Exodus 23:1-33
23 “You shall not raise a baseless report.
“Do not join hands with a knave to become a witness for injustice.
2 “You shall not follow numbers into mischief, nor in a case at law give testimony leaning to the popular side so as to warp the decision.
3 * “You shall not make too much of great man’s claim or poor man’s.
4 “When you encounter your enemy’s cow or donkey straying you must get it back to him.
5 * “When you see lying down under its load a donkey belonging to a man who hates you, and you are hanging back from unloading it for him, you must help him unload.
6 * “You shall not warp the law in your enemy’s case.
7 “You shall keep aloof from falsehood and not kill the innocent and the man who has right on his side, because I will never treat as in the right one who is in the wrong.
8 “And you shall not take a bribe, because a bribe blinds wide-awake men and upsets honest men’s business.
9 “And an immigrant you shall not oppress; you know an immigrant’s feelings because you were immigrants in Egypt.
10 “And for six years you shall sow your land and get in its produce,
11 but the seventh you shall leave it fallow and let it alone for the poor of your people to eat from, and what they leave the wild beasts shall eat. You shall do the same with your vineyards and your olive-trees.
12 * “For six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall keep sabbath, in order that your ox and donkey may rest and that your slave and your immigrant may freshen up.
13 “And in everything that I tell you you shall be on your guard; and you shall not mention the names of other gods, they shall not be heard on your lips.
14 “Thrice a year you shall hold a feast to me.
15 ** The feast of matzoth you shall observe: for seven days you shall eat matzoth, as I have commanded you, at the regular date in the green-ear month, because in it you came out of Egypt,—and you shall not appear before me empty-handed,—
16 ** and the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of your crops that you sowed in the fields, and the feast of harvest-home when the year goes out, when you get in your crops from the fields.
17 Three times a year every male of yours shall appear before the Lord Jehovah.
18 “You shall not sacrifice the blood of my sacrifice on yeast bread. “The fat of my feast shall not stay over till morning.
19 “The first of the earliest cuttings from your land you shall bring to the house of your God Jehovah.
“You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
20 “I am sending my Angel before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place I have prepared.
21 Beware of offending him; obey him. Do not be disobedient, because he will not pardon your offenses, because my name is in him.
22 For if you obey him and do everything that I say, I will be enemy to your enemies and will assail those who assail you,
23 * because my Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivvites and the Jebusites, and I will extirpate them.
24 You shall not do reverence to their gods nor worship them, nor do like their doings, for you are to demolish their altars and break their obelisks to pieces
25 and worship your God Jehovah, and he will bless your bread and your water and remove maladies from among you.
26 There shall never be a barren woman, or one whose births miscarry, in your country; I will make the number of your days full.
27 “I will send my terror before you and throw into confusion all the people among whom you are to go in, and I will give you the backs of all your enemies;
28 and I will send hornets before you which shall expel the Hivvites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites, from before you.
29 I will not expel them before you in one year, for fear the country should become a desolation and wild beasts should multiply in it; I will expel them before you
30 little by little till you breed and occupy the country.
31 And I will set your boundaries from the Red Sea to the Philistine Sea and from the wilderness to the River, because I will give the inhabitants of the country into your hands and you shall expel them before you.
32 You shall make no terms with them nor with their gods;
33 they shall not remain in your country, for fear they should make you sin against me because you would worship their gods, because they would be a snare to you.”
Footnotes
^ 23:3 Codd. lit. And a poor man you shall not decorate in his case (without mention of great man)
^ 23:5 (last half) Unc.; susp.
^ 23:6 Codd. your needy man’s case
^ 23:12 Lit. your slave-woman’s son and your immigrant
^ 23:15 Or regular date on the new moon of the green-ear month, because on it
^ 23:15 Conj.* see my face emptyhanded
^ 23:16 Lit. firstfruits of your works
^ 23:16 Lit. get in your works
^ 23:23 Var. adds the Girgashites after the Hivvites
