I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 21-23.

    This passage starts with an emphasis on the importance of finding justice for those who have been murdered. When someone is found murdered and it is not known who committed the crime, the town elders of the nearest town must make an offering and take an oath that they do not know who committed the crime. This stresses the importance of finding justice for those who have been wronged. In this case, someone who has been murdered and cannot seek justice for themselves.

    The very next part of this passage suggests to me a key difference between the rules governing Israelite treatment of slaves and that of most other cultures. It lays out the provisions a man must follow if he wishes to make a woman captured in battle (and thus a slave) his wife. My reading of this is that it implies that a man was not permitted to have sexual relations with his slaves. If a man wanted to have sexual relations with his slave, he needed to marry her. Further, if he later no longer wanted to be married to her, while he was free to divorce her just as he was a wife he obtained in the normal manner, she did not return to being a slave. Instead, the slave he had made his wife would then be a free woman.