Jeremiah 34:8-22 - Zedekiah's Covenant Concerning Slaves

⁸ These are the words that the LORD spake unto Jeremiah the prophet, when Zedekiah was agreed with all the people at Jerusalem, that there should be proclaimed a liberty: ⁹ so that every man should let his servant and handmaid go free, Hebrew and Hebrewess, and no Jew to hold his brother as a bond man. ¹⁰ Now as they had consented, even so they were obedient, and let them go free. ¹¹ But afterward they repented, and took again the servants and the hand maidens, whom they had let go free, and so made them bond again.

¹² For the which cause the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah from the LORD himself, saying, ¹³ "Thus sayeth the LORD God of Israel: I made a covenant with your fathers, when I brought them out of Egypt, that they should no more be bondmen: saying, ¹⁴ 'When seven years are out, every man shall let his bought servant, a Hebrew go free, if he have served him six years.' But your fathers obeyed me not and hearkened not unto me. ¹⁵ As for you, ye were now turned, and did right before me, in that ye proclaimed, every man to let his neighbour go free, and in that ye made a covenant before me, in the temple that beareth my name. ¹⁶ But yet ye have turned yourselves again, and blasphemed my name, in this: That every man hath required his servant and handmaid again, whom ye had letten go quit and free, and compelled them to serve you again, and to be your bondmen.

¹⁷ And therefore thus sayeth the LORD: Ye have not obeyed me, every man to proclaim freedom unto his brother and neighbour: wherefore, I will call you unto a freedom, sayeth the LORD - even unto the sword, to the pestilence, and to hunger, and will make you to be plagued in all the kingdoms of the earth. ¹⁸ Yea, those men that have broken my covenant, and not kept the words of the covenant which they made before me - when they hewed the calf in two, and when there went through the two halves thereof - ¹⁹ The princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the gelded men, the Priests and all the people of the land, which went through the two sides of the calf. ²⁰ Those men will I give into the power of their enemies, and into the hands of them that follow upon their lives. And their dead bodies shall be meat for the fowls of the air, and beasts of the field. ²¹ As for Zedekiah the king of Judah and his princes, I will deliver them into the power of their enemies, and of them that desire to slay them, and into the hand of the king of Babylon's host, which now is departed from you. ²² But through my commandment, sayeth the LORD, they shall come again before this city, they shall fight against it, win it, and burn it. Moreover I will lay the cities of Judah so waste, that no man shall dwell therein."