⁵ Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children as their children: and, behold, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought into bondage [already]: neither is it in our power to help it; for other men have our fields and our vineyards.

¹ Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets to Elisha, saying, Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant did fear Yahweh: and the creditor is come to take to him my two children to be bondservants.

³⁹ "'If your brother has grown poor among you, and sells himself to you; you shall not make him to serve as a slave.

⁴⁰ As a hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with you; he shall serve with you until the Year of Jubilee:

⁴¹ then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and shall return to his own family, and to the possession of his fathers.

⁴² For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves.

⁴³ You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God.

²⁷ Come, and let's sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not let our hand be on him; for he is our brother, our flesh." His brothers listened to him.

⁷ Isn't it to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house? when you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you not hide yourself from your own flesh?

¹⁴ Laban said to him, Surely you are my bone and my flesh. He lived with him for a month.

¹ "Now these are the ordinances which you shall set before them.

² If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years and in the seventh he shall go out free without paying anything.

³ If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he is married, then his wife shall go out with him.

⁴ If 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 by himself.

⁵ But if the servant shall plainly say, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go out free;'

⁶ then his master shall bring him to God, and shall bring him to the door or to the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him for ever.

⁷ "If a man sells his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do.

⁸ If she doesn't please her master, who has married her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, seeing he has dealt deceitfully with her.

⁹ If he marries her to his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

¹⁰ If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marital rights.

¹¹ If he doesn't do these three things for her, she may go free without paying any money.

²⁵ But because he couldn't pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, with his wife, his children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.

⁵ Listen, my beloved brothers. Didn't God choose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which he promised to those who love him?

⁶ But you have dishonored the poor man. Don't the rich oppress you, and personally drag you before the courts?