2. Nor does the fact that the passage allowed the _purchase_ of servants, prove that the persons purchased were slaves, or became slaves. Irishmen were, many of them, a few years since, "bought servants." They were sold to pay for their passage to this country, but the whole transaction was voluntary on the part of the "sons of Erin," and looked to their benefit. Jacob, as we have seen, purchased Leah and Rachel with fourteen years of labor. Our blessed Savior hath purchased us with his own blood. The idea of chattel slavery cannot be associated with the word buy or bought, as used in the sacred writings, without doing great violence to their meaning. The phrase, "of them shall ye _buy_" may be properly rendered, "of them shall ye _get_, or _obtain_ servants." The word translated buy, in the passage before us, is in other places translated "get" or "getteth." Thus, "He that beareth reproof _getteth_ understanding." Prov., 15: 32. "He that _getteth_ wisdom, loveth his own soul." Prov., 19: 8. But the meaning of the word buy, and sell, as applied to the purchase and sale of men, is definitely settled by its use in the context of the passage which we are examining. It is used in verse 47, "if thy brother wax poor and _sell himself_" etc. In verse 39, the reading is, "and _be sold_." These passages are intended to convey an idea of the same transaction, and that transaction was nothing more nor less than the voluntary sale of a poor man to a rich one, not as a slave, but as a servant. The sale was made, and the _money was received by the servant who sold himself_, with which he released himself and family from pecuniary embarrassment. In this sale and purchase of a man, the idea of slavery is utterly excluded. Now is it probable that the words buy, and sell, in this same chapter, when applied to foreign servants, were used in a totally different sense? To suppose this would be to charge Moses, as Wm. Jay observes, with a fraudulent intent to render the meaning of his law doubtful and unintelligible. 3. Considerable stress is placed upon the phrase, "shall be of the _heathen_," as if heathenism was a crime to be punished with a still deeper degradation than idolatry can produce. "The word heathen," says Mr. Jay, "is gratuitously inserted by our translators instead of _nations_, the meaning of the original." 4. Permission was also given for the purchase of the "children of the strangers." "'Children of the strangers' is an orientalism, for strangers, as 'children of the East,' 'children of the Province,' 'children of the Ethiopians.' Hence, the Jews, instead of buying little boys and girls of their parents, were to buy foreigners residing in the country; and not only foreigners, but their descendants, natives of Palestine." (_Jay._)