the Jebusite is a householder, and more, is praised as acting like a king toward king David, who bought property of him whereon to build an altar; and yet, forsooth, they were not inhabitants!
But, as if to prevent equivocation, Moses defines the phrase "all the inhabitants;" "Ye shall return every man to his possession, and ye shall return every man to his family." Not every Hebrew, but every man, the same generic term as in the law against killing or stealing "a man;" it is unqualified and universal. Thus with one blow this noble law strikes down the two principal sources of social oppression—monopoly of land and monopoly of labor. All who had by poverty been compelled to part with the old farm and homestead received it back; all claims of service against any person, however mean and humble, were canceled; and the land and its inhabitants were again free as God had made them.
These accumulated arguments, each separately weighty and forcible, but collectively insurmountable, we think prove conclusively that the form of servitude among the Israelites was not chattel slavery, and that there is no sanction or authority for it in the Mosaic laws and regulations.
Thus in Jewish history we see the Israelites groaning under Egyptian bondage, and God's arm outstretched to rescue them when fugitives, and punish their pursuers—a warning to all such thereafter; we see laws enacted to prevent the existence of chattelism among them, by restricting the master's power, and securing the servant's freedom at regular intervals, and the opposite doctrine of equality among men asserted; we see the Israelites disobeying these commands, and adopting, with the idolatry of their neighbors, their slavery also, and God's fiery wrath denounced on them for it by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar in the destruction and captivity of the state.
NEW TESTAMENT.
Teachings of Christ.
Ages pass, the Jews are restored to their land, but the Roman eagle overshadows it and all the civilized world. Despotism is enthroned; and the idea that the world and
its people are the property of Rome and its citizens is questioned only in murmuring whispers. All the relations of Roman life partake of this idea of absolutism; slavery is every where, liberty nowhere. Then the glad tidings of Messiah's coming is announced to an expectant world. Whom will he side with—the crushed and despairing millions, or the aristocratic and haughty few? Will he adopt and develop the idea of equality found in Jewish law, or the principle now ascendant,—"Might makes right,"—the Roman slave law? Let him answer.
Standing in the synagogue at Nazareth, the home of his boyhood, amid his expectant friends and relations, he reads (Luke 4:16-21) from Isaiah, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book and sat down, ... and began to say to them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." There is his commission and the constitution of his kingdom. Can any thing be more explicit?
Christ himself comes with glad tidings for the poor, to destroy slavery and oppression, and establish liberty. Rejoice, ye poor, taught hitherto that ye were made only for the service of the rich; there is glad tidings for you. Rejoice, captives and slaves, "bruised" with the lash and fetter; God comes "to preach deliverance to the captives, liberty to them that are bruised, and the acceptable year (the Jubilee) of the Lord."