Exodus 21

1 And these are the judgments which you set before them: 2 When you buy a Hebrew servant, he serves for six years, and in the seventh he goes out as a freeman for nothing. 3 If he comes in by himself, he goes out by himself. If he is owner of a wife, then his wife has gone out with him. 4 If his lord gives a wife to him, and she has given birth to sons or daughters to him—the wife and her children are her lord’s, and he goes out by himself. 5 And if the servant really says: I have loved my lord, my wife, and my sons—I do not go out free, 6 then his lord will bring him near to God, and will bring him near to the door, or to the doorpost, and his lord will bore his ear with an awl, and he will serve him to a distant age. 7 And when a man sells his daughter for a handmaid, she does not go out according to the going out of the menservants. 8 If it is evil in the eyes of her lord, so that he will not betroth her, then he will let her be ransomed. He has no power to sell her to a strange people, in his dealing treacherously with her. 9 And if he betroths her to his son, he does to her according to the right of daughters. 10 If he takes another woman for him, he does not withdraw her food, her covering, and her habitation. 11 And if he does not do these three for her, then she will be gone out for nothing, without money. 12 He who strikes a man so that he has died is certainly put to death. 13 As for him who has not laid wait, but God has brought him to his hand, I have even set a place for you to where he flees. 14 And when a man presumes against his neighbor to slay him with subtlety, you take him from My altar to die. 15 And he who strikes his father or his mother is certainly put to death. 16 And he who steals a man, and has sold him, and he has been found in his hand, is certainly put to death. 17 And he who is reviling his father or his mother is certainly put to death. 18 And when men contend, and a man has struck his neighbor with a stone, or with the fist, and he does not die, but falls on the bed. 19 If he rises, and has gone up and down outside on his staff, then the striker will be acquitted. He only gives for his cessation, and he will be thoroughly healed. 20 And when a man strikes his manservant or his handmaid with a rod, and he dies under his hand—he is certainly avenged. 21 Only if he remains a day, or two days, he is not avenged, for he is his money. 22 And when men strive, and have struck a pregnant woman, and her children come out, and there is no harm to them, he is certainly fined as the husband of the woman lays on him, and he will give through the judges. 23 And if there is harm to them, then you will give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. 26 And when a man strikes the eye of his manservant, or the eye of his handmaid, and has destroyed it, he sends him away as a freeman for his eye. 27 And if he knocks out a tooth of his manservant or a tooth of his handmaid, he sends him away as a freeman for his tooth. 28 And when an ox gores man or woman, and they die, the ox is certainly stoned, and his flesh is not eaten, and the owner of the ox is acquitted. 29 And if the ox is one accustomed to gore before, and it has been testified to its owner, and he does not watch it, and it has put to death a man or woman, the ox is stoned, and its owner is also put to death. 30 If atonement is laid on him, then he gives the ransom of his life, according to all that is laid on him. 31 Whether it gores a son or gores a daughter, according to this judgment it is done to him. 32 If the ox gores a manservant or a handmaid, he gives 30 silver shekels to their lord, and the ox is stoned. 33 And when a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit, and does not cover it, and an ox or donkey falls in there— 34 the owner of the pit repays, he gives back money to its owner, and the dead is his. 35 And when a man’s ox strikes the ox of his neighbor and it dies, then they sell the living ox, and halve its money, and they also halve the dead one. 36 Or, if it has been known that the ox is one accustomed to gore before, and its owner does not watch it, he certainly repays ox for ox, and the dead is his.


Next: Chapter 22

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