The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 · Chapter 22III. —Did Persons Become Servants Voluntarily, or Were They Made Servants Against Their Wills?
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We argue that they became servants of their own accord,
1. Because to become a servant in the family of an Israelite, was to abjure idolatry, to enter into covenant with GodA, to be circumcised in token of it, to be bound to the observance of the Sabbath, of the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and to receive instruction in all the particulars of the moral and ceremonial law.
A: Maimonides, who wrote in Egypt about seven hundred years ago, a contemporary with Jarchi, and who stands with him at the head of Jewish writers, gives the following testimony on this point: "Whether a servant be born in the power of an Israelite, or whether he be purchased from the heathen, the master is to bring them both into the covenant."
"But he that is in the house is entered on the eighth day, and he that is bought with money, on the day on which the master receives him, unless the slave be unwilling. For if the master receive a grown slave, and he be unwilling, his master is to bear with him, to seek to win him over by instruction, and by love and kindness, for one year. After which, should he refuse so long, it is forbidden to keep him, longer than a year. And the master must send him back to the strangers from whence he came. For the God of Jacob will not accept any other than the worship of a willing heart."—Maimon, Hilcoth, Miloth, Chap. 1st, Sec. 8th.
The ancient Jewish Doctors agree in the testimony, that the servant from the strangers who at the close of his probationary year still refused to adopt the religion of the Mosaic system, and was on that account cut off from the family, and sent back to his own people, received a full compensation for his services, besides the payment of his expenses. But that postponement of the circumcision of the foreign servant for a year (or even at all after he had entered the family of an Israelite) of which the Mishnic doctors speak, seems to have been a mere usage. We find nothing of it in the regulations of the Mosaic system. Circumcision was manifestly a rite strictly initiatory. Whether it was a rite merely national or spiritual, or both, comes not within the scope of this inquiry. Nor does it at all affect the argument.
Were the servants forced through all these processes? Was the renunciation of idolatry compulsory? Were they dragged into covenant with God? Were they seized and circumcised by main strength? Were they compelled mechanically to chew, and swallow, the flesh of the Paschal lamb, while they abhorred the institution, despised its ceremonies, spurned the law which enjoined it, detested its author and executors, and instead of rejoicing in the deliverance which it commemmorated, bewailed it as a calamity, and cursed the day of its consummation? Were they driven from all parts of the land three times in the year up to the annual festivals? Were they drugged with instruction which they nauseated? Were they goaded through a round of ceremonies, to them senseless and disgusting mummeries; and drilled into the tactics of a creed rank with loathed abominations?
We repeat it, to become a servant, was to become a proselyte. And how did God authorize his people to make proselytes? At the point of the sword? By the terror of pains and penalties? By converting men into merchandise? Were proselyte and chattel synonymes, in the Divine vocabulary? Must a man be sunk to a thing before taken into covenant with God? Was this the stipulated condition of adoption, and the sole passport to the communion of the saints?
2. We argue the voluntariness of servants from Deut. xxiii. 15, 16, "Thou shall not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him."
As though God had said, "To deliver him up would be to recognize the right of the master to hold him. His fleeing "shows his choice—proclaims his wrongs, his master's oppressive acts, and his own claim to legal protection." You shall not force him back, and thus recognize the right of the master to hold him in such a condition as induces him to flee to others for protection." It may be objected, that this command had no reference to servants among the Israelites, but only to those of heathen masters in the surrounding nations. We answer, The regulation has no restriction. Its terms are unlimited. But the objection, even if valid, merely shifts the pressure of the difficulty to another point. Does God array his infinite authority to protect the free choice of a single servant from the heathen, and yet authorize the same persons, to crush the free choice of thousands of servants from the heathen! Suppose a case. A foreign servant flees from his master to the Israelites; God speaks, "He shall dwell with thee, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best." They were strictly charged not to put him in a condition which he did not choose. Now, suppose this same servant, instead of coming into Israel of his own accord, had been dragged in by some kidnapper who bought him of his master, and forced him into a condition against his will. Would He who forbade such treatment of the stranger, who voluntarily came into the land, sanction the same treatment of the same person, provided in addition to this last outrage, the previous one had been committed of forcing him into the nation against his will?
To commit violence on the free choice of a foreign servant is a horrible enormity, forsooth, PROVIDED you begin the violence after he has come among you. But if you commit the first act, on the other side of the line; if you begin the outrage by buying him from a third person against his will, and then tear him from home, and drag him across the line into the land of Israel, and hold him as a slave—ah! that alters the case, and you may perpetrate the violence now with impunity! Would greater favor have been shown to this new comer from the heathen than to the old residents—those who had been servants in Jewish families perhaps for a generation? Were the Israelites commanded to exercise toward him, uncircumcised and out of the covenant, a justice and kindness denied to the multitude, who were circumcised, and within the covenant?
Again: the objector finds small gain to his argument on the supposition that the covenant respected merely the fugitives from the surrounding nations, while it left the servants of the Israelites in a condition against their wills—the objector finds small gain to his argument. In that case, the surrounding nations would of course adopt retaliatory measures, and resolve themselves into so many asylums for fugitive Israelitish servants. As these nations were on every side of them such a proclamation would have been an effectual lure to men held in a condition which was a constant counteraction of will. Further, the objector's assumption destroys itself; for the same command which protected the foreign servant from the power of his master, protected him equally from the power of an Israelite. It was not merely, "Thou shalt not deliver him to his master," but "he (the servant) shall dwell with thee, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best." Every Israelite was commanded to respect his free choice, and to put him in no condition against his will. What was this but a proclamation, that all who chose to live in the land and obey the laws, were left to their own free will, to dispose of their services at such a rate, to such persons, and in such places as they pleased?
Besides, grant that this command prohibited the sending back of foreign servants merely, was the any law requiring the return of servants who had escaped from the Israelites? There was a statute requiring the return of property lost, and cattle escaped, but none requiring the return of escaped servants.
Finally, these verses contain, first, a command, "Thou shalt not deliver," &c. Secondly, a declaration of the fugitive's right of free choice, and of God's will that he should exercise it at his own discretion; and thirdly, a command guarding this right, namely, "Thou shalt not oppress him," as though God had said, If you forbid him to exercise his own choice, as to the place and condition of his residence, it is oppression, and I will not tolerate it.
3. We argue the voluntariness of servants from their peculiar opportunities and facilities for escape. Three times every year, all the males over twelve years of age, were required to attend the public festivals. The main body were thus absent from their homes not less than three weeks each time, making nine weeks annually. As these caravans moved over the country, were there military scouts lining the way, to intercept deserters?—a corporal's guard stationed at each pass of the mountains, sentinels pacing the hill-tops, and light horse scouring the defiles? What safe contrivance had the Israelites for taking their "slaves" three times in a year to Jerusalem and back? When a body of slaves is moved any distance in our free and equal republic, they are handcuffed to keep them from running away, or beating their drivers' brains out. Was this the Mosaic plan, or an improvement left for the wisdom of Solomon? The usage, doubtless, claims a paternity not less venerable and biblical! Perhaps they were lashed upon camels, and transported in bundles, or caged up, and trundled on wheels to and fro, and while at the Holy City, "lodged in jail for safe keeping," religions services extra being appointed, and special "ORAL instruction" for their benefit. But meanwhile, what became of the sturdy handmaids left at home? What hindered them from marching off in a body? Perhaps the Israelitish matrons stood sentry in rotation round the kitchens, while the young ladies scoured the country, as mounted rangers, to pick up stragglers by day, and patrolled the streets as city guards, keeping a sharp look-out at night.
4. Their continuance in Jewish families depended upon the performance of various rites and ceremonies necessarily VOLUNTARY.
Suppose a servant from the heathen should, upon entering a Jewish family, refuse circumcision; the question whether he shall remain a servant, is in his own hands. If a slave, how simple the process of emancipation! His refusal did the job. Or, suppose that, at any time, he should refuse to attend the tri-yearly feasts, or should eat leavened bread during the Passover, or compound the ingredients of the anointing oil, he is "cut off from the people;" excommunicated.
5. We infer the voluntariness of the servants of the Patriarchs from the impossibility of their being held against their wills. The servants of Abraham are an illustration. At one time he had three hundred and eighteen young men "born in his house," and probably many more not born in his house. The whole number of his servants of all ages, was probably MANY THOUSANDS. Doubtless, Abraham was a man of a million, and Sarah too, a right notable housekeeper; still, it is not easy to conceive how they contrived to hold so many thousand servants against their wills, unless the patriarch and his wife took turns in performing the Hibernian exploit of surrounding them! The neighboring tribes, instead of constituting a picket guard to hem in his servants, would have been far more likely to sweep them and him into captivity, as they did Lot and his household. Besides, Abraham had neither "Constitution," nor "compact," nor statutes, nor judicial officers to send back his fugitives, nor a truckling police to pounce upon panic-stricken women, nor gentleman-kidnappers, suing for patronage, volunteering to howl on the track, boasting their blood-hound scent, and pledging their "honor" to hunt down and "deliver up," provided they had a description of the "flesh marks," and were stimulated in their chivalry by pieces of silver. Abraham seems also to have been sadly deficient in all the auxiliaries of family government, such as stocks, hand cuffs, foot-chains, yokes, gags, and thumb-screws. His destitution of these patriarchal indispensables is the more afflicting, when we consider his faithful discharge of responsibilities to his household, though so deplorably destitute of the needful aids.
6. We infer that servants were voluntary, from the fact that there is no instance of an Israelitish master ever SELLING a servant. Abraham had thousands of servants, but appears never to have sold one. Isaac "grew until he became very great," and had "great store of servants." Jacob's youth was spent in the family of Laban, where he lived a servant twenty-one years. Afterward he had a large number of servants.
When Joseph sent for Jacob to come into Egypt, the words are, "thou and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST." Jacob took his flocks and herds but no servants. Gen xlv. 10; xlvii. 6; xlvii. 1. His servants doubtless, served under their own contracts, and when Jacob went into Egypt, they chose to stay in their own country.
The government might sell thieves, if they had no property, until their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine. Ex. xxii. 3. But masters seem to have had no power to sell their servants—the reason is obvious. To give the master a right to sell his servant, would annihilate the servant's right of choice in his own disposal; but says the objector, To give the master a right to buy a servant, equally annihilates the servant's right of choice. Answer. It is one thing to have a right to buy a man, and a very different thing to have a right to buy him of another man.
Though there is no instance of a servant being bought of his, or her master, yet there are instances of young females being bought of their fathers. But their purchase as servants was their betrothal as WIVES. Exodus xxi. 7, 8. "If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please not her master WHO HATH BETROTHED HER TO HIMSELF, he shall let her be redeemedA."
A: The comment of Maimonides on this passage is as follows:
"A Hebrew handmaid might not be sold but to one who laid himself under obligations, to espouse her to himself or to his son, when she was fit to be betrothed."—Maimonides—Hilcoth—Obedim, Ch. IV. Sec. XI.
Jarchi, on the same passage, says, "He is bound to espouse her and take her to be his wife for the money of her purchase is the money of her espousals."
7. We infer that the Hebrew servant was voluntary in COMMENCING his service, because he was pre-eminently so IN CONTINUING it. If, at the year of release, it was the servant's choice to remain with his master, so did the law guard his free will, that it required his ear to be bored by the judges of the land, thus making it impossible for the servant to be held in an involuntary condition. Yea, so far was his free choice protected, that his master was compelled to keep him, however much he might wish to get rid of him.
8. The method prescribed for procuring servants, recognized their choice, and was an appeal to it. The Israelites were commanded to offer them a suitable inducement, and then leave them to decide. They might neither seize by force, nor frighten them by threats, nor wheedle them by false pretenses, nor borrow them, nor beg them; but they were commanded to BUY themA; that is, they were to recognize the right of the individuals to their own services—their right to dispose of them, and their right to refuse all offers. They might, if they pleased, refuse all applications, and thus oblige those who made them, to do their own work. Suppose all, with one accord, refused to become servants, what provision did the Mosaic law make for such an emergency? NONE.
A: The case of thieves, whose services were sold until they had earned enough to make restitution to the person wronged, and to pay the legal penalty, stands by itself, and has no relation to the condition of servants.
9. Various incidental expressions throughout the Bible, corroborate the idea that servants became such by virtue of their own contract. Job xli. 4. is an illustration, "Will he (Leviathan) make a COVENANT with thee? wilt thou take him for a SERVANT forever?"
10. The transaction which made the Egyptians the SERVANTS OF PHAROAH, shows entire voluntariness throughout. It is detailed in Gen. xlvii. 18-26. Of their own accord, they came to Joseph and said, "We have not aught left but our bodies and our lands; buy us;" then in the 25th verse, "Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my Lord, and we will be servants to Pharaoh."
11. We argue that the condition of servants was an OPTIONAL one from the fact that RICH strangers did not become servants. Indeed, so far were they from becoming servants themselves, that they bought and held Jewish servants. Lev. xxv. 47.
12. The sacrifices and offerings which ALL were required to present, were to be made VOLUNTARILY. Lev. i. 2, 3.
13. Mention is often made of persons becoming servants where they were manifestly and pre-eminently VOLUNTARY. The case of the Prophet Elisha is one. 1 Kings xix. 21; 2 Kings iii. 11. Elijah was his master. The original word, translated master, is the same that is so rendered in almost every instance where masters are spoken of throughout the Mosaic and patriarchal systems. It is translated master eighty-five times in our English version. Moses was the servant of Jethro. Exodus iii. 1. Joshua was the servant of Moses. Numbers xi. 28. Jacob was the servant of Laban. Genesis xxix, 18-27.