It is vain to assume that the benefits of the Jubilee were restricted to a particular class. To what class? Not the six years' servants; they were freed in the seventh. Not to debtors; there _was no law_ compelling them to serve at all; therefore they could only serve voluntarily to pay their debts. Not to thieves; they could only be compelled to make restitution of the thing stolen, or its value; that paid, they were free. The only other classes to whom the law could apply were "all the inhabitants of the land" who served the longest time, the Hebrew "for ever" servants, and the heathen servants, thus preventing the possibility of the rise and growth of a servile class, the curse of any country. In this way only can we account for the fact that Jewish history never mentions the existence of a large servile class, or a servile insurrection in Israel, so common and disastrous an occurrence in the history of ancient slaveholding communities. Some object here, that the term "inhabitants" implies "all the Hebrews," and excludes the strangers, Canaanites, &c.; but by admitting that "all the Hebrews" were freed at the Jubilee, they admit that those who, in Ex. 21:6, are servants "for ever," are also freed, and thus to serve "for ever" only implies till the Jubilee. If, then, "for ever" means only till the Jubilee in one case, it means no more in the other. And if we show that the strangers and Canaanites _were_ considered "inhabitants of the land," then the Jubilee referred to Hebrew and stranger alike, and both were free. In Ex. 34:12, 15, "Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest;" and Lev. 18:25; Num. 33:52-55, Moses calls the heathen "the inhabitants of the land;" and as he was likely to understand the meaning of the term pretty well, he either refers in the Jubilee law to Hebrews, Canaanites, and all, or he meant Canaanites and heathen alone, which is still more decisive. Again, in 2 Sam. 11:2-27; 23:39, we find one of these strangers, Uriah the _Hittite_, not only an "inhabitant" of Jerusalem, but one of David's best officers, and his wife becoming queen of Israel and mother of Solomon; and in 2 Sam. 24:18-25, another, Araunah the Jebusite is a householder, and more, is praised as acting like a king toward king David, who bought property of him whereon to build an altar; and yet, forsooth, they were not inhabitants!