Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 23:8

"And thou shalt take no bribe: for a bribe blindeth them that have sight, and perverteth the words of the righteous." — Exodus 23:8 (ASV)

Thou shalt take no gift—that is, no bribe. Corruption has always been 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 (Herodotus 5.25). But it recurs again and again—“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.” According to Josephus (Against Apion 2.27), the Jewish law punished with death the judge who took a bribe. But Hebrew judges seem practically to have been no better than Eastern judges generally (see 1 Samuel 8:3; Psalms 26:10; Proverbs 17:23; Isaiah 1:23; Isaiah 5:23; Micah 3:9–11; etc.). The corrupt administration of justice was one of the crying evils that provoked God’s judgments against His people, and led, in the first instance, to the Babylonian captivity, and afterwards to the Roman conquest.