Exodus 21:1-6 ▼

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.