Ok, weird, right? As we’ve discussed in the past, chapters like this one make modern-day Christians cringe. Take verse 5, for instance, don’t wear clothing deemed appropriate for the opposite gender. Well, think what the Israelites wore back then. It probably would have been super weird to see them swap clothes. And what about verses 6 and 7? You can take the mama bird’s babies. That’s fine. But leave her be. She’s important to your own prosperity. I can’t unravel that one with my best unraveler. The point is, these laws came from a time and place and circumstances we can’t even fathom. But we do have enough history about the Israelites now to at least be able to visualize how some of these situations came to be. We’ve mentioned in past convos also that our modern nations/states/provinces/cities most likely have some crazy laws still on the books. We read them now and go, “What in the world???? How did this ever come about?” But if you ask someone who remembers when the law passed or read recorded history or news from that time, you’ll probably find a legitimate explanation as to how it came to be. We can sort of do that with these laws, and by knowing a little bit more about how they originated, we can better explain to others who pick these verses out of context why they exist in the first place. (I hope anyway.)
Writing prompt: out of context
Choose your favorite rule from this chapter and write about how it can be taken out of context and used as an argument against Christianity. Try to look at it from the point of view of having read this chapter and this chapter only of the Bible.
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