Yahweh’s second set of rules in Exodus 21:12 to 36, meets the need for justice, because it too is right at the top of the inevitable issues that nations, communities, families, schools and workplaces face. Which is understandable, because no matter how determined we are as humans to keep things humming along nicely without upset or incident, unfortunate and sometimes devastating things happen.
Which is when the need for justice is crucial, because if anyone feels that proper justice hasn’t been administered, and there’s no indication that justice will ever be done, things can escalate very quickly into bitterness, revenge, endless feuds, hurt that never heals, and even all out war.
Justice, then, needs to be done well and quickly, but what principles does good and fair justice operate by? There’s a clue in verse 12, that says, “Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death” – which justice surely demands – “However,” verse 13, “if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place of safety I will designate.”
A key principle in effective justice, then, is noting the difference between circumstantial and intentional. Circumstantial is when bad things happen that nobody intended. A person trips on a curb, for instance, and in his forward lunge to catch himself his head collides with a ladder up which a person is cleaning out a blockage in the eavestrough and down both he and the ladder crash breaking the neck of a passerby – every unfortunate stage of which was purely circumstantial.
On the other hand, verse 14, “if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately….put him to death.” Justice, therefore, separates the circumstantial from the intentional. It’s like a child growing up in a home where her Dad has three jobs to feed the family, so he wasn’t there when she needed his support and wisdom through her turbulent teenage years. She felt she’d suffered because of it, but instead of accepting it was circumstantial and Dad had no choice but to do what he did, she accuses him of deliberately hurting her, which in her mind then justified wrecking his life in return in some way.
And this to Yahweh was a great danger, so to prevent such misunderstanding causing break-ups and hostility in families, he got “Deadly serious about respect for parents”….(next blog)
