Exodus 21-24, Analysis

Exodus 21-24 was definitely quite an instructive piece of literature. It was almost raw in its nature as a text or "book" but more of reading an excerpt from a piece of non-fiction most similar to an instruction manual of some sort that you get when you buy a dissembled bike or desk. Something like being enrolled in a police academy there was definite sense of a master-slave relationship in the air. It is like something never before seen in the Torah, these chapters showed a whole new YHWH. The YHWH who is feared like the school principal in an elementary school, not even mom and dad has come on so strong as to the dos and donts of living life. It seems as if YHWH was pushed to such a point where YHWH has no choice but intervene into the lives of his children, and set the rules for the playground or else. YHWH's previous roles of guidance, assistance, and help have been abandoned and promoted to the role of almost a dictatorial one. This is a special moment between YHWH and Moses where they agree with each other that this is what is going to be done. YHWH's trust in his Children seems to have been implicitly betrayed as YHWH imposes these rules.

Another important aspect in these chapters is the strong emphasis placed on worshipping only one God. YHWH repeatedly tells Moshe in different ways that all other gods shall be abandoned whatever the situation may be. There are no excuses for worshipping other gods and that doing so will result with the most severe punishments. If you combine this with all of the other "instructions" that YHWH has mentioned, you have a situation where you will be automatically put to death if you do a vast amount of crimes and you can combine that with the crime of worshipping any other god. So you not only express your consent to obeying these instructions by worshipping YHWH, but by doing so you also accept to live an infallible lifestyle by doing so. This is quite limiting I can imagine for a people who have had no sense of YHWH's governmental prowess and all of a sudden doing what is expected to be done by this complex agreement. It now seems that though the Children are free from Egypt, "Egypt" has taken another form, in the form of YHWH.

I am not sure how YHWH feels about his chosen people if he has come to do so much for them only to place on them rules and regulations for his honor. The people seem to be forced into paying YHWH for the good deeds