LEAVING THE PAST BEHIND

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to faithhopegodlove@aol.com In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As Israel entered Canaan and took possession of the land the Lord promised, other nations outside of Canaan would try and war against Israel to take their land away. We have read earlier that any attempt to attack Israel in Canaan, at least now, would be fruitless. The Lord had promised to deliver into Israel’s hand any enemy who tried to war with them and had ordered that nations within Canaan were to be laid to waste and destroyed. There were to be no remnants of the people who worshipped false gods and idols.

Today’s passage addresses conflicts with nations outside of Canaan, specifically dealing with the matter of any Israelite who might notice a “beautiful woman…and (find themselves) attracted to her”. In these circumstances, they were allowed to take her as their wife but under certain conditions. She was to “shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured”, all acts that we customary to any woman who was entering the Israelite way of life. These acts were symbolic to leaving their prior life behind and entering into the holy family of Israel.

The man was also supposed to wait to see if the relationship was going to work out. Leaving their families for a completely new lifestyle and people had to be extremely difficult. Not all women would be able to adjust and make the change. So scripture tells us that the man was not to marry the woman until “after she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month”. This would allow time to see if things were going to work or not. If not, note that there were protections built in for the woman. The man was not to abuse her or “sell her…as a slave”. Instead, he was to “let her go wherever she wishes”.

As I read through this passage, I had to read it under the cultural contexts of the day it was written. Today, we wouldn’t think about requiring a woman to shave her head, trim her nails or cast off her old clothes as she enters into any relationship, regardless of what she represented before. That would seem odd in our time…but it wasn’t in the times of early Old Testament Israel. That was the way their culture operated.

But we can’t lose sight of the symbolic nature of the head shaving, nail trimming, clothes abandoning rites of that day. For the matter of leaving one’s prior life behind for another is more than applicable in our time for as we enter into a personal relationship with Christ Jesus, we are to be changed and transformed…leaving the world’s ways behind and adopting His ways instead. We are to live no longer for ourselves or anything else except Him…sacrificing all we were just as he sacrificed all He was for us. Consider these verses:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:22-24

When one comes to Jesus, truly they are becoming a new creation, adopting His ways over all others. We throw away our deceitful ways for a new attitude. We ever seek to walk toward perfection in righteousness and holiness, never reaching it but ever striving to get as close as we can by getting as close as we can to the Author of perfect righteousness, Jesus Christ. And we do this until that day when He calls us to Him where we won’t have to communicate with Him through the Holy Spirit but we will see Him face to face. What an awesome day that will be! Until then, let us ever seek to be like Him in every respect and carry out His last guidance to us…to make disciples, baptize, and teach all He commanded. There’s much work to be done. Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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