incumbrance, before entering upon its possession and
control. But it was that of the head of a family,
who had known better days, now reduced to poverty,
forced to relinquish the loved inheritance of his
fathers, with the competence and respectful consideration
its possession secured to him, and to be indebted to
a neighbor for shelter, sustenance, and employment.
So sad a reverse, might well claim sympathy; but one
consolation cheers him in the house of his pilgrimage;
he is an Israelite—Abraham is his father
and now in his calamity he clings closer than ever,
to the distinction conferred by his birth-right.
To rob him of this, were “the unkindest cut of
all.” To have assigned him to a grade of
service filled only by those whose permanent business
was serving, would have been to “rule over him
with” peculiar “rigor.” “Thou
shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant,”
or literally, thou shalt not serve thyself with
him, with the service of a servant, guaranties
his political privileges, and a kind and grade of
service comporting with his character and relations
as an Israelite. And “as a hired
servant, and as a sojourner shall he be with thee,”
secures to him his family organization, the respect
and authority due to its head, and the general consideration
resulting from such a station. Being already
in possession of his inheritance, and the head of
a household, the law so arranged the conditions of
his service as to alleviate as much as possible
the calamity which had reduced him from independence
and authority, to penury and subjection. The import
of the command which concludes this topic in the forty-third
verse, ("Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor,”)
is manifestly this, you shall not disregard those
differences in previous associations, station, authority,
and political privileges, upon which this regulation
is based; for to hold this class of servants irrespective
of these distinctions, and annihilating them, is to
“rule with rigor.” The same command
is repeated in the forty-sixth verse, and applied to
the distinction between servants of Jewish, and those
of Gentile extraction, and forbids the overlooking
of distinctive Jewish peculiarities, the disregard
of which would be rigorous in the extreme.[E]
The construction commonly put upon the phrase “rule
with rigor,” and the inference drawn from it,
have an air vastly oracular. It is interpreted
to mean, “you shall not make him a chattel, and
strip him of legal protection, nor force him to work
without pay.” The inference is like unto
it, viz., since the command forbade such outrages
upon the Israelites, it permitted and commissioned
their infliction upon the Strangers. Such impious
and shallow smattering captivates scoffers and libertines;
its flippancy and blasphemy, and the strong scent of
its loose-reined license works like a charm upon them.
What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities!
In Ex. i. 13, it is said that the Egyptians, “made