Study Desk

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also trust in you forever." Then Moses told the words of the people to the LORD.

'No hand shall touch him, but he shall certainly be stoned or shot through; whether animal or person, the violator shall not live.' When the ram's horn sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain."

He also said to the people, "Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman."

So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.

Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the entire mountain quaked violently.

"You shall not worship them nor serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, inflicting the punishment of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,

but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male slave or your female slave, or your cattle, or your resident who stays with you.

And all the people were watching and hearing the thunder and the lightning flashes, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it all, they trembled and stood at a distance.

So the people stood at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

"If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall leave as a free man without a payment to you.

"If he comes alone, he shall leave alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall leave with him.

"If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall leave alone.

"But if the slave plainly says, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not leave as a free man,'

"Now if a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do.

"If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He does not have authority to sell her to a foreign people, because of his unfairness to her.

"Yet if he did not lie in wait for him, but God caused him to fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee.

"If, however, someone is enraged against his neighbor, so as to kill him in a cunning way, you are to take him even from My altar, to be put to death.

"Now if people have a quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with a fist, and he does not die but is confined to bed,

"And if someone strikes his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies at his hand, he shall be punished.

"If, however, the slave survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for the slave is his property.