Exodus 21

1These are the rulings you are to set before them.

2If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve six years, and in the seventh year he is to go free without paying anything.

3If he came in single, he is to go out single. If he had a wife, his wife is to go out with him.

4If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and he is to go out alone.

5But if the slave plainly declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to go free,’

6then his master is to bring him to God. He is to bring him to the door or the doorpost, and his master is to pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his slave for life.

7If a man sells his daughter as a slave woman, she is not to go free as male slaves do.

8If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, since he has broken faith with her.

9If he designates her for his son, he must treat her as he would a daughter.

10If he takes another wife for himself, he must not reduce her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.

11If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free without paying any money.

12Whoever strikes a person so that he dies must be put to death.

13But if he did not lie in wait for him, and God let it happen by his hand, then I will appoint a place for you where he may flee.

14But if someone schemes against his neighbor and kills him by treachery, you are to take him even from my altar to be put to death.

15Whoever strikes his father or his mother must be put to death.

16Whoever kidnaps a person must be put to death, whether he has sold him or the person is still found in his possession.

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

18If men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and the man does not die but is confined to bed,

19then if he gets up and walks around outside with his staff, the one who struck him is not to be punished. He must only pay for the time the man lost and see that he is completely healed.

20If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, the slave must be avenged.

21But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his property.

22If men are fighting and they hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out, but there is no serious injury, the one responsible must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands of him, and he is to pay as the judges determine.

23But if there is serious injury, you are to give life for life,

24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

25burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

26If a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave and destroys it, he must let the slave go free because of the eye.

27If he knocks out the tooth of his male or female slave, he must let the slave go free because of the tooth.

28If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox must be stoned, and its meat must not be eaten, but the owner of the ox is not to be held liable.

29But if the ox has been in the habit of goring, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it confined, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox is to be stoned, and its owner also is to be put to death.

30If a ransom is imposed on him, he must pay whatever is imposed on him to redeem his life.

31If the ox gores a son or a daughter, he is to be dealt with according to this same rule.

32If the ox gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels of silver to the slave’s master, and the ox is to be stoned.

33If someone opens a pit, or digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it,

34the owner of the pit must make it good. He is to pay money to the animal’s owner, and the dead animal will be his.

35If one man’s ox injures his neighbor’s ox and it dies, they are to sell the live ox and divide the money, and they are also to divide the dead animal.

36But if it was known that the ox had been in the habit of goring, and its owner did not keep it confined, he must pay ox for ox, and the dead animal will be his.