John Gill Bible Commentary

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,.... Who have none to help them, and who ought to have mercy and compassion shown them, as well as justice done them; and should not be injured by private men in their persons and properties, and much less oppressed in courts of judicature by those who should be the patrons and defenders of them: and shed not innocent blood in this place: in the temple, where the sanhedrim, or great court of judicature, sat; for this does not so much respect the commission of murder by private persons, as the condemnation of innocent men to death by the judges, which is all one as shedding their blood; and by which actions they defiled that temple they cried up, and put their trust in; to shed innocent blood in any place, Kimchi observes, is an evil; but to shed it in this place, in the temple, was a greater evil, because this was the place of the Shechinah, or where the divine Majesty dwelt: neither walk after other gods to your hurt; the gods of e people, as the Targum; "for this", as the Arabic version renders it, "is pernicious to you"; idolatry was more hurtful to themselves than to God; and therefore it is dissuaded from by an argument taken from their own interest.