OT Laws

The Lord speaking to Israel in Exodus 22:

Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.

If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

When people nowadays look at the laws of the Old Testament, often there are some that stand out as unnecessary and even quite ridiculous. Laws like "Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk", "Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death" or even " As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement" catch our attention and make us think that God is pointless and his people are stupid.

However, a little cherry-picking is done to grab these very often misunderstood doosies and little care is taken to try to understand the context in which these laws were originally given. They are left to be hilarious bits of a irrelevant relationship to God that only people who aren't quite smart enough to deal with regular life will buy into.

And then there are the laws like those quoted above in the opening paragraph. These laws show a very different side of the law that perhaps is less paid attention to because it seems so obvious. The laws like those above are actually pretty characteristic of the entirety of what we call "The Law" for Old Testament Jews. As it can be seen with the short excerpt, the laws here are concerned with the protection of those, especially in that time thousands of years ago, that were the most vulnerable. Slaves, widows, orphans, exiles, aliens in their lands, debtors and the like are given rights and privileges that were not normally afforded to them in the original day and age that they were given. They were protected when there were not any of the social structures we have now that support the vulnerable. There were no battered womens shelters, orphanages, welfare offices, small claims court, consumer protection services, fireman or police, or even a psuedo-judge like Judge Judy.

And this is the type of situation, of personal relationships and issues that matter so much to God he gives them these laws of protection. They show, although not exhaustively, a system of justice that is very much on the side of those who cannot protect themselves in the same way other can. It's incredible that one of the first things God gives to the people of Israel after they enter into the covenant with God is that he gives an incredibly just judicial system for his people to follow. He even says "For I am compassionate." It is something he takes so seriously that he even threatens to make orphans and widows of the wives and children of those who fail to act justly toward them.

The laws were how a people, coming out of Egypt on their own for the first time as a nation, started off being the people of God. Following the law was how they showed the rest of the world that they were of that God, the God of Israel. And through following this precepts and commands they show the character of the God they serve. Because he asks them to be just and compassionate, he shows himself to be just and compassionate.

So when you read some of the OT laws and wonder what they're for, make sure to look at all of them and reflect on what they would mean for people of that time. You'll find that in between the lines of the laws that may seem cryptic and foreign to us now, lie the spirit of the law, the law of love that will be personified and shown perfectly in Jesus when he appears on the scene.