Exodus 21:1-11
Laws About Slaves
1“Now these are the arules that you shall set before them. 2 bWhen you buy a Hebrew slave, ▼▼Or servant; the Hebrew term ‘ebed designates a range of social and economic roles; also verses 5, 6, 7, 20, 21, 26, 27, 32 (see Preface)
he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 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 dif the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6then his master shall bring him to eGod, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever. 7“When a man fsells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. 8If she does not please her master, who has designated her ▼
▼Or so that he has not designated her
for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. 10If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or hher marital rights. 11And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money. Leviticus 25:39-43
39 i“If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: 40he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. 41 jThen he shall go out from you, khe and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return lto the possession of his fathers. 42For they are mmy servants, ▼▼Hebrew slaves
whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. 43 oYou shall not rule over him pruthlessly but qshall fear your God. 2 Kings 4:1
Elisha and the Widow’s Oil
1Now the wife of one of the rsons of the prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord, sbut the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.”Matthew 18:25
25 tAnd since he could not pay, his master ordered him uto be sold, with his wife and vchildren and all that he had, and payment to be made.
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