Hebrew Servants
1. These are the ordinances that you are to set before them:
2. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free without paying anything.
3. If he arrives alone, he is to leave alone; if he has a wife, she is to leave with him.
4. If 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 leave alone.
5. But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not wish to go free,’
6. then his master is to bring him before the judges. And he shall take him to the door or doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he shall serve his master for life.
7. If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.
8. If she is displeasing to her master who chose her for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has acted treacherously toward her.
9. But if he chooses her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.
10. If he takes another wife, he must not withhold her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.
11. And if he does not provide her with these three things, she shall go free without payment, without money.
Personal Injury Laws
12. Whoever strikes and kills a man must surely be put to death.
13. However, if he did not lie in wait, but God allowed it to happen, then I will appoint for you a place where he may flee.
14. But if a man schemes and acts willfully against his neighbor to kill him, you must take him away from My altar to be put to death.
15. Whoever strikes his father or mother must surely be put to death.
16. Whoever kidnaps another man must be put to death, whether he sells him or the man is found in his possession.
17. Whoever curses his father or mother must surely be put to death.
18. If men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die but is confined to bed,
19. if he can later get up and walk around outside with his staff, then the one who struck him will be cleared of any liability, except that he must pay for the man’s lost work and see that he is completely healed.
20. If a man strikes his male or female servant with a rod, and the servant dies by his hand, he shall surely be punished.
21. However, if the servant survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the servant is his property.
22. If men get into a fight and hit a pregnant woman so that her unborn child is miscarried, but no further harm is done, the one responsible shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband demands and as the court allows.
23. But if any harm comes to the woman, then you shall appoint life for life,
24. eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25. burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
26. If a man strikes the eye of his male or female servant and destroys it, he must let the servant go free in compensation for the eye.
27. And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female servant, he must let the servant go free in compensation for the tooth.
28. If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull must surely be stoned, and its flesh must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held accountable.
29. However, if the bull had a habit of goring, and its owner has been warned yet does not restrain it, and it kills a man or woman, the bull must be stoned, and its owner must also be put to death.
30. If instead a ransom is demanded of him, he can pay a redemption price for his life in the full amount demanded of him.
31. Whether it gored a son or daughter, it must be done to him according to this judgment.
32. If the bull gores a male or female servant, he must pay thirty shekels of silver to the master of the servant, and the bull must be stoned.
33. If a man uncovers a pit or digs one and fails to cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it,
34. the owner of the pit must make restitution; he must pay its owner, and the dead animal will be his.
35. If one man’s ox injures another’s so that it dies, they are to sell the live ox and divide the proceeds; they are also to divide the dead animal.
36. But if it is known that the ox had a habit of goring, yet its owner has failed to restrain it, he must compensate fully, ox for ox; the dead animal will belong to him.