Bribes and curses
Exodus 23:6-8; Deuteronomy 16:18-20; Zechariah 11:15-17; Zechariah 12:4.
What leads up to it
Two laws for judges say that a bribe blinds. Two oracles in Zechariah use blinding as a curse: on a worthless shepherd, and on the horses of the nations that attack Jerusalem.
What it says
A bribe "blinds those who see": a judge who takes money stops seeing the case in front of him. The shepherd who deserts his flock is cursed with a withered arm and a blinded right eye, the eye a man aimed with. The horses are struck with blindness in battle, as armies were struck in 2 Kings 6.
What the picture assumes about the blind
That blinding is a disabling and a disgrace, which is how the ancient world used it on conquered enemies and failed kings. The bribe verses assume something subtler: that a sighted man can be made not to see by his own choice, and that this is worse than not seeing.
Who is called blind
Judges who take bribes, a false shepherd, war horses. The curse of blindness in these verses falls on the powerful and the armed, never on the weak.
From Brian
Open for Brian: What this passage says to someone who lives without sight.
Other voices
Open: other blind people and their families will be asked the same question, and their answers will appear here with their permission.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
Henry on the bribe: a judge must not so much as take a gift, "for it has a strange tendency to blind those that otherwise would do well." The blinding is a slow, unintended corruption of a good man. The courts sat in the gates; Henry reports the later Jewish arrangement of seventy elders at the sanctuary, twenty-three judges in the larger towns and three in the small. The 1915 encyclopedia says the Old Testament "abounds with allusions" to the venality of judges, and Easton gives the Hebrew literally: the gift "maketh open eyes blind."
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Exodus 23 and Deuteronomy 16; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entries "Blindness, Judicial" and "Bribery"; Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entry "Bribe."
The curses. Henry reads the shepherd's darkened right eye as losing sight of danger, and ties it to John 9:39. The 1915 encyclopedia explains why the right eye in particular: blinding it "robbed the victim of his beauty, and made him unfit to take his part in war," and it names the custom of putting out enemies' eyes among the surrounding nations. Of the horses Henry says that blinding them "will be as bad as houghing them," an old word for cutting the tendons of the leg; the cavalry is simply made useless.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Zechariah 11 and 12; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Eye."
The passage
Exodus 23:6-8
6 You shall not deny justice to the poor in their lawsuits.
7 Stay far away from a false accusation. Do not kill the innocent or the just, for I will not acquit the guilty.
8 Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.
Deuteronomy 16:18-20
18 You are to appoint judges and officials for your tribes in every town that the LORD your God is giving you. They are to judge the people with righteous judgment.
19 Do not deny justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.
20 Pursue justice, and justice alone, so that you may live, and you may possess the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
Zechariah 11:15-17
15 And the LORD said to me: “Take up once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd.
16 For behold, I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will neither care for the lost, nor seek the young, nor heal the broken, nor sustain the healthy, but he will devour the flesh of the choice sheep and tear off their hooves.
17 Woe to the worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May a sword strike his arm and his right eye! May his arm be completely withered and his right eye utterly blinded!”
Zechariah 12:4
4 On that day, declares the LORD, I will strike every horse with panic, and every rider with madness. I will keep a watchful eye on the house of Judah, but I will strike with blindness all the horses of the nations.