1. NOW THESE are the ordinances you [Moses] shall set before [the Israelites].
2. If you buy a Hebrew servant [as the result of debt or theft], he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, paying nothing. [Lev. 25:39.]
3. If he came [to you] by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he came married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4. If his master has given him a wife and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out [of your service] alone.
5. But if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go free,
6. Then his master shall bring him to God [the judges as His agents]; he shall bring him to the door or doorpost and shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.
7. If a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant or bondwoman, she shall not go out [in six years] as menservants do.
8. If she does not please her master who has not espoused her to himself, he shall let her be redeemed. To sell her to a foreign people he shall have no power, for he has dealt faithlessly with her.
9. And if he espouses her to his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter.
10. If he marries again, her food, clothing, and privilege as a wife shall he not diminish.
11. And if he does not do these three things for her, then shall she go out free, without payment of money.
12. Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.
13. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God allowed him to fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee [for protection until duly tried]. [Num. 35:22-28.]
14. But if a man comes willfully upon another to slay him craftily, you shall take him from My altar [to which he may have fled for protection], that he may die.
15. Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.