v.1: Do not pass on worthless things that you hear. Do not reach out your hand with an evil person to be a false witness.

Transcription

1 Exodus Chapter 23 v.1: Do not pass on worthless things that you hear. Do not reach out your hand with an evil person to be a false witness. v.1: The second sentence in this verse uses the idiom tashet yadeka, meaning to join forces with an evil person s actions, inferring,תשת ידך here to be a false witness. The idiom ed chamas, חמס,עד literally means a violent witness, but can be translated false witness, that is, their lying testimony will cause violence or harm to the innocent. Worthless is shame a shav, שווא,שמע literally, things that are heard which have no value. Evil is rasha,,רשע and is one of the two biblical Hebrew words for evil, the other being the more common ra,.רע The two words are used synonymously in Biblical text. v.2: Do not follow after many people to do wrong; and do not speak (as a witness) in order to pervert (justice). v.2: The word for speak, ta aneh,,תענה refers here to a court case. The word for pervert is used as a verb, to pervert. It is justice that is perverted by a lying witness, so we have translated this verse to reflect this situation. v.3: And do not show favor to a poor person in a court case. v.3: The same word is used for a court case in both verses 2 and 3, (the word riv,,ריב which in modern Hebrew means any type of dispute). v.4: If you run across your enemy s bull or his donkey wandering about, you absolutely must return it to him. v.4: The word used here is shor,,שור and it can mean either a bull or an ox. Bulls were used for breeding; oxen were yoked and used for physical work. The word used for wandering about is the same word as in Genesis 37:15, describing how Joseph wandered about, lost, in a field. v.5: When you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying down under his heavy load, refrain from leaving him. You definitely must not leave him there.

2 v.5: Refrain is the literal word used. A valid paraphrase would be: Do not leave him; you definitely must not leave him alone there. v.6: Do not prevent justice to your needy (persons) in his court case. v.7: Distance yourself far away from a situation involving a lie; do not kill a righteous or a clean person, because I will not justify doing evil. v.7: The word for clean is naqi,,ינק and in this verse s idiomatic usage it means innocent from a charge deserving of capital punishment. v.8: Do not take a bribe, because a bribe blinds seeing persons, and negates the words of the righteous. v.8: The word vayisalef,,ויסלף can mean to negate, to twist around, or make crooked. We chose negate, as we are describing a legal situation here, where the testimony or judgment of the righteous is being stopped. v.9: Do not oppress a foreigner, since you intimately know about the life of being a foreigner, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. v.9: To intimately know is yadatem,,ידעתם and it carries the connotation of being deeply familiar with something or someone. It is used when Adam knew Eve in Genesis 4:1. v.10: So you will sow your Land for six years, and gather its yield. v.11: But in the seventh year, you will let it all fall; so abandon it, so that the destitute of your people can eat. Then animals in the field will eat the remainder. You will do this in your vineyards and olive groves. v.11: You will let it all fall is the word tishmetenah,.תשמטנה This word refers to the land being left fallow: unplowed, unsown, and not reaped by harvesters. In Hebrew, this is referred to as the shmittah year (from the same root as tishmetenah ) or the shana hashivit ( the seventh year. ) v.12: Six days you will do your activities, and on the seventh day you will take a Shabbat, so that your ox will rest, and your donkey, and your servant and the foreigner will have a time of refreshing. 2

3 v.12: The word refreshing is yinafesh,,ינפש from the root word n-f-sh which is used in the well-known word nefesh. It is the same term that is used in our Shabbat evening ceremony. It literally means to be infused with life/to become a person. This word emphasizes the refreshing of being humanity as humanity was created to be during a sabbatical time period. v.13: Do every single thing that I have said to you. Do not remember the names of any other gods. Do not mention them; this should not be heard in your mouths. v.14: You should have a meal celebration during three aliya times a year for My purposes. v.14: Modern scholarship has defined the word hag,,חג as a time when a people would gather and circle around their altar, then have a celebratory meal together. So we chose to translate hag as a meal celebration. שלוש רגלים regalim, These would occur during the times of the shalosh literally, the three walking times, namely, Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles, when people would travel to Jerusalem to eat, celebrate, and worship. In modern Hebrew, hag is often used interchangeably with other words for holidays. v.15: Guard over the meal celebration of matzas; seven days you will eat matzas, as I instructed you, during the national appointed time of the month of Aviv. Because it was then that you left Egypt. So do not appear before Me empty. v.15: Guard over is tishmor,,תשמור and denotes scrupulously observing something. It is a military term describing the care with which a soldier guards territory. National meeting time is the word mo ed,,מועד which, in Leviticus 23, describes the God appointed times in the yearly calendar when Israel meets with God. v.16: Then, the celebratory meal of the harvest, from the first fruits of your work in which you sow your fields; and then the celebratory meal of the reaping, when the year goes out, and you have gathered from your labors in the fields, v.17: Three times a year, our males will be seen before the Lord Adonai s presence. 3

4 v.18: Do not offer the blood of My offerings with leavened bread; as well, do not allow the fat of My celebratory meals to remain until morning. v.19: Bring the first of the crops of your Land to the House of Adonai your God; do not cook a goat in the milk of its mother. v.19: House of Adonai refers to the Tabernacle, and later on, refers to God s House in Jerusalem. The word for house, bet,,בית can refer to a physical home, dynasty, family clan, or specific religious movement with its teachers and students in Jewish history. v.20: Pay attention, I am sending a messenger ahead of you, to watch over you in the way, and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. v.20: Messenger is malak,,מלאך and is the same word as angel in Hebrew. v.21: Be very attentive to his presence, and heed his voice; do not be bitter with him, because he will not lift off your transgression, since My name is in his midst. v.21: Be very attentive is the same word as referring to carrying out a military watch. The gist of the wording is to be very diligent about the angel s leading. Take away is the word yisa,,ישא meaning to bear up, or to carry up. v.22: When you diligently hear his voice, and have done everything that I will say, I will make Myself an enemy to your enemies, and a foe to your foes. v.22: The verb translated hear is repeated shamo a tishma gna, gna. When that happens, there is an emphasis intended, as if the text is saying, really hear or really listen to. v.23: For my messenger will walk ahead of you, and will bring you to the Emorite, and the Hittite, the Perizzite, and the Canaanite; the Hivite and the Jebusite, and I will destroy them. 4

5 v.24: Do not bow down to their gods, nor serve them; do not emulate their activities; but thoroughly destroy them, and totally smash apart their pillars of idolatry. v.25: So serve Adonai your God, and He will bless your food and your water, so that I will remove all illness from your midst. v.26: You will not have a miscarriage or a barren woman in your Land; I will fill the number of your days. v.26: I will fill the number of your days is an idiom for I will give you long life, and it could be translated as such. v.27: I will send My fear before you; I will startle and confound every people that comes against you. Then I will cause all of your enemies to turn and flee. v.27: This is stated in idiomatic Hebrew. Startle and confound is the word hamoti,,המתי meaning to make great noise, then come upon one s enemy by surprise. Literally, cause enemies to turn and flee says to give your enemies a neck to you, that is, turn their neck (back) to you. v.28: Then I will send the hornet before you, and drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you. v.29: I will not drive them out before you in a single year, as the Land would become desolate, and then wild animals would multiply and be upon you. v.29: Literally it states, be upon you, which is an idiom for attack you. v.30: Little by little, I will drive them out before you, until you have become fruitful and have possessed the Land. v.30: The word for become fruitful means to physically multiply. It is the same word used in Genesis 1:28: Be fruitful (and multiply). v.31: I have positioned your boundary to be from the Sea of Reeds to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the midbar to the river, because I have 5

6 given all the inhabitants of the Land into your hand; so you will expel them from before you. v.31: We have translated the text very literally. It can also be translated, alternatively, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea; and from the wilderness to the river v.32: Do not make a covenant with them nor with their gods. v.33: They will not live in your Land, or they will cause you to miss the mark, because you will serve their gods, so they will become a trap for you. v.33: Miss the mark,,תחטיא is often translated as to sin. It means to miss the mark of Torah. Torah hits the mark exactly on what brings forth life. Torah is that which is who you are as nephesh chaiyah, a life that lives. To miss the mark is to miss who you are. To not live your own life, the life that Adonai created you to live. Interestingly enough, the ancient and biblical word for trap that is used here is mokesh,.מוקש In modern Hebrew, it signifies a land mine! 6