Wyjścia 23:18 Komentarz

This chapter continues and concludes the acts that passed in the first session (if I may so call it) upon mount Sinai. Here are, I. Some laws of universal obligation, relating especially to the ninth commandment, against bearing false witness (Exo 23:1), and giving false judgment (Exo 23:2, Exo 23:3, Exo 23:6-8). Also a law of doing good to our enemies (Exo 23:4, Exo 23:5), and not oppressing strangers (Exo 23:9). II. Some laws peculiar to the Jews. The sabbatical year (Exo 23:10, Exo 23:11), the three annual feasts (Exo 23:14-17), with some laws pertaining thereto. III. Gracious promises of the completing of the mercy God had begun for them, upon condition of their obedience. That God would conduct them through the wilderness (Exo 23:20-24), that he would prosper all they had (Exo 23:25, Exo 23:26), that he would put them in possession of Canaan (Exo 23:27-31). But they must not mingle themselves with the nations (Exo 23:32, Exo 23:33).

INTRODUCTION TO EXODUS 23 This chapter contains several laws, chiefly judicial, relating to the civil polity of Israel, as concerning witness borne and judgment made of cases in courts of judicature, without any respect to poor or rich, and without the influence of a bribe, Exo 23:1, concerning doing good to an enemy in case any of his cattle go astray, or fall under their burden, Exo 23:4, and of the oppression of a stranger, Exo 23:9, and then follow others concerning the sabbath of the seventh year, and of the seventh day, with a caution against the use of the names of idols, Exo 23:10, next are laws concerning the appearance of all their males at the three feasts, Exo 23:14, and concerning the slaying of the sacrifice of the passover, and bringing the first of the firstfruits of the land, Exo 23:18 and then a promise is made of sending an angel to them to bring them into the land of Canaan, where they should carefully avoid all idolatry, and show a just indignation against it, and serve the Lord, and then it would be well with them, Exo 23:20, and particularly it is promised, that the Lord would send his fear, and his hornets, before them, to destroy the inhabitants of the land, and drive out the rest by little and little, until they should possess the utmost borders of it, which are fixed, Exo 23:27, and the chapter is concluded with a direction not to make a covenant with these people, or their gods, nor suffer them to dwell among them, lest they should be a snare unto them, Exo 23:32.

Behold, I send an angel before thee,.... Not a created angel, but the uncreated one, the Angel of God's presence, that was with the Israelites at Sinai, and in the wilderness; who saved, redeemed, bore, and carried them all the days of old, whom they rebelled against and tempted in the wilderness; as appears by all the characters after given of him, which by no means agree with a created angel: Aben Ezra observes, that some say this is the book of the law, because it is said, "my name is in him", or "in the midst of it"; others say, the ark of the covenant; but he says this angel is Michael; and if indeed by Michael is intended the uncreated angel, as he always is in Scripture, he is right: Jarchi remarks, that their Rabbins say, this is Metatron, whose name is as the name of his master; Metatron, by gematry, is Shaddai, which signifies almighty or all-sufficient, and is an epithet of the divine Being; and Metatron seems to be a corruption of the word "mediator": some of the ancient Jewish writers say (k), this is the Angel that is the Redeemer of the world, and the keeper of the children of men: and Philo the Jew (l) applies the word unto the divine Logos, and says,"he (God) uses the divine Word as the guide of the way; for the oracle is, "behold, I send my Angel", &c.''which agrees with what follows: to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared; to preserve the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness, from all their enemies that should set upon them, and to bring them safe at last to the land of Canaan, which he had appointed for them, and promised to them, and had prepared both in his purpose and gift for them, and would make way for their settlement in it by driving out the nations before them. (k) In Zohar in Gen. fol. 124. 4. (l) "De migratione" Abraham, p. 415.

Laws against evil-speaking, Exo 23:1. Against bad company, Exo 23:2. Against partiality, Exo 23:3. Laws commanding acts of kindness and humanity, Exo 23:4, Exo 23:5. Against oppression, Exo 23:6. Against unrighteous decisions, Exo 23:7. Against bribery and corruption, Exo 23:8. Against unkindness to strangers, Exo 23:9. The ordinance concerning the Sabbatical year, Exo 23:10, Exo 23:11. The Sabbath a day of rest, Exo 23:12. General directions concerning circumcision, etc., Exo 23:13. The three annual festivals, Exo 23:14. The feast of unleavened bread, Exo 23:15. The feast of harvest, and the feast of ingathering, Exo 23:16. All the males to appear before God thrice in a year, Exo 23:17. Different ordinances - no blood to be offered with leavened bread - no fat to be left till the next day - the first fruits to be brought to the house of God - and a kid not to be seethed in its mother's milk, Exo 23:18, Exo 23:19. Description of the Angel of God, who was to lead the people into the promised land, and drive out the Amorites, etc., Exo 23:20-23. Idolatry to be avoided, and the images of idols destroyed, Exo 23:24. Different promises to obedience, Exo 23:25-27. Hornets shall be sent to drive out the Canaanites, etc., Exo 23:28. The ancient inhabitants to be driven out by little and little, and the reason why, Exo 23:29, Exo 23:30. The boundaries of the promised land, Exo 23:31. No league or covenant to be made with the ancient inhabitants, who are all to be utterly expelled, Exo 23:32, Exo 23:33.

The blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread - The sacrifice here mentioned is undoubtedly the Passover; (see Exo 34:25); this is called by way of eminence My sacrifice, because God had instituted it for that especial purpose, the redemption of Israel from the Egyptian bondage, and because it typified The Lamb Of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. We have already seen how strict the prohibition against leaven was during this festival, and what was signified by it. See on Exodus 12 (note).

LAWS CONCERNING SLANDER, &c. (Exo. 23:1-33) put not thine hand--join not hands.

The blessing attending their appearing before the Lord was dependent upon the feasts being kept in the proper way, by the observance of the three rules laid down in Exo 23:18 and Exo 23:19. "Thou shalt not offer the blood of My sacrifice upon leavened bread." על upon, as in Exo 12:8, denoting the basis upon which the sacrifice was offered. The meaning has been correctly given by the early commentators, viz., "as long as there is any leavened bread in your houses," or "until the leaven has been entirely removed from your houses." The reference made here to the removal of leaven, and the expression "blood of My sacrifice," both point to the paschal lamb, which was regarded as the sacrifice of Jehovah κατ̓ ἐξοχήν, on account of its great importance. Onkelos gives this explanation: "My Passover" for "My sacrifice." - "Neither shall the fat of My feast remain (ילין to pass the night) until the morning." "The fat of My feast" does not mean the fat of My festal sacrifice, for חג, a feast, is not used for the sacrifice offered at the feast; it signifies rather the best of My feast, i.e., the paschal sacrifice, as we may see from Exo 34:25, where "the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover" is given as the explanation of "the fat of My feast." As the paschal sacrifice was the sacrifice of Jehovah par excellence, so the feast of the Passover was the feast of Jehovah par excellence. The expression "fat of My feast" is not to be understood as referring at all to the fat of the lamb, which was burned upon the altar in the case of the expiatory and whole offerings; for there could have been no necessity for the injunction not to keep this till the morning, inasmuch as those parts of every sacrifice which were set apart for the altar were burned immediately after the sprinkling of the blood. The allusion is to the flesh of the paschal lamb, which was eaten in the night before daybreak, after which anything that remained was to be burned. עד־בּקר (without the article) till morning, has the same meaning as לבּקר "for the (following) morning" in Exo 34:25. Exo 23:19 The next command in Exo 23:19 has reference to the feast of Harvest, or feast of Weeks. In "the first-fruits of thy land" there is an unmistakeable allusion to "the first-fruits of thy labours" in Exo 23:16. It is true the words, "the first of the first-fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God," are so general in their character, that we can hardly restrict them to the wave-loaves to be offered as first-fruits at the feast of Weeks, but must interpret them as referring to all the first-fruits, which they had already been commanded not to delay to offer (Exo 22:29), and the presentation of which is minutely prescribed in Num 18:12-13, and Deu 26:2-11, - including therefore the sheaf of barley to be offered in the second day of the feast of unleavened bread (Lev 23:9.). At the same time the reference to the feast of Weeks is certainly to be retained, inasmuch as this feast was an express admonition to Israel, to offer the first of the fruits of the Lord. In the expression בּכּוּרי ראשׁית, the latter might be understood as explanatory of the former and in apposition to it, since they are both of them applied to the first-fruits of the soil (vid., Deu 26:2, Deu 26:10, and Num 18:13). But as ראשׁית could hardly need any explanation in this connection, the partitive sense is to be preferred; though it is difficult to decide whether "the first of the first-fruits" signifies the first selection from the fruits that had grown, ripened, and been gathered first-that is to say, not merely of the entire harvest, but of every separate production of the field and soil, according to the rendering of the lxx ἀπαρχηὰς τῶν πρωτογεννημάτων τῆς γῆς, - or whether the word ראשׁית is used figuratively, and signifies the best of the first-fruits. There is no force in the objection offered to the former view, that "in no other case in which the offering of first-fruits generally is spoken of, is one particular portion represented as holy to Jehovah, but the first-fruits themselves are that portion of the entire harvest which was holy to Jehovah." For, apart from Num 18:12, where a different rendering is sometimes given to ראשׁית, the expression מראשׁית in Deu 26:2 shows unmistakeably that only a portion of the first of all the fruit of the ground had to be offered to the Lord. On the other hand, this view is considerably strengthened by the fact, that whilst בּכּוּר, בּכּוּרים signify those fruits which ripened first, i.e., earliest, ראשׁית is used to denote the ἀπαρχή, the first portion or first selection from the whole, not only in Deu 26:2, Deu 26:10, but also in Lev 23:10, and most probably in Num 18:12 as well. - Now if these directions do not refer either exclusively or specially to the loaves of first-fruits of the feast of Weeks, the opinion which has prevailed from the time of Abarbanel to that of Knobel, that the following command, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk," refers to the feast of Ingathering, is deprived of its principal support. And any such allusion is rendered very questionable by the fact, that in Deu 14:21, where this command is repeated, it is appended to the prohibition against eating the flesh of an animal that had been torn to pieces. Very different explanations have been given to the command. In the Targum, Mishnah, etc., it is regarded as a general prohibition against eating flesh prepared with milk. Luther and others suppose it to refer to the cooking of the kid, before it has been weaned from its mother's milk. But the actual reference is to the cooking of a kid in the milk of its own mother, as indicating a contempt of the relation which God has established and sanctified between parent and young, and thus subverting the divine ordinances. As kids were a very favourite food (Gen 27:9, Gen 27:14; Jdg 6:19; Jdg 13:15; Sa1 16:20), it is very likely that by way of improving the flavour they were sometimes cooked in milk. According to Aben Ezra and Abarbanel, this was a custom adopted by the Ishmaelites; and at the present day the Arabs are in the habit of cooking lamb in sour milk. A restriction is placed upon this custom in the prohibition before us, but there is no intention to prevent the introduction of a superstitious usage customary at the sacrificial meals of other nations, which Spencer and Knobel have sought to establish as at all events probable, though without any definite historical proofs, and for the most part on the strength of far-fetched analogies.