Part 37 (1/2)
xlvii. 21-23. None but the monied aristocracy would be likely to decline such offers. On the other hand, the Israelites, owning all the soil, and an inheritance of land being a sacred possession, to hold it free of inc.u.mbrance was with every Israelite, a delicate point, both of family honor and personal character. 1 Kings xxi. 3. Hence, to forego the control of one's 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 such a calamity, the law released the Israelitish servant at the end of six[A] years; as, during that time--if of the first cla.s.s--the part.i.tion of the patrimonial land might have taken place or, if of the second, enough money might have been earned to disenc.u.mber his estate, and thus he might a.s.sume his station as a lord of the soil. If neither contingency had occurred, then after another six years the opportunity was again offered, and so on, until the jubilee. So while strong motives urged the Israelite to discontinue his service as soon as the exigency had pa.s.sed which made him a servant, every consideration impelled the _Stranger_ to _prolong_ his term of service;[B] and the same kindness which dictated the law of six years' service for the Israelite, a.s.signed 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 temporary expedient to relieve themselves from embarra.s.sment, and 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 lives. Whereas with the Stranger, it was a _permanent employment_, pursued both as a _means_ of bettering their own condition, and that of their posterity, and as an _end_ for its own sake, conferring on them privileges, and a social estimation not otherwise attainable.
[Footnote A: Another reason for protracting the service until the seventh year, seems to have been the coincidence of that period with other arrangements, in the Jewish economy. Its pecuniary responsibilities, social relations, and general internal structure, were _graduated_ upon a septennial scale. Besides, as those Israelites who had become servants through poverty, would not sell themselves, till other expedients to recruit their finances had failed--(Lev. xxv.
35)--their _becoming servants_ proclaimed such a state of their affairs, as demanded the labor of a _course of years_ fully to reinstate them.]
[Footnote B: The Stranger had the same inducements to prefer a long term of service that those have who cannot own land, 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_,) 1. They followed it as a _permanent business_. 2. Their term of service was _much longer_ than that of the other cla.s.s. 3. As a cla.s.s, they doubtless greatly outnumbered the Israelitish servants. 4. All the Strangers that dwelt in the land were _tributaries_, required to pay an annual tax to the government, either in money, or in public service, (called a _”tribute of bond-service;”_) in other words, all the Strangers were _national servants_, to the Israelites, and the same Hebrew word used to designate _individual_ servants, equally designates _national_ servants or tributaries. 2 Sam. viii. 2, 6, 14; 2 Chron.
viii. 7-9; Deut, xx. 11; 2 Sam. x. 19; 1 Kings ix. 21, 22; 1 Kings iv.
21; Gen. xxvii. 29. The same word is applied to the Israelites, when they paid tribute to other nations. 2 Kings xvii. 3.; Judg. iii. 8, 14; Gen. xlix. 15. 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 the Israelites as the most honorable of all occupations. After Saul was elected king, and escorted to Gibeah, the next report of him is, ”_And behold Saul came after the herd out of the field_.” 1 Sam. xi. 5. Elisha ”was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen.” 1 Kings xix. 19. King Uzziah ”loved husbandry.” 2 Chron. xxvi. 10. Gideon _was ”thres.h.i.+ng wheat”_ when called to lead the host against the Midianites. Judg. vi. 11. The superior honorableness of agriculture is shown, in that it was protected and supported by the fundamental law of the theocracy--G.o.d indicating it as the chief prop of the government. The Israelites were like permanent fixtures on their soil, so did they cling to it. To be agriculturists on their own patrimonial inheritances, was with them the grand claim to honorable estimation. When Ahab proposed to Naboth that he should sell him his vineyard, king though he was, he might well have antic.i.p.ated from an Israelitish freeholder, just such an indignant burst as that which his proposal 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 a.s.sign a native 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.[C] In short, it was in the earlier ages of the Mosaic system, practically to _unjew_ him, a hards.h.i.+p and a rigor grievous to be borne, as it annihilated a visible distinction between the descendants of Abraham and the Strangers. _To guard this and another fundamental distinction_, G.o.d inst.i.tuted the regulation, ”If thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant.” In other words, thou shalt not put him to servant's work--to the business, and into the condition of domestics. In the Persian version it is translated, ”Thou shalt not a.s.sign to him the work of _servitude_.” In the Septuagint, ”He shall not serve thee with the service of a _domestic_.” In the Syriac, ”Thou shalt not employ him after the manner of servants.” In the Samaritan, ”Thou shalt not require him to serve in the service of a servant.” In the Targum of Onkelos, ”He shall not serve thee with the service of a household servant.” In the Targum of Jonathan, ”Thou shalt not cause him to serve according to the usages of the servitude of servants.”[D] The meaning of the pa.s.sage is, _thou shalt not a.s.sign him to the same grade, nor put him to the same service, with permanent domestics._ The remainder of the regulation is--_”But as an hired servant and as a sojourner shall he be with thee.”_ Hired servants were not incorporated into the families of their masters; they still retained their own family organization, without the surrender of any domestic privilege, honor, or authority; and this, even though they resided under the same roof with their master. 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, yet he was not in a condition that implied subjection to him whose land he tilled, 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 a.s.sociated with their master's families at meals, at the Pa.s.sover, and at other family festivals, hired servants and sojourners were not. Ex. xii. 44, 45; Lev. xxii. 10, 11.
Hired servants were not subject to the authority of their masters in any such sense as the master's wife, children, 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 yet acceded to his inheritance, nor finally, one who had received the _a.s.signment_ of his inheritance, but was working off from it an inc.u.mbrance, before entering upon its possession and control. But it was that of _the head of a family_, who had known better days, now reduced to poverty, forced to relinquish the loved inheritance of his fathers, with the competence and respectful consideration its possession secured to him, and to be indebted to a neighbor for shelter, sustenance, and employment. So sad a reverse, might well claim sympathy; but 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 a.s.signed 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 and authority due to its head, and the general 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_ as much as possible 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, you shall not disregard those differences in previous a.s.sociations, station, authority, and political privileges, upon which this regulation is based; for to hold this cla.s.s of servants _irrespective_ of these distinctions, and annihilating them, is to ”rule with rigor.” 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.[E] 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 pay.” The 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 impious and shallow smattering captivates scoffers and libertines; its flippancy and blasphemy, and the strong scent of its loose-reined license works like a charm upon them. What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities! In Ex. i. 13, it is said that the Egyptians, ”made the children 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 service of servants under the Mosaic system. The phrase, ”thou shall not RULE over him with rigor,” does not prohibit unreasonable exactions of labor, nor inflictions of cruelty. Such were provided against otherwise.
But it forbids confounding the distinctions between a Jew and a Stranger, by a.s.signing the former to the same grade of service, for the same term of time and under the same political disabilities as the latter.
[Footnote C: The Babylonish captivity seems to have greatly modified Jewish usage in this respect. Before that event, their cities were comparatively small, and few were engaged in mechanical or mercantile employments. Afterward their cities enlarged apace and trades multiplied.]
[Footnote D: Jarchi's comment on ”Thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant” is, ”The Hebrew servant is not to be required to do any thing which is accounted degrading--such as all offices of personal attendance, as loosing his master's shoe-latchet, bringing him water to wash his hands and feet, waiting on him at table, dressing him, carrying things to and from the bath. The Hebrew servant is to work with his master as a son or brother, in the business of his farm, or other labor, until his legal release.”]
[Footnote E: The disabilities of the Strangers, which were distinctions, based on a different national descent, and important to the preservation of nation characteristics, and a national wors.h.i.+p, did not at all affect their _social_ estimation. They were regarded according to their character and worth as _persons_, irrespective of their foreign origin, employments and political condition.]
We are now prepared to review at a glance, the condition of the different cla.s.ses of servants, with the modifications peculiar to each.
In the possession of all fundamental rights, all cla.s.ses of servants were on an absolute equality, all were equally protected by law in their persons, character, property and social relations; all were voluntary, all were compensated for their labor, and released from it nearly one half of the days in each year; all were furnished with stated instruction; none in either cla.s.s were in any sense articles of property, all were regarded as _men_, with the rights, interests, hopes and destinies of _men_. In all these respects, _all_ cla.s.ses of servants among the Israelites, formed but ONE CLa.s.s. The _different_ cla.s.ses, and the differences in _each_ cla.s.s, were, 1. _Hired Servants_. This cla.s.s consisted both of Israelites and Strangers. Their employments were different. The _Israelite_ was an agricultural servant. The Stranger was a _domestic_ and _personal_ servant, and in some instances _mechanical_; both were occasional and temporary. Both lived in their own families, their wages were _money_, and they were paid when their work was done.
2. _Bought Servants_, (including those ”born in the house.”) This cla.s.s also, consisted of Israelites and Strangers, the same difference in their kinds of employment as noticed before. Both were paid in advance,[A] and neither was temporary. The Israelitish servant, with the exception of the _freeholder_, completed his term in six years. The Stranger was a permanent servant, continuing until the jubilee. A marked distinction obtained also between different cla.s.ses of _Jewish_ bought servants. Ordinarily, they were merged in their master's family, and, like his wife and children, subject to his authority; (and, like them, protected by 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, though dependent on him for employment.
[Footnote A: The payment _in advance_, doubtless lessened the price of the purchase; the servant thus having the use of the money, and the master a.s.suming all the risks of life, and health for labor; at the expiration of the six years' contract, the master having suffered no loss from the risk incurred at the making of it, was obliged by law to release the servant with a liberal gratuity. The reason a.s.signed for this is, ”he hath been worth a double hired servant unto thee in serving thee six years,” as if it had been said, as you have experienced no loss from the risks of life, and ability to labor, incurred in the purchase, and which lessened the price, and as, by being your servant for six years, he has saved you the time and trouble of looking up and hiring laborers on emergencies, therefore, ”thou shalt furnish him liberally,”
&c. This gratuity at the close of the service shews the _principle_ of the relation; _equivalent_ for value received. ]
It should be kept in mind, that _both_ cla.s.ses of servants, the Israelite and the Stranger, not only enjoyed _equal, natural and religious rights_, but _all the civil and political privileges_ enjoyed by those of their own people who were _not_ servants. They also shared in common with them the political disabilities which appertained to all Strangers, whether servants of Jewish masters, or masters of Jewish servants. Further, the disabilities of the servants from the Strangers were exclusively _political_ and _national_. 1. They, in common with all Strangers, could not own the soil. 2. They were ineligible to civil offices. 3. They were a.s.signed to employments less honorable than those in which Israelitish servants engaged; agriculture being regarded as fundamental to the existence of the state, other employments were in less repute, and deemed _unjewish_.
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; whatever their wealth or intelligence, or moral principle, or love for our inst.i.tutions, they can neither go to the ballot-box, nor own the soil, nor be eligible to office. Let a native American, be suddenly bereft of these privileges, and 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 ill.u.s.tration.
Rothschild, the late banker, though the richest private citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants, who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the government, inferior to the lowest among them. Suppose an Englishman of the Established Church, were by law deprived of power to own the soil, of eligibility to office and of the electoral franchise, would Englishmen think it a misapplication of language, if it were said, the government ”rules over him with rigor?” And yet his person, property, reputation, conscience, all his social relations, the disposal of his time, the right of locomotion at pleasure, and of natural liberty in all respects, are just as much protected by law as the Lord Chancellor's.
FINALLY.--As the Mosaic system was a great compound type, rife with meaning in doctrine and duty; the practical power of the whole, depended upon the exact observance of those distinctions and relations which const.i.tuted 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 ill.u.s.tration. In this case, the Israelitish servant, whose term expired in six years, married one of his master's _permanent female domestics_; but her marriage did not release her master 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 by a specific _grade_ and _term_ of service, nor impair her obligation to fulfil _her_ part of the 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 G.o.d would not tolerate. Nor, on the other hand, would he permit the master to throw off the responsibility of instructing her children, nor the care and expense of their helpless infancy and rearing. He was bound to support and educate them, and all her children born afterwards during her term of service. The whole arrangement beautifully ill.u.s.trates that wise and tender regard for the interests of all the parties concerned, which arrays the Mosaic system in robes of glory, and causes it to s.h.i.+ne as the sun in the kingdom of our Father.[B] By this law, the children had secured to them a mother's tender care. If the husband loved his wife and children, he could compel his master to keep him, whether he had any 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. It is not by any means to be inferred, that the release of the servant in the seventh year, either absolved him from the obligations of marriage, or shut him out from the society of his family. He could doubtless 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 on which the law released servants 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 merchants, editors, artists, &c., whose daily business is in New York, while their families reside from ten to one hundred miles in the country.
[Footnote B: Whoever profoundly studies the Mosaic Inst.i.tutes with a teachable and reverential spirit, will feel the truth and power of that solemn appeal and interrogatory of G.o.d to his people Israel, when he had made an end of setting before them all his statutes and ordinances.
”What nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments SO RIGHTEOUS, as _all_ this law which I set before you this day.” Deut. iv.
8.]
We conclude this inquiry by touching upon an objection, which, though not formally stated, has been already set aside by the tenor of the foregoing argument. It is this,--”The slavery of the Canaanites by the Israelites, was appointed by G.o.d as a commutation of the punishment of death denounced against them for their sins.”[A] If the absurdity of a sentence consigning persons to death, and at the same time to perpetual slavery, did not sufficiently laugh at itself; it would be small self-denial, in a case so tempting, to make up the deficiency by a general contribution. Only _one_ statute was ever given respecting the disposition to be made of the inhabitants of Canaan. If the sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced against them, and afterwards _commuted_, when?
where? by whom? and in what terms was the commutation, and where is it recorded? Grant, for argument's sake, 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 possible. It proclaims him rational, accountable, guilty, 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 him 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, not only by robbing it of all, but by annihilating their _foundation_, the everlasting distinction between persons and things? To make a man a chattel, is not the _punishment_, but the _annihilation_ of a _human_ being, and, so far as it goes, of _all_ human beings. This commutation of the punishment of death, into perpetual slavery, what a fortunate discovery! Alas! for the honor of Deity, if commentators had not manned the forlorn hope, and by a timely movement rescued the Divine character, at the very crisis of its fate, from the perilous position in which inspiration had carelessly left it!
Here a question arises of sufficient importance for a separate dissertation; but must for the present be disposed of in a few paragraphs. WERE THE CANAANITES SENTENCED BY G.o.d TO INDIVIDUAL AND UNCONDITIONAL EXTERMINATION? As the limits of this inquiry forbid our giving all the grounds of dissent from commonly received opinions, the suggestions made, will be thrown out merely as QUERIES, rather than laid down as _doctrines_. The directions as to the disposal of the Canaanites, are mainly in the following pa.s.sages, Ex. xxiii. 23-33; x.x.xiv. 11; Deut. vii. 16-24; ix. 3; x.x.xi. 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 unconditional and universal destruction of the _individuals_, or merely of the _body politic_? The word _haram_, 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.