himself, which certainly does not come under the designation of
involuntary servitude; second, the appropriation of captives
taken in war, and the buying from the heathen.
With regard to the servitude of the Hebrew by a voluntary
sale of himself, such servitude, by the statute-law of the land,
came to an end once in seven years; so that the worst that
could be made of it was that it was a voluntary contract to
labour for a certain time.
With regard to the servants bought of the heathen, or of
foreigners in the land, there was a statute by which their servi-
tude was annulled once in fifty years.
It has been supposed, from a disconnected view of one par-
ticular passage in the Mosaic code, that God directly counte-
nanced the treating of a slave, who was a stranger and foreigner,
with more rigour and severity than a Hebrew slave. That this
was not the case will appear from the following enactments,
which have express reference to strangers:--
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.
Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him; for ye were strangers in
the land of Egypt.--Exodus xxii. 21.
Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger.--Exodus
xxiii. 9.
The Lord your God regardeth not persons. He doth execute the judgment of
the fatherless and the widow, and loveth the stranger in giving him food and
raiment; love ye therefore the stranger.--Deut. x. 17-19.
Judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is
with him. Deut. i. 16.
Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger.--Deut. xxvii. 19.
Instead of making slavery an oppressive institution with re-
gard to the stranger, it was made by God a system within which
heathen were adopted into the Jewish state, educated and in-
structed in the worship of the true God, and in due time eman-
cipated.
In the first place, they were protected by law from personal
violence. The loss of an eye or a tooth, through the violence of
his master, took the slave out of that master's power entirely,
and gave him his liberty. Then, further than this, if a master's
conduct towards a slave was such as to induce him to run away,
it was enjoined that nobody should assist in retaking him, and
that he should dwell wherever he chose in the land, without
molestation. Third, the law secured to the slave a very con-
siderable portion of time, which was to be at his own disposal.
Every seventh year was to be at his own disposal.--Lev. xxv. 4-6.
Every seventh day was, of course, secured to him.--Ex. xx. 10.
The servant had the privilege of attending the three great
national festivals, when all the males of the nation were required
to appear before God in Jerusalem.--Ex. xxxiv. 23.
Each of these festivals, it is computed, took up about three
weeks. The slave also was to be a guest in the family festivals.
In Deut. xii. 12, it is said, “Ye shall rejoice before the Lord your
God, ye, and your sons, and your daughters, and your men-
servants, and your maid-servants, and the Levite that is within
your gates.
Dr. Barnes estimates that the whole amount of time which a
servant could have to himself would amount to about twenty-
three years out of fifty, or nearly one-half his time.
Again, the servant was placed on an exact equality with his
master in all that concerned his religious relations.
Now, if we recollect that in the time of Moses, the God and
the king of the nation were one and the same person, and that
the civil and religious relation were one and the same, it will
appear that the slave and his master stood on an equality in
their civil relation with regard to the state.
Thus in Deuteronomy xxix. is described a solemn national
convocation, which took place before the death of Moses, when
the whole nation were called upon, after a solemn review of their
national history, to renew their constitutional oath of allegiance
to their supreme Magistrate and Lord.
On this occasion, Moses addressed them thus:--“Ye stand
this day, all of you, before the Lord your God; your captains
of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men
of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is
in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy
water; that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord
thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh
with thee this day.”
How different is this from the cool and explicit declaration of
South Carolina with regard to the position of the American
slave!--“A slave is not generally regarded as legally capable of
Wheeler's Law of Slavery, p. 243.
being within the peace of the State. He is not a
citizen, and is not in that character entitled to her
protection.”
In all the religious services, which, as we have seen by the
constitution of the nation, were civil services, the slave and the
master mingled on terms of strict equality. There was none of
the distinction which appertains to a distinct class or caste.
“There was no special service appointed for them at unusual
seasons. There were no particular seats assigned to them, to
keep up the idea that they were a degraded class. There was
no withholding from them the instruction which the Word of
God gave about the equal rights of mankind.”
Fifthly. It was always contemplated that the slave would, as
a matter of course, choose the Jewish religion, and the service
of God, and enter willingly into all the obligations and services
of the Jewish polity.
Mr. Barnes cites the words of Maimonides, to show how this
was commonly understood by the Hebrews.--Inquiry into the
Scriptural Views of Slavery, by Albert Barnes, p. 132.
Whether a servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be pur-
chased 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; and he that is bought
with money, on the day on which his master receives him, unless the slave be un-
willing. 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 kind-
ness, for one year. After which, should he refuse so long, it is forbidden to keep
him longer than a year. And 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.
-- A sixth fundamental arrangement with regard to the Hebrew
slave was that he could never be sold. Concerning this Mr.
Barnes remarks:--
A man, in certain circumstances, might be bought by a Hebrew; but when
once bought, that was an end of the matter. There is not the slightest evidence
that any Hebrew ever sold a slave
; and any provision contemplating that was
unknown to the constitution of the commonwealth. It is said of Abraham that
he had “servants bought with money;” but there is no record of his having ever
sold one, nor is there any account of its ever having been done by Isaae or Jacob.
The only instance of a sale of this kind among the patriarchs is that act of the
brothers of Joseph, which is held up to so strong reprobation, by which they sold
him to the Ishmaelites. Permission is given in the law of Moses to buy a ser-
vant, but none is given to sell him again; and the fact that no such permission is
given is full proof that it was not contemplated. When he entered into that re-
lation it became certain that there could be no change, unless it was voluntary
on his part (comp. Ex. xxi. 5, 6), or unless his master gave him his freedom, until
the not distant period fixed by law when he could be free. There is no arrangement
in the law of Moses by which servants were to be taken in payment of their
master's debts, by which they were to be given as pledges, by which they were
to be consigned to the keeping of others, or by which they were to be given away
as presents. There are no instances occurring in the Jewish history in which
any of these things were done. This law is positive in regard to the Hebrew
servant, and the principle of the law would apply to all others. Lev. xxv. 42
“They shall not be sold as bondmen.” In all these respects there was a marked
difference, and there was doubtless intended to be, between the estimate affixed
to servants and to property.
-- As to the practical workings of this system, as they are deve-
loped in the incidents of sacred history, they are precisely what
we should expect from such a system of laws. For instance,
we find it mentioned incidentally in the ninth chapter of the
first book of Samuel, that when Saul and his servant came to
see Samuel, that Samuel, in anticipation of his being crowned
king, made a great feast for him; and in verse twenty-second
the history says, “And Samuel took Saul and his servant, and brought them into the parlour, and made them sit in the
chiefest place.”
We read, also, in 2 Samuel ix. 10, of a servant of Saul who
had large estates, and twenty servants of his own.
We find in 1 Chron. ii. 34, the following incident related:
--“Now, Sheshan had no sons, but daughters. And Sheshan
had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Jarha. And
Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha, his servant, to wife.”
Does this resemble American slavery?
We find, moreover, that this connexion was not considered
at all disgraceful, for the son of this very daughter was enrolled
among the valiant men of David's army.--1 Chron. ii. 41.
In fine, we are not surprised to discover that the institutions
of Moses in effect so obliterated all the characteristics of slavery,
that it had ceased to exist among the Jews long before the time
of Christ. Mr. Barnes asks:--
On what evidence would a man rely to prove that slavery existed at all in the
land in the time of the later prophets of the Maccabees, or when the Saviour ap-
peared? There are abundant proofs, as we shall see, that it existed in Greece and
Rome; but what is the evidence that it existed in Judea? So far as I have been
able to ascertain, there are no declarations that it did to be found in the canonical
books of the Old Testament or in Josephus. There are no allusion to laws and
customs which imply that it was prevalent; there are no coins or medals which
suppose it; there are no facts which do not admit of an easy explanation on the
supposition that slavery had ceased.
-- Two objections have been urged to the interpretations which
have been given of two of the enactments before quoted.
1. It is said that the enactment, “Thou shalt not return to
his master the servant that has escaped,” &c., relates only to
servants escaping from heathen masters to the Jewish nation.
The following remarks on this passage are from Professor
Stowe's lectures:
Deuteronomy xxiii. 15, 16.--These words make a statute
which, like every other statute, is to be strictly construed.
There is nothing in the language to limit its meaning; there is
nothing in the connexion in which it stands to limit its
meaning; nor is there anything in the history of the Mosaic
legislation to limit the application of this statute to the case
of servants escaping from foreign masters. The assumption
that it is thus limited is wholly gratuitous, and, so far as the
Bible is concerned, unsustained by any evidence whatever. It
is said that it would be absurd for Moses to enact such a law
while servitude existed among the Hebrews. It would indeed
be absurd, were it the object of the Mosaic legislation to
sustain and perpetuate slavery; but if it were the object of
Moses to limit and to restrain, and finally to extinguish slavery,
this statute was admirably adapted to his purpose. That it
was the object of Moses to extinguish and not to perpetuate
slavery is perfectly clear from the whole course of his legislation
on the subject. Every slave was to have all the religious privi-
leges and instruction to which his master's children were
entitled. Every seventh year released the Hebrew slave, and
every fiftieth year produced universal emancipation. If a
master, by an accidental or an angry blow, deprived the slave
of a tooth, the slave, by that act, was for ever free. And
so by the statute, in question, if the slave felt himself oppressed,
he could make his escape, and, though the master was not
forbidden to retake him if he could, every one was forbidden
to aid his master in doing it. This statute, in fact, made the
servitude voluntary, and that was what Moses intended.
Moses dealt with slavery precisely as he dealt with polygamy
and with war--without directly prohibiting, he so restricted as
to destroy it; instead of cutting down the poison-tree, he
girdled it, and left it to die of itself. There is a statute in
regard to military expeditions precisely analogous to this cele-
brated fugitive slave-law. Had Moses designed to perpetuate
a warlike spirit among the Hebrews, the statute would have
been pre-eminently absurd; but, if it was his design to crush
it, and to render foreign wars almost impossible, the statute
was exactly adapted to his purpose. It rendered foreign mili-
tary service, in effect, entirely voluntary, just as the fugitive-law
rendered domestic servitude, in effect, voluntary.
The law may be found at length in Deuteronomy xx. 5-10;
and let it be carefully read and compared with the fugitive
slave-law already adverted to. Just when the men are drawn
up ready for the expedition--just at the moment when even the
hearts of brave men are apt to fail them--the officers are
commanded to address the soldiers thus:--
What man of you is there that hath built a new house, and hath not
dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and
&n
bsp; another man dedicate it.
And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard and hath not yet eaten of
it? Let him also go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and
another man eat of it.
And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her?
Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man
take her.
And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What
man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go and return unto his
house, lest his brethren's heart faint, as well as his heart.
Now, consider that the Hebrews were exclusively an agri-
cultural people, that warlike parties necessarily consist mainly
of young men, and that by this statute every man who had
built a house which he had not yet lived in, and every man
who had planted a vineyard from which he had not yet gathered
fruit, and every man who had engaged a wife whom he had
not yet married, and everyone who felt timid and faint-hearted,
was permitted and commanded to go home--how many would
there probably be left? Especially when the officers, instead
of exciting their military ardour by visions of glory and of
splendour, were commanded to repeat it over and over again,
that they would probably die in the battle and never get home,
and hold this idea up before them as if it were the only idea
suitable for their purpose, how excessively absurd is the whole
statute considered as a military law--just as absurd as the
Mosaic fugitive-law, understood in its widest application, is,
considered as a slave-law!
It is clearly the object of this military law to put an end to
military expeditions; for, with this law in force, such expedi-
tions must always be entirely volunteer expeditions. Just as
clearly was it the object of the fugitive slave-law to put an end
to compulsory servitude; for, with that law in force, the servi-
tude must in effect be, to a great extent, voluntary--and that
is just what the legislator intended. There is no possibility of
limiting the law, on account of its absurdity, when understood
in its widest sense, except by proving that the Mosaic legisla-
tion was designed to perpetuate and not to limit slavery; and
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