The question whether the servants were a PROPERTY-"possession,” has been already discussed, pp. 47-64, we need add in this place but a word.  As an illustration of the condition of servants from the heathen that were the “possession” of Israelitish families, and of the way in which they became servants, the reader is referred to Isa. xiv. 1, 2.  “For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the strangers will be joined with them, and they shall CLEAVE to the house of Jacob.  And the people shall take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids; and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over the oppressors.”

We learn from these verses, 1st.  That these servants which were to be “possessed” by the Israelites, were to be “joined with them,” i.e., become proselytes to their religion. 2d.  That they should “CLEAVE to the house of Jacob,” i.e., that they would forsake their own people voluntarily, attach themselves to the Israelites as servants, and of their own free choice leave home and friends, to accompany them on their return, and to take up their permanent abode with them, in the same manner that Ruth accompanied Naomi from Moab to the land of Israel, and that the “souls gotten” by Abraham in Padanaram, accompanied him when he left it and went to Canaan.  “And the house of Israel shall possess them for servants,” i.e. shall have them for servants.

In the passage under consideration, “they shall be your possession,” the original word translated “possession” is ahuzza.  The same word is used in Gen. xlvii. 11.  “And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt.”  Gen. xlvii. 11.  In what sense was Goshen the possession of the Israelites?  Answer, in the sense of having it to live in, not in the sense of having it as owners.  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 buy male and female domestics.”  “Moreover of the children of the foreigners that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your permanent resource.”  “And ye shall take them as a perpetual source of supply to whom your children after you shall