Mishpatim — Flesh and Sinew on the Skeleton of the Ten Commandments

More Than Ten Commands Are Needed to Govern a Nation

In case someone thinks that the Ten Commandments are sufficient to administer and govern a nation that numbered more than a million people, the Torah portion of Mishpatim removes all doubt. The Israelites and the Mixed Multitude that joined them on the way out of Egypt need more than 10 commandments to be properly governed. The Ten Commandments are short and cover much ground, they were given to the whole nation on the same occasion, and although they are the most concise code of law, they cover most of the main diverse and moral challenges of a human being. However, to administer a nation, a people, it takes a much more detailed and elaborate code of law that addresses such issues as dealing with slaves that you employ in your household, or with a neighbor's ox that fell into a pit, or with two men fighting in a public place and one of them puts out the eye of the other, or hits a pregnant woman and she loses her baby. In other words, Moses is adding to the skeleton of the Ten Commandments, flesh and sinew.

These tribes and people that accompanied Israel are the so-called mixed multitude mentioned in Exodus 12:38:

Each nation or tribe that had joined together with Israel in this Exodus from Egypt heard God speak in their own language. And now all of them — Israel and the mixed multitude — needed a full and elaborate legal code to govern their lives together.

God Addresses the Weakest Link First

It is interesting that the first thing after the giving of the Torah, God addresses the status and the rights of the weakest link of the Israeli society — the Hebrew Slaves. A law that discusses the effect of the law on the weakest link of society, the rights of the Slaves, is truly God's Law. It is clear that the Torah is doing two things simultaneously: first, accommodating the slaves with privileges and limiting what the slave owner can exercise over his Hebrew human slave, so as not to treat him like property; second, speaking about accidental damage to people that are not involved in a fight or a quarrel, taking into account that it doesn't matter who you are and what is your status in society. If you cause damage to an innocent bystander, you are responsible to pay for that damage.

The next judgment that God gives Moses deals with a Hebrew female slave. Her master must betroth her. If he does not like her, he must allow her to be redeemed. He cannot sell her to someone else as a slave:

Note that if he does not treat her right and provide her with all her rights, she goes out free without any financial obligations. Today this must look really odd in the eyes of Western civilization, but we must understand that these laws are miles ahead of every law of every other nation of that time. We see this well in the slave laws of the Ur-Nammu code:

The difference could not be greater.

The Slave's Tooth Is Worth More Than a Free Person's Eye

The Torah portion also contains a principle I like very much. We see it in the discussion of a slave damaged in his eye or tooth. If you as his master don't take care to provide him with proper protection, and an eye of your slave is damaged, the price of his eye is total freedom from slavery. Even if the slave loses a tooth he is set free as compensation for his loss. In other words, the value of a slave's eye or tooth is much greater than the value of an eye of a stranger that happened to pass by. I like this principle very much because it puts the responsibility on the master to take double care and protection for the slave that he owns (temporarily).

In both the Ur-Nammu laws and in the code of Hammurabi, if a man strikes the eye or the tooth of a slave, all he has to pay is two shekels of silver.

How do I interpret these principles today? Those people who are under our care as employees or guests, or those who are less fortunate in our society, deserve not only the same protection and privileges as anyone else, but more care because of their dependence on you and on the society and community. This practice of the Torah would have solved so much suffering and so much pain and so much injustice even in our world today. If our communities, churches, and synagogues, would learn this principle I can imagine major success in evangelism and in real "church growth." Yes, it would be not only a real and good "church growth," but also a healthy growth that will produce a just and righteous community in a world that is so full of unrighteousness.

In this Torah portion, not only laws concerning man and woman are legislated, but also the treatment of farm animals is regulated. The Word of God presents a holistic attitude, and regulates relationship between men and women, free or slaves, and also relationship towards animals, public safety, and regulations between children and their parents. The Torah addresses a wide spectrum of legal matters that would make life in a community fair and just for all.

Human Trafficking — The Torah's Clearest Warning

Human trafficking and enslaving a person for any reason is taken very seriously in this portion, and such a case the Torah says:

In all the great empires during that period and even much later, like in the 18th and 19th centuries in England, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the "good old" United States of America, from children to adults, from male to female, people were kidnapped in Africa and in some South East Asian countries. Thousands upon thousands were kidnapped and loaded on ships and shipped to good old CHRISTIAN families to be slaves. Some of these slaves contributed to American culture and intellect even from their slavery. William Wells Brown, born 1814, is considered to be the first African-American to publish a novel. George Washington Carver, born 1861, whose development of new products derived from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South — Carver was born into slavery, the son of an enslaved woman named Mary.

The reason that I am bringing this information to you is so that the "self-righteous" that condemn Israel today would understand how great the Torah was and still is, in comparison to the great empires of the ancient world and even in comparison to the not so ancient world. Maybe, dear brothers and sisters, if the world would believe and keep the Torah, human-trafficking would not be so popular; sexual enslavement of human beings might not be considered such an attractive business.

Let us remember: a good society is measured not by how it treats the powerful, but by how it protects the weak, the vulnerable, and those placed under its care.