hee with the service of a _domestic_." In the Syriac, "Thou shalt
not employ him after the manner of servants." In the Samaritan, "Thou
shalt not require him to serve in the service of a servant." In the
Targum of Onkelos, "He shall not serve thee with the service of a
household servant." In the Targum of Jonathan, "Thou shalt not cause him
to serve according to the usages of the servitude of servants."[D] The
meaning of the passage is, _thou shalt not assign him to the same grade,
nor put him to the same service, with permanent domestics._ The
remainder of the regulation is--_"But as an hired servant and as a
sojourner shall he be with thee."_ Hired servants were not incorporated
into the families of their masters; they still retained their own family
organization, without the surrender of any domestic privilege, honor, or
authority; and this, even though they resided under the same roof with
their master. The same substantially may be said of the sojourner though
he was not the owner of the land which he cultivated, and of course had
not the control of an inheritance, yet he was not in a condition that
implied subjection to him whose land he tilled, or that demanded the
surrender of any _right_, or exacted from him any homage, or stamped him
with any inferiority; unless, it be supposed that a degree of
inferiority would naturally attach to a state of _dependence_ however
qualified. While bought servants were associated with their master's
families at meals, at the Passover, and at other family festivals, hired
servants and sojourners were not. Ex. xii. 44, 45; Lev. xxii. 10, 11.
Hired servants were not subject to the authority of their masters in any
such sense as the master's wife, children, and bought servants. Hence
the only form of oppressing hired servants spoken of in the Scriptures
as practicable to masters, is that of _keeping back their wages._ To
have taken away such privileges in the case under consideration, would
have been pre-eminent "_rigor_;" for it was not a servant born in the
house of a master, nor a minor, whose minority had been sold by the
father, neither was it one who had not yet acceded to his inheritance,
nor finally, one who had received the _assignment_ of his inheritance,
but was working off from it an incumbrance, before entering upon its
possession and control. But it was that of _the head of a family_, who
had known better days, now reduced to poverty, forced to relinquish the
loved inher