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23:10-12 Renewal, rest (23:12), and refreshment are important. Just as humans and animals are to enjoy these in the weekly Sabbath, so the land is to be given rest every seven years (23:10-11; see study note on 20:8-11).
23:1-3 It is necessary to give true witness, even under the pressure of evil people (23:1), the crowd (23:2), or misguided motives (23:3, 7-8).
23:14-17 God’s command was that every man in Israel must appear before . . . the Lord (23:17), that is, at the Tabernacle, three times each year. While all the people were camped around the Tabernacle in the wilderness, this requirement did not create any problems. Later, when the people were dispersed throughout the land at a distance from the Tabernacle (l...
23:14-17 God’s command was that every man in Israel must appear before . . . the Lord (23:17), that is, at the Tabernacle, three times each year. While all the people were camped around the Tabernacle in the wilderness, this requirement did not create any problems. Later, when the people were dispersed throughout the land at a distance from the Tabernacle (later the Temple), it was more difficult. The stipulation seems to have been intended to keep the people from building local worship centers, which would splinter them as a people and allow for pagan influences on the worship of Yahweh. Sadly, these stipulations were not carefully carried out (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 23:21-23).
23:15 appointed time in early spring, in the month of Abib: See 13:4-5; Lev 23:5-8; Deut 16:1-8.
Moses
Moses Moses was the founding leader of Israel as a nation. God used Moses at a critical juncture in the history of his people. He was the prophet who received the law and mediated God’s covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai (Exod 19:3-6). He was also the first known writer of Scripture. The younger brother of Miriam and Aaron, Moses was born in Egypt under dangerous circumstances (Exod 1:15–2:2). The Egyptian pharaoh, fearing a rebellion, had decreed that all Hebrew boys be killed at birth. Moses’ mother, Jochebed, entrusted her infant son to God and set him afloat in the Nile in a reed basket. Pharaoh’s daughter found him and took him into the palace to raise as her own child (Exod 2:3-10). Little is known about Moses’ upbringing. Jewish tradition holds that he received both administrative and military training in Pharaoh’s household. When he was about forty years old, he killed an Egyptian to rescue a Hebrew slave, and then he fled to Midian (2:11-15; cp. Acts 7:23-29). There he rescued some young women who were being harassed as they watered their flocks. Their father (Jethro) invited him home. Moses married one of the women, Zipporah, and began a family as he cared for h...
genesis 15:16
genesis 15:18
exodus 3:2
exodus 13:4-5
exodus 22:22-24
exodus 22:27
exodus 23:1
exodus 23:2
Ancient Law Codes
Ancient Law Codes Until the late 1800s, the law of Moses was believed to be a unique code of law, existing nearly a thousand years before anything comparable in Greek and Roman laws. Excavations in Persia in the late 1800s, however, uncovered laws set forth by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the 1700s BC, some 300 years prior to Moses. Surprisingly, a number of the laws in that list are almost identical to those in the Bible. Though this seemed to imply that the biblical laws had been taken from Hammurabi, subsequent discoveries produced law codes preceding Hammurabi’s by at least 500 years, and several laws are common to all of them, so Hammurabi also did not originate them. What does this mean for the Bible? First, it is not surprising that we find similar laws from cultures neighboring Israel; similar societies require similar codes of conduct in order to ensure justice. Second, the biblical laws are unique in that they are incorporated in a covenant with God. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, religious laws (about sacrifice, prayers, offerings, etc.) and civil laws (covering theft, lying, sexual conduct, murder, etc.) were completely unrelated because ethics and religi...
The Purpose of the Sinai Covenant
The Purpose of the Sinai Covenant Nearly everything the Israelites had learned about ultimate reality from the Egyptians was wrong. There are not many gods; there is only one God. The Creator is perfectly good, and evil is the result of rebellion against him. God’s blessings cannot be obtained through magic and manipulation; instead, they are free to those who lovingly submit to him. Upon leaving Egypt, the Israelites did not yet know God in the way that he intended. In the plagues and the Red Sea crossing, they learned of God’s unique power. In the wilderness, they learned about God’s providential care. But they still did not know God’s character. The covenant at Sinai was designed to teach the Israelites about God’s nature and character as they lived out his Torah, his instructions. The covenant used a familiar political form, the suzerain-vassal treaty, in which a great king (the suzerain) made a treaty with a nation he had subjected as a vassal people. In such a treaty, the conquered people would declare their absolute loyalty to the king and obedience to his demands. The king, for his part, would promise to care for the conquered people and protect them from any enemi...