Do The Right Thing (Exodus 23:1-9) Series

The other way to think about this, is that if one person is poor, the other person in a legal dispute isn't. Perhaps that person is rich.

Now, there are maybe people in this room who instinctively, reflexively, dislike the rich. They see them driving nice cars, or trucks. They see them pulling into beautiful homes, in the nice part of town. They see them as bosses, and general managers, and CEOs. And when they see these people living comfortable, prosperous lives, they feel a lot of ugly emotions-- anger, greed, envy, frustration. When a legal dispute pops up between someone rich, and someone poor, you can't view that as an opportunity to level the playing field. Just because someone's poor, doesn't mean their cause is right. Just because someone's rich, doesn't mean they should be punished, or treated more harshly.

Let me tell you another story. When I was a kid, there was one day my dad was driving us three kids in the backseat on a freeway toward our house, and we saw a Mercedes broken down on the side of the road. We three kids knew that a Mercedes was a rich man's car. And we knew, sitting in the back of that Dodge Omni, that it was better to own a small, cheap car. It was better to live modestly. And so, as we passed that Mercedes, we three kids all cheered. Loudly.

Terrible, right?

I'm pretty sure my dad was appalled. But he took that opportunity to teach us about how we should view the rich. We don't celebrate when bad things happen to rich people. And we don't look for opportunities, to harm the rich.

In legal disputes, God expects all people to be treated fairly.

This brings us to verses 4-5. Here, God shifts our attention from legal disputes, to talking about oxen. We are maybe going to struggle with the mental switch, but there's a reason for the shift:

(4) When you come upon the ox of your enemy or his donkey going astray, you shall surely/in fact bring it back to him.

(5) When you see the donkey of the one hating you lying down [helpless] under its burden, you should refrain from leaving [it] to him.

You shall surely/in fact restore (Neh. 3:8)/rearrange [the load] (Job 9:27) with him.

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Verse 5 is really difficult. "You should refrain from leaving [it] to him."

We find the same verb plus preposition in Job 39:14: "For she leaves/abandons TO the earth her eggs.

In the Exodus passage, the "it"-- the ox-- would be implied.

The verb I translated "restore," following van der Merwe (who points to DBL), is actually the same verb translated "leaving/abandoning" in the previous line. A word play, of sorts? It means "restore" in Nehemiah 3:8, 34. HALOT suggests a similar meaning in Exodus 23:5-- "to put into an order, arrange." So also Job 9:27, where Job talks about "putting his face in order," meaning "to adopt a different look" (HALOT). The idea, DBL, is "to bring something back to an original condition, implying effort to accomplish the goal."