lege of residence and protection under their government. No service
seems to have been required of the _females_. As these Gibeonites were
Canaanites, and as they had greatly exasperated the Israelites by
impudent imposition, and lying, we might assuredly expect that they
would reduce _them_ to the condition of chattels if there was _any_ case
in which God permitted them to do so.

IV. Throughout the Mosaic system, God warns the Israelites against
holding their servants in such a condition as they were held in by the
Egyptians. How often are they pointed back to the grindings of their
prison-house! What motives to the exercise of justice and kindness
towards their servants, are held out to their fears in threatened
judgments; to their hopes in promised good; and to all within them that
could feel; by those oft repeated words of tenderness and terror! "For
ye were bondmen in the land of Egypt"--waking anew the memory of tears
and anguish, and of the wrath that avenged them.

God's denunciations against the bondage of Egypt make it incumbent on us
to ascertain, of what rights the Israelites were plundered, and what
they retained.

EGYPTIAN BONDAGE ANALYZED. (1.) The Israelites were not dispersed among
the families of Egypt[A], but formed a separate community. Gen. xlvi.
35. Ex. viii. 22, 24; ix. 26; x. 23; xi. 7; ii. 9; xvi. 22; xvii. 5.
(2.) They had the exclusive possession of the land of Goshen[B]. Gen.
xlv. 18; xlvii. 6, 11, 27. Ex. xii. 4, 19, 22, 23, 27. (3.) They lived
in permanent dwellings. These were _houses_, not _tents_. In Ex. xii. 6,
22, the two side _posts_, and the upper door _posts_, and the lintel of
the houses are mentioned. Each family seems to have occupied a house _by
itself_,--Acts vii. 20. Ex. xii. 4--and judging from the regulation
about the eating of the Passover, they could hardly have been small
ones, Ex. xii. 4, probably contained separate apartments, and places for
concealment. Ex. ii. 2, 3; Acts vii. 20. They appear to have been well
apparelled. Ex. xii. 11. To have their own burial grounds. Ex. xiii. 19,
and xiv. 11. (4.) They owned "a mixed multitude of flocks and herds,"
and "very much cattle." Ex. xii. 32, 37, 38. (5.) They had their own
form of government, and preserved their tribe and family divisions, and
their internal organization throughout, though still a province of
Egypt, and _tributary_ to it. Ex. ii. 1; xii. 19, 21; vi. 14, 25; v. 19;
iii. 16, 18. (6.) They seem to have had