the servants were protected in all their personal,
social and religious rights, equally with their masters
&c. All remaining, after these ample reservations,
would be small temptation, either to the lust of power
or of lucre; a profitable “possession”
and “inheritance,” truly! What if
our American slaves were all placed in just such
a condition Alas, for that soft, melodious circumlocution,
“Our PECULIAR species of property!” Verily,
emphasis would be cadence, and euphony and irony meet
together! What eager snatches at mere words,
and bald technics, irrespective of connection, principles
of construction, Bible usages, or limitations of meaning
by other passages—and all to eke out such
a sense as sanctifies existing usages, thus making
God pander for lust. The words nahal and
nahala, inherit and inheritance by no means
necessarily signify articles of property.
“The people answered the king and said, we have
none inheritance in the son of Jesse.”
2 Chron. x. 16. Did they moan gravely to disclaim
the holding of their kin; as an article of property?
“Children are an heritage (inheritance)
of the Lord.” Ps. cxxvii. 3. “Pardon
our iniquity, and take us for thine inheritance.”
Ex. xxxiv. 9. When God pardons his enemies, and
adopts them as children, does he make them articles
of property? Are forgiveness, and chattel-making,
synonymes? “Thy testimonies have I taken
as a heritage” (inheritance.) Ps. cxix.
111. “I am their inheritance.”
Ezek. xliv. 28. “I will give thee the heathen
for thine inheritance.” Ps. ii.
8. “For the Lord will not cast off his people,
neither will he forsake his inheritance.”
Ps. xciv 14. see also Deut. iv. 20; Josh. xiii. 33;
Ps. lxxxii. 8; lxxviii. 62, 71; Prov. xiv. 8.
The question whether the servants were a PROPERTY-"possession,”
has been already discussed—pp. 37-46—we
need add in this place but a word, ahuzza rendered
“possession.” “And Joseph
placed his father and his brethren, and gave them
a possession in the land of Egypt.”
Gen. xlii. 11. In what sense was Goshen the possession
of the Israelites? Answer, in the sense of having
it to live in. In what sense were the Israelites
to possess these nations, and take them
as an inheritance for their children?
Answer, they possessed them as a permanent source of
supply for domestic or household servants. And
this relation to these nations was to go down to posterity
as a standing regulation, having the certainty and
regularity of a descent by inheritance. The sense
of the whole regulation may be given thus: “Thy
permanent domestics, which thou shalt have, shall
be of the nations that are round about you, of them
shall ye get male and female domestics.”
“Moreover of the children of the foreigners
that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye
get, and of their families that are with you, which