EXPOSITION
THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT, (Exodus 20:1-26. Exodus 20:22, to Exodus 22:1-31. Exodus 22:23). The Decalogue is followed by a series of laws, civil, social, and religious, which occupy the remainder of Exodus 20:1-26. and the whole of the three following chapters (Exodus 21:1-36; Exodus 22:1-31. and 23.). It appears from Exodus 24:1-18. that these laws, received by Moses on Sinai, immediately after the delivery of the ten commandments, were at once committed to writing and collected into a book, which was known as "the Book of the Covenant" (Exodus 24:7), and was regarded as a specially sacred volume. The document, as it has come down to us, "cannot be regarded as a strictly systematic whole" (Canon Cook): yet still, it is not wholly unsystematic,but aims in some degree at an orderly arrangement. First and foremost are placed the laws which concern the worship of God, which are two in number:—
1. Against idols;
2. Concerning altars (Exodus 20:23-26).
Then follow the laws respecting what our legal writers call "the rights of persons"—which occupy thirty-two verses of Exodus 21:1-36. and fall under some twenty different heads, beginning with the rights of slaves, and terminating with the compensation to be made for injuries to the person caused by cattle. The third section is upon "the rights of property," and extends from Exodus 21:33, to Exodus 22:15, including some ten or twelve enactments. After this we can only say that the laws are mixed, some being concerned with Divine things (as Exodus 22:20, Exodus 22:29, Exodus 22:30; and Exodus 23:10-19): others with human, and these last being of various kinds, all, however, more or less "connected with the civil organization of the state" (Kalisch). In the fourth section the enactments seem to fall under about twenty-five heads. The result is that the "Book of the Covenant" contains, in little more than three chapters, about seventy distinct laws.