[Footnote A:  Jarchi’s comment on “Thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant” is, “the Hebrew servant is not to be required to do any thing which is accounted degrading—­such as all offices of personal attendance, as loosing his master’s shoe latchet, bringing him water to wash his feet and hands, waiting on him at table, dressing him, carrying things to and from the bath.  The Hebrew servant is to work with his master as a son or brother, in the business of his farm, or other labor, until his legal release.”]

We pass to the remainder of the regulation in the 40th verse:—­

“But as an hired servant and as a sojourner shall he be with thee.”  Hired servants were not incorporated into the families of their masters; they still retained their own family organization, without the surrender of any domestic privilege, honor, or authority; and this, even though they resided under the same roof with their master.  While bought-servants were associated with their master’s families at meals, at the Passover, and at other family festivals, hired servants and sojourners were not.  Exodus xii. 44, 45; Lev. xxii. 10, 11.  Not being merged in the family of his master, the hired servant was not subject to his authority, (except in directions about his labor) in any such sense as the master’s wife, children, and bought servants.  Hence the only form of oppressing hired servants spoken of in the Scriptures as practicable to masters, is that of keeping back their wages.

To have taken away these privileges in the case stated in the passage under consideration, would have been preeminent rigor; for the case described, is not that of a servant born in the house of a master, nor that of a minor, whose unexpired minority had been sold by the father, neither was it the case of an Israelite, who though of age, had not yet acceded to his inheritance; nor, finally, was it that of one who had received the assignment of his inheritance, but was, as a servant, working off from it an incumbrance, before entering upon its possession and control[A].  But it was that of the head of a family, who had lived independently on his own inheritance, and long known better days, now reduced to poverty, forced to relinquish the loved inheritance of his fathers, with the competence and respectful consideration its possession secured to him, and to be indebted to a neighbor for shelter, sustenance, and employment, both for himself and his family.  Surely so sad a reverse, might well claim sympathy; but there remaineth to him one consolation, and it cheers him in the house of his pilgrimage.  He is an Israelite—­Abraham is his father, and now in his calamity he clings closer than ever, to the distinction conferred by the immunities of his birthright.  To rob him of this, were “the unkindest cut of all.”  To have assigned him to a grade of service filled only by those whose permanent business was serving, would have been to rule over him with peculiar rigor.