Nathan E. Lewis

“The Covenant: Kind Justice” Deuteronomy 24: 5 - 25:4

In a number of our English translations, the editors have organized sections under descriptive headings. Most of these headings I find to be helpful. Our text for this morning is titled, “Miscellaneous Laws.” I do not find this title to be particularly helpful. The editors are uncertain as to how Moses has organized these sections. Perhaps he has simply thrown some laws together, uncertain himself as to how to categorize them. Moses is ancient. His writing and his addresses do not conform to Western models, Classic or modern. Some of the confusion of categorization results from us thinking that his writing is a book of case law. At least we would expect Moses to categorize all of these detailed laws under the Ten Commandments. But he does not attempt such nice and neat organization. Do these addresses in Deuteronomy show to us an aging Moses who loses his train of thought from time to time, rambling from one law to another? Some of the most beautiful and most powerful writing of all Scripture comes from Moses. Psalm 91 is sheer poetry. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’” David, the great Psalmist repeated the beautiful and powerful imagery of Moses. Some of the well-turned phrases of Moses in Deuteronomy are fine prose – “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Listen to these words of Moses: “But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”
These miscellaneous laws before us are actually organized loosely around the theme of God’s kind justice. Divine justice is not merely played out on an epic scale, God causing wars to cease and bringing the kings of the earth to their knees. God’s justice is worked out in the details of our daily lives, in our primary relationships, in our mundane work. Divine justice is not merely raw power and impersonal authority. It is also kind and personal.
Firstly, God’s justice is kind to newlyweds. The groom is exempt from military service or any other public duty for the first year of his marriage. God’s justice promotes freedom to enjoy the marital relationship. How many brides have questioned God’s justice as they receive written notice of their husbands dying on the battlefield months after the wedding? The law of God prevents this tragedy, caused by mere human beings who ignore kind justice.
Secondly, God’s justice is kind to the hard working person. The man who borrows money to open a flourmill relies on the mill to turn a profit providing for his family’s needs. The lender must not take the millstone as the pledge for the loan. If he took the stone, how would the miller turn a profit to repay the loan? How would the miller feed his family? The kind justice of God promotes hard, productive work. The lender must promote and protect such honest industry.
Thirdly, God’s kind justice prevents the trafficking of people. This is a good example of the death penalty promoting the kindness of God. Kidnapping a brother and selling him into slavery is a grave injustice. To do so for money is proof of the total depravity of humanity. In our present world, trafficking has escalated as I have recently and painfully illustrated. Trafficking is out of control. Who will protect the helpless, the destitute, and the desperate? God is the protector of such people.
Fourthly, God’s justice is kind to the person who contracts a communicable and life threatening disease. The quarantine laws in Leviticus protect the community from spreading communicable diseases and so God’s justice is kind to the entire community. But Moses asks Israel to remember particularly Miriam’s case. It is her case that reminds us that God’s justice, though harsh for a time results in his kindness toward us. Miriam rebelled against her brother Moses questioning his divine call to be prophet mainly because she disapproved of his marriage to the Cushite woman. God inflicted Miriam with leprosy. Her brother, Aaron, who also rebelled alongside her, begged God for mercy, confessing their foolishness and sin. Then Moses cried out to God begging for his mercy, asking God to heal his sister. God heard these cries and his response is one of kind justice. God replies, “If an earthly father, spit in the face of his daughter, she would be shamed for seven days, not the rest of her life. Quarantine Miriam outside the camp for seven days. After that time she may return to the camp.” In other words, God cleansed her of the leprosy after seven days. God’s justice, though harsh for a time results in his kindness toward us.
Fifthly, God’s justice is kind to the poor. The person who lends money to a neighbor must not go inside the house to collect the pledge. There are at least to reasons for this law: 1) In Moses’ culture, the neighbor would be obligated to play host to anyone coming into his home, providing a meal and even entertainment. If this person has borrowed money from his neighbor, he may not be in the best position to play host. In entering the home, the lender adds to the problem of his neighbor’s debt; 2) If the lender collects the pledge of the loan in the home, the transaction would be private and thus both parties could be tempted to lie about the transaction. But if the lender collects the pledge in public, witnesses would testify to it.
The lender who accepts from a poor man his cloak as the pledge, must not keep it overnight. He must return it to the poor man. This law gives us a peak into the definition of poor in God’s law. The cloak is the only article of clothing this man owns. It doubles as his blanket as he sleeps. For a lender to reflect the kind justice of God in this way is righteousness in God’s sight!
Sixthly, God’s justice is kind to the employee. An employer must pay his employees in a timely fashion. They depend on this payment to live. This law is presented in an agrarian economy, but may apply to any employment. God’s law requires daily payment of poor and needy laborers, those who do not have other resources to fall back upon. Failure to pay wages daily is considered by God’s law to be oppressive. The law applies to fellow Israelite employees as well as employees that are not of the household of Israel.
God’s justice is kind to the individual. God’s law usually promotes, if not assumes corporate responsibility. The family is a unit, the tribe is a unit, and Israel altogether is the covenant community. But God’s law does protect the individual. A father may not be punished for crimes his child has committed. A child may not be punished for crimes a father has committed. Each individual is responsible for his own sin. This works against the all too familiar judgment: “Those Lewis’s are a bad lot – the whole of them. There’s not a good apple in the bunch. The apple doesn’t fall to far from the tree. Hang them all.” The scripture includes instances when an entire family or nation is punished as one group. But the scriptures also teach that each of us is responsible for our own actions.
God’s justice is kind to the foreigner, to the orphan and to the widow. In Moses’ day the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow were all poor and needy people. Once again Moses calls Israel to remember her past, her slavery in Egypt and to treat others with kindness, especially the poor and the oppressed. The gleaning laws provide food for these poor people. Poor people are able to glean grain, olives, and grapes. They are not denied the basic components of the Mediterranean diet – bread, oil, and wine.
God’s justice is kind to the guilty person. If the sentence is beating, then no more than 40 lashes may be administrated. The reason given for this limit is that to beat the person more would be degrading. The beating must be conducted in the presence of the judge who delivered the sentence. This is indeed a kind justice. While many have focused on the amount of beating an average human body may suffer short of expiring, God’s law focuses once again upon the dignity of humanity, made in the image of God. This law limiting the beating to 40 lashes is not designed to beat him an inch of his life, but to stop short of degrading one made in the image of God.
Finally, God’s justice is kind even to our animals. We treat our animals kindly and justly because God’s law commands us to do so.
If God’s justice is kind, then, what is the difference between his kind justice and his mercy? God’s mercy is divine kindness and help, which we do not deserve. But God’s kind justice is commanded of us in his holy law. Some of God’s justice is administered in this world through us, through our relationships, to one another. The justice required of us neighbor to neighbor, sister to sister, spouse to spouse is kind justice. The prophet Micah wrote, “He has shown thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you – to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
The central event of human history was a moment bereft of kind justice. Men who knew God’s law committed inhumane crimes against the Son of God while men who knew the laws of Man joined them in their treachery to nail an innocent man to a Roman cross. The raw, unfiltered justice of God, in the form of wrath was poured out upon Jesus Christ, the perfect representative of humanity and divine Savior of the world. God’s justice in the form of leprosy inflicting Miriam was nothing compared to the hell Jesus suffered in our place. In kind justice, God stopped short of spitting in Miriam’s face. But the heavenly Father turned away his smiling face from his suffering Son so that the full shame of death might inflict him. Thus, God’s justice has been satisfied and his mercy flows to all of us who put our faith in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit of Christ applies this grace to our lives so that we might live dispensing the kind justice of God to one another.