Exodus 21:1-19

Tree of Life Version

Parashat Mishpatim

Ordinances for the Covenant

21 “Now these are the ordinances which you will set before them.

² “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve for six years, and in the seventh he is to go free, without payment. ³ If he comes in by himself, he is to go out by himself. If he was married, then his wife will go out with him. ⁴ If his master gave him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will be her master’s, and he will go free by himself.

⁵ “But if the servant plainly states, ‘I love my master, my wife and my children, and I will not go out free,’ ⁶ then his master is to bring him to God,^[a] then take him to a door or to a doorpost. His master is to pierce his ear through with an awl, and he will serve him forever.

⁷ “If a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she is not to go free as the male servants do. ⁸ If she does not please her master who has selected her for himself, then he is to allow her to be redeemed. He will have no power to sell her to a foreign people, seeing as he has dealt deceitfully toward her. ⁹ If he betroths her to his son, he must give her the rights of a daughter. ¹⁰ If he takes another wife, he is not to diminish her food, her clothing, or her marriage rights. ¹¹ If he does not provide these three to her, then she is to go free without payment.

¹² “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies must surely be put to death. ¹³ But if he did not hunt him down, yet God caused it to happen, then I will appoint for you a place where he may run. ¹⁴ If a man presumes to kill his neighbor with craftiness, you are to take him from My altar and put him to death.

¹⁵ “Anyone who strikes his father or his mother must surely be put to death.

¹⁶ “Anyone who steals a person and sells him, or is found with him under his hand, must surely be put to death.

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

¹⁸ “If people quarrel, and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and the other does not die but lies in bed, ¹⁹ if he rises again and walks around on his staff, then the one that struck him he will be cleared. But he must pay for the loss of his time and help him to be thoroughly healed.