1 Do not make false state- ments. And do not join hands with the wicked by being a malicious witness.
2 Do not follow the majority when they do evil, or when they pervert justice in a lawsuit.
3 Do not be partial, not even to the poor.
4 If you see your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, take it back to him.
5 When you see the donkey of a man who hates you falling under its load, do not pass by but help him.
6 Do not deny justice to any of your poor in a lawsuit.
7 Keep away from lies. Do not slay the innocent or the just, for I will not forgive the wicked.
8 And do not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the clear-sighted and perverts the sentence of the just.
9 Do not oppress a stranger; you know what it is to be a stranger, for that is what you were in the land of Egypt.
10 For six years you will sow your fields and reap their produce,
11 but in the seventh you will let the land rest and lie fallow. The poor may eat what it produces and what they leave the wild animals will eat. It will be the same for your vineyard and your olive grove.
12 For six days you shall work but on the seventh you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may also rest and the son of your slave girl and the stranger as well may have a breathing space.
13 Pay attention to all that I tell you and do not call upon other gods; don’t let their names be heard on your lips.
14 Three times each year you shall cel ebrate a feast in my honor.
15 You shall keep the feast of Unleavened Bread, as I commanded you, and eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for it was then that you left Egypt. And do not come to me empty-handed.
16 You shall keep the feast of the Harvest with the feast of the first harvest of what you sowed in your fields.
Then the feast of Ingathering at the end of the year when you gather in the fruit of your labor in the fields.
17 Three times during the year all your men shall present themselves before Yahweh.
18 Do not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread or let the fat of my feast remain until morning.
19 The first of the first fruits of your soil you will bring to the house of Yahweh, your God.
Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
20 See, I am sending an Angel be fore you to keep you safe on the way and bring you to the place I have made ready.
21 Be on your guard in his presence and listen to him; do not resist him for he will not pardon your wrong-doing, for my name is in him.
22 If you listen to him and do what I say, I will be enemy to your enemies and the opponent of your opponents.
23 My Angel will go be fore you and bring you to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hi vites and the Jebusites; all these I will destroy.
24 You shall not bow down before their gods or serve them, or act according to their ways; rather you will destroy them utterly and smash their sacred stones.
25 If you serve Yahweh, your God, he will bless your bread and your water—and I will keep sickness away from you.
26 No woman among you will miscarry or be barren. I will fulfill the number of your days.
27 Now I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion all the peo ple you encounter; I will make all your enemies turn and flee before you.
28 I will send hornets ahead of you to drive out the Hivites, the Cana anites and the Hittites.
29 I will not drive them out in a single year lest the land become a desert and the wild beasts in crease and molest you.
30 I will drive them out before you little by little until your number in crease and you are able to take possession of the land.
31 I will fix your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines and from the Wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will deliver into your power the inhabitants of the land and I will drive them out before you.
32 You shall make no treaty with them or with their gods.
33 They shall not live in your country lest they lead you to sin against me and to serve their gods. That would surely be a snare for you.”
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Comments Exodus, Chapter 23
• 23.20 See, I am sending an angel before you. It is very dif ficult to speak adequately of God’s Providence for us. Am I to say every moment: “This is the work of God?” Here the Bible speaks of the “angel” that God sent before Israel. It is a way of saying that God protected and guided his own people, availing him self of countless, visible and invisible intermediaries.
Smash their sacred stones. This “destruction of idols” has often been understood in past centuries in a fanatical way resulting in the disappearance of many pagan works of art. Doubtless it was impossible for this to be otherwise given the mentality of the time. What Paul says of meat sacrificed to idols could be equally said of works of art representing pagan gods (1 Cor 8). Today we understand that the phrase refers to the worship and cult of the false gods of our age.