The Bible in a Year – 7 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

7 March. Deuteronomy chapters 24-27

Another collection of laws regulating personal behaviour.  One theme that runs through these, and many such teaching passages in the Bible, is that of the importance of fairness in general and fairness to minority groups and vulnerable people in particular.  Hence the provisions of not keeping a pledged cloak overnight (so that poor or homeless people would not have to sleep in the cold, 24:12); leaving any unharvested olives, grain and grapes for the poor to collect (24:19-21); and not cheating when it comes to weighing out goods (25:13-15).

 

Chapter 27 marks the end of a long section of detailed law, with Moses ordering the laws to be inscribed in plaster on standing stones in the promised land – this is reminiscent of the rules written on the wall in Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which the arrogant pigs who represented unscrupulous political leaders secretly changed the sacred wording by night, with few of the animals noticing.  Whenever laws are established with the intention of being universally and fairly applied, there will  always be those who seek to find a way round them, re-write them to their own advantage, or persuade others that the laws were wrong or inapplicable in the first place. We need to be on our guard and pray for wisdom to discern the difference between applying God’s laws to our own very different society, and ignoring those that should still apply.