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.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Exodus 21:2-4
Commentary on Exodus 21:1-11
(Read Exodus 21:1-11)
The laws in this chapter relate to the fifth and sixth commandments; and though they differ from our times and customs, nor are they binding on us, yet they explain the moral law, and the rules of natural justice. The servant, in the state of servitude, was an emblem of that state of bondage to sin, Satan, and the law, which man is brought into by robbing God of his glory, by the transgression of his precepts. Likewise in being made free, he was an emblem of that liberty wherewith Christ, the Son of God, makes free from bondage his people, who are free indeed; and made so freely, without money and without price, of free grace.