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.