| A NATIONAL LAW LIBRARY |
| Setting Israel apart from its neighbors |
| You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own. Leviticus 20:26 |
| The laws of the United States would fill a library. Elaborate indexes guide lawyers where to look when dealing with a particular issue. No one person can know even a fraction of all the federal, state, and local laws. If the Old Testament laws recorded in Leviticus (and Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) seem dull and long-winded, keep them in perspective. These - just over 600 in all - were the entire set of laws for a nation, as far as we know. Their most striking feature, to a lawyer, is brevity and simplicity. You don't have to go to law school to understand them. The laws are listed in no particular order. A law against witchcraft is followed by a law against improper haircuts, which is followed by a law against tattoos, which in turn is followed by a law against making your daughter into a prostitute. This mixing reveals an important feature of Old Testament thinking. Life is not analyzed in separate components, but seen as a whole. For the Israelites, separation of church and state did not exist. Every aspect of life - politics, family life, diet, economics - concerned God. Even the Ten Commandments (in Exodus 20) show this, for they include laws regarding our relationship to both God and our neighbor. The two cannot be separated. Remarkable Features In comparison with laws from other countries at that time, the Old Testament made a considerable advance. (Indeed, these laws have greatly influenced laws for our day.) |
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