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Justice for All23 You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. 2You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice; 3nor shall you be partial to the poor in a lawsuit. 4 When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. 5 When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free. 6 You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. 7Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. 8You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. 9 You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. Sabbatical Year and Sabbath10 For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; 11but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard. 12 Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed. 13Be attentive to all that I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips. The Annual Festivals14 Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. 15You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. No one shall appear before me empty-handed. 16 You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. 17Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord G od. 18 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my festival remain until the morning. 19 The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the L ord your God. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. The Conquest of Canaan Promised20 I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. 21Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him. 22 But if you listen attentively to his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes. 23 When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, 24you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces. 25You shall worship the L ord your God, and I will bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from among you. 26No one shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. 27I will send my terror in front of you, and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28And I will send the pestilence in front of you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. 29I will not drive them out from before you in one year, or the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you. 30Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. 31I will set your borders from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you. 32You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. 33They shall not live in your land, or they will make you sin against me; for if you worship their gods, it will surely be a snare to you. New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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31. And I will set thy bounds. There is no question that He confirms here the covenant which he had made with Abraham in somewhat different words. More briefly had it been said to Abraham, “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” (Genesis 15:18.) Here the four cardinal points of the compass are enumerated, and, instead of the Nile, the other sea is mentioned, which is opposite to the sea of Tarshish.271271 Corn. a Lapide thus explains these boundaries, — “God here gives the boundaries of the promised land with respect to the cardinal points; for it has the Red Sea as its southern limit; on the west, the sea of the Palestini, or the Mediterranean, whose shores are inhabited by the Philistines; (whence Scripture often speaks of ‘the Sea’ to express the west;) on the east, it has the Arabian Desert, lying between it and Egypt; and, finally, to the north it has the River Euphrates, which is called par excellence (autonomasian) the River.” Nor is it anything new which the Israelites are commanded to expect; but they are reminded of what they had heard of by tradition even from the time of Abraham. Hence what I have already said is more clearly perceived, viz., that the ancient covenant is set before them, in order that they may respond to God’s gratuitous favor, and on their part honor and worship Him, who had already anticipated them with His mercy. Furthermore, when they had robbed themselves of this blessing, God applied a remedy to their iniquity, by raising up a new condition of things under David, to whom this promise is repeated, as is seen in Psalm 72. Therefore, although even up to that time their inheritance was in a measure incomplete (truncata),272272 “Quand Dieu a establi son Eglise;” when God established His (Church. — Fr. yet, under this renovated condition, they reached its full and solid enjoyment. But since that prosperity and extension of the kingdom was not lasting, but after Solomon’s death began to fail, and at last its dignity was destroyed; therefore Zechariah uses the same words in declaring its ultimate and perfect restoration. (Zechariah 9:10.) Thence we gather that by the coming of Christ this prophecy at length obtained its perfect accomplishment; not that the race of Abraham then began to bear rule within the bounds here laid down, but inasmuch as Christ embraced the four quarters of the globe under His dominion, from the east even to the west, and from the north even to the south. Meanwhile the power of David was the prototype of this boundless reign, when he acquired the sovereignty of the promised land. We ought not to think it unreasonable that the ancient people should be kept out of some portion of that inheritance which was to be expected by them in accordance with the covenant; but rather does God’s incredible goodness display itself, in that, when they had altogether disinherited themselves, He still combated their iniquity, and failed not to shew practically His faithfulness. We may see the same thing in the calling of the Gentiles; for, if the Jews had continued faithful, the Gentiles would have been joined with them, as it had been said, “In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew,” (Zechariah 8:23;) but their rebellion brought it about, that God only gathered from among them the first-fruits of His Church, and afterwards the Gentiles were substituted in the place which they had left empty. In this way neither did this people retain their right of primogeniture, neither did God’s truth cease to stand firm, as Paul more fully explains in the eleventh chapter of Romans. |