Exodus 22:20-26

22:20 “Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord ¹  alone must be utterly destroyed. ² 

22:21 “You must not wrong ³  a foreigner ⁴  nor oppress him, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

22:22 “You must not afflict ⁵  any widow or orphan. 22:23 If you afflict them ⁶  in any way ⁷  and they cry to me, I will surely hear ⁸  their cry, 22:24 and my anger will burn and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children will be fatherless. ⁹ 

22:25 “If you lend money to any of ¹⁰  my people who are needy among you, do not be like a moneylender ¹¹  to him; do not charge ¹²  him interest. ¹³  22:26 If you do take ¹⁴  the garment of your neighbor in pledge, you must return it to him by the time the sun goes down, ¹⁵ 

[22:20]  ¹ tn Heb “not to Yahweh.”

[22:20]  ² tn The verb חָרַם (kharam) means “to be devoted” to God or “to be banned.” The idea is that it would be God’s to do with as he liked. What was put under the ban was for God alone, either for his service or for his judgment. But it was out of human control. Here the verb is saying that the person will be utterly destroyed.

[22:21]  ³ tn Or “oppress.”

[22:21]  ⁴ tn Or “alien,” both here and in 23:9. This individual is a resident foreigner; he lives in the land but, aside from provisions such as this, might easily be without legal rights.

[22:22]  ⁵ tn The verb “afflict” is a Piel imperfect from עָנָה (’anah); it has a wide range of meanings: “afflict, oppress, humiliate, rape.” These victims are at the mercy of the judges, businessmen, or villains. The righteous king and the righteous people will not mistreat them (see Isa 1:17; Job 31:16, 17, 21).

[22:23]  ⁶ tn The accusative here is the masculine singular pronoun, which leads S. R. Driver to conclude that this line is out of place, even though the masculine singular can be used in places like this (Exodus, 232). U. Cassuto says its use is to refer to certain classes (Exodus, 292).

[22:23]  ⁷ tn Here again and with “cry” the infinitive absolute functions with a diminished emphasis (GKC 342-43 §113.o).

[22:23]  ⁸ tn Here is the normal use of the infinitive absolute with the imperfect tense to emphasize the verb: “I will surely hear,” implying, “I will surely respond.”

[22:24]  ⁹ sn The punishment will follow the form of talionic justice, an eye for an eye, in which the punishment matches the crime. God will use invading armies (“sword” is a metonymy of adjunct here) to destroy them, making their wives widows and their children orphans.

[22:25]  ¹⁰ tn “any of” has been supplied.

[22:25]  ¹¹ sn The moneylender will be demanding and exacting. In Ps 109:11 and 2 Kgs 4:1 the word is rendered as “extortioner.”

[22:25]  ¹² tn Heb “set.”

[22:25]  ¹³ sn In ancient times money was lent primarily for poverty and not for commercial ventures (H. Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 [1971]: 127-34). The lending to the poor was essentially a charity, and so not to be an opportunity to make money from another person’s misfortune. The word נֶשֶׁךְ (neshekh) may be derived from a verb that means “to bite,” and so the idea of usury or interest was that of putting out one’s money with a bite in it (See S. Stein, “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament,” JTS 4 [1953]: 161-70; and E. Neufeld, “The Prohibition against Loans at Interest in the Old Testament,” HUCA 26 [1955]: 355-412).

[22:26]  ¹⁴ tn The construction again uses the infinitive absolute with the verb in the conditional clause to stress the condition.

[22:26]  ¹⁵ tn The clause uses the preposition, the infinitive construct, and the noun that is the subjective genitive – “at the going in of the sun.”