[Footnote A:  These two latter classes are evidently referred to in Exod. xxi. 1-6, and Deut. xv. 12]

Finally, the former part of the regulation, “Thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant,” or more literally, thou shall not serve thyself with him, with the service of a servant, guaranties his political privileges, and secures to him a kind and grade of service, comporting with his character and relations as a son of Israel.  And the remainder of the verse, “But as a hired servant, and as a sojourner shall he be with thee,” continues and secures to him his separate family organization, the respect and authority due to his head, and the general consideration in society resulting from such a station.  Though this individual was a Jewish bought servant, the case is peculiar, and forms an exception to the general class of Jewish bought servants.  Being already in possession of his inheritance, and the head of a household, the law so arranged his relations, as a servant, as to alleviate as much as possible the calamity which had reduced him from independence and authority, to penury and subjection.

Having gone so much into detail on this point, comment on the command which concludes this topic in the forty-third verse, would be superfluous. “Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear thy God.”  As if it had been said, “In your administration you shall not disregard those differences in previous habits, station, authority, and national and political privileges, upon which this regulation is based; for to exercise authority over this class of servants, irrespective of these distinctions, and annihilating them, is to_rule with rigor_.”  The same command is repeated in the forty-sixth verse, and applied to the distinction between the servants of Jewish, and those of Gentile extraction, and forbids the overlooking of distinctive Jewish peculiarities, so vital to an Israelite as to make the violation of them, rigorous in the extreme; while to the servants from the Strangers, whose previous habits and associations differed so widely from those of the Israelite, these same things would be deemed slight disabilities.

It may be remarked here, that the political and other disabilities of the Strangers, which were the distinctions growing out of a different national descent, and important to the preservation of national characteristics, and to the purity of national worship, do not seem to have effected at all the social estimation, in which this class of servants was held.  They were regarded according to their character and worth as persons, irrespective of their foreign origin, employments, and political condition.