# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 Foreword.

and to his fathers'," except in the case — which without doubt occurred only very rarely, as an exception — that he himself did not wish to be set free, in which case he then also had to be and remain his master's servant "forever." As regards the Hebrew servants, this provision was further made, that the one set at liberty, if he had entered servitude without a wife, should also go out without wife and children, the latter remaining with the master in such a case. Exod. 21:1–6. Lev. 25:39–43. We meet other provisions with regard to servants bought from the heathen. Concerning these it says expressly: "But if thou wilt have bondmen and bondmaids, thou shalt buy them of the heathen that are round about you, of the sojourners who are strangers among you, and of their offspring whom they beget among you in your land: these ye shall have as your own, and ye shall possess them, and your children after you, as a possession forever; these ye shall have as bondmen." Lev. 25:44–46.

Now just as God's Word thus confirms in general the relation between master and servant as a civil ordinance and institution concerning bodily and temporal matters, so this also happens, moreover, in particular, in that God's Word makes all manner of provisions touching the duties of the master toward the servant and of the servant toward his master. The master was to regard his menservants and maidservants as members of his family, and therefore to care for their souls' salvation (Gen. 17:12; 18:19 — "his house," that is, his household — Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:14; Exod. 12:44); and, while not treating them as free lords but as servants (Prov. 29:21), he was nevertheless to deal with them according to the demands of righteousness, equity, and love (Job 31:13); hence the servant who had been treated so cruelly by his master that the latter had struck out his eye or a tooth had to be set free by the master. Exod. 21:26–27. The household servants were, according to God's ordering, to be regarded as so closely bound up with the family that, for instance, when one was found in a priest's family, he himself enjoyed the outward priestly privileges which even the priest's own daughter forfeited upon marrying out of the family; for thus we read, Lev. 22:10–12: "There shall no stranger eat of the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest, or a hired servant, shall not eat of the holy thing. But if the priest buy any soul with his money, he may eat of it, and he that is born in his house: they may eat of his bread. But if the priest's daughter be married to a stranger, she shall not eat of the holy heave offering." — Upon menservants and maidservants, on the other hand, is laid the duty of honor, which includes love, faithfulness, and obedience, toward their masters. So the LORD speaks through the prophet Malachi: "A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master" (Mal. 1:6). When therefore the Egyptian maidservant Hagar had fled from her mistress, after the latter had humbled her, the uncreated Angel of the LORD, that is, the LORD Himself, appeared to her and asked