Written by Jackson Ferrell

Hiatus Update: What Have I Been Up To?

Short answer: I’ve been using a combination of Psalm 119 and Duolingo to learn Hebrew. Find out more in this publicly-available post on my Patreon.

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Written by Jackson Ferrell

Exodus 23 – Sundry Laws Against Sundry Gods (or: Israel, Take Heed)

I’ll be frank: the last half of Exodus 22 and the first half of Exodus 23 read like God suddenly gave up on organizing his laws into categories and just started declaring norms. The NASB gives the section the header “Sundry Laws,” which sound like laws pertaining to your sundry. But no, “sundry” is an adjective, not a noun. And if you look through this legal grab-bag, you can find some recurring themes, like gods.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

Exodus 21 – On Slaves to Legalism Legalizing Slavery

Oh, great. We’re not two verses into this chapter, and God–the same God whom we had established was speaking out loud about what not to do as his people and how to build altars–now starts talking about the proper keeping of slaves. Comedian Bo Burnham’s song from 2010 “Rant” immediately sprang to mind. Most of it is unfit to quote on this blog, as it’s Bo Burnham. But there’s a section where a hypothetical priest interprets the Old Testament passages about slavery as allegorical, referring to “slaves within our hearts,” and then Bo observes: “And then as God goes on to explain / The logistics of buying and selling slaves…” And worse, this isn’t the last time in the Torah that we’ll read a passage detailing the rights and obligations of the slave and slave-owner.

To quote another song by Bo Burnham, I don’t think that I can’t handle this right now.

Written by Jackson Ferrell

Exodus 20 – Dangerous Presence

Welcome to the Ten Commandments, also referred to as the Decalogue. In Judaism, they’re known as the Aseret ha’Dibrot, which might be translated “the Ten Sayings,” “the Ten Statements,” or, as my dad is fond of putting it, “the Ten Words.” They’re not technically imperative sentences, but they do prescribe certain behavior, or more accurately, they proscribe certain behavior. And they certainly are sayings, as the chapter says right out the gate that God says them.