Probably no one of the Old Testament patriarchs had more servants than Job; “This man was the greatest man of all the men of the east.”  Job, i. 3.  We are not left in the dark as to the condition of his servants.  After asserting his integrity, his strict justice, honesty, and equity, in his dealings with his fellow men, and declaring “I delivered the poor,” “I was eyes to the blind and feet was I to the lame,” “I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out,” * * * he says “If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or my maid-servant when they CONTENDED with me * * * then let mine arm fall from the shoulder blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone.”  Job. xxix. 12, 15, 16; xxxi. 13, 22.  The language employed in this passage is the phraseology applied in judicial proceedings to those who implead one another, and whether it be understood literally or figuratively, shows that whatever difference existed between Job and his servants in other respects, so far as rights are concerned, they were on equal ground with him, and that in the matter of daily intercourse, there was not the least restraint on their free speech in calling in question all his transactions with them, and that the relations and claims of both parties were adjudicated on the principles of equity and reciprocal right.  “If I despised the cause of my man-servant,” &c.  In other words, if I treated it lightly, as though servants were not men, had not rights, and had not a claim for just dues and just estimation as human beings.  “When they contended with me,” that is, when they plead their rights, claimed what was due to them, or questioned the justice of any of my dealings with them.

In the context Job virtually affirms as the ground of his just and equitable treatment of his servants, that they had the same rights as he had, and were, as human beings, entitled to equal consideration with himself.  By what language could he more forcibly utter his conviction of the oneness of their common origin and of the identity of their common nature, necessities, attribute and rights?  As soon as he has said, “If I did despise the cause of my man-servant,” &c., he follows it up with “What then shall I do when God raiseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?  Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb.”  In the next verse Job glories in the fact that he has not “withheld from the poor their desire.”  Is it the “desire” of the poor to be compelled by the rich to work for them, and without pay?