We see from the foregoing, why servants purchased from the heathen, are called by way of distinction, the servants, (not bondmen,) (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, required to pay an annual tax to the government, either in money, or in public service, (called a “tribute of land-service;”) in other words, all the Strangers were national servants to the Israelites, and the same Hebrew word 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. 2 Kings xvii. 3.  Judg. iii. 8, 14.  Gen. xlix. 15.  Another distinction between the Jewish and Gentile bought servants, was in their kinds of service.  The servants from the Strangers were properly the domestics, or household servants, employed in all family work, in offices of personal attendance, and in such mechanical labor, as was required by increasing wants, and needed repairs.  The Jewish bought servants seem almost exclusively agricultural.  Besides being better fitted for it by previous habits—­agriculture, and the tending of cattle, were regarded by the Israelites as the most honorable of all occupations.  After Saul was elected king, and escorted to Gibeah, the next report of him is, “And behold Saul came after the herd out of the field.” 1 Sam. xi. 7.  Elisha “was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen.” 1 Kings xix. 19.  King Uzziah “loved husbandry.” 2 Chron. xxvi. 10.  Gideon was “threshing wheat” when called to lead the host against the Midianites.  Judg. vi. 11.  The superior honorableness of agriculture, is shown, in that it was protected and supported by the fundamental law of the theocracy—­God indicating it as the chief prop of the government.  The Israelites were like permanent fixtures on their soil, so did they cling to it.  To be agriculturalists on their own inheritances, was with them the grand claim to honorable estimation.  Agriculture being pre-eminently a Jewish employment, to assign a native Israelite to other employments as a business, was to break up his habits, do violence to cherished predilections, and put him to a kind of labor in which he had no skill, and which he deemed degrading.  In short, it was in the earlier ages of the Mosaic system, practically to unjew him, a hardship and rigor grievous to be borne, as it annihilated a visible distinction between the descendants of Abraham and the Strangers.—­To guard this and another fundamental distinction, God instituted the regulation which stands at the head of this branch