Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Nife is full of highs and lows. So, too, is the TORah, which is, we have experience the heights of the Torah over the last few weeks, really. We've tracked Moses from a displaced shepherd at the burning bush through to Pharaoh's palace and the plagues to NaKShon's heroics in the Reed Sea. Last week, Jethro's words of wisdom, both to the leader and to the community. We talked about that. And then literally, at the end of the parsha, to the height of heights, to Mount Sinai to meet God.
That's a pretty high height. And there are so many things that we don't talk about as we go through the Torah cycle each year. There are so many lessons, things that we could have said with the giving of the commandments. The Aserit, Hadevarim is the hebrew word. It's not really commandments. It's the ten words. The ten things talk about their structure, their meaning. Why are they on two tablets? Why are they divided the way they are, their everlasting profundity in human culture, in the legal system, how this stuff forms a basis for even the legal Code that exists today, and the voice of God declaring at least some of those words. There's a lot of discussion about how many were said. But the thunder, the lightning, the flames, the sound of the chauffeur, the smoking mountain, the people's acknowledgement of this marriage covenant, which indeed it was, we will be your people. You will be our God. This was a culmination. This Ketubah, Moshe's words say, don't fear, for in order to elevate you, God has come, so that awe of him shall be on your face. All that was happening last week in this Torah portion, man, I mean, if you put yourself there, which is what we're really supposed to do, we're supposed to mean, you know, that's what the Torah says. Everyone was there. No matter. Today you're there. Put yourself there. And then the height of heights, Mount Sinai, meet God, thunder, shofar, Katuba, all of it. And then here we start with these words in this week's Torah portion.
The Eli Hamish, Batim, asher Tasim, leifnechem. These are the ordinances that you are supposed to put before them. Okay, Moses, take these. This is what you're supposed to teach them. If you buy a jewish bondsman or if a man sells his daughter as a bondswoman, this is where we go from the height of heights to talking about slavery and men selling their children.
Seriously, talk about highs to low. We move from excitement to all this. This is the continuation of the story of the giving of the commandments in Mount Sinai.
And to top it off, I mean, slavery daughters, no wonder sometimes we look around and realize that very few people value this Old Testament stuff, right?
What are we supposed to do with this?
Well, this is an incredible stopping point. We got to stop right here on the ledge and ask these and think about this, because we are at a pivotal moment in biblical understanding. It is at this point in the Torah for many people, at which the Bible reader, Christian Bible reader, disciples of Yeshua, the majority of the rest of the Torah becomes, to a large degree, completely irrelevant in their minds from this point forward.
Yep, ten commandments. Those are awesome. The rest of it, sure, there are some good stories coming. Like, we've got the golden calf, we've got Balam, we've got talking donkeys, we've got snakes on poles, we've got Moses striking the rock. And, yeah, there's that Leviticus 19 thing we need to pay attention to about loving your neighbor. That's in there.
But mishpatim ordinances about slavery, oxen goring people, people killing their parents, men fighting around a pregnant woman, and determining what. I mean, then we move into the building of the tabernacle, the longest narrative twice. We get the instructions for it, and then we move to deuteronomy, and it repeats and Moses says it all again.
And for that matter, this only sort of seems. When we read things, like, we're reading this portion, it only seems to cement the persistent idea that Jesus had to come away, come and do away with all this stuff, that he had to fulfill it, because in what rational mind would slavery be something that we would want in our Bible?
And that Paul, we can now understand why he called it a curse. And you've been redeemed from the law of sin and death, which is actually not the Torah, but he has a lot of negative things to say about it, which have informed theology for millennia that none of this stuff matters to us anymore. And it's not hard to understand why Mount Sinai, to the end of the Torah only gets sort of a casual nod, like, yeah, it's in the Bible. Sometimes we read it, but we kind of keep our distance from that because we don't pay a lot of attention to it. I mean, God kind of changed his mind, right, about the whole arrangement.
I mean, what are we supposed to do with this? So let's skip to Matthew.
I love the fact that there are just New Testaments sold.
I remember when I became a believer. Somebody gave me a disciple of Yeshua, they gave me a New Testament. Like, that's nice. Where's the rest of mean?
But anyway, so listen, here's the corrective. It all works together, as evidenced by the very first words of this parsha. V'ele ve means in Hebrew, V. When we see that it's a conjunctive, it joins. It's called the conjunctive vav. That's the letter v'ele. We come down from Sinai, we read V'eli Hamishbatim, and these are the ordinances, which means everything you heard at Sinai. Yep, that's it. And these, they go together. It's a package deal. You don't get to separate them.
And this is something, though, because you can't pick and choose. If you say you're a Bible follower, if you read it, you can't just throw out the parts you don't like. People do that all the time.
But there's a really important understanding that modern society needs about ancient culture. Books like this. See, for us, religion is like the supernatural.
We're worshipping, we're praising God. It's in religious environments, with religious music. It's a spiritual experience. It's something like altogether different than regular life. We come in here on Shabbat, and this is this thing. And then there's the rest of what we do, which is something else.
But whether it's the ancient Near east, whether it's Judaism, whether it's Greece, whether it's Rome, the distinction between secular and religious in those cultures was nothing like what we have, the division, the separation of church and state.
It wasn't a thing.
In ancient times, it would have been unimaginable because religion permeated every aspect of life. It was inseparable from social, political, moral order. And in jewish society, religion and state were deeply intertwined. The Torah provided spiritual guidance, but also a comprehensive legal and moral code that covered all kinds of things in life. I mean, on Yom Kippur of all days, the holiest of days, we're reading the afternoon Torah portion, and it's about not having sex with your sister and things like that. I mean, this is at times a difficult book to read, but it also included worship practices and civil law and ethics. The kings of Israel and Judah, they were expected to know the law components. The prophets would come and teach them and convict them about not being good at this.
They reminded leaders and people there was no concept of separate religious institution distinct from politics and social. They were one and the same. And you know what the governing body was? Well, you could say the Sanhedrin, but what I mean is the governing document was the Torah.
And so you follow the laws and the commandments set forth in the Torah. That was part of the covenantal relationship.
But the idea of religious people was kind of a misnomer. Who in the Room knows someone who's like, really? They're religious. They're really holy. You look at them and say, wow, what a person. Look at that.
Observance was not a matter of personal piety in these Days.
It was a communal identity and obligation. Everyone was expected to adhere to the Laws making the Entire community Religious by default. Religious is a word with a lot of baggage, but you understand what I mean. The Talmud tells us, listen, if you want to be a devout person, then you need to focus a lot of energy and attention on learning civil and tort law.
That's not spiritual, that's not religious.
And you lived your life every day by the things you read. All the ten commandments, the Elay and these mishpatim, and everything that followed. Personal devotion. Yeah, there was definitely, we see, a lot of sadiqim, righteous people. That was a thing.
But religion was a communal affair, which is actually why it is impossible to imagine. If you know this history, this context, it's impossible to imagine Jesus coming and saying, I've come to do away with all of that. You couldn't do that.
It governed every aspect of life.
It makes so much more sense than when we read. Therefore, anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly would be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Do you hear that? Most people say, yes, there it is.
He's done with it. No, he's calling you to a higher level of knowledge about life and law than the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.
That is a very high calling, and it was everybody's responsibility to know these things.
And we ask, where would those instructions, where were they found? Of course, it started on the mountain. And now all these seemingly mundane, boring, even disturbing laws are being spelled out in the Torah for us.
But they're not about being saved. They're about living together in a world of justice and equality, what we might call the divine civil code. Someone came to Yeshua and they said, teach.
Hey, what's a good thing? What good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life? Yeshua says, why do you ask me about what's good? There's only one who's good. If you want to enter the keep the commandments. Which ones?
What's the classic reinterpretation of Yeshua's restatement of our obligations to the law?
It all boils down to one thing.
You've heard this Yeshua did away with everything except love each other, right? It's just that.
But when we read his actual words and we say, which ones? The guy asks, what should I do? Don't murder. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't give false testimony. Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself. And the critic would argue, okay, well, it's not just love yourself, but those are the only ones.
Well, that's also not true. None of that is true because it was so much a part of the life you lived.
These ways of thinking.
The Torah is intended to be a document of life. It's not a spiritual high. It is integrated into real life. Religion was not its purpose. Ritual and worship were apart, but not the whole. So, fine, one might then concede with my last ten minutes, okay, man, there's value in it. There's value in the law. Okay, I get it. The law, the instruction, there's value there.
But, man, these things are ridiculous. They're cruel.
When a man sells his daughter as a bondswoman, you honestly can't imagine, right? And to that, you say, yes, we're in agreement. When we're reading it from our world, from our context, we, even, as messianic Jews and Gentiles, were forced to make some concession about the relevance of some of the things in the Torah. Now, I'm going to get on some dangerous ground here, but it's separation of church and state, religion, religious people. Those things wouldn't have been recognized in ancient culture. But we admit that the text very much speaks to an ancient culture. In many ways, it is undeniable.
Some of the ideas that the biblical text addresses are out of place in our society. And the acknowledgment and acceptance of slavery is one of those things.
But there's the choice to read it, pass it by, or dismiss it or to question it, to wonder about it and discuss, wow, that sounds strange. That sounds irrelevant. That sounds bad.
God said this, and you're telling me Jesus affirmed the whole. I mean, huh.
So you ask questions.
People often say, there are no contradictions. No contradictions in the biblical text.
I struggle with that.
There are contradictions in the biblical text. Numbers.
Who ordered a census, what this person's name was here versus what their name was here, who did what. There are things usually, then we find some very well thought out contradictions to the contradictions which reconcile them. And I'm okay with that. That doesn't change anything. Here's where we run into a dilemma. When God is contradictory, okay? When there is a contradiction in the nature of God, it's a very different thing, which is why we have the idea of. Very popular idea of an Old Testament God of wrath and a New Testament God, which basically has been ascribed to being Jesus as the nice new God, okay? Because these natures seem irreconcilable.
So we got to create two gods. Talk to Martian about it. Not on Mars. Marcion, the guy who made up his own bible.
And it was very popular for a while in the early century.
But is it possible? Is it even possible that God could change his mind, that God would change so much that he creates this whole new system? Is it possible? Did God make a mistake in the first five books of the Bible? Or actually, did God make a mistake in the 39 books of the Bible?
Actually, 38 proverbs is pretty good, right? We can take that one. No, of course not.
Now, while we might rightly cringe at the word slavery in these ancient cultures, it was simply a fact.
It was a fact slavery existed, and yet it is the law of God. The Torah, which governed all aspects of life, which addresses it, provides the recognition of justice and dignity for all humans. I want to explain that, because that's a lot to swallow. Again, from high to low, talking about the incredible spiritual high of Mount Sinai, down to this. When a man takes a slave, when a man sells his daughter into slavery, that's where we are.
From Sinai to slavery. Seriously, it's no mistake.
The first set of laws that we encounter after the spiritual height of Sinai are directed to the lowest levels of social hierarchy. You understand that?
A divine law stoops down to the lowest of lows to create a world where all people are treated as the image of the divine. And so the expansion of the Torah's legal code begins with from high to the lowest of lows. The slave is where we start the story or continue the story. However you want to look at it now. Need to be very clear. This kind of slavery is different than the chattel slavery, the horrendous part of many cultures, our own culture, even in the modern age. The Torah, though, even in this kind of slavery, is more like indentured. Indentured servitude, okay. But the Torah protects the right of all slaves as part of the laws within it. But regardless, to be a slave, the lowest of low, there were three ways that you got there. One, you were either so desperately poor that you had no other options. There's a rule.
There was a whole chapter about these things, a lot of commentary written, or you had committed some crime that required you to work off a penalty. So here's the deal. In this system of justice, you don't get to go to jail for three hots and a cot.
You're going to go work at the lowest of low. That's another way you got in slavery. Now, then there's the slavery of the nations, which that's not as pretty a story, and it's harder to get into, which is why I'll refer you to Lance's teaching that he did several years ago called is slavery kosher? Where he talks a lot about slavery and the nations. That's actually not the focus of my message, but I want to focus this part of our teaching on something that seems absolutely irreconcilable with anything related to God. Fine. We're talking about slavery there. Okay.
When a father sells his daughter as a bondswoman, and while recognizing that some components of ancient civilization are no longer acceptable in the modern age, like slavery, though, it's actually alive and well, I read the Statistic. I don't remember where or how long ago. That said, there are more people in today's world enslaved than there were in the past history of the world combined.
Slavery has a broad definition when you look at it that way. I mean, we're talking about, in essence, slaves in asian factories, but that's also something else. Sorry. Listen, we should always read beyond the words, the story. Beyond the story. For this, we need some help sometimes. Commentary, culture, context. Again, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Sola scriptura. If you read Sola Scriptura right here, you're sunk.
Sola scriptura will leave you so confused and has left so many people confused that more than half of the Bible gets thrown out because of reading things like this and not understanding. When we see beyond it, we can see the fact that the Torah reminds us that it is from a good God who desires good for us, and that it is well beyond a text for religious people. When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does, not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people. And since he has broken faith with her, since he has betrayed her, some translations read, if he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food or clothing or marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing without payment of money. That's hard to read. It's hard to listen to. It's hard to even begin to understand why that's in a religious text. Okay, fine. Some of these things don't matter. Still, we're reading it. How do we do it? Well, first, let's meet this earthly father. He is absolutely destitute. Okay.
Rambam writes, a father may not sell his daughter as a maidservant unless he became impoverished to the extent that he owns nothing, neither landed property, movable property, not even the clothing that he's wearing. That's the level of poverty in which this father lives and he has a child or children.
And this is an important stipulation, okay? A father may not do this unless he has absolutely nothing to offer her, no life, no honor, no food, and certainly no future.
And so we say. So the Torah allows him to make money selling his daughter because of his own bad decisions.
Because he can't manage his money or made terrible decisions, he gets to sell his daughter.
There's an important stipulation I appreciate here from Rabbi Foreman David Foreman Aleph Beta highlighting this. When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. That's in the text. When he sells her as a slave, she shall not go out as a male slaves do. But the thing is, she does go out as the male slaves do. Six years you're in slavery. 7th year you go free, or a jubilee year, slaves are set free, jewish slaves or puberty. Got to understand, this girl, to make it even worse, is young. She's twelve and a half or less.
Okay? But those are the reasons she is allowed to go out from slavery. So why in the world does it say she should not go out? What does this mean?
Well, here's the Torah as the document for real life in that particular moment, if you're open to see it, here's God leveling the social hierarchy.
If you see this process, the sale, it happens with this stipulation that the master will marry this girl, okay, the master will marry her. And if he doesn't marry her, then his son will marry her.
To which the critic responds, arranged marriages, also a part of the culture of the times, still a part of many modern cultures.
The Torah tolerates this arrangement of something that was happening so that a young girl with no future prospects of any kind of life, much less a good and prosperous 1, may actually have a chance.
The father extends this only when the circumstances are so incredibly dire that there is no escape for this young girl, and that he will be strongly assured that the girl will be taken care of better than he would be able to take care of her.
There's more. If he takes her as a wife, the master, as intended, he is obligated to treat her as an eQual. She is no longer seen in any light as a slave or lower than him. If he chooses not to marry her, and the son steps up and marries this young slave girl, he is obligated to treat her as an equal to meet her every marital obligation. And furthermore, the father is to treat her as a daughter in law, as an equal, as a part of the family. If for any reason, they were to marry another wife in addition to this one. Polygamy. Yep. That's also something that was going on at this time in the bIble. It was cultural. If either of them take another wife in addition to this slave girl, who's no longer a slave girl, she must be treated equally. Her status will always be at the height of her husband. She will never be relegated or diminished.
This is what it means when the Torah writes, she shall not go out as the male slaves do, meaning she is supposed to be cared for, taken up, brought into the family, and elevated in social status to have a life.
And if the arrangement does not work out, if no one marries her, that is actually viewed. The Torah uses the word. I pointed it out as a betrayal. They didn't do what they had given the Father the indication that they were going to do. They didn't do the right thing. They didn't treat her well, they didn't bring her in, and so she's released. That's not ideal, but that's in the toRah. Why? Because the Torah is a civil and practical life document for dealing with the life's real problems that occurred.
Now, embedded then, in this super weird and disturbing story that has the word slavery. In it, we actually find a story of salvation, not of her soul, but of her life, her opportunity, a rescue from probable certain DeAth. If you starve to DeAth, you don't have any clothes now, just because I love to do this, and I've been talking longer than I should already, but here's a stretch.
A shadow of the messiaH, if you will. When we can read the Torah and derive these lessons, even from weird things about slavery, we can see ourselves, in some sense, as the girl. I want you to listen to me and see if it makes sense. I'm just making this up as I go.
Just kidding.
As children of the world also has a big connotation. But as children, left to our own devices in this world apart from God, self consumed, no guiding principles to lead us to good, we are lost. We have no hope, we have no future.
But we are given an opportunity. See, our father doesn't sell us. We put ourselves into slavery. In this example, we live constrained, with no bad choices, dismal future, no hope, death on the horizon, inevitably. And yet, there is an opportunity presented to be adopted into a new house. We're taken in by a father who welcomes us into the family, not by marrying us, but giving us the opportunity to take hold of the bridegroom, who elevates our status from one destined for death to an equal heir who will enter into goodness for the rest of our lives.
We are accepted, we are welcomed, and we receive a new identity. But guess what? There's still, even in that arrangement, this idea of servitude, right? Paul talks about slaves to sin, slaves to righteousness. You still have it. You still have an obligation, even in this thing.
We can become equal and still bear this servant to righteousness. Or if you want to, you can go it on your own and see how that works.
But you have an opportunity to have a change in status, to be elevated by being taken by the sun into a marriage arrangement.
Okay, now, that's a stretch. I know. Listen, let me finish this up. I like it, though.
I like it. The point here is this. The Torah, the law, the ordinances, the commandments are challenging sometimes, and it is very easy to read this and say, assume the worst. Throw it out. People do it. It's almost like they like to do it. It has resulted, though, in a tragic state of affairs where many miss the forest for the trees.
It is hard, I understand, to engage with laws about slaves and oxen and plowing fields and mixing seeds in the field and fabrics and all the things that seem to be at least out of my field of interest, if not completely crazy and irrelevant.
But if nothing else, nothing else. We learn today that God goes from the highest to the lowest to start at the bottom to bring everybody in.
And that's beautiful.
That more than being some angry, slave driving chauvinist with no use for women, he's actually using a very unattractive reality of the culture to elevate, to bring about a new equality for a woman. And most of all, the Torah of truth is relevant. All scripture. We read this, everyone knows it. God breathed is useful teaching, rebuking, correcting, training. So the servant of God, servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work that we find divine inspiration, even in the confusing stuff and applicability in teaching, correcting, guiding followers of Messiah toward a life of righteousness. This underlies the idea that the Bible is not a strictly religious book.
And I know that may sound weird in a religious environment, but it's about life and we can't separate that.
We're to represent it all if nothing else. If you care nothing else for my creative midrash about Messiah or finding a way that slavery for a bonds girl gives her equality, if nothing else, here's what I want you to take out. You are forced to admit that God came to the lowest of the low, and we have no excuse to also not judge favorably and treat with justice and equality those who are the lowest. That's in this Old Testament, this document of laws that have been overlooked by many for being cruel and archaic. We're disciplined. We're disciplined to study this and understand these things and talk about them, not because we think we're going to be saved by it, but because it guides us to live and live out the best version of ourselves. So when you see the God's love hashem from highest to lowest, from Sinai to slavery, you should be inspired to do the same thing.
Love your neighbor as yourself, no matter their status.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: Shabbat Shalom please visit our website, shalommaken.org, to learn more about us. Join our live services Access other teachings sign up for our newsletter, join our private network that will connect you with our greater community from around the world or contribute to the work of Shalom Aiken. Thank you for watching and we look forward to connecting with you.
