The common construction put upon the expression, “rule with rigor,” and an inference drawn from it, have an air so oracular, as quite to overcharge risibles of ordinary calibre, if such an effect were not forestalled by its impiety.  It is interpreted to mean, “you shall not make him an article of property, you shall not force him to work, and rob him of his earnings, you shall not make him a chattel, and strip him of legal protection.”  So much for the interpretation.  The inference is like unto it, viz.  Since the command forbade such outrages upon the Israelites, it permitted and commissioned the infliction of them upon the Strangers.  Such impious and shallow smattering, captivates two classes of minds, the one by its flippancy, the other by its blasphemy, and both, by the strong scent of its unbridled license.  What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities!

In Exodus, chap. i. 13, 14, it is said that the Egyptians “made the children of Israel to serve with rigor,” “and all their service wherein they made them serve, was with rigor.”  The rigor here spoken of, is affirmed of the amount of labor extorted from them, and the mode of the exaction.  This form of expression, “serve with rigor,” is never applied to the service of servants either under the Patriarchal, or the Mosaic systems.  Nor is any other form of expression ever used, either equivalent to it, or at all similar.  The phrase, “thou shalt not RULE over him with rigor,” used in Leviticus xxv. 43, 46, does not prohibit unreasonable exactions of labor, nor inflictions of personal cruelty. Such were provided against otherwise.  But it forbids, confounding the distinctions between a Jew and a Stranger, by assigning the former to the same grade of service, for the same term of time, and under the same national and political disabilities as the latter.

We are now prepared to survey at a glance, the general condition of the different classes of servants, with the modifications peculiar to each class.  I. In the possession of all fundamental rights, all classes of servants were on an absolute equality, all were equally protected by law in their persons, character, property and social relations.  All were voluntary, all were compensated for their labor.  All were released from their regular labor nearly one half of the days in each year, all were furnished with stated instruction; none in either class were in any sense articles of property, all were regarded as men, with the rights, interests, hopes, and destinies of men.  In these respects the circumstances of all classes of servants among the Israelites, were not only similar but identical, and so far forth, they formed but ONE CLASS.

II.  DIFFERENT CLASSES OF SERVANTS.