Exodus 21

1Here are the rules you are to lay before the people: 2When you acquire a Hebrew slave, he will serve six years; then in the seventh year he is to be released, free and owing nothing. 3If he arrived alone, he leaves alone. If he was married when he arrived, his wife leaves with him. 4If his master provides him with a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children remain the master’s, and he goes out on his own. 5But suppose the slave says plainly, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children. I will not leave as a free man.’ 6his master shall bring him to God. Then he shall stand him by the door or the doorpost and drive an awl through his ear, and the man will serve him as a slave for life.

7If a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she does not leave at the end of six years as the male slaves do. 8Should her master, who had intended her for himself, find her displeasing, he must allow her to be redeemed. Since he has failed her, he may not sell her to people of another nation. 9If he intends her for his son, he must deal with her as he would with a daughter of his own. 10Should he take a second wife, the first is still to have her full share of food, clothing and marital rights. 11And if he fails her in these three things, she may leave free, with no price to pay.

12Whoever hits another person and kills them must be put to death. 13But if the killing was not planned, and God allowed it to happen, I will set aside a place for you where the killer can flee.

14But if someone schemes against their neighbor and kills them by treachery, take the killer away even from my altar to be put to death.

15Whoever strikes father or mother must be put to death. 16Whoever steals a person must be put to death, and it makes no difference whether the captive has been sold or is found still held.

17Whoever curses father or mother must be put to death.

18Suppose two people fight, and one strikes the other with a rock or with a fist. The other does not die but is laid up in bed. 19If the injured person can get up and go about outdoors leaning on a staff, the attacker goes unpunished. But the attacker must make up for the work the injured one could not do, and pay until the healing is complete.

20When an owner beats a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies on the spot, the slave must be avenged. 21But if the slave lives on for a day or two, there is to be no vengeance, for the slave is the owner’s money.

22When men are fighting and they hit a pregnant woman so that her children are born early, but no further harm follows, the guilty man must pay a fine. The woman’s husband sets the amount, and the payment is made as the judges determine. 23If harm does follow, the penalty is life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, gash for gash, welt for welt.

26If an owner hits a slave, male or female, in the eye and blinds that eye, the slave goes free as payment for the lost eye.

27The same holds for a tooth: a slave, man or woman, whose tooth the owner knocks out is to be freed for the tooth.

28When an ox kills a man or a woman with its horns, the animal is to be stoned and its meat left uneaten. Its owner, though, bears no guilt. 29It is different if the ox was known to gore before. If its owner had been told of the danger and still failed to keep it in, and it then kills a man or a woman, the ox must be stoned, and the owner too must die. 30But if the owner is offered a ransom instead, their life can be redeemed by paying the full amount that is set. 31If the ox gores a boy or a girl, the owner is dealt with by this same ruling. 32When the victim is a slave, man or woman, the ox’s owner pays about 12 ounces of silver to the slave’s master, and the ox is stoned.

33Suppose someone opens up a pit or digs a new one and leaves it without a cover, and an ox or a donkey falls into it. 34The pit’s owner must make good the loss by paying the animal’s owner in silver, and may keep the dead animal.

35If someone’s ox injures their neighbor’s ox and it dies, they are to sell the ox that is alive and share the price, and share the dead one too. 36But if people knew the ox had a habit of goring and its owner still left it loose, that owner must replace the dead ox with a live one, and the dead one becomes the owner’s.