Exodus 21:1-11

The Treatment of Servants

21¹ And these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. ² If thou buy a Hebrew bondman, six years shall he serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. ³ If he came in alone, he shall go out alone: if he had a wife, then his wife shall go out with him. ⁴ If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. ⁵ But if the bondman shall say distinctly, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free; ⁶ then his master shall bring him before the judges, and shall bring him to the door, or to the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall be his bondman for ever. ⁷ And if a man shall sell his daughter as a handmaid, she shall not go out as the bondmen go out. ⁸ If she is unacceptable in the eyes of her master, who had taken her for himself, then shall he let her be ransomed: to sell her unto a foreign people he hath no power, after having dealt unfaithfully with her. ⁹ And if he have appointed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the law of daughters. ¹⁰ If he take himself another, her food, her clothing, and her conjugal rights he shall not diminish. ¹¹ And if he do not these three things unto her, then shall she go out free without money.