this word ‘servant’. He delighted to call himself God’s ‘ebed (e.g., Psalm 116:16); and expressed that joy in his acts of private and corporate praise and prayer. Unlike the Greek thought of slavery as servile abasement and captivity, the Hebrew notion, implicit in the word ‘ebed, expressed the relationship of servant and kindly master (e.g., Exodus 21:1–6). This bond was thought of and described in terms of privilege and honour more than of inhuman bondage; and when men called themselves the ‘servants