Quite a few of us, if we were asked to name the ten words/commandments, wouldn't be able to come up with all ten. But for sure one of the ones we would name, is "Don't murder."
At first glance, this command is straightforward. God doesn't want his people to kill someone without legitimate cause. You can't murder someone because you're angry with them, or because you want their stuff. You can't murder them, simply because you want to. Murder is not the kind of thing that God will tolerate inside of his kingdom, among his people.
But if we stop and think about it, the concept of "murder" has some blurry lines to it. There are situations where you have the right to defend yourself, your family, or those around you, by killing someone. What exactly are those situations? We perhaps think of the "Stand your ground" states.
It also gets blurry, because sometimes people accidentally kill one another. Last week, we read about what happens when a master strikes his male or female servant, and ends up killing them. A more contemporary example, would be a foolish driver, texting his friend, who runs over a pedestrian. Is that murder?
The longer we think about all of this, the more complicated it seems. What's murder, and what's not?
Part of what our passage did last week, is answer the question of whether of whether or not it's okay to kill certain kinds of people. Are all human beings, truly, fully, human beings? Or are some humans, less important? Can you kill some types of people, for whatever reason, and not have it be murder?
Specifically, this played out with two different categories of people-- servants, and the unborn.
Let's reread our verses from last week, to remind ourselves of where we are in the Mosaic law, and help us get in the right frame of mind for today:
(20) and if a man strikes his male servant or female servant with the rod,
and he/she dies under his hand, he/she shall surely be avenged.
(21) However, if a day or two days he stands, he/she shall not be avenged,
because his money/purchase (literally: his silver), he/she is,
(22) and if men are fighting,
and they hit a pregnant woman,
and her children come out,
and there isn't bodily injury,
he shall surely be fined,
according to what the husband of the woman sets/imposes for him,
and he shall give in accordance with the judges/judgments,
(23) and if bodily injury, there is, you shall give life in place of life, eye in place of eye, tooth in place of tooth, hand in place of hand, foot in place of foot, burn/scar in place of burn/scar, wound in place of wound, bruise in place of bruise,
(26) and if a man strikes the eye of his male servant or the eye of his female servant, and he destroys it, as a free person he shall release him/her in place of his eye,
(27) and if the tooth of his male servant or the tooth if his slave woman he causes to fall out, as the free he shall release him in place of his tooth,
So what we've seen so far with the Mosaic law, has revolved around human violence. When humans harm, and kill, and murder one another, how do you respond? What happens next?
Perhaps you think, "None of this should be necessary. People should naturally, easily, do the right thing." But God is working with a hard-hearted people, who don't always want to do the right thing. Who sometimes sin against one another. And who need direction, on what happens next.
Starting in verse 28, in today's passage, we move from human on human violence, to animal on human violence. And what we see, is that the ox is the key animal. But before we start reading about ox on human violence, we should think a little about the ox, in ancient Israel.
I'm pretty sure most of us are a bit like Samson-- powerful, ripped, human beings, able to bench press twice our weight. Despite that, we find that some things push the limits of what we are capable of. There are bunk beds, cleverly designed fit into a box, that Fed Ex drivers can't get up to the third floor apartment by themselves. There are car parts, rusted into place, that refuse to do what our biceps tell them to do.
If we think about farming for long enough, at least in ND, we think about giant boulders. Even for a young, college-aged guy, there are rocks too big to move. And that's true, even if his girlfriend is sitting there watching him. Give me the right tools, and I can till 40 acres. But it would take me weeks, and the lines for planting would be embarrassingly crooked.
Sometimes, even farmers who are built like Samson need help. And in ancient Israel, where pretty much everyone was a farmer, or rancher, what that help looks like, is an ox. The ox is your tractor. It's your thresher. Your ox is the thing that lets you do twice as much, and produce twice as much food, as you could by yourself.
Now, the catch with oxen, is that they can be dangerous. They have horns. They can be mean. Animals, by definition, do unexpected things.
What happens, when oxen attack, and kill, human beings-- people made in God's image, who were designed to rule over all of creation? And what happens to the owner of the ox, when that happens?
Exodus 21:28 gives us God's basic, overarching command in this regard:
(28) and if an ox gores a man or a woman,
and he(/she) dies,
the ox shall surely be stoned to death,
and its meat shall not be eaten,
while the owner of the ox [is] innocent,
If an ox gores and kills a human being, the ox is treated like a human murderer. The ox is killed by stoning. Even though that ox has hundreds of pounds of meat on it, it can't be eaten. No one gets the benefit from it. Why?
An ox, in general, is an incredibly valuable animal. But it's an animal with an expected lifespan. Animals get old. They get weak. They die. When your ox gets up there in age, and doesn't move very well, and becomes less useful, eventually you'd kill it for its meat and its hide, and replace the ox with a younger model. All of that is perfectly fine.
But the ox that gores someone, can't be eaten, because doing so lessens the severity of what just happened. You can't celebrate an ox roast, and gorge yourself on meat, after it killed a human being. An ox killing a human is a tragedy, and it's a terrible offense against someone made in God's image. So you don't let yourself think about the meat, or the hide. You think about the sin, and you kill it. You make sure it's remembered as a tragedy, and not as a feast.
Now, what about the owner? The default position here, is that the ox's owner is not held liable for that death. The owner didn't tell the ox to murder a human being. An ox, even though it's a domestic animal, is still a bit wild, and unpredictable. So we can imagine that an ox has a sign on its side: "Not responsible for any injuries or accidents." And the default position, is that this is true.
Verse 29 adds our first wrinkle:
(29) while if a goring ox, it is, from three days before,
and it was warned to its owner,
and he wasn't watching/guarding it,
and it kills a man or a woman,
the ox shall be stoned,
and, what's more, its owner shall be put to death.
Some animals, by nature, are evil, violent, wicked creatures. They are ornery. They are looking for someone, or something, to attack. Some of you maybe think I'm overstating this. But those of us who have been meter readers know I speak the truth.
When an animal takes the path of evil, violence, and wickedness, that seemingly becomes its nature for the rest of its life. A mean ox, will forever be mean. It will forever be looking for opportunities to gore people. It's not trustworthy; you can't turn your back on it.
What happens if/when an ox proves itself, to be evil, and violent, and wicked, and the owner doesn't put the appropriate safeguards in place? Perhaps your ox is a wonderful, loving, gentle creature around you, but around the Fed Ex driver, it turns into a ruthless killer. Well. If your ox successfully murders a human being-- not just goring, but fatally goring-- then the ox gets killed. That part doesn't change. But what does change, is that you get killed as well. Your ox dies, and you die.
Perhaps I'm biased, but I think this is a fine law. It's perfectly fair. It's perfectly legitimate.
Verses 30-31 add a wrinkle, to verse 29:
(30) If a ransom/redemption price is set upon him, he shall give redemption money for his life -- in accordance with all that was set upon him,
(31) or [if] a son he gores, or a daughter he gores, in accordance with this law (mishpat) it shall be done to him.
So let's say, your neighbor has a goring ox. You know it's dangerous. You know it likes hurting people. And your neighbor was careless-- he lost track of ox, and the ox wandered away, and murdered your child, or spouse.
You have two choices at that point. You can either have your neighbor killed, or you can accept "redemption money" in its place. There's a dollar amount-- and the law doesn't say what it is, but I imagine it's a really big number, that depends on the person-- that can take the place of the owner.
Whether you want blood, or money, in that situation is up to you. It's your choice. Maybe you were the one who warned your neighbor, and your neighbor blew it off, and said it was no big deal. In that situation, wanting blood is understandable. If you're a young widow, suddenly left without a husband, maybe you choose the money.
Either way, again, it's your choice.
So verses 30-31 cover the rules for family. If your spouse, or kids, get killed, you have the choice of compensation-- blood, or money.
Verse 32 adds another wrinkle. What happens when it's your servant, who the ox kills?
(32) If a male servant the ox gores, or a female servant, thirty shekels of silver he shall give to his master,
while the ox shall be stoned,
When it comes to oxen killing servants, as opposed to killing family members, there are two main differences.
The first, is that if an ox gores your servant, the owner of that ox can't be killed. They are redeemed, instead, for money. So no one makes the choice between blood or money; it's just money. The second difference, is that the dollar amount, is a set figure. 30 shekels of silver.
Now, we read this, and it's easy to get the wrong idea. This law doesn't mean that a servant's life is only worth 30 shekels. This law reflects the truth that a master doesn't own a servant. Servanthood is temporary-- lasting no longer than seven years, right?
The law isn't compensating the master for the value of the servant's LIFE. The master is being compensated for the value of his servant's WORK. The master paid money to have that servant's work for seven years. Or, possibly, that servant is working off a debt he couldn't pay, by becoming a servant. All of that deserves compensation.
With this, we come to verses 33-36. Here, the law changes topics. We are no longer talking about what to do, when animals kill people. Now, it's a matter of what happens, when animals die, from one thing or another. Let's start by reading verses 33-34:
(33) and if a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit, and he doesn't cover it, and an ox or donkey falls into there, the owner of the pit shall make whole.
(34) Money/silver he shall return to its owner, ["money" is focused]
while the dead animal shall belong to him,
Here, we find another example of negligence. Suppose you've dug a hole, for one reason or another. Maybe you're searching for precious metals (Isaiah 51:1; the "quarry"= "pit" from where you were dug), or you dug a new well (the most common "pit"; "drink water from your own 'pit'"; Proverbs 5:15; 1 Samuel 19:22, the great "pit").
Maybe you are digging down to create a strong foundation for a tower. Or maybe you've built a pit for defensive purposes, as a last resort defensive position (Jeremiah 41:9). There's lots of reasons to dig a hole.
So you dug this hole, presumably on your own land, and don't bother to cover it. Then, someone else's animal wanders over, and falls into it, and dies.
Whose fault is that? Who is responsible?
Many of us, in that situation, would be tempted to say something like this: "Your ox is not my problem. You need to keep track of your things, and not lose them. You have to be a better master than that, and now you've learned a painful lesson." If you do that, what you're sounding like, basically, is the tough parent, who is teaching her kid valuable life skills about putting your stuff away, and keeping track of it.
But the law says that when it comes to pits, and animals, it doesn't work this way. The owner of the pit is responsible for the dead animal. If you dig a pit, you need to take steps to make sure that nothing can accidentally fall into it. In ancient Israel, that means probably means putting a cover on it (Genesis 29:3). Today, it would probably mean putting a fence around it. If you fail to do that, you are gambling that nothing bad will happen. You can dig a pit, without covering it. It's your choice. But at that point, you are responsible for anything bad that happens as a result.
So if someone's domestic animal falls into your pit, and dies, what happens, basically, is that you purchase that animal at full price.
And that's not a great deal for you. Under the Mosaic law, you aren't allowed to eat meat off an animal found dead (need verse). You can use the hide. If it's a sheep, maybe you can turn it into some kind of coat. You could probably feed the meat to your dogs, except that I'm pretty sure ancient Israelites didn't keep dogs as pets.
Maybe, there's a little value there somewhere. If there is any value, you get that value. You can salvage the carcass for something.
But really, the main thing that results, from you buying the dead animal, is that you are responsible for disposing of the carcass. Imagine finding your neighbor's ox, rotting away in your well, bloated, flies everywhere. That ox, is now yours, and you get to cut it out in pieces, and haul it away.
Verse 35:
(35) and if it strikes/injures (different word) the ox of a man-- the ox of his neighbor-- and it dies, they shall sell the living ox,
and they shall divide its silver/money,
and, what's more, the dead animal they shall divide,
Here, the law deals with a different type of situation, that can lead to a dead ox. Imagine that you and your neighbor live in close proximity, or you work together, using your ox together, so that you can get jobs that require two ox power, instead of one ox power.
At some point, one of the oxen unexpectedly turns on the other, and kills it. What do you do?
That's a tricky situation. It's hard to assign blame, and figure out whose fault it is. And it's also awkward, figuring out the appropriate compensation, in a case like that. So what the law does here, is make things really simple. If your ox kills your neighbor's ox, the end result is that no one has an ox. You have to sell the living one, and divide the money equally. Also, you divide the dead animal equally. And here, the dead animal is almost certainly useful. If you see an animal die-- or if you put it out of its misery, because it's so badly injured-- you can eat its meat.
Most of the hide will be in good shape, and you can use that as well.
The beauty of this law, is that it makes it easy for the neighbors to get along, and be friends, going forward. A real tragedy happened, but they are equally worse off, and they can move forward in peace.
Verse 36 adds a wrinkle to all of this:
(36) or [if] he knows that an ox, a goring [animal] it is in the past, and he didn't watch over it, its owner shall surely make whole an ox in place of the ox,
while the dead [animal] shall belong to him.
If you have a goring ox, and you aren't careful to keep watch over it, and it kills someone else's ox, the rules change. In this situation, it's easy to figure out who is to blame-- you are.
So in that situation, you have to get your neighbor a new ox, of equivalent value. Making your neighbor whole, I would think, means getting him an ox that's just as strong, of roughly the same age.
Basically, you buy your neighbor a new ox, or give him one of yours, and you acquire the dead animal.
Now, that's the part that I find really interesting, maybe in a nerd sort of way. Just see: you get to keep the dead animal. You aren't being punished for having a goring ox. And your neighbor doesn't come out ahead, for losing an animal. You get the dead ox, and your neighbor comes out of this "whole."
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At this point, let's take a step back, and try to view this passage as a whole. What do we do with these laws? Let's ease our way into this, by first thinking about animals.
1) Animals are, by nature, unpredictable. You can use an ox for years, without any problems, only to have it turn on someone one day, and gore them. I have friends who deliver packages for people, and they've told stories like this about dogs. There are dogs who for years has been friendly toward the driver, and one day, it's like something snaps inside of that dog, and it gets aggressive, and attacks the driver.
2) When animals have a proven track record of violence against humans, the rules should change. We saw that twice, with the oxen. If an ox kills someone, and it had no history of human violence, the owner isn't killed. But if it's a goring ox, and the owner wasn't careful, the owner might have to pay for that lost life, with his life.
So let's think about that, in relation to mean dogs.
If you have a mean dog, that you'd rather call "protective," that's fine. It's your choice, to have an animal like that. But if you've been warned that the dog is "protective," or seen it act "protectively," you need to take steps in the future to make sure it doesn't harm anyone. You keep it in the house, or tied up, or in a kennel. Maybe you leave a tote at the edge of your property, so that delivery drivers don't have to enter your property. If it's out, verse 29 says you have to "watch over it," or "guard it," to make sure it doesn't hurt anyone.
Part of being a good neighbor, and loving your neighbor as yourself, is keeping your dog on a leash, or in a kennel, or in your house. And consider the possibility that the most loving thing you could do for your neighbor, especially if they have small children, is kill your mean dog.
3) Negligence is a real thing. People who don't take warnings seriously about dangerous animals, and who don't put appropriate safeguards in place, leave themselves open to death. I think that's a key idea, or principle, in these laws. When you are warned that something is dangerous, you have a responsibility at that point to fix it. And if you choose not to, at least in ancient Israel, you leave yourself open to getting killed.
The other place we saw negligence come into play, was with open pits. If you dig a hole, you should make sure nothing can fall into that hole. You cover it, or you put a fence around it. If anything falls into your hole and dies, it's your fault.
An easy modern analogy, is with swimming pools and hot tubs. If you live in town, and have a swimming pool, you should have a fence around it. In many cities, this is law-- you don't have a choice. But you have created a dangerous situation in your backyard, and you have to make sure that no kid, or anything else, drowns in your pool. You could make the argument, "It's my property; it's my pool; they shouldn't have trespassed." But you shouldn't create unsafe environments, or tolerate them. You put a fence around your pool, at least in town. And you cover up your hot tub, when you're not using it. You have to make sure nothing tragic happens, because you were negligent.
Now, once we've seen this, and accepted it, we should find our imaginations opening up in other directions. Part of being a good homeowner, is making your house, and property, a safe place for wandering animals, or kids, or postal workers. In town, you shovel your sidewalk. You put salt down, if it's icy. If you have rotting boards on your deck, you replace them. If you have a rotting tree hanging over the sidewalk, you cut it down. And if you're warned that something is dangerous, you take that warning seriously.
All of this applies just as easily to employers. Some jobs, by default, are dangerous. I used to be a tree trimmer, and with that job, if you're not 80 feet up an oak tree, you're at the bottom of a tree with branches falling all around you, or you're feeding branches into a wood chipper that can tear you apart. It's a dangerous job. My parents were relieved when I quit. But there are things employers can do, to minimize those dangers. You can make sure the cranes on the bucket trucks are in good shape. You can make sure the safety features on the wood chippers are working. You can stop working up in trees, when there's lightning anywhere near you.
And if you're the boss, and an employee comes to you and says that something is unacceptably dangerous, you take that warning seriously. If a job is too hard and complicated for the employee, given that employee's comfort level in the tree, you don't take the job. If there's a frayed climbing rope, you replace it. If the failsafe on the wood chipper is broken, you stop using it until it's fixed. Sometimes things break. Sometimes accidents happen. But you listen to your employees, and take warnings seriously.
At this point, I think we can stop, and spin everything around, and come at it from another angle.
Jesus said that the whole law can be summed up in two commands: Loving God with the entirety of who you are, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Today's passage is mostly about loving your neighbor as yourself. Actually, more carefully, it's about loving and obeying God, by loving your neighbor. God is teaching us what it looks like, to love your neighbor as yourself.
My guess is that we tend to think of loving your neighbor, in rather narrow terms. We focus on doing good works for them, and being kind, and forgiving. We think about biting our tongues.
But God's vision for his kingdom is broader than this. Loving your neighbor as yourself, is bigger than this. Before I talk about what loving your neighbor means, let me say two things it doesn't mean, based on this passage:
(1) Loving your neighbor as yourself, doesn't mean creating a perfectly safe world. In the real world, accidents happen. Lots of things, have a certain amount of risk to them. Any time you're working with an ox, the potential for goring is there. Right? But the truth is that you need that ox. Even though you're Samson, you can't do everything on your own strength. God gave you the ox, to help you subdue creation.
So you live in a way that minimizes risks, while understanding that bad stuff happens. Put two oxen in close proximity, and you never know for sure what will happen.
If you have a dog, who has no history of biting or attacking, you don't need to keep quite as close an eye on it. Probably, it won't do anything. Probably, if its tail is wagging, your kids can safely pet it. And if the dog bites? Well... it happens. It's only after it bites, that the rules, and the perspective, change.
The Mosaic covenant doesn't create a world, where you have to live in fear. If you're tree trimming, a rope can suddenly snap. The fail-safe on a wood chipper, can break. Tires can blow on a semi, and you can lose control and die. People can get killed, lots of different ways. You live carefully, but you also have to live. And sometimes, you get hurt. Sometimes, you die. It happens. And the Mosaic covenant recognizes that. Sometimes, shockingly, an ox kills a human being.
(2) Loving your neighbor, doesn't mean getting rich off of them when they are at fault. If your neighbor has a goring ox, and it killed your ox, you don't wind up profiting from the situation. You don't get to keep your dead ox, and get a new ox. If your ox falls down someone's gold mine, and dies, you don't get to keep the carcass, and get a new ox. Your neighbor makes you "whole." He doesn't make you rich.
We live in a society that looks for opportunities to sue people, and get rich off them. If you trip and fall in someone's business, you can probably retire.
But God's vision, in the Mosaic law, is to make people whole-- not make people better off than they were before.
I was at a customer's house one time, and my foot went through a floor board. I tripped, and fell down their stairs, and broke my arm. Under the Mosaic covenant, I would've been compensated for the medical bills. I would've been compensated for the lost paychecks, since I couldn't work. If I hadn't made a full recovery, I would've been compensated for my permanent disability.
But what wouldn't have happened, is that I walked away with 100K in compensation for emotional trauma. The Mosaic covenant makes people whole. It restores them to what they were, before the bad thing happened to them. It doesn't make people millionaires, when someone spills hot coffee on them. It doesn't set them up for life.
So what does it mean, to love your neighbor as yourself?:
(1) Loving your neighbor as yourself, means making your property a safe place for wandering animals and kids. It means replacing rotting deck boards, so no one falls through and breaks something. It means cutting down rotting trees. It means shoveling your driveway, and deicing. It means putting a fence around your pool, and a cover on your hot tub.
(2) Loving your neighbor as yourself, means controlling your mean dogs. You keep them on a leash, or in a kennel, or in your house. And if you keep that mean dog in your house, you don't let them out when you say "hi" to your delivery person.
Now, if your dog isn't just mean, but actually psychotic, and possibly demonized, loving your neighbor as yourself means seriously consider putting your dog down. I know a number of people who used to have mean dogs, and who made the loving decision to get rid of them. A dog is far less useful than an ox, and there's far less reason to put up with its violence.
(3) Loving your neighbor as yourself, means taking warnings seriously. You don't brush off warnings about rotting boards, or exposed electrical wires, or bald tires, or missing safety guards on assembly lines. There are always risky things in life. We don't in a bubble. But not all risks are necessary, and we reduce them when we can. [A great example of this, is when Ford (apparently?-- don't want to get sued myself) knew that the Pinto had an engineering flaw built into it, that created an unnecessary explosion hazard from small accidents, and didn't fix it. That's unacceptable, and the kind of thing that would've gotten whoever made that decision killed under the Mosaic covenant. If they'd fixed it, immediately, when they found out, it would've been tragic, but not deserving of death].
(4) Loving your neighbor as yourself, means compensating them when you've caused them financial loss. If you break something, or lose something, you replace it. You make them whole.
So that's my encouragement to you today. Broaden your perspective, on what it looks like to love your neighbor as yourself. And, above all else, if you have a mean dog, "deal" with it.
Translation:
(28) and if an ox gores a man or a woman,
and he dies,
the ox shall surely be stoned to death,
and its meat shall not be eaten,
while the owner of the ox [is] innocent,
(29) while if a goring ox, it is, from three days before,
and it was warned to its owner,
and he wasn't watching/guarding it,
and it kills a man or a woman,
the ox shall be stoned,
and, what's more, its owner shall be put to death.
(30) If a ransom/redemption price is set upon him, he shall give redemption money for his life -- in accordance with all that was set upon him,
(31) or [if] a son he gores, or a daughter he gores, in accordance with this law (mishpat) it shall be done to him.
(32) If a male servant the ox gores, or a female servant, thirty shekels of silver he shall give to his master,
while the ox shall be stoned,
(33) and if a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit, and he doesn't cover it, and an ox or donkey falls into there, the owner of the pit shall make whole.
(34) Money/silver he shall return to its owner,
while the dead animal shall belong to him,
(35) and if it strikes/injures (different word) the ox of a man-- the ox of his neighbor-- and it dies, they shall sell the living ox,
and they shall divide its silver/money,
and, what's more, the dead animal they shall divide,
(36) or [if] he knows that an ox, a goring [animal] it is in the past, and he didn't guard/keep it, its owner shall surely make whole an ox in place of the ox,
while the dead [animal] shall belong to him.
