Year 7, Day 173: Deuteronomy 22

Theological Commentary: Click Here

I believe that this chapter can be summed up in five simple words: just do the right thing.  We have a series of disjointed laws.  But in each case, people doing what they would want done to them satisfies the law.

For example, if you see someone else’s property doing what it shouldn’t be doing, tell them!  At the very least, take care of it so the situation doesn’t get any worse until they come along and can fix it themselves.  After all, if something of yours was in danger and a person could prevent it, isn’t that what you would want of them?

Or, take the rule about putting a parapet around your roof.  In those days, rooves were places of relaxation.  If your friends came over, you would probably take them up to the roof to relax.  Doesn’t it make sense that if you are going to be entertaining people on your roof that you would want to have a little wall so that people couldn’t just randomly fall off the edge?

Then there is the law about men dressing up like women and women dressing up like men.  God calls it an abomination, plain and simple.  Mind you, that’s a very strong word.  But again, just do the right thing!  If you are a man, be a man!  If you are a woman, be a woman! Don’t make life more complicated than it already is.

The same can be said with the rest of the laws.  You don’t plow with an ox and a donkey because you’ll never go straight.  You don’t kill the mature female population of animals because that way you are doing your part to ensure their will be a food source for later generations.  You don’t put two kinds of seed in the same field because they will need to be harvested at different times and you’ll destroy the unfinished crop.  More common sense.

I find chapters like this refreshing.  So many people read the Law and walk away saying, “It’s too hard, who can live like that?”  Yes, there are some pretty hard teachings in the Law.  There are some ways in which it is easy for the typical human being to fail.  But at the same time, there are some parts of the Law that just make sense.  In fact, I would say that the vast majority of the Law are the kind of laws where if you just do what is right and stop being self-centered, you don’t really have much of a problem with it at all!

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