destruction of the whole system, and for tho removal of all its unhappy effects. Both these objects should be contemplated in his efforts." |
One of them "was a great city, as one of the royal cities;" so large that a confederacy of five kings was deemed necessary for its destruction.
Did He who thundered [in