“If you buy (A)a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment. If he comes [a]alone, he shall go out [b]alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out [c]alone. But (B)if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,’ then his master shall bring him to [d]God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Exodus 21:3 Lit by himself
  2. Exodus 21:3 Lit by himself
  3. Exodus 21:4 Lit by himself
  4. Exodus 21:6 Or the judges who acted in God’s name

39 (A)If a [a]countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave’s service. 40 He shall be with you as a hired man, as (B)if he were a sojourner; he shall serve with you until the year of jubilee. 41 He shall then go out from you, he and his sons with him, and shall go back to his family, that he may return to the property of his forefathers. 42 For they are My servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt; they are not to be sold in a slave sale. 43 (C)You shall not rule over him with severity, but are to revere your God.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Leviticus 25:39 Lit brother

14 (A)At the end of seven years each of you shall set free his Hebrew brother who [a]has been sold to you and has served you six years, you shall send him out free from you; but your forefathers (B)did not obey Me or incline their ear to Me.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Jeremiah 34:14 Or has sold himself