Exodus 23:1 - Forerunner Commentary

Exodus 23:1

Commentaries:

No entry exists in Forerunner Commentary for Exodus 23:1.

Exodus 23:1-2
Excerpted from: Biblical Principles of Justice (Part Two)

These are just a couple of verses that are in a long passage about justice and we are going to look at a great many of them, all the way through verse 8. But what we see in verses 1 and 2, first of all, is the law against perjury. A perjured witness is a criminal. He cannot be trusted. He is a liar. He is willing to lie for whatever reason in a criminal case. God says perjury prevents justice because it is not the truth—godly justice is all about getting to the truth—and so a perjured person has to be punished.

Of course, his eyewitness testimony has to be thrown out. I think we are all pretty much aware of this one. It is not too difficult a principle to understand. Perjury is not allowed. You cannot lie on the witness stand.

Verse 2 condemns something else, and that is any kind of mob or majority rule outside of God’s system of right and wrong, the intent (as it says here in the text) being to do evil. What this gets to, in terms of justice, is, as judges, we are not to go against what is right or what is against our conscience in order to please the public—if we are ever in a situation where we have to judge and we have got this whole crowd yammering that this is what the judgment should be.

Exodus 23:1-2
Excerpted from: Differences of Opinion

Justice demands impartiality rather than unwarranted compliance with the crowd. Judges are cautioned not to pervert judgment and they must not be overruled either by might or multitude, nor to go against their consciences in giving judgment.

Now in verse 2 of Exodus 23, the English word they are used for crowd is multitude. Crowd or multitude is translated from the Hebrew word, rabbim, which sometimes signifies the great chiefs or mighty ones or great teachers. The sense can also be understood as "you shall not follow the example of the group, the great or the rich, who may so far disgrace their own character as to live without God in the world and trample His laws." United States President John F. Kennedy in his 1963 State of the Union message revealingly said, "The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion."

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