Exodus 21
The New Consensus Bible is an AI-generated contemporary rendering, built from seven public-domain translations and the 20-tradition consensus. See all the work behind this chapter.
1Now these are the judgments which you will set before them: 2If you buy a Hebrew servant, he will serve six years, and in the seventh he will go out free for nothing. 3If he comes in by himself, he will go out by himself. If he is the master of a wife, then his wife will go out with him. 4If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children will be her master's, and he will go out by himself. 5But if the servant expressly says, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,' 6then his master will bring him near to God, and will bring him near to the door or to the doorpost, and his master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve him forever. 7And if a man sells his daughter to be a female servant, she will not go out according to the going out of the male servants. 8If she is evil in the eyes of her master, who has designated her for himself, then he will let her be redeemed. He will have no power to sell her to a foreign people, because of his acting deceitfully with her. 9And if he designates her for his son, he will deal with her according to the right of daughters. 10If he takes another wife for himself, he will not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marital rights. 11And if he does not do these three things for her, then she will go out for nothing, without money. 12Whoever strikes a man so that he dies will surely be put to death. 13But as for him who did not lie in wait, but God delivers him into his hand, I will appoint for you a place where he will flee. 14And when a man acts presumptuously against his neighbor, to kill him by deceit, you will take him from My altar, to die. 15And whoever strikes his father or his mother will surely be put to death. 16And whoever steals a man and sells him, or he is found in his hand, he will surely be put to death. 17And whoever curses his father or his mother will surely be put to death. 18And when men strive, and a man strikes his neighbor with a stone or with a fist, and he does not die but falls to his bed; 19if he rises and walks outside on his staff, then the one who struck him will be cleared; only he will pay for his sitting idle, and he will surely provide for his healing. 20And if a man strikes his male servant or his female servant with a rod, and he dies under his hand, he will surely be avenged. 21Only, if he continues a day or two days, he will not be avenged; for he is his money. 22And when men strive, and they strike a pregnant woman, and her children come out, and there is no fatal harm, he will surely be fined, according to what the woman's husband will impose on him; and he will give it through the judges. 23But if there is fatal harm, then you will give life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. 26And when a man strikes the eye of his male servant or the eye of his female servant and destroys it, he will send him away free for his eye. 27And if he knocks out the tooth of his male servant or the tooth of his female servant, he will send him away free for his tooth. 28And when an ox gores a man or a woman and they die, the ox will surely be stoned, and its flesh will not be eaten; but the owner of the ox will be acquitted. 29But if the ox was a gorer from yesterday and the third day, and it has been testified to its owner, and he does not guard it, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox will be stoned, and its owner also will be put to death. 30If a ransom is laid upon him, then he will give the redemption of his life, according to all that is laid upon him. 31Whether it gores a son or it gores a daughter, according to this judgment it will be done to him. 32If the ox gores a male servant or a female servant, he will give silver, thirty shekels, to their master, and the ox will be stoned. 33And when a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls there, 34the master of the pit will make it good; he will give back money to its master, and the dead animal will be his. 35And when a man's ox strikes the ox of his neighbor, and it dies, then they will sell the live ox and they will divide its silver; and also the dead ox they will divide. 36Or if it is known that the ox was a gorer from yesterday and the third day, and its owner does not guard it, he will surely make good, an ox for the ox, and the dead one will be his.
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