Day 17

Moses Receives Additional Laws

from the Exodus reading plan


Exodus 20:22-26, Exodus 21:1-36, Isaiah 44:6, Matthew 22:36-40

BY Rebecca Faires

I know every word of the Bible is inspired. I know it’s all useful for teaching and righteousness, but what is happening in this passage?! These rules don’t make any sense, and they make me mad. Did you read the one making provision for what to do if you hit your slave and knock her down? If she can get up after two days, it’s no problem, because she is your property?! (Exodus 21:21). Are you kidding me? I feel like I don’t even know where to start.

But I think that’s exactly how I can get a sense for the justice in these laws—they are a start, a beginning. In Exodus, God’s people had just escaped the unbearable cruelty of their Egyptian masters. So, for them, a start was to begin by treating each other with more justice and mercy than they had received at the hands of the Egyptians—to give an individual human life value.

In Egypt, they were beaten with no recourse and no accountability. Contrast this lawless and brutal reality with the orderliness of the laws in Exodus. Under these new laws, there were consequences for loss of life and destruction of property. And these laws introduced the basic “a life for a life” concept, which was the cornerstone of ancient justice.

It’s tempting for my personal sense of justice to be the primary lens through which I read these rules. But God is compassionate and gracious, and abounding in faithful love (Psalm 103:8). So while it’s hard for me to understand why these laws don’t fit my idea of perfect justice, it helps me to look at what Jesus said to His friends about the law.

When Jesus’s disciples tried to interpret the law—to distill all the rules into one basic idea—they asked Him, “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” Jesus responded with this simple, beautiful, and uniting command, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands” (Matthew 22:36–40).

And, though these ancient civil laws of Israel may strike us as strange and even upsetting, we can see that the center of them was this: Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor.

But there’s more—because it’s totally unsatisfying to look at a passage like this and think, I don’t get it, but I’ll just accept it and ignore the difficulties. God isn’t afraid of our questions, our doubts, or even our objections. However, He is quite interested in transforming us. This means that we don’t get to brush this stuff away. Instead we are called to dig in, to seek to understand.

The beginning of this understanding, however, doesn’t come to us by leaning on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). Rather, we approach the difficulties remembering what we know: God is holy, just, merciful, and He is love (1John 4:8). Yes, He is more loving than we are, and His laws for ancient Israel come from that love. When we make gods of gold for ourselves—or even gods of our own intellect, opinion, and understanding—we miss the mark. The law and God’s grace both exist for the same reason: to save us and to teach us to love the Lord. Begin there.

Post Comments (40)

40 thoughts on "Moses Receives Additional Laws"

  1. Jessica Marsee says:

    Yes! I listened to both episodes and they were fantastic!

  2. Jessica Marsee says:

    Yes! I listened to both episodes and they were fantastic!!

  3. Blake M. says:

    i hadn’t considered this fully! love it!! thank you!

  4. Blake M. says:

    i hadn’t considered this angle –

  5. Mercy says:

    Reading today’s scriptures, I see how God shows harsh consequences to discourage the offenders BEFORE the offence. It’s an effective tactics when you show consequences; this is God’s hidden wisdom for sure for damage control. As the Bible says somewhere else, when a crime is not punished quickly, the hearts of men are fully set to do evil (Ecclesiastes 8:11), in a way people are encouraged to do evil, NLT says they even feel safe to do evil if there is no speedy consequences. Do you see this in kids too? Perhaps ? Any mama out there with me? That is a sad condition of the human heart. I see this in our society too, when there is a loop hole in the law, serial offenders feel safe to commit more crimes, repeatedly, hence serial. So, freedom could be a snare if laws are not strictly enforced, carried out speedily (as God’s word says it should), and scrutinized in great details. I love how God lays His laws, if you notice, God always says if you forgive, then you will be forgiven, if you don’t, then you won’t be forgiven. There is always if yes then this, if no then this, no room for gray area of assumptions/speculations/guesswork in between. Effective/successful contracts are also like this, as we see for employment contracts, or between landlord-tenants contracts, commercial or residential, etc. My parents used to have terrible tenants for their apartment renting experience. One of the main reasons was they didn’t draft a detailed contract stating rules and consequences. There was damage, people fled without paying rent, they even took the AC, even changed the lock. Crazy stuff. Laws protect us from being trespassed by setting clear boundaries. One of the laws I like when Bible talks about forgiving debt after 7 years, I see many banks also adopt this Godly rule for bankruptcy status. Amazing to see this rule applied in finance/loans industry. How about social justice, criminal laws, etc. if adapt the laws of God? More Godly laws should be studied and applied, since they are packed with grace and wisdom to better our lives. That’s why we need to pray for those who pass laws, regulations, public legislations and such, in supreme courts and all other levels of society, to have godly wisdom and boldness to do this (they will face persecution for sure in the face of wicked laws abounding). God’s word is PURE wisdom, pure wisdom (Psalm 19:7), if only we know, and wisdom is a defense, a big defense (For wisdom is a defense , even as money is a defense; but the excellency of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it (Ecclesiastes 7:12). A nation is only wise when they have understanding people (Deuteronomy 4:6). Lifting up our dear sisters on your prayer requests. May we never cease to learn to appreciate the beauty of God’s laws deep within our heart and mind! Be blessed dear sisters!

  6. Rhonda J. says:

    Prayers for Kaylee @Dorthy! And hope your knee is feeling better! Prays for you to @LexiB! I’m glad your business is doing well! It is definitely overwhelming to be the “do it all” person!

    @Traci- was thinking of you yesterday and pray for your grief! It is heartbreaking even thinking of losing a child so I can’t imagine the extraordinary pain you are battling. I am sending you a big hug!

    @Sara-prayers for your anxiety and finding a new counselor.

    I have an awesome praise! Remember how last winter I was asking for prayer hoping my husband would get involved with me in finding a new church and being active within the church and also hoping the Holy Spirit would ignite his spirit and faith? He is getting baptized this Sunday at our new home church!! I can’t tell you how exciting this is! He was baptized as a child, but wants to be submerged and make a commitment! Hallelujah! He also goes weekly with me to feed the homeless, and blesses us so much. I am hoping that we can join a small group together this coming Fall. Our relationship is so much stronger with Christ as our center! His daughter and boyfriend are coming to visit us for a week this Saturday, so hopefully, they will come to see! (he hasn’t told her yet!) I’m hoping we can reflect Christ to her because even though she grew up in church she doesn’t attend for a decade or more. She has 2 kids and her boyfriend’s child as well, so I would love to see them attend a church and start feeling up their lives with Jesus! There are so many young people these days with mixed families and that makes the challenges 2 fold and super hard, I pray for these kids!

  7. GramsieSue . says:

    @Traci Gendron prayers continue for you. Grief doesn’t go away…ever. God knows. He loves. He cares. Hugs to you ❤️

  8. Dorothy says:

    After reading both the Scripture and the devotional, the main point I want to remember is: THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD, I need to love HIM with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my being and that the love I show to God I need to show to ALL mankind. There was one of the Scripture in Exodus that I never really noticed before and that was the part about the pregnant woman being struck and losing her child. I’m sure I’ve read it, it just never “caught my eye”.
    I do want to bring up, I don’t know if anyone else has pointed this out, but the Scripture in Matthew where Christ is talking about the greatest commandment, it wasn’t His disciples who asked it was one of the Pharisees who asked the question. I wrote next the the Matthew verses: “This IS the GREASTEST COMMANDMENT — I believe the 2 (commandments) are 1 because to love your neighbor you have to LOVE the TRIUNE FIRST!!!
    I have a prayer request, my second little girl, Kaylee, I care for went in the hospital on Sunday for an operation, which she had Monday, but she isn’t bouncing back like she should. She isn’t able to keep anything down. Please pray for Kaylee and her parents.
    Be blessed and love God with ALL your being!!!

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