Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Crime and Punishment (not about the book) (07/21/11)
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TITLE: IF THIS, THEN THAT | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sharon Gault Baker
07/28/11 -
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We as human beings have lived our lives on a conditional basis since God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The first condition that God gave man was that IF he ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, THEN he would surely die. Once the fruit had been eaten from the Tree, the consequences followed. The serpent was cursed to crawl on his belly and to eat dust for the remainder of his life. Eve’s (and all women henceforth) pain in childbearing was increased. Adam was cursed to a hard life of working the fields until he died.
God provided Moses with laws for the new Jewish nation as it emerged out of its captivity from Egypt. These laws are sometimes referred to as The Mosaic Law. Not only were the Ten Commandments provided to guide the Israelites in their relationship with God and each other, but approximately 600 other laws were given to provide a legal framework for this new nation. The Israelites now had to learn to live their lives free from captivity and slavery. They had to learn how to be free. They had very little education, if any, and knew nothing about living and working in a successful society. To help them be successful in creating a working society, God saw that laws were needed. These laws would aid them in governing their new society. There were laws regarding inheritance, debt, loans, dietary laws, laws for the punishment of crimes and many others. One of the most well-known laws is in Leviticus 24:19-20:
“If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him; fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured.” NIV
Because the Israelites had been used to living in a controlled environment, God knew that the laws He would give them must be quite strict. After Moses and Joseph, none of the Israelites would hold public office and to be left to their own human wisdom to guide them would have made them just as any other nation around them. These were God’s chosen people. He had a plan for Israel, but they must obey Him.
A few hundred years after Moses, during King Solomon’s time, Hammurabi, a Babylonian King created his own set of laws known as The Code of Hammurabi. When compared to The Mosaic Law, they are quite similar. It is safe to say that laws in today’s society are derived from the laws God left Moses to govern the Israelite nation. Just as every law then had a consequence, the same is true with laws today. IF you speed, THEN you get a ticket. IF, you steal, THEN, you serve jail time. These are conditions for disobeying…IF this, THEN, that.
Hence the lesson to be learned is that consequences always follow disobedience, whether it is disobeying God’s law or man’s law. Obey or be ready to pay.
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