“If you buy (A)a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall leave as a free man without a payment to you. If he comes [a]alone, he shall leave [b]alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall leave with him. 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 leave [c]alone. But (B)if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not leave as a free man,’ then his master shall bring him to [d]God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an [e]awl; and he shall serve him permanently.

“Now (C)if a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to [f]go free (D)as the male slaves [g]do. If she is [h]displeasing in the eyes of her master [i]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 [j]unfairness to her. And if he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. 10 If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her [k]food, her clothing, or (E)her conjugal rights. 11 But if he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go [l]free for nothing, without payment of money.

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Footnotes

  1. Exodus 21:3 Lit by himself
  2. Exodus 21:3 Lit by himself
  3. Exodus 21:4 Lit by himself
  4. Exodus 21:6 Or the judges (who acted in God’s name)
  5. Exodus 21:6 I.e., a pointed tool
  6. Exodus 21:7 Lit go out
  7. Exodus 21:7 Lit go out
  8. Exodus 21:8 Lit bad
  9. Exodus 21:8 Another reading is so that he did not designate her
  10. Exodus 21:8 Lit dealing treacherously
  11. Exodus 21:10 Lit flesh
  12. Exodus 21:11 Lit out

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