1 »These are the ordinances you should set before them.

2 »When you buy a Hebrew slave he will be your slave for six years. In the seventh year he may leave as a free man without paying for his freedom.

3 »If he was single at the time you bought him he alone must be set free. If he was married at that time, both he and his wife must be given their freedom.

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

5 »What if the slave loves his wife and children so much that he will not leave without them?

6 »He must stand beside either the door or the doorpost at the place of worship. His owner will punch a small hole through one of his ears with a sharp metal rod. This makes him a slave for life.

7 »When a man sells his daughter into slavery, she will not go free the way male slaves do.

8 »If she does not please the master who has chosen her as a wife, he must let her be bought back by one of her close relatives. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, since he has treated her unfairly.

9 »If a man buys a female slave to give to his son, he should treat her like a daughter.

10 »If a man takes a second wife, he must continue to give his first wife the same amount of food and clothing and the same rights that she had before.

11 »If he fails to do any of these things, she should be given her freedom without cost.

12 »Death is the punishment for murder.

13 »If you did not intend to kill someone and I, Jehovah, let it happen anyway, you may run for safety to a place that I have set aside.

14 »If a man schemes and kills a man deliberately remove him from my altar and put him to death.

15 »He who strikes beats his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

16 »Whoever kidnaps another person must be put to death regardless of whether he has sold the kidnapped person or still has him.

17 »Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

18 »When men quarrel and one hits the other with a rock or with his fist and injures him so that he has to stay in bed you must do this.

19 »If the injured man is able to stand up again and walk around outside with a cane, the one who hit him must not be punished. He must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and for all his medical expenses.

20 »If a slave owner takes a stick and beats his slave, whether male or female, and the slave dies on the spot, the owner is to be punished.

21 »If the slave lives a few days after the beating, you are not to be punished. After all, you have already lost the services of that slave who was your property.

22 »When a pregnant woman suffers a miscarriage as the result of an injury caused by someone who is fighting, if she is not badly hurt, the one who injured her must pay whatever fine her husband demands and the judges approve.

23 »The payment will be for life if she is seriously injured,

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

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

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

27 »If he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free because of his tooth.

28 »If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall go unpunished.

29 »If an ox was previously in the habit of goring and its owner has been warned, yet he does not confine it and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death.

30 »If a ransom is demanded of him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is demanded of him.

31 »Whether it gores a son or a daughter, it shall be done to him according to the same rule.

32 »If the ox gores a male or female slave, the owner shall give his or her master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.

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

34 the owner of the pit shall make restitution. He will give money to its owner, and the dead animal shall become his.

35 »If one man’s ox hurts another’s so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide its price equally. They should divide the dead ox.

36 »If it is known that the ox was previously in the habit of goring, yet its owner has not confined it, he shall surely pay ox for ox, and the dead animal shall become his.«