What Laws of the Old Testament Apply to Life Today?
Do you ever read the Old Testament and wonder what on earth building a fence around your roof or oxen goring people has to do with you today?
In his book, Making Sense of the Old Testament, Tremper Longman III makes an excellent and helpful distinction in the Mosaic laws given to Israel in the wilderness. Longman writes that the laws given to Moses reflect common treaties made in that day, where two kinds of rules were set forth: apodictic and case (p 111 ff). An apodictic law would be a universal, general principle, such as, not committing adultery, which applies at any time and place. A case law, however, addresses a particular situation, such as, what to do when someone's ox gores a man to death.
The Ten Commandments (literally, the "Ten Words" in the Hebrew) were the foundation, or core of all the other commandments. The Ten Commandments were apodictic (general principle) laws and the rest were case laws. Longman observes that all case laws flowed out of the apodictic laws (Ten Commandments).
Even more interesting is Longman's observation that Old Testament expert, Walter Kaiser, shows how almost the entire book of Deuteronomy is a commentary on the Ten Commandments:
- Deuteronomy 5-11 comments on the first commandment.
- Deuteronomy 12 comments on the first and second commandments.
- Deuteronomy 13:1-14:27 comments on the third commandment.
- Deuteronomy 14:28-16:17 comments on the fourth commandment.
- Deuteronomy 16:18-18:22 comments on the fifth commandment.
- Deuteronomy 19:1-22:8 comments on the sixth commandment.
- Deuteronomy 22:9-23:18 comments on the seventh commandment.
- Deuteronomy 23:19-24:7 comments on the eighth commandment.
- Deuteronomy 24:8-25:4 comments on the ninth commandment.
- Deuteronomy 25:5-16 comments on the tenth commandment.