Reading God's Commands in Their Literary Context

You’ve probably heard this before: Context is everything. Most of us would agree with that. For example, when we hear a shocking story on the news, we want to know more about the situation that led up to that event. We want to know the context. So, what do we do? We follow the story on the news and sometimes go to other news sources, or social media, to find out other angles and more information on the story.

This is like how we should study the Bible. Of course, bearing in mind that the medium is different.

When we find something interesting in Scripture we should ask, “Why was this written in this way?” “What events led to this writing?” “What is the author’s goal in this writing?” The way of studying the Bible that I want to propose in this blog is focusing firstly, and primarily, on the Literary Context.

So, what does it look like to study the literary context when studying the Bible? Let me first tell you what it’s not. It’s not interpreting certain passages of Scripture using other passages from different books, like using Duet 15:7-11 to understand Jesus’, “the poor will always be with you.” in John 13. It’s also not studying when God flooded the earth in Genesis (6-9) through other flood accounts from ancient sources outside of Genesis.  

Now, none of those ideas are bad when it comes to seeking deeper understanding of Scripture, but both these methods don’t treat Scripture, as Jeanine Brown puts it, as “communication”. Simply put, the writers of the Bible are trying to communicate with their audience. It’s a simple idea, but it’s easy for us to get stuck in all oddities in the Bible. The truth is, the writers of the Bible, both OT and NT, are trying to communicate something, a message. In order to understand that message, we need to read it. We need to focus on the literary context. So, how do we do this? It’s a simple concept, but hard to apply. In Seminary me and my classmates used to gripe when we were told by our NT professor to go home and read 1 Peter or Revelation, but in order to know the literary context, that’s what you must do.

If you want to understand why Jesus said, “the poor will always be with you”, you have to the read the surrounding verses in the chapter. If you want to understand the chapter, you must read the surrounding chapters. In the end, you begin to realize, “wow, this is what Jesus meant!” and you have evidence for why you think that because you’ve tried to discover the meaning of something based on the larger literary context.

Are you following me?

So, now it’s time to put this into practice. Let’s investigate The Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-17).

Let’s be honest, The Ten Commandments have a bad reputation. They are one of main reasons why many people in our world think that Christianity/The Bible is all about rules. However, this is a wrong perception and in order to understand “why” The Ten Commandments we need to look at the literary context of Exodus. We need to see what the author is trying to communicate. We need to ask, “In the writer’s mind, why did God give these commandments to the Hebrews at the time in which He did?”, “For what reason did God give the commandments?”

How do we answer these questions? We can’t simply take Ex 20:1-17 as if it’s all we have. Ex 20:1-17 is a part of Exodus so, in order to understand the commandments, we need to look at the story from which they come.

We know from Exodus 1 that the Israelites were near Egypt and things were going just fine and dandy. However, a new Pharaoh comes onto the scene and he has Egypt’s best interest in mind. This Pharaoh notices the Israelites are growing in number and in strength and he is afraid that if he doesn’t enslave and become the ruler of the Israelites, they will conquer Egypt one day (1:8-11). That’s probably how it worked back then. There are no rules guiding how these different groups interact with one another. You either conquer or be conquered. So, that’s what they did. Egypt made the Israelites their servants and made their lives very difficult.

We also learn that this Pharaoh had another strategy to rule over the Israelites: kill all the male children born (1:16). That’s appalling. Can you imagine being a mother, giving birth to a son and then immediately having him taken to be killed? Life in Egypt for the Israelites probably felt like hell.

We also need to notice when reading Exodus that it seems like a fast-moving story, but the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for, by some estimates, around 200 years. That’s a lineage of hard-tasked slaves and women who have had their male children taken away from them. Even if the Israelite’s baby boys weren’t always taken, or discovered, just the paranoia alone could drive someone mad.

Another piece of evidence that shows this awful situation is how Moses’ mom puts him into a basket into the Nile once she was unable to keep him a secret. That’s desperation. She would have rather given Moses the slightest chance to live by putting him into a basket into the Nile than having him thrown in by the Egyptians to die (2:3, 1:22).

So, this is what we know about the Israelite experience in Egypt: They were forced to work, probably past the point of physical pain (1:11-14) and moms were having their male children taken from them at birth. This goes on for near 200 years. These people probably lived life with serious, unvalidated traumas. You can imagine some of them saying, in a depressed tone, “This is just how life is for us”. They probably learned what to do, what not to do and to keep their heads down and not make life any more difficult than it already was.

However, we also know that after God frees them from Egypt (I’m jumping quite ahead in the story) they don’t enjoy their wanderings in the dessert either. Ex 14:10-13 shows the Israelites backed up against the sea (before God parts it) and some of them say that they never wanted to leave Egypt! They were simply okay with how the way things were being slaves. They wanted to keep the status quo.

Now before you think these Israelites are crazy, we need to recognize that people can still act this way today. Many prisoners who have served long sentences struggle to live outside of prison walls. Or in the case of addiction. Addiction can continue to rule in someone’s life knowing very well that it’s destroying them. Why does this happen? We can put up with a whole lot in the name of “security” and “familiarity”. We can begin to find our identity in destructive patterns and with destructive people. Afterall, “freedom” is scary if all you’ve known is slavery.

Repeatedly there’s a realization in Exodus, as said so eloquently by Rev. Wayne Darbonne, “You can take the people out of slavery, but you can’t take the slavery out of the people”. Through the traumatic experiences in Egypt, the Israelites seem to think of themselves as “Egypt’s slaves” and not “God’s people”. In fact, there’s a chance that many Israelites while in Slavery lost touch with the oral stories of God creating a good creation and making a covenant with Abraham.

So, what are The Ten Commandments considering their literary context? They seem to be God’s teaching tool. The Israelites are recovering from slavery and their new identity is found through the lessons of the Law. The Israelites needed that type of structure and God gives it to them in the Law. What does it look like to be God’s people and not an Egyptian slave? It looks like not killing others, for example. What’s the underlying message there? All people are made in God’s image. This would have been opposite to how Egyptians viewed the world.

Another Law that I want to bring to your attention to is the command to rest on the Sabbath (Ex 20:10-11). Given the background of the Israelites that doesn’t even seem to be a rule, it’s more like a gift! Do you think the Israelites were given much rest in Egypt? Probably not. They would probably only get rest, or other things for that matter, if they could satisfy the demands of their taskmasters. But here God is saying that they should rest because that’s what God did. Rest is a part of God's rhythm. What does God want to teach the Israelites in this command? Someone with a slave mentality would say, “you get what you earn through work”. It’s just you alone out in the big world and if you don’t do anything you’ll starve or worse. But God’s command to rest says something different. It says God is watching out for you. God sees what you need. You are not alone. You can rest and find comfort in knowing that God works on your behalf. What a powerful concept. God provides for His creation.

Pretty powerful isn’t it? At a face value, God’s commands seem strange, like God is all about rules. However, when we understand these Laws in their Literary Context we see something quite different. We see God, once again, providing for His people in love and in grace.