Moses and the Torah
21:1 to 23:19
As the name of this parashah (see the commentary on Deuteronomy, to see link click Af – Parashah) indicates, this reading from the Torah contains the mishpatim, or the rulings. Like an Ancient Near Eastern legal code, the rulings of God come tumbling forth in some of the most densely packed and comprehensive legislation of the whole Torah. Several of the rulings speak of being brought before Elohim, thus it would seem that legal matters are to be settled directly by God. Yet, the context of these trials indicates that a human court of judges in meant. Which is correct? Perhaps both are correct. In Jewish thought there is no disconnecting between civil, moral, and ceremonial mitzvot, for they are all God’s Torah. An Israelite judicial court was a religious court. The legal issues they debated and decided were issues of the Torah legal system. As a result, to appear before a Torah court of law was to appear before YHVH, for the Torah court is the dispenser of God’s rulings.
Because Torah is both rulings and revelation, it functions in a dual capacity. On the one hand, it is a blueprint for living (see Dj – The Ten Commandments) which guides our conduct. On the other hand, it is the expression of Ha’Shem in human terms. We must learn to recognize that Torah is more than merely 613 commandments; it is actually the revealed character of YHVH dressed up as mitzvot. Torah is His spoken Word written down and His self-disclosure to the world. When one realizes this, one must also realize the enormous gravity of declaring it irrelevant to their lives today. Even the smallest commandment of the Torah is saturated with godliness. To declare any commandment as being irrelevant or obsolete is to deny the eternal and unchanging nature of God.
Sadly, far too many people today are put off by these commandments. The sudden jolting return to the culture of the Ancient Near East is more than they are prepared to handle. When the Torah begins to speak in a matter-of-fact manner about the institution of slavery, about selling one’s daughter, about repaying measure for measure, we quickly become queasy. The temptation is to comfort ourselves with the notion that all of these unpleasant commandments have been done away with and replaced by kinder, gentler, and nobler virtues. The problem with such thinking is that is is heretical. To suppose that God’s eternal Torah can simply be dismissed is an affront to the Holiness and Unchangingness of YHVH.
Every commandment of the Torah is spoken by the mouth of God. Each mitzvah is therefore Holy and Eternal. Whether or not a particular commandment seems to apply in our day is irrelevant. Human society may change, but the LORD does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Every commandment is a distillation of His essence, a pure revelation of His person. The study of the commandments is the study of God. As soon as we begin to discard commandments, we have begun editing ADONAI. We have immediately begun the process of reshaping the Holy One into an image that we have deemed more appropriate. So you see, when we try to change the Torah or do away with a commandment, it is actually God we are trying to change or do away with.
When the Torah was completed there would be 613 commandments, including the Ten Commandments. These teachings were divided into two groups, positive and negative. The positive ones start with words like: do or you shall; while the negative ones started with words like: do not or you shall not. There were 248 positive commandments and 365 negative commandments, one for each day of the year. There are a lot of mitzvot packed into this parashah. Of the 613 commandments, over 50 of them come directly from this portion. Yet there are far more than 50 commandments here. Some of them are repeated in later portions, while other fall under the general categories of broader mitzvot.
When we get to the B’rit Chadashah and we read about the traditions of the Elders (Matthew 15:2) or the traditions of my fathers (Galatians 1:14), those had nothing to do with the Torah. They were man made rules after the Babylonian captivity and were called the Oral Law (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Ei – The Oral Law). The rabbis taught that Moses brought them down with him in written form Mount Sinai, but in reality God had nothing to do with them. By the time of Christ, the Pharisees and Sadducees not only treated them as being equal to Torah, but they actually held them in higher esteem. They said, “He who follows Torah does a good thing. But he who follows the Oral Law, does an even better thing.” Therefore, all of the conflict Jesus had with the religious rulers in Jerusalem was over the Oral Law. But Messiah had nothing to do with the thousands and thousands of oral laws, that is why He called them the traditions of men (Mark 7:8). So although the Torah was misinterpreted and corrupted by pharisaic Judaism, it continues to be a tree of life to those who take hold of its principles. Happy are those who view it as a blue print for living because its ways are pleasant and all its paths lead to peace (Proverbs 3:17-18).
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