Exodus day 25
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Owners, Guardians, and Monotheists Exodus 22 verse 1 to 17 comes under the
00:08heading of property and ownership, but in various senses verses 1 to 6 rest in the assumption
00:13that we have a right to private property, and that this right must be safeguarded by
00:19sanctions against theft or willful damage.
00:22In Old Testament law there is no sense in which one size fits all.
00:27Different cases require different responses, but theft itself is always wrong, and restitution
00:33must be paid.
00:35Not to the treasury but to the injured party.
00:38Guardianship, where goods or money are entrusted to someone's care, rests on an assumption
00:43of integrity on the part of the person trusted.
00:47Verse 11 opens a window into a society of trust in which it can be taken for granted
00:51that a person's word is his bond.
00:54The case of the unmarried daughter, though possibly according more authority to the father
00:59than is the norm today, is an issue of guardianship since the parent is the responsible guardian
01:05as long as she is under his roof.
01:09Premarital sex created an obligation to marry, and indissoluble marriage at that.
01:16Offenses against monotheism attracted the death penalty, being as they were primary
01:20violations of the Decalogue.
01:22This obviously applies in verses 18 and 20, but also in verse 19 because bestiality was
01:28a feature of Canaanite fertility cults.
01:32But the particular nature of Israelite monotheism exerted its own distinctive requirements.
01:38First is the need to live in a way that reflects the nature of our redemption.
01:42The situation from which we were redeemed must make us especially concerned for those
01:46who are still as we once were.
01:50Secondly is the obligation to relate to people in a way that matches the Lord's attitude
01:54towards them.
01:56The helpless and resourceless are Yahweh's special concern.
02:00The debtor must be protected from the lone shark.
02:03Thirdly is the requisite to be holy.
02:06To display in every way the difference and distinctiveness proper to those who are the
02:10Lord's.
02:12Reflection.
02:13To be holy means to be separated to one's God.
02:17To belong to His sphere of reality.
02:19Live by His rules and reflect what He is and what He wishes.