8 And ayou bshall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the discerning and perverts the words of the righteous.
9 “Also you shall not oppress a1 stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
The Law of Sabbaths
10a“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce,
11 but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your1 olive grove.
12aSix days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed.
13 “And in all that I have said to you, abe circumspect and bmake no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.
Three Annual Feasts
14a“Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year:
15aYou shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; bnone shall appear before Me empty);
16aand bthe Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in thefruitof your labors from the field.
17a“Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord1God.
18a“You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with bleavened bread; nor shall the fat of My1 sacrifice remain until morning.
19aThe first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. bYou shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
six years thou shalt sow thy land—intermitting the cultivation of the land every seventh year. But it appears that even then there was a spontaneous produce which the poor were permitted freely to gather for their use, and the beasts driven out fed on the remainder, the owners of fields not being allowed to reap or collect the fruits of the vineyard or oliveyard during the course of this sabbatical year. This was a regulation subservient to many excellent purposes; for, besides inculcating the general lesson of dependence on Providence, and of confidence in His faithfulness to His promise respecting the triple increase on the sixth year (Leviticus 25:20-21), it gave the Israelites a practical proof that they held their properties of the Lord as His tenants, and must conform to His rules on pain of forfeiting the lease of them.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Exodus 23:10:
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