LAW AND NARRATIVE IN EXODUS 19-24

This connection of slave law to narrative also bleeds over to the other social justice regulations concerning the poor and especially sojourners. The primarily social-humanitarian regulations of Exod 22:22-23:9, which begin and end with the command not to oppress a sojourner (Heb. ger), is parallel in terms of the literary, chiastic structure with the social-humanitarian laws about slaves in Exod 21:2-11.34 This is not accidental. The disadvantaged classes of Exod 22:22-27, the sojourner, the widow, the orphan, and the poor, were the very people most subject to becoming enslaved on the basis of unpaid debts.35 Israel itself had become enslaved in Egypt after entering it as sojourners, as the regulation itself suggests: "Do not oppress a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt" (Exod 23:9). The experience of Israel in Egypt recorded by the narrative is thus the basis for the motive clause promoting legal obedience.

c. The use of the number 7. The narrative of God's resting or ceasing to create on the seventh day of creation (Gen 2:1-4) influences several laws in Exodus 20-23. Exodus's version of the Decalogue (Exod 20:11) finds the basis for the human Sabbath day in the pattern that God rested on his seventh day. The association of God's seventh day with "ceasing" or "resting" helps to explain why the Hebrew slave is released, not in the third year as in the Laws of Hammurabi (§117) or the fifth or eight year, but in the seventh year (Exod 21:2). This is in accord with the symbolism of "ceasing, rest" invested in the number seven through the creation narrative. The symbolism of "ceasing, rest" invested in the number seven also explains why the land is to lie fallow specifically in the seventh year (Exod 23:11). Outside of Exodus 19-24 there are other places where the number seven appears to reflect the symbolism derived from the creation narrative: The Sabbath year occurs every seven years (Lev 25:1-7). The year of Jubilee occurs after seven times seven years (Lev 25:11), and there was to be a remission of debts every seven years (Deut 15:1-3; 31:10).

d. The altar laws. It is well known that the altar of earth law of Exod 20:24-26 is hard to reconcile with the references to the other altars in the Bible (Exod 27:1-8: bronze altar; Lev 17:3-9; Deuteronomy 12). Although there are a variety of ways to approach this problem, one way to explain the differences between these laws is on the basis of their occurrences at differing points in the narratives.

The following reconstruction seems possible:38 Before the exodus, no explicit regulations about altars are recorded. God did command that one not eat the flesh of an animal "with the blood" (Gen 9:4), but this command may or may not assume the use of altars. The altar law of Exod 20:22-26 limits altars to simple, "natural" and unmanufactured, stone materials, in contrast with the bronze altar of the tabernacle (Exodus 27). This difference of material is probably intended to show the pre-eminence of tabernacle's altar.