Discovery BoxExodus 23:8
Context23:8 “You must not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see 1 and subverts the words of the righteous.
Deuteronomy 16:18-19
Context16:18 You must appoint judges and civil servants 2 for each tribe in all your villages 3 that the Lord your God is giving you, and they must judge the people fairly. 4 16:19 You must not pervert justice or show favor. Do not take a bribe, for bribes blind the eyes of the wise and distort 5 the words of the righteous. 6
Isaiah 1:23
Context1:23 Your officials are rebels, 7
they associate with 8 thieves.
All of them love bribery,
They do not take up the cause of the orphan, 11
or defend the rights of the widow. 12
Isaiah 33:15
Context33:15 The one who lives 13 uprightly 14
and speaks honestly;
the one who refuses to profit from oppressive measures
and rejects a bribe; 15
the one who does not plot violent crimes 16
and does not seek to harm others 17 –
Micah 7:3
Context7:3 They are determined to be experts at doing evil; 18
government officials and judges take bribes, 19
prominent men make demands,
and they all do what is necessary to satisfy them. 20
[23:8] 1 tn Heb “blinds the open-eyed.”
[16:18] 2 tn The Hebrew term וְשֹׁטְרִים (vÿshoterim), usually translated “officers” (KJV, NCV) or “officials” (NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT), derives from the verb שֹׁטֵר (shoter, “to write”). The noun became generic for all types of public officials. Here, however, it may be appositionally epexegetical to “judges,” thus resulting in the phrase, “judges, that is, civil officers,” etc. Whoever the שֹׁטְרִים are, their task here consists of rendering judgments and administering justice.
[16:18] 4 tn Heb “with judgment of righteousness”; ASV, NASB “with righteous judgment.”
[16:19] 5 tn Heb “twist, overturn”; NRSV “subverts the cause.”
[16:19] 6 tn Or “innocent”; NRSV “those who are in the right”; NLT “the godly.”
[1:23] 7 tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”
[1:23] 8 tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”
[1:23] 9 tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”
[1:23] 10 sn Isaiah may have chosen the word for gifts (שַׁלְמוֹנִים, shalmonim; a hapax legomena here), as a sarcastic pun on what these rulers should have been doing. Instead of attending to peace and wholeness (שָׁלוֹם, shalom), they sought after payoffs (שַׁלְמוֹנִים).
[1:23] 11 sn See the note at v. 17.
[1:23] 12 sn The rich oppressors referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.
[33:15] 13 tn Heb “walks” (so NASB, NIV).
[33:15] 14 tn Or, possibly, “justly”; NAB “who practices virtue.”
[33:15] 15 tn Heb “[who] shakes off his hands from grabbing hold of a bribe.”
[33:15] 16 tn Heb “[who] shuts his ear from listening to bloodshed.”
[33:15] 17 tn Heb “[who] closes his eyes from seeing evil.”
[7:3] 18 tn Heb “upon evil [are their] hands to do [it] well.”
[7:3] 19 tn Heb “the official asks – and the judge – for a bribe.”
[7:3] 20 tn More literally, “the great one announces what his appetite desires and they weave it together.” Apparently this means that subordinates plot and maneuver to make sure the prominent man’s desires materialize.
