Exodus 21:1-11

1“Now these are the ordinances which you will set before them.

2“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve for six years, and in the seventh he is to go free, without payment.

3If he comes in by himself, he is to go out by himself. If he was married, then his wife will go out with him.

4If his master gave him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will be her master’s, and he will go free by himself.

5“But if the servant plainly states, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children, and I will not go out free,’

6then his master is to bring him to God, then take him to a door or to a doorpost. His master is to pierce his ear through with an awl, and he will serve him forever.

7“If a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she is not to go free as the male servants do.

8If she does not please her master who has selected her for himself, then he is to allow her to be redeemed. He will have no power to sell her to a foreign people, seeing as he has dealt deceitfully toward her.

9If he betroths her to his son, he must give her the rights of a daughter.

10If he takes another wife, he is not to diminish her food, her clothing, or her marriage rights.

11If he does not provide these three to her, then she is to go free without payment.