Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children.

So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.”

But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

And I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring.”

So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves

and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

God Hears Israel's Groaning

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.

Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.

Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.

Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.

Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses,

but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field.

and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread

Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.

And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Laws About Slaves

“Now these are the rules that you shall set before them.

When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.

But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’

then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.

“When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged.

But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.

“When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye.