(I.) Hebrew Slaves. — (1.) The circumstances under which a Hebrew might be reduced to servitude were — («) poverty; (h) the commission of theft; and (c) the exercise of paternal authority. In the tirst case, a man who had mortgaged his property, and was unable to support his family, might sell liimself to another He- brew, with a view both to obtain maintenance and per- chance a surplus sufficient to redeem his property (Lev. XXV, 2.5, 39). It has been debated whether, under this law, a creditor could seize his debtor and sell him as a slave. The words do not warrant such an inference, for the poor man is said in Lev. xxv, 39 to sell himself (not as in the A. V., "be sold;" see Gesenius, Thesavr. p. 787) ; in other words, to enter into voluntary servitude, and this under the pressure, not of debt, but oi poverty. The instances of seizing the children of debtors in 2 Kings iv, 1 and Neh. v, 5 were not warranted by law, and must be regarded as the outrages of lawless times, while the case depicted in the paral)le of the unmerciful servant is probably borrowed from Koman usages (Matt. xviii, 25). The words in Isa. 1, 1, " Which of my cred- itors is it to whom I have sold you?" have a prima fa- cie bearing upon the question, but in reality apply to one already in the condition of slavery. The com- mission of theft rendered a person liable to servitude, whenever restitution could not bo made on tlie scale prescribed by the law (Exod. xxii, 1, 3). The thief was bound to work out the value of his restitution- money in the service of him on whom the theft had been committed (for, according to .Josephus, A nt. xvi, 1, 1, there was no power of selling the person of a thief
to a foreigner); when this had been effected he would be free, as implied in the expression '• sold for his theft," i. e.Jhr the amount ufhxs theft. This law con- trasts favorably with that of the Romans, under wliich a thief became the actual property of his master. The exercise of paternal authority was limited to the sale of a daughter of tender age to be a maid-servant, with the ulterior view of her becoming a concubine of the purchaser (Exod. xxi, 7). Such a case can perhaps hardly be regarded as implying servitude in the ordi- nary sense of the term.
(2.) The servitude of a Hebrew might be terminated in three ways: (<;) by the satisfaction or the remission of all claims against him ; {h) by the recurrence of the year of Jubilee (Lev. xxv, 40), which might arrive at any period of his servitude ; and (c), failing either of these, the expiration of six years from the time that his servitude commenced (Exod. xxi, 2; Deut. xv, 12). There can be no doubt that this last regulation applied equally to the cases of poverty and theft, though I!ab- binical writers have endeavored to restrict it to the for- mer. The period of seven years has reference to the sabbatical principle in general, but not to the sabbati- cal year, for no regulation is laid down in reference to the manumission of servants in that year (Lev. xxv, 1 sq. ; Deut. xv, 1 sq.). We have a single instance, in- deed, of the sabbatical year being celebrated by a gen- eral manumission of Hebrew slaves, but this was in consequence of the neglect of the law relating to such cases (Jer, xxxiv, 14). To the above modes of ob- taining liberty the Eabbinists added, as a fourth, the death of a master without leaving a son, there being no power of claiming the slave on the part of any heir ex- cept a son (IVIaimonides, Ahad. 2, § 12).
If a servant did not desire to avail himself of the op- portunity of leaving his service, he was to signify his intention in a formal manner before the judges (or, more exactly, at the place o/juihpnent), and then the master was to take him to the door-post, and to bore his ear through with an awl (Exod. xxi, 6), driving the awl into or "imto the door," as stated in Deut. xv, 17, and thus fixing the servant to it. Whether the door was that of the master's house, or the door of the sanctuary, as Ewald (Alterlh. p. 245) infers from the expression el hd-elohim, to which attention is drawn above, is not stated ; but the significance of the action is enhanced by the former view ; for thus a connection is established between the servant and the house in which he was to serve. The boring of the ear was i)robably a token of subjection, the ear being the organ through which com- mands were received (Psa. xl, 6). A similar custom prevailed among the Mesopotamians (Juvenal, i, 104), the Lydians (Xenophon, Anab. iii, 1, 31), and other an- cient nations. A servant who had submitted to this operation remained, according to the words of the law, a servan|, " forever" (Exod. xxi, 6). These words are, however, interpreted by Josephus (.In^ iv, 8, 28) and by the Eabbinists as meaning until the year of Jubilee, partly from the universality of the freedom that was then' proclaimed, and partly perhaps because it was necessary for the servant then to resume the cultivation of his recovered inheritance. The latter point no doubt presents a difficulty, but the interpretation of the word "forever" in any other than its obvious sense presents still greater difficulties.