A random
list of commands—that’s a reasonable summary of Exodus 21-23. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s hard to
find any kind of organizing principle in there.
Partly that’s because Exodus is a very ancient book. I keep coming back to this in Bible class,
but it’s really important. Remember how
hard Shakespeare was when you were in high school? And the Bard lived only 400 years ago and
wrote in our native language. Exodus is
nine times older than that, have been written around 1400 BC. It’s not really fair to expect something that
is that far removed from our day to make the same kind of sense we’d find
today.
And the apparent
randomness shouldn’t blind us to some other things that are here. For example, we look at these laws and some
of them seem really harsh to us. But, if
we read them against their own historical background, we find out many of them
are actually quite liberal. For example,
on Saturday we read Exodus 21:24, “an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.” Now, we hear that as a principle of
retribution, but I’d suggest that it is originally a principle of
limitation. That is, it’s not a demand
that vengeance must be collected; it’s a limitation on the amount of vengeance that
can be collected: “You may only take an
eye for a lost eye; you may not take the whole head.” Things that sound harsh to modern ears—statements
about vengeance, slavery, etc.—sometimes only sound that way because the ears that
hear are modern! Let some of the commands
that are easier on modern ears serve as the filter for the harder ones. For example, note in today’s reading the call
for returning your enemy’s donkey (23:4) and providing justice for the poor
(23:6). Clearly, they offer protections
that didn’t exist before.
What else
shall we notice? We should pay attention
to the fact that Israel is called to a distinctive life as God’s holy
people. That peculiarity is part of the
laws, too. The uniqueness is
demonstrated in today’s reading with the Sabbath commands. Let’s face it: when you live a subsistence life, when your
existence is often in doubt, when famine is a reality and you don’t know if you’ll
have enough for your children the next day—when that’s your life, a day off is
a little counter-intuitive. But Israel is
to resist the despair in so much of ancient life. She is to rely on her God, to count on His
providence. And, in a practice unique
among ancient people, they are to set aside a day for rest and the worship of
their God.
As we work
through the laws of Moses in Exodus through Deuteronomy over the next several
weeks (we’ll finish Deuteronomy right about Easter on our current schedule), we’ll
have those moments when things appear just plain random. We’ll be well served if we can try to keep
the bigger picture—that these laws are often about Israel’s uniqueness—in mind,
and if we can try to imagine what they might mean in the ancient world—that they
are actually quite broad-minded and move Israel toward a more merciful approach
to the world.
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