Xuất Ai Cập Ký 23

Honest witness and fair justice

¹Do not pass along a false report. Do not join forces with a wicked person by serving as a witness whose words do violence.

²Do not follow a crowd to do evil. And when you speak in a lawsuit, do not lean toward the many so as to bend justice. ³Do not give special treatment to a poor person in their lawsuit either.^a

⁴When you find your enemy’s ox or donkey gone astray, you must lead it back to its owner.

⁵Suppose the donkey of someone who hates you has sunk down under its burden. However much you may wish to leave it to them, you must work with them to set it free.^b

Justice, rest and the yearly feasts

⁶Do not pervert the justice due to your poor when they bring a case. ⁷Stay far away from a false charge. Do not put to death one who is innocent and in the right, for I will not declare the wicked to be in the right. ⁸Take no bribe. A bribe blinds the clear-sighted and overturns the cause of those who are in the right. ⁹Do not oppress a foreigner living among you. You know from the inside what a foreigner’s life is like, since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt. ¹⁰For six years you are to sow your land and gather in its crops, ¹¹but in the seventh you are to release it and let it lie, so that the needy among your people may eat from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Treat your vineyard and your olive grove the same way. ¹²Work for six days, but on the seventh day stop, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the child of your female servant and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed. ¹³Be on guard in all that I have said to you. Do not make mention of the names of other gods; let no such name be heard from your mouth. ¹⁴Three times each year you shall keep a pilgrim feast in my honor. ¹⁵Observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread: you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I instructed you, at its fixed time in the month of Abib, the month when you left Egypt. And let no one come into my presence empty-handed.^{c 16}Keep also the Feast of Harvest, with the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year, when you gather in from the field what your labor has produced. ¹⁷Three times a year every male among you is to present himself before the Lord GOD. ¹⁸Do not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, and the fat from my feast must not be left over until morning. ¹⁹The best of your ground’s firstfruits you are to bring to the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.^d

An angel to lead the way

²⁰I am sending an angel to go before you. He will protect you on your journey and lead you to the place I have made ready. ²¹Take care in his presence and obey what he says. Do not defy him, because he will not pardon your wrongdoing; my name is in him. ²²If you truly heed his voice and do everything I tell you, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to those who stand against you. ²³For my angel will go before you and bring you to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I will make an end of them. ²⁴Do not bow down to their gods or serve them, and do not copy what they do. Instead, you are to pull those gods down completely and break their sacred pillars into pieces. ²⁵Serve the LORD your God, and he will bless your bread and your water. I will take sickness away from among you.^{e 26}No woman in your land will lose her child before birth or be unable to bear children. I will let you live out the full number of your days. ²⁷I will send terror of me ahead of you and throw every people you come against into panic. I will make all your enemies show you their backs. ²⁸I will send the hornet in front of you, and it will chase the Hivites, the Canaanites and the Hittites out of your path.^{f 29}Yet I will not clear them away from before you within one year. If I did, the land would lie empty, and the wild animals would multiply and overrun you. ³⁰I will drive them out from before you little by little, until you have grown many and can take the land as your own. ³¹I will fix your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you. ³²Make no covenant with them or with their gods. ³³They must not live in your land, or they will lead you to sin against me. For you would come to serve their gods, and that would be a snare to you.”