SELLING a servant. Abraham had thousands of servants,
but seems never to have sold one. Isaac "grew until he became very
great," and had "great store of servants." Jacob's youth was spent in
the family of Laban, where he lived a servant twenty-one years.
Afterward he had a large number of servants. Joseph sent for Jacob to
come into Egypt, "thou and thy children, and thy children's children,
and thy flocks and thy herds, and ALL THAT THOU HAST." Jacob took his
flocks and herds but _no servants_. Gen xlv. 10; xlvii. 16. They
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
different 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
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 and take
her to be his wife, for the _money of her purchase_ is the money of her
espousal."]

VII. We infer that the Hebrew servant was voluntary in COMMENCING his
service, because he was pre-eminently so IN CONTINUING it. If, at the
year of release, it was the servant's _choice_ to