6. We infer that servants were voluntary, from the fact that there is no instance of an Israelitish master ever SELLING a servant.  Abraham had thousands of servants, but appears never to have sold one.  Isaac “grew until he became very great,” and had “great store of servants.”  Jacob’s youth was spent in the family of Laban, where he lived a servant twenty-one years.  Afterward he had a large number of servants.

When Joseph sent for Jacob to come into Egypt, the words are, “thou and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST.”  Jacob took his flocks and herds but no servants.  Gen xlv. 10; xlvii. 6; xlvii. 1.  His servants doubtless, served under their own contracts, and when Jacob went into Egypt, they chose to stay in their own country.

The government might sell thieves, if they had no property, until their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine.  Ex. xxii. 3.  But masters seem to have had no power to sell their servants—­the reason is obvious.  To give the master a right to sell his servant, would annihilate the servant’s right of choice in his own disposal; but says the objector, To give the master a right to buy a servant, equally annihilates the servant’s right of choice.  Answer.  It is one thing to have a right to buy a man, and a very different thing to have a right to buy him of another man.

Though there is no instance of a servant being bought of his, or her master, yet there are instances of young females being bought of their fathers.  But their purchase as servants was their betrothal as WIVES.  Exodus xxi. 7, 8. “If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do.  If she please not her master WHO HATH BETROTHED HER TO HIMSELF, he shall let her be redeemed[A].”

[Footnote A:  The comment of Maimonides on this passage is as follows:  “A Hebrew handmaid might not be sold but to one who laid himself under obligations, to espouse her to himself or to his son, when she was fit to be betrothed.”—­Maimonides—­Hilcoth—­Obedim, Ch.  IV.  Sec.  XI.

Jarchi, on the same passage, says, “He is bound to espouse her and take her to be his wife for the money of her purchase is the money of her espousals.” ]

7. We infer that the Hebrew servant was voluntary in COMMENCING his service, because he was pre-eminently so IN CONTINUING it.  If, at the year of release, it was the servant’s choice to remain with his master, so did the law guard his free will, that it required his ear to be bored by the judges of the land, thus making it impossible for the servant to be held in an involuntary condition.  Yea, so far was his free choice protected, that his master was compelled to keep him, however much he might wish to get rid of him.