translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: EXO

label: NET study note

text: The next section of laws concerns property rights. These laws protected property from thieves and oppressors, but also set limits to retribution. The message could be: God’s laws demand that the guilty make restitution for their crimes against property and that the innocent be exonerated.


text: Beginning with 22:1 , the verse numbers through 22:31 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text ( BHS ), with 22:1 ET = 21:37 HT, 22:2 ET = 22:1 HT, etc., through 22:31 ET = 22:30 HT. Thus in the English Bible ch. has 31 verses, while in the Hebrew Bible it has 30 verses, with the one extra verse attached to ch. in the Hebrew Bible.


text: He must pay back one for what he took, and then one for the penalty – his loss as he was inflicting a loss on someone else.


text: Thorn bushes were used for hedges between fields, but thorn bushes also burned easily, making the fire spread rapidly.


text: The point is that the man should have taken better care of the animal.


text: The second half of the chapter records various laws of purity and justice. Any of them could be treated in an expository way, but in the present array they offer a survey of God’s righteous standards: Maintain the sanctity of marriage (16-17); maintain the purity of religious institutions (18-20), maintain the rights of human beings (21-28), maintain the rights of Yahweh (29-31).


text: There still were many who wished to follow pagan beliefs and consort with the dead (see Deut 18:10-11 ). The sorceress was someone who dealt with drugs or herbs for occult purposes.


text: The punishment will follow the form of talionic justice, an eye for an eye, in which the punishment matches the crime. God will use invading armies (“sword” is a metonymy of adjunct here) to destroy them, making their wives widows and their children orphans.


text: The moneylender will be demanding and exacting. In Ps 109:11 and 2 Kgs 4:1 the word is rendered as “extortioner.”


text: In ancient times money was lent primarily for poverty and not for commercial ventures (H. Gamoran, “The Biblical Law against Loans on Interest,” JNES 30 [1971]: 127-34). The lending to the poor was essentially a charity, and so not to be an opportunity to make money from another person’s misfortune. The word נֶשֶׁךְ ( neshekh ) may be derived from a verb that means “to bite,” and so the idea of usury or interest was that of putting out one’s money with a bite in it (See S. Stein, “The Laws on Interest in the Old Testament,” JTS 4 [1953]: 161-70; and E. Neufeld, “The Prohibition against Loans at Interest in the Old Testament,” HUCA 26 [1955]: 355-412).


text: The use of this word here has to do with the laws of the sanctuary and not some advanced view of holiness. The ritual holiness at the sanctuary would prohibit eating anything torn to pieces.