Exodus 23

¹ “You must not make false assertions. You must not support a guilty man by giving malicious evidence.

² You must not take the side of the greater number in the cause of wrong-doing nor side with the majority and give evidence in a lawsuit in defiance of justice;

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

⁴ “If you come on your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you must lead it back to him.

⁵ If you see the donkey of a man who hates you fallen under its load, instead of keeping out of his way, go to him to help him.

⁶ “You must not cheat any poor man of yours of his rights at law.

⁷ Keep out of trumped-up cases. See that the man who is innocent and just is not done to death, and do not acquit the guilty.

⁸ You must not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds clear-sighted men and is the ruin of the just man’s cause.

⁹ “You must not oppress the stranger; you know how a stranger feels, for you lived as strangers in the land of Egypt.

¹⁰ “For six years you may sow your land and gather its produce,

¹¹ but in the seventh year you must let it lie fallow and forego all produce from it. Those of your people who are poor may take food from it, and let the wild animals feed on what they leave. You shall do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

¹² “For six days you shall do your work, but stop on the seventh day, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the son of your slave girl have a breathing space, and the stranger too.

¹³ “Take notice of all I have told you and do not repeat the name of other gods: let it not be heard from your lips.

¹⁴ “Three times a year you are to celebrate a feast in my honour.

¹⁵ You must celebrate the feast of Unleavened Bread: you must 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. And no one must come before me empty-handed.

¹⁶ The feast of Harvest, too, you must celebrate, the feast of the first-fruits of the produce of your sown fields; the feast of Ingathering also, at the end of the year when you gather in the fruit of your labours from the fields.

¹⁷ Three times a year all your menfolk must present themselves before the Lord Yahweh.

¹⁸ “You must not offer unleavened bread with the blood of the victim sacrificed to me, nor put by the fat of my festal victim for the following day.

¹⁹ “You must bring the best of the first-fruits of your soil to the house of Yahweh your God. “You must not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.[*a]

²⁰ “I myself will send an angel before you to guard you as you go and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.

²¹ Give him reverence and listen to all that he says. Offer him no defiance; he would not pardon such a fault, for my name is in him.

²² If you listen carefully to his voice and do all that I say, I shall be enemy to your enemies, foe to your foes.

²³ My angel will go before you and lead you to where the Amorites are and the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites; I shall exterminate these.

²⁴ You must not bow down to their gods or worship them; you must not do as they do: you must destroy their gods utterly and smash their standing-stones.[*b]

²⁵ You are to worship Yahweh your God, and I shall bless your bread and water, and remove sickness from among you.

²⁶ In your land no woman will miscarry, none be barren. I shall give you your full term of life.

²⁷ “I shall spread panic ahead of you; I shall throw into confusion all the people you encounter; I shall make all your enemies turn and run from you.

²⁸ I shall send hornets in front of you to drive Hivite and Canaanite and Hittite from your presence.

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

³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out before you until your numbers grow and you come into possession of the land.

³¹ For your frontiers I shall fix the Sea of Reeds and the Philistine sea, the desert and the river;[*c] yes, I shall deliver the inhabitants of the country into your hands, and you will drive them out before you.

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

³³ They must not live in your country or they will make you sin against me; you would come to worship their gods, and that would be a snare for you indeed!”‘