[Footnote A:  Another reason for protracting the service until the seventh year, seems to have been, its coincidence with other arrangements, and provisions, inseparable from the Jewish economy.  That period was a favorite one in the Mosaic system.  Its pecuniary responsibilities, social relations and general internal structure, if not graduated upon a septennial scale, were variously modified by the lapse of the period.  Another reason doubtless was, that as those Israelites who became servants through poverty, would not sell themselves, except as a last resort when other expedients to recruit their finances had failed—­(See Lev. xxv. 35)—­their becoming servants proclaimed such a state of their affairs, as demanded the labor of a course of years fully to reinstate them.]

It is important to a clear understanding of the whole subject, to keep in mind that adult Jews ordinarily became servants, only as a temporary expedient to relieve themselves from embarrassment, and ceased to be such when that object was effected.  The poverty that forced them to it was a calamity, and their service was either a means of relief, or a measure of prevention.  It was not pursued as a permanent business, but resorted to on emergencies—­a sort of episode in the main scope of their lives.  Whereas with the Strangers, it was a permanent employment, pursued not merely as a means of bettering their own condition, and prospectively that of their posterity, but also, as an end for its own sake, conferring on them privileges, and a social estimation not otherwise attainable.

We see from the foregoing, why servants purchased from the heathen, are called by way of distinction, the servants, (not bondmen, as our translators have it.) (1.) They followed it as a permanent business. (2.) Their term of service was much longer than that of the other class. (3.) As a class, they doubtless greatly outnumbered the Israelitish servants. (4.) All the Strangers that dwelt in the land, were tributaries to the Israelites—­required to pay an annual tribute to the government, either in money, or in public service, which was called a “tribute of bond-service;” in other words, all the Strangers were national servants, to the Israelites, and the same Hebrew word which is used to designate individual servants, equally designates national servants or tributaries. 2 Sam. viii. 2, 6, 14. 2 Chron. viii. 7-9.  Deut. xx. 11. 2 Sam. x. 19. 1 Kings ix. 21, 22. 1 Kings iv. 21.  Gen. xxvii. 29.  The same word is applied to the Israelites, when they paid tribute to other nations.  See 2 Kings xvii. 3.  Judges iii. 8, 14.  Gen. xlix. 15.  Another distinction between the Jewish and Gentile bought servants, claims notice.  It was in the kinds of service assigned to each class.  The servants from the Strangers, were properly the domestics, or household servants, employed in