It was a typical Samarian market day—crowds and noise; buying and selling; idle rich and drudging poor; haughty military grandees, in their resplendent attires, and cowed, miserable beggars in their rags; color and laughter at the bazaars, and tears and sorrow at the auction block just across the way—always crowds and always noise.
The auctioneer was shouting above the general din the good points of a man who had just been placed on the block.
"To be sold till the Jubilee Year," he cried. "How much am I bid?"
A clerk read the court's decree that this man was to be sold for debt. It was signed by the judges, who sat in the East Gate of Samaria. The document was a cold, formal statement. It did not take into account the reason why this man, in the full vigor of manhood, had fallen into debt. His creditors had pushed the poor fellow hard for their money. He could not pay. He pleaded with the judges that the sickness of his wife and children had reduced him to direst need, but it was without avail. He could not pay his debts and must work them off as a slave for seven years; that was the decree of the court. After seven years he would be a free man again. Cases like this were very common.
The keen eye of the auctioneer noted a man at the far edge of the platform who had made several attempts as if to bid during the sale. He was a middle-aged man, tall and thin, but wiry. His face was bronzed from exposure to sun and wind. He wore a long woolen mantel that completely covered him, even to the sandals on his feet.
"How much am I bid?" The auctioneer spoke the question directly to this country yokel, while he winked at the crowd in front of him. He thought that the fellow who came to the market clad in such clothes, instead of his Sabbath best, had little money with him to buy a slave, and less use for one. So he spoke the question again to the "farmer," expecting an answer that would make the crowd laugh and put them in good humor.
The country yokel again made as if to speak but changed his mind and backed away, facing the auctioneer.
He had hardly backed three paces when he bumped into some one. He was pushed violently forward, and, before he could recover, winced under a stinging crack from a whip.
He turned quickly and faced two brutish looking men, swearing at his awkwardness and cursing his impudence for being in the way.
The "farmer" could have given a good account of himself in a square fight with these men, but he knew better than to start a fight with them. They were the foreguards to a splendid pleasure outfit—the outfit of a very rich Samarian merchant. A fight meant arrest and punishment at the hands of Samarian judges, whether he was in the right or not. The rich of Samaria had the judges under their thumbs. A stranger or a poor man, in fact, anyone who had no influence in Samaria, stood little chance of getting justice.