resort for servants.  ALWAYS, of them shall ye serve yourselves.”  The design of the passage is manifest from its structure.  So far from being a permission to purchase slaves, it was a prohibition to employ Israelites for a certain term and in a certain grade of service, and to point out the class of persons from which they were to get their supply of servants, and the way in which they were to get them.[A]

[Footnote A:  Rabbi Leeser, who translated from the German the work entitled “Instruction in the Mosaic Religion” by Professor Jholson of the Jewish seminary at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in his comment on these verses, says, “It must be observed that it was prohibited to SUBJECT a Stranger to slavery.  The buying of slaves alone is permitted, but not stealing them.”

Now whatever we call that condition in which servants were, whether servitude or slavery, and whatever we call the persons in that condition, whether servants or slaves, we have at all events, the testimony that the Israelites were prohibited to subject a Stranger to that condition, or in other words, the free choice of the servant was not to be compelled. ]

OBJECTION IV. “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 but as an HIRED-SERVANT, and as a sojourner shall he be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee.”  Lev. xxv. 39, 40.

As only one class is called “hired,” it is inferred that servants of the other class were not paid for their labor.  That God, while thundering anathemas against those who “used their neighbor’s service without wages,” granted a special indulgence to his chosen people to force others to work, and rob them of earnings, provided always, in selecting their victims, they spared “the gentlemen of property and standing,” and pounced only upon the strangers and the common people.  The inference that “hired” is synonymous with paid, and that those servants not called “hired,” were not paid for their labor, is a mere assumption.  The meaning of the English verb to hire, is to procure for a temporary use at a certain price—­to engage a person to temporary service for wages.  That is also the meaning of the Hebrew word “saukar.”  It is not used when the procurement of permanent service is spoken of.  Now, we ask, would permanent servants, those who constituted a stationary part of the family, have been designated by the same term that marks temporary servants?  The every-day distinctions in this matter, are familiar as table-talk.  In many families the domestics perform only the regular work.  Whatever is occasional merely, as the washing of a family, is done by persons hired expressly for the purpose.  The familiar distinction between the two classes, is “servants,” and “hired