Exodus 21

¹Now these are the judgments that you shall set before them.

²When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, at no cost.

³If he came in alone, he shall go out alone; if he was the husband of a wife, his wife shall go out with him.

⁴If 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 alone.

⁵But if the slave clearly declares, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,'

⁶then his master shall bring him before God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. His master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him permanently.

⁷When a man sells his daughter as a female servant, she shall not go out as the male servants go out.

⁸If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master, who designated her for himself, he shall let her be redeemed. He has no authority to sell her to a foreign people, since he has acted treacherously toward her.

⁹But if he designates her for his son, he shall treat her according to the custom of daughters.

¹⁰If he takes another wife for himself, her food, her clothing, and her conjugal rights he shall not diminish.

¹¹And if he does not do these three things for her, then she shall go out free, without payment of money.

¹²Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.

¹³But if he did not lie in wait, but God caused it to fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee.

¹⁴But if a man acts presumptuously against his neighbor to kill him by cunning, you shall take him from my altar to die.

¹⁵Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

¹⁶And whoever steals a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

¹⁷Whoever curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

¹⁸When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed,

¹⁹if he rises again and walks about outside on his staff, then the one who struck him shall be cleared; he shall only pay for the loss of the injured person's time and shall have him thoroughly healed.

²⁰When a man strikes his male servant or his female servant with a rod and the servant dies under his hand, the death shall be avenged.

²¹But if the servant survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for he is his master's property.

²²And when men strive together and strike a pregnant woman so that her children come out, but there is no serious injury, he shall surely be fined, according as the woman's husband imposes upon him; and he shall pay according to the arbitrators.

²³But if there is harm, then you shall give life for life.

²⁴eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

²⁵burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

²⁶When a man strikes the eye of his male servant or the eye of his female servant, and destroys it, he shall let the servant go free on account of the eye.

²⁷And if he knocks out a tooth of his male servant or a tooth of his female servant, he shall let the servant go free on account of the tooth.

²⁸When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall be clear.

²⁹But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death.

³⁰If a ransom is laid on him, he shall give the redemption of his life according to all that is laid on him.

³¹Whether it gores a son or gores a daughter, according to this same ruling it shall be done to the owner.

³²If the ox gores a male servant or a female servant, thirty shekels of silver he shall give to his master, and the ox shall be stoned.

³³And when a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it,

³⁴the owner of the pit shall make restitution; he shall pay silver to its owner, and the dead animal shall be his.

³⁵And if a man's ox strikes the ox of his neighbor and it dies, they shall sell the live ox and divide its price, and the dead ox also they shall divide.

³⁶Or if it was known that the ox had been a goring ox from yesterday and the day before, and its owner did not keep it in, he shall surely pay ox for ox, and the dead animal shall be his.