Separate

Thursday 21^st August

Read Deuteronomy 23:1-24:9

“No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.

² No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.

³ No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. ⁴ For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. ⁵ However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. ⁶ Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live.

⁷ Do not despise an Edomite, for the Edomites are related to you. Do not despise an Egyptian, because you resided as foreigners in their country. ⁸ The third generation of children born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord.

⁹ When you set up camp against your enemies, keep away from everything impure. ¹⁰ If one of your men is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he is to go outside the camp and stay there. ¹¹ But as evening approaches he is to wash himself, and at sunset he may return to the camp.

¹² Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. ¹³ As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. ¹⁴ For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.

¹⁵ If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand them over to their master. ¹⁶ Let them live among you wherever they like and in whatever town they choose. Do not oppress them.

¹⁷ No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine-prostitute. ¹⁸ You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow, because the Lord your God detests them both.

¹⁹ Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. ²⁰ You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess.

²¹ If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it, for the Lord your God will certainly demand it of you and you will be guilty of sin. ²² But if you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty. ²³ Whatever your lips utter you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the Lord your God with your own mouth.

²⁴ If you enter your neighbour’s vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. ²⁵ If you enter your neighbour’s cornfield, you may pick the ears with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to their standing corn.

24 If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, ² and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, ³ and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, ⁴ then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord. Do not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

⁵ If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.

⁶ Do not take a pair of millstones – not even the upper one – as security for a debt, because that would be taking a person’s livelihood as security.

⁷ If someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite and treating or selling them as a slave, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you.

⁸ In cases of defiling skin diseases, be very careful to do exactly as the Levitical priests instruct you. You must follow carefully what I have commanded them. ⁹ Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam along the way after you came out of Egypt.” (NIVUK)

 Another chapter with a seemingly random list of instructions. First comes a list of people to exclude from the ‘assembly’ (the community?), those who are ‘deformed’, illegitimate or ‘foreign’, a practice that would be totally unacceptable in our modern inclusive age. This is unexpected given all are created in the image of God, so I understand this to be an ‘illustration’ of separateness from the unholy, not an exclusion instruction; exactly like those who follow Christ are called to be separate, but all are welcome through faith in Jesus. The second set of instructions relating to cleanliness and hygiene are a little more understandable as protective of the community while there is also an element pointing to holiness (vs14) ‘so that he will not see among you anything indecent…’. Then comes what appears at a first reading at least, to be a random list of do-nots related to ownership and financial dealings (prostitution, interest, payment on promise, exploitation of another’s resources). Exploitation in any form is not acceptable. The beginning of chapter 24 turns back to relationships; this time focused on male responsibility (personal or financial) with the admonition that the social structures put in place by God’s people should protect marriage and faithfulness (divorce simply to permit other sexual relationships is not acceptable as it is exploitation of others). We then return to finance with v5 implying that security for a debt should not involve the basic resources (millstone) needed for the livelihood of the family. Lastly kidnapping is an unacceptable (death penalty) means of financial gain and skin diseases are to be carefully managed by the health care providers given by God, the Levites. I am left with a sense that the financial practices and social structures that are used by God’s people should never exploit but should protect and thereby facilitate God’s people being identifiably different from the community at large.  Do I seek to live in ways that will make it clear that I am different in attitudes and actions in comparison to the secular society I live in?

Geoff Hinch