Uncovering Nakedness

Posted on February 16, 2020 by ehurst

In the Old Testament, the phrase “uncovering someone’s nakedness” was invariably a reference to sexual intercourse. Even if it was a private thing, as sex should be, it could be tantamount to a public humiliation. It was something degrading and abusive. It exposed someone’s nakedness to demonic infestation. From that time forward, their private parts were a domain of demonic presence. The “covering” of God’s blessing was torn away. Publicity wasn’t really the issue, but the exposure to demons; however, it might as well be public humiliation.

This was typically associated with idolatrous practices, but it didn’t have to be. People had little or no reason to publicly humiliate someone sexually except as a matter of degrading pagan ritual, but it was still an open invitation to demons. It was making a sacrifice of someone else’s innocence to a pagan deity, and in Scripture, all pagan deities are demons. There is only worship of the true Creator; all others are demons who capture the worship that should go to God.

If you worship your own self, in the sense of self-glorification, or simply can’t restrain your lustful impulses, it’s still service to a demon. Thus, any public act of sexual humiliation is inherently an act of demonic worship. But secret sexual encounters are no different. Notice that Leviticus 20 is all about stoning to death, and sometimes burning the corpse. The same actions without an idolatrous intent would not necessarily bring the same penalty, but sexual sins do.

We’ve already covered how private marital sex occurring during a wife’s menstrual period is treated as a mere ritual defilement in other passages, not a capital sin as mentioned in Leviticus 20. Hebrew men didn’t loathe menstruation, but feared the intimation of idolatrous practices associated with seeking a woman’s menstrual blood for demonic ritual magic. But according to Biblical Law, every sex act outside the bonds of a marriage covenant was de jure demonic.

Thus, proper marital sex was never “uncovering someone’s nakedness.” Pay attention to the context when reading the Law of Moses. Then again, in Old Testament History, nearly every instance of homosexuality was tied to vile pagan religious rituals. There were very few men and women sexually attracted to their own gender without a pagan influence; it was nearly always a matter of service to some pagan deity. And those who were homosexual or bisexual were suspected of being idolatrous, because demonic influence is considered the source of it. That’s what made Sodom and Gomorrah so disturbing. It wasn’t a pair of cities filled with queers, but degrading ritual sex practices in service to demons.

And publicizing any kind of sexual desire in that context was inherently an act of devotion to demons. It’s a paradox that the Old Testament Hebrew culture was so matter-of-fact about human sexuality, but then held it as something that must be kept private. It wasn’t embarrassing, just none of your business. That’s quite different from our Anglo-American cultural silliness of being so prissy about human sexuality, so that the only way to be “honest” about it is to engage in vulgarity.

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FYI: The emergency blog I started yesterday will remain open as an echo of this blog. It will serve as the backup blog, but is also an experiment to see what traffic it draws on another platform.

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Law of Moses — Leviticus 20

Posted on February 15, 2020 by ehurst

This is an austere chapter, enumerating a list of sins for which the death penalty is demanded. That would be hard to understand if you fail to realize that all of these represent pagan practices. The chapter begins and ends with a reference to idolatrous rituals, and everything in between is best understood as more of the same. Thus, it is not the acts in themselves that are so wrong, but that they are all associated with pagan practices that defile the nation and threaten covenant shalom.

Please note that the frequent comment “his blood shall be upon him” is a specific formula that forbids relatives of the guilty from seeking any blood vengeance rights. The perpetrator executed for any of these crimes against the Covenant was no victim, but brought on his own death.

Sacrificing children to Moloch involved building a brass oven in some likeness of the deity, with the arms as the focus of the heat. Once hot enough, a child was thrown alive into the arms and cooked to death. For the most part, it was meant to curry Moloch’s favor for predictable weather and a good harvest. That’s bad enough, but the whole symbolism of giving children granted by Jehovah to some other deity was just beyond the pale. However, the failure to zealously prosecute those who commit this foul idolatry is considered equal to the sin itself, and thus the penalty is the same. The People of the Covenant are all equally charged with guarding the Covenant regardless how dear the life that was forfeited.

The various practices of divination are condemned yet again. The people are warned to commit themselves to a zeal for the Lord and prosecute the defiling idolatry wherever, whenever and however it rears it’s demonic head. Cursing one’s parents was another foul act of idolatry, since there was no ritual for that under the Covenant. It was defacto a pagan practice that involved consorting with demons.

The list of forbidden sexual relations is not new at this point. Most of them were part of Egyptian religious practices. Again, the reference to sex during a woman’s menstruation is not a mere sex act, as we noted in a previous lesson, but refers to a pagan practice meant to conjure power from blood. The mention of burning with fire was not a means of execution, but what happens to the bodies after they are dead from stoning. Also, “they shall be childless” is a reference to execution well before the woman can give birth. If her pregnancy is the evidence that brings on the charge, she is to be executed before giving birth, because the child is defiled.

God depicts the land — the natural world — as intolerant of these filthy pagan practices. The land itself would facilitate the slaughter of the degraded Canaanites living there, and it would do the same to Israel by someone else. Holiness meant taking seriously the heart-led way of sensing moral danger, and these commandments would set a baseline for understanding what moral danger looked like. Thus, anyone who practices any idolatrous rituals for any reason must be stoned to death.

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Context for Service

Posted on February 14, 2020 by ehurst

It is no longer possible to bring together the divided halves of America. The only question now is when the shooting starts. There may be some false starts, but we shall have a civil war that will not end before things become horrific on a grand scale. Both sides have long postured about being the true American path, but it won’t matter. This is how empires die.

On the one hand, we dare not take sides. On the other hand, we cannot avoid it. That is, we must be prepared to find ourselves in the middle of something with no way of escape. Even if you are certain your abode is where God wants you, there will be hard decisions that no one else can make for you. Salute whatever flag flies over your place of service; embrace it as God’s choice for you. Otherwise, be ready to migrate when the Spirit moves.

You are the only one who can know what God requires of you in any context. It is your faith alone that can read the convictions of your heart. Your divine call and sense of mission is the frame of reference. It will never make sense to anyone else, unless they understand the nature of the heart-led path. So the way folks divide into opposing camps has nothing to do with righteousness. Holiness is following the path God lays out for you. The source of human conflicts is our fallen nature; the conflicts are a feature, built into our world. We engage those conflicts in one way or another because that’s where God puts us, not because the side on which we end up is somehow righteous. It’s simply the context in which we serve.

That service is the thing God sees; the context is His to control.

This is not nihilism; it is holy cynicism. As long as people are focused on this world, they will never understand what God demands. Instead, they will serve the idols of various human interests, calling those things “God” because they don’t know God. None of their idols will survive the cleansing hand of God. The only thing we take to heaven when we die is our witness to the otherworldly truth of God.

I know what my mission is. Already people have tried to hijack it, subvert it to idolatrous pursuits of whatever false gods they serve, and I haven’t even gotten started. My first long bike trip waits for warmer, drier weather here in Oklahoma. Until then, I’m simply training up to long rides with a loaded bike.

By the way, someone asked if the bike I linked to in a previous post is the only one I would use. No, this one could also fill the bill, and costs a little less. But either this or the other one is simply a material ideal, not the iron choice of God. His will isn’t like that when it comes to mission equipment. To be honest, God can provide a wide range of things, because things don’t really matter. They are just tools for service; the service is what matters. We seek to match the tools to the context, and our understanding of the context is likely to vary from moment to moment. It’s the commitment to service that really matters. God will provide, and will bless what He provides.

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Prayers for Frustration

Posted on February 11, 2020 by ehurst

Today I went down to our local military surplus and picked up a poncho. It was advertised is equivalent to the US government issue stuff, and it was all they had. It was not equivalent. It was a very cheap knock-off at too high a price; it’s not even close to full sized. It’s about right for a large child. If I search online, I see a lot of vendors assuring me I can get the government issue item, but then the pictures show the kind of cheap junk I bought today. I can’t trust any of them.

This represents what I’ve been running into a lot lately on things. Right now we have a windfall, but it’s almost as if forces of darkness are trying to consume all of it on junk. Not everything turns out sour, but something like half of it is just useless effort, chasing the wind. I’m not deterred, but I know that this isn’t going to get anywhere without some prayer support. Keep your money (unless you want to spring for that new bike); pray with me about how to use the money I already have.

I’m not going to replace my current bike until I can gather up something over $2k. That’s for something specifically designed for what I’m doing (Trek 920). What’s out there for sale at lower prices is no better than what I have, or it’s not at all designed for what I need. Unless my current bike simply breaks down completely, I’m going to keep riding it. So for now, I need to get two more things fixed, and both need special tools that I haven’t been able to find yet. There are still some bike stores I haven’t checked. Keep in mind that the tools have to be chosen for the bike, so it must be with me when I get them. The two issues are: the freehub and the bottom bracket bearings. Things will work okay for a while, but I want to get them fixed before I get out on the long trips.

I will have to build a front luggage rack, because apparently nobody makes a generic one that will work with my bike. I have a few ideas, and none of them are expensive, but they will require using materials I have little experience with. It has to be pretty lightweight. Since there’s no way I can get the right kind of aluminum tubing and bend it, and then weld it, I’ll have to use combinations of things like fiberglass rods and short pieces of curved steel tubing held together by epoxy — this is my current idea. Yes, I need a front rack. Long rides with all the load on the back are frankly dangerous. The load needs to be balanced between front and rear.

Camping gear is a little more flexible, so I’m not sweating that so much. I’ll have to order the sleeping bag; nothing available locally is suitable without being way too expensive. Same with the sleeping pad. They won’t stock the good stuff that costs less. My junk poncho will serve as a ground cover; I still need to identify a good tent that will be easy to carry and use. I’m pretty happy with my cameras for now. My emphasis will be telling the story of my experiences in writing, with pictures to breathe life into it. Right now, I don’t feel led to worry too much about video. I’ll do that in small doses for things like panoramas of terrain. I’m not even thinking about a camera drone; those cost way too much for too little gain.

Some of the things I’ll emphasize: advocacy of cycling itself, particularly here in Oklahoma. Not just recreational use, but to indicate what sort of things people could do with bikes. I’ll be putting pressure on the system to accommodate cyclists and tent camping, both of which are sorely lacking in Oklahoma, particularly in some of the most beautiful areas. Another emphasis is the communion with nature, not just the visual beauty. I haven’t forgotten the heart-led way by any means; I want to touch all of Creation with at least one experience of a heart-led human. I’m starting right here where I live, and I’ll be developing more writing on how that works. But not just the writing, the pictures and videos must arise from that communion, and should help to transmit that experience back to folks who see my work. I don’t want to compete with the YouTube guys and gals; this needs to be something different.

This needs prayer so that I don’t get sidetracked from the core issue. The current advocacy for bikepacking is not in tune with what God has called me to do. Some of it overlaps, but there’s plenty that completely misses the point, and won’t accommodate me trying to make that point until they embrace what we have.

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Additional Notes on Leviticus 19

Posted on February 9, 2020 by ehurst

Something we noted in this chapter, but shows up in a lot of other passages, is the warning about divination, soothsaying and mediums. The whole problem with these pagan practices is that they arise from a desire to see the future. Once one knows the future, the temptation is to decide how to meet it by your own reasoning, and to stop seeking God’s face. You aren’t supposed to poke around in the future itself; any choice you make about it will always be based on human thinking. Rather, you are supposed to pray and ask the Lord to tell you what to do next. It doesn’t matter what’s coming with that; you need to know what God wants from you regardless of what’s coming.

Even when you seek a prophetic word, the whole point is to know God’s will for you, not God’s will for everyone else. We aren’t looking for any particular advantage in this life except what comes in the same package as shalom.

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Law of Moses — Leviticus 19:19-37

Posted on February 8, 2020 by ehurst

We continue a laundry list of commandments that are designed to set Israel apart from other nations.

The business of mixing animals, crops and fabrics has provoked endless debate, even among Jewish scholars. Nowhere else in Scripture is this explained. The only obvious reason for this prohibition is that it represents pagan religious practices. This section of verses seems to address a lot of that sort of thing.

The penalty for adultery with a concubine is much lower, especially for the woman. She’s not a free woman, but a servant or slave taken into the household as a concubine. Thus, she can be scourged, and it’s likely the man would be too, but he has the added penalty of a sin offering.

The prohibition of eating from fruit trees the first few years is a common practice today. So far as scholars can discern, it is simply good agricultural practice, since pruning is almost a necessity for the first few years to make the tree hardy and not drag its limbs on the ground. Some fruits don’t even produce for the first few years. The fourth year crop belongs wholly to God. Fifth and subsequent years, the Lord took a tithe from the first fruits. On the other hand, this prohibition had nothing to do with wild fruit, only cultivated trees.

The next few verses cover a range of idolatrous practices. Not eating blood is covered repeatedly because it was a vile pagan practice to seek magical powers from bloodshed. The term “divination” is a collection of dark practices that have to do with changing one’s voice to indicate another being is speaking through them, while “soothsaying” refers to any number of practices based on reading the future, like astrology, for example. The odd beard trimming, scars and tattoos were all well known pagan practices.

One of the most hideous practices was ordering one’s daughters to serve as temple prostitutes for a period prior to marriage. At least one religion demanded this as an annual sacrifice, when all women were encouraged to sell their bodies in exchange for offerings to the temple. The reaction to this is why genuine virginity is so prized by the Hebrew people. The people would have all they could do properly observing the Sabbath and treating the Tabernacle with respect; they didn’t need the slavery of pagan practices.

It was common to find pagans who claimed to have contact with spirit beings. The “medium” refers to any number of practices, but typically a ventriloquist. It was silly hocus-pocus. Another more dangerous practice was actually a person cultivated by a particular demon as their “familiar spirit” who would manifest at times with supposed messages from the dead. Jehovah says this is all threats of moral defilement.

Stand or rise in the presence of elders as a sign of respect, because God will take it as an insult if you are disrespectful to them. Aside from certain rituals prescribed elsewhere, treat a peaceful Gentile resident in your lands as one of your own, with due care and consideration. In other words, don’t drive them out. Give them a reason to reverence your God. He reminds them not to act like the Egyptians did, enslaving Israel just because they were a convenient labor source. Don’t cheat each other in commerce. Fall in love with honest measures, weights and scales.

All of this contributes to the image of what “holiness” means.

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Current News Review 14

Posted on February 5, 2020 by ehurst

This time, at least, this series feature will appear on this blog.

Are you watching the conflict between Syria and Turkey? Here’s what I see. For unknown reasons, God is raising up Turkey. She can’t have everything she wants, but she will be a power no one can ignore. If Syria wants to clean up the mess the Western countries have caused by provoking civil war, she will have to stay snuggled up close to Russia. But more importantly, the Syrian government must win the full support of the people, whatever that means (which is wholly unlikely anything resembling the claims of “democracy” by Western propaganda). If the Syrian people do not rise up to push Turkish forces back across the border, then the Syrian people deserve to live under Turkish rule. And Syria needs to present an ultimatum to the feckless Kurds: Support the government or be slaughtered/driven out. The Kurds are a serious threat to any country that hosts them. Giving them a token “Kurdistan” would be a huge mistake.

What happened with the Iowa Democratic caucuses? First, you have to understand how those caucus meetings work. The main point is the 15% threshold. During the recent Democratic caucuses in Iowa, the party leadership did some rigging to ensure Bernie Sanders didn’t win. The primary trick was to send in extra caucus members who showed up pre-organized and committed to foiling a Sanders win. They didn’t vote for any particular candidate, but tried rig the outcome so as many candidates as possible got 15%, thus depriving Sanders of any realignment votes. Sanders consistently received a smaller share than would have happened without the rigging.

The Democratic Party is anything but democratic. I’ve already written how I believe that party is run by globalists, and Sanders is not one of them. Rather, he’s a huge favorite of the leftward leaning part of the US population at large. As things stand, he could never win against Trump in a general election. I doubt any of the Democratic candidates could. But we have two or three who are owned by the globalists. Biden started as the anointed one, but it’s obvious he can’t hold it together, and it looks like Buttigieg has made a deal with them. If that doesn’t work (black voters and Muslims aren’t likely to support him), Bloomberg is the fallback. He’s agreeable, but too powerful; he could buck the party and no one could touch him once in office. He already has an armed “palace guard” — one like Trump should have organized on his way to the White House.

I sense that we are still some years away from a break-up of the US. However, we remain on the knife edge of financial collapse. Notice I’m not saying it will be a full economic collapse, but the high finance system will shatter. Things like the stock market will drop, venture capital could dry up, banks will close or drastically change their policies, etc. I suspect the massive bailouts we saw previously will not be possible the next time. Look for currency controls, making it much harder to rely on cash for significant business transactions. Large hordes of cash will be confiscated and we will all be forced to use bank cards or cellphone apps for even small stuff. Those things aren’t guaranteed, but highly likely if the current trends continue.

Let your convictions tell you what to do with this information.

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This Is His Show

Posted on February 4, 2020 by ehurst

FYI Administrative trivia first: I’ll be using my ehurst909@gmail.com for this blog. The jehurst@gmail.com account is for the bikepacking stuff.

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I’m walking riding by faith. Unless I’m totally deluded, this business of biking and camping and sharing my adventures is the mission I’ve long believed was my last great adventure in life. This is frankly not at all what I was expecting, but now that it stands in front of me, I embrace it wholly. I’m not looking for anything else; I know my divine mission.

Naturally this will require changes in the pattern of what I post on the two blogs. Also, note that I now have a Facebook account solely to publicize what I’m doing with bikepacking. Sure, it’s nice to keep in touch with family that way, but my interactions on Facebook will be focused on biking and camping in Oklahoma. I’m supposed to promote the idea of exploring my state, and this is how I do that. Of course, that’s the purpose most folks will see, and that’s good enough.

I’m not going to get lost in Facebook chatter about politics and other social commentary. I’ll still post my own thoughts on such things on my blogs, but I won’t even link any of that on Facebook, only the posts about bikepacking. I’ll refrain from “liking” anything that I can’t use to support that public mission. You folks will know why I’m doing this, and I’ll share with you the prophetic contemplations from those long rides, but I won’t promote that on Facebook.

Now that I know what my public persona is supposed to be, that will naturally affect the focus of my contemplations while out on those long rides. Where I stand will affect what I see. I’ll probably write a lot less about what would be ideal in the events around us, and more about how to avoid being fooled by what does happen, and what the liars say about it.

A few years ago I held the bright hope that we could avoid an apocalypse. I’m still sure we did, but only by a hair’s breadth. Things did not go as they should have and could have, so the window of blessing has closed. I sense in my spirit that a few key folks out there simply turned away from the call of God. God showed us how bad it could have been, and folks fled from it. However, we dodged one apocalypse only to blunder into another, in that sense. We will still experience some very bad times.

But crazy as it may seem, my new mission is not ignoring the tribulation. It’s simply how God intends to use me during that tribulation. Frankly, I’m not seeing the whole picture. All I know is that bikepacking around the state is how God intends to use me for His glory. I must do this. I’ll push ahead with whatever resources God provides, and trust Him for all the needs I still see coming, and those I don’t even see. It’s not a question of justifying donations for something that will appear to many as frivolous. It’s a question of inviting folks to participate in something that blesses them. Don’t give unless the Lord moves you.

Here are some mission equipment items you can pray about with me: (1) camping gear, (2) a better bike, and (3) a tablet with a SIM card (cellphone connection) for navigation and snapshot use. Most of Oklahoma has functional cellphone coverage, but a cellphone display simply isn’t big enough for navigation in the open countryside. A good tablet would have far better battery life, too. I’m inclined to look at iPads, even though they are expensive.

Regular sponsorship would be nice, but I’m not asking for a “glamping” lifestyle. It would be nice to sleep in motels and eat in cafes all the way, but that simply isn’t possible. There are whole counties with maybe two ratty convenience stores, and a great many towns with nothing at all. And that kind of isolation is exactly where some of the best natural beauty can be found. Also, keep in mind that there are some areas I’ll never see if I have to ride all the way out there on a bike. I will need to tote the bike out to some areas and ride around after I get there.

Side note: I will be actively seeking chances to chat with folks who live out in the countryside. We shall see what God does with that, but it can make for fascinating stories.

The readers of this blog will be my prayer support team. If you aren’t praying with me, no amount of money from anybody would be of any use. A major question for me is the publicity angle. I don’t have a clear vision yet of what that should be, but I know that this mission isn’t just for the blessing of a faithful few. There is something about this that needs to get a much wider attention. I tend to believe this should show up in the news at some point, for whatever reason — God alone knows. This is His show.

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Come Along for the Ride

Posted on February 2, 2020 by ehurst

I have a vision. Hear, if you will, the burden that the Lord has placed on me.

For the past year or so, I really felt like I had written pretty much all I could say about my faith. I know that my God is sovereign and there are plenty of things He doesn’t tell me. I can be hard-headed and slow to learn, so I would always have something to talk about. But I felt the drive to attempt organizing something of a virtual church, as a basis for some kind of movement that spawned more churches around the world. That didn’t happen. For the time being, it won’t happen. I honestly believe that was a matter of God offering people a chance at something better, and they didn’t take it. That’s not pointed at you, dear readers. You did respond, but a lot of other folks didn’t.

Don’t be angry with them. We can never know the identity of the key people who turned away from this calling. There’s no time for wallowing in sadness about that. The window is closed. I’m moving on to what God says is the new mission. Things have changed and it’s time to move on.

It’s not all that different from what I was doing a few years ago, before I moved from eastern rural Oklahoma County into Midwest City. Back then, I took off on long bike rides, which put me in that odd place where I was wide open to the Spirit’s voice. I was out on the roads, often forgotten back roads typically seen only by locals. I took pictures and described what I experienced. Sometimes I talked to people and it was a blessing.

I’m going back to that. Just when I thought it was about time to wrap up (i.e., de-emphasize) the writing and move on to other, more practical things, that mission is back in full force. Only, this time there will be some changes. Instead of just going out on day rides, I sense this is the right time to include camping and multi-day rides.

It will require sponsorship. That is, with only my own budget, I won’t get very far. If you like the pictures and stories, pray that I gain more resources for this. In practical terms, I will need camping gear. Sometime in the future, I expect my four-year-old bike to break down to the point it requires replacement, and that’s not cheap. I’ll get something one way or another, but the better the bike, the more I can go. And the better my sponsorship, the lighter I can travel.

What I have now is suitable for the period of training up to long distance riding again. I’m not jumping into this project today. I’m not asking for donations yet. There is still too much unsettled, too much of not knowing what I’ll need or what I can use. I have no idea how this will branch out, nor how long this will continue. I don’t want to waste donations on extravagance that serves no purpose. I aim to be a faithful steward.

I’m going to publicize this on the other blog to a much wider audience, and it won’t be robed in terms of ministry. It’s just something I’m doing and they can feel free to participate as the Lord moves them. But it will be a service of sorts, sharing the experience and the results of my contemplations. Keep in mind that I no longer profess to be “in the ministry” as most people think of it. My calling is elder, not pastor. I’m just an aging philosopher trying to share my insights. And I still maintain that I am a prophet of sorts, though nothing like the common image of that, either.

I’m sharing this here to gain prayer support momentum before moving forward. I’m going to start small, obviously, and see how the Lord prospers this thing. I’m going to move the pictures to the other blog. They aren’t the product; the product will be the experiences and how they shape my writing. But the pictures and narratives will be the ostensible purpose that disarms folks who don’t really understand, gives them a place to hang this mission in their own minds.

Again: For now, I’m just letting you know to start praying about this. Keep your money, but I’ll be glad to accept actual camping equipment (lightweight, solo use) that I know how to use. If nothing else, I can practice carrying the load. I have only vague ideas of what I should eventually carry along. If you get some ideas or questions, share them. For example: Yes, this means the computer tech support ministry becomes a very tiny aspect of my future work. It will be marginalized by more important things, though it won’t disappear entirely. This will change the audience on the other blog to some degree. Eventually all of this will come to light there, but right now we are in the preparatory phase. I need to get a lot more riding miles right now.

To them I’ll say, “Come along for the ride.” To you I say the same, but with a whole depth of meaning they won’t grasp so quickly.

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Law of Moses — Leviticus 19:1-17

Posted on February 1, 2020 by ehurst

This is one of the richest chapters in the Bible, showcasing a wide array of moral treasures. We can’t cover it in one lesson, so we’ll be here a while.

A fundamental expression of reverence for God is to revere one’s elders. Don’t get confused by this; the Hebrew people knew one’s elders could be wrong about some things. It wasn’t the intent to make anyone a slave of their elders, but to make one respectful even when it was impossible to do everything the elders demanded. Mind your manners, but obey the Lord. Along with that was the Sabbath observance — seven days without worship makes one week, and makes one weak, as well. These two items were easily the most prominent markers of devotion to Jehovah.

The concept of holiness in this context is devotion to the Lord, an undivided loyalty. Israel never had to worry about offending any other deities; Jehovah was the only God who could touch them. For that reason, they had no excuse at all to play the harlot with idols. Jehovah was a possessive God.

The whole point of a Peace Offering was to share a meal with God and His family. You took the animal to the Tabernacle/Temple, had it slaughtered by the priest, and the guts were offered on the altar to God. The rest was a shared meal with God’s family. You were supposed to make a concerted effort to give away as much as you couldn’t eat by yourself. Feed your own household, and then invite everyone you can find to come and get a serving, as well. In particular you should invite those who are poor. There shouldn’t be any left after a couple of days eating and sharing.

This brings up the next point. Don’t be hyper-efficient in your harvesting of crops. Make sure you or your servants are working hard enough to drop a little now and then. Don’t cut all the way up into the corners, but leave some standing. Leave enough unharvested for your poor fellow Israelis to go help themselves. You don’t have to invite them for supper, but you can leave enough that they can work for it themselves. Treat it like an offering to God.

It should be obvious that you will be honest with your covenant brothers and sisters. Don’t take their stuff for any reason. Don’t hide pertinent facts when dealing with them and don’t try to cheat them by deception. God is watching and knows what’s in your heart.

And what kind of asshole amuses himself by taking advantage of deaf and blind folks? The terminology refers to saying something nasty about a deaf person so everyone hearing can laugh, or tripping up the blind for the sake of comedy. There is no excuse for cruelty. If you can’t bring yourself to help them, just let them be. Again, God is watching.

When it’s your place to judge something, don’t show favoritism to either the underdog or the powerful. What is just is in everyone’s best interest. This is how we build shalom with God. Don’t be a scandal-monger, slandering people behind their backs. Don’t even tell funny stories without first finding out how the main character feels about the whole thing.

You must not hold a grudge against your own people. If they have offended you, clear the air with them. Get it off your chest, but don’t let hatred fester in your heart if you can’t just let it go. Give them a chance to repent. This is your family we are talking about here; if you love yourself, you can’t hate them.

Keep your society stable.

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