Day 24 Exodus 22-24

            I didn’t realize that there was so many rules handed down in this first meeting beyond the Ten Commandments.  After the rules about how to treat your Hebrew slaves and how to deal with injuries, now God tells Moses about their new property laws, like how to make things right if someone borrows an ox and it gets stolen or killed by wild animals or something.  It sounds kind of petty to us today for something handed down directly from God, but these rules were a big deal for them I’m sure.  You could wind up dead if something like that happened and someone thought you were treating them unfairly.  God wouldn’t have fixed it if it wasn’t a problem.

            The next section on social responsibilities is where we get rules about not having sex with animals and what my obligations are if I sleep with your daughter.  A lot of these passages can’t seem to figure out though whether someone has to stand trial in front of the Judges of Israel or in front of God Himself.  That seems important to me, but I guess it doesn’t matter much now.  Also, don’t charge interest when you lend money to other Israelites.

            The laws of justice and mercy are more what I expected to see here.  These sound like the laws of the God of the New Testament.  They go above and beyond what is expected of us culturally and require that everyone avoid bribery and corruption and seek justice.  We should neither take advantage of a poor man by denying him justice, or favor him because he’s poor.  Don’t follow the crowd, but do what’s right, and be good even to your enemies and people who hate you. The most interesting part for me is the law against taking advantage of widows and orphans.  All these other laws talk about how, when someone sins, they need to pay a fee or they’re stoned or punished or destroyed.  If you mess with widows and orphans though, then God will kill you Himself.  I guess that one’s important.

            Finally, God sets up three feasts spread about evenly through the year, lays down some more rules about what not to do on the Sabbath, and promises the services of an angel who will ride ahead of the Israelites preparing for them to conquer the land.  They’re promised the land from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and from the desert to the Euphrates river.  This is most of what we think of as the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia through Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and all the way up to Iraq.  I don’t think the Israelites ever actually got all that land, but they didn’t do a very god job of holding up their end of the bargain either so I guess there’s a lesson in there.