Exodus 21:1-11

The Treatment of Servants

21¹ Now these are the laws which you are to put before them. ² If you get a Hebrew servant for money, he is to be your servant for six years, and in the seventh year you are to let him go free without payment. ³ If he comes to you by himself, let him go away by himself: if he is married, let his wife go away with him. ⁴ If his master gives him a wife, and he gets sons or daughters by her, the wife and her children will be the property of the master, and the servant is to go away by himself. ⁵ But if the servant says clearly, My master and my wife and children are dear to me; I have no desire to be free: ⁶ Then his master is to take him to the gods of the house, and at the door, or at its framework, he is to make a hole in his ear with a sharp-pointed instrument; and he will be his servant for ever. ⁷ And if a man gives his daughter for a price to be a servant, she is not to go away free as the men-servants do. ⁸ If she is not pleasing to her master who has taken her for himself, let a payment be made for her so that she may go free; her master has no power to get a price for her and send her to a strange land, because he has been false to her. ⁹ And if he gives her to his son, he is to do everything for her as if she was his daughter. ¹⁰ And if he takes another woman, her food and clothing and her married rights are not to be less. ¹¹ And if he does not do these three things for her, she has the right to go free without payment.