Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 21:4-6

4 If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.

5 And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:

6 Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.

In the last verses we heard that a servant would go free after six years of labor, however if he took a wife of his master’s slaves, and had children with her, the wife and children would remain with the master after the servant went free. Of course, the wife would also be freed after her six years of service had transpired if she was a Hebrew, so it would seem that this rule was only applicable when the spouse was a foreigner. In such a case, the man’s union to the woman would have been permitted, but not sanctified. The marriage would not have been a covenant before the Lord to such a degree that the husband and wife were to “cleave to one another, and be one flesh.”

As mentioned in the last post, though, the privileges of Israelite nationality was openly-exclusive. The Lord had already related how any foreigner might become a part of the chosen people, so presumably the foreign wife could take on the Hebrew covenants and be counted among the Lord’s people, and then be eligible for freedom from her servitude and remain with her husband.

Or, if she would not, the husband would also have the opportunity to make himself as a foreigner, testifying before the judges that he would rather remain in servitude than go free, and the master would perform a ritual where he fastened the man to his door, making the man a permanent fixture of his household.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 21:2-3

2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.

Today we begin the rules that applied to an Israelite slave. As I mentioned in my last post, this subject can be shocking to us today, but we must not take our current privileges and assume that they also existed in these ancient times. The historical context matters.

As we will read in upcoming verses, an Israelite man might end up a servant by selling himself, or by being sold by his father, into that service, presumably due to immense poverty. This was, therefore, a transaction with payment, and the serving participant elected to participate in it. The relationship being described here is not chattel slavery, but probably something between our modern concept of slavery and servanthood.

Today, we might wish that that the slave/servant could have been aided by some sort of welfare program instead, but what if there wasn’t sufficient stability and wealth in the economy to provide that welfare? We might wish that the rich master would simply pay for the man’s livelihood without receiving any service in return, as an act of charity, but what if the rich men of the time would themselves become destitute unless they made some gain after paying for the man’s livelihood?

Freedom is a great good that we should all aspire to, but history has taught us that it is a concept that requires a certain level of infrastructure and stability to exist. The Israelites simply may not have had that necessary infrastructure or stability, given that they were fresh out of Egypt and living in a brutal environment. At least, not enough infrastructure or stability to support it entirely.

Because, even while God’s law was allowing for a form of slavery in this moment, it is already showing the ending of slavery as well. Defined in God’s law was that no Hebrew slave should be forced to stay in such a state for perpetuity. Every seventh year he would have the opportunity to go free, at no cost, and be a free man again. If he found the world still too hard to abide on his own he could presumably sell himself back into servitude again, though after another seven years he would have still have that guaranteed chance for freedom once more.

And if it seems unfair that this option for freedom is only offered to Hebrew slaves, and presumably not the foreign ones, remember that God had already detailed how any foreigner could become a child of the covenant, and would presumably then have the same privilege of freedom.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 21:1

1 Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

After giving the ten commandments, God goes on to clarify other aspects of His law. The things that we are going to read now are going to look much less like the transcendent, eternal principles of the ten commandments, and more like the nitty-gritty terms of judicial law, meant to help the judges when ruling over a dispute.

And for this study, it is essential to remember that the people and time that the Lord is providing a law to is not the same as the people and time of today. In our next study’s verses we will examine the rules related to servants belonging to their masters. Some of these practices may sound shocking to us, but that is with the lens of today’s unprecedented upwards mobility. We did not live at this time, we did not have the same problems, we did not need the same solutions. It is too shallow, too simplistic, to just dismiss these parts of Jewish law out of hand, and call them unjustifiable in every time and place, and never admit that in actuality we just don’t really know. Most of us don’t even try to study the day-to-day life of these people, and even those who do have never had to face it firsthand. We just don’t know.

And so, if some of these rules feel out-of-place in today’s world then they probably are. That’s alright, because these aren’t eternal commandments that we’re reading about now. These are merely the legal rules and definitions that applied to the local scope that they belonged to.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Shame, the Unspeakable

If I were to give a personal definition of shame, it was all the things in my life that were unspeakable. Since about the age of 7 or 8 I started to collect certain things that I didn’t dare talk to anyone about, and it grew throughout the years. It was filled with deeply embarrassing things that I did, times that I hurt someone I loved for selfish reasons, and secret repulsive behaviors I engaged in.

All of these shameful things were real weights in my life, they were extremely present and significant in my mind, yet totally absent in my words and confessions. My reality was therefore twisted around things that were genuine, but treated as if they weren’t, and that twisting caused me all manner of anxiety and misery.

In the moment my conundrum seemed so incredibly complicated, yet the solution to it was ridiculously simple. If my crushing shame was all of the things that I couldn’t speak, then all I had to do was speak them aloud and they would cease to be shame, by definition. After twenty years I did eventually start divulging the things I had refused to talk about, and the relief and release that I experienced took me entirely by surprise. Only in hindsight has the logic of what transpired in those moments of confession revealed itself to me. I confessed not knowing the significance of what I was doing, but I received the full benefits of it regardless. I was speaking the unspeakable, so the shameful became unashamed.

If you have any things in your own life that are unspeakable, I urge you to look for the person and place where you can start to confess your guilt and shame. I wouldn’t say to divulge those things to just anyone, Jesus did teach us not to “cast our pearls before swine,” after all. But I would hope that you could find at least one trusted minister, or well-meaning friend, or recovery group of similarly-burdened individuals. Just find anyone who can receive that confession and offer you peace and wholeness in return. I can tell you that in my own life nothing else has given me as much healing and change of heart as this, and I pray it may be the same for you, too.

Posted on by Abe Austin

True Freedom

True freedom is not having your chains removed, it is realizing they were never there in the first place.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:24-26

24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.

25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.

In the last post we discussed how the Israelites were not to create any graven image, even of the Lord Himself. Today we see that this forbidding of graven religious artifacts extended also to the altar upon which they would make their sacrifices. They were not to carve the stone into closely-fitting shapes, but instead would lay the rocks in a rough and natural pile.

God goes so far as to say that using a tool on the stone would pollute it. The altar was the most sacred place in the Jewish faith, and so it was to be a work of God alone. God crafted the rocks of the earth, and man was not supposed to try and improve on that. If they did, it would be an altar of men, not of the Lord.

Neither were they to craft stairs leading up to the altar, but approach it on level ground. The reason given is not because the stairs would be a constructed edifice, though, but because there might be a risk of the priestly skirt exposing a man as he ascended the stairs. For later altars the Lord would instruct the Israelites to elevate it up in the air, but by that point He also would have instructed the priests to wear breeches underneath their skirts.

This is a recurring pattern in the Biblical account. The Lord requires a holy practice of His people, but He modifies its requirement according to their capability at the time. Another example would be how the newly-freed Israelites, wandering back-and-forth through the wilderness, were told to construct a tabernacle that was portable and modest, whereas at the height of their power—under the reign of King Solomon—the temple would be a vast and permanent construction. In some things the Lord demands sudden, dramatic changes, but in other things He leads His people by degrees.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:22-23

22 And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.

23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold.

God had commanded the people that they were not to make any graven images. In today’s verses He goes further to say that they must not make idols even of Him. Yes, He is their God, but they are not to try and recreate Him in any physical fashion.

One obvious reason for this is so that the idol would not become a distraction from the actual God. By pouring their devotion into a figure, they might compromise their relationship with the actual, living Lord. We do something similar when we obsess over a particular interpretation of the gospel, and hold to it at the expense of all other parts. We are more devoted to the image in our head of God, than to God Himself.

Another reason for not creating any idols of God is because God would create His own image. It would be a living, walking, talking image, even a man in the flesh, Jesus Christ. All the worshippers of Horus and Ra and Baal and Ashtaroth made images that were static, mute, and dead, just as the gods they represented were dead. Only God could create a living image, because only God was truly alive.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:20-21

20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

I find very interesting the last phrase in today’s verses: “Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.” This sounds counterintuitive. The scriptures describe God as being synonymous with the light, the entity that dispels the darkness. Why would Moses go into darkness to meet the Lord?

We have to ask, “what was causing the darkness that Moses stepped into?” Looking back on verse 18, I assume that it was “the mountain smoking.” It seems that Moses stepped into the darkness of the smoke to find the Lord within. But, of course, what one finds within smoke is a flame. It wasn’t that God was the darkness, but that He was the light within the darkness. This idea returns at other points as well, such as when John gives his testimony of the Word that was with God, and he uses the phrase: “the light shineth in darkness.”

We do not come across God as a bright spot in an already well-lit room. We find Him shining in the midst of the deepest darkness, darkness that we must step into before we find Him. Stepping into that darkness means facing our deepest fears, confessing our most shameful secrets, enduring our most painful afflictions, and ultimately passing into the darkness of death itself. This is a most fascinating aspect of our faith. We do not just believe that God is good, but that He is the good that we can only find through the darkest experiences of our life.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:18-19

18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.

19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

Today’s verses seem to go back before Moses ascended the mountain and received the ten commandments, the first moment the noise and power of the Lord was made manifest upon the mountain. These verses seem to take place in-between, or just after, Exodus 19:19 and Exodus 19:25.

In this account it is apparent how great of a fear came upon the people, and how they desired not to draw near to or speak with the Lord, for fear that they would die under the power of His word. To be clear, we have not heard of any threatening word or action from the Lord in this moment, His power has been restricted to the mountain, not invading into their camp. So the Israelites fear of God is not based on any malice, but because His glory and power is too great for them to bear.

There are those today who make light of God, openly mocking Him and portraying Him as a bumbling fool. It is safe that no one who does this has actually glimpsed the true Lord of Heaven and Earth. No one would dare to speak irreverently if they had seen and known the terrible majesty of His purifying glory. One day, all of us will witness that tremendous glory, and when we do it is said that even the kings and the mighty will beg the “mountains and rocks, to fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne!” (Revelations 6:16). Like the Israelites, we will be in terrible fear, and we would then desire a representative, even a mediator, to be able to stand before God in our place.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:17

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

The final commandment is a unique one. It goes deeper than the acted out behaviors to address the inner, conceptual thoughts and desires. It is not enough to refrain from stealing our neighbor’s things, it is wrong to even lust for those things. It is not enough to refrain from committing adultery with our neighbor’s wife, it is wrong to even lust for her.

Desires, of course, are not entirely in our control. By our lifestyle we can foster certain positive or negative trends in them, but even with the purest of habits we will surely encounter invasive thoughts that would be impure to put into practice. Thankfully, having a random impulse is not the same as “coveting.” Coveting is making a choice to dwell on the unholy notion, to entertain it, to fantasize over it.

Also, we are not told that all things are wrong for us to hold a long and burning passion for. God’s commandment does not tell us that we cannot aspire to obtain a certain status in life, or to earn a certain accomplishment, or to marry a certain spouse. What we are not to obsess over is that which already belongs to another. We are each meant to seek our own. We have no justification in lusting for that which God has already given to our neighbor.