(a.) In the patriarchal system servitude could not possibly have been compulsory. It must have been voluntary. Force, coercion, was utterly out of the question. Abraham had neither army nor police to hold his slaves in bondage. In fact they were his armed soldiers as against freebooting incursions or any hostile assault whatever. Manifestly they lived with him while they chose――no longer. Some of them rose to bear important responsibilities, _e. g._ Eliezer (Gen. 24); his two young men who went with him and Isaac to Moriah (Gen. 22).――――Isaac “had great store of servant” (Gen. 26: 14), but there is not the least intimation that they were entailed as part of his estate to either Esau or Jacob; or that he received them by inheritance from Abraham.――――Jacob had many servants (Gen. 30: 43), and in fact must have had to help him in the care of his flocks and herds: but the history shows that he did not take them with him into Egypt. Joseph’s invitation left out the servants (Gen. 45: 10, 11.), and the record specifies all the family except the servants and gives us the actual enumeration――all servants omitted (Gen. 46: 5–26). Property in servants in the American sense, there was none. (b.) Of Egyptian slavery enough is known to show that they bought slaves brought in from other nations, holding therefore a property right in them, and that they constituted a menial class in society. * * * * * The condition of the Israelites under oppression there was peculiar. Manifestly they were not held by individual Egyptians as their personal property, but rather by the crown. The king of Egypt appears as the great slave-holder of the Hebrew people, making levies upon them for laborers at his pleasure, and exacting the severest tasks with no limitations but his own will on the one hand and their possible endurance on the other. The question of letting the people go was (at least mainly) personal to himself and to his throne. His merciless severity would naturally tend to make slavery in Egypt heartlessly cruel. Laws to restrain masters from severity could not be thought of under such kings. It is easy to see that when, at and after Sinai, the Lord came to legislate for the Hebrew people, fresh from Egyptian usages and laws, there was abundant occasion for statutes to modify the severities of human bondage. With telling force the Lord could say――Never oppress your servants; ye know how oppression feels! _The Jubilee._――(Lev. 25). In this chapter and here only we have an account of this peculiar institution. The following points in it deserve special attention.