Laws Laid Before Them
21 1 Now these are the regulations you are to set before them:
Hebrew Servants
2 When you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve six years, and in the seventh he is to go free, paying nothing.
A Servant Who Chooses to Stay
3 If he comes in alone, he is to go out alone; if he comes in married, then his wife is to go out with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and he is to go out alone.
5 But if the servant plainly declares, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to go out free,' 6 then his master is to bring him before our Father and then to the door or the doorpost; his master is to pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve him for life. 1 1 v6 The servant's ear was pierced at the doorpost as a permanent, visible mark of his free choice to belong to his master's household for life.
7 When a man sells his daughter as a female servant, she is not to go free as the male servants do. 8 If she does not please her master who has chosen her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he is to treat her as a daughter. 10 If he takes another wife for himself, he is not to reduce her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. 11 And if he does not provide her these three things, she is to go free, with no payment of money.
Life for Life
12 Whoever strikes a man so that he dies is to be put to death.
Violence and Its Limits
13 But if he did not lie in wait and I allowed it to happen, I will appoint for you a place where he may flee.
14 But if a man acts with premeditation against his neighbor to kill him by treachery, you are to take him even from my altar, that he may die.
15 Whoever strikes his father or his mother is to be put to death.
16 Whoever kidnaps a man and sells him, or is found still holding him, is to be put to death.
17 Whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death.
18 When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and the man does not die but is confined to his bed, 19 then if he gets up and walks around outside with his staff, the one who struck him is to go unpunished; he must only pay for the lost time and see that he is fully healed.
20 When a man strikes his male or female servant with a rod and the servant dies as a result, he is to be avenged. 21 But if the servant survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, since the servant is his property.
22 When men fight and strike a pregnant woman so that her child is born, but there is no further harm, the offender is to be fined whatever the woman's husband demands of him, and he is to pay as the judges determine. 23 But if there is further harm, then you are to give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 2 2 v24 This law set a limit on revenge — no more than the injury done. Jesus later transformed it, teaching his followers not to retaliate but to overcome evil with love (Matthew 5:38-39). 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
26 When a man strikes the eye of his male or female servant and destroys it, he is to let the servant go free in compensation for the eye. 27 And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female servant, he is to let the servant go free in compensation for the tooth.
28 When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox is to be stoned and its flesh is not to be eaten, but the owner of the ox is not liable.
29 But if the ox was in the habit of goring and its owner had been warned yet did not keep it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox is to be stoned and its owner also is to be put to death. 30 If a ransom is required, he must pay whatever is demanded to spare his life.
31 Whether the ox gores a son or a daughter, he is to be dealt with according to this same rule.
32 If the ox gores a male or female servant, the owner is to give about twelve ounces of silver to their master, and the ox is to be stoned.
Restitution and Accountability
33 When a man opens a pit, or digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, 34 the owner of the pit is to make it good. He is to repay its owner with money, and the dead animal will be his.
35 When one man's ox injures another's so that it dies, they are to sell the live ox and divide the price of it, and they are also to divide the dead animal. 36 But if it was known that the ox was in the habit of goring and its owner did not keep it in, he must repay ox for ox, and the dead animal will be his.