How to Read Biblical Law
Examine how legal texts address particular situations, organize communal life, and function within biblical narratives and collections.
“Biblical law” names several kinds of ancient legal literature
Biblical books preserve direct commands, conditional case laws, ritual instructions, speeches, and larger legal collections. These texts address such matters as worship, courts, injury, property, debt, labor, family, food, purity, land, and care for vulnerable people.
The laws help define communal responsibilities and institutions within the worlds described by the Bible. They also form part of larger narratives about covenant, identity, worship, land, exile, and restoration. They are not arranged as a single modern statute book, and scholars continue to examine how particular collections developed, related to practice, and were interpreted in later periods.
Calling a passage biblical law identifies its literary and historical setting. It does not, by itself, determine how the passage should be applied today.
Read a law in more than one frame
Try it yourself: Exodus 21:28–36
This passage presents a sequence of legal cases. The opening condition in each case is shown in bold. Notice how the result changes when the circumstances change.
28 If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.
29 But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.
30 If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid upon him.
31 Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter, according to this judgment shall it be done unto him.
32 If the ox shall push a manservant or a maidservant; he shall give unto their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.
33 And if a man shall open a pit, or if a man shall dig a pit, and not cover it, and an ox or an ass fall therein;
34 The owner of the pit shall make it good, and give money unto the owner of them; and the dead beast shall be his.
35 And if one man’s ox hurt another’s, that he die; then they shall sell the live ox, and divide the money of it; and the dead ox also they shall divide.
36 Or if it be known that the ox hath used to push in time past, and his owner hath not kept him in; he shall surely pay ox for ox; and the dead shall be his own.
Exodus 21:28–36 · KJV- List the facts introduced in each bold condition—for example, whether the animal had previously been dangerous and whether its owner had been warned.
- Beside each condition, write the response or consequence that follows.
- Compare the cases. Which changed fact appears to change responsibility or restitution?
- Record what the passage explicitly states before proposing why the cases differ.