_LAWS OF KINDNESS_
With the commands we now have to consider, we leave altogether the
region of strict law, and enter entirely upon that of aspiration
and of feeling. Kindness, by its very nature, eludes the rude
compulsion of law, properly so called. It ceases to be kindness when
it loses spontaneity and freedom. Precept, therefore, not law, is
the utmost that any lawgiver can give in respect to it; and this is
precisely what we have in Deuteronomy, so far as it endeavours to
incite men to gentleness, goodness, and courtesy to one another.
The author gives his people an ideal of what they ought to be in
these respects, and presses it home upon them with the heartfelt
earnestness which distinguishes him. That is all; but yet, if we are
to do justice to him as a lawgiver, we must consider and estimate
the moral value of these precepts; for, properly speaking, they are
the flower of his legal principles, and they reveal in detail, and
therefore, for the average man, most impressively, the spirit in
which his whole legislation was conceived. In the abstract no doubt
he had told us that love--love to Yahweh--was to be the fundamental
thing, and we have seen how deep and wide-reaching that announcement
was. But a review of the precepts which indicate how he conceived
that love to God should affect men's relations with men, will give
that general principle a definiteness and a concreteness more
impressive than a thousand homilies. For the conception that a
relation of love is the only fit relation between man and God, could
not, if it were sincerely taken up, fail to throw light upon men's
true relations to each other. Consequently the great declaration
of the sixth chapter was bound to re-echo in the precepts to guide
conduct, giving new sanctity and breadth to all man's duty to his
fellows.
Of course the risk of great failure was nigh at hand: for men may
be intellectually convinced that love is the element in which life
ought to be lived, and may proclaim it, who are far from being
actually penetrated and filled with love, tested and increased by
communion with God. As a result, much talk about love and kindly
human duty has fallen with but little impulsive power upon the
hearts of men. When, however, it is felt to be the expression of a
present experience, such exhortation has power to move men as no
other words can do. And the author of Deuteronomy was one of those
who had this divinely given secret. In all parts of his book you
find his words becoming winged with power, wherever love to God and
man is even remotely touched upon. If our hypothesis as to the age
in which he lived and wrote be correct, his must have been one of
those high and rare natures which are not embittered by persecution
or contemptuous neglect. Long before our Lord had spoken His
decisive words on our duty to our neighbour, or St. Paul had written
his great hymn to love, this man of God had been chosen to feel the
truth, and had suffused his book with it, so that the only principle
which can be recognised as binding together all his precepts is the
central principle of the New Testament. Of course that made his
ideal too high for present realisation; but he gained more than he
lost; for, from Jeremiah and Josiah downwards through the years, all
the noblest of his people responded to him. The splendour of his
thought cast reflections upon their minds, and these glowed and
shone amid the meaner lights which Pharisaism kindled and cherished,
till He came whose right it was to reign. Then Deuteronomy's true
rank was seen; for from it Christ took the answers by which He
repelled Satan in the temptation, and from it, too, He took that
commandment which He called the first and greatest. Of course the
humanity of the book had not, in expression at least, the imperial
sweep of Christian brotherhood which makes all men equal, so that
for it there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither wise nor unwise,
neither male nor female, neither bond nor free. But _all_ the chosen
people are included in its sympathy; and in this field, without
undue interference with private life, the author sets forth by
specimen cases how the fraternal feeling should manifest itself in
loving, neighbourly kindness.
As these laws or precepts of kindness are not systematically
arranged, it will be necessary to group them, and we shall take
first those in which it is prescribed that injury to others should
be avoided. Of course criminal wrongs are not dealt with here. They
have already been forbidden in the strictly legal portions of the
book, and penalties have been attached to them. But in the region
beyond law, there are many acts in which the difference between a
good, and kindly, and sympathetic man, and a morose, and sullen,
and unkindly one, can be even more clearly seen. In that region
Deuteronomy is unmistakably on the side of sympathy. The poor, the
slave, the helpless should, it teaches, be objects of special care
to the true son of Israel. They should be treated, it shows, with a
generous perception of the peculiar difficulties of their lot; and
pressure upon them at these special points where their lot is hard
should be abhorrent to every Israelite.
The first in order of the precepts which we are considering (chap.
xxii. v. 8)--"When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make
a railing for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house,
if any man fall from thence"--reveals the fatherly and loving
temper which it is the author's delight to attribute to Yahweh. As
earthly parents guard their children from accidents and dangers,
so Yahweh thinks of possible danger to the lives of His people,
and calls for even minute precautions. The habit of sitting and
sleeping upon the flat roofs of the houses has always been, and is
now, prevalent in the East. Many accidents take place through this
habit. In recent years Emin Pasha, who ruled so long at Wadelai,
nearly lost his life by one; and here the house-owner is required in
Yahweh's name to minimise that danger, "that he bring not blood upon
his house." The life of each one of Yahweh's people is precious to
Him; therefore it is that He will have them to guard one another.
This is the principle which runs through all these precepts. In the
sphere of ritual and religion the Deuteronomist does not transcend
Old Testament conditions. For him as for others it is the nation
which is the unit. But in the region now before us he virtually goes
beyond that limitation, and emphasises the care of Yahweh for the
individual, just as in the demand for love to God he had already
made Israel's relation to their God depend upon each man's personal
attitude. The thought that the Divine care was exerted over even
"such a set of paltry ill-given animalcules as himself and his
nation were," according to Carlyle's phrase, does not stagger him as
it staggered Frederick the Great.
In matters like these, the unsophisticated religion of the Old
Testament is most helpful to us to-day. We have analysed, and
refined, and dimmed all things into abstractions, God and man among
the rest. The fearless simplicity of the Old Testament restores us
to ourselves, and pours fresh blood into the veins of our religion.
No faith in God as the living orderer of all the circumstances of
our lives can be too strong or too detailed. The stronger and more
definite it becomes, the nearer will it approach the truth. Only one
danger can threaten us on that line, the danger of taking all our
own plans and desires for the Divinely appointed path for us. But
most men will by natural humility be saved from that presumption;
and the glad assurance that they are wrapped about with the love
of God is perhaps the greatest need of God's people in their many
sceptical and unspiritual hours.
We cannot, therefore, be surprised that, in connection with
debts and pledges for payment, the same kindness in the Divine
commands should be observable. As usury was forbidden in Israel,
and precautions against excessive indebtedness were exceedingly
elaborate, the possibilities of oppression in connection with debt
in Israel were much more limited than in most ancient communities.
Nevertheless there was here a region of life in which great wrongs
could still be done by a harsh and unscrupulous creditor. In order
that the creditor might have some security for what he had lent, it
was permitted to receive and give pledges. The precepts regarding
these are contained in chap, xxiv., vv. 6, 10 ff. and 17, and
express a considerate brotherly spirit, for which it would be hard
to find a parallel either in ancient or modern times. The creditor
who has taken a poor man's upper garment as a pledge is commanded,
both in the Book of the Covenant and in Deuteronomy, to restore
the garment to its owner in the evening, that he may sleep in it.
In Palestine for much of the year the nights are cold enough, and
the poor man has no covering save his ordinary clothes. To deprive
him of these, therefore, is to inflict punishment upon him, whereas
all that should be aimed at is the creditor's security. This was
peculiarly offensive to Israelite feeling, as we see from the
mention in Amos ii. 8 of the breach of this prescription as one of
the sins for which Yahweh would not turn away Israel's punishment.
Further, in no case was a widow's garment to be taken in pledge, nor
the handmill used for preparing the daily flour, for that is taking
"life" in pledge, as the Deuteronomist says with the feeling for the
conditions of the poor man's life which he always shows.
But the crown of all this kindness is found in the beautiful tenth
verse: "When thou dost lend thy neighbour any manner of loan, thou
shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge thou shalt stand
without, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring forth the
pledge without unto thee." Not only does Yahweh care for external
and physical pain, He sympathises with those deeper wrongs and
pains which may hurt a man's feelings. If a pledge to satisfy the
lender had to be given, scruples of delicacy on the part of the
borrower would appear to the "practical" man, as he would call
himself, contemptibly misplaced. If the man's feelings were so very
superfine, why did he borrow? But the author of Deuteronomy knew the
heart of God better. With the fine tact of a man of God, he knew how
even the well-meaning rich man's amused contempt for the poor man's
few household treasures, would cut like a whip, and he knew that
Yahweh, who was "very pitiful and of tender mercy," would desire no
son of Israel to be exposed to it. He knew, too, how human greed
might dispose the lender to seize upon the thing of greatest value
in the poor house, whether its price was in excess of the loan or
not. Finally, he knew how it deteriorates the poor to be dealt with
in an unceremonious, tactless way even by the benevolent. And in the
name and with the authority of God he forbids it. The poor man's
home, the home of the man whom we desire to help especially, is to
be sacred. In our dealing with him of all men the finest courtesy
is to be brought into play. Just because he needs our help, we are
to stand on points of ceremony with him, which we might dispense
with in dealing with friends and equals. "Thou shalt stand without,"
unless he asks thee to enter; and thou shalt show thereby, in a
deeper way than any gifts or loans can show, that the fraternal tie
is acknowledged and reverenced.
In two other precepts the same delicate regard for the finer
feelings finds expression. In the fifth verse it is commanded that
"When a man taketh a new wife, he shall not go out in the host,
neither shall he be charged with any business: he shall be free
at home one year, and shall cheer his wife that he hath taken."
The strangeness and loneliness which everywhere make themselves
felt as a formidable drawback to a young wife's joy, and which in
a polygamous family, where jealousies are bitter, must often have
reached the point of being intolerable, are provided for. In chap.
xxv. 1-3 again, which deals with the punishment of criminals by
beating, it is provided that in no case shall the number of blows
exceed forty, and that they shall be given in the presence of the
judge. This in itself was a measure of humanity, but the reason
given for the direction is greatly more humane. "Forty stripes he
may give him," says ver. 3; "he shall not exceed; lest, if he should
exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother
should seem vile unto thee." Even in the case of the criminal
care is to be taken that he be not made an object of contempt.
Punishment has gone beyond its true aim when it makes a man seem
vile unto his neighbours by attacking his dignity as a man; for that
should be inalienable even in a criminal. A man may have all his
material wants satisfied, and yet be sorely vexed and injured. God
sympathises with these hurts of the soul, and defends His people
against them.
After the lovingkindness of these commands, it seems almost
needless to say that the smaller social wrongs which men may inflict
upon each other are sternly forbidden. Often, the rich from want
of thought about the life of the poor carelessly do them wrong.
Such a case is that dealt within chap. xxiv. 14 f.: "Thou shalt not
oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of
thy brethren, or of thy strangers (_gerim_) that are in thy land
within thy gates: in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither
shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart
upon it: lest he cry against thee unto Yahweh, and it be sin unto
thee." The same command is given in Lev. xix. 13, and Dillmann is
probably right in regarding this as a Deuteronomic repetition of
that, since there the precept forms part of a pentade of commands
dealing with similar things, while here it stands alone. From early
times, therefore, Yahweh had revealed Himself as considering the
poor and the necessities of their position. Further, the poor man
or the wayfarer was permitted to satisfy his hunger by taking fruit
or grain in his hands as he passed through the fields. No one was
to die of starvation if the fields were "yielding meat." Last of
all, estrangement between brethren, _i.e._ all Israelites, was not
to free them from duties of neighbourly love. If a man find a stray
ox or sheep or ass, or a garment or any other lost thing, he is not
to leave it where he finds it. He is to restore it to the owner;
and if the owner is unknown or too far off, the finder is to keep
that which he has found till it is inquired after. Then if he see
his brother's, _i.e._ his neighbour's, ass or ox fallen by the way,
he must not pass by, but must help the owner to set it on its feet
again. That an estranged "brother" was especially in view is shown
by the fact that in the parallel passage (Exod. xxiii. 4) "thine
enemy's ox" and "the ass of him that hateth thee" are mentioned.
Now, we have called these precepts and provisions the flower and
blossom of the Deuteronomic legislation, because they reveal in
their greatest perfection that sympathy with the commonest and
the innermost cares of men which is the moving impulse of it all.
But they reveal more than that. They show that already in those
far-off days the secret of God's love to man had been made known.
Its universality so far as Israel was concerned, its penetrative
sympathy, its quality of regarding no human interest as outside
its scope, its superhuman impartiality--all are here. They are not
of course present in their full sweep and power, as Christ made
them known. Outside of Israel there were the Gentiles, who had a
share only in the "uncovenanted mercies" of God; and even among
the chosen people there were the slaves and the strangers, who had
a comparatively insecure relation to Him. Further, the thought of
the self-sacrifice of God, though soon to have its dawning in the
later chapters of Isaiah, was not as yet an appreciable element
in the Israelite theology. Nevertheless the passages we have been
considering throw a light upon social duty, as seen by this inspired
servant of God, which puts to shame the state of the Christian mind
on these subjects even now.
The great principles underlying right relations between men of
different social status are, according to these precepts, courtesy
and consideration. Now it is precisely the want of these which
lies at the root of the bitterness which is so alarming a symptom
of our social state at present. There is not, we are willing to
believe, much of intentional, deliberate oppression exercised by
the strong upon the weak. The injustice that is done is probably
inherent in the present social system, for the character of which
no one living is responsible. But one reason why reform comes so
slowly, and why patience till it can come dies out among the masses
of men, is that the employing classes, and those who have inherited
privileges, often convey to those they employ the impression that
they are beyond the pale of the courtesies which are recognised as
binding between men of the same class. Often without intending it,
their manner when they are approached by those they employ, their
short and half-aggrieved replies, reveal to the latter that they
are regarded much more as parts of the machinery, than as men who
might naturally be expected to claim, and who have a right to, the
recognition of their rights as men.
Of course there are excuses. There is the long tradition of
subordination to arbitrary power, from which none in earlier ages
of the world have been free. There is the impatience with which
a governing and organising mind listens to grievances which it
sees either to be inevitable under the circumstances, or to be
compensated by some corresponding privilege, which stands or falls
with the thing complained of. And then there is the absence of
outlook, which is the foible of the directing mind. It is set to
rule and make successful a large and intricate business under given
circumstances. The more effective such a mind is for practical
purposes, the more thoroughly will it limit itself to working out
the problem committed to it. When grievances have to be dealt with
which have their root in the present circumstances, and which imply
changes more or less radical in his fixed point if they are to be
redressed, it is hard for the employer to persuade himself that his
employees are not merely crying for the moon. If he think so, he
will probably say so; and working men go away from such interviews
with the feeling that it is vain to expect from employers any
sympathy for their aspirations towards a better social state, which
yet they cannot give up without a slur upon their manhood.
But though these are excuses for the attitude we have been
describing, there can be no question that the fine and delicate
courtesy which Deuteronomy prescribes is indispensable in order
to avert class hostility. Courtesy cannot, of course, change our
social state, and where it works badly evils that produce friction
will remain. But the first condition of a successful solution of
our difficulties is, that evil tempers should as far as possible
be banished, and for that purpose courtesy even under provocation
is the one sovereign remedy. For it means that you convey to your
neighbour that you consider him in all essentials your equal.
It means, too, that you are willing to recognise his rights and
to respect them. Though power may be on your side, and weakness
on his, that will only make it more incumbent upon you to show
that mere external circumstances cannot impair your reverence for
him as man. If that be sincerely felt, it opens a way, otherwise
absolutely closed, to mutual confidence and mutual understanding.
These once established, light on all parts of the social problem
(which, be it remembered, employers and employed must solve together
if it is to be solved at all) will break in upon the minds of both
classes. In spite of the diversity of their immediate interests,
the ultimate interest of all is the same. If contempt and suspicion
were excluded, eyes which are now holden would be opened, and a
common effort to reach a social state in which all men shall have
the opportunity of living lives worthy of men would become possible.
If all would learn to treat those of other classes with the courtesy
which they constantly show to those of their own, a great step in
the right direction would be taken. Men overlook much and forgive
much to their fellows when these recognise their equality, and show
that they attach importance to having good relations with them.
But much more is to be aimed at than that. The esteem for man as
man has great conquests yet to make before even the Deuteronomic
courtesy becomes common. But if these nobler manners are to come
in, then the motives suggested by Deuteronomy will have to be made
effective for our day. What these were it is not difficult to see.
They all had their source in the author's own relations and the
relations of his people to God. Each of his brethren of the chosen
people was a friend of Yahweh. There was no difference between
Israelite men before Him. He had brought them all, the poor and
the weak, as well as the rich and the strong, out of the house of
bondage; He had guided them all through the wilderness, and had
appointed each household a place in His land where full communion
with Him was to be had. He had thought many thoughts about them,
had given them laws and statutes dictated by loving insight, so as
to fill their life with the consciousness that Yahweh loved them,
condescended to them, and even allowed Himself to be made to serve
by their sins. Whatever else they might be, they were friends of
God, and had a right to respect on that ground. And for us who are
Christians all these motives have been intensified and raised to
a higher power. It is not lawful for us to call any man common or
unclean. It is not lawful to overwhelm and bear down the minds of
others by sheer energy and power. Those "for whom Christ died" are
not to be dealt with save on the worthy plane of moral and spiritual
conviction. That is the law of Christ; and so long as it is broken
in our labour troubles by contemptuous refusal of conference when
it can be granted without compromising principle, or by slighting
references to labour leaders and a refusal to meet them, when
leaders of another class would be courteously met, so long will the
bitterness which inevitably springs up trouble us.
It is not, however, to be supposed that only the rich can sin in
this respect. The labour organisations are becoming in many places,
the stronger,[123] and so far they have learned the law of courtesy
no better than their opponents. Opprobrious epithets and injurious
suspicions and accusations are the stock-in-trade of some who lead
the labour cause. That is as unworthy in them as it would be in
others; it is not only a crime, but a blunder.
[123] Especially in some of the Southern Colonies in one of which
this exposition is written.
But the practice of courtesy does not end with itself. It opens
the way for that consideration of the circumstances of the poor
which we have found so conspicuous in Deuteronomy. As we have seen,
Yahweh's precepts contemplate with the nicest care the unavoidable
necessities of the poor man's life. So He stirs us to endeavour
to realise the conditions of our poorer brethren, and by doing so
to avoid the blunders which well-meaning people make by assuming
that the conditions of their own life are the norm. There are
vast varieties of circumstance in the world; and from lack of
consideration those more favourably situated excite envies and
hatreds the bitterness of which they cannot conceive, by simply
taking it for granted that every one has the same opportunities for
recreation, the same possibilities of rest. To realise clearly what
life and death mean to the toiling millions of men; to see that
matters which are small to those who live the materially larger and
freer life of the class above them are of vital moment to the poor;
to consider and allow for all such things in their dealings with
them,--this is the teaching of Deuteronomy. Hence the command to pay
the labourer his wages in the same day. The heart of man responds
when this note is struck. In nothing is the story of Gautama the
Buddha more true to the best instincts of humanity than in this,
that it represents him as making his great renunciation through
coming into intimate contact with the pain and misery of ordinary
life.[124] That gave him insight, and insight wrought sympathy, and
sympathy transformed him from being a petty prince of Northern India
into the consoler and helper of millions in all Eastern lands. Even
hopeless pessimism, when born of sympathy, has an immense consoling
power. Much more should the inextinguishable hope given by Christ,
combined as it is with the same sympathetic insight, console men and
uplift them.
[124] _Buddhism_, by T. W. Rhys Davids, p. 29.
But the sixteenth verse of chap. xxiii. reminds us that in that
ancient Deuteronomic world there were sad limitations to these lofty
sympathies and hopes. If intensively Deuteronomy almost reaches the
Gospel, extensively it shows the whole difference between Judaism
at its best and Christianity. Below the world of free-born members
of the Israelite community, to whom the precepts we have hitherto
been considering alone apply, there was the class of slaves, who
in many respects lay beyond the region of the finer charities. The
origin of slavery we need not discuss. It was a quite universal
feature in all ancient communities, and was doubtless a step upwards
from the custom of destroying all prisoners taken in war. Among the
Hebrews it had always been customary; but in historic times it was
not among them the all-important matter it was in Greek and Roman
polity. Had it been so, it would have been impossible to discuss the
economic ideals of Israel without taking this social feature into
consideration first. But slaves were comparatively few in Israel,
and the slave trade can never have been extensive, since no slave
markets are mentioned in the Old Testament. Moreover the social
state of the country made owners of slaves share in the slaves'
work, and that of itself prevented the growth of the worst abuses.
But the most powerful element in making the lot of the slave
tolerable was undoubtedly the just and pitiful character of the
Israelite religion.
The fundamental position with regard to him was, however, the common
one: he was the property of his master. He could be sold, pledged,
given away as a present, and inherited, and could even be sold to
foreigners. But a female slave, if taken as a subordinate wife,
could not be sold, but only freed if she ceased to occupy that
position. Exclusive of the Canaanites, subject to forced labour,
and the Nethinim, the servants of the Sanctuary, who occupied
much the same place as the _servi publici_ in Rome, there were
two classes of slaves, non-Israelites and Israelites. The ways in
which a non-Israelite slave could come into Israelite hands were
just what they were elsewhere. They might be prisoners of war,
they might be purchased from travelling merchants, they might
voluntarily have sold themselves from poverty in a strange land, or
might have been sold for debt, and finally they might be children
born of slaves. Their lot was of course the hardest. Yet even they
were not so entirely unprotected by the law as slaves were among
Greeks and Romans. They were recognised as men, having certain
general human rights. The master had no right to kill; and if he
maimed his slave he had to give him his freedom, according to the
oldest law (Exod. xvi. 20 f.). The law regarding the killing of a
slave has often been quoted as singularly harsh, especially that
clause which says that if a slave when fatally smitten lives for
some days after the blow, his death shall not be avenged, "for he
is his (the master's) money." But it ought, notwithstanding the
harshness of the expression, to be judged quite otherwise. The fact
that death was not immediate was taken to indicate that death was
not intended, and consequently the loss of the slave was thought a
sufficient punishment. But the prohibition of the deliberate murder
of a slave was a humane provision which could not be paralleled in
the Græco-Roman world. Moreover these laws would not seem to have
been widely called into action. The humane spirit became so general
in Israel that slaves were generally well treated. In Prov. xxix.
21 over-indulgence to a slave is deprecated, as if it were a common
error; and during the whole history there is no mention of evils
resulting from cruel treatment of slaves, much less any record
of servile insurrection. Nor is there very frequent mention even
of runaway slaves. On the other hand, we read of slaves who were
stewards of their masters' houses; others probably were entrusted
with the charge of the education of children.
In Deuteronomy we find, as we should expect, that the movement
towards humanity in dealing with slaves is greatly furthered. In
chap. xxi. 10 ff. the hardship of a woman's lot when she was taken
captive in war is mitigated with sympathetic insight. To modern
women of the Western world the lot of such an one seems so dreadful
that no mitigation of it can make any difference. The current
teaching among even religious men is that rather than submit to it
a woman is justified in suicide. But in antiquity the personality
of woman was undeveloped, the chances of life constantly passed
her from one master to another, and things intolerable now were
tolerable then. Making even these allowances, however, if we look
at the law of the Old Testament as being in all its provisions and
_ab initio_ Divine, it seems impossible to praise it. A law which
graciously permitted a captive woman to mourn for her people for
a month, and only then allowed her captor to marry her, but if he
wished afterwards to get rid of her provided that he should not sell
her, but should let her go whither she would, cannot be said to be
in itself compassionate. But, if the customary law of the Israelite
tribes, restrained and purified by the higher spirit, be regarded as
the basis of Old Testament legislation, then the leaven of religion
and humanity can be seen working nobly, and in a manner worthy of
revelation, even in such cases as these. Long after the Christian
era we see what the ordinary fate of a captive woman was, in the
conduct of Khalid the "sword of the Lord," one of the first great
Mohammedan soldiers. When he had captured Malik ibn Noweira, who had
resisted Islam, along with his wife, he gave orders which led to
Malik's death, and the same night he married his widow.[125] Shortly
afterwards, at the battle of Yemama, he demanded the daughter of
his captive Mojda, and married her, as the Caliph wrote in reproof,
"whilst the ground beneath the nuptial couch was yet moistened
with the blood of twelve hundred." Horrors like these Deuteronomy
forbids. The frenzied moments of a captive's first grief are
respected, and some tenderness is shown to woman in a world where
her lot at its best had always in it possibilities which cannot now
be even thought of with equanimity. The same steady pressure to a
nobler form of life is likewise seen in the Deuteronomic law dealing
with the case of a foreign slave who had taken refuge in Israel
(Deut. xxiii. 15 f.). In the words, "Thou shalt not deliver unto
his master the slave which is escaped from his master unto thee; he
shall dwell with thee, in the midst of thee, in the place which he
shall choose within one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou
shalt not oppress him," we have, thus early, the same legislation
which it is the peculiar boast of England to have introduced into
the modern world. "Slaves cannot breathe in England," and the
moment they touch British soil in any part of the world they are
free. This was the case with the land of Israel according to the
Deuteronomic conception of what it ought to be.
[125] Sir W. Muir, _Caliphate_, pp. 26 and 33.
But the highest points of privilege come to the non-Israelite slave
in a way which disturbs the modern conscience, for they came by
means of compulsion in religion. In contrast to the day labourer
and the "Toshab" or sojourner, the slave _must_ be of his master's
religion. For a heathen, however, that was not a difficulty. His
gods were gods of his land; and when he left his land and was
carried into a foreign country, he had no scruple about worshipping
the god of the new land. A typical case of this is found in the
narrative 2 Kings xvii., where the immigrants whom the king of
Assyria had settled in Samaria after Israel had been carried captive
besought him to send some one to teach them how to worship Yahweh.
This adoption of the master's religion secured equality of slave and
free to a degree which could not otherwise have been attained, and
brought the slaves fully within the humanity of the Hebrew law. It
gave them the Sabbath (chap. v. 14). It gave a full share in all the
religious festivals and a part in the sacrificial feasts (Deut. xii.
12 and xvi. 11, 14). Such slaves were, in fact, fully adopted into
the family of God, and became brethren, poorer and more unfortunate,
but still brethren of their masters. They had indeed no claim to
freedom, as Israelite slaves had; they were slaves in perpetuity.
But their slavery was of a kind that did not degrade them beneath
the condition of man.
With regard to Israelite slaves the beneficence of the law was
naturally still greater. The fullest statement in regard to them
is found, not in Deuteronomy, but in Lev. xxv. 39-46; but in the
main we may suppose that in its larger outlines the distinction
between Israelite and non-Israelite slaves there insisted on was
always acknowledged. They were not to be thrust down into the
lowest depth of slavery, and they were not to be set to the lowest
kinds of labour, rather to that which hired labourers were wont
to do, because they were of the children of Israel, of the nation
whom Yahweh had brought out of the house of bondage. Further, they
had a right to emancipation every seventh year, that is to say,
whenever they had served six full years they could claim freedom in
the seventh. Their original property was meant to be restored to
them in the Sabbatic year, and so their degradation could last only
for a very limited time. In Exod. xxi. 2 ff. we find the original
provisions concerning the Israelite slave. Deuteronomy simply took
these up, and modified them in certain respects. It extends all
that Exodus says of the slave to the female slave also, and, in its
care for and understanding of the difficulties of the poor, enacts
that a slave when set free shall receive a fresh start in life from
the cattle, the barn, and the winepress of the former owner. But
this anticipation of discharged prisoners' aid societies was too
high a demand upon a faithless generation. Even Jeremiah could not
get it carried out; and the probability is that none but the most
spiritually minded of the Jews ever regarded it as binding law.
The love which love of Yahweh inspired spread still more widely. It
took in not only the poor and the slave, but it took account also of
the lower animals. It has been often made a reproach to Christianity
that it makes no such appeal on behalf of the lower creation as
Buddhism does. But that reproach (like the kindred one brought by
J. S. Mill, that in comparison with the Qur'an the New Testament
is defective in not pressing civil duty) is tenable only if the
New Testament be absolutely severed from the Old. Taken as the
completion of the moral and religious development begun in Israel,
Christianity takes up into itself all the experience, and all the
teaching by example, which the Old Testament contains. It does not
repeat it, because to the first Christians the Old Testament was
the Divinely inspired guide. It was at first their whole Bible,
and to take the New Testament by itself as an independent product
is to mutilate both the Old and the New. When the Old Testament,
therefore, enjoins kindness to animals we may set down all that
it prescribes to the credit of Christianity. So much, at least,
the latter must be held to teach; and if we consider the spirit as
well as the letter of this law, there is no exaggeration in saying
that it covers all the ground. Here, as in the case of slaves and
the poor, the fundamental reason for kindness is relation to God.
In the Yahwist's narrative in Gen. ii. all creatures are formed by
God, and God Himself shows kindness to them. Indeed in passages like
Psalm xxxvi. 7, as Cheyne well remarks, there is an implication
"that morally speaking there is no complete break of continuity in
the scale of sentient life," and that, as is seen by passages like
Jer. xxi. 6, and Isa. iv. 11, the mild domesticated animals "are in
fact regarded as a part of the human community." In the Decalogue
the animals that labour with and for man have their share in the
Sabbath rest, and the produce of the fields during the Sabbatic year
(Exod. xxiii. 11; Lev. xxv. 7) is to be for them as well as for the
poor. That they were mere machines of flesh and blood, to be driven
till they were worn out, and were then to be cast aside, seems never
to have occurred to the Israelite mind. These helpful creatures
had made a covenant with man, and had a share in the consideration
which the sons of Israel were taught to have for one another. In
reaching that attainment Israel had reached the only effective
ground for dealing with animals, as Cheyne says, "without inhumanity
and without sentimentalism." The individual prescriptions of
Deuteronomy emphasise and bring down these principles into the
practical life. It is probable that the precept not to seethe a kid
in its mother's milk (Deut. xiv. 21) was, in part at least, a law
of kindness, founded upon a reverential feeling for the parental
relationship even in this lower sphere. The command in Deut. xxii.
6 is certainly so. We read there: "If a bird's nest chance to be
before thee in the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young
ones or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs,
thou shalt not take the dam with the young; thou shalt in any wise
let the dam go, but the young thou mayest take unto thyself; that
it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days."
Evidently the ground of sympathy here is the existence and the
sacredness of the parental relationship. The mother bird is sacred
as a mother; and length of days is promised to those who regard the
sanctity of motherhood in this sphere, as it is promised to those
who observe the fifth commandment of the Decalogue. Thus intimately
the lower creation is drawn into the human sphere.
The only other precepts under this head are that a fallen animal is
always to be lifted (Deut. xxii. 4), and the ox is not to be muzzled
when it is treading out the corn (Deut. xxv. 4). These were ordinary
prescriptions of humanity, but they too rest upon the sympathetic
identification of the sufferings and wants of all sentient beings
with those of mankind. It may be objected, however, that St. Paul
denies that the last precept really was due to pity for the oxen. In
1 Cor. ix. 9, referring to it, he says, "Is it for the oxen that God
careth, or saith He it altogether for our sake? Yea, for our sake it
was written." But there is no real contradiction here. It is quite
impossible that a devout Jew like St. Paul did not believe that
God's "tender mercies are over all His works" (Psalm cxlv. 9). He
would have been false to all his training had he not accepted that
as a fundamental axiom. His apparent denial does not refer at all to
the historic fact that the precept _was_ given because of God's care
for oxen. It only signifies that, when taken in its highest sense,
it was meant to form character in _men_. St. Paul argues, as Alford
says, "that not the oxen, but those for whom the law was given, were
its objects. Every duty of _humanity_ has for its ultimate ground,
not the mere welfare of the animal concerned, but its welfare in
that system of which man is the head, and therefore man's welfare."
In fact St. Paul understood the Old Testament as we have seen it
demands to be understood, and places the duty of kindness to animals
in its right relation to man.
In all relations, therefore, Deuteronomy insists that life's main
principle shall be love illumined by sympathy. Beginning with
God and giving man's unquiet heart a firm anchorage there, it
commands that all creatures about us shall be embraced in the same
sympathising tenderness. It forbids us to look upon any of them as
mere instruments for our use, for all of them have ends of their
own in the loving thought of God. God is for it the great unifying,
harmonising power in the world, and from a right conception of Him
all right living flows. If the New Testament asks with wonder how a
man who loves not his brother whom he hath seen can love God whom
he hath not seen, the Old Testament teaches with equal emphasis the
complementary truth that he who loves not God whom he hath not seen
will never love as he ought his brother whom he hath seen. For to it
Yahweh is the first and last word; and all the growth in kindness,
gentleness, consideration, and goodness which can be traced in
the revelation given to Israel, has its source in a conception of
the Divine character which from the first was spiritual, and was
moreover unique in the world.