WAGES. The word 171", rendered in the A. V. by this term, comes from a verb which signifies to hire, to pay, or receive wages. Another word rendered wages is ,p's or r6pp, from 170, to do, to labour. Wages, then, according to the earliest usages of mankind, are a return tnade by a purchaser for something of value—specifically for work performed. And thus labour is recognised as property ; and wages as the price paid or obtained in exchange for such property. In this relation there is obviously nothing improper or humiliating on the side either of the buyer or the seller. They have each a certain thing which the other wants, and in the exchange which they in consequence make both parties are alike served. In these few words lies the theory, and also the justification of all ser vice. The entire commerce of life is barter. In hire, then, there is nothing improper or discredit able. It is only a hireling—that is, a mercenary, a mean sordid spirit—that is wrong. So long as a human being has anything to give which another human being wants, so long has he something of value in the great market of life ; and whatever that something may be, provided it does not contribute to evil passions or evil deeds, he is a truly respect able capitalist, and a useful member of the social community. The Scriptural usage in applying the
term translated wages ' to sacred subjects—thus the Almighty himself says to Abraham (Gen. xv. t), 'I aro thy exceeding great reward '—tends to confirm' these views, and to suggest the observance of cantion in the employment of the words hire ' and hireling,' which have acquired an offensive meaning by no means originally inherent in them selves, or in the Hebrew words for which they stand (Gen. xxx. 18, 32, 33).
Property, in all ages, has in practice disowned the truth, that it has its duties as well as its rights. This Jacob found in his dealings with Laban. But in the iron age of the Jewish state, injustice towar& those who had no property but such as their labour supplied became very common, and conduced, with other crimes, to call down the divine wrath—' I will be a swift witness against those that oppress the hireling in his wages ' (Mal. iii. 5).—J. R. B.