The Bible Period by Period: A Manual for the Study of the Bible by PeriodsTidwell, Josiah Blake
Religion
The Bible Period by Period: A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods
Tidwell, Josiah Blake
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- History of Biblical events; Bible -- Introductions
(2) _The law of Mercy_. This law is found in the instructions
concerning the priesthood and the sacrifices. Through these were seen;
(a) the need of an atonement for the sinner's guilt; (b) the need of
inward cleansing on the part of all; (c) the redemption of the
forfeited life of the sinner by another life being substituted in its
stead and only by that means; (d) the fact that God would punish
wrong-doing and reward righteousness. This is also called "The Law of
Holiness" or "The Ceremonial Law" and was intended to show Israel
man's sinfulness and how a sinful people could approach a holy God and
themselves become holy. It, therefore, deals with such matters as
personal chastity, unlawful marriages and general social purity and
the religious behavior by which they were to be absolved from all
impurity and symbolically to be made pure again.
(3) The Law of Justice. This is composed of miscellaneous civil,
criminal, humane and sanitary laws, calculated to insure right
treatment of one another and thus promote the highest happiness of
all: (a) There was to be kindness and justice to each other including
slaves, and also to domestic animals; This is beautifully shown in the
provisions for the treatment of the poor, the aged and the afflicted;
(b) The rights of property were to be sacredly regarded and all
violations of such rights severely punished as in the case of fraud or
theft; (c) Laws of sanitation and health guarded the imprudent against
the contraction of disease and protected the wicked or careless
against its spread and thereby saved Israel from epidemics of
malignant disease. Thus the right of the innocent and helpless were
insured; (d) The sanctity of the home and of personal virtue was held
inviolable and every transgressor, such as the man who should commit
adultery with another man's wife, was put to death; (e) Life was to be
sacred. No man being able to give it was to take it from another and
so the murderer was to pay the penalty by giving his life.
These laws were so amplified as to meet every demand of the domestic,
social, civic and industrial relations of the nation. There could
hardly be designed a happier life than the proper observance of all
these laws would have brought to Israel. This legislation reached its
noblest expression in the law of the neighbor: "Thou shall love thy
neighbor as thyself" (Lev. 19:18). It is the final word in all right
relation to others.
The Journey to Kadesh-Barnea. After camping before Sinai a little more
than a year, during which tune they received the law and were
gradually organized into a nation, the cloud by which they were always
led from the time of their departure to their entrance to Canaan,
arose from the tabernacle and set forward. It led them by a way that
we cannot now trace but which Moses says was eleven days' journey from
the sacred mountain. (Dt. 1:2).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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