Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/393

 TREATMENT OF INFERIORS IN ISRAEL 379

they to appoint over them to civil or judicial positions such aliens; as they were not to intermarry with them (Deut. 17:15; 25:5). There is nothing in the prophets to lead us to believe they did not hold such provisions to be reasonable. Certainly a solitary passage in a highly imaginative prophetic utterance should not be pressed too far (Isa. 56: 3-8). Very likely they all believed a time was coming when through circumcision foreign peoples would enter their fold. In their day it was not to be ; so they stood by the deuteronomic law, and forbade aliens the right of citizenship. To these ethical teachers, so long as their own people were few and weak, it seemed the only safe way of handling the perplexing immigration problem of their time. They might consider the Assyrian and Chaldean policy of colo- nization well enough for them. They surely must have rejoiced that their own people had fared so well in Babylonia. But they could hardly be expected to urge a like liberal policy at home ; and they would have been the last men among their people, we may be sure, to go beyond such a policy and encourage anything like municipal domination or control on the part of an alien population in any one of their cities, though they might urge submission to a foreign power that had made conquest of their people, notwithstanding the fact that such doctrine might render them the most unpopular men of their land and time.

There remains one class of unfortunates, a class that could never have been large, of which to speak. We refer to the pris- oners, who must have been for the most part their own people. The lot of prisoners in those times in Israel was exceptionally severe, owing in part to a want of interest in them, it may be, among those in authority, who could have had no systematic way of caring for them, and in part to the nature of the pris- ons themselves. These frequently were underground rooms or vaults; and were vile, damp places (Isa. 24:22; Jer. 38:6 ff.). Even when they were above ground, houses of restraint, or houses of the bound, those cast into them must have suffered frightfully through filth and neglect. The prophets from the nature of their writings say little about these poor unfortunates, but the little they do say is significant. In the new