Exodus 21:1-17
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]
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.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Exodus 21:3 Lit. with his body; i.e. single, and so throughout the chapter
- Exodus 21:6 Or before God
- Exodus 21:7 The Heb. lacks as the male servants do
- Exodus 21:8 Lit. bad in the eyes of
- Exodus 21:8 I.e. as a secondary wife also called a mistress or concubine
- Exodus 21:8 Or treacherously
- Exodus 21:9 I.e. as a secondary wife also called a mistress or concubine
- Exodus 21:10 The Heb. lacks from the first
- Exodus 21:11 The Heb. lacks at all
- Exodus 21:13 Lit. hand; i.e. the event was not premeditated by the accused
- Exodus 21:14 Lit. even from
- Exodus 21:16 Lit. he
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