Ayub 36:18

36:18 Be careful that ¹  no one entices you with riches;

do not let a large bribe ²  turn you aside.

Yesaya 1:23

1:23 Your officials are rebels, ³ 

they associate with ⁴  thieves.

All of them love bribery,

and look for ⁵  payoffs. ⁶ 

They do not take up the cause of the orphan, ⁷ 

or defend the rights of the widow. ⁸ 

Yehezkiel 22:12

22:12 They take bribes within you to shed blood. You engage in usury and charge interest; ⁹  you extort money from your neighbors. You have forgotten me, ¹⁰  declares the sovereign Lord. ¹¹ 

[36:18]  ¹ tn The first expression is idiomatic: the text says, “because wrath lest it entice you” – thus, beware.

[36:18]  ² tn The word is כֹּפֶר (kofer), often translated “ransom,” but frequently in the sense of a bribe.

[1:23]  ³ tn Or “stubborn”; CEV “have rejected me.”

[1:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “and companions of” (so KJV, NASB); CEV “friends of crooks.”

[1:23]  ⁵ tn Heb “pursue”; NIV “chase after gifts.”

[1:23]  ⁶ 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]  ⁷ sn See the note at v. 17.

[1:23]  ⁸ 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.

[22:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “usury and interest you take.” See 18:13, 17. This kind of economic exploitation violated the law given in Lev 25:36.

[22:12]  ¹⁰ sn Forgetting the Lord is also addressed in Deut 6:12; 8:11, 14; Jer 3:21; 13:25; Ezek 23:35; Hos 2:15; 8:14; 13:6.

[22:12]  ¹¹ tn The second person verb forms are feminine singular in Hebrew, indicating that the personified city is addressed here as representing its citizens.