You could comment on every single miscellaneous law given, but I just chose a few that stood out to me...
22:1-4 - You look out for your brother. If you can lend a hand and help a brother out, you do it. You don;t disrespect God and your community by ignoring their problem. This is what people who love God and love others do.
22:5 - This may seem like an insignificant law, but God is serious about His creation. He crated man to be male and women to be female and He doesn't want the two confused. Dressing up as the opposite sex messes with the sanctity of the created human form. If you blur the lines between right and wrong, eventually there is no longer any right.
22:6-7 - Again we see God protecting nature. God does not want to see the destruction of any species He created. If you want to eat, take the eggs and leave the mother, because the mother can continue to produce eggs and the bird population can safely continue on. I think we have really let God down when it comes to earth stewardship.
22:9-11 - Again we see that God even wants the species of grain separated. People in ancient times would often sow two types of seeds, because as the plants grew, they would feed off of one another and help to grow. God also may want the Israelites to sow only one type of seed because it is harder and He wants them to trust that He is the one providing.
22:12 - These tassels serve as a constant reminder that they are the people of the Most High God. What do you use as a reminder?
23:1 - This verse describes two common forms of castration in ancient times. Castration was associated with pagan rituals and foreign peoples - the Israelites are not know to have used any form of castration culturally. This means that God is prohibiting the influence of foreign people who have be deeply impacted by pagan cultures on the community of Israel. (We also need to understand that this is not referring to worshipping the Lord. People are not being restricted from honoring God...they are being restricted from being a part of the main assembly with was the ruling structure of Israel.)
23:9 - Something you need to recognize here - this is referring to a camp of war. A camp set up when the Israelites go off to war. The men are warned to be very conscious of their purity, so that they will stay focused on God...the camp had to holy because the Israelites were dependant on God for military victory. I think we would all be more focused on offering ourselves fully to God and setting ourselves apart for Him if we truly believed we needed Him to get by day to day. Don't balk - do you really live every day like you are in desperate need of God...that your every breath depends on Him?
23:18 - What is this fee of the dog thing? Well...(cough)...it is most likely a reference to male homosexuality. The offerings given from prostitution whether male or female were considered unacceptable to God. It's kinda like when we offer God scraps of our live...or distracted prayers...or worship Him with a heart set on others things...God wants the best and purest of what we have to offer.
23:19 - I love this. The Israelites are a community...they are a family and they do not try to make money off one another.
24:1 - We know from elsewhere in scripture that God hates divorce. We know that God only allowed divorce to take place because of the hardness of peoples' hearts. Early rabbis looked at this passage from Moses and tried to make the case that a man could divorce a woman for any reason at all - any reason! Later teachers of the law understood that a man could only divorce a woman fro something truly indecent, like apostasy, adultery, refusal of sex, etc. (Though not mentioned here...women would also traditionally have the right to divorce because of their husband's indecency.) We see through these laws that God, even when He allows the people to follow paths that go against what He made us for, always sets laws in place to protect the weak and the poor.
2 comments:
22:28-29: I remember Rob Bell talking about this concept when we read Sex God. He threw the idea out that maybe sex is what makes 2 people married.
I think the biggest thing that stuck out to me from these chapters was 24:16. Children were not to be punished for the failures of their fathers and vice versa. I take this to mean that God will not punish you for the bad choices your parents (may have) made, however even if you are in a bad situation, you are responsible for how you respond to it. God will not punish us for things we have no control over, would you agree or disagree?
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