Exodus 23:8

Thou shalt take no gift — i.e., no bribe. Corruption has been always rife in the East, and the pure administration of justice is almost unknown there. Signal punishments by wise rulers have sometimes checked the inveterate evil (Herod. v. 25). But it recurs again and again — “Naturam expellas furca, tarnen usque recurret.” According to Josephus (contr. Ap. ii. 27), the Jewish law punished with death the judge who took a bribe. But Hebrew judges seem practically to have been no better than Oriental judges generally. (See 1 Samuel 8:3; Psalms 26:10; Proverbs 17:23; Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 5:23; Micah 3:9, &c.) The corrupt Administration of justice was one of the crying evils which provoked God’s judgments against His people, and led, in the first instance, to the Babylonian captivity, and afterwards to the Roman conquest.