When Isaac sojourned in the country of the Philistines he “had great store of servants.”  And we have his testimony that the Philistines hated him, added to that of inspiration that they “envied” him.  Of course they would hardly volunteer to organize patroles and committees of vigilance to keep his servants from running away, and to drive back all who were found beyond the limits of his plantation without a “pass!” If the thousands of Isaac’s servants were held against their wills, who held them?

The servants of the Jews, during the building of the wall of Jerusalem, under Nehemiah, may be included under this head.  That they remained with their masters of their own accord, we argue from the fact, that the circumstances of the Jews made it impossible for them to compel their residence and service.  They were few in number, without resources, defensive fortifications, or munitions of war, and surrounded withal by a host of foes, scoffing at their feebleness and inviting desertion from their ranks.  Yet so far from the Jews attempting in any way to restrain their servants, or resorting to precautions to prevent escape, they put arms into their hands, and enrolled them as a night-guard, for the defence of the city.  By cheerfully engaging in this service and in labor by day, when with entire ease they might all have left their masters, marched over to the enemy, and been received with shoutings, the servants testified that their condition was one of their own choice, and that they regarded their own interests as inseparably identified with those of their masters.  Neh. iv. 23.

VI.  NO INSTANCES OF ISRAELITISH MASTERS SELLING SERVANTS.  Neither Abraham nor Isaac seem ever to have sold one, though they had “great store of servants.”  Jacob was himself a servant in the family of Laban twenty-one years.  He had afterward a large number of servants.  Joseph invited him to come into Egypt, and to bring all that he had with him—­“thou and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST.”  Gen. xlv. 10.  Jacob took his flocks and herds but no servants.  Yet we are told that Jacob “took his journey with all that he had.”  Gen. xlvi. 1.  And after his arrival in Egypt, Joseph said to Pharaoh “my father, and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds and all that they have, are come.”  Gen. xlvii. 1.  The servants doubtless, served under their own contracts, and when Jacob went into Egypt, they chose to stay in their own country.

The government might sell thieves, if they had no property, until their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine.  Ex. xxii. 3.  But masters seem to have had no power to sell their servants.  To give the master a right to sell his servant, would annihilate the servant’s right of choice in his own disposal; but says the objector, “to give the master a right to buy a servant, equally annihilates the servant’s right of choice.”  Answer.  It is one thing to have a right to buy a man, and a quite another thing to have a right to buy him of another man.[A]