In Exodus 21:1, Yahweh tells Moses, “These are the laws you are to set before them,” and when the Israelites obeyed these laws “fully,” Exodus 19:5-6, “then out of all nations,” Yahweh says, “you will be my treasured possession, and you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
By the application of these laws, then, the Israelites would be the most skilled people on the planet in the art of living. As “priests” they would also teach it, and as a “holy nation” demonstrate it. And in Yahweh calling Israel his “treasured possession,” that’s how much he prizes those who bring his laws to life in their world and their circumstances.
The Israelites, for instance, had grown up in an Egyptian culture of masters and slaves. But rather than have the Israelites start from scratch and try to create a completely different culture, Yahweh gave them laws for living within that culture, because that’s where the differences in his ways of living would really begin to show. The Egyptians, for instance, were brutal in their treatment of foreign captives and labourers, including the Israelites themselves, so Yahweh designed laws for the Israelites that would stop them doing the same thing.
Like the first law on his list in Exodus 21:2, which says, “After six years service a servant shall go free, with no financial penalty.” But if the servant says in verse 5, “I love my master” and wants to stay as his servant, his choice would be honoured too (6). No one, therefore, was stuck as a servant forever with no chance of a new life, but nor was he let go if he felt welcome and secure in his present position.
Where in Egypt or in any of the surrounding cultures would that be top priority? But it was to Yahweh, because it would beautifully show the contrast and improvement in the culture that his laws made, which in Deuteronomy 4:5-8 was exactly what Yahweh had chosen Israel “out of all nations” for.
Is there also a clue here, in Yahweh making this the first of his laws for Israel, that the most pressing (and depressing) problem in any culture in any age would be the strained relationship between masters and servants, or in our day the relationship between the ruling elite and the working class? But in the Israelites Yahweh had a solution for that: it was always there in his laws, that lived fully create “A society with a heart”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 