Chapter VI: NO INSTANCES OF ISRAELITISH MASTERS SELLING SERVANTS. Neither

Abraham nor Isaac seem ever to have sold one, though they had "great store of servants." Jacob was himself a servant in the family of Laban twenty-one years. He had afterward a large number of servants. Joseph invited him to come into Egypt, and to bring all that he had with him--"thou and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST." Gen. xlv. 10. Jacob took his flocks and herds but _no servants_. Yet we are told that Jacob "took his journey with _all that he had_." Gen. xlvi. 1. And after his arrival in Egypt, Joseph said to Pharaoh "my father, and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds and _all that they have_, are come." Gen. xlvii. 1. The servants doubtless, served under their _own contracts_, and when Jacob went into Egypt, they _chose_ to stay in their own country.

The government might sell _thieves_, if they had no property, until their services had made good the injury, and paid the legal fine. Ex. xxii. 3. But _masters_ seem to have had no power to sell their _servants_. To give the master a _right_ to sell his servant, would annihilate the servant's right of choice in his own disposal; but says the objector, "to give the master a right to _buy_ a servant, equally annihilates the servant's _right of choice_." Answer. It is one thing to have a right to buy a man, and a quite another thing to have a right to buy him of _another_ man.[A]

[Footnote A: There is no evidence that masters had the power to dispose of even the _services_ of their servants, as men hire out their laborers whom they employ by the year; but whether they had or not, affects not the argument.]

Though servants were not bought of their masters, yet young females were bought of their _fathers_. But their purchase as _servants_ was their betrothal as WIVES. Ex. xxi. 7, 8. "If a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please not her master WHO HATH BETROTHED HER TO HIMSELF, he shall let her be redeemed."[B]

[Footnote B: The comment of Maimonides on this passage is as follows:--"A Hebrew handmaid might not be sold but to one who laid himself under obligations, to espouse her to himself or to his son, when she was fit to be betrothed."--_Maimonides--Hilcoth--Obedim_, Ch. IV. Sec. XI. Jarchi, on the same passage, says, "He is bound to espouse her to be his wife, for the _money of her purchase_ is the money of her _espousal_."]