Exodus 21:1-11

International Standard Version

Laws Concerning Servants

21 “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,^[a] 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^[b] 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.

⁷ “When a man sells his daughter as a servant, she won’t go out as the male servants do.^{[c] 8} If she’s displeasing to^[d] her master who selected her for himself,^[e] he must let her be redeemed. He does not have the right to sell her to foreign people, because he has dealt unfairly^[f] with her. ⁹ If he has selected her for his son,^[g] he is to treat her according to the ordinance for daughters. ¹⁰ If he takes another woman for himself, he may not withhold from the first^[h] her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. ¹¹ If he does not do these three things for her, she may go out without paying anything at all.”^[i]