1 Sep 2025 – jeffersonvann

Exodus 23

Exodus 23:1 “You should not extend a false report. You should not join hands with a wicked person to be a malicious witness.

Exodus 23:2 You should not follow the majority to do evil, nor should you bear witness in a lawsuit, stretching with the majority, so as to stretch the truth,

Exodus 23:3 nor should you be favor a poor man in his lawsuit.

Exodus 23:4 “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey getting lost, you should bring it back to him.

Exodus 23:5 If you see the donkey of one who hates you fallen under its burden, you should refrain from leaving him under it; you should rescue it along with him.

Exodus 23:6 “You should not stretch the judgment for your poor in his lawsuit.

Exodus 23:7 Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, because I will not acquit the wicked.

Exodus 23:8 And you should take no bribe, because a bribe blinds the seeing and turns the cause of those who are in the right.

Exodus 23:9 “You should not oppress a foreign guest. You know the throat of a foreign guest, because you were foreign guests in the land of Egypt.

Exodus 23:10 ” You will plant on your land for six years and collect what it produces,

Exodus 23:11 but the seventh year you will let it stop producing, lying fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and so that the animals of the field may eat what they leave. You should do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.

Exodus 23:12 “Six days you will do your work, but on the seventh day you will stop; so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your female slave, and the foreign guest, may be refreshed.

Exodus 23:13 “Pay attention to all that I have said to you and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.

Exodus 23:14 “Each year, three times you should keep a feast to me.

Exodus 23:15 You should keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Just as I commanded you, you should eat only unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, because in it you came out of Egypt. No one should appear before me empty-handed.

Exodus 23:16 You should keep the Feast of Harvest, of the first picking of your crops, of what you sow in the field. You should keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your work.

Exodus 23:17 Three times in the year all your males should appear before the Lord Yahveh.

Exodus 23:18 “You should not offer the blood of my sacrifice along with anything leavened or let any fat of my feast be left over in the morning.

Exodus 23:19 ” You should bring The first[1] of the first picking of your ground crops into the house of Yahveh your God. “You should not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Exodus 23:20 “Notice, I am sending an agent before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.

Exodus 23:21 Listen carefully to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, because he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.

Exodus 23:22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

Exodus 23:23 “When my agent goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I make them disappear,

Exodus 23:24 you should not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you should utterly destroy them and break their pillars in pieces.

Exodus 23:25 You should serve Yahveh your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you.

Exodus 23:26 No one will miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.

Exodus 23:27 I will send my fear before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you will come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs from you.

Exodus 23:28 And I am sending hornets before you, which will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.

Exodus 23:29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, or else the land will become a sinister desolation and the wild animals increase against you.

Exodus 23:30 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have multiplied and possess the land.

Exodus 23:31 And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the open country to the Euphrates, because I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.

Exodus 23:32 You will make no agreement with them and their gods.

Exodus 23:33 They should not live in your land, or else they would make you fail me; because if you serve their gods, it will definitely be a trap to you.”

[1]רֵאשִׁית = first. Exodus 23:19; 34:26.

Exodus 23 quotes:

“It is not accidental that these laws appear side by side in Exodus 23. The editor uses the literary technique of “inclusion” to tie these two very different regulations together into a coherent unit. This is achieved by repeating a key word or words at the beginning and end of the unit, to serve as an inclusio (“bookends”) for the material in between.”

Lowery, R. H. Sabbath and Jubilee. Chalice Press, 2000. p. 52.

“God graciously responded to Moses’ desire to know who would go with him, saying, “My Presence will go with you” (verse 14)—that is, with Moses. (The “you” is singular in Hebrew.) Thus, because of Moses’ intercession, God partly reversed His decision not to go with the Israelites (verse 3); He would agree to go “with Moses.” We can understand God’s “Presence” to be the special angel mentioned earlier, in whom God’s Name was placed (Exodus 23:21).”

Hale, Thomas, and Stephen Thorson. The Applied Old Testament Commentary. 1st ed, David C. Cook, 2007. p. 271.

“These laws are given in the context of the covenant renewal. The Lord will work marvels for His people, provided that they keep His commandments. They are not to make treaties with the Chanaanites, “else they will become a snare among you.” They are to destroy the sacred asheroth or poles in honor of the goddess of fertility and to destroy also the masseboth or sacred pillars in honor of Baal (see Exodus 23, 23-33).”

Murphy, Roland E. The Book of Exodus. Paulist Press (Paulist Fathers), 1960. p. 22.