The ancient Jewish Doctors assert that the servant from the Strangers who at the close of his probationary year, refused to adopt the Jewish religion and was on that account 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. ]

II.  THE SURRENDER OF FUGITIVE SERVANTS TO THEIR MASTERS WAS PROHIBITED.  “Thou shalt 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.”  Deut. xxiii. 15, 16.

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 and his title to 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 said that this command referred only to the servants of heathen masters in the surrounding nations.  We answer:  the terms of the command are unlimited.  But the objection, if valid, would merely shift the pressure of the difficulty to another point.  Did God require them 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 escapes to the Israelites; God says, “He shall dwell with thee, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best.”  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 forsooth a horrible enormity, 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