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The Law concerning Slaves

21These are the ordinances that you shall set before them:

2 When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. ³If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. ⁴If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. ⁵But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person’, ⁶then his master shall bring him before God.^* He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.

26 When a slave-owner strikes the eye of a male or female slave, destroying it, the owner shall let the slave go, a free person, to compensate for the eye. ²⁷If the owner knocks out a tooth of a male or female slave, the slave shall be let go, a free person, to compensate for the tooth.