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Laws Concerning Servants

21 “These are the ordinances that you are to set before them.

“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. 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. 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. 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,’ 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.

“When a man sells his daughter as a servant, she won’t go out as the male servants do.[c] 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. 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]

Laws Concerning Personal Injury and Homicide

12 “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies is certainly to be put to death. 13 If he didn’t lie in wait, but God let him fall into his reach,[j] then I’ll appoint for you a place to which he may flee. 14 If a man acts deliberately against his neighbor, to kill him by treachery, you are to take him to die even if he’s at[k] my altar.

15 “Whoever strikes his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death.

16 “Whoever kidnaps a person, whether he has sold him or whether the victim[l] is still in his possession, is certainly to be put to death.

17 “Whoever curses his father or his mother is certainly to be put to death.

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Footnotes

  1. Exodus 21:3 Lit. with his body; i.e. single, and so throughout the chapter
  2. Exodus 21:6 Or before God
  3. Exodus 21:7 The Heb. lacks as the male servants do
  4. Exodus 21:8 Lit. bad in the eyes of
  5. Exodus 21:8 I.e. as a secondary wife also called a mistress or concubine
  6. Exodus 21:8 Or treacherously
  7. Exodus 21:9 I.e. as a secondary wife also called a mistress or concubine
  8. Exodus 21:10 The Heb. lacks from the first
  9. Exodus 21:11 The Heb. lacks at all
  10. Exodus 21:13 Lit. hand; i.e. the event was not premeditated by the accused
  11. Exodus 21:14 Lit. even from
  12. Exodus 21:16 Lit. he