Reading: Exodus 22-24, Psalm 24
I am a nerd and a completionist, and so it is tempting to tackle each of these laws and show how they are a constraint of the human will gone awry. But there are so many that to make that point over and over would be excessive, even for me. I do want to call attention to the a few things.
The first group of laws are what is often called “property rights” laws. They are seen as concerned with protecting the property of individuals in the community. And so they are, to a point. But more than that, they are concerned with the people taking responsibility for their property or property entrusted to them. God is laying out a system in which the use of what people have is of note.
Following this is a strange sounding law about a man seducing a woman and paying a bride-price. This is again a law about responsibility. God is making sure that the men of Israel take responsibility for their actions, in this case marrying and supporting a woman who is now unlikely to find a responsible livelihood. The bride-price is required as well because marriageable daughters were at times the only resource aged parents would have if they had few or no sons.
Standing right in the center of God’s law is a requirement that bears a rather severe consequence for disobedience: You shall not mistreat a sojourner, and you shall not mistreat the fatherless and the widow. The consequence for disobedience to this command is as clear as it is extreme: God will slaughter the people of Israel, making their wives widows and their sons fatherless. God will not tolerate his people taking advantage of the orphan, the widow, or the refugee. This stands apart from many of the commands as the consequence is pronounced to the whole community, not an individual, as with the death proscribed for witchcraft or worship of a foreign god.
Alongside God’s command to treat the marginalized of society with dignity, there is a command to favor neither the wealthy or the poor in the court. No one is favored, only justice. Despite what has been said, God has no preferential attitudes when it comes to keeping or breaking his laws, or in the carrying out of justice.
God closes these commands with a review and expansion of his first commands to Israel: feast and rest. The sabbath is reiterated to include the people of Israel, their servants, and the foreigners living among them. The rest of God is not for the privileged few or only the “in” crowd. Everyone is to be refreshed by the day of rest. The feasts are commanded three times a year, and they are to be a potluck. No, really. God tells everyone to bring something to the three annual feasts. The first is the one following Passover which we saw a few chapters ago. The second and third happen at early and late harvest, the first fruits and the in-gathering. In all cases they are basically a big party all the people of Israel come to and eat for a week.
And then, right at the end of this command to party, God tells the people not to boil a young goat in it’s mother’s milk. Really. I am going to let this stand as an example of the confusing cultural barriers that stand between us and people 3500 years ago. While they were careful to obey it, Jewish scholarship has been banging it’s head against this command for thousands of years. Some believe it a mis-translation and that this is actually about not letting the “first fruit” of the flock grow up before offering it at the feast. This is appealing because they could then eat cheeseburgers. Why couldn’t they eat cheeseburgers? Because others have interpreted this to mean meat is not to be cooked or mixed with any milk products. Outside of Judaism, it is generally assumed to refer to the practices of ancient near eastern cultures which offered sacrifices to local gods by doing exactly this. Unfortunately there is no particular evidence for this, though it was a known practice in later societies. The end of the story is that we just don’t know why some of these things are in the laws God set out to Israel, and we are unlikely to. But if we are going to understand the story God is telling, we need not understand God’s motivations in all things. In fact, the story tells us we will not, and to accept that some things are beyond us. Like why the people of Israel weren’t supposed to boil a baby goat in it’s mother’s milk.
As they prepare to confirm this covenant relationship with God, God outlines what he will do- he will drive out the people of Canaan before them over the course of years and give them the land of Canaan. IF. In this agreement with God, there is an IF. In no other covenant God has made yet is there an explicit condition, but here there is. The IF here is that the people of Israel utterly separate themselves from the people of Canaan. God will drive them out, Israel is to eradicate their culture and have nothing to do with it. God is using Israel for something special and unique, and they are not to be like the nations around them. They are not who they think they are.
The people agree to this condition, so Moses and Aaron make extensive sacrifices on their behalf. They cover the people with the blood of various animals. He declares this blood to be the blood of the covenant, a phrase that will show up again much, much later in the story. Here, the blood of the covenant apparently did something unusual. Because the next thing you know the representatives of the twelve tribes, the elders, go up on the mountain and have lunch with God. Yeah. Not a scene you see a lot- people hanging out with God and eating lunch. Something about the blood of the covenant covering the people made them pure enough to have lunch with God, just this once.
After the meal, Moses proceeds up into the cloud to hear from God further instructions. He remains on the mountain forty days and forty nights. Heard that before? Yeah, in Genesis 7, when the water burst forth and it rained for 40 days and nights, destroying the old world. Moses has gone to speak with God, and there is a new creation coming.