Well chit, my guess is you struggled a bit with today's reading, I know I did.
Let's do a quick summery!
A. If a person is killed and you don't know or can't find out what happened kill a cow, and it's all good.
B. If you capture a beautiful foreign woman and take her as your wife and later decide you don't like her...let her go, bald.
C. When you are married to two women be sure the oldest son gets your inheritence even if he isn't the son of the prefered wife.
D. If your kid is rebellious, eats too much or drinks too much you take him to the city gate and lead the town elders in his assasination.
E. When you kill people by hanging them on a pole be sure to clean up before dark.
F. Help your neigbor out when they have animal or property issues.
G. Don't wear clothing of the opposite gender!
H. Follow safe building codes.
I. Don't mix seeds; it defiles the plant, the fruit, the field.
J. Don't yoke an ox and a donkey on the same plow
K. Don't wear mixed fabric
L. Make some tassels for your cloak
J. Women are judged by their sex lives and should be killed if they can't prove their virginity.
K. Adultry = death for the man and the woman
L. Girls that are pledged in marriage that don't scream for help when raped in the city get killed along with the fella that raped them. But, the ones who are not pledged that have been raped can watch as thier rapist pays their father and then takes them home as thier wife.
So, I get it, that is a whole pile of steaming dung when looked at from our vantage point. We do not live by the letter of any of these laws as far as I can tell. Frankly, I struggle to even draw anything that feels faithful or applicable from most of these laws. And yet, we have our own set of new and imporved leagalisms that are far more gracious in our own eyes. What will futures generations think of when they consider our system?
What if we ask a different question? What if instead of comparing our understanding to their own and standing in shock and judgement of their perspective we did somehing different? What would happen if we compared all of this to the worldly points of view of their time rather than our own?
So, there's the homework. Go consider the way goverments, religious orders, male female relationships were handled in the cultures around the Hebrews and consider was this really the pile of buttsmell that I tend to think it was...or was it a step forward in grace. Ready, go.
Keep reading.