parashat mishpatim Experience Shapes the Commandments
The Torah portion read in synagogues around the world this week is parashat mishpatim. Parashat mishpatim runs from Exodus 21 verse 1 to the end of chapter 24. Parashat mishpatim begins with the word ואלה “and these.” Many translations don’t bother translating the conjunction; they simply begin, “These are the case laws which you shall set before them.” But the ancient rabbis thought about that little conjunction “and.” Just what exactly were “and these are the case laws you shall set before them”? Rabbi Yishmael, who lived in the 2nd century, decided that the little conjunction “and” must refer back to the Decalogue. Rabbi Yishmael understood Exodus 21:1 to mean, “The Decalogue and these are the case laws which you shall set before them” [,מסכתא דנזיקין, פרשה א'Mkhilta].
Now, our Torah clearly terms what God speaks in the previous chapter “the Ten Statements” whereas it terms what comes in this chapter “case laws.” The terminology is different. Even the form is different.
The Decalogue comes in the form where the legislator addresses those obligated in the second person: “You shall do this and that, and you shall refrain from this and that.” This form is called apodictic law. In contrast, the case laws come in the form where past decisions in typical cases are codified. This form is called casuistic law. Casuistic law is not brand-new legislation; casuistic law standardizes existing legal practice. Casuistic law isn’t relevant to most citizens; it’s only relevant to a plaintiff or defendant involved in a similar case.
Rabbi Yishmael is saying that for all the obvious differences between the Decalogue and the case laws in form and terminology, there’s a connection. Exodus chapter 20 and chapter 21 belong together. “The Decalogue and these are the case laws which you shall set before them.” The Decalogue and the case laws are both written in the “Book of the Covenant.” The ratification of the covenant with its written stipulations is described in Exodus 24:3.
“So Moshe came and told the people all the words of HaShem, and all the case laws. And all the people answered with one voice. They said, ‘All the words which HaShem has spoken we will do.’ So Moshe wrote all the words of HaShem."
Skipping down to verse 7.
"And he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the ears of the people. They said, ‘All that HaShem has spoken we will do and we will hear.’ And Moshe took the blood and splattered it on the people. He said, ‘Behold, the blood of the covenant which HaShem has cut with you regarding all these words.”
We see then, that both the Decalogue and the case laws are written in “The Book of the Covenant.” Both the Ten Statements and the case laws comprise the stipulations of HaShem’s covenant with Israel.
Many Jewish and Christian teachers down through the ages have claimed that the Decalogue is a concise summation of all the commandments contained in the Torah. But this is very difficult to sustain. How, for example, can the agricultural laws or the food laws or the ecology laws or the economic laws be derived from the Decalogue?
A better way of explaining the relationship between the Decalogue and the rest of the commandments is that instead of the Decalogue being a concise summation of the rest, the Decalogue is the first ten items on the list. Rather than being the table of contents or the chapter headings of a book, the Decalogue is more like the first ten pages.
Evidently the relationship between the Decalogue and the rest of the commandments is due to a change in plans. The original plan was for the children of Israel to hear more than just the Ten Statements. Originally, they were to hear at least the rest of the Book of the Covenant, until Exodus 23:19, or maybe even the entire Torah. But the children of Israel’s fear [Exodus 20:18-21] changed the original plan. God agreed that Moshe would hear the remainder of his commandments and the children of Israel would receive them indirectly from Moshe. Consequently, as things stand now, the Decalogue serves as the introduction to the remainder of the commandments.
The first statement of the Decalogue is an introduction to HaShem. The two parties to the covenant need to be introduced. The children of Israel have seen HaShem as a warrior who fights for them, but their experience in Egypt has conditioned them to think of God as a specialist. In Egypt one god is the sunshine and another god is the moonlight. In Egypt one god is in charge of birth and another god is in charge of death. The children of Israel need to be told that the very same God who brought them out of Egypt is the One entering into this relationship with them:
“I am HaShem your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.”
This first statement of the Decalogue also introduces Israel. Israel is in a position to accept the commandments because Israel has experienced HaShem’s grace first-hand. The commandments are not intended for those in “the house of slaves.” The commandments are for those who have been brought out “from the house of slaves.” The offer of the commandments has been preceded by redemption.
The second statement of the Decalogue states how HaShem is to be worshipped. A sharp distinction must be made between worship in Egypt and worship in Israel. Unlike the gods of Egypt, HaShem cannot be represented by images. Whatever might be depicted by images simply isn't HaShem. Any attempt at visual representation is a falsification:
“For you there shall be no other gods before my face. You shall not make yourself a statue or any image of what is in heaven above, or what is on earth beneath, or what in the water beneath the earth. You shall not prostrate to them, not worship them. For, I HaShem your God, am El the jealous, who visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children unto the third and forth generation of those who hate me, and who performs loyalty unto a thousand generations of those who love me me and observe my commandments.”
HaShem reveals himself, not by making his form visible, but by speaking his name to his servants the prophets. His communication is verbal rather than visual. He is known by what he says and does, not by what he looks like. This leads us to the third statement of the Decalogue:
“You shall not lift up the name of HaShem your God for an improper purpose, for HaShem does not overlook anyone who lifts up his name for an improper purpose.”
Borrowing or misusing HaShem’s name is intolerable, because it communicates the wrong god. In a polytheistic world, the true God can only be distinguished from the competition by jealously enforcing the copyright on his name. He cannot afford to lend out his identity to anybody else, otherwise he won’t be distinguishable. Nobody else can legally be called HaShem, because there is no other HaShem. Contrary to what a number of people in ancient Israel supposed, there’s no Mrs. HaShem, either. Since he is unique, he has exclusive rights to his name and to his identity.
The fourth statement of the Decalogue presents the Shabbat in light of Israel’s experience of redemption. The children of Israel had recently passed though a contest over who has the right to issue them orders. The ten plagues on Egypt have proven that Israel’s true Creator and Master is HaShem, not the gods of Egypt.
The fourth statement also presents the Shabbat in light of Israel’s experience as slaves. Frequently, when the oppressed finally get the upper hand they become just as oppressive as their former masters. The human tendency is to pass on the pain. The fourth statement singles out those most vulnerable for special protection from overwork.
“Remember the day of Shabbat, to sanctify it. Six days you shall labor and do all your workmanship. But the seventh day is Shabbat to HaShem your God. You shall not do any workmanship: you, nor you son, nor your daughter, nor your male slave, nor your female slave, nor your cattle, nor your resident alien who is within your gates. For six days HaShem did the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore HaShem blessed the day of Shabbat and sanctified it.”
The case laws in parashat mishpatim pick up this theme of protecting the vulnerable. The first seven case laws in parashat mishpatim concern Hebrew slaves. Slaves in Israel are not to be treated like slaves in Egypt. The case law in Exodus 22:20-22 [English 21-23] also singles out the most vulnerable members of society for special consideration:
“A resident alien do not mistreat or oppress him, for you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt. Any widow or orphan you shall not afflict. If you afflict him, surely he will protest to me, and surely I will hear his protest."
The case law in Exodus 23:9 spells out the reason why Israel must protect the vulnerable:
“A resident alien you shall not oppress. You know the soul of the resident alien, for you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt.”
The restatement of the Decalogue in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 makes the reason why Israel must protect the vulnerable more explicit.
“Observe the day of Shabbat to sanctify it as HaShem your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your workmanship. But the seventh day is Shabbat to HaShem your God. You shall not do any workmanship: you, nor you son, nor your daughter, nor your male slave, nor your female slave, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor your cattle, nor your resident alien who is within your gates, in order that your male slave and female slave may rest like you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and HaShem your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore HaShem your God has commanded you make the day of Shabbat.”
The fifth statement of the Decalogue restores the slave’s family rights.
“Honor your father and your mother in order that your days on the ground which HaShem your God is giving you may be lengthened.”
Egypt did not recognize family rights or family responsibilities. Slaves are breeding animals; a slave’s relationship to parents is purely biological. Prior to their liberation God’s first command to the children of Israel was to eat a whole lamb together as a household unit [Exodus 12:3-4]. Liberation requires the restoration of the family. Much like the survivors of the shoah, after liberation the former slaves must have been tempted to despair and cease reproducing. Israel would have gone extinct. Instead, despite the horrors they’d experienced, the survivors insisted on raising children. The best response to genocide is to be fruitful and multiply.
The slaves had not only been traumatized by Pharaoh’s murder of the Hebrew babies, they had also witnessed the death of many Egyptians during the ten plagues and at the Sea of Reeds. Even more recently, Israel had defeated Amaleq by the edge of the sword [Exodus 17:13]. Their experience had desensitized the children of Israel to the value of human life. The sixth statement of the Decalogue reaffirms human life in the face of wholesale slaughter.
“You shall not murder.”
The Hebrew slaves had also been desensitized to the boundaries of moral propriety. In Egypt being married to your sister was considered normal; that was what the Pharaohs did. In Egypt the Hebrew slaves had been conditioned to associate power with extreme promiscuity. When the Torah lists the various forms of forbidden relations, it warns,
“According to the practice of the land of Egypt where you dwelt you shall not do.” [Leviticus 18:3]
The seventh statement of the Decalogue reestablishes those moral boundaries that had eroded in Egypt.
“You shall not commit adultery.”
The slaves in Egypt had no rights of ownership. The model of creating wealth they’d been exposed to was exploitation of other people’s labor and seizure of assets. As a step in their redemption and rehabilitation, God had commanded to children of Israel to demand reparations. Exodus 12:35-36.
“The children of Israel did according to the word of Moshe, they borrowed from the Egyptians utensils of silver and utensils of gold and garments. And HaShem gave the people favor in the eyes of Egypt. They borrowed and they plundered Egypt.”
The problem was the newly liberated slaves might imagine that plundering was normal economic activity. After all, God had once told them to do it! The eighth statement of the Decalogue reestablishes proper economic boundaries.
“You shall not steal.”
Back in Egypt the Hebrew slaves lacked respect for others. People without self-determination and self-respect have little respect for others. If Israel was to survive as a group and become “a holy gentile” [Exodus 19:6], all that had to change. At Sinai God called a model society into existence, a society where interpersonal relations would reflect his own redemptive love. The ninth and tenth statements of the Decalogue introduce new interpersonal relationships. The ninth and tenth commandments are neighborly commandments. The former slaves must learn to look after one another. The ninth statement of the Decalogue protects the neighbor from false accusation.
“You shall not answer as a lying witness against your neighbor.”
The tenth statement of the Decalogue protects the neighbor from greed and ruthless competition.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male slave, his female slave, his ox, his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Back when the children of Israel were still slaves, when God commanded them to plunder Egypt, the Torah employed the term “neighbor” to refer to those who were about to be despoiled. Exodus 11:2
“Speak in the ears of the people that they should borrow each man from his neighbor and each woman from her neighbor utensils of silver and utensils of gold.”
But redemption transforms “the neighbor.” The Decalogue commands that instead of the neighbor being someone whom Israel can despoil, the neighbor must become someone Israel protects. At Sinai Israel has to lose the slave mentality and regard the neighbor differently. Even the Egyptian neighbor has to be regarded differently.
To summarize what we’ve observed, all the commandments of the Decalogue are framed in reference to Israel’s very recent experience of slavery and redemption. The commandments are tailor-made to meet the immediate challenges of the new situation. Israel’s experience shapes the Decalogue and the case laws.
Jewish tradition explains that at Sinai the seventy other nations of the world didn’t accept the commandments, because for them the commandments were disembodied law, detached from experience. At the time the Gentiles had no experience with this God.
Jesus changed the Gentile experience. Jesus introduced the Gentiles to the God of Israel, the God who liberated those enslaved and gave them new rules. From the time they felt accepted, the Gentiles too have been disposed to accept this God’s commandments. So why don’t Seventh-day Adventists view the case laws this way?
Seventh-day Adventists don’t encounter the commandments within their narrative framework. Within Adventism the commandments have been de-contextualized and de-historicized. Adventists generally don’t recognize that formally the Decalogue and the case laws are the stipulations of God’s covenant with Israel [Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13]. This is why Adventists question how ancient legislation can adequately delineate God’s relationship to his children today.
The most usual answer, which is trapped within the same box as the question, says that the commandments embody universally valid principles which people who don’t even know the God of Israel ought to be able to figure out on their own from common sense. This is another way of claiming the commandments are not the product of a specific people’s experience with a specific God.
This answer goes back to yet another decontextualization. In Romans chapters 1 and 2 the Apostle Shaul says some things about Gentiles that superficially resemble a philosophical category of Constantine’s empire known as natural law, but the resemblance comes about because modern readers aren’t familiar with 1st century Jewish discussions of Gentile salvation. The Apostle Shaul doesn’t really advocate natural law.
The first Christian on record to distinguish natural law from particular law was Justin Martyr. Justin distinguishes what is katholou “universal,” phusis “natural,” aionios “eternal,” teleutaios “final,” haplos “absolute,” from what God merely revealed at Sinai. Justin Martyr devalues the particular experience of a particular people as being temporal and temporary. He doesn’t sense that his anti-particularism runs contrary to the Christian doctrine of God, in which God’s identity is a particular Jew “who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” Justin’s denigration of the particular denigrates the particular Jew whom Christians worship. Justin’s denigration of the particular risks turning the God of Israel into a generic god.
Other Christian teachers followed suit. Like Justin Martyr they pitted universal, timeless, natural law against historically conditioned, particularistic law.
While Seventh-day Adventists are aware that changes in Shabbat observance and church organization are the product of the politicization of Christianity, we don’t realize the philosophical assumptions of our own culture are also a product of the politicization of Christianity. Historically, it was the Constantinian establishment which required so-called universal truth in order to justify the imposition of majority faith on minorities within the empire. Under Constantine Christians were considered “universal,” natural,” and “timeless,” so they enjoyed favored status. Jews were considered “particular,” “foreign,” and “temporary,” so they were discriminated against. The argument over what sort of commandments are universal is really an argument over what sort of human beings are desirable within Christendom.
Historically speaking, Judaism and Islam have operated over a wider range of cultures, languages, people groups, and geography than Christianity. During Constantine’s time the boundaries of Christianity coincided with the Roman Empire, while Judaism operated throughout the Roman Empire as well as the Sassanid Empire. Shortly thereafter Judaism was to spread far to the East, following the Silk Road. Despite the objective situation, Christianity was favored for being cosmopolitan and universal; while Judaism was decried for being provincial.
While Seventh-day Adventists deplore the consequences of imperial policy, we’ve glibly accepted the philosophical assumptions undergirding Constantine’s empire. But whenever the philosophical categories of Constantine’s empire have been applied to God’s commandments, the effect has been detrimental. God’s commandments cannot be neatly divvied up into categories as if we knew in advance which ones should be obeyed and which ones can be ignored. Like the Christian God himself, his commandments are truly incarnational. We cannot split Jesus up into human nature and divine nature and play them off against one another. The commandments are neither purely human nor purely divine, but an inseparable combination of both human and divine. The commandments embody God’s will for the children of Israel at the unique historical moment of his self-giving. The commandments don’t cover all situations and all circumstances. The commandments do not exhaustively express God’s will. The commandments are embarrassingly particular. They are not universal in the sense which Christian philosophy demanded.
But the commandments are crucially important for Christians, because God’s covenant with Israel is a crucial event in the plan of salvation. Even though God at first redeemed only one solitary family, that solitary redemption was meant to have repercussions for all humanity. Although the commandments are not universal, the commandments have universal repercussions. God did not make the covenant at Sinai with the whole world, but he intended the whole world to benefit from the consequences.
God determined to save his lost world, not by abstract principles, but by personally identifying with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and a baby born out of wedlock under Roman occupation. God did not choose the absolute, the universal, or the timeless. God chose specific individuals, circumstances, and events to join the lost world he loved. We have to respect God’s choice, even when it is counterintuitive.
Christian ethics have unfortunately followed the lead of Christian theology. The classic Christian procedure is to start with abstract principles and derive ethics from reason. The procedure moves from the general to the specific. Christians then balance good and bad consequences against one another until they come up with the best course of action. But moral calculus removes obedience from the realm of God’s kingdom and makes it a purely human exercise. The classic Christian procedure is a closed system which excludes God’s intervention in human affairs. Christians end up playing God. This is a denial of God’s kingship. Obedience ought to reinforce God’s kingship rather than disconnecting us from it.
Other Christians have viewed the commandments as divinely revealed imperatives, but disconnected from God’s partnership with Israel. Making the commandments purely divine has the effect of divorcing them from everyday life. If the commandments are purely divine, they can safely be relegated to a small corner of life called religion. The commandments then no longer delineate the totality of God’s lordship over the redeemed community. The commandments then only govern what goes on inside your head, or perhaps they are merely ideals toward which we should strive. This too is a denial of God’s kingship.
We cannot properly appreciate the commandments unless we understand their time-frame and circumstances. Israel’s experience shapes the Decalogue and the case laws. History impacts halakha. While the message of Sinai has universal repercussions, the message is unique to a particular audience.
As Christians we have not been given the commandments directly. We receive the commandments indirectly by adoption into the family of Avraham and Sara’s descendants. We receive Israel’s commandments as adapted for us by the apostles. The commandments found in the Apostolic Writings are largely based on Torah, but the point is they are interpretations. The apostles don’t directly impose biblical commandments on the Gentiles. Since God meets the Gentiles at a different point in salvation history than he met Israel, the Gentiles necessarily walk with God over different terrain. The Gentiles walk with the same God, but not over the exact same ground as ancient Israel. History doesn’t repeat. Communal experience is unique. That’s what makes God’s family diverse. The Gentiles’ experience also shapes God’s commandments, just as Israel’s experience shapes God’s commandments.
This is the reason why it is necessary for us to sort out how the Church is related to Israel. Until we clearly define in what respect the Church is in continuity with Israel and in what respect the Church is different from Israel, we’ll flounder over the question of what form our obedience to God ought to take. As Seventh-day Adventist Christians we believe that even though we weren’t yet historically in existence, we too have a stake in what God was doing way back at Sinai. Israel’s story is our story too. But we’ve never defined how we are different from historic Israel. Obviously, we are different. As Seventh-day Adventists we need to define who God has uniquely called us to be.
We cannot simply expropriate God’s covenant with Israel and sign up on our own initiative. God will refuse to honor a covenant stolen from somebody else. Not only will God refuse to honor a stolen covenant, he may decide to punish us for stealing!
To lift the commandments from the story which the Torah tells is to sever the connection between law and life. The commandments are a product of God’s walk with Israel and of Israel’s walk with God. There’s a true partnership here. God’s expectations from his “kingdom of priests” [Exodus 19:6] have been forged in the crucible of Egyptian oppression. A “kingdom of priests” cannot be built on the shaky ground of abstract speculation concerning universal morality, but only on the bedrock of hard experience.
Let’s honor the partnership. Let’s also explore how we Christian have come to join the family of Avraham and Sara. We definitely want to continue our walk with this God: the God of Israel and the God of Jesus our L-rd.
