Book excerpt: This original study concerns itself with the manumission laws of Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25. It begins with the social background to debt slavery and the socioeconomic factors encouraging the rise of debt slavery in Mesopotamia. After a comparative analysis of the Mesopotamian and biblical material Chirichigno examines the social background to debt slavery in Israel, the various slave laws in the Pentateuch (in order to delimit the chattel-slave laws from the debt-slave laws), and the biblical manumission laws themselves.