man is to come, whatever inconvenience his absence from home may cause to his master: the interests of the master being in this case, as in the case of the Sabbath, set aside with a high hand in favour of the slave’s interest as a moral being, and of the claims of religion.
And the bondman of a priest ministering in holy things was not to be a mere “slave of the temple.” Whatever measure of sanctity attached to the rest of the priest’s household was to attach also to him. “There shall no stranger eat of the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest or an hired servant shall not eat of the holy thing. But if the priest buy any soul with his money, he shall eat of it, and he that is born in his house: they shall eat of his meat.”[1]
Still more momentous perhaps than the ordinance which makes the slave a partaker with the rest of the nation in its public worship, is the ordinance which makes him a partaker with the rest of the family in the Passover:—“This is the ordinance of the Passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof: but every man’s servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof.”[2] The Lawgiver goes on to enact that “a foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof;” as though to make it clear that the reason why the bondman is to partake is that he is in the fullest sense a member of the family. No one could eat of the passover who had not been circumcised; but, as we have seen before, the head of a family was required by the command originally given to Abraham to circumcise all his household, “whether
