Exodus 21:1-21 ▼

1 “Now these are the judgments which you are to set before them:

2 “If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment.

3 If he comes alone, he shall go out alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him.

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

5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out as a free man,’

6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. Then his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently.

7 “And if a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do.

8 If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He does not have authority to sell her to a foreign people because of his treachery to her.

9 And if he designates her for his son, he shall do to her according to the custom of daughters.

10 If he takes for himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights.

11 And if he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.

12 “He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.

13 But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee.

14 If, however, a man acts presumptuously toward his neighbor, so as to kill him by deceit, you shall take him even from My altar, that he may die.

15 “And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

16 “He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.

17 “And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

18 “And if men contend with each other and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but remains in bed,

19 if he gets up and walks around outside on his staff, then he who struck him shall go unpunished; he shall only pay for his loss of time, and he shall take care of him until he is completely healed.

20 “And if a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall surely be punished.

21 But if for a day or two he is able to stand, no punishment shall be taken; for he is his property.