Exodus 23:1-9: Justice

The laws of Moses are often hard to sort out; there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to them.  Yet there are underlying values that support them.  In Exodus 23, those values are justice, respect, and faithfulness to the Lord.  (I only have time to deal with the first one.)

The call for justice is in verses 1-9, in which the Lord calls His people to be truthful.  Truth and justice go hand in hand.  The sad fact is that we are susceptible to the interests of the powerful.  It is easier to court and cultivate those who have something to offer us than it is to really pay attention to the excluded.  It’s easier to get along than to rock the boat.  It’s easier to live with easy certainties about ‘the way things’ are than to pursue real justice.

Of course, we might look at these verses and say that we don’t do those things.  We don’t join hands with the wicked.  We don’t fall in with evildoers.  That’s assuming the wicked and the evildoer are easily identified!  The end of 23:2 puts the edge on that.  “Nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many. . .”  So, sometimes simply siding with the majority means ignoring the harder realities that justice demands.  And of course, we’d probably never take a bribe (v. 8).  On the other hand, if we let our own self-interests play a part in the way we deal with people, that’s pretty much the same thing.

Why the concern for justice?  Justice is the correct ordering of God’s world.  Justice means that each one is recognized as the beloved creature of God.  Justice means that each one subsumes his needs under the greater needs of another.  One of the marks of the Messiah’s reign will be the establishment of justice (Isaiah 42:4).  Jesus establishes God’s justice in His death, in which He places His needs under the needs of those whose sin has made them of no account.  Sin casts us as the poor, the outcast, the alien in the presence of God.  In His death, Jesus accounts for the eternal needs of us fallen people, and He does it even though we do not deserve it nor can we repay it.  Justice, then—God’s justice—is closely tied to His grace.  The call for God’s people to be just is a call to be gracious.