Noticeably, this law provides for the family rights of the servant. If he had brought his wife with him into this state, he took her out with himself, and of course his children also. If his master had given him a wife, he retained her because of his property interest in herservices, and her children with her for humanity’s sake; for children under six years of age need their mother’s care. Wives in that age of the world were paid for.
Let it be noticed, the law assumes that possibly the servant may love his wife and his children and even his master so well that he chooses not to leave them. Very well; if he will consent to come before the judges and in a solemn judicial manner, testify to this love of his heart, and moreover, will consent to endure the rather uncomfortable operation of having his ear bored through with an awl, then he may remain forever—i. e. during life. But the discomforts of this operation were intended to bear somewhat against this unlimited servitude. The law seemed to say to every servant—“It would probably be better for you to be your own master and live in freedom, rather than in even this very comfortable servitude.”——Every provision of this statute had a purpose. The servant must be brought before the judges to express in this public manner his choice to remain in servitude; for this method would make it impossible for the master to misrepresent the will of his servant. Moreover, it seems probable that boring the ear was no badge of honor but the opposite, and therefore would bear against the man’s choice of perpetual servitude.
The law made special provision for the case of female servants. The original statute (Ex. 21: 7–11) put her case on a different footing from that of her brother. “She shall not go out as the men-servants do.” The language—“If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant”—may seem at first view to be a case of slave-sale, involving real property in human flesh and bones. A closer examination will show that it comes under the usage of selling daughters to become wives; for this purchase “betrothed her to her master,” or to “his son,” and the law made special provision for her rights as such; viz. that in case her master is not pleased with her, he shall let her be redeemed, “and shall have no power to sell her unto a strange nation.” If betrothed to his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter; if the son take another wife, he shall not abate from his duty as a husband toward her; and if he refuse to do all the law demands, she is free—redeemed by law,“without money.”——These statutes of course shape themselves to the existing usages in respect to polygamy, concubinage, and easy divorce, sedulously protecting the rights of a female servant under these most unfavorable usages.
It seems probable that these kind and considerate provisions failed to protect her rights as fully as the spirit of the law intended, and therefore a further modification appears at a later period; for Deut. 15: 17 declares that the six years’ emancipation law shall apply to her also as truly as to her brother;—“and unto thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise.”
5. In view of the fact that what we may call “religious privileges” included rest from labor and more or less of religious and social festivity, the law was very specific in stipulating that the man-servant and the maid-servant must share in all these equally with the son and the daughter. We see this in the law of the Sabbath; in the feast upon the second tithes (Deut. 12: 17, 18); and in two of the great festivals, viz. the Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut. 16: 11, 14).——Thus they were put religiously and socially upon the same footing as children in the family. No ban of exclusion, no stigma of caste, could attach to their condition so long as these statutes were duly observed.
6. By usage and without the necessity of statute, Hebrew servants held property. The old American doctrine—“The slave can own nothing”—had no place in the system of Hebrew servitude. The proof is twofold:——(a) The statutes provided that “if able he might redeem himself” (Lev. 25: 49). This permission would be only a taunting insult if in fact no Hebrew servant could hold property.——(b). The light of history bears witness: Ziba was a servant of the house of Saul; but he had servants under him—a round score; “fifteen sons and twenty servants” (2 Sam. 9: 10 and 19: 17), and seems to have had charge of cultivating Saul’s estates.
Thus manifold and effective were the humane provisions which softened the severities of slavery, toning them down to a very tolerable system of servitude.
The Slavery that Existed before Moses.
We have spoken of Hebrew servitude as a modified system—which raises the question—“modified” from what? What was the pre-existing system upon which these modifications were superinduced? A full answer must include (a) The patriarchal system as it appears in the case of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: and (b) The system of Egypt and perhaps other contemporary nations.
(a.) In the patriarchal system servitude could not possibly have been compulsory. It must have been voluntary. Force, coercion, was utterly out of the question. Abraham had neither army nor police to hold his slaves in bondage. In fact they were his armed soldiers as against freebooting incursions or any hostile assault whatever. Manifestly they lived with him while they chose—no longer. Some of them rose to bear important responsibilities, e. g. Eliezer (Gen. 24); his two young men who went with him and Isaac to Moriah (Gen. 22).——Isaac “had great store of servant” (Gen. 26: 14), but there is not the least intimation that they were entailed as part of his estate to either Esau or Jacob; or that he received them by inheritance from Abraham.——Jacob had many servants (Gen. 30: 43), and in fact must have had to help him in the care of his flocks and herds: but the history shows that he did not take them with him into Egypt. Joseph’s invitation left out the servants (Gen. 45: 10, 11.), and the record specifies all the family except the servants and gives us the actual enumeration—all servants omitted (Gen. 46: 5–26). Property in servants in the American sense, there was none.