In this episode, Nate sits down with his former Hebrew professor, Dr. Gordon Johnston, Professor of Old Testament at Dallas Seminary. Dr. Johnston helps us understand the nature of the case laws in Exodus 21-23 by explaining how they related to the Decalogue. The discussion also covers how we might read these texts as Christian Scripture today, and even guidance for how we can understand some of the more difficult passages in this section of Exodus.
In this episode, Nate sits down with his former Hebrew professor, Dr. Gordon Johnston, Professor of Old Testament at Dallas Seminary. Dr. Johnston helps us understand the nature of the case laws in Exodus 21-23 by explaining how they related to the Decalogue. The discussion also covers how we might read these texts as Christian Scripture today, and even guidance for how we can understand some of the more difficult passages in this section of Exodus.
Well, after a few false starts, I think we're actually underway here. I'm here today with Dr Gordon Johnston at Dallas Seminary. I was here last week with Dr Kreider talking about theology and Exodus, and I'm here today with Dr Johnston. We're going to be talking about the case laws in Exodus. First let's. Dr Johnston this is your first time on our podcast, our first time recording. Why don't you just give us a little background information? Just who are you, where you're from?
Speaker 2:Thanks. I'm originally from Nebraska, so I grew up loving the Nebraska Cornhuskers, which is a bit of a sore topic now. Our team has not been playing really as well.
Speaker 1:The glory days are a little farther behind, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people that are not even alive anymore to enjoy the glory days.
Speaker 1:I remember Tom Osborne because those Cornhuskers beat my Tennessee volunteers in the Orange Bowl and spoiled paint mannings last game.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I loved that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2:And two of our teams over the years have been named as two of the top 10 football teams of all time. But it's been a long time. My wife and I and family have been in Dallas since 1998. I came on board, started teaching Old Testament in the department here then. So this is beginning in my year 26 teaching Old Testament here. So my area of specialization is in Hebrew. Biblical theology, ancient Eastern literature.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Yeah, so for listeners, for background connection, dr Johnston was my Hebrew professor for Hebrew 3 and Hebrew 4. And then I think it was either in conjunction with one of those you let me sit in on a PhD seminar in ancient Near Eastern literature. Okay, it kind of let me know way back when it's like, okay, I think I could do this PhD thing I could sit in with the class.
Speaker 2:I remember that seminar. Now, that was the first time you taught the course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was team taught. It was you and Dr Webster and Dr.
Speaker 2:Hilberg yeah, and I just did it again last spring.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so it opened up a whole new world for me with like oh, I feel like I understand the Bible really well. I'm getting there, you know, but now I'm learning about all this literature and the surrounding cultures. That's similar, yet very noticeably different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked about context, and this is part of the context too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're actually we're going to pull on that thread just a little bit here. So, for the listeners, we've been in this series in Exodus on Sunday morning and we've been. We just finished the 10 commandments this past Sunday and people are going to hear this before the next sermon when they're going to notice, we've skipped from Exodus 20 to Exodus 24 all of a sudden, and as we did when we went through Genesis, we didn't necessarily go chapter by chapter. We followed the main contours of the story of Abraham, and so in this, in this time through Exodus, we've had to make some choices about where we focus more attention on Sunday morning and where maybe we do what we're getting ready to do right now and we record a podcast about a section of the book that we hope is helpful in understanding how it all fits together.
Speaker 1:And so we're going to talk today about these case laws, as they're called in Exodus 21 through 23, which on first reading it may seem like, oh, we just got the 10 commandments, and then now we have this miscellaneous assortment of other laws that we also have to keep track of, and so it seems like is it a bait and switch? Is there really 10 commandments or is there actually all these other ones? And then, if they're not actually commandments, what are they? So, dr Johnson, could you just maybe we start by explaining how do these three chapters of seemingly miscellaneous laws connect to the 10 commandments that just came before them?
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, that's one of my favorite topics, nate. So the case laws in Exodus 21 to 23 are set apart. They're distinct from the decalogue, but they're related to the decalogue. The decalogue consists of well, it's a lot of people refer to it as 10 commandments. I prefer the refer the decalogue as a 10 words because the first word is actually an indicative I'm Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So that's the foundation.
Speaker 2:But the case laws are, if you will, they are specific, culturally contextualized, everyday life applications of the 10. So the 10 commandments, or the 10 words, the decalogue, are timeless absolutes that are really non contextualized. They're very, they're very abstract in some ways, and intentionally so. And so the question is how is? How would an Israelite, how would a person of God, go about obeying these and applying these?
Speaker 2:What the case laws are doing is showing how practical God wanted to be in the Israelites ethic, their everyday life, and so they're providing concrete examples for what this would look like in everyday life. So in Exodus 21 to 23, scholars have actually shown that every one of the case laws in some way is an application of one of the elements of the decalogue. They're not in the exact same order in Deuteronomy 12 to 26. The case laws there actually followed the same order of the decalogue, but with that in mind, when we look at Exodus 21 to 23, each one of them in some way is an application. So, for example, the decalogue says to honor father and mother. In the case laws the Israelites are told well, that means you don't curse your father and mother.
Speaker 2:You don't strike your father and mother. So that would be an example of that. They were told not to commit murder. That gets teased out in terms of in the case laws if you have an ox that gores another ox, then how do you deal with that ox? Or if you have an ox that accidentally gores a human, what do you do with that? So the laws of don't murder don't just apply to intentional acts of homicide, they also God also wanted the Israelites to understand that you need to do everything you can to protect life in every case.
Speaker 2:So it's very, very practical and they were contextualized in a way that made sense for ancient Israel in agricultural, pre industrial, pre monarchial situation. And even the case laws in exodus were designed in some cases for the nomadic situation where the Israelites were encamped at Sinai yeah, that year and then for the 40 years in the wilderness. Some of the case laws are anticipating what life will be like in the land of Canaan, but we get to do derotomy. Those case laws are actually say that we're going to make some changes for what? What you've been doing for the 40 years in the wilderness? Because we're going to cross the Jordan and go into into the land of Canaan things. Some things have got to change because we're now moving from a nomadic food gathering situation, where we're nomadically encamped around the central sanctuary at Sinai, to we're going to be spread out. We're going to be sedentary in a village life, agricultural food producing, but the central sanctuary is going to be at a great distance.
Speaker 1:So some things are going to change yes, that's that's helpful to sit to point out to. That's why we have them twice we get the 10 commandments or the, the decalogue I'll use your term, let's say the decalogue in exodus 20, but then you get it again in Deuteronomy 5. It's like well, why are we getting it again? And it's like well, because the wilderness generation has died off it in the book of numbers.
Speaker 2:It's a new situation, and so the decalogue doesn't change, but the applications get shifted, because they are culturally sensitive, culturally contextualized, to a new situation and it's what's interesting too even though the decalogue doesn't get changed from the first sec to the first, to the second generation, the motive clauses in the decalogue get adjusted in some of the applications in the decalogue itself get recontextualized. So, for example, the motive clause for work six days and rest on the Sabbath in exodus. The motivation is because Yahweh worked six days and he rested on the Sabbath, and so he's our creator.
Speaker 2:In Deuteronomy, the motive clause is you were slaves in Egypt. You never got one day of rest at all. So this is going to be a gift to you. You were slaves in Egypt, but Yahweh redeemed you. So you need to remember that he redeemed you in the exodus. You might, you might. We might actually assume that the first generation, the motive clause would have been you were in Egypt. Yeah, redeemed you. He's really trying to focus on the fact that the God who redeemed you is not just your national God, he's, he's the one and only true God, and so that's the reason that that he was able to redeem you. So he's not just your covenant Lord, he's also the creator of heaven and earth because we just had that showdown with the gods of Egypt, right that's exactly right, and so they realize that he's, that he's, he's the one and only true God.
Speaker 2:But by the time you get to the second generation, many of them were children and and, and it would be easy in future generations to forget about this mighty act of deliverance from Egypt. So this is one of the ways that you remember you were in Egypt, he brought you out, and so Israel was supposed to remember and rehearse the exodus and the deliverance from generation to generation. Also, another way that the decalogue gets extended in Deuteronomy is that, on the law of not coveting, you don't covet your neighbor's wife, you don't covet your neighbor's donkey and ox, and things like this. When it's in Deuteronomy, it's extended. You don't covet your neighbor's wife, you don't covet your neighbor's ox, you don't covet your neighbor's field in exodus they didn't have a field.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were nomadically encamped around the tabernacle in the will in at Sinai, but in Deuteronomy they're getting ready to go into the land and some Moses is now contextualizing the old law for a new situation even extends the application till you don't covet your neighbor's field.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that would be a new situation so it's kind of like these, these laws in exodus, 21 through 23, and then again in Deuteronomy, 12 through 26. They're kind of guiding people. And how would we actually apply the 10 commandments, how would we obey these 10 words? Because they are abstract and even it's the way we even approached it as we just preached through it, as we did. The first sermon was on the first table, the ones that are usually associated with love the Lord, your God, all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and then the second table, you know, the ones associated with loving your neighbor. But it's like those are abstractions too. Love God is abstract. Well, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:and so you get a little more specification that's right, and I even remember when I became a new Christian and I knew from the New Testament I'm supposed to love my wife and honor my wife, but it's very abstract. I didn't really know what it meant to love my wife until I was around. Some older godly Christians have been married for many years and just watched how they responded to their wife, how they serve their wife, and just seeing what that meant to be was fleshed out. And this is what the case laws are doing. They're fleshing it out in helping Israel to understand. This is what it means to love God in this situation. This is what it means to love your neighbor in that situation. We were talking before we did the podcast today at the fact that when we hear the word law in western Southern modern context, we're often thinking in terms of Greco-Roman law tradition. We're often thinking in terms of.
Speaker 1:Even if we don't think those words, in our mind it's our tradition. Legal system. Legal system these are exhaustive laws that Moses would have had, and if a situation comes up, he's like well, let me consult the laws and see which one was violated, what's the punishment, and then dole it out.
Speaker 2:And the Hebrew word for law Torah does not mean rule and regulation, it doesn't even mean law Torah itself. The primary meaning is guidance and instruction. It's more in terms of a father teaching his son, a coach a coaching, a sage teaching somebody the path to walk. It's more of an ethical system than it is a legal system per se and it's certainly not exhaustive. The Law Code of Hammurabi is much longer than the Law Code of Moses. Hammurabi is 1750 BC, hundreds of years before Moses. And the Torah of Moses is not even as detailed as our tax law. Tax law that we have to fill out taxes every year is more detailed.
Speaker 2:So one of the things we want to do is kind of rehabilitate our view of the Torah of Moses, because many people get the impression it was so oppressive, it was so detailed, it was so legalistic. The poor Israelite couldn't turn around and breathe without violating it in some way and it was just oppressive. And that's really not the way it was. It was actually very liberating, it was enlightening. That was not exhaustive.
Speaker 2:The case laws in Exodus only give us about two dozen applications. That's really not many. So you have the ten elements of the Decalogue and then you get about two dozen applications to guide their existence for the next 40 years. What they were doing is giving a couple of concrete applications that were said a precedent taught the ethic, and then the Israelites were supposed to follow that ethic. So I think of Psalm 119 about your law being a guide to my path and a lamp to my feet. It was there to teach them in the way to walk and when they would get into new situations they would follow the trajectory, the path, that the ethic, what the law had been giving to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's almost like there's a component where it's trying to rehabilitate their imagination. They can only imagine life in a certain type of way, having been slaves in Egypt and then based on their surrounding context. And now they're moving into a new context, and it's not just that they're being given. Here's a bunch of rules to follow. This is a new way of living in light of the Lord, your God, who delivered you from slavery in Egypt. He's brought you into well, he's brought them to Sinai at this point, but he's going to bring you into the land that he promised to Abraham Isaac and Jacob. And these are ways that you can maybe I'm thinking imagination, but I'm also thinking there's a wisdom element to it?
Speaker 2:Yes, very much so.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things these case laws don't cover, but you're supposed to use the case laws to then think, well, if I'm supposed to do this in this situation, and they became the precedents to guide future decisions.
Speaker 2:So for example, what most people miss is that, before we get to Sinai, moses had complained to Yahweh. I can't possibly myself deal with all of the problems and the griefs and the debates that the Israelites have got with one another. So Yahweh told Moses to choose wise, discerning men from each of the tribes and they would help him to be able to guide the people in terms of Mishabah and Sodica, justice and moral righteousness. The case laws that we get in Exodus 21 to 23, if you will, are a distillation of this wisdom that Moses and the elders, or these, these, these judges came to as they're looking at the deck log that Yahweh had given and they're talking and in conversation with Yahweh. What do we do in this situation? What do we do in that situation? And so it was.
Speaker 2:It was for the purpose then, of of their enlightened moral conscience that the deck log had guided them, and this is part of divine revelation as well. God was giving him enlightened hearts to understand the applications. And then, when we get to Deuteronomy 12 to 26, we've got dozens more new case laws, because situations had arisen in the past 40 years and Moses is anticipating situations that will arise when they get into the land. And in Deuteronomy 12 to 26,. This is again the wisdom that God has given Moses to understand what the application would look like. So, yeah, there's a wisdom element very much, and then that would become the guide for wisdom for the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, so we've kind of talked about context then, like what's what's going on with these chapters? How do they relate to the Ten Commandments? And we've clarified that they're not legislative in the sense that we tend to think of legal things. Before we get into a couple of examples that we've talked about, I think it would be useful you sent me a PowerPoint that did this but tracing out this is actually not a unique feature to the Pentateuch, where it's just well, we only see this with the deck log and then the case laws it actually you could kind of trace it through scripture, where we have this there's a statement, there's some abstract laws, rules, regulations, that sort of thing, but then there's these particular applications that are not exhaustive, and so we've talked a lot about the Exodus and Deuteronomy examples, but then we could go back to Genesis, right?
Speaker 2:We could go back.
Speaker 1:We could also go forward to the New Testament as well, to kind of see.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, let's do that. So this is fascinating. I always like to ask my students it's a trick question of sorts I always ask them, when was the law of God originally given? And they kind of look at me like, why would you ask us such an easy question? I would say, well, sinai, of course the Decalogue, exodus 20, 21 to 23. And I tell them well, you're not reading your scripture very well, it's in Genesis. And they kind of look at me dumbfounded.
Speaker 2:But if you think about the Decalogue, every element of the Decalogue apart from Sabbath is reflected in the narratives in Genesis, starting with Genesis 4 to the end. So Cain is being held accountable for killing Abel. Joseph knows that adultery is a great sin. And you get every element of the Decalogue embedded in the narratives and people are being held accountable for violating the moral law of God or being commended for obeying the moral law of God. Now again, we remember that Paul is going to tell us that sin is not imputed where there's no law. And yet people are being held accountable, not just for Adam's sin. Nobody. In Genesis 4 to 50 is being told you are guilty because of Adam's sin. Mankind has been corrupted because of Adam's sin. So we're sinners because of Adam's sin, but people in Genesis 4 to 50 are being held accountable for their own sin. And so how do we reconcile? How in the world could people be held accountable for sin before the law of Sinai? And the very easy answer and Paul even tells us this in Romans 2, is that God's law is written on the human conscience from creation. So God, through common grace and through the spirit of God working on conscience in the heart, was holding people accountable to his moral law of God from creation.
Speaker 2:Now the Sabbath is reflected in Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3, the creation account. But that's the narrator, biblical narrator, telling us that that ultimately, the Sabbath is at the very worship of God, is at the very heart of creation. But Sabbath was not intuitive, it was ritual. The Sabbath gets introduced for the first time in Exodus 16, when Yahweh is bringing the people out of Egypt and he says I'm going to provide manna for you six days of the week. You gather six days. On the sixth day you gather a double portion because you're going to rest on the seventh day. And then, when he gets to Sinai, that the Sabbath principle of manna gathering gets extended every year of life. In Exodus 34, it tells us Sabbath was unique because it was a sign, was a ritual sign of Israel being in covenant. But the nine elements of the decalogue the nine more moral, are not just unique for Israel but it's part of God's moral accountability, moral will for all people, of all times, from creation forward. So the law of God on the heart from creation got contextualized as the law of God on stone for Israel. So before Sinai, god was inviting people to express the fear of God by obeying the moral conscience on the heart. At Sinai he was inviting those that had believed in him to enter into a covenant with him. And then these commandments got spelled out and the Sabbath got morphed into it because now they're in covenant with Yahweh.
Speaker 2:When we get to the New Testament we shouldn't be surprised to find that the decalogue is reflected in the New Testament. Jesus talked about obeying when somebody says what do I need to do to be right before God? And he says well, you know the commandments, what are they? And the apostles? After the death burial Christ and the inauguration of the New Covenant, the apostles salt and pepper the decalogue. Now, the one area that Paul, who's the apostle of the Gentiles, relaxes for the Gentiles is circumcision, which was signed at the Abrahamic covenant for the physical descendants of Abraham, sabbath, which was the sign of the Mosaic covenant for the physical descendants of Israel, and the food laws, which were designed to separate Jews and Gentiles in the Old Covenant. But Jews and Gentiles are now one of the New Covenant, so the food laws are relaxed, but the other nine commandments are reflected and repeated all throughout the New Testament.
Speaker 2:Paul who talks about in Ephesians 2, that the particular stipulations that had divided Jews and Gentiles, which I think in the context of Ephesians 2 is primarily circumcision, he says that's been done away. But by Ephesians 6 he talks about the. He repeats honor father and mother, which not he doesn't say, which was the first commandment with a promise, but which still is the first commandment with a promise. And it's there interesting in in Exodus and Deuteronomy Yahweh had said to Israel obey your father and mother, so it may go well with you and you may live long in the land that Yahweh is about to give to you for Israel. Paul decontextualizes that and reapplies it in the New Covenant when he says honor father and mother, so it may it may go well with you and you may live long upon the earth. Interesting, the Hebrew term erets could mean both land or earth. The corresponding Greek word can be both land or earth. So Paul's not changing the text.
Speaker 2:Paul recognizes even in wisdom literature, book of Proverbs, which is more universal in application because it was general revelation of the wisdom that God has built into the world. Book of Proverbs says if you will listen to your father and mother and honor them, you're going to live long and have a long life wherever you are on the earth. That got specifically contextualized for Israel it's Sinai that if the Israelites would honor their father and mother, they would live long in the particular land God was about to give to them. But that was not a unique, exclusive promise and command to Israel. That's what God wants all people to do to honor their father and mother, to listen to them, and he offers long life to anybody, wherever they live. So I think that's a good guide in terms of Paul's hermeneutic, how he's understanding what the law is doing and so understanding the structure of the law from the law of God before Sinai, the law of God at Sinai, and then what Paul even talks about refers to the law of Christ. So there's both continuity but there's also discontinuity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a really helpful way to sketch it out. And then it helps us see too that some of what Paul's doing is because we are remenining these nine commands in the New Testament in various ways. We're also getting a kind of equivalence of case laws in the epistles where it's. Paul can't deal with every situation that might come up, but he's writing to these specific churches with specific advice for this situation, specific advice for that situation and it's very culturally contextualized.
Speaker 2:It's very much like what Moses was doing with the case laws.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like a meta structure in some sense, because we see it in the Old Testament, we see it in the New Testament, it's in the Pentateuch, it's in the Gospels. When we think about Sermon on the Mount is not exhaustive, but it's taking these individual cases and applying elements of the Decalogue.
Speaker 2:I've even seen a study in which somebody has taken the nine elements of Decalogue we're referring to, apart from the Sabbath, which was unique to the Old Covenant in terms of the Sabbath laws, and they have been able to line up all the commandments in the New Testament epistles and the Gospels and showed it in some way or another. Every specific commandment, the more contextualized, the more specific commandments, are in some way an application of one of the one of the deck lock. Paul even does this explicitly in Colossians, chapter three, when he says put to death everything that remains of your, of your fleshly nature, and he lists certain things and then he says these all amount to idolatry. So Paul has even got that kind of structure that you've got the one great commandment to love God, as the other, like them, to love your neighbor.
Speaker 2:Moses does this, jesus does this. Paul. The epistles do this love God, love your neighbor. That gets gets fleshed out in the 10. In the 10 get fleshed out in the Old Testament in terms of the case laws. The 10 get fleshed out in the New Testament in terms of the New Testament, the epistles, the, the occasional letters and Jesus application in the in the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that really helps us see when, when, when we do have Jesus summing up the law and the prophets with the two commands, the love God, love neighbor. That really would only work if all the other commands could somehow be linked to those two big, two big commands. We see that the deck of log is kind of the way that that happens. It makes it a little more particular. And then the case laws are even a more deeper particularity for certain cultures at certain times, and so I think that helps us kind of see how it all fits together.
Speaker 1:But then also how we might think of it today as Christians, where we're reading through Exodus 21 through 23, and we can see the wisdom there of how it's applying the 10 commandments, but we're not necessarily reading it thinking, oh man, I have to figure out how to obey these specific commands, as if they were legislate, either legislatively binding or even covenantally binding. And so I think we recognize they're not covenantally binding on me as a, as a, as a Christian, but I also don't want to. They are part of Christian scripture. We're not going to say, well, there, I don't need to read that because it's irrelevant.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if the disconnect that we feel is that and I'm reading the case laws in Exodus 21 to 23 or Deuteronomy 12 to 26 they seem so different from our experience and so we tend to assume this is an old, covenant thing, it's irrelevant to us what what's. What is often happening is that we live in such a different culture. But if I was living in Afghanistan today, in a village in Afghanistan, I had a mud brick house at the flat roof and I'm a farmer and I've got an ox in a donkey in a plow the case laws at Exodus 21 to 23 and Deuteronomy 12 to 26 would speak to me they speak to my everyday life experience.
Speaker 2:Now, for us as Christians that live in a different kind of culture than ancient Israel in the Iron Age, the late Bronze Age, what we need to do is to ask ourselves a question what? What would be what? What? What ethic was that? Were the case laws trying to express so, for example, in Exodus or in Deuteronomy? In Exodus, if you're walking down the road and you see an ox or donkey falling inside the road, you can't ignore it. Well, I don't see ox and donkey falling on the side of the road yeah but it's under the case.
Speaker 2:It's under it's. It's one of the applications of don't murder you. Not only do you not murder, but you protect life positively wherever you find it. That means when you see someone in need, or even an animal in need, you don't ignore it. So I drive down Central Expressway. Now I think in Orlando. What did you tell?
Speaker 1:me. I was gonna say, yeah, it's Central Expressway, here is kind of a main thoroughfare in and out of downtown, and for us in Orlando it's I for which goes straight through the middle of the writing down.
Speaker 2:I for, and you see, along the side of the road a car that's broken down, that's got a flat tire, a little old lady or a little old man is out there and they've got their car jack. You don't you? That's a dangerous situation because there's trucks flying by and you don't want a little old man or a little old woman trying to jack up their car could fall upon them. So there's a moral obligation upon us to stop and help and do what we can. We can't ignore that. And so the case law of if you see a donkey or an ox falling on the side of the road, you can't ignore it, that that that enlightens my heart and my conscience to tell me that when I see someone in need, I can't ignore that. And if it's true that it were that, where I can't ignore an ox or donkey falling on the side of the road, how much more should I not ignore a human that's fallen on the side of the road?
Speaker 1:yeah, and we even to sometimes. I don't think a lot of people do this on purpose, but sometimes we can get caught up on the spec, this specificity, that's it. It's kind of an awkward word, but it's like, oh, I don't see oxen or donkey, but you know people in Florida. It's like well, it's a very common occurrence to see a giant turtle trying to make its way across the road. It's like, well, I'm gonna make sure I don't run over it. But at the same time it's like well, but I should probably stop and put my flashes on and hop out and pick him up and get him the rest of the way across the road so somebody else doesn't run over him or he didn't. You know, somebody doesn't swerve to miss him and hit a car, and now it's, you know, an accident with the injuries.
Speaker 2:See, this is why in Psalm 1, already the beginning of the Psalter, it says the man or woman of God that is blessed by God meditates on the Torah. And we're talking about meditating on the Decalogue and the case laws. Why do we need to meditate on them? Because there's the case laws were so specific and they were not exhaustive, but they were giving illustrative examples in order to understand what that ethic means in other kinds of situations. I've got to meditate on those. I've got to meditate on the law. If you find an ox or a donkey walking down the side of the road or falling on the side of the road, what? What is that looking at in other kind of situations? What's the ethic that's trying to be portrayed there?
Speaker 2:The Israelites had flat roofs. They had mud brick, flat roof houses and they would often sleep on top of the house, they would do activities on the roof of the house and they could fall off. So we're told they have to build a parapet along a railing along the side of the roof so the less somebody fall off. Well, does that mean that I have to build, that we have to have flat roofed houses today?
Speaker 2:we can't have gable pitched roofs no well, but what it means is that again, it's under the command don't murder. That means that I have to do everything I can to protect life as a homeowner and not be a negligent homeowner. So if I have a staircase, I need to have, I need to have a railing. If I've got a balcony, and have a railing. If I've got a swimming pool, I need to have a fence to keep kids from falling in yeah, I live in Nebraska it snows, I've got to shovel my front walk so that people don't slip and fall.
Speaker 2:Or if somebody asked to borrow my car and I'm going to loan them my car, I've got to make sure my car is a safe vehicle. So it's. It's meditating on what was God trying to convey to the Israelites about not just not taking away life, but doing everything they could to protect life wherever they found it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, say what I've heard of I think it's Daniel Block, maybe in his Deuteronomy commentary and we even talked about this, maybe in our in the Ten Commandments podcast, where he he reframed a way of thinking of the. The Decalogue is it's you're protecting your neighbor's rights like your neighbor has a right to life.
Speaker 1:Your neighbor has a right to his family, his wife. He has a right to his stuff and it's not just, don't take it it's that you're trying to protect his interests and when you think about it, in the Decalogue there's only two positive commands honor your father, mother and keep Sabbath.
Speaker 2:The other commands are negative. In other words, you could you could keep eighty percent of the deck lock if you just sit still you don't do, don't do things, you just don't do things and but everything that you do that's wrong is some way violating somebody else's right yeah and John Locke used to talk about the natural, the natural order.
Speaker 2:When somebody is living in isolation by themselves, they don't need laws, because if they're just in isolation by themselves, they're not going to violate somebody else. But as soon as you have people living in community, you got the possibility of offending people, violating people, depriving people of what their natural rights are. And so the, the Torah was built at not only to bring people into covenant with Yahweh, but to create a peaceful, a peaceful community in which people would their rights would be protected, their rights would be respected, and this would be a community of the people of God who could enjoy peace and harmony with one another yeah, and that's that's the picture that we've been, we've been seeing over and over again and we even some of what we were just doing right now just for the listener.
Speaker 1:We see precedents for it in Paul as well, with the way he understands the not muscling the ox while it treads the grain. That's the same kind of move of. It's not just it is about agriculture and it is about livestock and it is about farming, but there's a principle at work there that applies in other cases and it takes an imaginative, meditative appropriation of these case laws to think about.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is the way this could be applied here today so if it's, if it's true that you want to protect the rights of the ox, that's working for you. How much true, how much more true is it that you want to protect the rights of the human? That's working for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah and so that's the direction that Paul's going.
Speaker 2:Paul is not. He's not outrising, he's not abusing. He's understanding what the what the spirit of the law was, what the ethos was, that it wasn't exhaustive, but it was setting a precedent and he's he's making appropriate applications. Yeah so, even the case laws Paul makes the point even the gold testament case laws, those still speak to us today yeah because they still provide this moral instruction, this ethical guidance.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, dr Johnson, in closing I think it would be we talked about this at before we were recording.
Speaker 1:It would probably be helpful, with what we just said in mind, to deal with at least one of the objectionable or the scandalous case laws, one of the texts of terror text of terror and it just for the listeners, like we're gonna, we're gonna talk kind of matter of factly about one of these examples and so it's a very sensitive topic but we're trying to just deal with it in terms of the background context and what's going on. But I could see it, you know people thinking, yeah well, what do we do with some of these passages where it seems misogynistic or it seems very behind the times, but it's actually maybe not quite what people think it is, even as it is still somewhat scandalous and so well, so this will be a slightly sensitive conversation as we wrap up real quickly so we were talking about Deuteronomy 21, 10 to 15.
Speaker 2:It's the so-called law of the beautiful captive woman, the beautiful foreign captive woman, and in Deuteronomy 21, yahweh is giving the rules of engagement for warfare. Now it's important to understand because Israel often gets and Moses often gets bad press because of the conquest and the and the command to attack the Canaanites. But it's important to understand that ancient Israel was the first and only nation in the ancient or east that had rules of engagement for warfare. All throughout the ancient or east they would have laws for society and for the cities and for the state, but there were no rules anything, anything goes so they could.
Speaker 2:They would rape with the women that on the battlefield. They would murder the survivors, they would force the people into slavery. They would confiscate and loot all of their money. Then and it was a celebration of the victors they felt like this was their reward.
Speaker 2:Ancient Israel, when they went to battle Yahweh, gave rules to maintain humanitarian boundaries for warfare. So if you conquer a city and then you take captives, if Moses said if you see a beautiful woman among the captives, you may not rape her, in the ancient or east, the woman would be raped, often gang raped or taken prisoner and then sold as a concubine. Moses says if you see a beautiful captive woman, you may not rape her. If you want her, you're going to have to marry her. So Moses, moses moved this activity from the battlefield into the bedroom of marriage and he said that if you, if you're gonna marry her, you have to give her opportunity to grieve her loss. You have to allow her to maintain her canaanite, or is ancient foreign mourning rituals that were not allowed for Israel and then that's the shaving of the shaving they had.
Speaker 1:That's not something being forced on to them. That's right they would have. That's exactly what I actually wanted to do.
Speaker 2:That's right in part of the that was the part of the foreign the pagan mourning rituals that Leviticus did not allow the Israelites to participate in. But because you're, because she's been taken captive, you have to allow her to celebrate her own cultural mourning rituals and then you wait for 40 days and then she can become your wife if for some reason, you're not pleased with her. You can't sell her as a concubine. You can't sell her as a slave. You have to have to give her divorce papers and she gets to go out as a free woman with all the rights and full privileges of a full Israelite citizen.
Speaker 2:So although this, it's still, it's still part of ancient Israelite culture. It was still part of ancient ristan, which there is a warfare in the prophets. Look for a day in which there would no longer be warfare. It still is reflecting a patriarchal culture in which the man takes the woman and she becomes his wife. Where we get to the end of the Old Testament, the right of the woman to have a say in marriage has started to be recognized. So we're still. We're still not there at the ideal ethic yet, but it's the first step in the right direction on the long path to the ideal ethic and it's an improvement. It's out, it's an. It's more progressive than what was happening in the culture. We look at it today and it looks to be us regressive, but we need to understand the context in which this happened.
Speaker 2:Moses was really out front and being very aggressive in terms of the culture. A lot of people ask well, why didn't God give the absolute culture to begin with? Why did he wait? Why was it revealed progressively over time? And my friend Darrell Bock often says that when you're working with cultural engagement, you have to be sensitive that you don't take people as far as they're able to go at a time. You only take them one step at a time. If you get out too far in front of them, you lose them. So God was taking people one step at a time. But this was this was the first step.
Speaker 1:It wasn't the last step yeah, and that's just that we talked about earlier. It's like that's why the Sermon on the Mount is with Jesus in the New Testament and not Exodus 19.
Speaker 2:It's when he's, he's, he's, he's pressing it forward yeah, so I think it.
Speaker 1:This all just illustrates a posture that I think we need to bring to these case laws as we read them is there's probably more going on there than what we would think on a surface reading. There's a deep wisdom there that is drawing on the decalogue and how do we apply these, and there are things there that feel regressive to us but are actually moving moving things forward in the right direction on this red and the reason that feels regressive dust is because God has he's.
Speaker 2:He's brought us forward. Yeah, yeah, well, dr.
Speaker 1:Johnson, this has been a great discussion. I enjoyed talking through these things with you and I will look forward to hopefully doing this again sometime.