obliged, previous to marriage, to redeem from servitude; who was therefore under a double obligation to him, and over whom he had a double claim. The reference to the thing to be typified is quite apparent. It was not a free, independent people whom the Lord chose, but a people whom He was obliged first to redeem from vile servitude, before He entered into a nearer relation to them. This redemption appears, throughout, as a ransoming from the house of bondage,--and the wonderful dealings of the Lord, as the price which He paid. Compare, _e.g._, Deut. vii. 8: "But because the Lord loved you, and because He kept His oath which He had sworn to your fathers, He has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed thee (ויפדך) from the house of bondmen (מבית עבדים), from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt." See also Deut. ix. 26. It is upon this redemption that the exhortation to the people is founded--that, as the Lord's servants, they should serve Him alone; comp., _e.g._, the introduction to the Decalogue. Thus, we have here also a feature so evidently typical, [Pg 197] so plainly transferred from the thing typified to the type, that we cannot any longer think of an outward transaction. This argument, however, is, in the main point, quite independent of the philological interpretation of כרה. Even if it be translated "I bought her to me," the circumstance, notwithstanding, always remains, that the wife was redeemed from slavery, unless there be a denial of the connection of the sum mentioned with Exod. xxi. 32, and Zech. xi. 12, where the thirty pieces of silver likewise appear as the estimate of a servant's value; and this circumstance evidently suggests the inward character of the transaction.