13. Furthermore, when you set them free from your service, you must not let them go empty-handed.
14. Instead, provide for them fully from your flock, food, and wine. You must give to them from that with which the Lord your God has blessed you.
15. Remember how each of you were slaves in Egypt and how the Lord your God saved you. That’s why I am commanding you to do this right now. (
16. Now if your male servant says to you: "I don’t want to leave your service" because he loves you and your family and because life is good for him in your service,
17. then you may take a needle and pierce his ear with it into the doorframe. From that point on, he will be your permanent servant. Do the same thing for female servants.)
18. Don’t consider it a hardship to set these servants free from your service, because they worked for you for six years—at a value double that of a paid worker. The Lord your God will bless you in everything that you do.
19. You must devote every oldest male animal from your herds or flocks to the Lord your God. Don’t plow with your oldest male ox and don’t shear your oldest male sheep.
20. Year after year, you and your family are allowed to eat these animals in the presence of the Lord your God, in the location the Lord selects.
21. But if there is any defect in it, lameness, blindness, any flaw whatsoever, you must not sacrifice it to the Lord your God.
22. You are allowed to eat those in your own cities, whether you are polluted or purified, just as you would eat gazelle or deer.
23. Even so, don’t consume any blood. Pour it out on the ground, like water.