Day 64, Deuteronomy 24-26

Today started week 9, and I am still reading about laws! Seriously, when will this end? This entire section was about laws; laws concerning divorce, laws concerning Levirate marriage, firstfruits and tithes, and miscellaneous laws.

This journal entry may seem tedious, and for my sanity I will be making several lists to try to keep the information straight.

Today started out with laws concerning divorce. Which turns out, in the books of Moses divorce was permitted and regulated. It didn’t change until Jesus conditioned the law in the Sermon of the Mount and cited the higher law of creation. Honestly, I have no idea what this means and am just quoting from my study Bible. I guess I will learn more about this when I get to the New Testament.

So basically, if a man married a woman and she became displeasing to him or he found something indecent about her, he could write her a certificate of divorce and boot her out of the house. If she went on to marry another man, and that one also had a problem with her and divorced her, she could not go on to remarry her first husband. This is also the case in the circumstance if her new husband died.

Miscellaneous Laws:

• If a man is recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay home and bring happiness (marital bliss was held in high regard) to the wife he has married.
  I wonder how many times this was allowed? I could picture some lazy men out there that would just marry and divorce women year after year so they could stay home.
  
• Do not take a pair of millstones (used for grinding grain for flour and daily food), not even the upper one, as security for a debt, because that would be taking a man’s livelihood as security.
  
• If a man is caught kidnapping one of his brother’s Israelites and treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnappers must die.
  
• In cases of leprous diseases be very careful to do according to all that the Levitical priests shall direct you. Remember what the Lord did to Miriam on the way as they came out of Egypt.
  
• When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into his house to get what he is offering as a pledge. Stay outside and let them bring the pledge out to you. If the man is poor, do not go to sleep still in possession of his pledge. Return his cloak to him by sunset so he can sleep in it.
  
• Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy. Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it.
  
• Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for their own sins.
  
• Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.
  
• When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it there for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. When you gather grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward.
  
• When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty deserves to be beaten, he shall lay down and be flogged with the number of lashes his crime deserves. He must not be given more than forty though. Beating could subject the culprit to abuse, so the law kept the punishment from becoming inhumane. Yikes!
  
• Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.

Then it went on to discuss laws concerning Levirate marriage. Saying if brothers live together and one of them died and had no son, the wife of the dead man could not marry outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother was to marry her. The first son born to them would be named after the dead brother, so his name would not be erased from Israel.

However, if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, they had to take it up with the elders. Ultimately then, in the presence of the elders she would take off his sandals and spit in his face, and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.

Miscellaneous Laws Continued:

• If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
  Wow! For one, women should not get involved in men fighting, they will just most likely get hurt. And two, if you did decide to jump in, what would make you think to grab his, ummm, “thing” to stop the fight? Really?
  
• Do not have two different weights in your bag, one heavy and one light. Do not have two different measures in your house, one large and one small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures.
  
• Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. When the Lord gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of the Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

Lastly, it discussed the offerings of the firstfruits and tithes. When they finally enter the land God has given them, they were to take some of the firstfruits of all the produce and put them in a basket.

Then wherever the place is God will choose for the dwelling of His Name and speak to the priest, saying, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land the Lord swore to our forefathers to give us.”

The priest would take the basket and set it down in front of the altar and bow down before the Lord. Then all would rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household.

Then when they finished setting aside a tenth of all the produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, they were to give it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow so they could eat within the towns.

By doing these things, it declared that they were following the Lord’s commands, statutes, and rules. They proved that the Lord was their God, and they would walk in his ways and obey.

“And the Lord declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.”

-Deuteronomy 26:18-19