9. Laws arising from the ninth commandment 24:8-25:19

The ninth commandment is, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor"(5:20). There may be a deliberate descending order of heirarchy in the list of offended parties in this section beginning with the highest to the lowest.²⁷⁴

 Leaders 24:8-9

The reference to Miriam recalls her misrepresenting Moses and her punishment (Num. 12:1-15). The Israelites were to be careful to submit to the Levites if the Israelites contracted leprosy. Miriam had given false testimony against a Levite, Moses, and had contracted leprosy as a result.

 Debtors 24:10-15

The Israelites were not to take advantage of their poorer brethren because of their vulnerable condition. God looked out for them. They were not to withhold their clothing and wages from them (cf. James 5:4). Specifically they were not to humiliate a debtor by entering his house and demanding repayment of a debt. They were to allow the debtor to initiate repayment. Perhaps the connection with the ninth commandment is this. By taking the initiative the creditor was saying something about the debtor that was not necessarily true, namely, that he was unable and or unwilling to repay the debt.

 Individual responsibility 24:16

The Israelites were not to punish children for the crimes their parents committed. To do so charged them with guilt unjustly.

". . . it was a common thing among heathen nations--e.g., the Persians, Macedonians, and others--for the children and families of criminals to be also put to death (cf. Esther ix. 13, 14 . . .)."²⁷⁵

In the cases where God executed the families of criminals He may have done so because the family members were also responsible for the crime (v. 16; cf. Josh. 7:24-26). In any case God has the right to do things that He does not allow His people to do. It is one thing for children to suffer physically and socially because of their parents' sins (Exod. 20:5; Deut. 5:9). It is something else for human authorities to punish them for criminal acts that they have not committed.

 The indigent 24:17-22

God guarded the rights of aliens (non-Israelites living in Israel), orphans, and widows since they were not as capable of defending themselves as other Israelites were (vv. 17-22).

 Criminals 25:1-3

Beating was a form of punishment used in Israel for various offenses. However the safety and personal dignity of the person being beaten was important to God even though he or she deserved the beating. These things were also to be important to God's people.

"This was the Egyptian mode of whipping, as we may see depicted upon the monuments, when the culprits lie flat upon the ground, and being held fast by the hands and feet, receive their strokes in the presence of the judge. . . . The number forty was not to be exceeded, because a larger number of strokes with a stick would not only endanger health and life, but disgrace the man. . . . If he had deserved a severer punishment, he was to be executed. . . . The number, forty, was probably chosen with reference to its symbolical significance, which it had derived from Gen. vii. 12 onwards, as the full measure of judgment. The Rabbins fixed the number at forty save one (vid. 2 Cor. xi. 24), from a scrupulous fear of transgressing the letter of the law, in case a mistake should be made in the counting; yet they felt no conscientious scruples about using a whip of twisted thongs instead of a stick."²⁷⁶

Verse 1 points out very clearly that "justify"means to declare righteous, not to make righteous. This distinction is very important to a correct understanding of the doctrine of justification as God has revealed it in Scripture.²⁷⁷

 Animals 25:4

God's care for animals as His creatures lay behind this law. The Apostle Paul expounded the significance of this command (1 Cor. 9:9; 1 Tim. 5:18).

"The purpose clearly was not only to provide for the ox itself but to make the point by a fortioriargument that if a mere animal was worthy of humane treatment, how much more so was a human being created as the image of God."²⁷⁸