1. These are the ordinances you shall lay before them.
2. When you purchase a Hebrew slave, he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year he shall leave as a free person without any payment.
3. If he comes into service alone, he shall leave alone; if he comes with a wife, his wife shall leave with him.
4. But if his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children belong to her master and the man shall leave alone.
5. If, however, the slave declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children; I will not leave as a free person,’
6. his master shall bring him to God and there, at the door or doorpost, he shall pierce his ear with an awl, thus keeping him as his slave forever.