https://buy-zithromax.online buy kamagra usa https://antibiotics.top buy stromectol online https://deutschland-doxycycline.com https://ivermectin-apotheke.com kaufen cialis https://2-pharmaceuticals.com buy antibiotics online Online Pharmacy vermectin apotheke buy stromectol europe buy zithromax online https://kaufen-cialis.com levitra usa https://stromectol-apotheke.com buy doxycycline online https://buy-ivermectin.online https://stromectol-europe.com stromectol apotheke https://buyamoxil24x7.online deutschland doxycycline https://buy-stromectol.online https://doxycycline365.online https://levitra-usa.com buy ivermectin online buy amoxil online https://buykamagrausa.net

37 (or so) Things Banned in Exodus (and their penalties)

Moses - Ten CommandmentsA while back, I put together a post titled “76 Things Banned in Leviticus (and their penalties)” which has turned out to be the most popular thing I’ve ever posted. Go figure.

While doing a Bible Study class, I became inspired to do something similar for Exodus.

As with the Levitican Law, modern American Christians tend to cherry-pick which of the bans in Exodus to pay attention to and which to ignore. This is sometimes a reasoned (convincingly or not) approach, other times it’s just “Well, that’s obviously evil but that’s obviously not something we need to worry about any more.” I’ll leave it to the reader to judge whether each these restrictions still apply or not.

For me, as noted there, I tend to fall back on the “Greatest Commandments” as a guideline, rather than a To-Do / To-Don’t List approach: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. It’s a bit more work, but I feel a bit more confident with the results (when I’m able to manage it).

I’m going to ignore injunctions that are ritualistic (e.g., how not to cook the Passover lamb), unless there are penalties included, as well as skipping over injunctions tied to the chapter’s situation (e.g., no saving up manna).  There are some positive commands that have penalties for not performing them; I’ve rephrased these as negative commands below.

I’m using the NRSV translation here. Death penalties are in red.

  1. No idols or idol worship (20:4-6) – “Punishment,” down to the third or fourth generation of children.
  2. No wrongful use of the Lord’s name (20:7) – God will not forgive you.
  3. No work on the Sabbath (20:8-11) – No penalty given; “you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”
  4. No murder, adultery, theft, false witness, or covetousness of your neighbor’s stuff. (20:12-17) – No penalty given.
  5. No idols of silver and gold. (20:23, 34:17) – No penalty given.
  6. No altars of hewn stones (20:25) – No penalty given.
  7. No altars you have to step up to (20:26) – No penalty given.
  8. No selling female sex slaves to foreign people. (21:8) – No penalty given
    No reducing food, clothing, or “marital rights” of a first wife when the second comes along. (21:10) – The first wife can leave without paying him.
  9. Moses - Ten CommandmentsNo killing a person with a blow. (21:12) – Execution; if unplanned, the killer can flee for sanctuary.
  10. No striking your mother or father (21:15) – Execution.
  11. No kidnapping (21:16) – Execution.
  12. No cursing your mother or father (21:17) – Execution.
  13. No killing a slave with a blow. (21:20) – “Punishment” (execution?) unless the slave survives a few days.
  14. No injuring a pregnant woman during a fight. (21:22-25) – Paying off the husband in case of a miscarriage; other harm to the woman along the “life for life, eye for eye” rule.
  15. No blinding or knocking out teeth of slaves (21:26-27) – The slave will be freed.
  16. No letting your ox known for goring people wander free so that it gores another person (21:29) – Execution, or else making an agreed-upon payment — unless it’s a slave, in which case the pay-off is 30 shekels.
  17. No open pits left around that animals can fall into. (21:33-34) – Payment for the animal to the owner (but you get to keep the dead animal).
  18. No letting your ox known for goring animals wander free so that it gores another ox. (21:35-36) – Replacing the dead ox (though you get to keep the it).
  19. No stealing an ox or sheep (22:1-4) – Paying off with multiple the value, or else being enslaved.
  20. No killing a burglar in daylight hours (22:2-3) – “Bloodguilt” (treat as other killings?)
  21. No letting your animals graze another’s fields or vineyards (22:5) – Restitution from your own fields or vineyards.
  22. No starting a fire that destroys someone’s grain (22:6) – Restitution.
  23. No stealing stuff that is in a neighbor’s safekeeping (22:7) – Pay double.
  24. No falsely disputing ownership over something (22:9) – Pay double.
  25. No stealing something entrusted to you (22:10-11) – Restitution.
  26. No letting an animal you’ve borrowed be injured or killed (22:14-15) – Resitution, unless the owner was present.
  27. No seducing a virgin (22:16-17) – Marriage, if the father insists; bride-price regardless.
  28. No being a female sorcerer (22:18) – Execution.
  29. No bestiality (22:19) – Execution.
  30. No sacrifices to other gods (22:20) – Execution.
  31. No mistreating widows or orphans (22:22-23) – Death from the Lord (“I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans”)
  32. No exacting interest, no reviling God, no cursing leaders, no delays in harvest offerings, no eating carrion (22:25-31) – No penalty given.
  33. No spreading false reports, no being a malicious witness, no following the majority in wrongdoing, no lying with the majority in a lawsuit, no being partial to the poor in a lawsuit, no perverting justice for the poor, no false charges, no killing the innocent, no bribe-taking, no oppressing resident aliens (again) (23:1-9) – No penalty given.
  34. Moses - Ten CommandmentsNo speaking the names of other gods. (23:13) – No penalty given.
  35. No showing up empty-handed at annual festivals, no offering blood sacrifices with anything leavened, no letting festival fat sit out overnight, no boiling a kid in its mother’s milk (23:15-19, 34:20-26) – No penalty given.
  36. No not wearing the proper ceremonial garb (28:40-43) – Death from the Lord, but only for the descendants of Aaron.
  37. No work on the Sabbath (including lighting fires) (35:2-3) – Execution.

So there you have it. How many laws of Exodus have you violated in the last week?

[Google+ share located here.]

28,368 view(s)  

11 thoughts on “37 (or so) Things Banned in Exodus (and their penalties)”

  1. How does completely failing to seduce a virgin go? Its not me that is asking, but rather the teenage me from 30 years go that wants to know.

    (PS define seduce. How far can I have gone?)

  2. I download and saved your “76 things banned in Leviticus” and all the comments. I found them helpful in planning a recent sermon “What the Bible is All About: Lawful and Lawless”. I will do the same for “37 or so things banned in Exodus”.

    Chaos Theory assumes that in dynamic deterministic systems very small changes in initial conditions make it virtually impossible to predict ultimate outcomes because of the “butterfly effect”. Very small changes can create large changes in ultimate outputs. Weather forecasts, for example, are frequently inaccurate if made more than 24 hours prior to outcomes.

    Human systems are not truly deterministic, but random free will creates infinite possibilities for a society to advance or decay, live or die. Without Old Testament law structures, would the promise of God to Abraham to bring a Messiah through his blood line have deteriorated into chaos. As it is, we can trace Jesus back to King David, to Jacob, to Abraham. Yes, there are some weird laws by modern standards, but keeping the Jewish bloodline intact may have required many of them.

    “None of these diseases” by McMillen demonstrates that many of the dietary laws helped preserve the health of the Jewish nation. Familial sexual behavior laws helped prevent genetic defects and family destruction. Cultural dress and ceremonial laws preserved the identity of a chosen people. Laws related to sexual practices outside of normal procreation may well have helped preserve the Jewish nation in unknown but important ways. Homosexuality, for example is an evolutionary dead end if you believe in natural selection. I doubt seriously there will ever be reproducing hermaphroditic humans.

    God is so much wiser than the wisdom of man that I continue to trust in the wisdom of Biblical laws until there are no viable arguments which can be considered.

    Mike Hopper, Ed.D.
    Greenfield, Indiana

    1. …and you encourage your congregation to say the lord’s prayer with the line “Thy will be done” when his will is that “23then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, (the Jews), and you will dispossess nations greater and stronger than you., (all those that emigrated to the USA and Europeans) 24Every place where the sole of your foot treads will be yours, (probably every country in the world). Your territory will extend from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Western Sea. (loads more thna the Palestinians to be shifted and treated as inferiors then) 25No man will be able to stand against you; the LORD your God will put the fear and dread of you upon all the land, (that’s you, you fool, your so scared even when you read about the Slaughter of the Midianites exceot their virgins who were permitted slaves you still preach it as correcct behaviour – you big chicken – rolling over and letting the rabbis tickle your tummy) wherever you set foot, as He has promised you.…

  3. I trust Paster Mike follows all of the laws of Leviticus, not just the two passages regarding homosexuality.
    Jesus never uttered a word about homosexuality… but he did say judge not, lest ye be not judged.

  4. I find these two articles and the comments pretty interesting. To the author of this article, I too am a grace based believer in Christ. “All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments” means to me that if you love other people as you do your self you simply will not kill them, steal from them, tell lies about them, curse them, etc. That makes a lot of sense to me. I am kind of confused why so many people think that people are basically so “unrighteous” that they would do or want to do the majority of the things laid out in the two lists and therefore require a list of items they must not do.

    But also I question a lot of this old testament superstition and rigidity because as the bible unfolds even in the Old Testament there are few things from the lists in the Torah that continue to be emphasized. And new things begin to appear. Most importantly, most significantly, from a viewpoint of sacrificial behaviors, and that of stoning or not suffering this or that person of particular sin to live, the prophets start talking about God desiring mercy and not sacrifice. Hosea 6:6 for example, and Christ reiterated this saying in Matthew 9:13, and again both matters in Matthew 12:7

    I know this is not what your articles are about but I have noticed that many rigid, superstitious and even hostile fundamentalist “Christians” almost always point to books such as those of the Torah, to justify the, to my mind, most bizarre of Christian beliefs, human sacrifice. Since I myself have never had any desires I’ve needed to keep in check with a list of laws to do many of the listed things, eat insects, imprecate anyone, tell lies about any one, have sex with animals, and on and on and on, I can not help thinking my lack of desire to glory in human sacrifice from a Christian perspective is not simply a facet of human decency and one at that which doesn’t require a rule book to tell me killing people is wrong. Of course having it validated by someone saying it is wrong is helpful.

    Is it possible that people of the Old Testament therefore, saying God required sacrifices, could also simply be being used as a justification to cite for those people (who apparently believe in the ancient practice of human sacrifice, wherein a culture would elevate a person so unlike the majority in the sense that they must have had a naturally occurring sense of not lying, stealing, killing, etc., to the status of a god, then sacrificed that person and believed that in the frenzy of their blood lust they received atonement for their many sins), who believe that via the assassination of Christ, Jesus, they now have reconciliation and inheritance with God?

    Here is where it really makes me question how much these ancient brothers really knew what they were talking about in regards to sacrificial behaviors, and note this whole chapter starts out saying they did or continued to do many of the things you outline in your articles and were upsetting God thereby. But Jeremiah reports this:

    For I spoke not to your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people: and walk you in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well to you.” – Jeremiah 7:22-23 AKJV

    Concerning the many sacrificial behaviors the prophet Isaiah tells us God says this:

    “He that kills an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrifices a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offers an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burns incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yes, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations.” – Isaiah 66:3 AKJV

    And there is Jesus’ story about the owner of the vineyard and how it apparently outlines religious rule over the people, the abuse, stoning and killing of the prophets, and ends with the murder of Christ and the two major conclusions “let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours” and “what do you think the owner will do when he comes and sees they killed his son? He will destroy those wicked men…” (Mark chapter 12 and Luke chapter 20)

    Again, if people are justified by the blood of the murder of Christ why will they mourn when he returns and they look upon him whom they have pierced? Revelation 1:7

    I really am just trying to understand why many Christians hate other people in the name of God citing lists of “not’s” of the Old Test, and how they reconcile “Thou shalt not kill.” with “we have inheritance with God through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.” And if Christians truly believe that Christ was the last scapegoat, why so much persecution of people and killing in the name of Christ through the centuries of saying they have, unlike the Jews, invented the true temples of devotion to God???

    Between the prophets, the words of Christ and the spirit within me I believe killing Christ is just wrong and has not provided a means of atonement. I could be wrong but, if there really was “no other way” why did he who is perfect in knowledge pray so hard at the rock in the garden that he sweated blood for the cup of such violence to pass from him (?), most likely submitting “not my will but your will be done” knowing God hardens whom he will” and that it was likely God could not soften their stony hearts and would have to end up coming and destroying those wicked men.

    Christ said blessed are those who weep now, then another fellow said those who weep are the enemy of the cross. I will gladly be an enemy of that cross, for we all have the cross in our blood, laminin, and if he had to die to save us why was he raising the dead while he lived? The blood bears witness in the earth but what does it bear witness to? In the case of >>shedding blood<< I can only think it bears witness against murderers. In any case, who is telling the truth the founding fathers of Judaism saying God required sacrifices or the prophets saying God did not command their fathers concerning sacrifices??? And how can Christians justify killing Christ by the former and not rather justify God and Christ's teachings from the latter?

  5. Correction on this sentence:

    I can not help thinking my lack of desire to glory in human sacrifice from a Christian perspective is not simply a facet of human decency and one at that which doesn’t require a rule book to tell me killing people is wrong.

    I can not help thinking my lack of desire to glory in human sacrifice from a Christian perspective is simply a facet of human decency….

  6. I can probably tell you why your “76 Things Banned in Leviticus (and their penalties)” post “has turned out to be the most popular thing” you’ve ever posted: Debate material.

    I’m not fond of people that like to throw around just one or two as against God’s Law, but either deliberately ignore – or are ignorant of – the other 70+; I like to see what lengths my discussion partner will go to in justifying their breaking just as many rules as the unforgivable homosexual sinner (and I always thought that forgiveness wasn’t up to people but to God, anyway – but okay).

    I’ve only once heard someone cite Cultural relativism and I do believe it’s a worthy measure meant to ensure the continued bloodline of the Jewish people (McMillan, as stated by Pastor Mike – above). I tend to apply it to the whole of humanity, if possible. So, while homosexuality is in itself an evolutionary dead end (donors, surrogates, In Vitro, etc. not withstanding)…isn’t our over populated planet – struggling to provide us with enough food and water just to keep alive the ones already here – a culturally relevant situation that justifies a re-examination of the prohibitions on homosexuality?

    Also, I don’t remember there being a rule against “a woman lying with another woman as one would a man” (or however lesbianism would be defined). There might be – I’m far from a Biblical Scholar – but if not: why is that acceptable as it also has no biological purpose?

    I guess it just doesn’t sit well with me that a person will curse (using God’s name); think nothing of cheating someone in business (a 3000% mark-up to ebay an item found at a thrift store for a quarter); inhale a bacon and cheese sandwich; “enjoy” using the shower a whole lot more than normally results from simply cleansing; wear a poly-cotton wife-beater; trim their sideburns and shave their beard; chug a case of beer on Sunday (while grilling ‘Gator tails) and praying at the alter of the NFL; “psyche-out” the poor homeless guy at the corner by holding out a dollar for him to run and retrieve only to snatch it back – laughing – while speeding away; complain constantly about the [N-word] President as being the “root of all evil in ‘Mericuh;” not tithe at all for the services actually attended – 2-3 times a year, maybe? – because “that greedy-ass church has plenty enough money” and constantly complain about “them [sic] wetbacks takin’ all the jobs”… actually perform/commit all of these acts on the same day!! (today) – but will condemn a member of their own family for daring to fall in love with and want to marry someone of their own gender. (Coincidentally, it was a divorced parent – who he cursed on/about for hours – which violates it’s own rule – above.)

    As these things happen pretty regularly I can’t even ascribe it to the shock of it be a parent this time. It’s just hypocrisy. As I think there’s little left to justify most – if not all – of the non-Commandment rules, I try to live by the order to love, do what I can for the poor, leave judgement to a higher power, treat others as I want them to treat me and just be a decent person. (And yeah, if I’m being a hypocrite I want to be called on it.) Maybe I was being judgmental in my heart but all of the broken rules above were presented as questions to consider (Did you cut your hair this week? Is that a stretch tank top? So, no shrimp for brunch next week? What makes you think Obama is a terrible leader? Want another Egg McMuffin? etc.) and when finally confronted on why I kept asking these really weird questions, simply responded, “also listed as not allowed.” (And if it is judgmental, then that’s a transgression for me to deal with; I’m only human.)

    I’m hoping the quiet contemplation that followed was him doing a little soul searching; taking a couple of hours to read through the passages I scribbled down for him and then deciding if it’s really what he believes – and worth believing – or if it’s simply what has been repeated so often and with such vile that he feels like he can’t go against the ramblings of those who pick and choose. He’s smart, though; I wouldn’t put it past him to come up with the cultural aspect of abiding by certain laws all on his own (if worded differently)…I’m kinda hoping he does so we can discuss it; I love debate! Or, simply know not to bring it up ever again in my house.

    I’d very much rather us go back to him being my boyfriend’s best friend and me being his “walking encyclopedia” of “absolutely useless but grudgingly cool” information. It’s hard to still feel that love I’m supposed to have, even for someone I’m not particularly fond of. (Of course, that’s how I know I’m being tested.)

  7. Pastor Mike defaults to magic, superstition and the wisdom of 2000 year old goat herders who didn’t know the Earth is round or where the sun goes at night, unless he can be thoroughly convinced to consider logic and reason, with modern knowledge, as a last resort.
    That’s… brave.
    I note he’s using the Internet rather than papyrus.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *