Deuteronomy 19:14

Hebrew Bible

12 The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger to die. 13 You must not pity him, but purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood, so that it may go well with you. 14 You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker,28 which will have been defined in the inheritance you will obtain in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 15 A single witness may not testify against another person for any trespass or sin that he commits. A matter may be legally established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 16 If a false witness testifies against another person and accuses him of a crime,

Proverbs 23:10

Hebrew Bible

8 you will vomit up the little bit you have eaten and will have wasted your pleasant words. 9 Do not speak in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. 10 Do not move an ancient boundary stone or take over the fields of the fatherless, 11 for their Protector is strong; he will plead their case against you. 12 Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to the words of knowledge.

 Notes and References

"... The couplets of Proverbs 22:28 and 23:10 present us with the opening segment: ‘Do not remove the ancient marker,’ which is completed by two variant closures playing on the verbal motif of ‘father’: ‘which your fathers have set’ and, alternatively, ‘or enter the fields of the fatherless,’ and in their variance rendering radically different signification. While this opening segment echoes a proverb of the Egyptian Amenemope’s ‘Admonitions,’ it is also found in Deuteronomy 19:14 – in a very close variant of the Proverbs 22 couplet, in the context of a ‘law’ of Moses: ‘Do not remove your neighbor’s marker; which the men of old have set,’ a ‘legal’ motif, which in a poem of Hosea is referenced as an analogue, condemning a lawless Judah: ‘The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the marker’ (Hosea 5:10). Such economy of composition is one of the central factors reflected in the close formal proximity of biblical traditions presented as songs and those offered as wisdom. In Job 7:17 and Psalm 8:5 we find the famous interrogatory entrance: ‘What is a person?’ Job completes the query not merely adding the segment ‘that you make so much of one,’ but coupling it with ‘and that you pay attention to one,’ a couplet open to a positive orientation ..."

Thompson, Thomas L. Biblical Narrative and Palestine’s History: Changing Perspectives (p. 140) Equinox, 2013

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