EXOD518 So beloved was compassion in the eyes of the giver of the Torah that when he began to enumerate the laws that were to govern their life, with what did he begin?-"If you purchase a Hebrew slave" [this verse]. It is well known that the status of slaves in the ancient world was comparable to that of domestic animals, the ox and the donkey. They and their children were the property of the owner, who could beat and even kill them, as he pleased. The Torah begins its legislation by limiting the years of servitude of the Hebrew slave to six years. It then restricted the right of the owner to beat cruelly and to maim his Canaanite slave, so that if the slave died of the beating, the owner had to answer for it. And if the slave's eye or tooth is knocked out, he attains his freedom. The Torah also ordained that the slave must be allowed to rest on Sabbaths and festivals.