Exodus 21:1-11

1“These are the decisions that you will set before them:

2“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year he will go out free without paying anything.

3If he came in by himself he will go out by himself; if he had a wife when he came in, then his wife will go out with him.

4If his master gave him a wife, and she bore sons or daughters, the wife and the children will belong to her master, and he will go out by himself.

5But if the servant should declare, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’

6then his master must bring him to the judges, and he will bring him to the door or the doorposts, and his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

7“If a man sells his daughter as a female servant, she will not go out as the male servants do.

8If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to a foreign nation, because he has dealt deceitfully with her.

9If he designated her for his son, then he will deal with her according to the customary rights of daughters.

10If he takes another wife, he must not diminish the first one’s food, her clothing, or her marital rights.

11If he does not provide her with these three things, then she will go out free, without paying money.