“The word rendered _buy_ or _purchase_ in the Scriptures, is applied to so many kinds of purchases, that no safe argument can be founded on its use in regard to the kind of servitude which existed in the time of Abraham. A reference to a few cases where this word is used, will show that nothing is determined by it respecting the tenure by which the thing purchased was held. (1.) It is used in the common sense of the word _purchase_ as applied to inanimate things, where the property would be absolute. _Gen._ xlii. 2, 7; xliii. 20; xlvii. 19; xxx. 19. (2.) It is applied to the purchase of _cattle_, where the property may be supposed to be _as_ absolute. See _Gen._ xlvi. 22, 24; iv. 20; _Job_ xxxvi. 33; _Deut._ iii. 19; _and often_, (3.) God is represented as having _bought_ his people; that is, as having ransomed them with a price, or purchased them to himself. _Deut._ xxxii. 6: ‘Is he not thy Father that hath _bought_ thee?’ קָּנֶךָ—_kânĕkhâ_, thy purchaser. _Exod._ xv. 16: ‘By the greatness of thine arm they shall be still as a stone, till thy people pass over; till the people pass over which thou hast _purchased_,’ קָנִיהָ,_kânithâ_. See _Ps._ lxxiv. 2. Compare _Isa._ xliii. 3: ‘I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.’ But though the word _purchase_ is used in relation to the redemption of the people of God, the very word which is used respecting the servants of Abraham, no one will maintain that they were held as _slaves_, or regarded as _property_. Who can tell but what Abraham purchased his servants in some such way, by redeeming them from galling captivity? May they not have been prisoners in war, to whom he did an inestimable service in rescuing them from a condition of grievous and hopeless bondage? May they not have been _slaves_ in the strict and proper sense, and may not his act of purchasing them have been, in fact, a species of emancipation in a way similar to that in which God emancipates his people from the galling servitude of sin? The mere act of paying _a price_ for them no more implies that he continued to hold them as slaves, than it does now when a man purchases his wife or child who have been held as slaves, or than the fact that God has redeemed his people by a price, implies that he regards them as slaves. (4.) Among the Hebrews a man might sell himself, and this transaction on the part of him to whom he sold himself would be represented by the word _bought_. Thus, in _Lev._ xxv. 47, 48: ‘And if a sojourner or a stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and _sell himself_ unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger’s family, after that he is sold, he may be redeemed again.’ This transaction is represented as a _purchase_. Ver. 50: ‘And he shall reckon with him that _bought_ him, (Heb. _his purchaser_, קֹנֵהוּ _konaihū_), from the year that he was sold unto the year of jubilee,’ &c. This was a mere purchase of _time_ or _service_.