[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 ownership 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 ownership of man, is the _man himself_, robbed of personal ownership. 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 _shifting 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."
From the direction to the Israelites to "buy" their servants, and from the phrase "bought with money," applied to Abraham"s servants, it is argued that they were articles of _property_. The sole ground for this belief is the _terms_ "buy" and "bought with money," and such an import to these terms when applied to servants is a.s.sumed, not only in the absence of all proof, but in the face of evidence to the contrary. How much might be saved, if in discussion, the thing to be proved was always _a.s.sumed_. To _beg_ the question in debate, what economy of midnight oil! what a forestaller of premature wrinkles, and grey hairs! Instead of protracted investigation into Scripture usage, and painful collating of pa.s.sages, and cautiously tracing minute relations, to find the meaning of Scripture terms, let every man boldly resolve to interpret the language of the oldest book in the world, by the usages of his own time and place, and the work is done. And then what a march of mind!
Instead of _one_ revelation, they might be multiplied as the drops of the morning! Every man might take orders as an inspired interpreter, with an infallible clue to the mind of the Spirit, if he only understood the dialect of his own neighborhood! We repeat it, the only ground of proof that these terms are to be interpreted to mean, when applied to servants in the Bible, the same that they mean when applied to our _slaves, is the terms themselves._
What a Babel-jargon it would make of the Bible to take it for granted that the sense in which words are _now_ used is the _inspired_ sense.
David says, "I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried." What a miracle-worker, to stop the earth in its revolution! Rather too fast.
Two hundred years ago, _prevent_ was used in the strict Latin sense to _come before_, or _antic.i.p.ate_. It is always used in this sense in the Old and New Testaments. David"s expression, in the English of the nineteenth century, is, "Before the dawning of the morning I cried," or, I began to cry before day-break. "So my prayer shall _prevent_ thee."
"Let us _prevent_ his face with thanksgiving." "Mine eyes _prevent_ the night watches." "We shall not _prevent_ them that are asleep," &c. In almost every chapter of the Bible, words are used in a sense now nearly or quite obsolete, and sometimes in a sense totally _opposite_ to their present meaning. A few examples follow: "Oftentimes I purposed to come to you, but was _let_ (hindered) hitherto." "And the four _beasts_ (living ones) fell down and worshipped G.o.d,"--Whosoever shall _offend_ (cause to sin) one of these little ones,"--Go out into the high ways and _compel_ (urge) them to come in,"--Only let your _conversation_ (habitual conduct or course of life) be as becometh the Gospel,"--They that seek me _early_ (earnestly) shall find me,--Give me _by and by_ (now) in a charger, the head of John the Baptist,"--So when tribulation or persecution ariseth _by-and-by_ (immediately) they are offended.
Nothing is more mutable than language. Words, like bodies, are continually throwing off particles and absorbing others. So long as they are mere _representatives,_ elected by the whims of universal suffrage, their meaning will be a perfect volatile, and to cork it up for the next century is an employment sufficiently silly, (to speak within bounds,) for a modern Bible dictionary maker. There never was a shallower conceit than that of establishing the sense attached to a word centuries ago, by showing what it means _now_. Pity that hyper-fashionable mantuamakers and milliners were not a little quicker at taking hints from some of our Doctors of Divinity. How easily they could save their pious customers all qualms of conscience about the weekly shiftings of fashion, by demonstrating that the last importation of Parisian indecency, just now flaunting here on promenade, was the identical style of dress in which the pious Sarah kneaded cakes for the angels, the modest Rebecca drew water for the camels of Abraham"s servants. Since such fashions are rife in Chestnut-street and Broadway _now_, they _must_ have been in Canaan and Pandanaram four thousand years ago!
II. 1. The inference that the word buy, used to describe the procuring of servants, means procuring them as _chattels_, seems based upon the fallacy--that whatever _costs_ money _is_ money; that whatever or whoever you pay money _for_, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it _proves_ that it is property. The children of Israel were required to _purchase_ their first-born out from under the obligations of the priesthood, Numb. xviii. 15, 16; Exod. x.x.xiv. 20.
This custom is kept up to this day 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_. So the Israelites were required to _pay money_ for their own souls. This is called sometimes a ransom, sometimes an atonement. Were their _souls_ therefore marketable commodities?
2. Bible saints _bought_ their wives. Boaz _bought_ Ruth. "So Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I _purchased_ to be my wife." Ruth iv. 10. Hosea bought his wife. "So I _bought_ her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley." Hosea iii. 2. Jacob _bought_ his wives Rachel and Leah, and not having money, paid for them in labor--seven years a piece. Gen. xxix.
15-29. Moses probably bought his wife in the same way, and paid for her by his labor, as the servant of her father. Exod. ii. 21. Shechem, when negotiating with Jacob and his sons for Dinah, says, "What ye shall say unto me, I will _give_. Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say unto me." Gen. x.x.xiv. 11, 12. David purchased Michal, Saul"s daughter, and Othniel, Achsab, the daughter of Caleb, by performing perilous services for the benefit of their fathers-in-law. 1 Sam. xviii. 25-27; Judges i. 12, 13. That the purchase of wives, either with money or by service was the general practice, is plain from such pa.s.sages as Exod. xxii. 17, and 1 Sam. xviii. 25. Among the Jews of the present day this usage exists, though it is now a mere form, there being no _real_ purchase. Yet among their marriage ceremonies, is one called "marrying by the penny." The coincidences, not only in the methods of procuring wives and servants, and in the terms employed in describing the transactions, but in the prices paid for each, are worthy of notice. The highest price of wives (virgins) and servants was the same. Compare Deut. xxii. 28, 29, and Exod. xxii. 17, with Lev. xxvii. 2-8. The _medium_ price of wives and servants was the same. Compare Hosea iii. 2, with Exod. xxi. 2. Hosea appears to have paid one half in money and the other in grain. Further, the Israelitish female bought-servants were _wives_, their husbands and their masters being the same persons. Exod. xxi. 8, and Judges xix. 3, 27. If _buying_ servants among the Jews shows that they were property, then buying _wives_ shows that _they_ were property. The words in the original used to describe the one, describe the other. Why not 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. How far gone is the Church from primitive purity! How slow to emulate ill.u.s.trious examples! Alas! Patriarchs and prophets are followed afar off! When will pious husbands live up to their Bible privileges, and become partakers with Old Testament worthies in the blessedness of a husband"s rightful immunities! Surely professors of religion now, are _bound_ to buy and hold their wives as property! Refusing so to do, is to question the morality of those "good old" wife-trading "patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," with the prophets, and a host of whom the world was not worthy.
The use of the word buy, to describe the procuring of wives, is not peculiar to the Hebrew. In the Syriac language, the common expression for "the married," or "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 Hebrew word translated _buy_, is, like other words, modified by the nature of the subject to which it is applied. Eve says, "I have _gotten_ (bought) a man of the Lord." She named him Cain, that is, _bought_. "He that heareth reproof, getteth (buyeth) understanding", Prov. xv. 32. So in Isa. xi. 11. "The Lord shall set his hand again to recover (to _buy_) the remnant of his people." So Ps. lxxviii. 54. He brought them to this mountain which his right hand had _purchased_, i.e. gotten. Jer. xiii.
4. "Take the girdle that thou hast got" (bought.) Neh. v. 8. "We of our ability have _redeemed_ (bought) our brethren that were sold to the heathen." Here "_bought_" is not applied to persons who were made slaves, but to those taken _out_ of slavery. Prov. 8. 22. "The Lord possessed (bought) me in the beginning of his way before his works of old." Prov. xix. 8. "He that _getteth_ (buyeth) wisdom loveth his own soul." Prov. xvi. 16. "How much better is it to _get_ (buy) wisdom than gold?" Finally, to _buy_ is a _secondary_ meaning of the Hebrew word _Kana_.
4. Even at this day 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 "bought." This is now the current word in West India newspapers. So a few years since in New-York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and even now in New-Jersey servants are "_bought_" as really as in Virginia. And the different senses in which the same word is used in the two states, puts no man in a quandary, whose common sense amounts to a modic.u.m.
So under the system of legal _indenture_ in Illinois, servants now are "_bought_."[A] A short time since, hundreds of foreigners who came to this country were "bought" annually. By voluntary contract they engaged to work for their purchasers a given time to pay for their pa.s.sage. This cla.s.s of persons called "redemptioners," consisted at one time of thousands. Mult.i.tudes are _bought out_ of slavery by themselves or others, and remove into free states. Under the same roof with the writer is a "servant bought with money." A few weeks since, she was a slave. As soon as "bought," she was a slave no longer. Alas! for our leading politicians if "buying" men makes them "chattels." The Whigs say that Benton and Rives were "bought" by the administration with the surplus revenue; and the other party, that Clay and Webster were "bought" by the Bank. The histories of the revolution tell us that Benedict Arnold was "bought" by British gold. Did that make him an article of property? When a northern clergyman marries a rich southern widow, country gossip hits off the indecency with this current phrase, "The cotton bags _bought_ him." When Robert Walpole said, "Every man has his price, and whoever will pay it can _buy_ him," and when John Randolph said, while the Missouri question was pending, "The northern delegation is in the market; give me money enough, and I can _buy_ them," they both meant _just what they said_. When the temperance publications tell us that candidates for office _buy_ men with whiskey; and the oracles of street tattle, that the court, district attorney, and jury, in the late trial of Robinson were _bought_, we have no floating visions of "chattels personal," man auctions, or coffles.
[Footnote A: The following statute is now in force in the state of Illinois--"No negro, mulatto, or Indian, shall at any time _purchase_ any servant other than of their own complexion: and if any of the persons aforesaid shall presume to _purchase_ a white servant, such servant shall immediately become free, and shall be so held, deemed, and taken."]
The transaction between Joseph and the Egyptians gives a clue to the meaning attached to "buy" and "bought with money." See Gen. xlvii.
18-26. The Egyptians proposed to Joseph to become servants, and that he should _buy_ them. When the bargain was closed, Joseph said, "Behold I have _bought you_ this day," and yet it is plain that neither of the parties dreamed that the persons _bought_ were in any sense articles of property, but merely that they became thereby obligated to labor for the government on certain conditions, as a _compensation_ for the entire support of themselves and families during the famine. And that the idea attached to "buy us," and "behold I have bought you," was merely the procuring of services voluntarily offered, and secured by contract, as a return for _value received_, and not at all that the Egyptians were bereft of their personal ownership, and made articles of property. And this buying of _services_ (they were to give one-fifth part of their crops to Pharaoh) is called in Scripture usage, _buying the persons_.
This case deserves special notice, as it is the only one where the whole transaction of buying servants is detailed--the preliminaries, the process, the mutual acquiescence, and the permanent relation resulting therefrom. In all other instances, the _mere fact_ is stated without entering into particulars. In this case, the whole process is laid open.
1. The persons "bought," _sold themselves_, and of their own accord.
2. Obtaining permanently the _services_ of persons, or even a portion of them, is called "buying" those persons. The objector, at the outset, a.s.sumes that servants were bought of _third_ persons; and thence infers that they were articles of property. This is sheer _a.s.sumption_. Not a single instance is recorded, of a servant being sold by any one but himself; not a case, either under the patriarchal, or the Mosaic systems, in which a _master sold his servant_. That the servants who were "bought" _sold themselves_, is a fair inference from various pa.s.sages 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."
The _same word_, and the same _form_ of the word, which, in the 47th verse, is rendered _sell himself_, is in the 39th verse of the same chapter, rendered _be sold_; in Deut. xxviii. 68, the same word is rendered "_be sold_." Here it is the Hithpael conjugation, which is reflexive in its force, and, like the middle voice in Greek, represents what an individual does for himself; or in his own concerns; and should manifestly have been rendered, ye shall _offer yourselves_ for sale. For a clue to Scripture usage on this point, see 1 Kings xxi. 20, 25--"Thou hast _sold thyself_ to work evil." "There was none like to Ahab that _sold himself_ to work wickedness."--2 Kings xvii. 17. "They used divination and enchantments, and _sold themselves_ to do evil."--Isa. l.
1. "For your iniquities have ye _sold yourselves_." Isa. lii. 3, "Ye have _sold yourselves_ FOR NOUGHT, and ye shall be redeemed without money." See also, Jeremiah x.x.xiv. 14--Romans vii. 14, and vi. 16--John viii. 34, and the case of Joseph and the Egyptians, already quoted.
Again, if servants were _bought of third persons_, where are the instances? In the purchase of wives, though spoken of rarely, it is generally stated that they were bought of _third_ persons. Is it not a fair inference, if servants were bought of third persons, that there would _sometimes_ have been such an intimation?
II.-THE LEADING DESIGN OF THE MOSAIC LAWS RELATING TO MASTERS AND SERVANTS, WITH AN ENUMERATION OF THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES SECURED TO SERVANTS.