Exodus 21:1-11

Evangelical Heritage Version

Civil Laws

21 Now these are the ordinances which you are to set before them:

Laws About Servants

² If you purchase a Hebrew servant, he is to serve for six years, but in the seventh he may go free without paying anything. ³ If he comes in by himself, he will go out by himself. If he is married when he comes in, then his wife will go out with him. ⁴ If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will belong to her master, and the servant will go out by himself. ⁵ But if the servant formally declares, “I love my master, my wife, and my children. I do not want to go out free,” ⁶ then his master shall bring him to the judges.^[a] His master shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and he shall bore through his ear with an awl. Then he shall serve him for the rest of his life.

⁷ If a man sells his daughter to be a female servant, she may not be sent out of the household as the male servants may be. ⁸ If she does not please her master who has married her, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has not kept his commitment to her. ⁹ If he marries her to his son, he must deal with her as he would deal with a daughter. ¹⁰ If he takes a second wife for himself, he must not diminish the food, the clothing, or the marital rights^[b] of the first wife. ¹¹ If he does not do these three things for her, she may go free without paying any money.