Exodus 21:1-14 ▼

1 And these are the judgments which thou dost set before them:

2 'When thou buyest a Hebrew servant -- six years he doth serve, and in the seventh he goeth out as a freeman for nought;

3 if by himself he cometh in, by himself he goeth out; if he is owner of a wife, then his wife hath gone out with him;

4 if his lord give to him a wife, and she hath borne to him sons or daughters -- the wife and her children are her lord's, and he goeth out by himself.

5 'And if the servant really say: I have loved my lord, my wife, and my sons -- I do not go out free;

6 then hath his lord brought him nigh unto God, and hath brought him nigh unto the door, or unto the side-post, and his lord hath bored his ear with an awl, and he hath served him -- to the age.

7 'And when a man selleth his daughter for a handmaid, she doth not go out according to the going out of the men-servants;

8 if evil in the eyes of her lord, so that he hath not betrothed her, then he hath let her be ransomed; to a strange people he hath not power to sell her, in his dealing treacherously with her.

9 'And if to his son he betroth her, according to the right of daughters he doth to her.

10 If another woman he take for him, her food, her covering, and her habitation, he doth not withdraw;

11 and if these three he do not to her, then she hath gone out for nought, without money.

12 'He who smiteth a man so that he hath died, is certainly put to death;

13 as to him who hath not laid wait, and God hath brought to his hand, I have even set for thee a place whither he doth flee.

14 'And when a man doth presume against his neighbour to slay him with subtilty, from Mine altar thou dost take him to die.