This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.
This passage, along with the next three books of the Bible, I think are some of the most challenging to get through. There’s a lot of just talking about laws that the Israelites have, and there will be a fair bit of genealogies involved as well.
On top of that, there are also some hard passages to get through because it’s hard to imagine the God we know instituting some of the laws we read about. For instance, there are laws about slaves and how they are to be handled. There are laws about when a man rapes a woman, there are laws about divorce, etc.
In our mind, it seems that the God we know would never allow slavery, so how can that same God be seemingly condoning it by putting laws in place around it. There are many distinctions that must be made when talking about the specific subjects, and it’s my guess that if we were to dive into each one, it could take up my writing and research for the next year. In fact, I’m sure there are entire books and research papers that have been conducted on topics seemingly as small as the slavery debate of the Bible. Does God allow slavery? Does he allow divorce? Etc.
Since we don’t have time to go thoroughly through them, or even through one. And my goal is simply to read through chronologically for now. Perhaps in the future, I will dive into specific subjects. My understanding is that slavery talked about in the old testament is quite different from how we imagine slavery today. It seems that slavery in the old testament talked about here is almost always due to a debt that one man owes to another man, and they have no other way of repaying that debt. It even has passages that talk about if you steal a man you should be put to death. So it’s not the same kind of slavery we might imagine where it’s one person taking advantage of another who is completely helpless to get out of it.
There is also a limit of 6 years for the slave to be under the master, and at that point, they could either go free or if they loved their master enough (which we also probably don’t imagine happens much in our context of slaves), they could stay with them forever.
The second thought that I have had and heard is to be careful as we go through these laws to Israel. It’s important to note that when Jesus came, he said he didn’t come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. But it’s also important to note that this was a specific law given to a specific people at a specific time. And these people had just come out of 400 years of slavery. God, through Moses, is setting up an entire infrastructure of society for a people that have never experienced freedom before. Which I might add that some of the laws that were set in place by God here are still laws that are used today. There are laws in the united states that can trace their origin to none other than the laws set forth right here in Exodus. How’s that for laws that stand the test of time?
There is so much to be said about this passage, but perhaps one of the most fascinating to call out for me is the conditional aspect of the covenant he made with Israel at this time. As we went through Genesis, we saw that God made a covenant with Abraham that said that he was going to bless his offspring and make them numerous in all the earth, etc. With this covenant that he makes, there is no conditional aspect with Abraham. After it is made, there is nothing Abraham, nor his descendants can do to nullify the covenant. It’s made by God. Dependant only on God.
However, we see in Ex 19:5-6a, God says: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Then later he tells them once he gives them their land and the inhabitants of that land…Ex 23:32-33 – “You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
He clearly he lets them know that this part is conditional. His covenant with Abraham is still unconditional. But to these people here, he lets them know that they must obey him and keep his covenant if they would like to be His “treasured possession among all peoples.”
I think it’s important to call out these distinctions as we go through here to be able to then know when things happen, why they might happen.