IV.  Throughout the Mosaic system, God warns the Israelites against holding their servants in such a condition as they were held in by the Egyptians.  How often are they pointed back to the grindings of their prison-house!  What motives to the exercise of justice and kindness towards their servants, are held out to their fears in threatened judgments; to their hopes in promised good; and to all within them that could feel; by those oft repeated words of tenderness and terror!  “For ye were bondmen in the land of Egypt”—­waking anew the memory of tears and anguish, and of the wrath that avenged them.

God’s denunciations against the bondage of Egypt make it incumbent on us to ascertain, of what rights the Israelites were plundered, and what they retained.

EGYPTIAN BONDAGE ANALYZED. (1.) The Israelites were not dispersed among the families of Egypt[A], but formed a separate community.  Gen. xlvi. 35.  Ex. viii. 22, 24; ix. 26; x. 23; xi. 7; ii. 9; xvi. 22; xvii. 5. (2.) They had the exclusive possession of the land of Goshen[B].  Gen. xlv. 18; xlvii. 6, 11, 27.  Ex. xii. 4, 19, 22, 23, 27. (3.) They lived in permanent dwellings.  These were houses, not tents.  In Ex. xii. 6, 22, the two side posts, and the upper door posts, and the lintel of the houses are mentioned.  Each family seems to have occupied a house by itself,—­Acts vii. 20.  Ex. xii. 4—­and judging from the regulation about the eating of the Passover, they could hardly have been small ones, Ex. xii. 4, probably contained separate apartments, and places for concealment.  Ex. ii. 2, 3; Acts vii. 20.  They appear to have been well apparelled.  Ex. xii. 11.  To have their own burial grounds.  Ex. xiii. 19, and xiv. 11. (4.) They owned “a mixed multitude of flocks and herds,” and “very much cattle.”  Ex. xii. 32, 37, 38. (5.) They had their own form of government, and preserved their tribe and family divisions, and their internal organization throughout, though still a province of Egypt, and tributary to it.  Ex. ii. 1; xii. 19, 21; vi. 14, 25; v. 19; iii. 16, 18. (6.) They seem to have had in a considerable measure, the disposal of their own time,—­Ex. xxiii. 4; iii. 16, 18, xii. 6; ii. 9; and iv. 27, 29-31.  And to have practiced the fine arts.  Ex. xxxii. 4; xxxv. 22-35. (7.) They were all armed.  Ex. xxxii. 27. (8.) They held their possessions independently, and the Egyptians seem to have regarded them as inviolable.  No intimation is given that the Egyptians dispossessed them of their habitations, or took away their flocks, or herds, or crops, or implements of agriculture, or any article of property. (9.) All the females seem to have known something of domestic refinements; they were familiar with instruments of music, and skilled in the working of fine fabrics.  Ex. xv. 20; xxxv. 25, 26. (10.) Service seems to have been exacted from none but adult males.  Nothing is said from which the bond service of females could he inferred; the