As though God had said, “To deliver him up would be to recognize the right of the master to hold him.  His fleeing “shows his choice—­proclaims his wrongs, his master’s oppressive acts, and his own claim to legal protection.”  You shall not force him back, and thus recognize the right of the master to hold him in such a condition as induces him to flee to others for protection.”  It may be objected, that this command had no reference to servants among the Israelites, but only to those of heathen masters in the surrounding nations.  We answer, The regulation has no restriction.  Its terms are unlimited.  But the objection, even if valid, merely shifts the pressure of the difficulty to another point.  Does God array his infinite authority to protect the free choice of a single servant from the heathen, and yet authorize the same persons, to crush the free choice of thousands of servants from the heathen!  Suppose a case.  A foreign servant flees from his master to the Israelites; God speaks, “He shall dwell with thee, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best.”  They were strictly charged not to put him in a condition which he did not choose.  Now, suppose this same servant, instead of coming into Israel of his own accord, had been dragged in by some kidnapper who bought him of his master, and forced him into a condition against his will.  Would He who forbade such treatment of the stranger, who voluntarily came into the land, sanction the same treatment of the same person, provided in addition to this last outrage, the previous one had been committed of forcing him into the nation against his will?

To commit violence on the free choice of a foreign servant is a horrible enormity, forsooth, PROVIDED you begin the violence after he has come among you.  But if you commit the first act, on the other side of the line; if you begin the outrage by buying him from a third person against his will, and then tear him from home, and drag him across the line into the land of Israel, and hold him as a slave—­ah! that alters the case, and you may perpetrate the violence now with impunity!  Would greater favor have been shown to this new comer from the heathen than to the old residents—­those who had been servants in Jewish families perhaps for a generation?  Were the Israelites commanded to exercise toward him, uncircumcised and out of the covenant, a justice and kindness denied to the multitude, who were circumcised, and within the covenant?