Tuesday, September 10, 2019

The Jubilee Brought Universal Release.

What is an inhabitant, but one who dwells, or resides in the place mentioned? “All inhabiting it” is the exact form of expression in the original. The persons of whom we are speaking inhabited some country, they dwelt somewhere. It was not in Syria, Arabia, or Egypt, or any other spot on earth than the land of the Hebrews. Besides for whom was the proclamation of liberty so obviously necessary. The Hebrew people generally, could not be in bondage; the hired servants like hired men now, were at liberty to make their own contracts, and on performing them to go where they pleased. The Hebrew servants who had been sold to their brethren for debts, could not at the longest be detained over six years, without their own consent. For whom then, especially, was the great release, on the return of every fiftieth year from its first celebration, provided? Was it not for those who of all men most needed it; for those who otherwise must have remained in bondage until death, leaving their children and children's children after them, to inherit the same destiny? Of this sort were Hebrew servants who on the expiration of six years, had chosen to have their ears pierced in token of perpetual bondage, because they did not like to be separated from their families, and the foreign servants who had been bought with money. That the former of these classes were inhabitants of the land we suppose no one will dispute. Why were not the latter in every proper sense of the term, as really so? The seal of the Jewish nation, and of her covenant with God, had been by their priests set upon their flesh. Their children who had never been in any other land, were like themselves consecrated to Israel's God. They all, in common with the native Hebrews, were required to share in the rest and join in the holy employments of the Sabbath; were admitted to all the solemn feasts, in which strangers had no right to partake; and shared equally with their masters in all the benefits of the Sabbatical year, during the whole of which they enjoyed exemption, as well as Hebrew servants, from labor. Who then will say that when the great circle, or seven times seven years have revolved, and the loud and joyful trumpets of jubilee were proclaiming liberty throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof, that proclamation, so welcome, so full of good tidings to others, brought to these no blessing whatever; nothing but death to their hopes, and bitter aggravation to their lot? This would, indeed, make the similarity between the Hebrew servitude and American slavery more close and striking, in this land, on the day set apart for the celebration of our national independence, while the noble declaration is sounded through the land, that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” while smooth-tongued orators grow eloquent in extolling our land as eminently the land of liberty, and an asylum for the oppressed; and general rejoicing in the ringing of bells and roaring of cannon is heard through the land, nearly three millions of the inhabitants, for no crime, despoiled of liberty, mingle their sighs with our national rejoicings. Can we believe it was so on the occasion of the jubilee which was designed to prefigure affectingly, the universal and unrivalled blessings of the Gospel in the future reign of the Messiah? It is astonishing indeed that the biblical scholar, in disregard of such a mass of evidence to the contrary, could ever come to the conclusion that the bought servants of Gentile extraction were not to be set free. On what is it founded? Simply on the declaration that the bought servants should be bond men and bond maids forever, when they all admit that this same term forever when used in the same way in reference to the Hebrew servant whose ear was pierced with the awl, only means that he should remain permanently while he lived, or until the year when the jubilee should set him free. In this case they are undoubtedly right, but in the other wrong. The perponderance [sic] of evidence in favor of the complete release of all the bought servants, as well as others, on every occasion of Jubilee, is in our view decisive. The learned author of the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge has well said in regard to this matter, All the slaves were set free. The political design of the law of jubilee was to prevent the too great oppression of the poor as well as their being liable to perpetual slavery.” Their servitude then, was entirely different from modern slavery in this highly important respect, that it could in no case continue, in regard to any one person, over forty nine years, and in most cases only for a much shorter period; a period continually diminishing as the great year of universal release drew nigh. When released they were politically situated as are now the colored people in the British West Indies; and left free to make such arrangements in regard to the future as they might consider for their interest and happiness.
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Continued from: Reverend Silas McKeen to Thomas C. Stuart, August 20, 1839

SOURCE: Cyrus P. Grosvenor, Slavery vs. The Bible: A Correspondence Between the General Conference of Maine, and the Presbytery of Tombecbee, Mississippi, p. 60-4

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