There is no evidence to show that captives in war, reduced to slavery, or the slaves bought in the open slave market, foreigners in either case, would be freed from slavery at any time, under this law or any other. Later, Leviticus xxv. 44-6 expressly sanctions such being ‘bondmen for ever’, and this was everywhere the natural custom. The Hebrew ‘slave’, as he has hitherto been called, contemplated in this law, as understood somewhat later, is simply one who had assigned himself or had been assigned by lawful authority to his holder to work off a debt which he himself had contracted. Such in Rome became a real slave, and might easily have so become in Israel and Babylonia but for Moses and Hammurabi. There is no evidence that a Hebrew was ever a slave in any other sense. We shall return to the point again. This is not really a slave but a hostage for debt. Hammurabi had a special name for him, as had the Roman law. The Hebrew term covers such, using a word that may mean a servant, a hostage for debt, or a proper slave. This ‘slave’, then, worked off his debt by unpaid service. When Leviticus xxv. 40 lays down the rule that he shall not serve as a bondservant but shall be as a hired servant, it bears in mind that he was not a slave at all, but had temporarily lost his freedom. He was like the sojourner, still free, but not fully free. It could not be meant to order that wages were to be paid, only that no such exacting service should be required as was evidently the rule for bondservants or real slaves. ‘Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour’ is a good gloss on the case. For it was naturally a temptation to the holder to get as much work out of this ‘slave’ as he could, in order to recoup the debt or purchase-money in view of the approaching release. It is most important here to note that the law takes no account of the amount of debt. A purely commercial spirit would have estimated the yearly average value of the slave’s work above his keep and clothing, and then would fix the term of service at such a length as would suffice to work off the debt and its interest. That such calculations were made in Babylonia is evident from existing documents. In the existing state of legislation in Israel we may assume that a man who was in debt, knowing that if he sold himself for debt he would have to serve six years, would not sell himself unless he saw some fair equivalence between the work he would have to perform in that time and the amount he owed. He could hire himself out as a hired servant and pay off the debt with the money, possibly in less time. So it was ruled that if he did elect to serve out his debt he is not to be made to work harder than a hired servant would have to do.