Exodus/Shemoth 21-22 – "If you will . . . then I will. . ."

Most people are familiar only with the 10 Commandments, the Decalogue.

 

The medieval Jewish scholar “Rambam” or Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, counted all the commandments from Exodus through Deuteronomy and came up with the number 613. Don’t be overwhelmed by that number and don’t give up reading through the “instructions”.  

 

Please remember that in the original historical and cultural context, many of these instructions were intended to address the inter-relational problems that would arise during the wilderness wanderings of this mass of people who have to be taught how to live with each other in all their levels of relationship and various situations.

 

Notice the title of this article:  “If you will . . . then I will . . .”  It stresses the conditional premise of this covenant.  The blessings for obedience as well as the curses for disobedience are spelled out; most often, they are natural consequences of individual, communal or national choice.  If we follow YHWH’s dietary laws, we experience good health. If we elect an incompetent or corrupt president, we suffer the consequences of putting such a leader there. And so on.  The Law-Giver (YHWH) need not interfere, results are automatic or inevitable or to be expected.

 

As early as this time, OTHER-centeredness is immediately being inculcated in their community consciousness, with special care and attention to the disadvantaged members (servants, widows, orphans, the stranger).

 

If you wish to read a categorized, more systematic set of statutes, ordinances, commandments, please go to [http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm] where Tracey R. Rich has already done an excellent job.

 

The translation we have been using in this website is being replaced by EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.  The Chapter here is to be read through, uninterrupted by commentary, as the Torah should be read, at least initially. This will be followed by another post on the same chapter, with verse-by-verse commentary from our usual sources: Pentateuch and Haftorah (Dr. J.W. Hertz, Everett Fox, Robert Alter, etc.).

 

 

 

NSB@S6K

 

 

 

 

 

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Exodus/Shemoth 21

 

1 Now these are the regulations that you are to set before them:
2 When you acquire a Hebrew serf, 

he is to serve for six years, 

but in the seventh he is to go out at liberty, for nothing.
3 If he came by himself, he is to go out by himself; 

if he was the spouse of a wife, his wife is to go out with him.
4 If his lord gives him a wife, and she bore him sons or daughters,

the wife and those she bore are to remain her lord’s, and he is to go out by himself.
5 But if the serf should say, yes, say:

I love my lord, my wife and my children, I will not go out at liberty!,
6 his lord is to have him approach God’s-oracle, 

and then he is to have him approach the door or the post; 

his lord is to pierce his ear with a piercer, 

and he is to serve him forever.
7 When a man sells his daughter as a handmaid,

she is not to go out as serfs go out.
8 If she is displeasing in the eyes of her lord, who designated her for himself, 

he is to have her redeemed; 

to a foreign people he has not the power to sell her, 

since he has betrayed her.
9 But if it is for his son that he designates her, 

according to the just-rights of women he is to deal with her.
10 If another he takes for himself, 

(then) her board, her clothing, or her oil he is not to diminish.
11 If these three (things) he does not do for her,

she is to go out for nothing, with no money.
12 He that strikes a man, so that he dies,

is to be put-to-death, yes, death.
13 Now should he not have lain in wait (for him), but should God have brought him opportunely into his hand: 

I will set aside for you a place where he may flee.
14 But when a man schemes against his neighbor, to kill him with cunning, 

from my very slaughter-site you are to take him away, to die!
15 And he that strikes his father or his mother, 

is to be put-to-death, yes, death.
16 And he that steals a man,

whether he sells him or whether he is found in his hand, 

is to be put-to-death, yes, death.
17 And he that insults his father or his mother, 

is to be put-to-death, yes, death.
18 When men quarrel, and a man strikes his neighbor with a stone or with (his) fist, yet he does not die, but rather takes to his bed:
19 If he can rise and walk about outside upon his crutch, 

he that struck (him) is to go clear, 

only: he is to make good for his resting-time, and provide-that-he-be-healed, yes, healed.
20 When a man strikes his serf or his handmaid with a rod, so that he dies under his hand, 

it is to be avenged, yes, avenged;
21 nonetheless, if for a day or two-days he endures,

it is not to be avenged, for he is his own “money.”
22 When two men scuffle and deal a blow to a pregnant woman, so that her children abort-forth, but (other) harm does not occur, 

he is to be fined, yes, fined, as the woman’s spouse imposes for him,

but he is to give it (only) according to assessment.
23 But if harm should occur, 

then you are to give life in place of life-
24 eye in place of eye, tooth in place of tooth, hand in place of
25 hand, foot in place of foot,/burnt-scar in place of burnt-scar, wound in place of wound, bruise in place of bruise.
26 When a man strikes the eye of his serf or the eye of his handmaid, and ruins it, 

he is to send him free at liberty for (the sake of) his eye;
27 if the tooth of his serf or the tooth of his handmaid he breaks off,

he is to send him free at liberty for (the sake of) his tooth.
28 When an ox gores a man or a woman, so that one dies, 

the ox is to be stoned, yes, stoned, and its flesh is not to be eaten, 

and the owner of the ox is to be clear.

29 But if the ox was (known as) a gorer from yesterday and the day-before, and it was so designated to its owner, 

and he did not guard it,

and it causes the death of a man or of a woman,

the ox is to be stoned, and its owner as well is to be put-to-death.
30 If a ransom is established for him,

he is to give it as a redemption for his life, all that is imposed for him.
31 Whether it is a son it gores or a daughter it gores, 

according to this (same) judgment it is to be done to him.
32 If (it is) a serf the ox gores, or a handmaid, 

silver-thirty shekels-he is to give to his lord, and the ox is to be stoned.
33 When a man opens up a pit, or when a man digs a pit, and does not cover it up, and an ox or a donkey falls into it,
34 the owner of the pit is to pay, the worth-in-silver he is to restore to its owner, and the dead-animal is to remain his.
35 When a man’s ox deals-a-blow to his neighbor’s ox, so that it dies, 

they are to sell the live ox and split its worth-in-silver, and the dead-animal they are also to split.
36 Yet if it was known that it was a goring ox from yesterday and the day-before, and its owner did not guard it,

he is to pay, yes, pay, an ox in place of the ox, and the dead-animal is to remain his.
37 (Now) when a man steals an ox or a lamb, and slaughters it or sells it,

five cattle he is to pay in place of the ox, and four sheep in place of the lamb;

 

Exodus/Shemoth 22