Thursday, January 26, 2012

Exodus 22-23

The lawyer in me is quite fascinated with the differences between our modern society and theirs. In some ways, it reminds me of studying British colonial common law for the bar exam.

In Exodus 22-23, we see a lot more laws of the Israelite society. Some of them have parallels in our society, but many do not.

"no stealing" made the audible "initial 10" (i prefer that since they were not called 10 commandments in Exodus 20) and here's what happens if someone steals:

If cattle is stolen, repay it 5 times; if a sheep, repay it 4 times. The thief is not sent to jail (what we would do).

A night time burglar in your home can be killed, but not daylight burglar. This is similar to our "castle doctrine," but we do not make a time distinction.

Any other theft or property damage is compensated to the victim but other than the cattle/sheep, we don't see many more specifics of multiple damages. Our society does have multiple damage (punitive fines, treble damages) for situations that are egregiously bad.

If the person cannot pay, he is sold into slavery. Since we don't have slavery, we don't do that.

If you seduce a virgin, you have to pay the bride price and marry her. However, the father can refuse the marriage. We don't do bride price, so I guess this would be equivalent to giving her a diamond ring. It is still common to ask for the father's permission to marry his daughter; how often they refuse, I don't know.

We get some more death penalty crimes - sorcery, sex with animals, and idolatry (in that order). This is immediately followed by a requirement to be nice and hospitable to foreigners in your land. I read that to mean that the immediately preceding death penalty crimes only apply to Israelites and not foreigners. I also see a potential modern parallel with illegal immigration.

Be nice to widows and fatherless. If you're mean to them, God will avenge them with your blood. Uh oh.

Be fair in your business deals and don't take advantage of people.

Don't eat the meat of animal slain by other animals. It sounds like a health regulation, but it is immediately preceded by a clause on being a holy people, eating "animal kill" probably has a holiness effect on them.

Exodus 23 begins with examples of dealing honestly. It also repeats be nice to foreigners.

Then we move to Sabbath rules, which emphasizes rest. It even applies to land - rest your land every 7th year. Farmers still do crop rotation and fallowness today.

You have six days to work and rest on the seventh so that (i.e., the purpose) for your servant and beast. So you can't rest and make everyone else work.

Part of what I think is going on with the Sabbath is that God is implementing something revolutionary, but we take for granted today - a weekend. In the initial 10, it's holiness was defined in terms of not working and resting.

There will be three festivals:
Unleavened Bread (in the spring with Passover)
First fruit harvest (early autumn, I assume)
Final harvest (late autumn, I assume)

We get some sacrifice rules. In the midst of them appears: do not cook a young goat in it's mothers milk. I'm not sure what that means, its purpose, or how it can be applied today.

At the end of the rules, God reiterates the promise of the land in preparation for the Conquest. God will drive out the inhabitants and not just the Canaanites. They are not to bow down to their gods.

It appears to me that God wanted this generation to fulfill the Conquest. We know what happens and this generation dies out beforehand, but here, the text reads like a call to arms.

We also see a greater territorial boundaries than actually occurs. Basically, the land from the Red Sea to the Euphrates. It reminds me of one of the territory details that Abraham was promised.

But the Israelites don't take possession of that much land. Why not? My guess is maybe God wanted to give them that much land, but since they ended up worshiping the gods of the people they conquered, the process was arrested. In other words, their borders would have been that of a major contemporary empire, had they not worshiped the idols.

No comments:

Post a Comment