The Law of the Covenant

The purpose in this book is to give a theological and useable exposition of the first extended law code of the Bible. There is no extensive commentary on Exodus 21-23 of the Bible written from an orthodox, evangelical standpoint. Thus, at numerous points I have been put in a position of either saying very little or else breaking new ground. The reader may well find peculiar or strained, for instance, my interpretation of the stipulation that the owner of a slaughtered beast be compensated five-fold for an ox and four-fold for a sheep (Ex. 22:1), or my discussion of the meaning of “thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 23:19), to take two examples. I only ask the reader’s indulgence that he or she carefully consider my suggestions. I may be wrong at one place or another, but then again, I may be right. What seems strange to us might not have seemed strange to an ancient Israelite. If we take a man-centered approach to these laws, we might say that the purpose