NT – This is probably a cheat but this commentary on Biblegateway.com on Matt 23 is AMAZING. Please click here to go to it and read it. I learned so much!
OT—And so it begins. We get the first of 2 of the 10 Commandments. Please get a ribbon or a really nice bookmark and mark Exodus 19. We will come back to this over and over again and you will want to have this readily handy. I have a bookmark that Carol Beckman’s Jessica painted for me and it stays always in this place.
The first 5 books of the Bible are known as the Law. And they are known that for a reason. There are A LOT of them. Your eyes, like mine, will tend to glaze over and you will have read that section and absorbed nothing. Don’t do this. Stop when you start to do this and ask yourself what the basis for this law really was. If you don’t know, type it into a search engine on the internet and see what comes up. For example, Vs 7 really made me mad. Are you surprised? Any man that gets to sell his daughter and she doesn’t get to go free when her 6 years of servitude are up. So, I typed into Google Man selling daughter and here is what comes up:
http://bible.cc/exodus/21-7.htm
Fascinating! And the reality is, he only got to sell his pre-pubescent daughter and then only in dire need. And the reason she didn’t get to go free was because she was intended to be some sort of concubine/inferior wife. So, the stricture was really to provide some sort of help to the daughter that she not be sold off to someone else or cast aside if the son of the household didn’t really want her once she grew up.
I ask you not to gloss over these laws but to really read them and ponder them. Ask yourself, why would these laws have stood the test of 2500 years at the bare minimum? Was there one that really struck you? What did you learn by looking it up on the web? Share, please.
Psalm -- look at verse 3. What does that remind you of? Doesn’t that sound just like what Jesus was talking about with the Pharisees? Can’t you just see a beautifully coiffed woman, smiling at everyone she know while inside she is repeating gossip and thinking really evil thoughts. Last night, one of the rabbis in our interfaith discussion group pointed out a Southernism. You can say *ANYTHING* about a person, as long as it is followed by “Bless his/her heart!”. That is what verse 3 says to me.
Blessings on your reading. May you find challenge and strength in the Word.
It is so difficult to read about the do's and don'ts of slavery!
ReplyDeleteIt is very clear from the proverbs to watch out for promiscuous women! How many marriages might have been saved it this was written on the hearts of men. And women!
OT - God was so sure of human nature that he instructed the alter be built with stones not touched by a tool. He wanted their worship to be so pure and void of idolatry that even the shape of a stone could be a distraction. How full my life is of distractions!