65
so arranged the conditions of his service as to alleviate as much as possible the calamity, which had reduced him from independence and authority, to penury and subjection. The import of the command which concludes this topic in the forty-third verse, ("Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor,") is manifestly this, you shall not disregard those differences in previous associations, station, authority, and political privileges, upon which this regulation is based; for to hold this class of servants irrespective of these distinctions, and annihilating them, is to "rule with rigor." The same command is repeated in the forty-sixth verse, and applied to the distinction between servants of Jewish, and those of Gentile extraction, and forbids the overlooking of distinctive Jewish peculiarities, the disregard of which would be rigorous in the extreme.[1] The construction commonly put upon the phrase "rule with rigor," and the inference drawn from it, have an air vastly oracular. It is interpreted to mean, "you shall not make him a chattel, and strip him of legal protection, nor force him to work without pay." The inference is like unto it, viz., since the command forbade such outrages upon the Israelites, it permitted and commissioned their infliction upon the Strangers. Such impious and shallow smattering captivates scoffers and libertines; its flippancy and blasphemy, and the strong scent of its loose-reined license works like a charm upon them. What boots it to reason against such rampant affinities! In Ex. i. 13, it is said that the Egyptians "made the children of Israel to serve with rigor." This rigor is affirmed of the amount of labor extorted and the mode of the exaction. The expression, "serve with rigor," is never applied to the service of servants under the Mosaic system. The phrase, "thou shalt not rule over him with rigor," does not prohibit unreasonable exactions of labor, nor inflictions of cruelty. Such were provided against otherwise. But it forbids confounding the distinctions between a Jew and a Stranger, by assigning the former to the same grade of service, for the same term of time, and under the same political disabilities as the latter.
We are now prepared to review at a glance, the condition of the
- ↑ The disabilities of the Strangers, which were distinctions, based on a different national descent, and important to the preservation of national characteristics, and a national worship, did not at all affect their social estimation. They were regarded according to their character, and worth as persons, irrespective of their foreign origin, employments, and political condition.
