(b.) Of Egyptian slavery enough is known to show that they bought slaves brought in from other nations, holding therefore a property right in them, and that they constituted a menial class in society.
The condition of the Israelites under oppression there was peculiar. Manifestly they were not held by individual Egyptians as their personal property, but rather by the crown. The king of Egypt appears as the great slave-holder of the Hebrew people, making levies upon them for laborers at his pleasure, and exacting theseverest tasks with no limitations but his own will on the one hand and their possible endurance on the other. The question of letting the people go was (at least mainly) personal to himself and to his throne. His merciless severity would naturally tend to make slavery in Egypt heartlessly cruel. Laws to restrain masters from severity could not be thought of under such kings. It is easy to see that when, at and after Sinai, the Lord came to legislate for the Hebrew people, fresh from Egyptian usages and laws, there was abundant occasion for statutes to modify the severities of human bondage. With telling force the Lord could say—Never oppress your servants; ye know how oppression feels!
The Jubilee.—(Lev. 25).
In this chapter and here only we have an account of this peculiar institution. The following points in it deserve special attention.
1. Its main scope and purpose were manifestly of the same sort with those of the Sabbatic year—a year of rest from labor, of recuperation for both the laborer and his lands, and of joy in the God of their mercies. Particularly it made provision for restoring lands which had been alienated by any means during the forty-nine intervening years. On this eventful year all lands were to return to the original proprietor and to his estate. The law provided that alienated lands might be redeemed at any time for a price graduated by the years intervening before the Jubilee. But if the poor man was unable to redeem his land and had no relative or friend to redeem it for him before the Jubilee, it then returned to him by the statute with no redemption price.
2. We must note its bearing upon Hebrew servants and its relation to the seventh year emancipation law.——It treats of two classes of servants of Hebrew blood; those who had sold themselves, because of their poverty, to a fellow Israelite; and those who for the same reason had sold themselves to a wealthy foreigner residing in the land. As to the former class, the law enjoins kind treatment; puts strongly the distinction between the hired and the bond-servant—permitting servants ofHebrew birth to be held in the former state but not in the latter; and finally gave him and his children freedom at the Jubilee.——Inasmuch as the seventh year emancipation law applied to this very class of servants, if it were enforced there could be no Hebrew servants to go out at the Jubilee except those who had not yet served six full years. This seems to be the bearing of the law of the Jubilee upon Hebrew servants. We can not assume that it superseded the seventh year law and took its place. The historic passage (Jer. 34: 8–17) would quite forbid such a construction.
As to the second class—those who had sold themselves to a foreigner—the law gave the right of redemption to any of his friends or to himself, and fixed the terms, providing for his freedom at the Jubilee.
3. The most difficult point is, the bearing of the Jubilee, if any, upon servants of foreign birth. Did it, or did it not, provide for their emancipation?
The passage (Lev. 25: 9, 10) seems very strong in favor of universal liberty, not omitting bond-servants of foreign birth. The words are—“Proclaim liberty through all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” This proclamation was made with sound of trumpet, ringing out its shrill blast over all the land. Now let it be considered: If foreigners were not included, and if the seventh year emancipation law had been duly enforced, there could have been but a meager showing of freedmen—only those few Hebrew servants who had not filled out their six years of service. Is it credible that so much proclamation and so much public display could have meant only the emancipation of say one-tenth or one-twentieth of all the servants in the land?——At any point of their history the number of foreign servants ought to have greatly exceeded the number of Hebrew birth—for two reasons:——(a.) The law encouraged the taking of foreigners into this relation:——and (b.) They continued in it at least till the Jubilee—their maximum service being therefore forty-nine years, awhile the maximum service of the Hebrew-born was only six. Therefore I urge that a proclamation so high sounding and in terms so absolutely universal can not have left out the great majority of bondmen in the land.