What followed the giving
of the Decalogue was an amazing set of prescripts.
God’s first concern is with the issue of
slavery, then murder
Having watched the
injustices of slavery for so long, He was determined to set things right. Half
of chapter 21 is dedicated to ethics surrounding the treatment of slaves.
He would not have
Israel treat people the way people treated Israel. The departure from Near-East
norms on this subject, is clear and abrupt. The first distinction of the Jewish
people and it remains to this day, would lie in the way they treat humanity.
Then He discussed the various
angles of murder and what distinguished that from “manslaughter” to provide a
discernable basis for appropriateness of punishment.
However, he started
with the very thing that undid Moses, as in: “If a man smite another man that
he should die”. It reveals for the first time that the actions of Moses were
wrong in God’s eyes.
Vengeance is His alone. It is not for us to take the law
into our own hands.
I always felt that the
exile of Moses was because he had violated Egyptian law, or closer to the
truth, that he was a rival threat to the reigning Pharaoh. Whatever, it seemed
from the narrative that it was simply expedient that he flee to Midian.
No so. He had wronged
God. Fleeing made him safe from Egypt, but left him alone with the real judge
of men’s hearts. That is sobering and it evidently led to a harsh reproof that
hung over the next 40 years until he stumbled again, as a kind of suspended
sentence.
Regulations on theft and other aspects of life
Chapter 22 is full of
regulations that I will not go into in detail. It starts with various prescriptions
on theft and what constitutes theft. In that context, the taking of a maid’s
virginity is classed as de facto theft unless the man takes her to wife,
subject to the blessing of her parents.
Very clear judgment was
reserved for witches, bestiality and idol worship. It is absolutely abhorrent to
God and carries the harshest possible censure.
Once again God revealed
His deep sense of the past by instructing Israel not to oppress or offend the weak,
the way they were treated in the past. The ethics of God were in such contrast to
the ruthless background of the age.
To be honest, the ethics
described here are remarkable even in to this age. It was ages before its time
and a far, far cry from any perceptions of a ruthless God.
Principles relating to wealth, finance and
giving
One intriguing
inclusion that would go on to set Jews apart in the world of finance, was the
prescript on usury. I personally feel that if we went back to that and forbade
any interest on money, we would invest in each other to return fair dividends
and so help each other prosper.
That ruling was so
noble that Muslims followed it and now tend to take it even more seriously than
Jews do. The Jews were always allowed to exact usury from strangers, not from
each other, but there were also laws pertaining to debt redemption.
Such fundamentals
deserve to be revisited in the present world and may be critical to surviving
the turbulence coming on our world. We need to live by a different set of
values, although God only articulated a few core principles to ensure broader
cultural norms.
One of those
cornerstone principles related to the giving of a portion of one’s wealth back
to God. It was such a noble principle. Tithing was abused in history and is
silent in the New Testament, but giving to God and each other is a timeless
value that I honor.
The commandments had not yet been enshrined in
stone
In preparation for
that God appeared before Moses, Aaron and his firstborn sons and heirs
apparent, Nadab and Abihu. For the moment lets ignore what later happens to
them.
They built an altar
with 12 pillars for the 12 tribes, and sacrificed on that altar as God had
instructed, then He sprinkled the blood on the people saying, “behold the blood
of the covenant”.
That is described in
Hebrews 9, but the writer concludes that the blood of bulls and goats can never
cleanse the conscience from the dead works of religion. Instead Jesus offers a
better way, saying, “This is the blood of the New Covenant” (Math 26:28, Mark
14:24).
In replacing the blood
of the old, with the blood of the spotless lamb of God, He did offered a once
and for all sacrifice that removed sin and guilt.
In the dedication made
by Moses, God appeared to Israel. It was a very rare revealing in which they
saw only His feet, which were like a translucent stone, carefully paved in
sapphire. It is way beyond anything we can comprehend, but was undoubtedly
magnificent.
After that Moses was
told to go up into the mountain, alone. He disappeared into the swirling mists and was there for 6 days before God spoke to him on the 7th. Then,
for the ensuing 40 days Moses communed with God in the clouds above Mount
Sinai.
The law was about to
be cast into stone and sealed as a perpetual covenant with the nation of
Israel, as its greatest heritage and an enduring witness to the nations. What a
moment.
(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com