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(A)When you purchase a Hebrew slave,[a] he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year he shall leave as a free person without any payment.

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Footnotes

  1. 21:2 Slave: an Israelite could become a slave of another Israelite as a means of paying a debt, or an Israelite could be born into slavery due to a parent’s status as a slave. Here a time limit is prescribed for such slavery; other stipulations (vv. 20–21, 26–27) tried to reduce the evils of slavery, but slavery itself is not condemned in the Old Testament.