Exodus - Chapter 23

¹ 'You will not spread false rumours. You will not lend support to the wicked by giving untrue evidence.

² You will not be led into wrong-doing by the majority nor, when giving evidence in a lawsuit, side with the majority to pervert the course of justice;

³ nor will you show partiality to the poor in a lawsuit.

⁴ 'If you come on your enemy's ox or donkey straying, you will take it back to him.

⁵ If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen under its load, do not stand back; you must go and help him with it.

⁶ 'You will not cheat the poor among you of their rights at law.

⁷ Keep clear of fraud. Do not cause the death of the innocent or upright, and do not acquit the guilty.

⁸ You will accept no bribes, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and is the ruin of the cause of the upright.

⁹ 'You will not oppress the alien; you know how an alien feels, for you yourselves were once aliens in Egypt.

¹⁰ 'For six years you will sow your land and gather its produce,

¹¹ but in the seventh year you will let it lie fallow and forgo all produce from it, so that those of your people who are poor can take food from it and the wild animals eat what they have left. You will do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

¹² 'For six days you will do your work, and on the seventh you will rest, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the child of your slave-girl have a breathing space, and the alien too.

¹³ 'Take notice of everything I have told you and do not mention the name of any other god: let none ever be heard from your lips.

¹⁴ 'Three times a year you will hold a festival in my honour.

¹⁵ You will observe the feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days you will eat unleavened bread, as I have commanded you, at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt. No one will appear before me empty-handed.

¹⁶ You will also observe the feast of Harvest, of the first-fruits of your labours in sowing the fields, and the feast of Ingathering, at the end of the year, once you have brought the fruits of your labours in from the fields.

¹⁷ Three times a year all your menfolk will appear before Lord Yahweh.

¹⁸ 'You will not offer the blood of my victim with leavened bread, nor will the fat of my feast be kept till the following day.

¹⁹ 'You will bring the best of the first-fruits of your soil to the house of Yahweh your God. 'You will not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

²⁰ 'Look, I am sending an angel to precede you, to guard you as you go and bring you to the place that I have prepared.

²¹ Revere him and obey what he says. Do not defy him: he will not forgive any wrong-doing on your part, for my name is in him.

²² If, however, you obey what he says and do whatever I order, I shall be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.

²³ My angel will precede you and lead you to the home of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, whom I shall exterminate.

²⁴ You will not bow down to their gods or worship them or observe their rites, but throw them down and smash their cultic stones.

²⁵ You will worship Yahweh your God, and then I shall bless your food and water, and keep you free of sickness.

²⁶ In your country no woman will miscarry, none be sterile, and I shall give you your full term of life.

²⁷ 'I shall send terror of myself ahead of you; I shall throw all the peoples you encounter into confusion, and make all your enemies take to their heels.

²⁸ I shall send hornets ahead of you to drive Hivite, Canaanite and Hittite out before you.

²⁹ I shall not drive them out ahead of you in a single year, or the land might become a desert where wild animals would multiply to your cost.

³⁰ I shall drive them out little by little before you, until your numbers grow sufficient for you to take possession of the land.

³¹ And your frontiers I shall fix from the Sea of Reeds to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River, for I shall put the inhabitants of the territory at your mercy, and you will drive them out before you.

³² You will make no pact with them or with their gods.

³³ They may not stay in your country or they might make you sin against me, for you would serve their gods, and that would be a snare for you!'

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