Revering the Word
Deuteronomy 25 What is the significance of 39 lashes?
Good morning everyone this morning we are in Deuteronomy 25 and we have more various laws or sundry laws as they call them in this chapter. Let's begin if there is a dispute between men and they go to court and the judges decide their case and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked then it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be beaten the judges shall then make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of stripes according to his guilt. He may beat him 40 times but no more so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these and your brother is not degraded in your eyes. It's kind of an interesting passage so they limited the amount of times that you could beat this criminal so to speak to 40 times. Now because you know when you're coming to 40 let's say you were you know lashing someone and you didn't want to do it more than 40 and you were counting you may stop at 39 because what if you miscounted so you would you stop short to make sure that you don't go over the 40. Well that plays into the New Testament and let me see if I can yeah put my finger on it here second Corinthians chapter 11 the Apostle Paul is speaking and he says five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes three times I was beaten with rods once I was stoned three times I was shipwreck and he's going through some of the persecutions and things that he received so when the Jews you know when he started converting to Christianity and pronouncing faith in Jesus and the Jews persecuted him for it he five times received 39 lashes can you imagine and he kept going and doing his missionary work what a what a man he was the Apostle Paul but you see they stopped at 39 because they wanted to make sure they didn't violate the old covenant and go over 40 and it's believed many believe that Jesus also likely received 39 lashes when they were preparing him for the cross all right you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing God is like hey that ox needs to eat so you know when he's working hard for you don't don't muzzle him when brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man her husband's brother shall go into her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother her it shall be that the first one whom she bears shall assume the name of the of his dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel it it's believed that part of this is because of inheritance rights and it's not that a woman could inherit in here it land but it was more normal I guess for you know the family land inheritance to pass down to the sons of the family and if someone died and had no sons instead of losing that inheritance they would have the wife of the husband who died if the other brother wasn't married then to take the brother as a wife and then things could all stay in the family now again and we've said this many times as we've gone through this journey through the old covenant we're not in the old covenant anymore we're under a new covenant and what's not taught to us in the new covenant regarding the old is not binding so the old covenant much of it is by the way and much of it's talked about much of it's reiterated some of its strengthened but we have to have a new testament lands to understand the old and this is not something that's carried forth and talked about in the new covenant but it is something that existed then and you know sometimes I mean I guess I can understand this from an inheritance perspective or also just keeping the family name going you know but sometimes we just did not live in this era so many years ago and what God was trying to do and I just trust him I trust him and things that I don't always understand why it may go a certain way back then and I do my best to try to give us a reasonable understanding of what God was after but sometimes we just don't know everything from what was you know put in effect this many years back but I trust that God in his wisdom had good intention of it all. Verse 7 "But if the man does not desire to take his brother's wife then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say my husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel and part of it is we wanted wanting the brother's name who died to continue he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me then the elders of his city shall summon him to speak to him and if he persists and says I don't want to I don't desire to take her then his brother's wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face and she shall declare thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother's house in Israel his name shall be called the house of him whose sandal is removed. Now one of the things that's interesting is we we see something very similar to this in the book of Ruth when they went away to the land they shouldn't have went to they went to the land of Moab and there her husband died and at her mom her mother-in-law husband died too and they end up going back to their homeland and then Boaz you might recall ended up taking Ruth as his wife but someone else in a sense had this law could have been in a fact where someone else had a right to like take her first and that person had to come before the elders and say no I'm not going to take her and then Boaz was able to marry Ruth and then from that marriage if you are familiar with the book of Ruth from that marriage and they end up having children and from those children comes Jesse which comes David which then comes Jesus so through this tragic scene where Ruth's husband dies and she has to you know go back to her homeland and then ends up marrying Ruth we end up getting the miraculous birth of Jesse David and then ultimately Jesus comes from that line it's quite a special story and it illustrates that at the end of the story if you haven't read the book of Ruth we'll get to it in our in our journey probably in the not-too-distant future all right so if two men verse 11 a man and his countrymen are struggling together and the wife of one comes near to deliver the husband from the hand of the one who is striking him and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals then you shall cut off her hand you shall not show pity that's very interesting right so two men are fighting and the wife comes and grabs and seizes the genitals of the one she's trying to you know help her husband with and God is making this known that you know what he doesn't want people going after the genitals and even in this situation where they were fighting he's saying no it's not appropriate to go after someone's genitals and and I think it's interesting he must really feel strongly about this because he's he's doing it in a in a situation where even where two men are fighting and the woman's trying to defend her husband but how much more than would it mean to not mess with someone's genitals like at other times you know if there was a justifiable time maybe it would have been when you're trying to help your husband but God's saying no that's not even justifiable to go after someone's genitals so that would mean you know that's a that's a that's a thing you're just not to do and I think that's why it it's coming across this way is because he's making it very clear that's just inappropriate to to to go after someone's genitals so verse 13 you shall not have in your bag differing weights a large and a small and you know back in the day the money changers could try to disguise the weights of things in order to benefit themselves and he's saying don't even have don't have that around don't even have the ability where you could cheat like that you shall not have in your house differing measures a small and a large or a large and a small you shall not have a full and just way you shall have excuse me you shall have a full and just way you shall have a full and just measure that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you for everyone who does these things everyone who acts unjustly is an abomination to the Lord your God so to cheat in the way of things is an abomination so that's how they would know like if you were giving of gold or silver or other coins the weight of it is showed its value so they did have scales like that to measure the weight of what you are providing but there'd be ways to to disguise your coin could be made of something heavier and made to appear like something else and he doesn't want anything unjust he calls that an abomination to be unjust in that way verse 17 remember what Amalek did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt so Amalek is an enemy nation who came up against Israel when they had escaped Egypt how he met you along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were faint and weary and he did not fear God therefore it shall come about when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your strong enemies and the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven you must not forget and it's interesting that Amalek lights ended up really being trouble for Israel all throughout history and they were not it doesn't appear they were fully defeated the way that they should have been by um Israel's army and even by David David and later on you might recall that a guy by the name of Haman in the book of Esther wants to exterminate all the Jews and he is a descendant of the Amicalites and the Amicalites and the Jews have been enemies all throughout history some believe that even some of the either Arab or Palestinian nations come from the Amicalites who and they're still warring today but yeah it's interesting that this carries forth even to the book of Esther you might recall that story and that'll come up in our situation in our in our Bible reading too where you know Haman was a wicked and wanted to exterminate all the Jews but Esther was the queen of the king and she stepped in and risked her life for such a time as this and the edict to kill the Jews was removed as a result of of her efforts back in that book the book of Esther so there you have it various sundry laws all of scripture is good for us to take in and consider and we'll see you again in chapter 26 God bless you all (keyboard clicking)