Exodus 21:1-11

The Treatment of Servants

21¹ 'And these 'are' the judgments which thou dost set before them: ² 'When thou buyest a Hebrew servant—six years he doth serve, and in the seventh he goeth out as a freeman for nought; ³ if by himself he cometh in, by himself he goeth out; if he 'is' owner of a wife, then his wife hath gone out with him; ⁴ if his lord give to him a wife, and she hath borne to him sons or daughters—the wife and her children are her lord's, and he goeth out by himself. ⁵ 'And if the servant really say: I have loved my lord, my wife, and my sons—I do not go out free; ⁶ then hath his lord brought him nigh unto God, and hath brought him nigh unto the door, or unto the side-post, and his lord hath bored his ear with an awl, and he hath served him—to the age. ⁷ 'And when a man selleth his daughter for a handmaid, she doth not go out according to the going out of the men-servants; ⁸ if evil in the eyes of her lord, so that he hath not betrothed her, then he hath let her be ransomed; to a strange people he hath not power to sell her, in his dealing treacherously with her. ⁹ 'And if to his son he betroth her, according to the right of daughters he doth to her. ¹⁰ 'If another 'woman' he take for him, her food, her covering, and her habitation, he doth not withdraw; ¹¹ and if these three he do not to her, then she hath gone out for nought, without money.