Exodus

...apparently that's the title of a Bob Marley song. John-Mark got a dvd of a Bob Marley concert for the break. I like it.

But the title actually has to do with the book of scripture, not Marley's song. I'm in Jurisprudence this semester, and we were discussing the law given by God to the Hebrews in Exodus. Our professor asked for discussion on why God gave the law and why the Hebrews chose to follow it (if they did). My answer immediately came to my head, though I didn't share it: love. He gave them the law because he loved them, and they followed it because they understood that love and out of deference to their understanding of Him.

But our professor turned to a verse in Chapter 19 of Exodus, when God is explaining how he has brought the Hebrews to that point. He says something to the effect of, "remember what I did to the Egyptians." Our professor used that language to support her statement that the language constituted a threat, and thus the Hebrews obeyed the law out of "duress". If they didn't obey, God said he would do the same thing to them that he did to the Egyptians.

Yes, perhaps the Hebrews obeyed partially out of "fear" for the Lord, but this seemed to me quite an inadequate explanation. While our professor kept stating that she was simply "reading the plain meaning of the text", I felt she was stretching. Evidenced by the fact that Moses comes down from Sinai to find a people who have forgotten their God.