Exodus 23-26

Exodus 23 continues the laying out of the law. In case you were wondering how many laws there are in the Torah, the Talmud lists 613 separate laws in the first five books of the Bible. Clearly, law is an important element here, but it is given in the context of a story, a journey, in the context of life.

Lawrence Boadt helpfully distinguishes various bodies of law in the first five books of the Bible:

The law of the covenant in Exodus 21-23 is an early body of law reflecting rural life before the city-centered time of the kings.
The Ten Commandments are found in two versions, one in Exodus 20, the other in Deuteronomy 5. Both represent early covenant law.
The cult commandments of Exodus 34 reflect the period of the early kings or even the time of the judges. Some of the commands, such as Exodus 34:26 about boiling a kid in its mother’s milk reflect a reaction to pagan customs of the Canaanites.
Leviticus 1-16 contains a series of laws on sacrifice and feast days.
Leviticus 17-26 is called the “Holiness Code” and is part of the later Priestly tradition, close to the thought of Ezekiel who lived from 593-572 BCE.
The Deuteronomic laws were written in a sermonic style and aimed at economic and social conditions typical of the later monarchy, from 700-600 BCE.

Archaeologists have uncovered no less than seven ancient codes of law from Israel’s neighbors. These include the Sumerian code of Ur Nammu in the 22^nd century BCE, Babylonian codes of the sixth century BCE, and the code of Hammurabi (1732-1680 BCE). The latter consists of 282 laws engraved on a stone pillar discovered in 1901. Many similarities have been noted between Hammurabi’s code and the laws in the first five books of the Bible.

C. S. Lewis’ comment on the Law is helpful to keep in mind. “In the perfect and eternal world the Law will vanish. But the results of having lived faithfully under it will not.” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer)

However, what happens when one disobeys the law? If one is caught, there is punishment, but is there the possibility of restoration, rehabilitation? The answer of the Torah is: “Yes.” This is where the Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant and the sacrifices come into play.

These chapters in the Torah dealing with the building of the Tabernacle, starting in Exodus 25, we may find very tedious reading. However, these chapters convey the significance of the Tabernacle as the channel to YHWH.[1] Also, without these chapters we would not be able to construct any picture of what the Tabernacle, the Ark, and the later Temple looked like.

Richard Elliott Friedman points out that: “No one has ever figured out how the Tabernacle is put together.”[2] Nevertheless, Friedman makes his own attempt at figuring this out. Furthermore, he makes the intriguing point that: “The Tabernacle, revered as the ancient channel to God, was actually located inside the Temple. So all the laws in the Torah that command that something be done at the Tabernacle applied as long as the first Temple stood in Jerusalem.”[3]

I find at least one point of practical application for us today in all of this. In Exodus 24:4 we read that Moses rose early in the morning to build an altar to the Lord. We read about a number of people throughout the Bible who rose early to worship God, including Jesus in Mark 1:35. (I am preaching on Mark 1:35 today in fact. You can listen to the sermon here: http://willvaus.com/mark when I post it later.) Perhaps Moses’ example of rising early to worship the Lord is a good one for us to follow.

[1] Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, 256

[2] Ibid, 258

[3] Ibid, 262

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