No such idea is contained in the passage. The word _forever_, instead of defining the length of _individual_ service, proclaims the _permanence_ of the regulation laid down in the two verses preceding, namely, that their _permanent domestics_ should be of the _Strangers_, and not of the Israelites; and it declares the duration of that general provision. As if God had said, "You shall _always_ get your _permanent_ laborers from the nations round about you--your _servants_ shall always be of _that_ class of persons." As it stands in the original, it is plain--"_Forever of them shall ye serve yourselves_." This is the literal rendering of the Hebrew words, which, in our version, are translated, "_They shall be your bondmen forever_." This construction is in keeping with the whole of the passage. "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the _heathen_ (the nations) that are round about you. OF THEM shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, OF THEM shall ye buy," &c. The design of this passage is manifest from its structure. It was to point out the _class_ of persons from which they were to get their supply of servants, and the _way_ in which they were to get them. That "_forever_" refers to the permanent relations of a _community_, rather than to the services of _individuals_, is a fair inference from the form of the expression, "THEY shall be your possession. Ye shall take _them_ as an inheritance for your children to inherit them for a possession." To say nothing of the uncertainty of _these individuals_ surviving those _after_ whom they are to live, the language used, applies more naturally to a _body_ of people, than to _individual_ servants. But suppose it otherwise; still _perpetual_ service could not be argued from the term _forever_. The ninth and tenth verses of the same chapter, limit it absolutely by the jubilee. "_Then shall thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month: in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout_ ALL _your land." "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto_ ALL _the inhabitants thereof_." It may be objected that "inhabitants" here means _Israelitish_ inhabitants alone. The command is, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto ALL _the inhabitants thereof_." Besides, in the sixth verse, there is an enumeration of the different classes of the inhabitants, in which servants and strangers are included. "_And the Sabbath of the land shall be meet for_ YOU--[For whom? For you _Israelites_ only?]--_for thee, and for thy_ SERVANT, _and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy_ STRANGER _that sojourneth with thee_."