Week 5 Exodus
I started reading Leviticus today but was still thinking about the 10 Commandments (10Cs).
Personally I think that if Moses had lost all his Exodus data from 20:17 to the end of the book I’d be okay. I’d still have the Essential Code. But the fact is his data wasn’t lost…I’ve got all 21 chapters…all 692 verses.
From the 692 I subtracted 113 verses of non-legal material – stories or narrative content (e.g. the golden calf).
That left me with 579 verses of legal / law-related material.
The 10Cs – The Essential Code – is only 17 of those 579 verses. Which means that the 10Cs make up just 2.94% of Exodus 20-40. I don’t think the remaining 97.06% are non-essential. They’re not inconsequential. But they’re in a different league.
The last twenty-one chapters of Exodus begin with the ten rudiments at the fountainhead and from there spread out into a hundred applications.
The Lord spells out The Essential Code at the top of Sinai and then Moses moves on to describe some of the drip-down effects those fundaments will have on personal and public life (in this specific case within a tribe in the ancient near east).
So while I’ve been reading through Exodus I’m trying to remind myself: you’re looking at an actual historical case study (so don’t just dismiss it). At the same time it’s an old case study. So I need to make a mental transposition before I can puzzle-out how the 2.94% trickles down in its applications to personal and social life in 21st century Alberta.