When you read through the Bible the genre and style of writing changes from book to book and sometimes chapter to chapter.

Narrative, back-story, vignettes of characters, laws, rules, census, genealogies, land divisions, narrative story again, poetry, and so on.

As I finished reading the 5 books of Moses, Torah, or the Pentateuch, I had to remind myself that I am not reading a book of rules and laws for me to follow.

If you wanted it to be a law manual then you are going to notice that it is incomplete. There aren't enough rules to manage a community.

But another thing to notice is that the laws unfold after the narrative parts are told. Here receive the first 10 commandments, immediately fail to follow the first two and now you get more laws. Suffer from a plague and now you have regulations about dead bodies.

There is a story being told.

We see and understand this in the modern books we read because the y use modern formats and styles that we are familiar with. In this ancient text we have to work to see the patterns, hyperlinks and ancient story telling to not misinterpret the purpose and meaning of the text.

The narrative of the Law shows how a people were chosen by God, the only God, to become partners, set apart from all other nations as a kingdom of priests, to put on display for all nations the justice, steadfast love, and presence of this God. The story isn't sterile and perfect but in fact a struggle for the people as they are shaped into this partner, they need forgiveness and second chances, they need help to become this partner and that is what we read about.

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