Mishpatim

Directly after Sinai comes a body of case law. The Hebrew servant serves six years and goes free in the seventh; the one who loves his master may choose to stay, his ear pierced at the doorpost. Laws follow for capital crimes — murder and manslaughter distinguished, with a place of refuge for the unintentional killer — for striking or cursing parents, and for kidnapping. Injuries are assessed and compensated: the famous "eye for eye" measure, the goring ox, the open pit, the thief who repays double or fourfold or fivefold, damage by grazing or by fire, and the responsibilities of those entrusted with a neighbor's goods.

The law turns to the vulnerable. The stranger is not to be wronged or oppressed — "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" — nor the widow or orphan, whose cry God promises to hear. Money lent to the poor carries no interest; a garment taken in pledge is returned by sundown. Judges must not pervert justice, follow a crowd to do evil, or take a bribe; even an enemy's straying donkey is returned, his fallen animal helped up. The seventh year the land rests for the poor; the seventh day, servant and stranger and animal rest. Three times a year — unleavened bread, harvest, and ingathering — all males appear before the LORD. A kid is not boiled in its mother's milk.

God promises an angel to lead them, gradual conquest — "little by little, until you are fruitful" — and no covenant with the nations or their gods. Then the covenant is sealed: Moses tells all the words, the people answer "all that the LORD has spoken we will do and hear," the book of the covenant is read, and blood is dashed on the altar and on the people. Moses, Aaron, his sons, and seventy elders ascend and see the God of Israel over a pavement like sapphire; and Moses goes up into the cloud, into the mountain, forty days and forty nights.