servants, and to assume that here also, as there, we have to do with different relations and classes of persons. In the law, Deut. xv. 12-17, the subject is in fact an actual maidservant, who has also been previously such, and whom her owner sells to another. If, now, she was of gentile descent (see our remarks above, on the term "Hebrew woman," applied to her), there accrues to her, from this transaction, the high advantage that, after six years service with the second master, she obtains her perfect freedom, and can in all cases return to her kindred. In the law, Ex. xxi. 7-11, she of whom it speaks has manifestly never been a maidservant, but has dwelt only in her father's house. He is probably a poor man, who, by the so-called sale of his daughter, gains something, but who, nevertheless, surrenders her only to enter into relations suitable for her, and in which he has a guarantee for her future condition. We have then again in the former case, Deut. xv. 12-27, a maid-servant; in the latter, Ex. xxi. 7-11, a free woman. Whether her father is an Israelite, or a foreigner, the text does not say; and it is, moreover, well-nigh a matter of indifference, since in the case of women this distinction was not so very important. It is, perhaps, more natural to think of the latter, if our conjecture is right that, in the law immediately preceding, the "Hebrew" servant is not of Israelitish descent. Perhaps, moreover, we ought not to leave altogether out of account the fact that the law in respect to captive heathen women contains provisions in certain respects similar; those, namely, which direct that, if the master treat with neglect a woman of this class in her matrimonial relation to him, he must let her go free, and neither sell her for money, nor compel her to perform bond-service. Deut. xxi. 14. See chap. 98, § 5.

916

It is further a weighty consideration, as well perhaps with reference to the case just adduced as in a general point of view, that we have here a relation altogether different from

916 According to this view, therefore, the lawgiver would rest here, not proceeding at all to the further assumption that an Israelite could surrender his daughter after this manner.

that of a regular marriage; inasmuch as the woman whom the master takes to himself is called, not wife, but maidservant, is dismissed without a bill of divorce, and receives no marriage dower. The difference is, then, somewhat of the same kind that appears in other books of the scriptures, between wives and concubines. To this latter relation the lawgiver is not, as it would seem, favorably inclined. See chap. 103, § 3. Hence, perhaps, the solicitude which he manifests, Ex. xxi. 9, 10, to secure for this maid-servant the rights of actual marriage. Accordingly, one might better refer the tenth verse also to the son alone, and understand the whole passage in the following manner: The master originally intended this maid for himself. With him—perhaps a man already advanced in years she claims only the place of a concubine. As such he must, first, take her to himself; or, secondly, provide for her redemption; or, thirdly, he can give her to his sou, although this was not the original stipulation. In this last case, however, she is not obliged to be connected with him in the relation of concubine, with the expectation of being thrust into the background by the subsequent introduction of a regular housewife; but the master must treat her as a daughter (in-law), not as a maid-servant, and give her to his son as an actual wife, so that, should he take another wife, she may not be disparaged. If the original purchaser did not do in her behalf one of these three things above specified, she went out free immediately and returned to her father. But the son of the father [if he had taken her] could not send her away without ceremony, but only on the condition. of giving her, as in the case of other regular wives, a writing of divorce, when he was, moreover, bound to assign a reason."

917

917 After the exposition of our views respecting the possibly different reference of the different laws concerning Israelitish and "Hebrew" servants, we must not omit stating that the views of the Rabbins know nothing of such a differWith them the Hebrew servant is an Israelite whom the judicial tribunal has sold against his will, or who has sold himself, — the former case only on account of theft, Ex. xxii. 2, the latter from absolute poverty. A Hebrew maid-servant is a girl yet in her minority, who has been given away on account

ence.

12. In connection with the law relating to the impoverished Israelite who enters into service, the manner of acquiring heathen men-servants and maid-servants is also indicated, as well as the relation which they hold to the Israelites. The impoverished Israelite is not to be sold as a perpetual servant, nor to be employed in (the rougher kinds of) bondservice, but to be treated as a hireling. But from the people who live round about, men-servants and maid-servants can be bought. So also from the children of resident foreigners, and from their descendants and families born in the land These may be put to (bond) service, treated as a perpetual possession, and also transmitted as an inheritance to children. Lev. xxv. 44-46. Compare vs. 39, 42.

Here then we have to a certain extent a condition of slavery,918 which however merits this name only in the mild

of pressing poverty (see on this subject the note to chap. 108). The obligation to serve till the year of jubilee is assumed as possible only in those cases where it arrives before the close of the six years, or where the servant prefers to remain. See Maimonides, Tract. Abadim, chaps. I.-IV. What difficulties lie in the way of this view have been indicated above. It may be, however, that the relations of a later day hardly permitted any longer the appearance of a special class of "Hebrew" servants in the sense above given. Against our attempted explanation, as applicable to the times of Jeremiah, the alternate use by him of the terms Hebrew and Jew might also deserve consideration, Jer.

xxxiv. 9.

In the case of a Hebrew servant, the right of master is gained [according to the Rabbins, -TR.] by purchase or document [, which Buxtorf defines to be, scriptum obligationis vel contractus, instrumentum literarum vel contractus. — TR.], and he becomes free again by the expiration of the six years, or still.earlier by the arrival of the year of jubilee, or by the reimbursement of that part of the purchase money which has not yet been paid off by service. The Hebrew maid-servant becomes, moreover, free by the appearance of the signs of puberty (ince then the right of the father over her ceases, comp. Kethuboth, IV. 4). The servant whose ear has been bored with an awl becomes free in the year of jubilee, and upon the death of the master. Qiddushin, 1, 2; Maimonides on the

same.

9. Michaelis introduces into his discussion respecting servants an unprofitable misapprehension, when he gives not only to this particular section, but to the whole the title of "Slavery." although he labors to show how strongly the lawgiver has expressed his disapprobation of the slavery prevailing among other people, and how carefully he has mitigated it. With what right can a man-servant who becomes free the seventh year, or even he who goes out in the year of jubilee, or a maid-servant when her master, upon his failure to perform certain obligations to her, is required immediately to send away free, — with what right can all these be called slaves? [Leibeigne the Latin term mancipia. — TR.]

the

919

est sense. For all the powers which we are accustomed to connect with this word, in ancient and modern times, absolute surrender of the slaves to the arbitrary will of the master, his right to chastise them without limit, to employ them in unremitting toil, and even to kill them with impunity, — all these are set aside by the Mosaic law, inasmuch as this class of servants is carefully protected by the law, and is in no way left without rights. In addition to this they were at liberty, as remarked above, to become naturalized, a step which must sooner or later have resulted in their independence and complete fusion with the nation. No prejudice, such as existed, and still exists, among other nations, according to which slaves are regarded as a sort of inferior beings, no such prejudice opposed itself among the Hebrews, even to a family connection with servants. An example in point may be found in 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35, (see chap. 109), where an Israelite gives his daughter to an Egyptian servant, whereby he becomes heir to his master. In the same manner Abraham has no scruples about installing his servant Eliezer as heir to his great possessions and his dignity as an emir, Gen. xv. 2, 3. These regulations could not but be followed by the most salutary results. By their means those who, under the title of "slaves," constitute in other nations a class distinct from the rest of the population, extremely dangerous, and capable of being kept in order only by the most severe, sometimes the most barbarous, laws, were among the Israelites received more intimately into the patriarchal family-circle; the feeling of distance and hostility which they naturally brought with them was, as it were, gradually dried up; and the general free spirit of the Mosaic institutions operated continually to soften down the contrast, otherwise so odious, between the condition of master and that of servant." Hence, as Michae

920

919 Precisely the same view is taken by the law of the Mishnah; although in some particulars this has apparently not kept itself entirely free from the influence of that feature of the Roman jurisprudence which regards the slave as chattel property.

"One of the carliest and most touching memorials of the manner in which

lis has already remaked, in the history of the Hebrew state during its existence of fifteen centuries, we hear nothing respecting servile wars, as in the Roman empire, or any other dissatisfaction on the part of the servants. In these circumstances no better fortune could befall one destined to slavery than that he should be sold into Palestine, where the mildest lot awaited him, and where also, by means of a special law, Deut. xxiii. 16, 17, forbidding the surrender of the servant who had escaped from his master and permitting him to settle at pleasure in the land, he found, as now in England (to which also Michaelis and Wallon, droit d'Asyle, refer) a protecting asylum the moment he set his foot on the soil of Palestine.

921

In the passage of the law now under consideration, purchase is named as the manner in which gentile men-servants and maid-servants were acquired, just as in the case of Hebrew servants. Elsewhere also, as for example, Ex. xii. 44, the servant is designated as "one bought for money (50 nap, mignath keseph). In addition to these were those born in the house" (yelide bayith 22), Gen. xvii. 23. These are the children of the men-servants and maid-servants who have come into the master's possession, as also (§3) the children of the maid-servant married to a Hebrew servant who remained with her master. These we find also designated by another term, "the son of thy handmaid," Ex. xxiii. 12.923

servants were treated in the Hebrew family offers itself in the circumstance that the oak under which Rachael's handmaid was buried received the name of the oak of weeping. Gen. xxxv. 8.

921 The average price of a servant or handmaid appears from Ex. xxi. 32, (see chap. 73 §1) to have been thirty shekels. Compare the valuation of persons, Lev. xxvii. 2, seq., chap. 43. § 4.

922

ילידי בית 918

923 According to the law of the Mishnah the right of master over a Canaanitish servant is acquired (just as in the case of immovable estate) by purchase, by document, or by actual appropriation (having one's self served by him).

; עבד כנעני נקנה בכסף ובשטר ובחזקה : The words of the Mishnah are]

a

Canaanitish servant is acquired by money, by document, and by possession. The latter mode of acquisition is thus explained by Maimonides as quoted by Surenhusius, Mishna, Qiddushin, I. 3; "If he has taken off or put on his master's shoes, or carried his garments after him to the bath; undressed, washed, anointed, rubbed, dressed, raised him up; or if the master has raised up the servant, he