Deuteronomy 25 – Flogging may be imposed on a person found guilty of an infraction, but not more than 40 strokes – “more than that would humiliate him publicly” (25:3). Do not muzzle ox treading out grain—even animals have a right to a reward for their labor. If brothers live on the same property, and one of them dies with no son, the surviving should take a deceased brother’s wife as his own so that children may be brought forth for that brother’s line. Now get this, if he refuses, then the woman can call upon the town leaders to put pressure on him. If he still refuses “his brother’s widow is to go up to him in the presence of the town leaders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face, and say, ‘This is what happens to a man who refuses to give his brother a descendant’ His family will be known in Israel as ‘the family of the man who had his sandal pulled off’”(25:9-10).

Really, some of these rules are amazing. Makes me thankful the Temple never was rebuilt; that apparently is the reason ALL these laws are no longer in effect for the orthodox. If “two men fight and the wife of one, grabs hold of the other man’s genitals, show her no mercy; cut off her hand” (25:11). Then come some that you can more easily understand: You are not to cheat using weights and measure. “The Lord hates people who cheat” (25:16).

And the chapter ends with an admonition to “kill all the Amalekites” because of what they did when the Israelites entered the land; they attacked them from the rear when they were exhausted and killed stragglers. No mercy here. 

Deuteronomy 26 – In remembrance of all the blessings the Lord showed to the Israelites in bringing them from Egypt, people are to take the first-fruits of their crops to the place of worship and recite the words that tell of their history. Then celebrate with the Levites and any foreigners as well. “Every third year give the tithe – a tenth of your crops – to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans, and the widows, so that in every community they will have all they need to eat” (26:12). The faithfulness of God’s people to all these laws “will bring praise and honor to his name. You will be his own people, as he promised” (26:19).

I think the thing I most take from reading through all these laws, some that seem fundamental and justice-based, some that seem trivial and even silly, is a sense of how fully and completely those who clung to them wanted everything in their lives to be in conformity with God’s will. They did not see God as a being who only loved; He hated as well. He hated evil, disobedience, interference with His plan to plant this “people” in a way of life that would attract the attention and admiration of others over time. The argument about whether the God of the Old Testament and the God Jesus talked about could possibly have been "the same God" makes me think of the movie, The Quarrel, about two Jewish friends who have survived the Nazi slaughter and meet by happenstance in a park in Montreal around 1948. They get into an argument about God - had he abandoned His people or punished them for their lack of complete obedience?  Was this God still a God anyone could rationally believe in? At the end you realize that neither argument could really be reasonably debated. The existential questions - on God's existence or not; His nature - loving or capable of abandonment and hatred towards humankind; the value (or not) of faith and memory and obedience - all the things Deuteronomy holds dear - are really beyond our ability to argue, or if not argue - we can argue these things forever - but our ability to resolve through argument. Whatever our answers are to these questions, they are answers based on faith. Faith is that inward rock on which the "house of your life" is built.

Galatians 4 - The Christian is no longer under the discipline of the law.  He is now a man.  He is no longer “enslaved to the elemental powers of the world” (4:3) – the various “celestial beings” pagans thought controlled the world. Gentiles are now adopted children of God and heirs. The proof of this is “that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, ‘Abba, Father’” (4:6).

It is not so much that they have come to “know God” but that God now “knows them” (4:9). He’s annoyed that somehow they now want to observe “special days and months and seasons and years” (4:11).  This sounds just like George Fox and early Friends complaining about the special Christian “Holy Days” and seasons. He is so aggravated by the fact that others have come and ended their devotion and enthusiasm to him as their teacher. He feels now he “must go through the pain of giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you” (4:19).

Paul insists that if they want to be “subject to the Law” (4:20) it will mean they have chosen to be heirs of Hagar, not heirs of the “free woman” Sarah. “[T]he women stand for the two covenants. The first who comes from Mount Sinai, and whose children are slaves, is Hagar—since Sinai is in Arabia—and she corresponds to the present Jerusalem that is a slave like her children. The Jerusalem above, however, is free and is our mother” (4:25-26). They are meant to be like “children of the promise” like Isaac, not children born in the ordinary way.