I don’t know if you’ve heard, but rumor has it that the God of the Old Testament is a pretty angry deity. He can’t go 5 pages without punishing someone for something, preferably via smiting. And with so many rules, it’s no wonder that the Israelites run afoul of them so frequently.
If you can manage to actually read through all the laws, though, you might get the impression that God is more than smoter-in-chief. He demonstrates considerable concern for the disadvantaged, for example. One particular provision stood out to me on a recent excursion through the Pentateuch — the call to not reap every last morsel of grain, in order to leave behind something for those who don’t have their own fields or other means of obtaining food. Commandments to leave the gleanings are repeated several times in the law. That led to wonder what it means to leave gleanings in a 21st century context.
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