Part 14 (1/2)
[Footnote A: Jarchi, the most eminent of the Jewish writers, (if we except perhaps the Egyptian Maimonides,) who wrote seven hundred years ago, in his comment on this stealing and making merchandize of men, gives the meaning thus:--”Using a man against his will, as a servant lawfully purchased; yea though he should use his services ever so little, only to the value of a farthing, or use but his arm to lean on to support him, _if he be forced so to act as a servant_, the person compelling him but once to do so shall die as a thief, whether he has sold him or not.”]
The Hebrew word, _Gaunab_, here rendered _stealeth_, means the taking from another what _belongs_ to him, whether it be by violence or fraud; the same word is used in the eighth commandment, and prohibits both _robbery_ and theft.
The crime specified is that of _depriving_ SOMEBODY _of the owners.h.i.+p of a man_. Is this somebody a master? and is the crime that of depriving a _master_ of his _servant_? Then it would have 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 and _proprietor_!
The crime, as stated in the pa.s.sage, is three-fold--man _stealing_, _selling_ and _holding_. All are put on a level, and whelmed under one penalty--DEATH. This _somebody_ deprived of the owners.h.i.+p of man, is the _man himself_, robbed of personal owners.h.i.+p. Joseph said to the servants of Pharoah, ”Indeed I was _stolen_ away out of the land of the Hebrews.”
Gen. xl. 15. How _stolen_? His brethren took him and sold him as an _article of merchandize_. Contrast this penalty for _man_-stealing with that for _property_-stealing. Exod. xxii. If a man stole an _ox_ and killed or sold it, he was to restore five oxen; if he had neither sold nor killed it, the penalty was two oxen. The selling or the killing being virtually a deliberate repet.i.tion of the crime, the penalty was more than doubled.
But in the case of stealing a _man_, the first act drew down the utmost power of punishment; however often repeated, or however aggravated the crime, human penalty could do no more. 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 totally different principles. The man stolen might be past labor, and his support a _burden_, yet death was 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 amount stolen, the payment of _double_ wiped out the score. It might have a greater _money_ value than a _thousand_ men, yet _death_ was never the penalty, nor maiming, nor branding, nor even _stripes_. Whatever the kind, or the amount stolen, the unvarying penalty was double of _the same kind_. Why was not the rule uniform? When a _man_ was stolen why not require the thief 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 have two _oxen_, or if he had killed it, _five_. But if G.o.d permitted men to hold _men_ as property, equally with _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 whole of the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a _man_ was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender _money_ as an equivalent, would have been to repeat the outrage with the intolerable aggravations of supreme insult and impiety. Compute the value of a MAN in _money!_ Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled from such outrage and blasphemy. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double, would have been making the repet.i.tion of crime its atonement. But the infliction of death for _man-stealing_ exacted from the guilty wretch the utmost possibility of reparation. It wrung from him, as he gave up the ghost, a testimony in blood, and death groans, to the infinite dignity and worth of man,--a proclamation to the universe, voiced in mortal agony, that MAN IS INVIOLABLE,--a confession shrieked in phrenzy at the grave's mouth--”I die accursed, and G.o.d is just.”
If G.o.d permitted man to hold _man_ as property, why did He punish for stealing _that_ kind of property infinitely more than for stealing any _other_ kind of property? Why did he punish with _death_ for stealing a very little, perhaps not a sixpence worth, of _that_ sort of property, and make a mere _fine_, the penalty for stealing a thousand times as much, of any other sort of property--especially if G.o.d did by his own act annihilate the difference between man and _property_, by putting him _on a level with it_?
The atrociousness of a crime, depends greatly upon the nature, character, 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 the _nature_ of the article, but in _s.h.i.+fting its external relation_ from _him to me_. But when I take my neighbor _himself_, and first make him _property_, and then _my_ property, the latter act, which was the sole crime in the former case, dwindles to a mere appendage. The sin in stealing a man does not consist in transferring, from its owner to another, that which is _already property_, but in turning _personality_ into _property_. True, the _attributes_ of man still remain, but the rights and immunities which grow out of them are _annihilated_. It is the first law of reason and revelation to regard things and beings as they are; and the sum of religion, to feel and act toward them according to their nature and 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 G.o.d has indissolubly joined, or confounded in one, which he has separated by infinite extremes; when sacred and eternal distinctions, which he has garnished with glory, are derided and set at nought, then, if ever, _sin_ reddens in its ”scarlet dye.” The sin specified in the pa.s.sage, is that of doing violence to the _nature_ of a _man_--his _intrinsic value_ and relations as a rational being, and blotting out the exalted distinction stamped upon him by his Maker. In the verse preceding, and in that which follows, the same principle is laid down. Verse 15, ”_He then smiteth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death._” Verse 17, ”_He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death._”
If a Jew smote his neighbor, the law merely smote him in return. But if that same blow were given to a _parent_, the law struck the smiter _dead_. Why this difference in the punishment of the same act, inflicted on different persons? Answer--G.o.d guards the parental relation with peculiar care. It is the _centre_ of human relations. To violate that, is to violate _all_. Whoever trampled on _that_, showed that no relation had any sacredness in his eyes--that he was unfit to move among human relations who had violated one so sacred and tender.--Therefore, the Mosaic law uplifted his bleeding corpse, and brandished the ghastly terror around the parental relation to guard it from impious inroads.
But why the difference in the penalty since the _act_ was the same? The sin had divers aggravations.
1. The relation violated was obvious--the distinction between parents and others, manifest, dictated by natural affection--a law of the const.i.tution.
2. The act was violence to nature--a suicide on const.i.tutional susceptibilities.
3. The parental relation then, as now, was the centre of the social system, and required powerful safe-guards. ”_Honor thy father and thy mother_,” stands at the head of those commands which prescribe the duties of man to man; and, throughout the Bible, the parental relation is G.o.d's favorite ill.u.s.tration, of his own relations to the whole family of man. In this case, death is inflicted not at all for the act of _smiting_, nor for smiting a _man_, but a _parent_--for violating a vital and sacred relation--a _distinction_ cherished by G.o.d, and around which, both in the moral and ceremonial law, He threw up a bulwark of defence. In the next verse, ”He that stealeth a man,” &c., the SAME PRINCIPLE is wrought out in still stronger relief. The crime here punished with death, is not the mere act of taking property from its owner, but the disregarding of _fundamental relations_, doing violence to an _immortal nature_, making war on a _sacred distinction_ of priceless worth. That distinction which is cast headlong by the principle of American slavery; which makes MEN ”_chattels_.”
The incessant pains-taking throughout the old Testament, in the separation of human beings from brutes and things, shows G.o.d's regard for the sacredness of his own distinction.
”In the beginning” the Lord uttered it in heaven, and proclaimed it to the universe as it rose into being. He arrayed creation at the instant of its birth, to do it reverent homage. It paused in adoration while He ushered forth its crowning work. Why that dread pause, and that creating arm held back in mid career, and that high conference in the G.o.dhead?
”_Let us make man in_ OUR IMAGE, _after_ OUR LIKENESS, AND LET HIM HAVE DOMINION _over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth_.”
_Then_ while every living thing, with land, and sea, and firmament, and marshalled worlds, waited to catch and swell the shout of morning stars--THEN ”G.o.d CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE. IN THE IMAGE OF G.o.d CREATED HE HIM.” This solves the problem, IN THE IMAGE OF G.o.d CREATED HE HIM. Well might the sons of G.o.d cry all together, ”Amen, alleluia”--”_Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive blessing and honor”--”For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth_.” Psalms viii. 5, 6, 9. The frequent and solemn repet.i.tion of this distinction by G.o.d proclaims his infinite regard. The 26th, 27th, and 28th verses of the 1st chapter of Genesis are little else than the repet.i.tion of it in various forms. In the 5th chapter, 1st verse, we find it again--”In the day that G.o.d created man, IN THE LIKENESS of G.o.d MADE HE MAN.” In the 9th chapter, 6th verse, we find it again. After giving license to shed the blood of ”every moving thing that liveth,” it is added, ”_Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for_ IN THE IMAGE OF G.o.d MADE HE MAN.” As though he had said, ”All these other creatures are your property, designed for your use--they have the likeness of earth, they perish with the using, and their spirits go downward; but this other being, MAN, has my own _likeness_; IN THE IMAGE OF G.o.d made I man; an intelligent, moral, immortal agent, invited to all that I can give and he can be.” So in Levit. xxiv. 17, 18, ”_He that killeth any_ MAN _shall surely be put to death; and he, that killeth a beast shall make it good, beast for beast; and he that killeth a_ MAN _shall be put to death_.” So in the pa.s.sage quoted above, Ps. viii. 5, 6. What an enumeration of particulars, each separating infinitely, MEN from brutes and things!
1. ”_Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels_.” Slavery drags him down among _brutes_.
2. ”_And hast crowned him with glory and honor_.” Slavery tears off his crown, and puts on a _yoke_.
3. ”_Thou madest him to have dominion_ OVER _the works of thy hands_.”
Slavery breaks his sceptre, and casts him down _among_ those works--yea, _beneath them_.
4. ”_Thou hast put all things under his feet_.” Slavery puts HIM _under the feet of an owner_, with beasts and creeping things. Who, but an impious scorner, dare thus strive with his Maker, and mutilate HIS IMAGE, and blaspheme the Holy One, who saith to those that grind his poor, ”_Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me_.”
But time would fail us to detail the instances in which this distinction is most impressively marked in the Bible.
In further prosecuting this 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 Divine inst.i.tutions previously existing. As a _system_, however, the latter alone is of Divine authority. Whatever were the usages of the _patriarchs_, G.o.d has not made them our examplars[A].
[Footnote A: Those who insist that the patriarchs held slaves, and sit with such delight under their shadow, hymning the praises of ”those good old patriarchs and slaveholders,” might at small cost greatly augment their numbers. A single stanza celebrating patriarchal _concubinage_, winding off with a chorus in honor of patriarchal _drunkenness_, would be a trumpet call, summoning from bush and brake, highway and hedge, and sheltering fence, a brotherhood of kindred affinities, each claiming Abraham or Noah as his patron saint, and shouting, ”My name is legion.”
What a myriad choir, and thunderous song!]
Before entering upon an a.n.a.lysis of the condition of servants under these two states of society, let us settle the import of certain terms which describe the mode of procuring them.
IMPORT OF THE WORD ”BUY,” AND THE PHRASE ”BOUGHT WITH MONEY.”