Working out our salvation II – an undivided heart (Exod 23:10-19)

Sitting in a restaurant or café, the most common sight one sees is couples or groups scrolling through their phone or typing messages while talking. Our attention is claimed by many things; we are bombarded with messages through social media and ads on what we are missing, how we can be more attractive, lovable, secure, happy, fulfilled. More than just our attention, our very heart is divided and pulling us in all directions. While phones and social media are modern phenomena, the difficulty of keeping the heart undivided and focused on God is nothing new. In the ancient world, the presence of the gods in human affairs was taken for granted and, like all the things that tempt us today with the hope of happiness, the gods were seen as the key to a good life. For Israel, as for us, to seek satisfaction and fulfilment outside the one true God is the greatest temptation.

In my last post, we have seen how Israel’s defining moment, coming out of slavery, called for a changed life that was patterned on what God had done for them. It was expressed in the Sabbath rest for all and in offerings at specific festivals as a token of gratitude for the Lord’s provision. Another aspect that needed reinforcing was the fact that it was God and God alone who brought them out of slavery. He had no helper, no other gods who acted alongside Him. Thus, the seemingly abrupt command in Exod 23:13 about not mentioning the name of other gods returns us to the fundamentals of faith. Mentioning the gods has the sense of invoking or praising them, i.e. turning to them for help and acknowledging them. The pagan world saw a god behind every natural phenomenon (the sun, the earth, the rain), thus the prohibition is appropriate in the context of agricultural work. When Israel practised the Sabbath, they expressed their trust in God, but it would have been tempting to cover all bases and appeal to other gods, too, just to make sure of a good harvest. The problem, then, is not simply the choice of either-or, but the worship of God AND other gods.

The final rulings relating to the feasts (Exod 23:18-19) likewise speak of the need for single-minded commitment to the Lord, expressed through symbolic actions. First, Israel is exhorted not to offer leavened bread with their sacrifice. Although the absence of leaven at the Passover was due to Israel’s haste in getting out of Egypt, it later came to symbolise evil and corruption because the process is a form of fermentation, which is associated with decomposition and decay (see my post on the Feast of Unleavened Bread here). Thus, adding leaven to a sacrifice expressed the kind of divided attitude that mixed good and evil together. The fat of an animal sacrifice always belonged to God (it was seen as the richest portion) and leaving it overnight might have meant a delay in offering it to the Lord, hence communicating half-heartedness. Conversely, giving the best of the first fruits (v.19) expressed devotion. Finally, the command not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk, though baffling, may again address the same issue. A mother-goat’s milk was life-giving substance for its young, but in this practice, it is used in a process that involves death.[1] Thus, once again, two incompatible elements, life and death are mingling together.

Half-heartedness and divided loyalties take so many forms and the lesson of commitment to God is a hard one to learn. It should not surprise us then that woven into so many of Israel’s different practices are actions that reinforce allegiance to God alone. Our issue may be trusting both the Lord AND material things, status or relationships for our fulfilment. Alternatively, our conversation can be a mixture of praises to God as well as gossip and malicious remarks (James 3:8-10). We may feel gratitude for God’s salvation but also hold grudges against others (Matt 18:27-28). Whatever, our specific temptation, Scripture calls us back into a wholehearted devotion to the God who saved us.

[1] Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, AB 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 740-42. Alternative theories for the ban on boiling the kid in its mother’s milk are that it was a pagan practice (though we have no evidence for this), or that it has a humanitarian rationale, similar to the command not to kill an animal and its young the same day (Lev 22:28). Interestingly, the prohibition about the goat and its mother’s milk was extended in rabbinic interpretation to all meat and milk, hence the Jewish practice of not eating dairy and meat products together. Milgrom’s explanation is illuminating here. ‘For milk, the life-sustaining force of the animal, should not commingle with meat, the animal that has met its death.’ Ibid., 742.

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