Vat.sir.369

...that they might hear them and fear Him. And to him who said to them, Moses: "Do not fear, because God has come to test you, and that His fear may be upon your faces, so that you do not sin." And the people stood from a distance, and Moses drew near to the cloud where God was. And the Lord said to Moses: "Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: You have seen that I spoke with you from heaven. Do not make for yourselves gods of silver, and gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves. You shall make an altar of earth for me, and you shall sacrifice upon it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen, in every place where I mention my name, I will come to you and bless you. And if you make for me an altar of stones, you shall not build it of hewn stone, because if you lift a sword upon it, you have defiled it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness may not be revealed upon it." And these are the laws that you shall set before them: If you buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve you, and in the seventh he shall go out to freedom for nothing.

If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. And if he is a husband of a wife, his wife shall go out with him. But if his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be the master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant says: "I love my master, and my wife, and my children; I will not go out to freedom," his master shall bring him before God, and he shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever. And if a man sells his daughter into slavery, she shall not go out as the male servants go out. If she is evil in the eyes of her master so that he does not choose her, he shall redeem her; he shall not have the right to sell her to a foreign people, because he has dealt unfairly with her. And if he chooses her for his son, he shall do for her according to the right of daughters. And if he takes another for himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage right. And if he does not do these three for her, she shall go out for nothing, without money. He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. And if he did not lie in wait for him, but God delivered him into his hand, I will set for you a place to which he may flee. And if a man acts presumptuously

against his neighbor to kill him with deceit, you shall take him from my altar to die. And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. And he who steals a person from the children of Israel and sells him, and he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death. And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. And if men strive together, and a man strikes his neighbor with a stone or with a fist, and he does not die, but falls onto his bed, if he rises and walks about with his staff, the one who struck him shall be acquitted. Only he shall pay for his loss of time, and he shall cause him to be healed. And if a man strikes his servant or his maidservant with a rod, and he dies under his hand, he shall surely be punished. But if he survives a day or two, he shall not be punished, because he is his money. And if men strive together and they strike a pregnant woman, and her children come out, and there is no death, he shall surely be punished as the woman's husband shall impose upon him, and he shall give by the decision of judges. And if there is death, he shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning,

wound for wound, stripe for stripe. And if a man strikes the eye of his servant or the eye of his maidservant and destroys it, he shall let him go free for his eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of his servant or the tooth of his maidservant, he shall let him go free for his tooth. And if an ox gores a man or a woman and they die, the ox shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall be acquitted. And if the ox was in the habit of goring from yesterday and the day before, and it was testified to its owner, and he did not keep it, and it killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall die. And if a ransom is set upon him, he shall give the redemption of his life according to all that is set upon him. Whether it gores a son or it gores a daughter, according to this judgment it shall be done to him. And if the ox gores a servant or a maidservant, thirty silver shekels shall be given to their master, and the ox shall be stoned. And if a man opens a pit, or if a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall pay; he shall return money to their owner, and the dead animal.