Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 23:9
Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
9. The gr, or foreigner ‘sojourning’ in Israel, not to be ‘crushed.’ Identical, in great measure verbally, with Exo 22:21: here, no doubt, directed specially against unfair judgement (cf. Deu 24:17 ‘Thou shalt not wrest the judgement of the sojourner,’ Exo 27:19, Mal 3:5).
stranger (each time)] sojourner: see on Exo 22:11.
for ye (emph.) know , seeing ye were sojourners, &c.] see on Exo 22:21.
the heart ] lit. the soul, i.e. the feelings.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Exo 23:9
Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye knew the heart of a stranger.
The logic of law
The argument is that our conduct is to spring out of our experience; we are to go back upon our own history and consciousness for the law that shall guide us in the treatment of our fellow-men. Why, could we do so, no more should we hear the rasping voice of rancour, hostile criticism, mean remark, or severe demand.
1. Thou shalt not oppress the struggling man, for thou thyself hast had thy struggle. Do not be hard upon those who are going up-hill.
2. Thou shall not oppress a doubting man, for thou thyself hast had thy doubts, if thou art more than half a man.
3. The text has a meaning in reference to ourselves, as well as to others. Thou shalt not renew old fears, for all thy fears have been round, black, blatant liars. Six fears have been with you, have lied to you, have made you play the fool in all the higher relations and issues of life, and yet I detect you this morning talking in the corner to a member of the same false family! Why do you not throw it from you, or order it behind you, or mock it with the jibing of perfect rest in God!
4. Thou shalt not–, because–. That is the logic of the text. Now, what must He be who gave such laws? In the character of the laws, find the character of the legislator. God must be tender; He takes care of strangers. Not only so; He must be aware of human history in all its changes and processes. He knows about the strangers who were in the land of Egypt; He knows about their deliverance; He knows that strangers are a tribe that must be on the earth from age to age; He knows us altogether. He speaks a word for the stranger. Oh, man, friendless, lonely man, you should love God. Oh, woman, mother, sister, sinning woman, you should love Christ. Oh, little children, frail flowers that may wither in a moment, you should put out your little hands, if in but dumb prayer, and long to touch the Son of God. Oh, working man, led away by the demagogue, made to scoff where you ought to pray, the Bible has done more for you than any other book ever attempted to do; this is a human book, a book for the nursery, the family, the market-place, the parliament, the universe! (J. Parker, D. D.)
Kindly qualities developed by adversity
I suppose it is adversity that develops the kindly qualities of our nature. I believe the sense of common degradation has a tendency to make the degraded amiable–at least among themselves. I am told it is found so in the plantations in slave-gangs. (Lord Beaconsfield.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 9. Ye know the heart of a stranger] Having been strangers yourselves, under severe, long continued, and cruel oppression, ye know the fears, cares, anxieties, and dismal forebodings which the heart of a stranger feels. What a forcible appeal to humanity and compassion!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The heart of a stranger, i.e. the disposition, dejection, and distress of his heart, which makes him an object of pity, not of malice or mischief.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Also thou shall not oppress a stranger,…. As these were not to be vexed and oppressed in a private manner and by private men, see
Ex 22:21 so neither in a public manner, and in a public court of judicature, or by judges on the bench when their cause was before them, by not doing them justice, showing a partiality to those of their own nation against a stranger; whereas a stranger ought to have equal justice done him as a native, and the utmost care should be taken that he has no injury done him, and the rather because he is a stranger:
for ye know the heart of a stranger; the fears he is possessed of, the inward distress of his soul, the anxiety of his mind, the tenderness of his heart, the workings of his passions, his grief and sorrow, and dejection of spirit: the Targum of Jonathan is,
“”the groaning of the soul of a stranger”: this the Israelitish judges knew, having had a very late experience of it:”
seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt; where they had been vexed and oppressed, brought into hard bondage, and groaned under it; and therefore it might be reasonably thought and expected that they would have a heart sympathizing with strangers, and use them well, and especially see that justice was done them, and no injury or oppression of any kind.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Verse 9:
This is a repetition of Ex 22:21, with special emphasis upon giving justice in a court of law.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(9) Thou shalt not oppress a stranger.See Note on Exo. 22:21. The repetition of the law indicates the strong inclination of the Hebrew people to ill-use strangers, and the anxiety of the legislator to check their inclination.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
9. Not oppress a stranger This command is repeated from Exo 22:21, with some addition, and shows that the foreigner was entitled to protection from judicial wrongs as well as other forms of oppression. Israel should not forget how the heart of a stranger feels.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 23:9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Ver. 9. Thou shalt not oppress, &c. ] See Trapp on “ Exo 22:21 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
heart = soul. Hebrew. nephesh. App-13.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
thou shalt not: Exo 21:21, Deu 10:19, Deu 24:14-18, Deu 27:19, Psa 94:6, Eze 22:7
ye know: Mat 18:33, Heb 2:17, Heb 2:18
heart: Heb. soul
Reciprocal: Gen 15:13 – thy Exo 20:10 – thy stranger Exo 22:21 – vex a stranger Lev 19:33 – And if Lev 25:35 – a stranger Deu 1:16 – the stranger Deu 23:7 – because thou Deu 23:16 – thou shalt not Deu 24:17 – pervert Eze 18:7 – hath not Eze 22:29 – oppressed Zec 7:10 – oppress Heb 4:15 – we have
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Exo 23:9. Thou shalt not oppress the stranger Though aliens might not inherit lands among them; yet, they must have justice done them. It is an instance of the equity of our law, that if an alien be tried for any crime, except treason, the one half of his jury, if he desire it, shall be foreigners; a kind provision that strangers may not be oppressed. For ye know the heart of a stranger That is, ye know by experience what a distressed, friendless condition that of a stranger is. The disposition, dejection, and distress of his heart, make him an object of pity, not of malice or injustice. Ye know his heart is easily depressed, and very unable to bear repulses. There is a great beauty in the expression.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
23:9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the {e} heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
(e) For since he is a stranger, his heart is sorrowful enough.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
1
THE STRANGER.
Exo 22:21, Exo 23:9.
Immediately after this, a ray of sunlight falls upon the sombre page.
We read an exhortation rather than a statute, which is repeated almost literally in the next chapter, and in both is supported by a beautiful and touching reason. “A stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shall ye oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” “A stranger shall ye not oppress, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exo 22:21, Exo 23:9).
The “stranger” of these verses is probably the settler among them, as distinguished from the traveller passing through the land. His want of friends and ignorance of their social order would place him at a disadvantage, of which they are forbidden to avail themselves, either by legal process (for the first passage is connected with jurisprudence), or in the affairs of common life. But the spirit of the commandment could not fail to influence their treatment of all foreigners; and simple and commonplace though it appear to us, it would have startled many of the wisest and greatest peoples of antiquity, and would have fallen as strangely upon the ears of the Greeks of Pericles, as of the modern Bedouin, with whom Israel had kinship. A foreigner, as such, was a foe: to wrong him was a paradox, because he had no rights: kinship, or else alliance or treaty was required to entitle the weaker to any better treatment than it suited the stronger to allow.
Yet we find a precept reiterated in this Jewish code which involves, in its inevitable though slow development, the abolition of negro slavery, the respect by powerful and civilised nations of the rights of indigenous tribes, the most boundless advance of philanthropy, through the most generous recognition of the fraternity of man.
However sternly the sword of Joshua might fall, it struck not at the foreigner, as such, but at those tribes, guilty and therefore accursed of God, the cup of whose iniquity was full. And yet there was enough of carnage to prove that so gracious a commandment as this could not have risen spontaneously in the heart of early Judaism. Does it seem to be made more natural, by any proposed shifting of the date?
The reason of the precept is beautifully human. It rests upon no abstract basis of common rights, nor prudential consideration of mutual advantage.
In our time it is sometimes proposed to build all morality upon such foundations; and strange consequences have already been deduced in cases where the proposed sanction has not seemed to apply. But, in fact, no advance in virtue has ever been traced to self-interest, although, after the advance took place, self-interest has always found its account in it. A progressive community is made of good men, and the motive to which Moses appeals is compassion fed by memory: “For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exo 22:21); “For ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exo 23:9).
The point is not that they may again be carried into captivity: it is that they have felt its bitterness, and ought to recoil from inflicting what they writhed under.
Now, this appeal is a master-stroke of wisdom. Much cruelty, and almost all the cruelty of the young, springs from ignorance, and that slowness of the imagination which cannot realise that the pains of others are like our own. Feeling them to be so, the charities of the poor toward one another frequently rise almost to sublimity. And thus, when suffering does not ulcerate the heart and make it savage, it is the most softening of all influences. In one of the most threadbare lines in the classics, the queen of Carthage boasts that
“I, not ignorant of woe, To pity the distressful know.”
And the boldest assertion in Scripture of the natural development of our Saviour’s human powers, is that which declares that “In that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb 2:18).
To this principle, then, Moses appeals, and by the appeal he educates the heart. He bids the people reflect on their own cruel hardships, on the hateful character of their tyrants, on their own greater hatefulness if they follow the vile example, after such bitter experience of its character. He does not yet rise to the grand level of the New Testament morality, Do all to thy neighbour which it is not servile and dependent to will that he should do for thee. But he attains to the level of that precept of Confucius and Zoroaster which has been so unworthily compared with it: Do not unto thy neighbour what thou wouldest not that he should do to thee–a precept which mere indifference obeys. Nay, he excels it; for the mental and spiritual attitude of one who respects his helpless neighbour because he so much resembles himself, will surely not be content without relieving the griefs that have so closely touched him. Thus again the legislation of Moses looks beyond itself.
Now, if the Jew should be merciful because he had himself known calamity, what implicit confidence may we repose upon the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?
In the same spirit they are warned against afflicting the widow or the orphan. And the threat which is added joins hand with the exhortation which preceded. They should not oppress the stranger, because they had been strangers and oppressed. Now the argument advances. The same God Who then heard their cry will hear the cry of the forlorn, and avenge them, according to the judicial fate which He had just announced, in kind, by bringing their own wives to widowhood and their children to orphanage (Exo 22:22-24).
To their brethren they should not lend money upon usury; but loans are no more recommended than afterwards by Solomon: the words are “if thou lend” (Exo 22:25). And if the raiment of the borrower were taken for a pledge, it must be returned for him to use at night, or else God will hear his cry, because, it is added very significantly and briefly, “I am gracious” (Exo 22:27). It is the most exalting of all motives: Be merciful, for I am merciful: ye shall be the children of your Father.
Again is to be observed the influence reaching beyond the prescription–the motive which cannot be felt without many other and larger consequences than the restoration of pledges at sunset.
How comes this precept to be followed by the words, “Thou shalt not curse God nor blaspheme a ruler” (Exo 22:28)? and is not this again somewhat strangely followed by the order not to delay to offer the first fruits of the soil, to consecrate the firstborn son, and to devote the firstborn of cattle at the same age when a son ought to be circumcised? (Exo 22:29-30).
If any link can be discovered, it is in the sense of communion with God, suggested by the recent appeal to His character as a motive that should weigh with man. Therefore they must not blaspheme Him, either directly or through His agents, nor tardily yield Him what He claims. Therefore it is added, “Ye shall be holy men unto Me,” and from the sense of dignity which religion thus inspires, a homely corollary is deduced–“Ye shall not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field” (Exo 22:31). The bondmen of Egypt must learn a high-minded self-respect.