The Preferential God: Exodus 21–24
Reading for Wednesday 3.30 – Saturday 4.2
We must never confuse religious observance with divine intimacy. During Lent we run the risk of adhering to strict fasts or other religious rites while ignoring our neighbor, or even God. The world of Yahweh, even when imagined in its most legal and religious language is always a world of love for God and neighbor.
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Read Exodus 21–24
“You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. You must not exploit a widow or an orphan. If you exploit them in any way and they cry out to me, then I will certainly hear their cry.”
Exodus 22:21-23 (NLT)
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The Preferential God
The Exodus makes one thing apparent. God's vision for the world excludes and refuses to tolerate the exploitative nature of empire. Thus, the lesser-known laws following on the heels of the ten commandments curb the predatory greed that is the empire's life force. The new society of Yahweh is not one of predation but neighborly love.
The Ten Commandments provide the foundation of the new communities identity. These universal principles are meant to shape and rule all of life in the emancipated community. Immediately following these principles are a series of case laws that bring to life those principles in Israel's world. With few exceptions, the case laws highlight the inclination to default back into living in the ways of empire. The formerly oppressed risk becoming oppressors. A restructuring of society is necessary. At the center of this new order is allegiance and worship to Yahweh. All else flows from this.
The worshiping community's default trajectory is not amassing power and seeking vengeance but neighborliness and justice. These two concepts ensure that Israel identifies, cares for, and lifts from vulnerability those who risk oppression. Those who stood the most significant risk of exploitation, the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner, are given special consideration by Yahweh. It is Yahweh who stands with the vulnerable as their protector. Should Israel exploit and commodify their vulnerable, they will answer to Yahweh.
The stakes are high. Israel, meant to be a holy nation, runs the risk of becoming everything she escaped. Thus God commits to eliminating those who refuse neighborliness.
The same God of compassion to the oppressed becomes the God of wrath for the oppressor. The cry of the poor mobilizes the God who stands for the poor to disrupt the narrative of empire.
God's Law disrupts the ways of empire, imagining a community of love, where the vulnerable are cared for rather than preyed upon. These laws are foreign, even shocking to our modern ears. Yet the aim of them is a community of compassion and justice. The community of Jesus is one where there are no outsiders, and exploitation is replaced with redemption and restoration. God's vision for a world of self-giving neighborly love lives on in us today.
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Reflect with a friend
God has a soft spot for the poor, the vulnerable, the humble, etc. In what ways do you find yourself epoverished? How has the story of God’s deliverance of Israel colored your own story of deliverance?
In what ways does God’s preference for standing with the vulnerable convict you? In what ways does it encourage you?
What does it mean to for you to live a life of neighborliness rather than one of empire? Where might you live a more neighborly life? What’s holding you back?
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Next Reading
Sun 4.3 – Wed 4.6
Exodus 25
