No wonder that God, in a code of laws prepared for such a people at such a time, should light up on its threshold a blazing beacon to flash terror on slaveholders. “He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be surely put to death.”  Ex. xxii. 16.  God’s cherubim and flaming sword guarding the entrance to the Mosaic system!  See also Deut. xxiv. 7[A].

[Footnote A:  Jarchi, the most eminent of the Jewish writers, (if we except perhaps the Egyptian Maimonides,) who wrote seven hundred years ago, in his comment on this stealing and making merchandize of men, gives the meaning thus:—­“Using a man against his will, as a servant lawfully purchased; yea though he should use his services ever so little, only to the value of a farthing, or use but his arm to lean on to support him, if he be forced so to act as a servant, the person compelling him but once to do so shall die as a thief, whether he has sold him or not.”]

The Hebrew word, Gaunab, here rendered stealeth, means the taking from another what belongs to him, whether it be by violence or fraud; the same word is used in the eighth commandment, and prohibits both robbery and theft.

The crime specified is that of depriving SOMEBODY of the ownership of a man.  Is this somebody a master? and is the crime that of depriving a master of his servant?  Then it would have been “he that stealeth” a servant, not “he that stealeth a man.”  If the crime had been the taking of an individual from another, then the term used would have been expressive of that relation, and most especially if it was the relation of property and proprietor!

The crime, as stated in the passage, is three-fold—­man stealing, selling and holding.  All are put on a level, and whelmed under one penalty—­DEATH.  This somebody deprived of the ownership of man, is the man himself, robbed of personal ownership.  Joseph said to the servants of Pharoah, “Indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews.”  Gen. xl. 15.  How stolen?  His brethren took him and sold him as an article of merchandize.  Contrast this penalty for man-stealing with that for property-stealing.  Exod. xxii.  If a man stole an ox and killed or sold it, he was to restore five oxen; if he had neither sold nor killed it, the penalty was two oxen.  The selling or the killing being virtually a deliberate repetition of the crime, the penalty was more than doubled.