Exodus 21:1-11

The Treatment of Servants

21¹ Now these are the ordinances which thou shalt set before them. ² If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. ³ If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he be married, then his wife shall go out with him. ⁴ If his master give him a wife and she bear him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. ⁵ But if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: ⁶ then his master shall bring him unto God, and shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever. ⁷ And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. ⁸ If she please not her master, who hath espoused her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a foreign people he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. ⁹ And if he espouse her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. ¹⁰ If he take him another [wife]; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. ¹¹ And if he do not these three things unto her, then shall she go out for nothing, without money.