Chapter 23
A Righteous and Fraternal People. 1 “You shall not utter a false report. Do not join hands with the guilty to be an unjust witness. 2 Neither shall you follow the multitude in doing evil nor shall you testify in a suit in order to agree with the multitude and thus falsify justice.
3 “You shall not even show partiality toward a weak man in a lawsuit.
4 [a]“When you encounter the lost ox or donkey of your enemy, you shall bring it back to him. 5 When you see your enemy’s donkey lying helpless under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him alone. You must help him to release it.
6 “You shall not pervert justice for a needy person who turns to you in a dispute.
7 “Keep far away from falsehoods. Do not slay the innocent or the just, for I will not acquit the wicked.
8 “Do not accept gifts, for gifts blind the clear-sighted and pervert the cause of the righteous.
9 “Do not oppress those who are sojourners, for you know the life of the sojourner because you yourselves were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
10 “For six years you shall sow the land and you shall harvest its produce, 11 but in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow so that the needy of your people may eat of it. Whatever is left, let the beasts of the field eat it. You shall do likewise with your vineyards and your olive groves. 12 For six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest so that your ox and your donkey may rest, as well as the sons of your female slaves and your sojourners.
13 “You shall take heed of all that I have said to you. Do not mention the names of other gods, nor let them be heard on your lips.
14 Feasts and Rites To Be Observed.“Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast in my honor.[b]
15 “You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread. You must eat unleavened products for seven days, as I have commanded you, at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month I brought you out of the land of Egypt. You will not appear before me empty-handed.
16 “You shall also observe the Harvest Feast of the firstfruits of that which you have sown in the fields as well as the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year when you gather the fruit of your labor in the fields.
17 “Three times a year all your men shall appear before the Lord God.
18 “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall you allow the fat of my feast to remain till the morning.
19 “You shall bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord, your God. You shall not cook a kid goat in its mother’s milk.[c]
20 Promises and Instructions for Entering into Canaan.[d]“Behold, I will send an angel before you to protect you on your way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. 21 Pay heed to him and listen to his voice and do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression since my name is in him. 22 If you listen to his voice and do what I will tell you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
23 “When my angel goes before you and leads you to the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, I will destroy them. 24 You shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them. You shall not do what they do, but rather you shall demolish and break their sacred pillars to pieces.
25 “You shall serve the Lord, your God. He will bless your bread and water and take away sickness from your midst. 26 There will be no woman in your land who miscarries or who is sterile. I will make you arrive at the full count of your days.
27 “I will send my terror before you and throw into confusion all the peoples among whom you will come. I will make your enemies turn their backs and flee.
28 “I will send hornets ahead of you and they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. 29 I will not drive them out from before you in a single year lest the country remain deserted and the wild beasts multiply against you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you until you have many sons to occupy the land.
31 “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea up to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the river. I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands and I will drive them out from before you. 32 But you must not make a covenant with them or their gods. 33 They are no longer to live in your land. Otherwise, they would make you sin against me, for you would serve their gods and that would be a trap for you.”
Footnotes
- Exodus 23:4 Every one is to be treated the same (see Deut 22:1-4). Jesus is the example par excellence in showing others what it means to “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:44).
- Exodus 23:14 The feasts are those of the springtime (Unleavened Bread—Passover; see Ex 12:1, 11), of the summer (Feast of Weeks or Pentecost: 34:22), and of autumn (harvest festivals or Booths: Lev 23:34-43; Deut 16:13). (See Ex 34:18-23; Num 28–29; Deut 16:1-16.)
- Exodus 23:19 Cooking a young goat in its mother’s milk was a pagan custom of the Canaanites.
- Exodus 23:20 Faithful service of the Lord was a condition for the entrance of the chosen people into the Promised Land. They would have to avoid defilement by other forms of worship and therefore by the peoples who practiced these. This is the context for understanding the laws regarding extermination and the anathema that were promulgated against foreigners; these laws were not applied to the letter (see Jos 6:17).