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Exodus

About this book
Chapter 23

1 “You must not give a false report. Do not make common cause with the wicked to be a violent6 witness.⁠ 2 “You must not follow a crowd in doing evil things; in a lawsuit you must not offer testimony that agrees with a crowd so as to pervert justice,⁠ 3 and you must not show partiality to a poor man in his lawsuit. 4 “If you encounter your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, you must by all means return it to him. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen under its load, you must not ignore him, but be sure to help him with it. 6 “You must not turn away justice for your poor people in their lawsuits.⁠ 7 Keep your distance from a false charge—do not kill the innocent and the righteous, for I will not justify the wicked. 8 “You must not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and subverts the words of the righteous.⁠ 9 “You must not oppress a resident foreigner, since you know the life of a foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 10 “For six years you are to sow your land and gather in its produce. 11 But in the seventh year you must let it lie fallow and leave it alone so that the poor of your people may eat,⁠ and what they leave any animal in the field may eat; you must do likewise with your vineyard and your olive grove.⁠ 12 For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you must cease, in order that your ox and your donkey may rest and that your female servant’s son and the resident foreigner may refresh themselves. 13 “Pay attention to do everything I have told you, and do not even mention the names of other gods—do⁠ not let them be heard on your lips. 14 “Three times in the year you must make a pilgrim feast to me. 15 You are to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread; seven days you must eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you, at the appointed time of the month of Abib, for at that time you came out of Egypt. No one may appear before me empty-handed. 16 “You are also to observe the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors that you have sown in the field, and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year when you have gathered in your harvest out of the field. 17 At three times in the year all your males will appear before the Sovereign Lord. 18 “You must not offer the blood of my sacrifice with bread containing yeast; the fat of my festal sacrifice must not remain until morning. 19 The first of the firstfruits of your soil you must bring to the house of the Lord your God. “You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.⁠ 20 “I am going to send a messenger before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared.⁠ 21 Take heed because of him, and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my Name is in him.⁠ 22 But if you diligently obey him and do all that I command, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be an adversary to your adversaries.⁠ 23 For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely. 24 “You must not bow down to their gods; you must not serve them or do according to their practices. Instead you must completely overthrow them and smash their standing stones to pieces. 25 You must serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will remove sickness from your midst. 26 No woman will miscarry her young or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. 27 “I will send my terror before you, and I will alarm all the people whom you encounter; I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 I will send hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite before you.⁠ 29 I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals multiply against you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you become fruitful and inherit the land. 31 I will set your boundaries from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River, for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. 32 “You must make no covenant with them or with their gods. 33 They must not live in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 23:22 and 2 Maccabees 10:26

Hebrew Bible · Deuterocanon

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Summary

2 Maccabees portrays its military battle as a continuation of the Exodus tradition by invoking the language of Exodus 23, asking God to be an enemy of their enemies and an adversary to their adversaries.

Passages

Exodus 23:22

Hebrew Bible
20 “I am going to send a messenger before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared. 21 Take heed because of him, and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my Name is in him. 22 But if you diligently obey him and do all that I command, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be an adversary to your adversaries. 23 For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely. 24 “You must not bow down to their gods; you must not serve them or do according to their practices. Instead you must completely overthrow them and smash their standing stones to pieces.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

2 Maccabees 10:26

Deuterocanon
24 Now Timotheus, who had been defeated by the Jews before, having gathered together foreign forces in great multitudes, and having collected the cavalry which belonged to Asia, not a few, came as though he would take Judea by force of weapons. 25 But as he drew near, Maccabaeus and his men sprinkled dirt on their heads and bound their loins with sackcloth, in supplication to God, 26 and falling down upon the step in front of the altar, implored him to become gracious to them, and be an enemy to their enemies and an adversary to their adversaries, as the law declares. 27 Rising from their prayer they took up their weapons, and advanced some distance from the city. When they had come near to their enemies, they halted. 28 When the dawn was now breaking, the two armies joined in battle, the one part having this, beside virtue, for a pledge of success and victory, that they had fled to the Lord for refuge, the others making their passion their leader in the fight.
160–63 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Maccabees

References

"... 2 Maccabees is a Hellenistic work, very different from biblical historiography, but the influence of Deuteronomy on the book has been acknowledged by several scholars. Still, its use of Deuteronomy differs from that of 1 Maccabees. The religious fervor advocated by the book does not consist in the eradication of the unfaithful Jews/Judeans (Deuteronomy 13), but rather in martyrdom, in willingness to die rather than transgress the Law. This is a wholly different kind of faithfulness to the Law. What is more, the book has a clear theological agenda. First, it tries to argue that in spite of the persecution of the faithful ones, God is just, punishes the wicked and rewards the pious. In this connection, Daniel Schwartz has argued that Deuteronomy 32 plays a key role in the ideology of 2 Maccabees, in so far as it inspires the 'sin-punishment-reconciliation theme' so prominent in the book. The main Deuteronomic influence on 2 Maccabees is in fact the idea that the misfortunes of the Judeans were a consequence of their sins. The second aspect of the book's theological agenda is its insistence on the omnipotence of God, who fights for his people (See 2 Maccabees 10:26, referring explicitly to Exodus 23:22) and is able to grant victory even to a small group of barely armed people facing a powerful and professional army, an idea that appears in Deuteronomy too (7:17-24; 20:1-4). Moreover, in 2 Maccabees, God is so sensationally involved in the history of his people that celestial visions, powerful angels and miraculous deliverances abound ..."
Katell Berthelot, “The Biblical Conquest of the Promised Land and the Hasmonaean Wars According to 1 and 2 Maccabees,” in The Books of the Maccabees: History, Theology, Ideology: Papers of the Second International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books, ed. Géza G. Xeravits and József Zsengellér (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 45–60.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 23:22 and 2 Maccabees 10:26

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