dies, argues a great many blows and great violence, and this kept up to the death-gasp, showed an intent to kill.  Hence “He shall surely be punished.”  But if he continued a day or two, the length of time that he lived, together with the kind of instrument used, and the master’s pecuniary interest in his life, ("he is his money,”) all made a strong case of circumstantial evidence, showing that the master did not design to kill.  Further, the word nakam, here rendered punished, is not so rendered in another instance.  Yet it occurs thirty-five times in the Old Testament, and in almost every place is translated “avenge,” in a few, “to take vengeance,” or “to revenge,” and in this instance ALONE, “punish.”  As it stands in our translation, the pronoun preceding it, refers to the master, whereas it should refer to the crime, and the word rendered punished, should have been rendered avenged.  The meaning is this:  If a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, IT (the death) shall surely be avenged, or literally, by avenging it shall be avenged; that is, the death of the servant shall be avenged by the death of the master.  So in the next verse, “If he continue a day or two,” his death is not to be avenged by the death of the master, as in that case the crime was to be adjudged manslaughter, and not murder.  In the following verse, another case of personal injury is stated, for which the injurer is to pay a sum of money; and yet our translators employ the same phraseology in both places.  One, an instance of deliberate, wanton, killing by piecemeal.  The other, an accidental, and comparatively slight injury—­of the inflicter, in both cases, they say the same thing!  “He shall surely be punished.”  Now, just the discrimination to be looked for where God legislates, is marked in the original.  In the case of the servant wilfully murdered, He says, “It (the death) shall surely be avenged,” that is, the life of the wrong doer shall expiate the crime.  The same word is used in the Old Testament, when the greatest wrongs are redressed, by devoting the perpetrators to destruction.  In the case of the unintentional injury, in the following verse, God says, “He shall surely be fined,” (Aunash.) “He shall pay as the judges determine.”  The simple meaning of the word anash, is to lay a fine.  It is used in Deut. xxii. 19:  “They shall amerce him in one hundred shekels,” and in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 3:  “He condemned (mulcted) the land in a hundred talents of gold.”  That avenging the death of the servant, was neither imprisonment, nor stripes, nor a fine, but that it was taking the master’s life we infer, (1.) From the use of the word nakam.  See Gen. iv. 24; Josh. x. 13; Judg. xiv. 7; xvi. 28;