Commentaria in Exodum
Chapter Twenty-three
He goes on to lay down judicial laws, especially concerning respect of persons and of offices. Secondly, at verse 14, he adds ceremonial laws concerning the sabbath of the seventh year, and the three chief feasts of the year. Thirdly, at verse 20, he promises them an angel as leader and guardian, and other blessings, if they obey His laws.
1. Thou shalt not receive the voice of a lie; neither shalt thou join thy hand to bear false witness for a wicked person. 2. Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil: neither shalt thou yield in judgment to the opinion of the most part, to stray from the truth. 3. Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in judgment. 4. If thou meet thy enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, bring it back to him. 5. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lie underneath his burden, thou shalt not pass by, but shalt lift him up with him. 6. Thou shalt not go aside in the poor man’s judgment. 7. Thou shalt fly lying. The innocent and just person thou shalt not put to death: because I abhor the wicked. 8. Neither shalt thou take bribes, which even make the wise to be blind, and pervert the words of the just. 9. Thou shalt not molest a stranger, for you know the hearts of strangers, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt. 10. Six years thou shalt sow thy ground, and shalt gather the fruits thereof. 11. But in the seventh year thou shalt let it alone, and suffer it to rest, that the poor of thy people may eat: and whatsoever shall be left, let the beasts of the field eat it: so shalt thou do with thy vineyard and thy oliveyard. 12. Six days thou shalt work: the seventh day thou shalt cease, that thy ox and thy ass may rest: and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be refreshed. 13. Keep all things that I have said to you. And by the name of strange gods you shall not swear, neither shall it be heard out of your mouth. 14. Three times every year you shall celebrate feasts to me. 15. Thou shalt keep the feast of the unleavened bread. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month of the new corn, when thou camest out of Egypt: thou shalt not appear before me empty. 16. And the feast of the harvest of the firstfruits of thy work, whatsoever thou hast sown in the field. And the feast in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in all thy fruits out of the field. 17. Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord thy God. 18. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice upon leaven: neither shall the fat of my solemnity remain until the morning. 19. Thou shalt carry the firstfruits of the corn of thy ground to the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of his dam. 20. Behold I will send my angel, who shall go before thee, and keep thee in thy journey, and bring thee into the place that I have prepared. 21. Take notice of him, and hear his voice, and do not think him one to be contemned: for he will not forgive when thou hast sinned, and my name is in him. 22. But if thou wilt hear his voice, and do all that I speak, I will be an enemy to thy enemies, and will afflict them that afflict thee. 23. And my angel shall go before thee, and shall bring thee in unto the Amorrhite, and the Hethite, and the Pherezite, and the Chanaanite, and the Hevite, and the Jebusite, whom I will destroy. 24. Thou shalt not adore their gods, nor serve them: thou shalt not do their works, but shalt destroy them, and break down their statues. 25. And you shall serve the Lord your God, that I may bless thy bread and thy waters, and may take away sickness from the midst of thee. 26. There shall not be one barren in thy land, nor a barren woman: I will fill the number of thy days. 27. I will send my fear before thee, and will kill every people to which thou shalt come: and I will turn the backs of all thy enemies before thee: 28. Sending hornets before, which shall drive out the Hevite, and the Chanaanite, and the Hethite, before thou come in. 29. I will not cast them out from thy face in one year, lest the land be brought into a wilderness, and the beasts multiply against thee. 30. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, till thou be increased, and dost possess the land. 31. And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea to the sea of the Palestines, and from the desert to the river: I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hands, and will drive them out from before you. 32. Thou shalt not enter into league with them, nor with their gods. 33. Let them not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me, if thou serve their gods, which undoubtedly will be a scandal to thee.
1. THOU SHALT NOT RECEIVE THE VOICE OF A LIE.—In the Hebrew: Thou shalt not receive the hearing of falsehood; that is, thou shalt not give ear to a slanderer who tries to draw thee to his side and make thee a witness of calumny.
Vatablus renders it: Take not up a vain, or false, report; as if to say: Be not a hearer of false rumour against thy neighbour, so as to frame in thy heart anything by which his good name may be injured; and again, do not listen to, nor admit, such a rumour.
The wise men of the Hebrews say that he who listens to a false informer sins no less than he who falsely accuses another. Hence this is their saying: “Everyone who maliciously defames another, and whoever receives an informer, and everyone who gives false testimony against his neighbour, is worthy to be cast to the dogs.”
NOR SHALT THOU JOIN THY HAND,—thou shalt not make common cause, thou shalt not associate thyself with him, so as to be a witness of iniquity and calumny by speaking false testimony. So the Hebrew.
Thus Pericles, when a friend demanded of him false testimony to be confirmed by oath, answered that he was “a friend only as far as the altar.” Plutarch is witness in his Laconic Sayings. And Phocion, when Antipater asked of him something unjust, said: “Thou canst not have Phocion for a friend and a flatterer.”
“A false witness,” says Isidore, book 3, On the Highest Good, “is guilty toward three persons: first, toward God, whom he despises by perjuring himself; next, toward the judge, whom he deceives by lying; lastly, toward the innocent man, whom he injures by false testimony.” Such false witnesses were Doeg against David, 1 Kings 22:9; Siba against Miphiboseth, 2 Kings 16:3; the two suborned men against Naboth, 3 Kings 21:13; Jerias against Jeremias, Jer. 37:12; the two elders against Susanna, Daniel 13:34; the two against Christ, Matt. 26:60; those against Stephen, Acts 6:13.
2. NEITHER SHALT THOU YIELD IN JUDGMENT TO THE OPINION OF THE MOST PART, TO STRAY FROM THE TRUTH.
In the Hebrew there is a pretty play on words: And thou shalt not answer in a suit, so as to turn aside after the many, to turn aside, or wrest, understand, true and right judgment.
Socrates, says Laertius, book 2, chap. 5, said that those who trust the unlearned multitude do the same as if a man should despise and cast away a single tetradrachm, yet approve and receive a heap made up of the like. He that is not to be trusted alone is no more to be trusted in a crowd of the like; for it matters not how many they are, but how weighty. A counterfeit coin, even in the largest heap, is counterfeit still.
3. NEITHER SHALT THOU FAVOUR A POOR MAN IN JUDGMENT.—In the Hebrew: Thou shalt not honour the poor man in his suit; that is, thou shalt not protect the poor man, out of a perverse pity for him, in an unjust cause, or when he is in truth guilty of the crime. For mercy is good, but it must not overturn judgment; the Lord loveth both. Hence the Psalmist says: “Mercy and judgment I will sing to thee, O Lord;” and: “The king’s honour loveth judgment.” Hence also of Christ the King of justice it was foretold that He should come “to judge thy people in justice, and thy poor in judgment,” Psalm 71:2. So St. Augustine, Quest. 88, and Jerome on Psalm 32.
5. IF THOU SEE THE ASS OF HIM THAT HATETH THEE LIE UNDERNEATH HIS BURDEN, THOU SHALT NOT PASS BY, BUT SHALT LIFT HIM UP WITH HIM.—The Hebrew here is obscure, and is variously rendered by various interpreters; but the sense of all comes to the same, and coincides with that which our version gives. Literally the Hebrew seems to be rendered thus: If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lie under his burden, wilt thou cease to leave it to him? (that is, the burden, by passing by; as if to say: By no means, but) in leaving it thou shalt be left with him; as if to say: Thou shalt stay by him, and assist him to lift it up and set the beast on its feet.
One might also suspect that in the Hebrew the reading is faulty, lo written with vau instead of lo with aleph, and then the sense would be clearer: wilt thou cease to leave (him groaning under his burden)? leaving, thou shalt not leave with him the burden under which he groans. Thou seest here that the love of enemies was commanded not only to Christians, but also to the Jews.
6. THOU SHALT NOT GO ASIDE IN THE POOR MAN’S JUDGMENT (that is, in his condemnation: it is a metonymy).—In the Hebrew it is: Thou shalt not decline (pervert) the judgment of the poor man in his cause; where judgment is taken in its proper sense. God therefore, who before forbade the person of the poor to be favoured against equity in judgment, here likewise forbids that his just cause be perverted by an unjust judgment.