of our inquiry, “If thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant.”  In other words, thou shalt not put him to servant’s work—­to the business, and into the condition of domestics.  In the Persian version it is translated thus, “Thou shalt not assign to him the work of servitude.”  In the Septuagint, “He shall not serve thee with the service of a domestic.”  In the Syriac, “Thou shalt not employ him after the manner of servants.”  In the Samaritan, “Thou shalt not require him to serve in the service of a servant.”  In the Targum of Onkelos, “He shall not serve thee with the service of a household servant.”  In the Targum of Jonathan, “Thou shalt not cause him to serve according to the usages of the servitude of servants."[A] The meaning of the passage is, thou shalt not assign him to the same grade, nor put him to the same service, with permanent domestics. The remainder of the regulation is,—­“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.  Ex. xii. 44, 45; Lev. xxii. 10, 11.  Hired servants were not subject to the authority of their masters 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 such privileges in the case under consideration, would have been pre-eminent “rigor,” for it was not a servant born in the house of a master, not a minor, whose minority had been sold by the father, neither was it one who had not yet acceded to his inheritance:  nor finally, one who had received the assignment of his inheritance, but was working off from it an incumbrance, before entering upon its possession and control.  But it was that of the head of a family, who had 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.  So sad a reverse, might well claim sympathy; but one consolation 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 his birth-right.  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