The law is good, but it was through the law that death came. I think most folks who talk about keeping the law seem to focus on the easy parts like keeping the SABBATH (as opposed to meeting together on Sunday), dietary restrictions and of course, the granddaddy of all laws; circumcision. They forget things like the proper way to treat slaves, forcing their daughter to marry the guy who raped her, mixing two fibers in one garment (only 100% flax for them), stoning their disobedient son, gouging out the eye of a man who put out the eye of another man in a fight, cutting off the hand of a woman who grabs the testicles of a man who is beating her husband in a fight⌠stuff like that.
How, one might ask, could such ridiculous things find their way into the law of God?
First, it wasnât âthe law of God.â Jesus Himself called it the law of Moses. These laws meant something to the people of the day. I donât know about the dietary things, but these restrictions werenât unusual at the time. People speculate that some of these are for food safety reasons. Certainly they were at least in part symbolicâintended to keep the people in mind of the ways of God. Circumcision reminds us of the need for the âremoval of the flesh.â (The flesh standing in for our fleshly, bestial, instinctive nature.) The fact that the law lays down rules (sometimes not very nice laws in our modern eyes) for treating slaves does NOT mean that God approves slavery. At the time, the idea that slaves deserved any consideration or justice or kindness at all was revolutionary. Mosesâs law bettered the lives of slaves though it didnât get all the way to freeing slaves. IMO the people werenât ready for that kind of catastrophe level cultural earthquake. It s only in the last 150-200 years that slavery has come to be generally disapproved. Whether you know this or not, actual slavery is on the rise, yes, even in the USA. And it is as ugly or more-so than ever.
Mixing of fibers is doubtless symbolic, but maybe it had other purposes. Stoning a disobedient sonâwell, thatâs pretty harsh. The implication is a physically mature son who is presumably dangerous or potentially dangerous. Too big for the parents to control. Still, pretty harsh. I somehow donât think the folks who preach âthe law, the lawâ are gonna be stoning their good-for-nothing young adult son any time soon. Eye for an eyeâwe donât do that any more, and you donât get to do it just because youâre a âlaw guy.â If a woman grabs the other guyâs âfamily jewelsâ to save her husband, sheâs gonna be either praised or at worst, laughed at. The other guy is definitely going to be laughed at. Cutting off her hand might occur to HIM, but no one else is even going to think such a thing, let alone suggest it. No, not even âlaw guyâ (unless itâs him thatâs bent over double, gasping for breath). Still, I think (if I remember right), the punishment for such an impropriety had previously been death. (Ouch!)
Forcing a girl to marry her rapist sounds like a punishment (of her) to us. At the time, it was more like forcing the rapist to marry the girl he has attacked. In that culture, a rape was even more catastrophic for the girl than today, since no man would have her for a wife after she had been defiled. In that culture a woman was really in a fix without a husband to protect/provide for her. The language obliges the rapist, but it doesnât oblige the girlâs father (who was the only one who had a say in the matter back then). It was intended to force the jerk to support and provide for the girl he had âhumbled.â Not ideal, but (maybe) better than her being an outcast for the rest of her life and him getting away with just paying her dad off.
My point is that the law was first and foremost Mosesâs law, and that it doesnât even relate to modern Jewish society for the most part, let alone to us gentiles who were NEVER included in the culture to whom the law was given. Jesus absolutely fulfilled the SPIRIT of the law perfectly. In Him, we have also been given credit for keeping the law (if we need creditâthe Jews among us perhaps legitimately feel that need). The law has been satisfied. Jesus gave us a new law. âLove one another.â THAT is our law. Itâs actually a lot more challenging than a bunch of surface level edicts.