nd the
head of a household, the law so arranged the conditions of his service
as to _alleviate_ as much as possible the calamity, which had reduced
him from independence and authority, to penury and subjection. The
import of the command which concludes this topic in the forty-third
verse, ("Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor,") is manifestly this,
you shall not disregard those differences in previous associations,
station, authority, and political privileges, upon which this regulation
is based; for to hold this class of servants _irrespective_ of these
distinctions, and annihilating them, is to "rule with rigor." The same
command is repeated in the forty-sixth verse, and applied to the
distinction between servants of Jewish, and those of Gentile extraction,
and forbids the overlooking of distinctive Jewish peculiarities, the
disregard of which would be _rigorous_ in the extreme[B]. The
construction commonly put upon the phrase "rule with rigor," and the
inference drawn from it, have an air vastly oracular. It is interpreted
to mean, "you shall not make him a chattel, and strip him of legal
protection, nor force him to work without pay." The inference is like
unto it, viz., since the command forbade such outrages upon the
Israelites, it permitted and commissioned their infliction upon the
Strangers. Such impious and shallow smattering captivates scoffers and
libertines; its flippancy and blasphemy, and the strong scent of its
loose-reined license works like a charm upon them. What boots it to
reason against such rampant affinities! In Ex. i. 13, it is said that
the Egyptians "made the children of Israel to _serve_ with rigor." This
rigor is affirmed of the _amount of labor_ extorted and the _mode_ of
the exaction. The expression, "serve with rigor," is never applied to
the service of servants under the Mosaic system. The phrase, "thou shalt
not RULE over him with rigor," does not prohibit unreasonable exactions
of labor, nor inflictions of cruelty. Such were provided against
otherwise. But it forbids confounding the distinctions between a Jew and
a Stranger, by assigning the former to the same grade of service, for
the same term of time, and under the same political disabilities as the
latter.

[Footnote A: Jarchi's comment on "Thou shall not compel him to serve as
a bond-servant" is, "The Hebrew servant is not to be required to do any
thing which is accounted degrading--such as all offices of personal
attendance