CHAPTERXVIII.THE CIVIL INSTITUTES OF MOSES, CONTINUED.

CHAPTERXVIII.THE CIVIL INSTITUTES OF MOSES, CONTINUED.VII.Hebrew Servitude.Servitude existed before Moses. It was no part of the mission of the Hebrew code tocreateit. Let it be forever admitted that the laws given of God through Moses can not be held responsible for the existence of slavery. They found it existing and proceeded therefore tomodify it; to soften its more rigid features; to extract its carnivorous teeth; to ordain that the slavehad rightswhich the master and the nation were bound to respect—in short, to tone down the severities of the system from unendurable slavery to very tolerable servitude.By what means was this change wrought?What new elements were introduced to abate the severities of real slavery?1.Man-stealing was punished with death.“He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death” (Ex.21: 16). The law as recited inDeut.21: 7 applies to a man stealing one of his brethren of the children of Israel. As stated inEx.21: 16 it is universal, with no limitation. Stealing amanis the crime. I see no reason to doubt that the law was intended to apply to men of every nationality—to men as made in God’s image of whatever nation.This statute struck at the very root of real slavery. Both stealing and selling contemplate property—assume the fact of a property value. The spirit of the law is—Men shall never be degraded into merchandise. Every body knows that all American slavery began with stealing men from Africa and selling them. Servitude, involving a certain right to service and property in service, there might be, despite of this Hebrew law; but real slavery—property in man as distinctfrom property in his services, there could not be under this law. Moreover, the severity of this penalty must have thrown its shield of protection over the entire system of servitude. It was a very palpable indication of God’s stern displeasure against the whole system of chattelizing human beings.2. The Hebrew law positively forbade the rendition of fugitives. “Thou shalt not deliver to his master the servant that has escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him” (Deut.23: 15, 16).——Observe it was not only impossible to have any law for the reclamation of fugitives—i. e.to have “a fugitive slave law” of the recent American pattern; but the law was put on the other side. It declared—“Thou shaltnotdeliver him up to his master”—shalt not give his master information and help the arrest; but shalt let him choose his abode by his own free and manly will. If his hardships are such under his bondage that he prefers to take his risk of finding a better living elsewhere, let him try it. Let no man stand in his way. He would not leave his master if his personal rights and interests were properly cared for. But if his master is too selfish, or too cruel, or too exacting of labor, or too stingy of bread or clothing, who shall judge but the servant himself? Therefore let the servant better his own condition if he can, and let all selfish, savage-hearted masters take warning!——Such laws exorcise the real spirit of slavery with blessed rapidity. It would require but few such ameliorating statutes to tone it down from unendurable slavery to very tolerable servitude.The spirit of this law is altogether the spirit of the Great Lawgiver when he found the Hebrews sorely oppressed in Egypt; smote off their chains; brought them forth from their house of bondage, and placed them beyond all reclamation. What he required his people now to do in behalf of any oppressed servant was only in spirit what he had done for them.3. Severe personal injuries gave the slave his freedom. “If a man smite the eye of his servant or the eye of his maid that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.” So of the tooth (Ex.21: 26, 27).The eye and the tooth are but specimen illustrations of the principle. A charge of shot in the leg could not be less under this law than a passport to freedom.——Moreover, the statutes very specifically enjoined clemency and forbade rigor in the treatment of Hebrew servants (Lev.25: 39–43, 46).4. Of wider sweep in its influence and of inexpressible value wasthe system of periodical emancipation. The term of service for the Hebrew-born was limited to six years. At the end of this term they went out free. Servants of foreign birth (as we shall see) went out at the Jubilee, each fiftieth year.——The effect of this law was at once to lift from the heart the terrible incubus of a life-long bondage—that sense of a hopeless doom which knows no relief till death. Whatever the amount of discomfort or suffering involved in servitude might have been, the Hebrew servant had under this law the prospect of his freedom at no distant day.——Moreover the accompanying provisions of this law were thoroughly humane. The servant who had sold himself through extreme poverty (Lev.25: 47–55) might be redeemed at any time by a friend, or if he could command the means by extra labor or skill, he might redeem himself.——When his term expired, his master must not send him away empty, but must furnish him liberally out of his flock and out of his floor (grain), and even out of hiswine-press—of any thing and every thing wherewith the Lord had blessed the master, he was to impart liberally to his manumitted servant (Deut.15: 12–15). So the servant would have a fair start in his new self-supporting life. It was a fore-thoughtful provision, full of the milk of a more than human kindness.Apparently this periodic emancipation applied to every class of Hebrew servants—to him who had sold himself because he had become too poor to provide for his family; to him who had been taken and sold for debt; and to him who had been sold into servitude for crime. This latter case, however, is doubtful.Noticeably, this law provides for the family rights of the servant. If he had brought his wife with him into this state, he took her out with himself, and of course his children also. If his master had given him a wife, he retained her because of his property interest in herservices, and her children with her for humanity’s sake; for children under six years of age need their mother’s care. Wives in that age of the world were paid for.Let it be noticed, the law assumes that possibly the servant may love his wife and his children and even hismasterso well that he chooses not to leave them. Very well; if he will consent to come before the judges and in a solemn judicial manner, testify to this love of his heart, and moreover, will consent to endure the rather uncomfortable operation of having his ear bored through with an awl, then he may remain forever—i. e.during life. But the discomforts of this operation were intended to bear somewhat against this unlimited servitude. The law seemed to say to every servant—“It would probably be better for you to be your own master and live in freedom, rather than in even this very comfortable servitude.”——Every provision of this statute had a purpose. The servant must be brought before the judges to express in this public manner his choice to remain in servitude; for this method would make it impossible for the master to misrepresent the will of his servant. Moreover, it seems probable that boring the ear was no badge of honor but the opposite, and therefore would bear against the man’s choice of perpetual servitude.The law made special provision for the case of female servants. The original statute (Ex.21: 7–11) put her case on a different footing from that of her brother. “She shall not go out as the men-servants do.” The language—“If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant”—may seem at first view to be a case of slave-sale, involving real property in human flesh and bones. A closer examination will show that it comes under the usage ofselling daughters to become wives; for this purchase “betrothed her to her master,” or to “his son,” and the law made special provision for her rights as such;viz.that in case her master is not pleased with her, he shall let her be redeemed, “and shall have no power to sell her unto a strange nation.” If betrothed to his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter; if the son take another wife, he shall not abate from his duty as a husband toward her; and if he refuse to do all the law demands, she is free—redeemed by law,“without money.”——These statutes of course shape themselves to the existing usages in respect to polygamy, concubinage, and easy divorce, sedulously protecting the rights of a female servant under these most unfavorable usages.It seems probable that these kind and considerate provisions failed to protect her rights as fully as the spirit of the law intended, and therefore a further modification appears at a later period; forDeut.15: 17 declares that the six years’ emancipation law shall apply to her also as truly as to her brother;—“and unto thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise.”5. In view of the fact that what we may call “religious privileges” included rest from labor and more or less of religious and social festivity, the law was very specific in stipulating that the man-servant and the maid-servant must share in all these equally with the son and the daughter. We see this in the law of the Sabbath; in the feast upon the second tithes (Deut.12: 17, 18); and in two of the great festivals,viz.the Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut.16: 11, 14).——Thus they were put religiously and socially upon the same footing as children in the family. No ban of exclusion, no stigma of caste, could attach to their condition so long as these statutes were duly observed.6. By usage and without the necessity of statute, Hebrew servants held property. The old American doctrine—“The slave can own nothing”—had no place in the system of Hebrew servitude. The proof is twofold:——​(a) The statutes provided that “if able he might redeem himself” (Lev.25: 49). This permission would be only a taunting insult if in fact no Hebrew servant could hold property.——​(b). The light of history bears witness: Ziba was a servant of the house of Saul; but he had servants under him—a round score; “fifteen sons andtwentyservants” (2 Sam.9: 10 and 19: 17), and seems to have had charge of cultivating Saul’s estates.Thus manifold and effective were the humane provisions which softened the severities of slavery, toning them down to a very tolerable system of servitude.The Slavery that Existed before Moses.We have spoken of Hebrew servitude as amodifiedsystem—which raises the question—“modified”from what? What was the pre-existing system upon which these modifications were superinduced? A full answer must include (a) The patriarchal system as it appears in the case of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: and (b) The system of Egypt and perhaps other contemporary nations.(a.) In the patriarchal system servitude could not possibly have been compulsory. It must have been voluntary. Force, coercion, was utterly out of the question. Abraham had neither army nor police to hold his slaves in bondage. In fact they were his armed soldiers as against freebooting incursions or any hostile assault whatever. Manifestly they lived with him while they chose—no longer. Some of them rose to bear important responsibilities,e. g.Eliezer (Gen.24); his two young men who went with him and Isaac to Moriah (Gen.22).——Isaac “had great store of servant” (Gen.26: 14), but there is not the least intimation that they were entailed as part of his estate to either Esau or Jacob; or that he received them by inheritance from Abraham.——Jacob had many servants (Gen.30: 43), and in fact must have had to help him in the care of his flocks and herds: but the history shows that he did not take them with him into Egypt. Joseph’s invitation left out the servants (Gen.45: 10, 11.), and the record specifies all the family except the servants and gives us the actual enumeration—all servants omitted (Gen.46: 5–26). Property in servants in the American sense, there was none.(b.) Of Egyptian slavery enough is known to show that they bought slaves brought in from other nations, holding therefore a property right in them, and that they constituted a menial class in society.The condition of the Israelites under oppression there was peculiar. Manifestly they were not held by individual Egyptians as their personal property, but rather by the crown. The king of Egypt appears as the great slave-holder of the Hebrew people, making levies upon them for laborers at his pleasure, and exacting theseverest tasks with no limitations but his own will on the one hand and their possible endurance on the other. The question of letting the people go was (at least mainly) personal to himself and to his throne. His merciless severity would naturally tend to make slavery in Egypt heartlessly cruel. Laws to restrain masters from severity could not be thought of under such kings. It is easy to see that when, at and after Sinai, the Lord came to legislate for the Hebrew people, fresh from Egyptian usages and laws, there was abundant occasion for statutes to modify the severities of human bondage. With telling force the Lord could say—Never oppress your servants; ye know how oppression feels!The Jubilee.—(Lev.25).In this chapter and here only we have an account of this peculiar institution. The following points in it deserve special attention.1. Its main scope and purpose were manifestly of the same sort with those of the Sabbatic year—a year of rest from labor, of recuperation for both the laborer and his lands, and of joy in the God of their mercies. Particularly it made provision for restoring lands which had been alienated by any means during the forty-nine intervening years. On this eventful year all lands were to return to the original proprietor and to his estate. The law provided that alienated lands might be redeemed at any time for a price graduated by the years intervening before the Jubilee. But if the poor man was unable to redeem his land and had no relative or friend to redeem it for him before the Jubilee, it then returned to him by the statute with no redemption price.2. We must note its bearing upon Hebrew servants and its relation to the seventh year emancipation law.——It treats of two classes of servants of Hebrew blood; those who had sold themselves, because of their poverty, to a fellow Israelite; and those who for the same reason had sold themselves to a wealthy foreigner residing in the land. As to the former class, the law enjoins kind treatment; puts strongly the distinction between the hired and the bond-servant—permitting servants ofHebrew birth to be held in the former state but not in the latter; and finally gave him and his children freedom at the Jubilee.——Inasmuch as the seventh year emancipation law applied to this very class of servants, if it were enforced there could be no Hebrew servants to go out at the Jubilee except those who had not yet served six full years. This seems to be the bearing of the law of the Jubilee upon Hebrew servants. We can not assume that it superseded the seventh year law and took its place. The historic passage (Jer.34: 8–17) would quite forbid such a construction.As to the second class—those who had sold themselves to a foreigner—the law gave the right of redemption to any of his friends or to himself, and fixed the terms, providing for his freedom at the Jubilee.3. The most difficult point is, the bearing of the Jubilee, if any,upon servants of foreign birth. Did it, or did it not, provide for their emancipation?The passage (Lev.25: 9, 10) seems very strong in favor ofuniversalliberty, not omitting bond-servants of foreign birth. The words are—“Proclaim liberty through all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” This proclamation was made with sound of trumpet, ringing out its shrill blast over all the land. Now let it be considered: If foreigners were not included, and if the seventh year emancipation law had been duly enforced, there could have been but a meager showing of freedmen—only those few Hebrew servants who had not filled out their six years of service. Is it credible that so much proclamation and so much public display could have meant only the emancipation of say one-tenth or one-twentieth of all the servants in the land?——At any point of their history the number of foreign servants ought to have greatly exceeded the number of Hebrew birth—for two reasons:——​(a.) The law encouraged the taking of foreigners into this relation:——and (b.) They continued in it at least till the Jubilee—their maximum service being therefore forty-nine years, awhile the maximum service of the Hebrew-born was only six. Therefore I urge that a proclamation so high sounding and in terms so absolutely universal can not have left out the great majority of bondmen in the land.The opponents of this view rely upon the words (v.46)—“They shall be your bondmen forever”—whichthey claim must meanduring life.——But it may be replied—One human life is very much short offorever. Also, if the statute had meant during life, why did it not say so?——Again; the order of the Hebrew words favors this construction: “Forever of them shall ye take servants”—or somewhat more literally: Forever among them shall ye serve yourselves,i. e.provide yourselves with servants. And this construction harmonizes fully with the drift of the context, the spirit of which is—Go to the heathen about you, or to heathen families living among you for your supply of bond-servants. Let this be the permanent arrangement.The English phrase—“bond-servant” may perhaps give a stronger sense than the Hebrew will warrant. The Hebrew suggests no sort of “bond”—no obligation of law or justice. It expresses a certain degree of emphasis by means of repeating the words for service and servant, in this way: (v.39), If thy brother with thee shall become weak “[broken down financially], and shall sell himself to thee, thou shalt not exact of him the service of a servant, [or serve thyself in him with the service of a servant].” This is all that “bond-servant” can mean. It is a somewhat intensified idea of service.——Another prohibition in this passage is sufficiently explicit: “Thou shalt not rule over himwith rigor” (vs.43, 46),i. e.literally, with crushing; shalt not break him down; or in the American slave-holder’s phrase “break him in.”The case offoreign servantsdemands yet a few more words of explication. It can not be denied that the spirit of the Hebrew law favored the choice of foreigners for servants, and the increase of this class of population. This is plainly the doctrine of the passageLev.25: 44–46.——In connection with this we may profitably study the law of the Passover in its relation to servants (Ex.12: 43–49). “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.”——That this law contemplated Gentile servants is clear on two grounds:——​(a.) Only such would need circumcision—all Hebrews being circumcised when eight days old.——​(b.) The law (Lev.25: 44) required them to take their servants from the heathen,and authorized them to “buy” such. The buying of a Hebrew servant was a very different thing. The poor Hebrewsold himself—i. e.his services, and took pay in advance of doing the work. Selling himself is precisely the sense of the Hebrew inLev.25: 39, 47, though in the former case (v.39) our translators made it “be sold” and in the latter “sell himself.” The Hebrew verb is equally reflexive in both verses.——Moreover, no man might steal a Hebrew and sell him on pain of death. It does not appear that Hebrew fathers sold their sons. When they took pay for a daughter, it came under the usage of paying for wives. She was betrothed to her purchaser (Ex.21: 7–11) and of course had the rights of a wife. Hence this “buying a servant for money” (Ex.12: 44) contemplates a foreigner.——The law proceeds to say—“A foreigner (one not a servant) and a hired servant shall not eat thereof.”——Furthermore, circumcision was naturalization; it brought the servant within the pale of the Hebrew community. For this law of the Passover declares that “when a stranger sojourning with thee,i. e.in thy land, desires to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it;and he shall be as one that is born in the land;”i. e.his circumcision is equivalent in force to being born in the land; it secures his naturalization. Hence the buying of foreign servants would be a perpetual process of naturalizing them, and bringing them into the Hebrew community. They came to the Passover and were entitled to all the religious privileges of the children of Israel. Abraham himself circumcised, not his sons alone, but “all that were born in his house or bought with money of the stranger” (Gen.17: 23, 27).——Thus the system reached forth its arms, gathered to its genial bosom and blest with religious nurture thousands of alien birth, some of whom attained renown among the servants of the God of Israel. We have the history of Rahab and Ruth, and to name no more of “Uriah the Hittite,” and of “Ittai the Gittite” [of Gath].VIII.Judicial Procedure.Under this general head the following topics should receive attention.1.Judges.The reorganization suggested by Jethro has been noticed, and also its further modification to adjust it to the fixed residence in Canaan.——Between Joshua and Saul, there was an irregular series of Supreme Judges, closing with Samuel of whose circuit court, taking four cities in rotation, we have a notice in1 Sam.7: 15–17. The kings manifestly held this function of Supreme Judge. In the absence of other Judges, the High Priest seems to have served ex-officio. His powers, under the “Judges” above referred to and the kings, are not sharply defined; but probably religious and semi-religious questions came before him and his associates. The Judges between Joshua and Samuel were military men.——A special reorganization of the judiciary under Jehoshaphat (2 Chron.19: 5–11) will repay a careful reading. It provides subordinate judges in all the fortified cities; solemnly admonishes them to administer justice in the fear of God; establishes a supreme court in Jerusalem, where “he set of the Levites, priests, and chief of the fathers of Israel for the judgment of the Lord and for controversies when they returned to Jerusalem”—the last clause apparently referring to cases carried up for decision before this supreme court.——It should be noted that we read nothing of cases taken up to a higher court by appeal of a dissatisfied party; but only as carried up by the lower court itself when the case seemed too hard or too high for its decision. This principle went into operation in the reorganization by Moses (Ex.18: 22, 26 andDeut.1: 17)—“The cause that is too hard for you, bring it to me and I will hear it.” It passed into the general law as we may see (Deut.17: 8–13) which provides for a supreme court at the religious center, the judges being “the priests, the Levites, and the judges that shall be in those days.”The warnings against partiality and bribery were earnest and solemn—the penalty for these offenses being left, it would seem, to be visited upon the offender by the Almighty (Ex.23: 6–8, andLev.19: 15, andDeut.1: 17, and 16: 18–20). They were not even allowed to favor the poor man in his causeagainst justice(Ex.23: 3 andLev.19: 15)—there being sometimes a temptation to do this out of sympathy with his poverty and his necessities. But God put justice in law above sympathy for even the necessitous poor.——The public anathema fell on him who took a bribe to slay the innocent (Deut.27: 25).2. The seat of justice—the place for holding court—was “in the gates of the city.” Hence this being with all Orientals the place of public resort, the courts were public—open to all.3. The processes of prosecution are not specially described. In cases of a personal, private character, the aggrieved party brought suit. In cases of a public nature “the elders of the city” bore responsibilities, as we see in the case of murder by an unknown hand. A remarkable case of appeal to the sensibilities of the whole nation is givenJudg.19: 25–30, under which the people woke to a consciousness of horrible wickedness in Israel, and their indignation became irrepressible; yet they carefully sought counsel of the Lord in this terrible case.4.Advocates.We find no notice of professional advocates. The “lawyers” of New Testament history were men versed in the law and were teachers of law, but not by any means the modern advocate. Every man might be his own advocate, and even women were heard before no less a king than Solomon himself (1Kings 3: 16–18). Noble-hearted, disinterested men seem in Oriental life to have undertaken this service voluntarily for the poor and the fatherless, of which Job gives a touching description (Job 29: 7–17). Isaiah exhorts to this duty: “Plead for the widow” (1: 17). It was the noble doctrine of this system—“Our law judges no man before it hears him and knows what he doeth” (Jn.7: 51). Moses puts it thus—“Ye shall hear the small as well as the great” (Deut.1: 17). “If there arise a matter in judgment between blood and blood,between plea and plea,”etc.(Deut.17: 8).5.Of Witnesses—the points of chief importance are these:(1.) They testified under oath—the manner of administration being this: The witness listened to the rehearsalof the words, and gave his oral assent, “Amen,” or, “As thou sayest.” The passage (Lev.5: 1) describes the case of one who sins in this way, hearing the voice—i. e.the words of the sacred oath, adjuring him to testify whether he has seen or known any thing in this case. Then if he will not make known, “he shall bear his iniquity.”——A special statute for the case of a wife suspected of conjugal infidelity shows how she is to be put under this solemn oath (Num.5: 19–22). She listens to the words of the oath and responds, “Amen, amen.” (See alsoProv.29: 24 andMat.26: 63).(2.) That the witnesses were examined separately and in presence of the accused appears probable from a comparison ofMat.26: 61 withMk.14: 55–59. Jesus was present (Mat.26: 62).(3) As to the requisite number of witnesses—a criminal case of capital crime required two besides the accuser (Deut.17: 6 and 19: 15). Hence the phrase—“In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (Mat.18: 16).——A supposed case is stated (Ex.22: 10, 11) in which the complainant and the accused are the only witnesses. Both are put under oath; but the testimony of the accused under oath seems to be accepted as his vindication.(4.) By another peculiar provision of the Mosaic statutes, the witnesses in certain cases must be first to execute the penalty (Deut.17: 7, and 13: 9, and Acts 7: 58, and John 8: 7). This provision was doubtless morally wholesome.IX.Punishments.A few points not already brought to view deserve a brief notice.1.Fines.—Some were fixed by statute. The highest known to the law (one hundred shekels of silver) was laid on the man who falsely accused his wife of previous unchastity (Deut.22: 19). Another case among violations of the seventh commandment appears (Deut.22: 28, 29).——In the case of an ox goring some one fatally, the penalty of death upon his owner might be commuted to a fine at the discretion of the judges (Ex.21: 28–31)—a wise provision because the real culpability of hisowner must vary with circumstances. In another case (Ex.21: 22), the suffering party and the judge fixed the amount of the fine.2. The sin and the trespass offerings sustained a slight relation to fines, since the party bore the cost of the animal sacrificed—a young bullock, a kid of goats,etc.These laws may be seen inLev.4 and 5 and inNum.15: 27–29. They pertain to sins of ignorance and of remissness; never to presumptuous sins. In addition to the cost of the sacrifice the penalty included a public confession of the offense, and was well adapted to make a good moral impression.The special cases which come under this general head of sin and trespass offerings were——​(1.) Unintentional transgressions of the Levitical law.——​(2.) The rash oath, ill-considered and not conscientiously kept (Lev.5: 4).——​(3.) Perjury in a witness;—not however the case of false swearing to condemn the innocent, which was punished by retaliation; but the offense ofnottestifying what he knew when put under oath (Lev.5: 1).——​(4.) Debts due to the sanctuary—a failure to pay tithes; the penalty being, one-fifth added to the original amount and all paid, coupled with the trespass offering (Lev.5: 14–16).——​(5.) Denying any thing given in trust, or retaining another man’s lost property which he may have found, and similar offenses, coupled with false swearing (Lev.6: 1–7); the penalty being, to restore with one-fifth added and to make his trespass offering.——​(6.) Adultery with a slave. The penalty—a sin-offering and the punishment of death commuted to stripes.3.Stripeswere made the penalty of certain specified crimes (Lev.19: 20 andDeut.22: 18). The law was careful to limit the number of stripes to forty, giving as the reason—“Lest if thou shouldest exceed” [this number] “then thy brother should seem vile unto thee;”i. e.not merely lest the man might lose his self-respect, but lest he lose the respect of the community, and be hopelessly degraded. In usage the Hebrews limited the number to thirty-nine—said to have been administered by thirteen strokes of a triple cord.4. Of retaliation [“lex talionis”] notice has been taken already.5.Excommunication; excision; being cut off from his people. When executed by God himself, it meant destruction by some providential agency. Compare1Kings 14: 10 with 15: 29 and2Kings 9: 8–10.——When executed by human agency, it was capital punishment, usually by stoning (Ex.31: 14, andLev.17: 4, and 20: 17, 18).6. The customary modes of capital punishment were two:stoningandthe sword. (Deut.13: 9, 10, and 17: 5, andJosh.7: 25.) The sword appears in later ages.7.Disgrace after deathin some cases heightened the penalty,e. g.by burning the dead body (Gen.38: 24, andLev.20: 14, and 21: 9). That in these cases the death was by stoning and the burning was only that of the dead body, seems to be sufficiently proved fromJosh.7: 15, 25. “All Israel stoned him” [Achan and his family] “with stones and burned them with fireafterthey had stoned them with stones.” Their very bodies seem to have been thought of as polluted andpolluting.——Another method of posthumous disgrace was by hanging on a tree (Num.25: 4, 5 andDeut.21: 22, 23). The body must not remain suspended over night “that thy land be not defiled; for he that is hanged is accursed of God.” See cases of the execution of this law inJosh.8: 29 and 10: 26, 27.Several forms of punishment were introduced from other nations in later ages which we may omit as foreign from our subject.In closing this topic let it be noted that judicial procedure and punishment were summary—both the trial and the execution being carried through with apparently no delay. Compared on these points with the most highly civilized countries of our age, the Hebrews have greatly the advantage, and the efficiency of their law must have been for this very reason surpassingly great. Their methods afforded but the smallest possible hope of escape. Punishment followed close on the heels of detection, and usually, we must presume, of crime.——Furthermore, these punishments, compared with those of other nations in that age were by no means severe. Indeed the modes of capital punishment which come to view in the Scriptures as existing among other nations were terribly barbarous compared withthose of the Hebrew code;e. g.burning in a fiery furnace; being torn in pieces by lions; being sawn asunder; crucifixion.The design of punishment is put in the plainest terms. In its severer forms it is not the discipline of the criminal but the good of the public—to deter the evil-minded from crime and so to make society safe from outrage. In the case of presumptuous sins we read—“That man shall die, and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel, and all the people shall hear and fear and do no more presumptuously” (Deut.17: 12, 13 and 19: 20).It is worthy of special notice under this head that we find in this code a considerable number of statuteswith no penalty attachedwhich human hands were to inflict. God reserved the infliction of the penalty to himself. The fear of his displeasure, coupled with his promised rewards for obedience were the only forces coercing obedience to these statutes. They were left upon the conscience of the people, and upon their fears and hopes under a system in which God’s hand in providence was often made most palpable. For cases in point I may refer to the laws against usury and requiring favors to be shown to the poor;—as for example (Deut.15: 9, 10): “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying—The seventh year, the year of release is at hand, and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother and thou givest him naught, and he cry unto the Lord against thee and it be sin upon thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him; because that for this thing the Lord thy God will bless thee in all thy works,”etc.The moral power of this invisible force upon the heart and conscience of the people we shall be able to appreciate more justly if we carefully study the words which stand (Ex.23: 20–25),i. e.at the close of the first catalogue of the “statutes and judgments.” It seems to come in here legitimately as a moral force to induce a conscientious and careful obedience to these statutes. “Behold” (calling special attention) “behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice anddo all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to thine enemies,”etc.——This angel, bearing authority to pardon or not pardon sins, and of whom the very God could say—“My name is in him” could be no less than really divine.Namein Hebrew usage as applied to God involves and implies his real nature—his essential attributes. Corresponding to this view of “the angel” in this passage is the injunction to “beware of him and to obey his voice”; and also his power to forgive sins—“for who can forgive sins but God only”? This passage therefore affords decisive proof that the personage who manifested himself to Israel in the pillar of cloud and of fire; whose presence abode in their tabernacle; whose voice they heard in this holy law—was truly divine, and yet was mysteriously distinct from the speaker—the “I”—of this remarkable passage. Truly he was God, manifest—if not precisely in human flesh—yet in palpable forms, in tangible demonstrations, in voice of power and tongue of flame; in the luminous pillar; in perpetual agencies of protection and of supply as to earthly need; and, not least, as their Ruler and their Lord whose voice in these statutes it behooved them to hear and obey as they would hope to be blessed in their national life and in any desirable prosperity. Hence it was both practicable and wise under this Hebrew system to leave some statutes upon the naked conscience of the people with no attempt to enforce obedience save the appeal to this invisible Presence.These remarks will naturally suggest to the thoughtful mind a train of inquiries of this sort:——How can we account for it that the books of Moses allude so very rarely to the future state of man’s being—to heaven and to hell? Had even the best men of those times any definite belief in the future life and in its retribution for deeds done in this? How happens it that both the law and the rewards or penalties of their civil code, and indeed of their religious code as well, make so much account of present retribution and so little of the future?These points will be treated more conveniently and in a more satisfactory manner after the religious code shall have been examined and after we have surveyed the history of Israel in the wilderness—i. e.at the close of the present volume.There are two historic questions pertaining to this civil code of the Hebrews which have sufficient interest to justify a few moments’ attention;viz.I.How far was this system indebted to Egypt?II.How far have the best civil codes of the most civilized nations of all subsequent history been indebted to this Hebrew code?I.As to the possible relations of this Hebrew code to Egyptian life and jurisprudence, perhaps the word “indebted” is too strong. It is by no means intended to disparage the divine originality of this law or of any and every feature of the system. I assume two things:——​(1.) That Moses, “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” may have had intimate personal acquaintance with very many things in civil jurisprudence which the Lord taught him in and through his Egyptian life rather than by immediate and independent revelation:——and (2.) That the people became familiar with some valuable usages and customs connected with Egyptian law and Egyptian life, and by this means were prepared to receive and adopt them under this new code and in this new style of life in Canaan, when, without this previous culture, these laws and usage could not have gone into operation so readily if at all.The Hebrew code and its system of jurisprudence—as also the entire Hebrew national life—were benefited by the Egyptian in the following points:1. The example and silent influence of a full civil, written code of law. That Egypt had such a code admits of no question. The Hebrew patriarchs, prior to the sojourn in Egypt, had nothing of the sort. Their life in Egypt therefore gave them their first lessons—their first ideas, of a complete code of written law. We shall be in small danger of over-estimating the value of these lessons and ideas in their bearings upon a higher civilization.2. Egypt gave to the Hebrew mind the example of a well digested system of judicial procedure, established courts and forms of trial; laws put in force by the aid of judges, witnesses, and the systematic execution of penalties.——Remarkably the last quarter of a century has brought to light documentary evidence of a judicial trial in Egypt as far back as the age of Moses, developingthe most finished method; well digested forms of procedure; a state trial, conducted with great dignity and decorum; and the whole proceeding put on record so carefullythat this original document is before the world in perfect preservation at thisday.423. Egypt gave to the children of Israel the example of a national lifebased on agriculture, as distinct from and indeed opposed to the wandering, unsettled life of the shepherd. The nomadic mode of life, perpetuated by necessity to this day in the deserts of Arabia, in which individual right to the soil is unknown and no family has a fixed home, each living for the time where its flocks may chance to find herbage and water—this had been the style of the patriarchs before Jacob went to Egypt. It was not the best for social and mental culture. God had a better life for his people prospectively in Canaan, and their residence in Egypt introduced them to it and gave them a preparation for it. It made subsistence less precarious; blended the cultivation of the soil with the care of flocks and herds; provided for a denser population; greatly enhanced the opportunities for social culture and for such a religious system as that of Israel. In a word it provided for a much higher Christian civilization than could have been possible under the strictly nomadic mode of life. To Egypt, the nation was indebted for the example and for the training into this agricultural mode of life.4. In another important respect, the example of the national life of Egypt was a preordained training for their own national life in Canaan:—it was that of a people providing for their own wants; living within themselves; maintaining substantially non-intercourse with other nations, and for the most part excluding foreign commerce. Such was Egypt during the residence of Israel there, and such God wisely designed Israel to be in her promised land of Canaan. As to Israel in Canaan, the purposes of this policy are obvious—protection from the contaminating influences of idolatry,not to say also from the contaminations of luxury and wealth.5. In Egypt, the priests were the learned class of the empire, and held the highest responsibilities in the civil and judicial as well as the religious life of the nation. A system essentially the same was introduced into Israel, the priests and the Levites holding the same place in the nation which they had seen held by the priests in Egypt.6. It is a very noticeable fact in the history of the legal life in Egypt, that though magic arts were in a sense tolerated and indeed were resorted to by the king in his emergencies, yet their influence in society proved to be so pernicious as to demand legal restraint. We have the record of a man indicted “for many crimes and wickednesses committed through his magic arts and writings, such as paralyzing limbs, empowering a slave to do audacious things,”etc.The decision of the court in his case reads—“For his various abominations, the greatest in the world, he is condemned to death.”——It will be remembered that the Mosaic law heldallpractice of magic arts to be a penal offense, punishable with death (Ex.22: 18 andLev.20: 27).7. In some points the spirit of the Mosaic code was so greatly in advance of the Egyptian as to stand related to it, not in the way of imitation or even modification, but of direct opposition. It held squarely the opposite doctrine and put forth statutes of an opposite character. Thus, the Egyptian code legalized slavery, and had its special law for the reclamation of fugitives. Among the recent discoveries in Egyptian antiquities “A warrant for the arrest of fugitive slaves” has been brought to light. From the tone of this warrant and from other evidence, collateral, it is inferred that slave-holders were obliged by law to register them in a list kept by government and disputes with regard to ownership must be brought before the judges. The rights of the master in his slave were not absolute. It was not by virtue of orders direct from the owner that search was instituted and arrest made, but by the authority of a high functionary of government, to whom the case is reported and who issues his mandate. Thus the government itself put forth its hand to recover a slave who had escaped from any citizen.——It wastherefore specially pertinent that the law of Jehovah to Israel should plant itself on ground precisely the reverse of this:—no reclamation of fugitives whatsoever. Thou shaltnotdo what Egyptian slave-holders were authorized by the highest authority of the kingdom to do—force back the escaped fugitive to his unendurable bondage.In the line of their religious institutions Israel stood related to Egypt in numerous particulars, borrowing some things for the adornment of its tabernacle from Egyptian art; and on the other hand, guarding by stringent prohibitions against many Egyptian usages associated with idolatry. These points will be in place after we have considered the religious institutions of Moses.II.The second proposed historic question,viz.How far have the best civil codes of all history and how far has the world at large been indebted to this Hebrew code?—opens a field of inquiry quite too wide to be fully canvassed within our prescribed limits. A few hints may be useful perhaps to guide the further inquiries of the reader. The following points are put comprehensively and suggestively:1. Moses sought to impress it upon his people that this system far surpassed that of any other nation. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me.... Keep, therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of all the nations who shall hear of all these statutes and shall say, Surely this nation is a wise and understanding people, for what great nation hath their God so nigh to them as the Lord our God is to us in all that we call upon him for? And what great nation hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day”? (Deut.4: 5–8.)2. The Hebrew system surpassed all others, especially in this—thatit gave to human government and law the sanction of God’s authority, and enforced them upon the human heart and conscience by this most impressive and benign of all influences.3. Preparatory to this result it maintained against the whole Pagan world the doctrine ofone God—perfect in character, supreme in power, righteous in all his administrationof rewards and punishments. Only so could it make the idea of God a really wholesome power and his authority effective in sustaining civil government.4. This divinely given code rested upon justice and equity, and determined every thing by this standard. So doing, it ruled out at once a multitude of interests and ends which human laws have often sought to secure. Its example therefore, in so far at least, was simply and supremely beneficent.5. In yet further detail, it recognized the common and equal rights of all men, irrespective of condition, rank, wealth—holding constantly the doctrine, “No respect of persons.”6. It appreciated at their just value the rights of the poor and of all that large class who look only to God and to human law for protection.We come now to the question of historic fact:Did this Hebrew code and government send forth its influence upon the nations of ancient history?Did it in any perceptible degree leaven the best systems of human law and jurisprudence.——If the proof for the affirmative falls short of positive certainty, what is its amount of probability?Here we may fitly consider—(a.) That God chose for Israel the land of Canaan, in the center of the ancient world of mind; immediately between Egypt on the one hand and Babylon, Assyria, Persia—all the great nations of Western Asia—on the other; and closely contiguous to ancient Greece and Rome.(b.) That David and Solomon became known to all the great powers of the world of their time. Solomon’s renown turned largely on the fact that his people were prosperous and happy, his government well ordered, and his own wisdom in all affairs of state unsurpassed.——It is simply impossible that such examples should drop powerless upon the nations of the earth.(c.) That at a later period the personal history of Mordecai, of Esther, and especially of Daniel in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar and of Cyrus show that the Jews, their religion, their God, and their law, did impress themselves upon the greatest centers of influence and power in their time.(d.) This dispersion of the Jews at and after theircaptivity planted them in large numbers in the chief seats of human science and learning; in Egypt on the South-West; in Babylon, Persia, and adjacent countries of the East. It is historically certain that in the age of the Ptolemies, a large body of learned Jews lived in Egypt; that the Old Testament was translated into Greek by request of Ptolemy Philadelphus;that the Egypt of that age was the school of wisdom and jurisprudence for Ancient Greece and was herself the pupil ofMoses.43——Thatthe best Greek authors knew Moses is matter of history. Longinus quotes from Moses (Gen.1: 3) in his treatise on Sublimity; Strabo makes honorable mention of him as a law-giver; and Diodorus Siculus acknowledges him to be “the first of legislators from whom all laws had their origin.” Numenius a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean school, speaking of Plato, exclaims—“What is Plato but Moses Atticising”—i. e.teaching in Attic Greek? Origen believed that Plato drew largely from Moses.——The list of eminent Grecian authors and savans who went personally to Egypt for wisdom and science is long—such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodotus.There they came into contact with learned Jews and not improbably with the writings ofMoses.44Prof.Wines (p.335) cites the learned Grotius as saying—“The most ancient Attic laws, whence in aftertimes the Roman were derived, owe their origin to Moses’ law. That the Grecians, especially the Attics, took their laws from Moses is credible. This is the reason why the Attic laws and the Roman twelve Tables which sprang from them so much resemble the Hebrew laws.”——This similarity between the Attic laws and those of Moses has been noticed by many other learned men,e. g.Josephus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Sir Matthew Hale, Archbishop Potter. The last named in his “Grecian Antiquities” has adduced many points ofGrecian law which seem to have been taken from Moses—viz.the laws of divorce; the purgation oath compared with “the oath of jealousy” among the Hebrews; the harvest and vintage festival; the law of first-fruits; the law requiring the best offerings for God; the portion for the priests; protection to the man-slayer at their altars; requiring priests to be unblemished; the agrarian law; laws regulating descent of property, and prohibiting marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity.——Plato in his ideal “Republic” is thought to have drawn largely from Moses.——Clement of Alexandria accosts him (by Apostrophe)—“But as for laws, whatever are true were conveyed to thee from the Hebrews.”These historic facts seem to indicate the definite channel through which the laws of Moses reached the Grecian mind in its earliest stages of culture and thus wrought themselves into the great fountains of Grecian and Roman civilization and jurisprudence.(e.) There seem to be strong grounds for the general statement that the greatest reformers of all known history have acted upon the ideas of Moses, and have probably drawn their doctrines more or less directly from that fountain. I will venture to place in this category Zoroaster, Plato, Confucius, Buddha, and Mahomet. These men were in their time reformers of society, of morals, and of jurisprudence. Their influence ledtowardif not fullyuntothe doctrine ofone God, and by natural consequence to a purer morality and juster views of law and equity; of love to one’s neighbor and purity of life.——I regret that my limits forbid any attempt to present the historic evidence which might support more or less fully these broad, comprehensive statements. The historic evidence that Zoroaster, Plato, and Mahomet drew from Moses is very strong. Of the great Indian reformer and of the Chinese comparatively little is known.(f.) Of Roman law as finally embodied in the great code of Justinian, it has been already suggested that its best things came from Moses and the Septuagint through Greece and the Egypt of the Ptolemies.——I add two other remarks:—​(a) That in the age of Justinian (first half of the sixth Christian century) primitive Christianity had quite fully leavened the publicsentiment and thus the jurisprudence of the then civilized world.——​(b.) That when Justinian created a commission of learned jurists to “collect the scattered monuments of ancient jurisprudence,” he recommended them in settling any point to regard neither the number nor the reputation of the jurisconsults who had given opinions on the subject,but to be guided solely by reason andequity.45(g.) Of Alfred the Great (reigned A. D. 871–901) the central testimony of history is that he was severelyjust. Despite of surroundings almost barbarous, he rose by dint of his irrepressible manliness to become the greatest legislator and scholar of his age, and so was able to lay the foundations for the best and truest glory of the English name. The common law of England and of the English-speaking world began its development under his hand. One fact is of itself a volume of testimony to the spirit of this ancient law. When after a long struggle Wilberforce brought the question before the English bench—Does English law sanction human bondage? the world heard the answer—Never. “Slaves can not breathe in England.” What moment they take in her pure air, they are free! The spirit of her law from the days of Alfred was justice and righteousness between a man and his neighbor. The laws of Moses were in Alfred’s eye; the spirit of those laws filled and fired his noble soul. It is currently said that the telling words which describe the needy as “God’s poor” are original (for our mother Saxon tongue) with him. Moses had reiterated the sentiment long ages before.——Sir Matthew Hale has traced the influence of the Bible generally on the laws of England. Sismondi testifies that Alfred, in causing a republication of the Saxon laws, inserted several statutes taken from the code of Moses, to give new strength and cogency to the principles of morality.“Thus have the principles of the Mosaic code found their way to a greater or less extent into the jurisprudence of all civilized nations.” [Wines—p.337.]It falls within our plan to speak briefly of the civil code of Mosesas a series of progressive revelations of God to man.I have spoken of the law of Sinai as a manifestation of God to man at once sublime in its majesty and most benignly practical in its moral bearings. The civil code—“the statutes and judgments”—carry out yet more fully the practical unfoldings of God’s wisdom and of his sense of justice and right as between man and man. It is not easy to select the most striking cases to illustrate this point, for the whole code is radiant with divine wisdom and aglow with testimonies of his love, manifesting itself in wisest legislation for human welfare.——Confining our attention to the second table of the law of Sinai—man’s relation to his fellow-man—we may consider how much there is here adapted to conserve all the best elements of society—in securing the honor due to parents and rulers; in guarding human life and providing the means for its protection; in making the marriage covenant sacred; on the one hand shielding the sexual relation of the race against abuses most pernicious; and on the other, providing agencies which may enrich man’s social life with priceless blessings. So also the statutes in detail respecting rights of property and rights of reputation are replete with fresh testimonies to the wisdom and the love of the Great Father.——Speaking frankly of the impressions made on my mind by this study of the code of Moses, I must say that no part has seemed to me more deeply imbued with the tenderness and pity of the Lord than the provisions made for the poor, and the restrictions and limitations upon personal servitude. In all his utterances on these points the Lord assumes that no interests of man more need his protection than these, and he comes promptly to the front to give it. He would have us know that over these interests his watchful eye never sleeps; his quick ear is never shut to any cry for help. The rich and the mighty may get on without his special aid; the poor are his own wards and shall never lack his sympathy nor his present hand. Human laws are in great part worthless—at least they miss their most important function—unless they make it their chief endeavor to protect the interests and rights of thosewho, powerless in themselves, drop upon the strong arm of law for their defence. Society and legislation might as well not be as to forget that they exist as appointed of God mainly for the sake of the poor and the otherwise unprotected and unbefriended. Such needy ones every human society will have for the moral trial of those who control society, and I may add, to draw out the sympathy of the Great Father.These revelations of himself stand forth in sunlight throughout this Mosaic code. They are a glorious advance upon all that the world had seen before. The true mission of civil law is brought out here with great fullness; for it seems to be every-where assumed that if laws protect and befriend the poor, they protect and befriendall. If the spirit of law faithfully guards their interests, it can not well fail to guard all interests that need the guardianship of human legislation. It is a priceless boon to the race to have these ideas so beautifully set forth and so substantially embodied in a code of laws fresh from the hand and from the heart of the Infinite Father.

VII.Hebrew Servitude.

Servitude existed before Moses. It was no part of the mission of the Hebrew code tocreateit. Let it be forever admitted that the laws given of God through Moses can not be held responsible for the existence of slavery. They found it existing and proceeded therefore tomodify it; to soften its more rigid features; to extract its carnivorous teeth; to ordain that the slavehad rightswhich the master and the nation were bound to respect—in short, to tone down the severities of the system from unendurable slavery to very tolerable servitude.

By what means was this change wrought?What new elements were introduced to abate the severities of real slavery?

1.Man-stealing was punished with death.“He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death” (Ex.21: 16). The law as recited inDeut.21: 7 applies to a man stealing one of his brethren of the children of Israel. As stated inEx.21: 16 it is universal, with no limitation. Stealing amanis the crime. I see no reason to doubt that the law was intended to apply to men of every nationality—to men as made in God’s image of whatever nation.

This statute struck at the very root of real slavery. Both stealing and selling contemplate property—assume the fact of a property value. The spirit of the law is—Men shall never be degraded into merchandise. Every body knows that all American slavery began with stealing men from Africa and selling them. Servitude, involving a certain right to service and property in service, there might be, despite of this Hebrew law; but real slavery—property in man as distinctfrom property in his services, there could not be under this law. Moreover, the severity of this penalty must have thrown its shield of protection over the entire system of servitude. It was a very palpable indication of God’s stern displeasure against the whole system of chattelizing human beings.

2. The Hebrew law positively forbade the rendition of fugitives. “Thou shalt not deliver to his master the servant that has escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him” (Deut.23: 15, 16).——Observe it was not only impossible to have any law for the reclamation of fugitives—i. e.to have “a fugitive slave law” of the recent American pattern; but the law was put on the other side. It declared—“Thou shaltnotdeliver him up to his master”—shalt not give his master information and help the arrest; but shalt let him choose his abode by his own free and manly will. If his hardships are such under his bondage that he prefers to take his risk of finding a better living elsewhere, let him try it. Let no man stand in his way. He would not leave his master if his personal rights and interests were properly cared for. But if his master is too selfish, or too cruel, or too exacting of labor, or too stingy of bread or clothing, who shall judge but the servant himself? Therefore let the servant better his own condition if he can, and let all selfish, savage-hearted masters take warning!——Such laws exorcise the real spirit of slavery with blessed rapidity. It would require but few such ameliorating statutes to tone it down from unendurable slavery to very tolerable servitude.

The spirit of this law is altogether the spirit of the Great Lawgiver when he found the Hebrews sorely oppressed in Egypt; smote off their chains; brought them forth from their house of bondage, and placed them beyond all reclamation. What he required his people now to do in behalf of any oppressed servant was only in spirit what he had done for them.

3. Severe personal injuries gave the slave his freedom. “If a man smite the eye of his servant or the eye of his maid that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.” So of the tooth (Ex.21: 26, 27).The eye and the tooth are but specimen illustrations of the principle. A charge of shot in the leg could not be less under this law than a passport to freedom.——Moreover, the statutes very specifically enjoined clemency and forbade rigor in the treatment of Hebrew servants (Lev.25: 39–43, 46).

4. Of wider sweep in its influence and of inexpressible value wasthe system of periodical emancipation. The term of service for the Hebrew-born was limited to six years. At the end of this term they went out free. Servants of foreign birth (as we shall see) went out at the Jubilee, each fiftieth year.——The effect of this law was at once to lift from the heart the terrible incubus of a life-long bondage—that sense of a hopeless doom which knows no relief till death. Whatever the amount of discomfort or suffering involved in servitude might have been, the Hebrew servant had under this law the prospect of his freedom at no distant day.——Moreover the accompanying provisions of this law were thoroughly humane. The servant who had sold himself through extreme poverty (Lev.25: 47–55) might be redeemed at any time by a friend, or if he could command the means by extra labor or skill, he might redeem himself.——When his term expired, his master must not send him away empty, but must furnish him liberally out of his flock and out of his floor (grain), and even out of hiswine-press—of any thing and every thing wherewith the Lord had blessed the master, he was to impart liberally to his manumitted servant (Deut.15: 12–15). So the servant would have a fair start in his new self-supporting life. It was a fore-thoughtful provision, full of the milk of a more than human kindness.

Apparently this periodic emancipation applied to every class of Hebrew servants—to him who had sold himself because he had become too poor to provide for his family; to him who had been taken and sold for debt; and to him who had been sold into servitude for crime. This latter case, however, is doubtful.

Noticeably, this law provides for the family rights of the servant. If he had brought his wife with him into this state, he took her out with himself, and of course his children also. If his master had given him a wife, he retained her because of his property interest in herservices, and her children with her for humanity’s sake; for children under six years of age need their mother’s care. Wives in that age of the world were paid for.

Let it be noticed, the law assumes that possibly the servant may love his wife and his children and even hismasterso well that he chooses not to leave them. Very well; if he will consent to come before the judges and in a solemn judicial manner, testify to this love of his heart, and moreover, will consent to endure the rather uncomfortable operation of having his ear bored through with an awl, then he may remain forever—i. e.during life. But the discomforts of this operation were intended to bear somewhat against this unlimited servitude. The law seemed to say to every servant—“It would probably be better for you to be your own master and live in freedom, rather than in even this very comfortable servitude.”——Every provision of this statute had a purpose. The servant must be brought before the judges to express in this public manner his choice to remain in servitude; for this method would make it impossible for the master to misrepresent the will of his servant. Moreover, it seems probable that boring the ear was no badge of honor but the opposite, and therefore would bear against the man’s choice of perpetual servitude.

The law made special provision for the case of female servants. The original statute (Ex.21: 7–11) put her case on a different footing from that of her brother. “She shall not go out as the men-servants do.” The language—“If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant”—may seem at first view to be a case of slave-sale, involving real property in human flesh and bones. A closer examination will show that it comes under the usage ofselling daughters to become wives; for this purchase “betrothed her to her master,” or to “his son,” and the law made special provision for her rights as such;viz.that in case her master is not pleased with her, he shall let her be redeemed, “and shall have no power to sell her unto a strange nation.” If betrothed to his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter; if the son take another wife, he shall not abate from his duty as a husband toward her; and if he refuse to do all the law demands, she is free—redeemed by law,“without money.”——These statutes of course shape themselves to the existing usages in respect to polygamy, concubinage, and easy divorce, sedulously protecting the rights of a female servant under these most unfavorable usages.

It seems probable that these kind and considerate provisions failed to protect her rights as fully as the spirit of the law intended, and therefore a further modification appears at a later period; forDeut.15: 17 declares that the six years’ emancipation law shall apply to her also as truly as to her brother;—“and unto thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise.”

5. In view of the fact that what we may call “religious privileges” included rest from labor and more or less of religious and social festivity, the law was very specific in stipulating that the man-servant and the maid-servant must share in all these equally with the son and the daughter. We see this in the law of the Sabbath; in the feast upon the second tithes (Deut.12: 17, 18); and in two of the great festivals,viz.the Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles (Deut.16: 11, 14).——Thus they were put religiously and socially upon the same footing as children in the family. No ban of exclusion, no stigma of caste, could attach to their condition so long as these statutes were duly observed.

6. By usage and without the necessity of statute, Hebrew servants held property. The old American doctrine—“The slave can own nothing”—had no place in the system of Hebrew servitude. The proof is twofold:——​(a) The statutes provided that “if able he might redeem himself” (Lev.25: 49). This permission would be only a taunting insult if in fact no Hebrew servant could hold property.——​(b). The light of history bears witness: Ziba was a servant of the house of Saul; but he had servants under him—a round score; “fifteen sons andtwentyservants” (2 Sam.9: 10 and 19: 17), and seems to have had charge of cultivating Saul’s estates.

Thus manifold and effective were the humane provisions which softened the severities of slavery, toning them down to a very tolerable system of servitude.

The Slavery that Existed before Moses.

We have spoken of Hebrew servitude as amodifiedsystem—which raises the question—“modified”from what? What was the pre-existing system upon which these modifications were superinduced? A full answer must include (a) The patriarchal system as it appears in the case of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: and (b) The system of Egypt and perhaps other contemporary nations.

(a.) In the patriarchal system servitude could not possibly have been compulsory. It must have been voluntary. Force, coercion, was utterly out of the question. Abraham had neither army nor police to hold his slaves in bondage. In fact they were his armed soldiers as against freebooting incursions or any hostile assault whatever. Manifestly they lived with him while they chose—no longer. Some of them rose to bear important responsibilities,e. g.Eliezer (Gen.24); his two young men who went with him and Isaac to Moriah (Gen.22).——Isaac “had great store of servant” (Gen.26: 14), but there is not the least intimation that they were entailed as part of his estate to either Esau or Jacob; or that he received them by inheritance from Abraham.——Jacob had many servants (Gen.30: 43), and in fact must have had to help him in the care of his flocks and herds: but the history shows that he did not take them with him into Egypt. Joseph’s invitation left out the servants (Gen.45: 10, 11.), and the record specifies all the family except the servants and gives us the actual enumeration—all servants omitted (Gen.46: 5–26). Property in servants in the American sense, there was none.

(b.) Of Egyptian slavery enough is known to show that they bought slaves brought in from other nations, holding therefore a property right in them, and that they constituted a menial class in society.

The condition of the Israelites under oppression there was peculiar. Manifestly they were not held by individual Egyptians as their personal property, but rather by the crown. The king of Egypt appears as the great slave-holder of the Hebrew people, making levies upon them for laborers at his pleasure, and exacting theseverest tasks with no limitations but his own will on the one hand and their possible endurance on the other. The question of letting the people go was (at least mainly) personal to himself and to his throne. His merciless severity would naturally tend to make slavery in Egypt heartlessly cruel. Laws to restrain masters from severity could not be thought of under such kings. It is easy to see that when, at and after Sinai, the Lord came to legislate for the Hebrew people, fresh from Egyptian usages and laws, there was abundant occasion for statutes to modify the severities of human bondage. With telling force the Lord could say—Never oppress your servants; ye know how oppression feels!

The Jubilee.—(Lev.25).

In this chapter and here only we have an account of this peculiar institution. The following points in it deserve special attention.

1. Its main scope and purpose were manifestly of the same sort with those of the Sabbatic year—a year of rest from labor, of recuperation for both the laborer and his lands, and of joy in the God of their mercies. Particularly it made provision for restoring lands which had been alienated by any means during the forty-nine intervening years. On this eventful year all lands were to return to the original proprietor and to his estate. The law provided that alienated lands might be redeemed at any time for a price graduated by the years intervening before the Jubilee. But if the poor man was unable to redeem his land and had no relative or friend to redeem it for him before the Jubilee, it then returned to him by the statute with no redemption price.

2. We must note its bearing upon Hebrew servants and its relation to the seventh year emancipation law.——It treats of two classes of servants of Hebrew blood; those who had sold themselves, because of their poverty, to a fellow Israelite; and those who for the same reason had sold themselves to a wealthy foreigner residing in the land. As to the former class, the law enjoins kind treatment; puts strongly the distinction between the hired and the bond-servant—permitting servants ofHebrew birth to be held in the former state but not in the latter; and finally gave him and his children freedom at the Jubilee.——Inasmuch as the seventh year emancipation law applied to this very class of servants, if it were enforced there could be no Hebrew servants to go out at the Jubilee except those who had not yet served six full years. This seems to be the bearing of the law of the Jubilee upon Hebrew servants. We can not assume that it superseded the seventh year law and took its place. The historic passage (Jer.34: 8–17) would quite forbid such a construction.

As to the second class—those who had sold themselves to a foreigner—the law gave the right of redemption to any of his friends or to himself, and fixed the terms, providing for his freedom at the Jubilee.

3. The most difficult point is, the bearing of the Jubilee, if any,upon servants of foreign birth. Did it, or did it not, provide for their emancipation?

The passage (Lev.25: 9, 10) seems very strong in favor ofuniversalliberty, not omitting bond-servants of foreign birth. The words are—“Proclaim liberty through all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” This proclamation was made with sound of trumpet, ringing out its shrill blast over all the land. Now let it be considered: If foreigners were not included, and if the seventh year emancipation law had been duly enforced, there could have been but a meager showing of freedmen—only those few Hebrew servants who had not filled out their six years of service. Is it credible that so much proclamation and so much public display could have meant only the emancipation of say one-tenth or one-twentieth of all the servants in the land?——At any point of their history the number of foreign servants ought to have greatly exceeded the number of Hebrew birth—for two reasons:——​(a.) The law encouraged the taking of foreigners into this relation:——and (b.) They continued in it at least till the Jubilee—their maximum service being therefore forty-nine years, awhile the maximum service of the Hebrew-born was only six. Therefore I urge that a proclamation so high sounding and in terms so absolutely universal can not have left out the great majority of bondmen in the land.

The opponents of this view rely upon the words (v.46)—“They shall be your bondmen forever”—whichthey claim must meanduring life.——But it may be replied—One human life is very much short offorever. Also, if the statute had meant during life, why did it not say so?——Again; the order of the Hebrew words favors this construction: “Forever of them shall ye take servants”—or somewhat more literally: Forever among them shall ye serve yourselves,i. e.provide yourselves with servants. And this construction harmonizes fully with the drift of the context, the spirit of which is—Go to the heathen about you, or to heathen families living among you for your supply of bond-servants. Let this be the permanent arrangement.

The English phrase—“bond-servant” may perhaps give a stronger sense than the Hebrew will warrant. The Hebrew suggests no sort of “bond”—no obligation of law or justice. It expresses a certain degree of emphasis by means of repeating the words for service and servant, in this way: (v.39), If thy brother with thee shall become weak “[broken down financially], and shall sell himself to thee, thou shalt not exact of him the service of a servant, [or serve thyself in him with the service of a servant].” This is all that “bond-servant” can mean. It is a somewhat intensified idea of service.——Another prohibition in this passage is sufficiently explicit: “Thou shalt not rule over himwith rigor” (vs.43, 46),i. e.literally, with crushing; shalt not break him down; or in the American slave-holder’s phrase “break him in.”

The case offoreign servantsdemands yet a few more words of explication. It can not be denied that the spirit of the Hebrew law favored the choice of foreigners for servants, and the increase of this class of population. This is plainly the doctrine of the passageLev.25: 44–46.——In connection with this we may profitably study the law of the Passover in its relation to servants (Ex.12: 43–49). “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.”——That this law contemplated Gentile servants is clear on two grounds:——​(a.) Only such would need circumcision—all Hebrews being circumcised when eight days old.——​(b.) The law (Lev.25: 44) required them to take their servants from the heathen,and authorized them to “buy” such. The buying of a Hebrew servant was a very different thing. The poor Hebrewsold himself—i. e.his services, and took pay in advance of doing the work. Selling himself is precisely the sense of the Hebrew inLev.25: 39, 47, though in the former case (v.39) our translators made it “be sold” and in the latter “sell himself.” The Hebrew verb is equally reflexive in both verses.——Moreover, no man might steal a Hebrew and sell him on pain of death. It does not appear that Hebrew fathers sold their sons. When they took pay for a daughter, it came under the usage of paying for wives. She was betrothed to her purchaser (Ex.21: 7–11) and of course had the rights of a wife. Hence this “buying a servant for money” (Ex.12: 44) contemplates a foreigner.——The law proceeds to say—“A foreigner (one not a servant) and a hired servant shall not eat thereof.”——Furthermore, circumcision was naturalization; it brought the servant within the pale of the Hebrew community. For this law of the Passover declares that “when a stranger sojourning with thee,i. e.in thy land, desires to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it;and he shall be as one that is born in the land;”i. e.his circumcision is equivalent in force to being born in the land; it secures his naturalization. Hence the buying of foreign servants would be a perpetual process of naturalizing them, and bringing them into the Hebrew community. They came to the Passover and were entitled to all the religious privileges of the children of Israel. Abraham himself circumcised, not his sons alone, but “all that were born in his house or bought with money of the stranger” (Gen.17: 23, 27).——Thus the system reached forth its arms, gathered to its genial bosom and blest with religious nurture thousands of alien birth, some of whom attained renown among the servants of the God of Israel. We have the history of Rahab and Ruth, and to name no more of “Uriah the Hittite,” and of “Ittai the Gittite” [of Gath].

VIII.Judicial Procedure.

Under this general head the following topics should receive attention.

1.Judges.The reorganization suggested by Jethro has been noticed, and also its further modification to adjust it to the fixed residence in Canaan.——Between Joshua and Saul, there was an irregular series of Supreme Judges, closing with Samuel of whose circuit court, taking four cities in rotation, we have a notice in1 Sam.7: 15–17. The kings manifestly held this function of Supreme Judge. In the absence of other Judges, the High Priest seems to have served ex-officio. His powers, under the “Judges” above referred to and the kings, are not sharply defined; but probably religious and semi-religious questions came before him and his associates. The Judges between Joshua and Samuel were military men.——A special reorganization of the judiciary under Jehoshaphat (2 Chron.19: 5–11) will repay a careful reading. It provides subordinate judges in all the fortified cities; solemnly admonishes them to administer justice in the fear of God; establishes a supreme court in Jerusalem, where “he set of the Levites, priests, and chief of the fathers of Israel for the judgment of the Lord and for controversies when they returned to Jerusalem”—the last clause apparently referring to cases carried up for decision before this supreme court.——It should be noted that we read nothing of cases taken up to a higher court by appeal of a dissatisfied party; but only as carried up by the lower court itself when the case seemed too hard or too high for its decision. This principle went into operation in the reorganization by Moses (Ex.18: 22, 26 andDeut.1: 17)—“The cause that is too hard for you, bring it to me and I will hear it.” It passed into the general law as we may see (Deut.17: 8–13) which provides for a supreme court at the religious center, the judges being “the priests, the Levites, and the judges that shall be in those days.”

The warnings against partiality and bribery were earnest and solemn—the penalty for these offenses being left, it would seem, to be visited upon the offender by the Almighty (Ex.23: 6–8, andLev.19: 15, andDeut.1: 17, and 16: 18–20). They were not even allowed to favor the poor man in his causeagainst justice(Ex.23: 3 andLev.19: 15)—there being sometimes a temptation to do this out of sympathy with his poverty and his necessities. But God put justice in law above sympathy for even the necessitous poor.——The public anathema fell on him who took a bribe to slay the innocent (Deut.27: 25).

2. The seat of justice—the place for holding court—was “in the gates of the city.” Hence this being with all Orientals the place of public resort, the courts were public—open to all.

3. The processes of prosecution are not specially described. In cases of a personal, private character, the aggrieved party brought suit. In cases of a public nature “the elders of the city” bore responsibilities, as we see in the case of murder by an unknown hand. A remarkable case of appeal to the sensibilities of the whole nation is givenJudg.19: 25–30, under which the people woke to a consciousness of horrible wickedness in Israel, and their indignation became irrepressible; yet they carefully sought counsel of the Lord in this terrible case.

4.Advocates.We find no notice of professional advocates. The “lawyers” of New Testament history were men versed in the law and were teachers of law, but not by any means the modern advocate. Every man might be his own advocate, and even women were heard before no less a king than Solomon himself (1Kings 3: 16–18). Noble-hearted, disinterested men seem in Oriental life to have undertaken this service voluntarily for the poor and the fatherless, of which Job gives a touching description (Job 29: 7–17). Isaiah exhorts to this duty: “Plead for the widow” (1: 17). It was the noble doctrine of this system—“Our law judges no man before it hears him and knows what he doeth” (Jn.7: 51). Moses puts it thus—“Ye shall hear the small as well as the great” (Deut.1: 17). “If there arise a matter in judgment between blood and blood,between plea and plea,”etc.(Deut.17: 8).

5.Of Witnesses—the points of chief importance are these:

(1.) They testified under oath—the manner of administration being this: The witness listened to the rehearsalof the words, and gave his oral assent, “Amen,” or, “As thou sayest.” The passage (Lev.5: 1) describes the case of one who sins in this way, hearing the voice—i. e.the words of the sacred oath, adjuring him to testify whether he has seen or known any thing in this case. Then if he will not make known, “he shall bear his iniquity.”——A special statute for the case of a wife suspected of conjugal infidelity shows how she is to be put under this solemn oath (Num.5: 19–22). She listens to the words of the oath and responds, “Amen, amen.” (See alsoProv.29: 24 andMat.26: 63).

(2.) That the witnesses were examined separately and in presence of the accused appears probable from a comparison ofMat.26: 61 withMk.14: 55–59. Jesus was present (Mat.26: 62).

(3) As to the requisite number of witnesses—a criminal case of capital crime required two besides the accuser (Deut.17: 6 and 19: 15). Hence the phrase—“In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (Mat.18: 16).——A supposed case is stated (Ex.22: 10, 11) in which the complainant and the accused are the only witnesses. Both are put under oath; but the testimony of the accused under oath seems to be accepted as his vindication.

(4.) By another peculiar provision of the Mosaic statutes, the witnesses in certain cases must be first to execute the penalty (Deut.17: 7, and 13: 9, and Acts 7: 58, and John 8: 7). This provision was doubtless morally wholesome.

IX.Punishments.

A few points not already brought to view deserve a brief notice.

1.Fines.—Some were fixed by statute. The highest known to the law (one hundred shekels of silver) was laid on the man who falsely accused his wife of previous unchastity (Deut.22: 19). Another case among violations of the seventh commandment appears (Deut.22: 28, 29).——In the case of an ox goring some one fatally, the penalty of death upon his owner might be commuted to a fine at the discretion of the judges (Ex.21: 28–31)—a wise provision because the real culpability of hisowner must vary with circumstances. In another case (Ex.21: 22), the suffering party and the judge fixed the amount of the fine.

2. The sin and the trespass offerings sustained a slight relation to fines, since the party bore the cost of the animal sacrificed—a young bullock, a kid of goats,etc.These laws may be seen inLev.4 and 5 and inNum.15: 27–29. They pertain to sins of ignorance and of remissness; never to presumptuous sins. In addition to the cost of the sacrifice the penalty included a public confession of the offense, and was well adapted to make a good moral impression.

The special cases which come under this general head of sin and trespass offerings were——​(1.) Unintentional transgressions of the Levitical law.——​(2.) The rash oath, ill-considered and not conscientiously kept (Lev.5: 4).——​(3.) Perjury in a witness;—not however the case of false swearing to condemn the innocent, which was punished by retaliation; but the offense ofnottestifying what he knew when put under oath (Lev.5: 1).——​(4.) Debts due to the sanctuary—a failure to pay tithes; the penalty being, one-fifth added to the original amount and all paid, coupled with the trespass offering (Lev.5: 14–16).——​(5.) Denying any thing given in trust, or retaining another man’s lost property which he may have found, and similar offenses, coupled with false swearing (Lev.6: 1–7); the penalty being, to restore with one-fifth added and to make his trespass offering.——​(6.) Adultery with a slave. The penalty—a sin-offering and the punishment of death commuted to stripes.

3.Stripeswere made the penalty of certain specified crimes (Lev.19: 20 andDeut.22: 18). The law was careful to limit the number of stripes to forty, giving as the reason—“Lest if thou shouldest exceed” [this number] “then thy brother should seem vile unto thee;”i. e.not merely lest the man might lose his self-respect, but lest he lose the respect of the community, and be hopelessly degraded. In usage the Hebrews limited the number to thirty-nine—said to have been administered by thirteen strokes of a triple cord.

4. Of retaliation [“lex talionis”] notice has been taken already.

5.Excommunication; excision; being cut off from his people. When executed by God himself, it meant destruction by some providential agency. Compare1Kings 14: 10 with 15: 29 and2Kings 9: 8–10.——When executed by human agency, it was capital punishment, usually by stoning (Ex.31: 14, andLev.17: 4, and 20: 17, 18).

6. The customary modes of capital punishment were two:stoningandthe sword. (Deut.13: 9, 10, and 17: 5, andJosh.7: 25.) The sword appears in later ages.

7.Disgrace after deathin some cases heightened the penalty,e. g.by burning the dead body (Gen.38: 24, andLev.20: 14, and 21: 9). That in these cases the death was by stoning and the burning was only that of the dead body, seems to be sufficiently proved fromJosh.7: 15, 25. “All Israel stoned him” [Achan and his family] “with stones and burned them with fireafterthey had stoned them with stones.” Their very bodies seem to have been thought of as polluted andpolluting.——Another method of posthumous disgrace was by hanging on a tree (Num.25: 4, 5 andDeut.21: 22, 23). The body must not remain suspended over night “that thy land be not defiled; for he that is hanged is accursed of God.” See cases of the execution of this law inJosh.8: 29 and 10: 26, 27.

Several forms of punishment were introduced from other nations in later ages which we may omit as foreign from our subject.

In closing this topic let it be noted that judicial procedure and punishment were summary—both the trial and the execution being carried through with apparently no delay. Compared on these points with the most highly civilized countries of our age, the Hebrews have greatly the advantage, and the efficiency of their law must have been for this very reason surpassingly great. Their methods afforded but the smallest possible hope of escape. Punishment followed close on the heels of detection, and usually, we must presume, of crime.——Furthermore, these punishments, compared with those of other nations in that age were by no means severe. Indeed the modes of capital punishment which come to view in the Scriptures as existing among other nations were terribly barbarous compared withthose of the Hebrew code;e. g.burning in a fiery furnace; being torn in pieces by lions; being sawn asunder; crucifixion.

The design of punishment is put in the plainest terms. In its severer forms it is not the discipline of the criminal but the good of the public—to deter the evil-minded from crime and so to make society safe from outrage. In the case of presumptuous sins we read—“That man shall die, and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel, and all the people shall hear and fear and do no more presumptuously” (Deut.17: 12, 13 and 19: 20).

It is worthy of special notice under this head that we find in this code a considerable number of statuteswith no penalty attachedwhich human hands were to inflict. God reserved the infliction of the penalty to himself. The fear of his displeasure, coupled with his promised rewards for obedience were the only forces coercing obedience to these statutes. They were left upon the conscience of the people, and upon their fears and hopes under a system in which God’s hand in providence was often made most palpable. For cases in point I may refer to the laws against usury and requiring favors to be shown to the poor;—as for example (Deut.15: 9, 10): “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying—The seventh year, the year of release is at hand, and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother and thou givest him naught, and he cry unto the Lord against thee and it be sin upon thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him; because that for this thing the Lord thy God will bless thee in all thy works,”etc.

The moral power of this invisible force upon the heart and conscience of the people we shall be able to appreciate more justly if we carefully study the words which stand (Ex.23: 20–25),i. e.at the close of the first catalogue of the “statutes and judgments.” It seems to come in here legitimately as a moral force to induce a conscientious and careful obedience to these statutes. “Behold” (calling special attention) “behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice anddo all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to thine enemies,”etc.——This angel, bearing authority to pardon or not pardon sins, and of whom the very God could say—“My name is in him” could be no less than really divine.Namein Hebrew usage as applied to God involves and implies his real nature—his essential attributes. Corresponding to this view of “the angel” in this passage is the injunction to “beware of him and to obey his voice”; and also his power to forgive sins—“for who can forgive sins but God only”? This passage therefore affords decisive proof that the personage who manifested himself to Israel in the pillar of cloud and of fire; whose presence abode in their tabernacle; whose voice they heard in this holy law—was truly divine, and yet was mysteriously distinct from the speaker—the “I”—of this remarkable passage. Truly he was God, manifest—if not precisely in human flesh—yet in palpable forms, in tangible demonstrations, in voice of power and tongue of flame; in the luminous pillar; in perpetual agencies of protection and of supply as to earthly need; and, not least, as their Ruler and their Lord whose voice in these statutes it behooved them to hear and obey as they would hope to be blessed in their national life and in any desirable prosperity. Hence it was both practicable and wise under this Hebrew system to leave some statutes upon the naked conscience of the people with no attempt to enforce obedience save the appeal to this invisible Presence.

These remarks will naturally suggest to the thoughtful mind a train of inquiries of this sort:——How can we account for it that the books of Moses allude so very rarely to the future state of man’s being—to heaven and to hell? Had even the best men of those times any definite belief in the future life and in its retribution for deeds done in this? How happens it that both the law and the rewards or penalties of their civil code, and indeed of their religious code as well, make so much account of present retribution and so little of the future?

These points will be treated more conveniently and in a more satisfactory manner after the religious code shall have been examined and after we have surveyed the history of Israel in the wilderness—i. e.at the close of the present volume.

There are two historic questions pertaining to this civil code of the Hebrews which have sufficient interest to justify a few moments’ attention;viz.

I.How far was this system indebted to Egypt?

II.How far have the best civil codes of the most civilized nations of all subsequent history been indebted to this Hebrew code?

I.As to the possible relations of this Hebrew code to Egyptian life and jurisprudence, perhaps the word “indebted” is too strong. It is by no means intended to disparage the divine originality of this law or of any and every feature of the system. I assume two things:——​(1.) That Moses, “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” may have had intimate personal acquaintance with very many things in civil jurisprudence which the Lord taught him in and through his Egyptian life rather than by immediate and independent revelation:——and (2.) That the people became familiar with some valuable usages and customs connected with Egyptian law and Egyptian life, and by this means were prepared to receive and adopt them under this new code and in this new style of life in Canaan, when, without this previous culture, these laws and usage could not have gone into operation so readily if at all.

The Hebrew code and its system of jurisprudence—as also the entire Hebrew national life—were benefited by the Egyptian in the following points:

1. The example and silent influence of a full civil, written code of law. That Egypt had such a code admits of no question. The Hebrew patriarchs, prior to the sojourn in Egypt, had nothing of the sort. Their life in Egypt therefore gave them their first lessons—their first ideas, of a complete code of written law. We shall be in small danger of over-estimating the value of these lessons and ideas in their bearings upon a higher civilization.

2. Egypt gave to the Hebrew mind the example of a well digested system of judicial procedure, established courts and forms of trial; laws put in force by the aid of judges, witnesses, and the systematic execution of penalties.——Remarkably the last quarter of a century has brought to light documentary evidence of a judicial trial in Egypt as far back as the age of Moses, developingthe most finished method; well digested forms of procedure; a state trial, conducted with great dignity and decorum; and the whole proceeding put on record so carefullythat this original document is before the world in perfect preservation at thisday.42

3. Egypt gave to the children of Israel the example of a national lifebased on agriculture, as distinct from and indeed opposed to the wandering, unsettled life of the shepherd. The nomadic mode of life, perpetuated by necessity to this day in the deserts of Arabia, in which individual right to the soil is unknown and no family has a fixed home, each living for the time where its flocks may chance to find herbage and water—this had been the style of the patriarchs before Jacob went to Egypt. It was not the best for social and mental culture. God had a better life for his people prospectively in Canaan, and their residence in Egypt introduced them to it and gave them a preparation for it. It made subsistence less precarious; blended the cultivation of the soil with the care of flocks and herds; provided for a denser population; greatly enhanced the opportunities for social culture and for such a religious system as that of Israel. In a word it provided for a much higher Christian civilization than could have been possible under the strictly nomadic mode of life. To Egypt, the nation was indebted for the example and for the training into this agricultural mode of life.

4. In another important respect, the example of the national life of Egypt was a preordained training for their own national life in Canaan:—it was that of a people providing for their own wants; living within themselves; maintaining substantially non-intercourse with other nations, and for the most part excluding foreign commerce. Such was Egypt during the residence of Israel there, and such God wisely designed Israel to be in her promised land of Canaan. As to Israel in Canaan, the purposes of this policy are obvious—protection from the contaminating influences of idolatry,not to say also from the contaminations of luxury and wealth.

5. In Egypt, the priests were the learned class of the empire, and held the highest responsibilities in the civil and judicial as well as the religious life of the nation. A system essentially the same was introduced into Israel, the priests and the Levites holding the same place in the nation which they had seen held by the priests in Egypt.

6. It is a very noticeable fact in the history of the legal life in Egypt, that though magic arts were in a sense tolerated and indeed were resorted to by the king in his emergencies, yet their influence in society proved to be so pernicious as to demand legal restraint. We have the record of a man indicted “for many crimes and wickednesses committed through his magic arts and writings, such as paralyzing limbs, empowering a slave to do audacious things,”etc.The decision of the court in his case reads—“For his various abominations, the greatest in the world, he is condemned to death.”——It will be remembered that the Mosaic law heldallpractice of magic arts to be a penal offense, punishable with death (Ex.22: 18 andLev.20: 27).

7. In some points the spirit of the Mosaic code was so greatly in advance of the Egyptian as to stand related to it, not in the way of imitation or even modification, but of direct opposition. It held squarely the opposite doctrine and put forth statutes of an opposite character. Thus, the Egyptian code legalized slavery, and had its special law for the reclamation of fugitives. Among the recent discoveries in Egyptian antiquities “A warrant for the arrest of fugitive slaves” has been brought to light. From the tone of this warrant and from other evidence, collateral, it is inferred that slave-holders were obliged by law to register them in a list kept by government and disputes with regard to ownership must be brought before the judges. The rights of the master in his slave were not absolute. It was not by virtue of orders direct from the owner that search was instituted and arrest made, but by the authority of a high functionary of government, to whom the case is reported and who issues his mandate. Thus the government itself put forth its hand to recover a slave who had escaped from any citizen.——It wastherefore specially pertinent that the law of Jehovah to Israel should plant itself on ground precisely the reverse of this:—no reclamation of fugitives whatsoever. Thou shaltnotdo what Egyptian slave-holders were authorized by the highest authority of the kingdom to do—force back the escaped fugitive to his unendurable bondage.

In the line of their religious institutions Israel stood related to Egypt in numerous particulars, borrowing some things for the adornment of its tabernacle from Egyptian art; and on the other hand, guarding by stringent prohibitions against many Egyptian usages associated with idolatry. These points will be in place after we have considered the religious institutions of Moses.

II.The second proposed historic question,viz.How far have the best civil codes of all history and how far has the world at large been indebted to this Hebrew code?—opens a field of inquiry quite too wide to be fully canvassed within our prescribed limits. A few hints may be useful perhaps to guide the further inquiries of the reader. The following points are put comprehensively and suggestively:

1. Moses sought to impress it upon his people that this system far surpassed that of any other nation. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me.... Keep, therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of all the nations who shall hear of all these statutes and shall say, Surely this nation is a wise and understanding people, for what great nation hath their God so nigh to them as the Lord our God is to us in all that we call upon him for? And what great nation hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day”? (Deut.4: 5–8.)

2. The Hebrew system surpassed all others, especially in this—thatit gave to human government and law the sanction of God’s authority, and enforced them upon the human heart and conscience by this most impressive and benign of all influences.

3. Preparatory to this result it maintained against the whole Pagan world the doctrine ofone God—perfect in character, supreme in power, righteous in all his administrationof rewards and punishments. Only so could it make the idea of God a really wholesome power and his authority effective in sustaining civil government.

4. This divinely given code rested upon justice and equity, and determined every thing by this standard. So doing, it ruled out at once a multitude of interests and ends which human laws have often sought to secure. Its example therefore, in so far at least, was simply and supremely beneficent.

5. In yet further detail, it recognized the common and equal rights of all men, irrespective of condition, rank, wealth—holding constantly the doctrine, “No respect of persons.”

6. It appreciated at their just value the rights of the poor and of all that large class who look only to God and to human law for protection.

We come now to the question of historic fact:Did this Hebrew code and government send forth its influence upon the nations of ancient history?Did it in any perceptible degree leaven the best systems of human law and jurisprudence.——If the proof for the affirmative falls short of positive certainty, what is its amount of probability?

Here we may fitly consider—

(a.) That God chose for Israel the land of Canaan, in the center of the ancient world of mind; immediately between Egypt on the one hand and Babylon, Assyria, Persia—all the great nations of Western Asia—on the other; and closely contiguous to ancient Greece and Rome.

(b.) That David and Solomon became known to all the great powers of the world of their time. Solomon’s renown turned largely on the fact that his people were prosperous and happy, his government well ordered, and his own wisdom in all affairs of state unsurpassed.——It is simply impossible that such examples should drop powerless upon the nations of the earth.

(c.) That at a later period the personal history of Mordecai, of Esther, and especially of Daniel in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar and of Cyrus show that the Jews, their religion, their God, and their law, did impress themselves upon the greatest centers of influence and power in their time.

(d.) This dispersion of the Jews at and after theircaptivity planted them in large numbers in the chief seats of human science and learning; in Egypt on the South-West; in Babylon, Persia, and adjacent countries of the East. It is historically certain that in the age of the Ptolemies, a large body of learned Jews lived in Egypt; that the Old Testament was translated into Greek by request of Ptolemy Philadelphus;that the Egypt of that age was the school of wisdom and jurisprudence for Ancient Greece and was herself the pupil ofMoses.43——Thatthe best Greek authors knew Moses is matter of history. Longinus quotes from Moses (Gen.1: 3) in his treatise on Sublimity; Strabo makes honorable mention of him as a law-giver; and Diodorus Siculus acknowledges him to be “the first of legislators from whom all laws had their origin.” Numenius a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean school, speaking of Plato, exclaims—“What is Plato but Moses Atticising”—i. e.teaching in Attic Greek? Origen believed that Plato drew largely from Moses.——The list of eminent Grecian authors and savans who went personally to Egypt for wisdom and science is long—such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodotus.There they came into contact with learned Jews and not improbably with the writings ofMoses.44Prof.Wines (p.335) cites the learned Grotius as saying—“The most ancient Attic laws, whence in aftertimes the Roman were derived, owe their origin to Moses’ law. That the Grecians, especially the Attics, took their laws from Moses is credible. This is the reason why the Attic laws and the Roman twelve Tables which sprang from them so much resemble the Hebrew laws.”——This similarity between the Attic laws and those of Moses has been noticed by many other learned men,e. g.Josephus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Sir Matthew Hale, Archbishop Potter. The last named in his “Grecian Antiquities” has adduced many points ofGrecian law which seem to have been taken from Moses—viz.the laws of divorce; the purgation oath compared with “the oath of jealousy” among the Hebrews; the harvest and vintage festival; the law of first-fruits; the law requiring the best offerings for God; the portion for the priests; protection to the man-slayer at their altars; requiring priests to be unblemished; the agrarian law; laws regulating descent of property, and prohibiting marriage within certain degrees of consanguinity.——Plato in his ideal “Republic” is thought to have drawn largely from Moses.——Clement of Alexandria accosts him (by Apostrophe)—“But as for laws, whatever are true were conveyed to thee from the Hebrews.”

These historic facts seem to indicate the definite channel through which the laws of Moses reached the Grecian mind in its earliest stages of culture and thus wrought themselves into the great fountains of Grecian and Roman civilization and jurisprudence.

(e.) There seem to be strong grounds for the general statement that the greatest reformers of all known history have acted upon the ideas of Moses, and have probably drawn their doctrines more or less directly from that fountain. I will venture to place in this category Zoroaster, Plato, Confucius, Buddha, and Mahomet. These men were in their time reformers of society, of morals, and of jurisprudence. Their influence ledtowardif not fullyuntothe doctrine ofone God, and by natural consequence to a purer morality and juster views of law and equity; of love to one’s neighbor and purity of life.——I regret that my limits forbid any attempt to present the historic evidence which might support more or less fully these broad, comprehensive statements. The historic evidence that Zoroaster, Plato, and Mahomet drew from Moses is very strong. Of the great Indian reformer and of the Chinese comparatively little is known.

(f.) Of Roman law as finally embodied in the great code of Justinian, it has been already suggested that its best things came from Moses and the Septuagint through Greece and the Egypt of the Ptolemies.——I add two other remarks:—​(a) That in the age of Justinian (first half of the sixth Christian century) primitive Christianity had quite fully leavened the publicsentiment and thus the jurisprudence of the then civilized world.——​(b.) That when Justinian created a commission of learned jurists to “collect the scattered monuments of ancient jurisprudence,” he recommended them in settling any point to regard neither the number nor the reputation of the jurisconsults who had given opinions on the subject,but to be guided solely by reason andequity.45

(g.) Of Alfred the Great (reigned A. D. 871–901) the central testimony of history is that he was severelyjust. Despite of surroundings almost barbarous, he rose by dint of his irrepressible manliness to become the greatest legislator and scholar of his age, and so was able to lay the foundations for the best and truest glory of the English name. The common law of England and of the English-speaking world began its development under his hand. One fact is of itself a volume of testimony to the spirit of this ancient law. When after a long struggle Wilberforce brought the question before the English bench—Does English law sanction human bondage? the world heard the answer—Never. “Slaves can not breathe in England.” What moment they take in her pure air, they are free! The spirit of her law from the days of Alfred was justice and righteousness between a man and his neighbor. The laws of Moses were in Alfred’s eye; the spirit of those laws filled and fired his noble soul. It is currently said that the telling words which describe the needy as “God’s poor” are original (for our mother Saxon tongue) with him. Moses had reiterated the sentiment long ages before.——Sir Matthew Hale has traced the influence of the Bible generally on the laws of England. Sismondi testifies that Alfred, in causing a republication of the Saxon laws, inserted several statutes taken from the code of Moses, to give new strength and cogency to the principles of morality.

“Thus have the principles of the Mosaic code found their way to a greater or less extent into the jurisprudence of all civilized nations.” [Wines—p.337.]

It falls within our plan to speak briefly of the civil code of Mosesas a series of progressive revelations of God to man.

I have spoken of the law of Sinai as a manifestation of God to man at once sublime in its majesty and most benignly practical in its moral bearings. The civil code—“the statutes and judgments”—carry out yet more fully the practical unfoldings of God’s wisdom and of his sense of justice and right as between man and man. It is not easy to select the most striking cases to illustrate this point, for the whole code is radiant with divine wisdom and aglow with testimonies of his love, manifesting itself in wisest legislation for human welfare.——Confining our attention to the second table of the law of Sinai—man’s relation to his fellow-man—we may consider how much there is here adapted to conserve all the best elements of society—in securing the honor due to parents and rulers; in guarding human life and providing the means for its protection; in making the marriage covenant sacred; on the one hand shielding the sexual relation of the race against abuses most pernicious; and on the other, providing agencies which may enrich man’s social life with priceless blessings. So also the statutes in detail respecting rights of property and rights of reputation are replete with fresh testimonies to the wisdom and the love of the Great Father.——Speaking frankly of the impressions made on my mind by this study of the code of Moses, I must say that no part has seemed to me more deeply imbued with the tenderness and pity of the Lord than the provisions made for the poor, and the restrictions and limitations upon personal servitude. In all his utterances on these points the Lord assumes that no interests of man more need his protection than these, and he comes promptly to the front to give it. He would have us know that over these interests his watchful eye never sleeps; his quick ear is never shut to any cry for help. The rich and the mighty may get on without his special aid; the poor are his own wards and shall never lack his sympathy nor his present hand. Human laws are in great part worthless—at least they miss their most important function—unless they make it their chief endeavor to protect the interests and rights of thosewho, powerless in themselves, drop upon the strong arm of law for their defence. Society and legislation might as well not be as to forget that they exist as appointed of God mainly for the sake of the poor and the otherwise unprotected and unbefriended. Such needy ones every human society will have for the moral trial of those who control society, and I may add, to draw out the sympathy of the Great Father.

These revelations of himself stand forth in sunlight throughout this Mosaic code. They are a glorious advance upon all that the world had seen before. The true mission of civil law is brought out here with great fullness; for it seems to be every-where assumed that if laws protect and befriend the poor, they protect and befriendall. If the spirit of law faithfully guards their interests, it can not well fail to guard all interests that need the guardianship of human legislation. It is a priceless boon to the race to have these ideas so beautifully set forth and so substantially embodied in a code of laws fresh from the hand and from the heart of the Infinite Father.

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