Exo 22:7-26 | Clarke | e4.org | Verse 7. Deliver unto his neighbour ] This is called pledging in the law of bailments ; it is a deposit of goods by a debtor to his creditor, to be kept till the debt be discharged. Whatever goods were thus left in the hands of another person, that person, according to the Mosaic law, became responsible for them; if they were stolen, and the thief was found, he was to pay double; if he could not be found, the oath of the person who had them in keeping, made before the magistrates, that he knew nothing of them, was considered a full acquittance. Among the Romans, if goods were lost which a man had intrusted to his neighbour, the depositary was obliged to pay their full value. But if a man had been driven by necessity, as in case of fire, to lodge his goods with one of his neighbours, and the goods were lost, the depositary was obliged to pay double their value, because of his unfaithfulness in a case of such distress, where his dishonesty, connected with the destruction by the fire , had completed the ruin of the sufferer. To this case the following law is applicable: Cum quis fidem elegit, nec depositum redditur, contentus esse debet simplo: cum vero extante necessitate deponat, crescit perfidia crimen , &c.-Digest., lib. xvi., tit. 3, 1. 1.

‏ Exodus 22:7-26

Verse 7. Deliver unto his neighbour] This is called pledging in the law of bailments; it is a deposit of goods by a debtor to his creditor, to be kept till the debt be discharged. Whatever goods were thus left in the hands of another person, that person, according to the Mosaic law, became responsible for them; if they were stolen, and the thief was found, he was to pay double; if he could not be found, the oath of the person who had them in keeping, made before the magistrates, that he knew nothing of them, was considered a full acquittance. Among the Romans, if goods were lost which a man had intrusted to his neighbour, the depositary was obliged to pay their full value. But if a man had been driven by necessity, as in case of fire, to lodge his goods with one of his neighbours, and the goods were lost, the depositary was obliged to pay double their value, because of his unfaithfulness in a case of such distress, where his dishonesty, connected with the destruction by the fire, had completed the ruin of the sufferer. To this case the following law is applicable: Cum quis fidem elegit, nec depositum redditur, contentus esse debet simplo: cum vero extante necessitate deponat, crescit perfidia crimen, &c.-Digest., lib. xvi., tit. 3, 1. 1.

Verse 8. Unto the judges] See Clarke on Ex 21:6.

Verse 9. Challengeth to be his] It was necessary that such a matter should come before the judges, because the person in whose possession the goods were found might have had them by a fair and honest purchase; and, by sifting the business, the thief might be found out, and if found, be obliged to pay double to his neighbour.

Verse 11. An oath of the Lord be between them] So solemn and awful were all appeals to God considered in those ancient times, that it was taken for granted that the man was innocent who could by an oath appeal to the omniscient God that he had not put his hand to his neighbour's goods. Since oaths have become multiplied, and since they have been administered on the most trifling occasions, their solemnity is gone, and their importance little regarded. Should the oath ever reacquire its weight and importance, it must be when administered only in cases of peculiar delicacy and difficulty, and as sparingly as in the days of Moses.

Verse 13. If it be torn in pieces-let him bring it for witness] Rather, Let him bring ed hatterephah, a testimony or evidence of the torn thing, such as the horns, hoofs, &c. This is still a law in some countries among graziers: if a horse, cow, sheep, or goat, intrusted to them, be lost, and the keeper asserts it was devoured by dogs, &c., the law obliges him to produce the horns and hoofs, because on these the owner's mark is generally found. If these can be produced, the keeper is acquitted by the law. The ear is often the place marked, but this is not absolutely required, because a ravenous beast may eat the ear as well as any other part, but he cannot eat the horns or the hoofs. It seems however that in after times two of the legs and the ear were required as evidences to acquit the shepherd of all guilt. See Am 3:12.

Verse 16. If a man entice a maid] This was an exceedingly wise and humane law, and must have operated powerfully against seduction and fornication; because the person who might feel inclined to take the advantage of a young woman knew that he must marry her, and give her a dowry, if her parents consented; and if they did not consent that their daughter should wed her seducer, in this case he was obliged to give her the full dowry which could have been demanded had she been still a virgin. According to the Targumist here, and to De 22:29, the dowry was fifty shekels of silver, which the seducer was to pay to her father, and he was obliged to take her to wife; nor had he authority, according to the Jewish canons, ever to put her away by a bill of divorce. This one consideration was a powerful curb on disorderly passions, and must tend greatly to render marriages respectable, and prevent all crimes of this nature.

Verse 18. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.] If there had been no witches, such a law as this had never been made. The existence of the law, given under the direction of the Spirit of God, proves the existence of the thing. It has been doubted whether mecash-shephah, which we translate witch, really means a person who practised divination or sorcery by spiritual or infernal agency. Whether the persons thus denominated only pretended to have an art which had no existence, or whether they really possessed the power commonly attributed to them, are questions which it would be improper to discuss at length in a work of this kind; but that witches, wizards, those who dealt with familiar spirits, &c., are represented in the sacred writings as actually possessing a power to evoke the dead, to perform, supernatural operations, and to discover hidden or secret things by spells, charms, incantations, &c., is evident to every unprejudiced reader of the Bible. Of Manasseh it is said: He caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times [, veonen, he used divination by clouds] and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, [ vechishsheph,] and dealt with a familiar spirit, [ veasah ob, performed a variety of operations by means of what was afterwards called the πνευμαπυθωνος, the spirit of Python,] and with wizards, [ yiddeoni, the wise or knowing ones;] and he wrought much evil in the sight of the Lord; 2Ch 33:6. It is very likely that the Hebrew cashaph, and the Arabic [Arabic] cashafa, had originally the same meaning, to uncover, to remove a veil, to manifest, reveal, make bare or naked; and [Arabic] mecashefat is used to signify commerce with God. See Wilmet and Giggeius. The mecashshephah or witch, therefore, was probably a person who professed to reveal hidden mysteries, by commerce with God, or the invisible world.

From the severity of this law against witches, &c., we may see in what light these were viewed by Divine justice. They were seducers of the people from their allegiance to God, on whose judgment alone they should depend; and by impiously prying into futurity, assumed an attribute of God, the foretelling of future events, which implied in itself the grossest blasphemy, and tended to corrupt the minds of the people, by leading them away from God and the revelation he had made of himself. Many of the Israelites had, no doubt, learned these curious arts from their long residence with the Egyptians; and so much were the Israelites attached to them, that we find such arts in repute among them, and various practices of this kind prevailed through the whole of the Jewish history, notwithstanding the offence was capital, and in all cases punished with death.

Verse 19. Lieth with a beast] If this most abominable crime had not been common, it never would have been mentioned in a sacred code of laws. It is very likely that it was an Egyptian practice; and it is certain, from an account in Sonnini's Travels, that it is practised in Egypt to the present day.

Verse 20. Utterly destroyed.] The word cherem denotes a thing utterly and finally separated from God and devoted to destruction, without the possibility of redemption.

Verse 21. Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him] This was not only a very humane law, but it was also the offspring of a sound policy: "Do not vex a stranger; remember ye were strangers. Do not oppress a stranger; remember ye were oppressed. Therefore do unto all men as ye would they should do to you." It was the produce of a sound policy: "Let strangers be well treated among you, and many will come to take refuge among you, and thus the strength of your country will be increased. If refugees of this kind be treated well, they will become proselytes to your religion, and thus their souls may be saved." In every point of view, therefore, justice, humanity, sound policy, and religion, say. Neither vex nor oppress a stranger.

Verse 22. Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.] It is remarkable that offences against this law are not left to the discretion of the judges to be punished; God reserves the punishment to himself, and by this he strongly shows his abhorrence of the crime. It is no common crime, and shall not be punished in a common way; the wrath of God shall wax hot against him who in any wise afflicts or wrongs a widow or a fatherless child: and we may rest assured that he who helps either does a service highly acceptable in the sight of God.

Verse 25. Neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.]

neshech, from nashach, to bite, cut, or pierce with the teeth; biting usury. So the Latins call it usura vorax, devouring usury. "The increase of usury is called neshech, because it resembles the biting of a serpent; for as this is so small as scarcely to be perceptible at first, but the venom soon spreads and diffuses itself till it reaches the vitals, so the increase of usury, which at first is not perceived nor felt, at length grows so much as by degrees to devour another's substance."-Leigh.

It is evident that what is here said must be understood of accumulated usury, or what we call compound interest only; and accordingly neshech is mentioned with and distinguished from tarbith and marbith, interest or simple interest, Le 25:36, 37; Pr 28:8; Eze 18:8, 13, 17, and Ex 22:12.

-Parkhurst.

Perhaps usury may be more properly defined unlawful interest, receiving more for the loan of money than it is really worth, and more than the law allows. It is a wise regulation in the laws of England, that if a man be convicted of usury-taking unlawful interest, the bond or security is rendered void, and he forfeits treble the sum borrowed. Against such an oppressive practice the wisdom of God saw it essentially necessary to make a law to prevent a people, who were naturally what our Lord calls the Pharisees, φιλαργυροι, lovers of money, (Lu 16:14,) from oppressing each other; and who, notwithstanding the law in the text, practise usury in all places of their dispersion to the present day.

Verse 26. If thou-take thy neighbour's raiment to pledge] It seems strange that any pledge should be taken which must be so speedily restored; but it is very likely that the pledge was restored by night only, and that he who pledged it brought it back to his creditor next morning. The opinion of the rabbins is, that whatever a man needed for the support of life, he had the use of it when absolutely necessary, though it was pledged. Thus he had the use of his working tools by day, but he brought them to his creditor in the evening. His hyke, which serves an Arab as a plaid does a Highlander, (See Clarke on Ex 12:34,) was probably the raiment here referred to: it is a sort of coarse blanket, about six yards long, and five or six feet broad, which an Arab always carries with him, and on which he sleeps at night, it being his only substitute for a bed. As the fashions in the east scarcely ever change, it is very likely that the raiment of the Israelites was precisely the same with that of the modern Arabs, who live in the very same desert in which the Hebrews were when this law was given. How necessary it was to restore the hyke to a poor man before the going down of the sun, that he might have something to repose on, will appear evident from the above considerations. At the same time, the returning it daily to the creditor was a continual acknowledgment of the debt, and served instead of a written acknowledgment or bond; as we may rest assured that writing, if practised at all before the giving of the law, was not common: but it is most likely that it did not exist.