Chapter VII: SERVANTS WERE BOUGHT. In other words, they received compensation in

advance.[A] Having shown, under a previous head, that servants _sold themselves_, and of course received the compensation for themselves, except in cases where parents hired out the time of their children till they became of age,[B] a mere reference to the fact is all that is required for the purposes of this argument. As all the strangers in the land were required to pay an annual tribute to the government, the Israelites might often "buy" them as family servants, by stipulating with them to pay their annual tribute. This assumption of their obligations to the government might cover the whole of the servant's time of service, or a part of it, at the pleasure of the parties.

[Footnote A: But, says the objector, if servants received their pay in advance, and if the Israelites were forbidden to surrender the fugitive to his master, it would operate practically as a bounty offered to all servants who would leave their master's service encouraging them to make contracts, get their pay in advance and then run away, thus cheating their masters out of their money as well as their own services.--We answer, the prohibition, Deut xxiii. 15. 16, "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master," &c., sets the servant free from his _authority_ and of course, from all those liabilities of injury, to which _as his servant_, he was subjected, but not from the obligation of legal contracts. If the servant had received pay in advance, and had not rendered an equivalent for this "value received," he was not absolved from his obligation to do so, but he was absolved from all obligations to pay his master in _that particular way_, that is, _by working for him as his servant_.]

[Footnote B: Among the Israelites, girls became of age at twelve, and boys at thirteen years.]