40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 175 (Deuteronomy 22:13-24:4)

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

Things get strange if a man accuses his new wife of not being a virgin and it turns out God is not a fan of lying. There are a lot of punishments that the law allows but rarely seem to be carried out. Why is a law against marrying your father's wife even necessary? What happens if a runaway slave comes to Israel? Chad and Daniel discuss these things and more. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conference Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. you can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there actually you can go over to 1517.org and you can go over to the christ hold fast section because that's where it is now it's over there at one site you can go over there to the chad bird section that's where chad stuff is you're probably like me and you probably just you know click on links to articles you know on on facebook or twitter or whatever if you know you probably don't you know just peruse sites but if you haven't went over there and perused and uh kind

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Chad, what's going on, man? I just was thinking when you were talking, man, is there any aspect of theology we don't have covered? We got it all, right? All of it. Yeah, all of it. Whether it's in a podcast or article or class or anything, it's all there. Yeah, man.

Now it's a pretty good library of stuff we got going on over there. Yeah. I do hear from a lot of people who use the site for, I mean, sometimes it's for just themselves or their families or their churches. you know so i don't know it's great to to know that the resources are being used in all sorts of all sorts of different situations which of course is why they're there right yeah yeah i mean it's really nice to be able well i mean this happens a lot of times we'll we'll have we'll get emails and stuff from people saying hey do you have anything on blank you know or they'll ask a

question um hey i was wondering could you answer this question about blank and it used to be that i would have to sit down if i wanted to answer and and we get a lot of that kind of stuff we get a lot of emails it would take you know i just set a day aside and answer emails if i if i wanted to give people answers which of course you do but um it's time consuming it's a lot easier now because uh you're we have so much material now that we've probably done something on it and so i can go over there and find something that's one of us has written or a video or a podcast on that things that yeah we uh we talk about that right here you know just send a link which is which is yeah really nice yeah i've done the same thing i mean it's it's time saving but also you know

usually an article is able to develop an answer a little bit more fully than we can in a brief email so i find myself doing that quite a bit either with emails with questions that get sent to me or uh even on on social media somebody asks a question you say well yeah it's we talk about this here it's a treasure trove a lot of good a lot of good stuff there for everybody yes indeed I'm sure what we're going to talk about today is going to be something that people have a lot of questions about Yeah So far Knock on wood

So far I have never been emailed a question about Deuteronomy 22 13 and following But hey, you never know Today might just be the day So if anybody asks me I can say, you know what, we talked about that In episode whatever this is

Of 40 Minutes of the Old Testament So give it a listen So what we're talking about, joking about, is the second half of Deuteronomy 22. If you were with us last time, which I hope you were, then you know that we've talked about some rather strange stuff, laws and customs and whatnot, having to do with all sorts of things. Well, a little bit of that is going to continue here in the next couple chapters. So I'm going to summarize quite a bit here of 13 through 30. that's the second half of deuteronomy chapter 22 so basically what this is talking about is is all sorts of uh questions related to sexual activity so the the first issue here is

so you got a couple and they just got married and uh the husband uh turns out he doesn't like his wife. And he accuses her of not being a virgin on their wedding night. And he starts like spreading this, this story. I don't want to call it a fact. I want to call it a rumor. But anyway, he starts telling people about this, uh, publicly defaming her is what verse 14 says. Look, I took this woman. And when I, when I, when I married her, I didn't find her a virgin. so uh there's a couple of different ways this this could uh this could uh fall out i mean one is that the parents uh this is gonna sound really strange to us but the parents can like bring out evidence of her virginity and it sounds strange to us but i i've been doing a little bit of

research this week and evidently this is not like unheard of in a lot of different cultures around the world where there's a garment maybe it's the sheet maybe it's a special kind of garment and it's underneath the woman on the wedding night and when the hymen is broken and blood is there this is actually kept as evidence of her virginity on her wedding night so this was uh it of course that is uh unless you're listening from one of those cultures that is going to sound rather of strange to you but that's what is being talked about here uh verse where's it at here verse 17 talks about spreading the garment before the elders of the city and the garment they're talking about is the garment that has this proof of of her virginity on there so this was evidently

a custom at least in parts of uh of israel's history so anyway uh if if the guy makes this this accusation and uh the parents bring this out and say basically he's lying he's defaming our daughter, then the guy, he's going to suffer for what he's done. First of all, he's going to get publicly chastised, and he's going to be fined 100 shekels of silver. And then he was trying to get out of the marriage, evidently, but he can't. So they're stuck together. I had to feel sorry for his wife. But anyway, that's one situation that could happen. The other situation is going to sound even more extreme to us and that is if the charge is true and the girl was not a virgin she is stoned to death the listeners are thinking kid grief you know i was thinking about uh this and

some of the other stuff there uh in this chapter about and not just this chapter but a lot of different sections of deuteronomy doesn't seem to me i mean doesn't seem to you like people are getting put to death an awful lot for a whole lot of things i mean there's just like you do this you're gonna die you do that you're gonna die there's a whole lot of death penalties here but when you look at the actual history of israel and not just the history but like specific examples uh it doesn't seem like this law was followed to a t in a lot of different situations dude you almost never see this stuff happen i mean even in jesus day when they catch the woman in adultery and they're like let's stone her yeah i was gonna bring up that example yeah i mean they're they're

they're trying to trap jesus right because they're they all get the stones and jesus is like you know writing in the dirt then you know he's out saying cast the first stone and they all throw the rocks down like dang that was a good response but if they were actually intent on doing it they just done it they just done it like because they're like it doesn't matter if i have sin i didn't do this sin and this is the punishment for this sin they were wanting him to either let her off which makes him not care about the law or be like yeah go ahead which makes him heartless right that's what they wanted and so yeah i mean all of these laws you there's a million ways to die in israel and you just don't see it happen that often you see people because i'll tell you this

if you think there was just like zero people who weren't virgins on their wedding night i mean i think that you're probably just insane and and and i do think this is the other thing to point out not not that this makes the punishment any less severe but i think some people think this is all about purity and what one thing you didn't you didn't mention is also i mean it's it's a if this it seems to me that like what the big issue here is is the lying if you just say look i'm not a virgin they don't take you out and stone you if a woman they just happen if she's honest about it that you don't get stoned it's if you went into a relationship saying claiming to be a virgin and then it's found out that you're not that's where you get stoned likewise if the if this guy

is found to be lying the lie is the problem lying about you not being a virgin then he has to pay all this money and says uh here that the elders of the city shall take that man and beat him so like you're gonna you're gonna get beat you're gonna pay five you're gonna pay a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father so you gotta pay a fine you gotta get out in public and just get the tar beat out of you and it seems to me that in both of these instances the thing that they don't like is the deceit yeah i mean yes they're obviously you're like whoa is it always stoning if you lie well no this is different than that so that does have something to do with purity and this sort of thing but this isn't just a if you if it is found out that you are not a virgin

you get stoned we stone all people who aren't virgins that's not that's not the law this test seems pretty easy to fake uh because mom and dad have this have this you know this sheet or whatever like all you need is a bloody sheet i mean i can give pretty easy to pull off give me 15 minutes i I'll get you a bloody sheet. I mean, if your daughter was like, look, I told him I'm a virgin, I'm not a virgin, you could have this thing ready to go. Yeah, yeah.

It would be very easy to get around this law. It probably happened too. You know, another thing, just to keep in mind about this, is there's like no law. Okay, say she does lie about her virginity. And the new husband finds out. It doesn't say he has to do this.

you know she can say like all right yeah you know i've been with a guy before he's like i forgive you and everything's good right yeah so it's not it's not as if this is describing a situation that has to happen every single time uh in other words and i think that's why we see it happen basically never right yeah another situation i mean that's that's like this you think of uh joseph and mary right you know they're which actually fits with something later in the chapter but uh yeah they're engaged which in jewish law is the equivalent to legally of marriage and so when he finds out she's pregnant of course he thinks she's been with another man but he doesn't doesn't reveal this he just divorces her decides he's going to divorce her quietly

there was joseph breaking the law no i think he was he was acting in love and love is the fulfillment of the law so yeah yeah i think i think ultimately what you have here is that yeah purity is obviously something that uh there's a high emphasis placed on there's also something that god really doesn't want going on is deceiving people he doesn't want deception going on within the people and he doesn't want let me see this over and over again and he doesn't want people lying about other people either. I don't think it's as much about the purity. The purity was a big thing to the people, obviously,

and it's not that it's nothing to God either, but like you said, this isn't a punishment for that. It's for the lying because you don't have to do this if you find out someone's not a virgin. Yeah, interesting section. The rest of the chapter deals with some other situations that are, that have to do with, with, uh, with sex as well. So you've got adultery discussed in, in verse 22. And if man's found lying with a, with a married woman, then, uh, they're both,

they're both put to death. And then you have a situation where, uh, you have a girl who's a virgin and she's engaged to another man. This is what I was talking about, uh, earlier in, in connection with Mary. And, uh, so there's a couple of different situations here. So she's a virgin she's engaged and what if so what if a man forces himself on her what if he rapes her and the example that she used is she's in the field and she cries out but nobody can hear her well then she's innocent but the guy of course is guilty he he's guilty of rape and so it actually it equates rape with murder in a sense because verse 26 says that just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him so is this particular case so it equates this attack upon another person

in one case murder and in one case rape and the rapist is also uh guilty of uh is to be sentenced to be sentenced to death but then you have a situation kind of wraps up the chapter where okay uh a guy and a girl they hook up they have sex and then but i mean it was both like it was a consensual relationship and they're found out well in that particular case then the guy has to marry the girl but he has to pay her father the the dowry basically 50 shekels of silver and then she becomes she becomes his wife all sorts of different uh sexual situations going on here and then to wrap up everything in this chapter we have a verse that is good as it sound really weird but hopefully i can explain it in a way where you might say you know what i guess i guess

I could see that happening. Verse 30 says, a man shall not take his father's wife so that he shall not uncover his father's skirt. You might think, come on, do you really have to prohibit that? Okay, so I'm reading a Jewish commentary on Deuteronomy. And he actually explained a situation where, knowing human nature, you'd be like, oh, yeah, I guess so. So a lot of men were married two or three times. So maybe they were married and they had some children with their first wife and then she died. And so he remarried and then maybe had some children with his second wife and she died and remarried a third time.

And this is this is not unusual, even in more recent times. Right. Because childbirth, of course, is a very dangerous activity. Very, you know, for women, a lot of a lot of things can happen in childbirth. so think about this you got a man who's now on his third wife his first two wives died but he had children with his with his very first wife and those children have grown up and now he remarries say a third time there's a very good chance that his oldest children say his oldest son is of the same age or even older than the third wife that the man marries yeah because in this time you're trying to have as many children as possible yeah and so you're gonna you're

probably marrying down yeah exactly yeah i mean it was typical for no matter what the age of the man to marry a woman who is just of the marrying age she's just had her first period and somewhat you know she's what 15 16 maybe you think about this so maybe the the guy's oldest son is 17 18 19 years old and his stepmom is 16 well you can see how that kind of situation would be A possible temptation And that's why you have verse 30 Well, it's also, I mean, you don't even have to die I mean, we talked about this last week a little bit

But also people just taking multiple wives It's not uncommon Yeah, yeah, that's true In a polygamous household, the same thing could be happening So, yeah, it's one of those verses When you read it on the surface, you're like Oh yeah, okay, thanks It's like those verses that forbid us from eating buzzards

Or something, like it's going to happen But it's a very realistic scenario In this particular culture Okay, enough about sex. We'll move on to 23. We got some more material coming up here. So this first, let's see, about the first eight verses or so, is delineating who and who cannot be part of the assembly. Now, there's a bit of debate here as to exactly what is meant by this. So it starts out by talking about someone who has been castrated and goes on, someone who's at illegitimate birth. uh ammonites and moabites so various people either with physical deformities or with who are from

these enemy enemy peoples can't it says can't enter the assembly of the lord so it's a little bit of a question here as to what is meant by the assembly because that particular hebrew word can mean a lot of different things sometimes it's translated as the congregation and sometimes people get the impression that this is talking about like the tabernacle they can't go to the tabernacle or the temple and i'm not so sure that that's the case that that this is what it's talking about it's a very good chance that this is talking about they can't be part of a ruling assembly so it doesn't mean that they can't necessarily be part you know can't be on the land of israel or uh are restricted from certain other kinds of activities or places but the

assembly here very well could be like a ruling assembly of israel so there's you know they're in various kinds of cultures, the Greek culture, for instance, in the Greek polis, in the Greek city, there were only certain people who could be elected to office and serve in a ruling capacity or in some kind of group that was responsible for maintaining the laws of the city. And something like this might be going on here with these first few verses of 23. But anyway, that's kind of what these verses are talking about. So there's certain restrictions about who's in and who's out with regard to this assembly of the Lord. And you can see how these, how the history of Israel and their connection to the Ammonites and the Moabites, as well as the Edomites, I mean, that history

continued to influence them into the future. Verse nine, we shift focus a little bit to, so you've got Israel, they're going out to do battle. They're going to confront a foreign army. and uh that's what these verses nine and the next few verses are talking about so it's basically setting up the israelite army camp as as a place where the restrict that we're like the the ritual restrictions aren't nearly as as precise as those at the tabernacle but there it is still understood that in this israelite army camp that god is dwelling in the midst of them that's what it says in verse 14. It says, the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you. Therefore, your camp must be holy. So even in an army camp where

you'd expect, you know, standards to be relaxed somewhat, there's an understanding that the Israelites who are there are sort of in a priestly capacity. And just in the sense that They are the chosen ones of the Lord to carry out his will, his martial will, in relation to those enemies that they're going against. And so he says, you shall keep yourself free from every evil thing in verse 9. So don't pollute yourself. And it talks about how if a man has a nocturnal emission, then he's unclean. He has to go outside of the camp and cleanse himself and come back to the camp. And we've discussed that elsewhere in the book of Leviticus.

So it even gets into details about like, you got to have an outhouse. You can't just go anywhere you want to. So there's this, the basic idea is that God is in the camp. The camp is to be holy. And so there's sort of a sanctification of the military aspect of Israel as well, because god is god doesn't just stay at the temple or tabernacle and send out his soldiers he goes with them he journeys with them and there's a very real possibility that when it talks about god like walking in the midst of the camp what it's talking about is the ark of the covenant

is there because the ark was carried out quite a few times on on military expeditions so it's the sanctification of the army camp is what those those few verses are talking about verse 15 and following talks about how you are to treat an escaped slave that you don't return him to his master but instead you you welcome him you you take care of him and verses 17 and 18 are discussing uh a pretty obvious prohibition that if you have a daughter you don't sell her into cult prostitution or if you have a son that you don't sell him into cult prostitution because of course this is this was practiced by the nations which were around israel and as it says here that was an abomination to the lord now this is interesting uh just a little side note here on an irony so

verse 18 says that if you have like if you have money from the from the hire of a harlot then you don't bring that money into the lord's house as some sort of offering to him because of course those things are an abomination to the lord so the basic idea is that if you've got money from something evil you don't turn around and put that in the offering plate okay now the reason i think this is this is ironic is because uh think of what happened in the the case of Judas. So Judas gets money from the priest to betray Jesus. And then after he betrays Jesus, he feels bad about it. And so he returns the money. And I'm trying to find my New Testament reference here. Maybe you know it off the top of your head. Oh yeah, it's Matthew 27, 6. Let me

let me read you what the priests say. This is the great irony of their reflection of this Old Testament law. So Judas goes back, and he feels remorse. He goes back to take the 30 pieces of silver back to the chief priest and says, I've sinned by betraying innocent blood. And they say, what is that to us see to that yourself he throws the pieces of silver down walks away and commits suicide and here's what the chief priest say about the silver it's not lawful to put them that is the silver into the temple treasury since it is the price of blood and so they have a meeting and they decide instead they're going to use it to buy the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. Just a blatant case of hypocrisy where they had given

him the money to do this. They had provided the blood money, but they won't take it back because they're too observant of the law to take this blood money and put it back in the temple treasury, even though they're the very ones who provided it to Judas. What an obvious case of how the law can be twisted to where it looks like, oh, you're being oh-so-pious and keeping it, and actually you're engaging in this blatant hypocrisy. Yeah. Which is, yeah, what happened

here with the priest. I do think it's interesting that you have this law telling you not to return slaves to their masters, which tells you that God knows that the sort of slavery that we hear about in Israel is not

like the slavery of other nations uh so much so you know where it's just you own these people and you're cruel and all this stuff is going on so much so that if one of the someone of another nation escapes or just a mistreated person escapes you don't give them back and it says actually that you should you should not do him any wrong yeah i think it goes to it goes to the the heart of israel's ongoing admonition to welcome the stranger, right? To take care of the sojourner, not to mistreat them. I think people sometimes get the impression the Old Testament is like, Israel, good. Everybody else, bad. That doesn't hold true at all with what we've been reading in Deuteronomy and elsewhere,

where there's an ongoing encouragement, in fact, law by God to welcome the stranger. if somebody is if you know they're not an israelite but they're living in the midst of israel then you welcome them i mean there there's even laws in which they can participate in the passover so there's a there's certainly a a more open-armed approach on the part of israel that sometimes people have the have an impression of israel's openness so there's there's not kind of a a xenophobia that characterizes israel they had their uh their borders were porous and so people were passing in and out and trading and evidently escaping through slavery sometimes and we have plenty of instances in the old testament where people from other other nations were actually

in the the high reaches of government or the military think of uriah right the the husband to Bathsheba Uriah was one of David's closest friends he was in his David's inner circle and yet Uriah was not an Israelite he was a Hittite yeah so uh and he he obviously lived right beside David's palace because that's the only way that David would have been able to see uh Bathsheba bathing is if you know she was right there close to the palace so the very proximity of this Hittite's house to David's palace tells you that he was an important person, yet he was not an Israelite.

Well, think about the reputation that Israel must have for slaves to want to escape there. Yeah, that's a great point. We know where we can go and be safe, but Israel. Yeah, you don't escape to like, Israel's horrible. They treat people terribly. Let's go escape there. So, I mean, this seems like a destination that you would go to if you were, you know,

It's probably like back in the day, if you were in the south, you'd escape north. You don't run further south. And chances are that the word about Israel would have spread to people who were looking to escape and looking for a place to go to Israel, because even their God has said that they must welcome us and take care of us. And they're not allowed to mistreat us. The natural fear of an escaped slave would be if he goes somewhere, then he's just going to be enslaved again right he seeks protection somewhere and they welcome

a man but they welcome a man just to shackle him once more into into more slavery all right so uh wrapping up the chapter here uh the next few verses talk about if if you loan money to a fellow israelite you can't charge them interest so you you could you know loaning was was encouraged it was it was understood it was going to happen but if you if you do that then you can't charge interest to your fellow israelite you can to a foreigner so maybe there were israelites that were loaning money to people who were outside of israel and you and they could they could do that they could charge them interest but not to their own countrymen and then verse 21 through 23 says more or less if you take a vow then you keep that vow you can't you can't like take a vow and and

then the next day be like oh man why did i say that i i'm gonna take it back whatever whatever you vowed then god calls you to be obedient and faithful to that which you have which you have promised and then the chapter ends up 24 and 25 these like there's all these subjects like go i don't know if there's any wagon segway between these it's like they're all thrown in here we got everything from sex to offerings to uh slavery to making vows and it ends up by uh throwing something else in there basically saying you know if you if you go for a walk and you're a little bit hungry you know you haven't had lunch yet and you're walking through your neighbor's vineyard and you pluck a few grapes that's fine you know pop the grapes in your mouth eat those grapes

that's fine but don't like carry a basket with you and fill the basket up with grapes don't do that because you know your neighbor's gonna be okay with you plucking a few grapes and have a little snack, but he's not going to be okay if you walk out of his vineyard with a couple of baskets full of his grapes. So, you know, don't be dumb. Grapes in your mouth is fine. Grapes in your pockets, no. Yeah, that's the summary of the law. Grapes in your mouth, good. Grapes in your pocket, not. And then we actually have a story that is somewhat reflected in verse 25, where it says, so you're not in your neighbor's vineyard, but you are walking through his wheat field, and you know you're hungry you pluck a few heads of grain you rub them together and you

i've never actually it doesn't sound very appetizing to me this sounds terrible you gotta be really hungry i've done that i mean i i grew up with wheat farmers and i helped them with harvest a few times and yeah you can get some of the wheat and you know you can put a little bit in your mouth but it's yeah it's not a very it's not a very tasty snack i mean you got to kind of grind it up with your teeth and it's dry. And so it's not very appetizing, but I guess if you're hungry, Hey, you can, uh, you can do that. So if you do that same law applies, uh, you can do that, but don't like, Hey, I'm going to go for a walk in my neighbor's grain field. I'm gonna carry my sickle with me. I'm going to cut down a few sheaves of wheat and

take it back on what? No, you can't do that. So the new Testament story, of course, uh, you probably recognize it is when jesus is with his disciples walking through a grain field and the disciples are hungry so they start doing this the only thing is it's a sabbath and according to the rabbinical law they were working by rubbing the grain together to get uh something for for a snack and jesus as always uh shows shows them just how wrong they are because listen so you think this is wrong have you never read what david did he went into the the tabernacle and he ate the sacred bread which was only for the priest so it's got an argument from greater to to lesser in that case that's an old testament law that we see reflected in in one of those new testament narratives

so that's that's all of chapter 23 we got we got about six minutes left so let's jump into the beginning of chapter 24 and this is actually a a very very fascinating section and we'll see if we can cover it right right quick if not we can uh touch on it again next week so here's the situation this is back to marriage and sex again although it's more marriage and sex so if this is about divorce and possible remarriage so there's a guy who takes a wife it says and uh it says it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes which is kind of a general term right what's that mean so she's displeasing to him in some way uh and then but then it like gets a little more specific he says because he's found some indecency in her uh but even that is not very specific i was i was

doing some research on the hebrew of that particular phrase some indecency in her and it's even that's pretty ambiguous uh i mean it can it can mean anything from just like something wrong to maybe she's committed a you know a sexual sin or something along those lines it's it's used we saw it actually in chapter 23 when it was talking about uh let me find it here talking about since god is in your camp keep your camp holy so that he doesn't see anything indecent among you that Hebrew phrase translated in 2314 about anything indecent, exact same phrase, Hebrew phrase that you have at the beginning of Deuteronomy 24, if he finds something indecent in her. So what does that mean? Well, who knows? But we do know that it was taken a couple different ways by first century

rabbis. You had a couple of different schools of thought. You had the school of Shammai, those who identified with the rabbi Shammai, and they interpreted this very narrowly to mean some sort of sexual indecency. So maybe she's committed adultery or something like that. Now, the school of Hillel interpreted this Hebrew phrase, something indecent, very broadly. I mean, anything. So there's just something about her that he doesn't like, whatever that might be. And so the school of Shammai said you could divorce her only for on grounds of marital infidelity. The school of Hillel said you could divorce her on the grounds of earning the breakfast, or snoring in bed, or whatever else you found unpleasing about her. Now, that's really

actually not the focus of these opening verses. The focus is, so you've done it. You've divorced her. You've given her what's called a certificate of divorce, and you've put it in her hand, and you've sent her out of your house. So you've divorced, you've divorced her. Now what's she going to do? Well, probably she's going to marry somebody else because that's usually what happened in this culture. So she goes out and later she starts to, she becomes another man's wife. And then what happens if that guy divorces her or if he dies and now she's a widow? Well, in that case, then she can't remarry her original spouse. So her first husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her back because she has been the wife of another man or of other men.

Now, what I find fascinating about this is not so much the whole discussion of divorce and remarriage and all of that in israel but take some time and read jeremiah chapter three because jeremiah chapter three is actually a sermon by god through jeremiah on deuteronomy 24 and here's what's fascinating in in the beginning of the beginning of the chapter of jeremiah chapter three he quotes Deuteronomy 24 and says, okay, here's the situation. But then he relates it to himself and he says, okay, well, you know what? I had a wife. Her name was Israel. And you know what she did? Well, she whored under every green tree she could find. She was sleeping with every God. She was committing spiritual adultery all over the place. I mean, so she had this whole string of

divine husbands that uh that she was worshiping and yet he goes on to say and yet if she comes to me i'll take her back because i'm merciful and i'm compassionate so god as it were quote breaks his own law in the sense that he lets love triumphs over judgment and his mercy always always wins in the end so to israel he says i'll take you back just like jose took back gomer and uh just like we have god always calling us back to himself so even though this might have been a law in israel and who knows how closely it was kept when in god's relationship with his church with israel he's the husband who is constantly calling his unfaithful bride back to himself because he's a god of mercy and compassion yeah there's two things that makes me think of one is

that this law probably does have to do with sexual infidelity since that's the way that it's used in jeremiah this seems like it would be a good argument for that that's what it means right instead of find something whatever displeasing or dishonoring and secondly that yeah god is uh there's a lot of times in the bible where you see god do things that i mean How often does Jesus get accused of breaking the law? Yeah. I mean, I know we talk about this, like Jesus without sin and all that. And certainly he was because love is the heart of the law.

So people are using the letter of the law to try to override the heart of the law. But on the surface, it certainly looks like Jesus just breaks the law all the time. Yeah. He touches a leper. Yeah, you can't do that. like there's there's no way around the fact that like that is not allowed yeah that's right yeah say i mean i i find it fascinating and and the reason i brought in jeremiah 3 is because it's not just like a jesus thing you you already see this happening in the old testament right

yeah yeah where god says okay here's the law and now watch what i do you know so you already have this precedent in the old testament where yeah you got the letter law but watch how god interacts with Israel it's pretty fascinating not only is Israel like married again but she like married 50 different gods and Yahweh's still like come back to me yeah I love you I'll forgive you yeah and whenever whenever you see this stuff happen this law-breaking this quote I'm doing air quotes right now this quote law-breaking happening with God or Christ or whatever it is what you will see is a common theme is it's always for the sake of compassion and love and mercy and forgiveness which tells you where the priorities are with God.

Yeah. Which is a real good thing. It is a real good thing. It's a great way to end, too. That's it. All right, guys. If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support the work, go over to 1517.org.

Go to the Donate page. You can become a contributor. Thank you so much to those of you who do that. You make this all possible. Chad, I'll see you next week. See you then. We'll be right back.