The World’s Greatest Deal (In Writing)

Exodus 34:27-28:

“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.’
“So he was there with the LORD forty day and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”

Thoughts on the Passage

When God came to the end of His instructions to Moses, He told him to write down "these words" – words which formed the basis of the covenant between God and Israel. He was not (at that time) writing down everything that God said from chapter 34:10-26. In my opinion, this was the follow-up to God’s instructions to Moses in chapter 34:1 when He told Moses to get another two tablets “like the former ones” and He (God) would write on these tablets the words that were on the former tablets which Moses had shattered out of anger.

While Moses had been with God for forty days and forty nights, he did not eat bread or drink water. (I believe in this context, we can assume that simply means he did not eat or drink, period.) And either during or at the end of that period of time, he wrote, on behalf of God, or under God’s instruction (or dictation), the Ten Commandments on this second set of tablets. Now, I must tell you that at least one commentator does not agree with me.  Robert Jamieson feels Moses wrote down all the words from Exodus 34 that God spoke right down to the end of verse 26, and that God wrote the Ten Commandments on the second Tablets. Certainly Deuteronomy 10:1-4 seem to support him. Others are silent on this point.

What causes the confusion is that Exodus 34:26 refers to “he” lower case, which normally does not refer to the Lord or God, at least in Exodus.  (We know for example in Exodus 34:34, the word “Him” is capitalized when referring to God.  So, Exodus 34:26 poses a dilemma for us as it would seem to indicate that Moses did the writing on the Tablets (yes, for God) and it was just the Ten Commandments. You will need to do further study and decide for yourselves. It is true that at some point, Moses had to write down all the words God had spoken earlier – but was it from memory, or was it while he was on the mountain. You decide.

For me, the messages from this passage are very clear:

When God says, “write something down”, be sure you do it because it is very important. In fact, this is the greatest written deal or covenant ever made between two parties and in this case, one of the parties is God.  We have to be careful not to blow it.

(I spend a lot of my time negotiating collective agreements between management and various unions, personal agreements between two people (often married ones who need to call it quits), and fair severance package agreements between a dismissed employee and his/her former employer. But none of them come close to being as important as the covenant that God established with His people through the Ten Commandments.)

While there are literally hundreds of Old Testament laws that God set up for the Israelites to follow (613 to be exact), I am confident there is not a single one that could not find a “home” in one of the Ten Commandments if we really tried hard enough.  For me, the Ten Commandments are a “high-level summary” of all that God wants and expects from His children.

That means that while you and I can get into an argument about whether or not Old Testament laws and instructions apply to us today, what we can agree on is that, one way or another, God expects even a person living in this day and age, to keep all of the Ten Commandments.

This does not mean man is capable of keeping all ten of these commandments all the time. And God knew that. He knew about it with respect to the 613 laws, and He knows about it with respect to the Ten. God also knew that as breakers of one of these commandments, we cannot be in His Holy presence, no matter how much He loves us.

But the Good News is that God did not stop there, He had a way to get over that legitimate hurdle He had established because He loves us. He had a way by which our sin could be paid for in a way that would wipe our spiritual criminal record clean and make us acceptable for His presence.  He had His Son die in our place, pay the penalty for us, and provide for us a way to be adopted by God.  That’s the Good News although the world has tried for the last 2000 tried to convince everyone it is Fake News.

And one more thought: Sometimes to get the message from God straight and clear, we need to focus totally on Him – no food, no drink. We need to fast. And no, that’s not just Old Testament stuff – we’re told to do that in the New Testament as well.  As far as this passage goes, there is debate whether a man can live 40 days and 40 nights without food or water. But while that’s a moot point physiologically, it need not be in this instance since we’re talking about a meeting being a created being with His Creator and Almighty God – the God of miracles.  So, yes, Moses did go 40 days and 40 nights on a complete fast.  But then again, who needs to eat in the presence of God?

As always, your questions and comments are invited.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

God’s Employment Standards Act: Part 1 -- Exodus 21:1-4

“Now these are the ordinances which you are to set before them.  If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment.  If he comes alone, he shall go out alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him.  If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone.”
 

The Ten Commandments have been shared with the people and now God continues with some other ordinances that Moses is to pass on to the Children of Israel.  Generally speaking an ordinance is a type of law, but in today’s application of the word, it usually refers to laws passed or enacted by municipal bodies as compared to national ones.  In God’s economy, Chuck Smith suggests that these ordinances are really “judgments for the appointed judges” to use in adjudicating matters that arise among the Israelites.  David Guzik says these are the laws “that establish precedent for the legal system of Israel”.  Matthew Henry suggested that these laws in Exodus chapter 21 relate to, and expound on, the fifth and sixth commandments.  He states they “are of great use for the explanation of the moral law, and the rules of natural justice.”

The first area covered is the legal relationships between slaves and masters.  In those days most of the labor that took place was indeed performed by slaves.  Today, that kind of exchange of work for some form of compensation (be it housing or food) has evolved to the modern relationship of employee and employer (work for pay and other benefits).  Nevertheless, it is important for us to note some of the principles that God had established in how work was to be undertaken.

To begin with, we should note that God, to our knowledge, did not establish the master-slave arrangement.  [Any more than He established polygamy.]  This arrangement was a man-conceived means of getting work done.  There may even have been some good intentions involved such as providing shelter and food and care for individuals in exchange for the work they did.  But as in most things that man construes to do on his own without taking God into consideration, his natural instincts of greed and taking advantage of others, especially those that are weaker, eventually come to the surface and bring about undesirable characteristics of the practice.  This was the case for much of the slavery that was in place, over time.  So much so, that it became unbearable for true followers of Christ to condone it in any way and it eventually was outlawed in the Western world.  But for our purposes, back in the days of Moses, God had to place some parameters around the conditions under which slaves were used and treated.

Two things we need to remember.  First, all Israelites were born as free men and women.  Second, as David Guzik points out, God brought these particular Israelites “out of slavery” – something they were to forget.  And so with that background, it is interesting to note that the very first area that ordinances dealt with was that of slavery.

It is also important to note how people became slaves in the Israelite society at the time.  Guzik suggests there were four basic ways a Hebrew might become a slave to another Hebrew as taken from later Scripture:

1.     In extreme poverty, they might sell their liberty (Leviticus 25:39).

2.     A father might sell his children into servitude (Exodus 21:7).

3.     In the case of bankruptcy, a man might become servant to his creditors (2 Kings 4:1).

4.     If a thief (or other criminal) had nothing with which to pay proper restitution (Exodus 22:3-4).

The first thing we note is that God never intended for any slave to be the property of any master forever.  A bought slave was only bought to work for six years and then the slave would be released as a free person and no payment would exchange hands.  Each of the above-mentioned four ways a person could become a slave would be subject to this principle.  No one owns another person for life.  We are God’s creations and only He can redeem us forever.  It is also of interest to note that God chose six as the number of years for which a slave was to serve.  This is in keeping with the pattern of His instruction to us to work six days and then rest.

And at the end of the six years, when the slave is let go, he only goes with what and with whom he came.  There is much to consider or ask ourselves here.  First, were female slaves ever bought on their own, or perhaps with their husband?  (We will see later that the answer to this question is yes, certainly for single female slaves.)  Second, if a young man was bought as single unmarried person, and then married during his six years of slavery, what are the implications for that marriage after that?  (That question is indeed answered below.)  And third, what happens to the children if they were born prior to a married person becoming a slave, or after he married during his term of service?  (This question too is left unanswered to this point in the Scriptures.)

The third part of this short passage does shed some more light on what happens when a slave marries during his six-year term of service as a slave.  If a slave marries during his term, and has children, then both the wife and children do not become free with him at the end of his term of service, for the wife and the children “belong to the master”.  What is not clear here is whether a slave can marry during his term via any other means other than “if his master gives him a wife”?  Can he find his own wife, as unlikely as that may be?  And if so, can that wife and any children that follow leave with him at the end of the six months?  We do not know but would suggest the answer is no.  It does seem rather a harsh ordinance to say that the wife and children that were joined to the man during his term of slavery could not leave with him.  On the other hand, if we follow this principle, we may have an answer to our question about what happens to the children born to a slave during his term of service but who had a wife when he became a slave?  Would they not belong “to him”?  Or because they were born “in the service of his master” would the children still belong to the master at the time of separation?  These are difficult questions for which there is no answer to this point in the Scriptures.

It is clear here that the slave had no rights at all to possess anything or to acquire anything while he was a slave – perhaps even his own children from a wife he brought to his term of slavery.  So, is there a way out to save one’s new wife and/or children?  The answer is yes and we will address it next.

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