Exodus 23:2

Summary

Exodus 23:2 gives two parallel prohibitions concerning legal and social conduct: not following a majority to commit wrongdoing, and not testifying in a legal dispute in a way that bends toward the majority to distort judgment. The verse uses repetition of the same phrase ("after many") to link both prohibitions structurally.

Key words

• tihyeh ("you must be", H1961) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular, giving the prohibition an ongoing/future force: a continuous stance to avoid, not a single act.
• acharei ("after", H0310A) — construct plural form meaning "following/behind"; appears twice (lines 3 and 14), creating a verbal echo between the two halves of the verse.
• rabbim ("many [people]", H7227A) — masculine plural adjective, repeated twice, denoting the majority or crowd that one is warned not to follow.
• ta'aneh ("you must testify", H6030B) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular, from the root for answering/testifying, used here in a judicial context of giving testimony in a riv ("case at law", H7379).
• le·hattot ("thrust aside", H5186 hiphil infinitive) — causative form of the same root used in lintot ("turning aside", H5186 qal infinitive), showing an intensification: the qal describes personal deviation, the hiphil describes causing something else (justice) to be twisted.

What the text says

The verse is built in two symmetrical clauses, each opened by lo' ("not", H3808) plus a 2nd person masculine singular imperfect verb. The first clause, lo' tihyeh acharei rabbim le-ra'ot, uses the verb "to be" followed by the construct phrase "after many" and the preposition le ("to", H9005) attached to ra'ot ("wicked deeds", H7451I) — literally "you shall not be after many, unto evil deeds." The second clause, ve-lo' ta'aneh 'al riv, shifts to the specific verb "to testify" governing the preposition 'al ("on", H5921A) plus riv ("a case at law", H7379), establishing a courtroom setting.

The verse then repeats the phrase acharei rabbim ("after many") a second time, followed by two infinitives built on the same root H5186: lintot (qal, "turning aside") and le-hattot (hiphil, "thrust aside"). The qal infinitive describes the subject's own deviation, while the hiphil infinitive that closes the verse describes a causative action — making something (implicitly the case or judgment) veer off course. This root repetition in two different verbal stems (qal then hiphil) creates a grammatical intensification not visible in translations that render both simply as "to pervert" or "to distort."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the closing hiphil infinitive le-hattot as ὥστε ἐκκλεῖσαι κρίσιν ("so as to shut out judgment"), introducing the noun κρίσιν ("judgment") explicitly, where the Hebrew leaves the object of "thrust aside" implicit. The Vulgate renders the same clause as ut a vero devies ("that you may deviate from the truth"), introducing verum ("the true/truth") as the implied object, differing from both the Hebrew's unstated object and the LXX's explicit κρίσιν.