COMMANDS, STATUTES DECREES, ORDINANCES AND JUDGMENTS
It often seems true that the brightest people become lawyers. They must study for years and pass rigorous tests before they can go into professional practice. In a sense, it is also necessary for religious people to become lawyers so that they can take care of their own legal business with God. And, consistent with what God commands, they will help other who struggle to understand the law. The law is not easy to understand and we all need a little bit of help because the concept of law in the Bible is pervasive and confusing. We create problems for ourselves and others, however, when we depend on others for instruction about the law, when we really should be listening to God’s Spoken Voice.

Frequency of the word “law” and various related words (i.e. commandment, statutes, decrees, ordinances and judgments) strongly suggest that they are all very important to God. Jews, therefore, take it all very seriously. Christians, on the other hand, tend to avoid and discount any scriptures that hint at legalism because they have been told, and they have read that they are no longer under the law. Both religions have clear scripture to support their doctrines. But, the way we see it, both religions are confused and in error because they think that all Biblical references to the law are to the Law of Moses. This wrong belief is part of the reason why God calls The Law a Stumbling Block

Like most Biblical concepts, the law and its many sub-components are not as simple as our common understanding of the individual words might suggest. They are filled with nuance that must be understood in order to comprehend God’s use of the words in various places in the Bible. In this series of pages we will help readers come to the right interpretation of admittedly difficult scriptures that will unravel the deep meaning of the law.

We will begin by looking at the definitions of the Hebrew words commonly translated as Law, Laws, Commands, Commandments, Statutes, Decrees, Ordinances and Judgments.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: We have included only the Hebrew words for law in the above table because there is only one Greek word for law: “nomos.” Nomos is translated as “law” one hundred and fifty-eight times in the in the King James Version of the New Testament. In the Greek Septuagint, “towrah” is always translated as “nomos.”

It is helpful to understand that “nomos” does not refer exclusively to the law of God or the law of Moses. It can refer to any law made by God or man.

Unfortunately, this table is only moderately instructive in unraveling the confusion about the law and related concepts.Nevertheless, we can learn the following important facts from the definitions of Hebrew words:

Organizing the information like this we see even more clearly the overlaps and duplications in definitions of Hebrew words that relate to laws and commandments. This might cause us to wonder why God used so many different words to describe one concept.

To the logical human mind, it seems like God could have made the Bible easier to understand and shorter if he had used just one or two words to represent laws and commandments. And the matter is made is made much more complicated and confusing because different translators of the Bible have often used different words to translate one Hebrew word. So, when we consider that the Bible is full of redundancies, repetitions and wrong translations, there is little wonder that we are confused.

The first thing we need to recognize is that God is not the one who is confused. The confusion exists only in the minds of the multitude of Bible translators who used only their intellect to interpret the original Hebrew and Greek words without listening to God’s voice. This is why God can say that the scribes who translated God’s ordinances lied in their writing because they rejected God’s spoken word (i.e. Dabar).

The problem is further aggravated by religious people who insist on interpreting what they read in the Bible literally — not symbolically. The result of this process is religion totally misses the meaning of God’s spoken word.

This situation might seem to be unredeemable until we consider that God still speaks to his people. Yes the Bible is full of MYSTERY and  Symbols, Signs, Types, Allegories, Parables, Copies, Shadows and Patterns that are impossible to understand. But this is OK in God’s mind because he never intended that the manna of the written word would be the source of life for his people. It has always been true, and is still true that spiritual life exists for those who listen to God’s voice. Thus the redemption for the seemingly unredeemable situation exists in the spoken words of God — not in the written words of the law.

The way we see it, God made it complicated to understand and manage so that we would sooner, or later, tire of trying to keep it all straight in our minds and tire of doing whatever the law says according to our literal understanding of it. Trying to keep it straight and do it requires all of our fleshly capabilities which God wants us to stop using so that we will instead start listening to and obeying his voice — not the teachings of religious leaders who make and enforce religious laws. This is the essence of the New Covenant and of the Sabbath Rest.

We are not at rest while keeping all the laws that religions — including Judaism and Christianity — require of its adherents. Law-keeping requires mental attention and physical work. Even going to church on Sunday and Synagogue on Saturday and praying is work in God’s view. These routine religious activities, along with Bible reading and prayer, are symbolically represented as manna which the Israelites were commanded to gather every day according to the Law of Moses.

It is important to recognize that the gathering of manna ceased when Israel entered the Promised Land because it was and is a place of rest. It makes one mentally and physically tired just thinking about the difficulty of keeping all the laws, commandments and such. Now we can begin to understand what Jesus meant about his yoke being easy and his burden light.

When we stop to consider that what he ultimately wants is for us to learn from him by listening to his voice instead of learning from the written word or human spoken words, the redundancies, repetitions and mistranslations begin to make sense. We begin to understand what Jesus said regarding God looking for is people who will worship him in Spirit and truth. — not in the flesh.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: See Two Covenants for more about Spirit and flesh.

Although God is looking for people who will worship in spirit and truth and not in the flesh, we are all consigned to first worship him in the flesh. This is a hard fact to grasp, but scripture makes it all too plain that this is the wilderness journey that no one can escape. Those who recognize this fact will do well to expedite the process through serious, diligent STUDY.