Exodus 21

Exodus 21:1

Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

Now these are the civil or judicial laws, which thou shalt appoint for the government of the Israelites.

Exodus 21:2

If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

Howsoever thou keep a servant of the Gentiles in a perpetual bondage, yet thou shalt not have that power over a Hebrew; but in the year of liberty and intermission, which is the seventh year, thou shalt release him, without any composition.

Exodus 21:4

If his master have given him a wife.

If his Master, upon his own liking or desire, shall allow him to marry with a foreigner, which is his maidservant.

Exodus 21:6

And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl: and he shall serve him for ever.

His master shall bore through his ear, to the door; whether as a reproachful mark of his perpetual servitude; or, as a signification of his fastening himself unto that house, so as he will not nor may not pass from it, without the liking of his master.

Exodus 21:7

And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do.

Likewise, if a man sell his daughter, as yet under age, with intention that she should marry him that buys her, if she be dismissed, it shall be upon better conditions, than an ordinary servant.

Exodus 21:8

If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed, &c.

If she please not her master, so far as that he betroths her to himself, then shall he suffer another, one of her friends, to redeem her of him; but he shall have no power to sell her to a stranger, seeing he hath deceived her expectation of marrying him.

Exodus 21:9

He shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

He shall so deal with her, in giving her to marriage, as if she had been a free woman.

Exodus 21:11

And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

But if he do not allow unto her food, raiment, and house-room convenient for her, then shall she go out free, at the time of liberty, or of such his denial, upon judgment, without any repayment of the money for which she was sold.

Exodus 21:13

And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand.

If a man have not laid wait for another, but casually, without any purpose of his, shall by God’s disposition do some act, which might procure the death of another.

Exodus 21:21

He shall not be punished; for he is his money.

For he bought him with his money; therefore, not purposely striking him to kill him, he shall not be punished; since he is already punished in his loss.