wonders wrought for
their deliverance, proclaim the reason for _such_ a law at _such_ a
time--when the body politic became a theocracy, and reverently waited
for the will of God. They had just been emancipated. The tragedies of
their house of bondage were the realities of yesterday, and peopled
their memories with thronging horrors. They had just witnessed God's
testimony against oppression in the plagues of Egypt--the burning blains
on man and beast--the dust quickened into loathsome life, and swarming
upon every living thing--the streets, the palaces, the temples, and
every house heaped up with the carcases of things abhorred--the kneading
troughs and ovens, the secret chambers and the couches; reeking and
dissolving with the putrid death--the pestilence walking in darkness at
noonday, the devouring locusts, and hail mingled with fire, the
first-born death-struck, and the waters blood, and last of all, that
dread high hand and stretched-out arm, that whelmed the monarch and his
hosts, and strewed their corpses on the sea. All this their eyes had
looked upon,--earth's proudest city, wasted and thunder-scarred, lying
in desolation, and the doom of oppressors traced on her ruins in the
hand writing of God, glaring in letters of fire mingled with blood--a
blackened monument of wrath to the uttermost against the stealers of
men. No wonder that God, in a code of laws prepared for such a people at
such a time, should light up on its threshold a blazing beacon to flash
terror on slaveholders. _"He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if
he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."_ Ex. xxi. 16.
Deut. xxiv. 7[A]. God's cherubim and flaming sword guarding the entrance
to the Mosaic system!

[Footnote A: Jarchi, the most eminent of the Jewish Commentators, who
wrote seven hundred years ago, in his commentary on this stealing and
making merchandize of men, gives the meaning thus:--"Using a man against
his will, as a servant lawfully purchased; yea, though he should use his
services ever so little, only to the value of a farthing, or use but his
arm to lean on to support him, _if he be forced so to act as a servant_,
the person compelling him but once to do so shall die as a thief,
whether he has sold him or not."]

The word _Ganabh_ here rendered _stealeth_, means the taking what
_belongs_ to another, whether by violence or fraud; the same word is
used in the eighth commandment, and prohibits both _robbery_ an