a law which was made for freemen who strove together.  Here we find, that if one man smote another, so that he died not, but only kept his bed from being disabled, and he rose again and walked abroad upon his staff, then he was to be paid for the loss of his time, and all the expenses of his sickness were to be borne by the man who smote him.  The freeman’s time was his own, and therefore he was to be remunerated for the loss of it.  But not so with the servant, whose time was, as it were, the money of his master, because he had already paid for it:  If he continued a day or two after being struck, to keep his bed in consequence of any wound received, then his lost time was not to be paid for, because it was not his own, but his master’s, who had already paid him for it.  The loss of his time was the master’s loss, and not the servant’s.  This explanation is confirmed by the fact, that the Hebrew word translated continue, means “to stand still;” i.e., to be unable to go out about his master’s work.

Here then we find this stronghold of slavery completely demolished.  Instead of its being a license to inflict such chastisement upon a servant as to cause even death itself, it is in fact a law merely to provide that a man should not be required to pay his servant twice over for his time.  It is altogether an unfounded assumption on the part of the slaveholder, that this servant died after a day or two; the text does not say so, and I contend that he got well after a day or two, just as the man mentioned in the 19th verse recovered from the effects of the blows he received.  The cases are completely parallel, and the first law throws great light on the second.  This explanation is far more consonant with the character of God, and were it not that our vision has been so completely darkened by the existence of slavery in our country, we never could so far have dishonored Him as to have supposed that He sanctioned the murder of a servant; although slaveholding legislators might legalize the killing of a slave in four different ways.—­(Stroud’s Sketch of Slave Laws.)

But I pass on now to the consideration of how the female Jewish servants were protected by law.

1.  If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed:  to sell her unto another nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.

2.  If he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

3.  If he take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.

4.  If he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.