Exodus 21:1-21 ▼

1 |These are the ordinances that you are to set before them.

2 |When you acquire a Hebrew servant, he is to serve for six years, and in the seventh he is to go out a free man without paying anything.

3 If he came in by himself, he is to go out by himself. If he was married, his wife is to go out with him.

4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and children belong to her master, and he is to go out by himself.

5 But if the servant, in fact, says, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children, and I won't go out a free man,'

6 then his master is to bring him before the judges and he is to bring him to the door or to the doorpost. His master is to pierce his ear with an awl, and he is to serve him permanently.

7 |When a man sells his daughter as a servant, she won't go out as the male servants do.

8 If she's displeasing to her master who selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He does not have the right to sell her to foreign people, because he has dealt unfairly with her.

9 If he has selected her for his son, he is to treat her according to the ordinance for daughters.

10 If he takes another woman for himself, he may not withhold from the first her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.

11 If he does not do these three things for her, she may go out without paying anything at all.|

12 |Whoever strikes a man so that he dies is certainly to be put to death.

13 If he didn't lie in wait, but God let him fall into his reach, then I'll appoint for you a place to which he may flee.

14 If a man acts deliberately against his neighbor, to kill him by treachery, you are to take him to die even if he's at my altar.

15 |Whoever strikes his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death.

16 |Whoever kidnaps a person, whether he has sold him or whether the victim is still in his possession, is certainly to be put to death.

17 |Whoever curses his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death.

18 |If people quarrel and one strikes the other with a rock or his fist, and he does not die but ends up in bed,

19 and the injured person then gets up and walks around outside with the help of his staff, the one who struck him is not liable, except that he is to compensate him for his loss of time and take care of his complete recovery.

20 |If a man strikes his male or female servant with a stick and he or she dies as a direct result, the master must be punished.

21 But if the servant survives a day or two, the master is not to be punished because the servant is his property.