Exodus 23: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God gives Israel rules for honest testimony and fair judgment in court, for returning a straying animal that belongs to an enemy, and for not oppressing a foreigner. Rules follow for letting the land rest in the seventh year, resting on the seventh day, keeping three feasts each year, and handling sacrifices and firstfruits. God then says he is sending an angel ahead of them to bring them to the place he has prepared, tells them to obey his voice, and promises to drive out the peoples of the land little by little and to set their borders, with a warning not to serve those peoples' gods or make a covenant with them.

Claim by Claim

1. 23:1
   • You shall not spread a false report.
   • You shall not join hands with a wicked person to serve as a witness who does violence.
2. 23:2
   • You shall not follow a crowd to do evil.
   • You shall not testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after the crowd and pervert justice.
3. 23:3
   • You shall not show favor to a poor man in his lawsuit.
4. 23:4
   • If you come upon your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering astray, you must return it to him.
5. 23:5
   • If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its load, you must not refrain from acting for him.
   • You must release the load along with him.
   • The command is ambiguous between leaving the animal alone and unloading it together with its owner.
6. 23:6
   • You shall not pervert the justice due to your needy person in his lawsuit.
7. 23:7
   • Keep far away from a false charge.
   • Do not kill the innocent and the righteous.
   • God says he will not acquit the guilty.
8. 23:8
   • You shall not take a bribe.
   • A bribe blinds those who can see.
   • A bribe twists the words of the righteous.
9. 23:9
   • You shall not oppress a resident foreigner.
   • You yourselves know the inner feelings of a resident foreigner.
   • You were resident foreigners in the land of Egypt.
10. 23:10
    • For six years you shall sow your land.
    • For six years you shall gather in its produce.
11. 23:11
    • In the seventh year you shall let the land go and leave it alone.
    • The needy of your people shall eat from it.
    • What they leave, the wild animals of the field shall eat.
    • You shall do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.
12. 23:12
    • For six days you shall do your work.
    • On the seventh day you shall cease.
    • The purpose is that your ox and your donkey may rest.
    • The purpose is that the son of your maidservant and the resident foreigner may be refreshed.
13. 23:13
    • Be on guard concerning everything God has said to you.
    • You shall not mention the name of other gods.
    • The name of other gods shall not be heard from your mouth.
14. 23:14
    • Three times in the year you shall hold a pilgrimage feast to God.
15. 23:15
    • You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
    • You shall eat unleavened bread for seven days.
    • God commanded this.
    • It is to be kept at the appointed time of the month of Abib.
    • In that month you came out of Egypt.
    • No one shall appear before God empty-handed.
16. 23:16
    • You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labors that you sow in the field.
    • You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the going out of the year.
    • The Feast of Ingathering is when you gather in your labors from the field.
17. 23:17
    • Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign, the LORD.
18. 23:18
    • You shall not offer the blood of God's sacrifice along with anything leavened.
    • The fat of God's feast shall not remain overnight until morning.
19. 23:19
    • You shall bring the first of the firstfruits of your ground into the house of the LORD your God.
    • You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.
20. 23:20
    • God says he is sending a messenger ahead of you.
    • The messenger is to guard you on the way.
    • The messenger is to bring you to the place God has prepared.
21. 23:21
    • Be on guard before him.
    • Obey his voice.
    • Do not rebel against him.
    • He will not pardon your transgression.
    • God's name is within him.
22. 23:22
    • If you truly obey his voice and do all that God speaks, God will be an enemy to your enemies.
    • If you truly obey his voice and do all that God speaks, God will be an adversary to your adversaries.
23. 23:23
    • God's messenger will go ahead of you.
    • God's messenger will bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
    • God will annihilate them.
24. 23:24
    • You shall not bow down to their gods.
    • You shall not serve their gods.
    • You shall not act according to their practices.
    • You shall utterly tear them down.
    • You shall completely smash their standing stones.
25. 23:25
    • You shall serve the LORD your God.
    • He will bless your bread and your water.
    • God will remove sickness from among you.
26. 23:26
    • No female in your land will miscarry or be barren.
    • God will fill up the number of your days.
27. 23:27
    • God will send his terror ahead of you.
    • God will throw into panic every people you come among.
    • God will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.
28. 23:28
    • God will send the hornet ahead of you.
    • The hornet will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.
29. 23:29
    • God will not drive them out from before you in a single year.
    • The reason is lest the land become desolate.
    • The reason is lest the wild animals of the field multiply against you.
30. 23:30
    • God will drive them out from before you little by little.
    • God will do so until you become fruitful and take possession of the land.
31. 23:31
    • God will set your border from the Sea of Reeds to the sea of the Philistines.
    • God will set your border from the wilderness to the River.
    • God will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand.
    • You will drive them out from before you.
32. 23:32
    • You shall not cut a covenant with them or with their gods.
33. 23:33
    • They shall not dwell in your land.
    • The reason is lest they cause you to sin against God.
    • If you serve their gods, it will become a snare to you.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

23:1

These opening rules are courtroom rules. In an Israelite town, cases were heard at the town gate by the elders, with no professional judges, police or prosecutors: a case was decided by the testimony of neighbors, so a false witness could kill a man. "Join hands with" translates a phrase for making common cause with someone, here, agreeing to back up his story.

23:2

The Hebrew word rendered "crowd" can mean either "the many" (a majority) or "the great ones" (the powerful); either way the point is not letting numbers or weight of opinion decide a case. "Twist" is the standard Hebrew image for injustice: bending a verdict out of line, like bending a straight object.

23:3

This is not about charity but about evidence. Ancient law codes routinely warned judges against favoring the rich; this warns against the opposite reflex, deciding for a poor man because he is poor rather than because he is right. Verse 6 forbids the more usual abuse.

23:4

An ox or a donkey was usually the most valuable thing a farming family owned, worth many months of income, and a strayed animal was easily lost for good. The law makes returning it a duty even when the owner is someone you are in open conflict with.

23:5

The Hebrew here is famously difficult. The verb translated "hold back from helping" and the verb translated "help" are the same word, azav, which normally means "leave, abandon", and which can also carry a sense of "loose, release", hence readings ranging from "do not abandon him, you must help him" to "you must certainly release it with him", i.e. unload the animal together. The sense of the law is not in doubt even where the wording is.

23:6

"Wrest the judgment of thy poor" means to bend a verdict against a poor person. Someone with no money and no influential family had no way to bribe or pressure a court, which made this the easy abuse to get away with.

23:7

"A false charge" means a fabricated accusation brought in court. The warning against putting the innocent to death follows directly: many offenses in this law carried the death penalty, so a false charge was a means of killing someone legally. The last clause is legal language, to "declare innocent" is what a judge does in acquitting someone.

23:8

The King James "gift" means a bribe; the Hebrew word covers any payment made to a judge. "Those who can see" translates a word for the clear-sighted or discerning, the very people a bribe most needs to blind.

23:9

A "foreigner living among you" (Hebrew ger) is a specific legal category: someone resident long-term in Israel but outside the family and clan networks that owned land and defended a person's rights in court. Such a person had no kin to speak for him, which is why the law repeatedly singles him out for protection.

23:11

This is the sabbatical or seventh year, applied to farmland. Leaving a field unsown for a year was a recognized way of restoring soil, but the law's stated reason is social: whatever grows of itself is left for the poor and then for wild animals, rather than being harvested by the owner.

23:12

"Refreshed" translates a Hebrew verb meaning to catch one's breath. The people named (the draft animals, the household slave born in the house, and the resident foreigner) are precisely those with no power to claim a day off for themselves.

23:13

"Speaking the name" of a god meant more than mentioning it: names of gods were invoked in oaths, contracts, curses and prayers, which was how one called on that god to act. The prohibition is on that use, not on the word itself.

23:14

These are pilgrimage festivals: three times a year the people were to travel to the sanctuary rather than mark the day at home. All three are tied to the farming year, spring barley, early summer wheat, and the autumn fruit harvest.

23:15

Bread without yeast is quick bread, made without waiting for dough to rise. Abib (later called Nisan) is the month of the barley harvest, roughly March–April. "Empty-handed" means without an offering: appearing before a superior, human or divine, without a gift in hand was an insult in the ancient world.

23:16

The Feast of Harvest, at the end of the wheat harvest, came to be called Weeks, and later Pentecost. "First crops" (firstfruits) are the opening portion of a harvest, handed over before the rest is used. The Feast of Gathering In, at the close of the fruit and olive harvest in autumn, came to be called Booths or Tabernacles. "The end of the year" reflects an agricultural year that turned over in the autumn, after everything was gathered.

23:17

"All your males" defines who was legally obliged to make the journey; it does not say others were excluded. "Appear before" is court language for presenting oneself to a king, here, at the sanctuary. In verse 19 and elsewhere, LORD printed in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which the Hebrew text writes but tradition avoided pronouncing; "Lord GOD" here renders a doubled title, roughly "the Master, the LORD".

23:18

In a sacrifice the blood was thrown against the altar and the fat burned; both were treated as belonging to God and never eaten. This rule keeps yeast away from that offering and forbids leaving the fat overnight, meat kept until morning in that climate was spoiled, and offering it was treated as contempt.

23:19

"The house of the LORD" is the sanctuary, at this stage the portable tent, later the temple. The rule about the young goat is stated without a reason; suggestions have ranged from a Canaanite ritual the law is rejecting to simple revulsion at cooking an animal in what fed it. Later Jewish practice took it as the basis for keeping meat and milk apart.

23:20

The Hebrew word translated "angel" (mal'akh) means simply "messenger", one sent to speak and act for the sender. Whether the figure here is distinguishable from God himself is left unresolved by the text.

23:21

In the ancient Near East an envoy who carried his master's name carried his master's authority: to defy the envoy was to defy the king who sent him, and the envoy could not waive an offense against his master. That is the legal idiom being used.

23:23

These six peoples are the populations of Canaan as the Bible lists them; such lists were conventional and vary in length elsewhere. The Amorites and Hittites were also names of major powers known across the wider region, and the Jebusites were associated with the town later called Jerusalem.

23:24

"Sacred stones" translates massebot: upright stone pillars set up at a place of worship to mark the presence of a god. They were a normal feature of Canaanite shrines, and archaeologists have found rows of them at sites across the region.

23:25

Bread and water is a short way of saying all the food and drink you need.

23:26

The Hebrew is unspecific about who or what is meant. The King James "cast their young" reads it of livestock miscarrying, other translations read it of women; the promise of full-term births and fertility covers flocks, herds and people alike. "The full number of your days" means a complete lifespan rather than a life cut short.

23:27

"Terror of me" is a set phrase for the panic that spreads ahead of an advancing army. "Turn their backs" is the Hebrew idiom for breaking and running in battle.

23:28

The Hebrew word tsir'ah occurs only here and in two related passages, and its meaning is uncertain. It is traditionally translated "hornet", but has also been read as a figure for panic or dread, or as a reference to Egyptian military campaigns, whose royal emblem was a bee.

23:29

Farmland with nobody working it goes back to scrub within a few seasons, and the region still had lions, bears and wolves. Emptying the land faster than you can fill it leaves you with wilderness and dangerous animals rather than a country.

23:31

These are the widest borders the Bible ever claims. "Red Sea" translates yam suph, literally "sea of reeds", used of the Gulf of Aqaba and its northern waters; the "Sea of the Philistines" is the Mediterranean, named for the people who occupied its southern coastal plain; "the desert" is the wilderness to the south; and "the River", with no other name attached, is the standard way of referring to the Euphrates.

23:32

A covenant here is a formal treaty between peoples, of the kind kings made across the ancient Near East. Such treaties were sworn in the names of the gods of both sides, who were called on as witnesses and enforcers, which is why making one "with them" also involved their gods.

23:33

"Snare" is a hunting term: the hidden trap or net a bird walks into without seeing it.