The Law

ORIGINS OF THE LAW

In this section we’ll be going over some of the statutes that Moses came up with to keep his merry band of wanderers in line. These statutes are the nitty gritty of how to implement the Ten Commandments.

Technically, the ‘Law’ is the Ten Commandments as written on the stone tablets. These were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, which we’ll get to later. The ‘statutes’ are the actual mandates and corresponding punishments that cover a myriad of situations.

Many people argue these statutes were dictated directly to Moses by God and were on the tablets Moses broke during the golden calf fiasco. If you take a look at any Bible and consider how many stone tablets it would take to write all this down, it’s pretty obvious two tablets wouldn’t cut it.

Even Jesus refers specifically to the ‘Law of God’ and ‘Statutes of Moses’ as two distinctly separate things. I figure if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.

Also, it’s important to note that all these laws and statutes were meant only for the Israelites – to keep them separate from the other people who occupied the land. So technically, if you’re not a Jew, none of this applies to you. You’re off the hook.¹

Most people, when they cite these laws, act like they were written for everybody, everywhere, for all time. That’s just not the case. They were written for the children of Israel, period. If you’re not a Jew but would like to abide by them, fine. If not, that’s fine too. You’re under no obligation, and neither is anybody else.

And, as it turns out, these were not entirely original laws. Moses borrowed liberally from the many codes and statues of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Sumerians and others that had been governing the peoples of the near and Middle East for centuries.²

LEVITICUS AND DEUTERONOMY

Leviticus and Deuteronomy are two books full of instructions on how to perform various sacrifices and rules about what’s okay to eat, how to treat people, who can have sex with whom, what to do about leprosy and much more. It’s pretty tedious.

There’s a lot of repetition in the two books so I’m going to be mixing and matching a lot of it, taking a little something from Leviticus and then a little something from Deuteronomy hoping you don’t get bored. I’m going to be skimming the basic content while highlighting some of the passages I found to be more interesting, questionable, or downright outrageous.

Leviticus and Deuteronomy are very much like a lot of the Bible narratives; the same story told from two differing perspectives.³