Innocent and Righteous - Exodus 23:4-9

23:4-5 - The next two verses deal with what to do if you find an animal lost but you know who the owner is, and of course, it says that you would help that animal if it was stuck and also return the animal to it’s rightful owner. Interestingly though, It’s not if you know the owner, it’s if it’s an enemy or “him that hateth thee.” I wonder if this means that it was obvious what the right thing to do was if the animal belonged to a friend or relative, but it had to be spelled out if it was someone that you didn’t like. It’s interesting to think about, if you would let an animal suffer just because you didn’t want to help the person that you didn’t like. The IM notes that these verses decry “where many people refuse to get involved in the problems or misfortunes of their neighbors.” I think that boundaries are important but that people should help too. It can be a fine line.

23:6-9 – I’m not exactly sure what these next two verses are saying, but from what I can deduce from context, it’s saying to not get involved in causes that are unjust or that take advantage of the poor and to be honest and protect the “innocent and righteous.” I think that so many people think that “protecting the innocent and righteous” means to like stand up for them if they are seen to be being abused or to tell someone to “back off” if they are seen hitting their kid in public or something like that, but I think that it’s so much more than that. Standing up for the innocent or the righteous or the poor or the disenfranchised means voting for public policies and politicians that champion their causes. There are so many of our politicians right now that cater to big business and enact policies that give them even more power and money. Those businesses want laws enacted that cripple the rights of their workers, poison the environment, and give them tax breaks. We can discuss the ethics of those policies all day long but ultimately look at how the company leadership lives and how their average employee lives and ask yourself if that’s protecting the “little guy.” I think that so much of the spirit of these laws are about considering the situation of those less fortunate, because we’ve talked before about how everything that we have is given by God, therefore our social and economic status has nothing to do with us personally and is all about God’s mercy.

Even the next two verses condemn bribes and oppression, which goes back to, how do we stand up for the “innocent and righteous?” Is it by voting for politicians who want to give big business LESS oversight, big bail outs from the government, and less taxes that are spent on social programs? And it’s not just the presidential elections, these are elections that occur on the local level too. My grandma lives in a small town, and the city council voted to give a gravel pit business a permit to dig up the side of a mountain by her house. Now, not only will that absolutely destroy the view but it ruins the water table to her house meaning that her house will no longer be able to pull water from the well that’s supplied it for the past 70 years. Is that just? She got a lawyer and the city council response was “this business is paying us to vote this way, we don’t care if you won’t have any water to your house, deal with it.” Is that the attitude of someone who is protecting the innocent and righteous? These people are elected in local elections, not presidential ones. If more people had gone to the city council and said “this is unjust and we won’t vote for you again if you do this,” then they would have eventually had to rescind the digging permit. But no one did, no one cared, no one got involved. That’s an example of what this law means I think.