The Torah reading מִּשְׁפָּטִים Mishpatim (“judgments,” Exodus 21:1–24:18) has a very controversial chapter, one we don’t like very much. In Exodus 21, God appears to uphold the institution of slavery, yet creates rules that make slavery so difficult as to disincentivized the institution.
God also enforces covenants that we have made that we want to break, and He also believes in the sanctity and innate humanity of the unborn child. All of these are very controversial in our current culture.
Our culture doesn’t care about human traffic and sex slavery as long as makes sex cheap to buy. We don’t want to keep the promises we make when they become difficult to keep and we create a “right to privacy” so we can kill the evidence of our illicit behavior.
We can only guess as to what slavery were like for the Israelites in Egypt. We can surmise that the Israelites did not have equal rights with the Egyptians.
God is reminding Israelites that they had spent 200-400 years in slavery and how they were treated during that time. They were accustomed to being treated little better than animals, but God was “graduating” them away from the kind of abusive, demeaning institution they came from to a more balanced and equal relationship between slave and master.
The Torah is the first ancient law code that actually gives slaves any rights whatsoever. If you read contemporary law codes of the surrounding cultures of the time period, slaves had no rights to life or limb at all.
In Torah, one cannot kidnap a person as a means to acquire a slave. The “slave” must volunteer to be in servitude. The other option, is a person found guilty of criminal offense is sentence to a time of servitude to pay off the debt they have incurred.
We read these rules and think, “We don’t buy and sell people in America in 2019”? Why don’t we?
Can a person, or a group of people, annul a rule of the Torah? No. Can they prohibit something the Torah does not prohibit? Yes. And God will hold them to it.
Jeremiah 34–35: Same as it ever was
“The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people who were in Jerusalem to proclaim release to them: that each man should set free his male servant and each man his female servant, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman; so that no one should keep them, a Jew his brother, in bondage” (Jeremiah 34:8–9 NASB)
This edict was not in the context of a Yobel (Jubilee) year.
“And all the officials and all the people obeyed who had entered into the covenant that each man should set free his male servant and each man his female servant, so that no one should keep them any longer in bondage; they obeyed, and set them free. But afterward they turned around and took back the male servants and the female servants whom they had set free, and brought them into subjection for male servants and for female servants.” (Jeremiah 34:10–11 NASB)
As time went, they reneged on the agreement. What happened? After all, strictly speaking, Torah gave them the right to possess Jewish slaves. However, once they made a covenant to free their Jewish slaves, God holds them to it.
“Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘I made a covenant with your forefathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, saying, “At the end of seven years each of you shall set free his Hebrew brother who has been sold to you and has served you six years, you shall send him out free from you; but your forefathers did not obey Me or incline their ear to Me.” (Jeremiah 34:12–14 NAS95)
God says that for the past 800 years, the Israelites did not free their Jewish slaves, which was a direct violation of the Torah. They made the promise to release these slaves, literally in God’s name, and then broke it (Jeremiah 34:15–16).
God brought a heavy punishment on the Jewish people for their failure to free their slaves (Jeremiah 34:17–22).
When we make agreements with God, we must follow though. Covenants with God should matter to us.
God, through Jeremiah, goes on to compare the rebellious Jewish nobles to the family of Jonadab the son of Rechab in Jeremiah 35:1-19. That family made a covenant to never drink wine, and to live in tents as nomads, like the bedouin.
The Torah does not command us not to drink wine or build permanent homes. Yet God lauds and praises the Rechabites for their 200-300 years of faithful abstinence from wine and their live as nomads. They refused to live a “civilized” life (Jeremiah 35:12–17).
The Rechabites bound themselves to the command of their ancestor and did not break faith with him, yet Israel’s nobles made a covenant with God and promptly broke it.
Is your word like God’s bond?
When we make covenants, God considers them binding, whether we make it directly with Him or with others. Covenants mean something to God.
“Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the LORD and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the LORD has spoken we will do!”” (Exodus 24:3 NASB)
Just as Jonadab the son of Rechab bound not only himself but all his heirs to the covenant of abstinence from wine and from “civilization,” the children of Israel did the same in front of Moses.
There’s an interesting verse in this reading that touches on the abortion debate.
““If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. “But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Exodus 21:22–25 NAS95)
In other words, if the mother ends up giving birth prematurely, but the child survives and suffers no permanent harm, than the aggressor merely pays a fine as decided by the court. However, if the child dies as a result of the fight, they are to execute the aggressor.
God is the defender of the helpless. The child is not able to protect itself. God puts this Torah instruction here to remind us to care for those who can’t care for themselves.
We see from this text that abortion is an act of murder which God takes most seriously. The fact that our laws permit it doesn’t matter to God. God doesn’t care what we think is legal.
God will, in his time, hold those people and nations who support abortion to account for their sin, just as he held the Jewish people to account when they refused to fulfill their promise to free their slaves.
Summary: Tammy