Exodus 23

1 You do not lift up a vain report. You do not put your hand with a wicked man to be a violent witness. 2 You are not after many to do evil, nor do you testify concerning a strife, to turn aside after many to cause others to turn aside. 3 And you do not honor a poor man in his strife. 4 When you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you certainly turn it back to him. 5 When you see the donkey of him who is hating you crouching under its burden, then you have ceased from leaving it to it—you certainly leave it with him. 6 You do not turn aside the judgment of your poor in his strife. 7 you keep far off from a false matter, and you do not kill an innocent and righteous man. For I do not justify a wicked man. 8 And you do not take a bribe, for the bribe binds the open-eyed and perverts the words of the righteous. 9 And you do not oppress a sojourner, since you have known the soul of the sojourner, for you have been sojourners in the land of Egypt. 10 And for six years you sow your land and will gather its increase. 11 And in the seventh you release it, and will leave it, and the needy of your people will eat, and the beast of the field eats their remainder. So you do to your vineyard and to your olive-yard. 12 Six days you do your work, and on the seventh day you rest, so that your ox and your donkey rest, and the son of your handmaid and the sojourner is refreshed. 13 And in all that which I have said to you—take heed. And you do not mention the name of other gods. It is not heard on your mouth. 14 You keep a celebration to Me three times in a year: 15 you keep the Celebration of Unleavened Things (you eat unleavened things for seven days as I have commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib. For in it you have come out out from Egypt, and you do not appear in My presence empty). 16 And the Celebration of Harvest, the first-fruits of your works which you sow in the field. And the Celebration of the Ingathering in the outgoing of the year, in your gathering your works out of the field. 17 Three times in a year all your males appear before the face of the Lord YHWH. 18 You do not sacrifice the blood of My sacrifice on a fermented thing, and the fat of My festival does not remain until morning. 19 The beginning of the first-fruits of your ground you bring into the house of your God YHWH. You do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. 20 Look, I am sending a Messenger before you to keep you in the way, and to bring you to the place which I have prepared. 21 Be watchful because of His presence, and listen to His voice, do not rebel against Him, for He does not bear with your transgression, for My name is in His heart. 22 For if you listen diligently to His voice, and have done all that which I speak, then I will be at enmity with your enemies, and will distress those distressing you. 23 For My Messenger goes before you, and will bring you to the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, and I will cut them off. 24 You do not bow yourself to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their doings, but utterly devote them, and thoroughly break their standing pillars. 25 And you will serve your God YHWH, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will turn aside sickness from your heart. 26 There will not be a miscarrying and barren one in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. 27 I will send My terror before you, and I will put to death all the people among whom you come, and I will give the neck of all your enemies to you. 28 And I will send the hornet before you, and it will throw out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. 29 I will not throw them out from before you in one year, lest the land be a desolation, and the beast of the field has multiplied against you. 30 I will throw them out little by little from before you, until you are fruitful, and have inherited the land. 31 And I will set your borders from the Red Sea, even to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River. For I give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will throw them out from before you. 32 You do not make a covenant with them and with their gods. 33 They do not stay in your land, lest they cause you to sin against Me when you serve their gods, when it becomes a snare to you.”


Next: Chapter 24

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