Tag: Understanding the Old Testament

Morning Musing: Exodus 21:15, 17

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“Whoever strikes his father or his mother must be put to death. . .Whoever curses his father or his mother must be put to death.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

My kids are at the age that I wind up watching a ton of pre-teen comedies. Most of these are on Disney. Thankfully, they’re mostly older Disney series that were pretty clean and uninterested in pushing moral boundaries very far. But while there is a pretty wide variety of settings among them, they mostly all have one thing in common. In all of them parents are either absent or idiots. Only rarely are the parents of the main characters (or any characters for that matter) positive examples of what good parenting should be. The net effect here is that a whole generation of kids grew up being constantly bombarded by the idea that parents are at best unnecessary hindrances to achieving all their hopes and dreams. That kind of environment doesn’t produce a lot of respect. That’s too bad because God seems to take generational respect pretty seriously. Let’s talk about what we see here.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 21:12-14, 16

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“Whoever strikes a person so that he dies must be put to death. But if he did not intend any harm, and yet God allowed it to happen, I will appoint a place for you where he may flee. If a person schemes and willfully acts against his neighbor to murder him, you must take him from my altar to be put to death. . . .Whoever kidnaps a person must be put to death, whether he sells him or the person is found in his possession.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We talked a couple of weeks ago about God’s command regarding murder. Just as a reminder: He doesn’t want us to do it. What we find here and in the rest of the chapter are some additional laws related to personal injury including murder, but also in several situations that fall short of there. Rather than trying to take the whole group all at once, we’re going to break them down into smaller bits. Some of the next few posts may be a bit shorter than usual, but I want to give each of these laws the attention they deserve. Let’s talk about God’s concerns when it comes to how we treat one another.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 21:7-11

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“When a man sells his daughter as a concubine, she is not to leave as the male slaves do. If she is displeasing to her master, who chose her for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has acted treacherously toward her. Or if he chooses her for his son, he must deal with her according to the customary treatment of daughters. If he takes an additional wife, he must not reduce the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. And if he does not do these three things for her, she may leave free of charge, without any payment.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There’s a memorable scene from the series, West Wing, when President Bartlett publicly embarrassed one of his critics. Bartlett is a Democrat (being the protagonist of a show developed by Aaron Sorkin, of course he is). The critic is a religious conservative who has a popular call in radio show where she has been critical of the President and his policies and has taken a conservative stance on a handful of social issues including homosexuality. In front of a roomful of reporters and supporters, Bartlett asks the critic what kind of price his daughter would fetch if he sold her into slavery. This is followed by a series of other questions whose purpose is to show that this critic’s traditional understanding of the Old Testament is silly, and thus so are conservatives. Well, this next law starts with the verse Bartlett cities about selling a daughter into slavery. Let’s talk about what this means, what it doesn’t, and why this doesn’t take away from our image of God’s character in the Old Testament.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 21:2-6

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“When you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for six years; then in the seventh he is to leave as a free man without paying anything. If he arrives alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrives with a wife, his wife is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and the man must leave alone. But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to leave as a free man,’ his master is to bring him to the judges and then bring him to the door or doorpost. His master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve his master for life.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The United States has a pretty uncomfortable relationship with slavery. Like most of the rest of the western world, we practiced and explicitly racist form of slavery rooted in the idea that black people (Native Americans too, but mostly just black people) were not equal to white people in either worth or dignity. Unlike our neighbors across the Atlantic in England, though, we did not end slavery by popular vote or legislative fiat. We fought an ugly, bitter war over it. After that followed racism’s comeback, especially in the cultural south through what became known as Jim Crow laws. It’s all an ugly stain on our history. During that awful period, people claiming the banner of Christ were often supportive of slavery on the basis of passages like this one. So, does the Bible support slavery? Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 21:1

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“These are the ordinances that you are to set before them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes rules make sense. I think about classroom rules when I was in grade school. Don’t talk without raising your hand. No running with scissors. Keep your hands to yourselves. Sometimes, though, rules need a little more clarification. How about what counts as traveling in basketball or pass interference in football? The Ten Commandments are pretty clear, all things considered. But they don’t cover everything in the kind of detail that would help us avoid lots and lots of questions about exactly what to do and what not to do in order to stay right with God. As a result, this next part of our journey has lots of rules. We’ll unpack them as we go, but let’s start here by looking at the big picture for a few minutes.

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