If the Israelites not only held slaves, but multitudes of them, if Abraham had thousands, and if they abounded under the Mosaic system, why had their language no word that meant slave?  That language must be wofully poverty-stricken, which has no signs to represent the most common and familiar objects and conditions.  To represent by the same word, and without figure, property, and the owner of that property, is a solecism.  Ziba was an “ebedh,” yet he “owned” (!) twenty ebedhs!  In our language, we have both servant and slave.  Why?  Because we have both the things, and need signs for them.  If the tongue had a sheath, as swords have scabbards, we should have some name for it:  but our dictionaries give us none.  Why?  Because there is no such thing.  But the objector asks, “Would not the Israelites use their word ebedh if they spoke of the slave of a heathen?” Answer.  Their national servants or tributaries, are spoken of frequently, but domestics servants so rarely, that no necessity existed, even if they were slaves, for coining a new word.  Besides, the fact of their being domestics, under heathen laws and usages, proclaimed their liabilities; their locality made a specific term unnecessary.  But if the Israelites had not only servants, but a multitude of slaves, a word meaning slave, would have been indispensible for every day convenience.  Further, the laws of the Mosaic system were so many sentinels on the outposts to warn off foreign practices.  The border ground of Canaan, was quarantine ground, enforcing the strictest non-intercourse in usages between the without and the within.

2.  “BUY.”  The buying of servants, is discussed at length. pp. 17-23.  To that discussion the reader is referred.  We will add in this place but a single consideration.  This regulation requiring the Israelites to "buy" servants of the heathen, prohibited their taking them without buying. Buying supposes two parties:  a price demanded by one and paid by the other, and consequently, the consent of both buyer and seller, to the transaction.  Of course the command to the Israelites to buy servants of the heathen, prohibited their getting them unless they first got somebody’s consent to the transaction, and paid to somebody a fair equivalent.  Now, who were these somebodies?  This at least is plain, they were not Israelites, but heathen.  “Of them shall ye buy.”  Who then were these somebodies, whose right was so paramount, that their consent must be got and the price paid must go into their pockets?  Were they the persons themselves who became servants, or some other persons.  “Some other persons to be sure,” says the objector, “the countrymen or the neighbors of those who become servants.”  Ah! this then is the import of the Divine command to the Israelites.