Note A — THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER NO 4. THE BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY. AN INQUIRY INTO THE PATRIARCHAL AND MOSAIC SYSTEMS ON THE SUBJECT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Fourth Edition—Enlarged. (continued 2)

3. "FOREVER." This is quoted to prove that servants were to serve during their life time, and their posterity from generation to generation.A No such idea is contained in the passage. The word "forever," instead of defining the length of individual service, proclaims the permanence of the regulation laid down in the two verses preceding, namely, that their permanent domestics should be of the Strangers, and not of the Israelites; it declares the duration of that general provision. As if God had said, "You shall always get your permanent laborers from the nations round about you; your servants shall always be of that class of persons." As it stands in the original, it is plain—"Forever of them shall ye serve yourselves." This is the literal rendering.