give us none.  Why? because there is no such thing.  But the objector asks, “Would not the Israelites use their word Ebed if they spoke of the slave of a heathen?” Answer.  The servants of individuals among the heathen are scarcely ever alluded to. National servants or tributaries, are spoken of frequently, but so rarely are their domestic servants alluded to, no necessity existed, even if they were slaves, for coining a new word.  Besides, the fact of their being domestics, under heathen laws and usages, proclaimed their liabilities; their locality told their condition; so that in applying to them the word Ebed, there would be no danger of being misunderstood.  But if the Israelites had not only servants, but besides these, a multitude of slaves, a word meaning slave, would have been indispensable for purposes of every day convenience.  Further, the laws of the Mosaic system were so many sentinels on every side, to warn off foreign practices.  The border ground of Canaan, was quarantine ground, enforcing the strictest non-intercourse between the without and the within, not of persons, but of usages.  The fact that the Hebrew language had no words corresponding to slave and slavery, though not a conclusive argument, is no slight corroborative.

II.  “FOREVER.”—­“They shall be your bondmen forever.”  This is quoted to prove that servants were to serve during their life time, and their posterity, from generation to generation.

No such idea is contained in the passage.  The word forever, instead of defining the length of individual service, proclaims the permanence of the regulation laid down in the two verses preceding, namely, that their permanent domestics should be of the Strangers, and not of the Israelites; and it declares the duration of that general provision.  As if God had said, “You shall always get your permanent laborers from the nations round about you—­your servants shall always be of that class of persons.”  As it stands in the original, it is plain—­“Forever of them shall ye serve yourselves.”  This is the literal rendering of the Hebrew words, which, in our version, are translated, “They shall be your bondmen forever.”

This construction is in keeping with the whole of the passage.  “Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen (the nations) that are round about you.  OF THEM shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.  Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, OF THEM shall ye buy,” &c.  The design of this passage is manifest from its structure.  It was to point out the class of persons from which they were to get their supply of servants, and the way in which they were to get them.  That “forever” refers to the permanent