Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Exodus 21-22
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 67
Key Verse
Exodus 21:34 — “The owner of the pit shall make it good, and give money unto the owner of them; and the dead beast shall be his.”
Devotional Thought
The thunder and smoke of Sinai have scarcely faded when Moses begins to set before Israel the everyday statutes of a holy God. Here in Exodus 21 and 22, the Ten Words become case law for a people learning to live together: the Hebrew servant who goes free in the seventh year, the bondman who loves his master and his family and chooses the awl through his ear at the doorpost, the daughter sold as a maidservant, the ox that gores, the pit left uncovered, the neighbor’s sheep stolen and repaid fourfold. It is a world of doorposts and dung heaps, of borrowed oxen and pledged cloaks. Yet the LORD is not absent from any of it. He legislates for the widow and the fatherless, for the stranger who was once a slave in Egypt, for the poor man who must not be charged usury, for the debtor whose coat must be returned before sundown. “I am gracious,” He says, and the laws read like the spelling out of His character.
June is a season of long days and growing things, of fields and gardens tending toward harvest. It is fitting that this passage keeps returning to fields and vineyards, oxen and sheep, corn and fire in the thorns. Most of us will not spend this Tuesday weighing out shekels of silver or leading an ox to the judges. But we will borrow things we did not pay for, keep what is not ours, and make promises we find inconvenient to keep. We will sit across from people who wrong us and decide what justice, and mercy, will look like. The sixth verse of Psalm 67 prays, “Then shall the earth yield her increase.” The statutes of Exodus are meant to make that possible—a society where trust holds, where the poor are not crushed, where a man’s word means something.
And in the middle of the case law stands the servant who will not go out free. He has every right to walk away, but love binds him to a household. His master bores his ear at the door, and he serves forever. Israel’s lawgiver could not have known how that small ceremony would echo: the Son of God, who “took upon him the form of a servant,” who loves His Father and His people and will not go free, who was pierced at the door of the world and serves forever. Every statute in this passage, rightly read, is a shadow cast by the One who came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.
So we read these chapters not as ancient codes for other people but as the words of our gracious God, who hears the cry of the afflicted and who has Himself entered our debt. Even the eye for eye and tooth for tooth testifies that our God takes human hurt seriously—and that He has borne that hurt Himself on a cross outside Jerusalem.
Reflection
- The servant in Exodus 21:5 refuses freedom because he loves his master, his wife, and his children. What are you clinging to that loves you back—and what are you refusing to leave, though it costs you your freedom?
- God says of the poor man’s cloak, “when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious” (Exodus 22:27). Where in your life are you the one holding the cloak—and where are you the one crying out?
Prayer
Gracious God, who set statutes before Israel at Sinai and heard the cry of the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger, we confess that we have not loved our neighbor as these judgments require. We have kept what was borrowed, delayed what was owed, and hardened our hearts toward the poor. Forgive us, and teach us to walk uprightly in the small, ordinary dealings of our days. Thank You for the Servant who would not go free, who bore the doorpost and the piercing for love of us. Cause Your face to shine upon us, that Your way may be known on earth, and that the earth may yield her increase in our own lives. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 67:1 — “God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah.”