Interpreting the Law of God (8)
We must always first understand the Law in its original setting.
Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely for our sake? 1 Corinthians 9.8, 9
Having considered, in the first seven installments in this series, the necessity of interpreting the Law of God , I turn now to offer some governing principles for rightly dividing the Word of truth as given through Moses to Israel (2 Tim. 2.15).
The first of these may seem obvious: We must always seek to understand the Law of God as it was first heard and understood on the part of those who received it from Moses. Right away, it seems that Paul is setting aside that principle. On closer examination, however, we can see that he is not; rather, he is using that principle to make a larger application of the Law.
God appointed His people to exercise dominion over the creation, subduing and subjecting it to human use for the purpose of advancing the goodness of God in all things (Gen. 1.26-28; Ps. 8). This involved the domestication of animals, for example, in the work of cultivating the earth. Those animals were to be worked by their human masters; however, they were not to be abused. If you used an ox to tread out your corn in ancient Israel, you were expected to allow that ox to browse freely while he worked. This statute implied a whole raft of applications concerning domesticated animals (eg., When you’re mad at your wife, don’t take it out on the dog!).
But the meaning of this commandment doesn’t stop with oxen, as Paul makes clear. Paul affirmed the original meaning of this statute simply by quoting it (Deut. 25.4), but he bore down to the principle of neighbor love implicit in it in order to make an application concerning the Corinthians’ duty to support those who “tread out the corn” in ministry among them. Which they had failed to do in Paul’s case.
Paul could perhaps have simply written, “You should have supported me, you ungrateful louts!” But instead, he appealed to the Law as it was originally given so that his readers would see themselves as guilty of failing in the righteous requirements of the Law, not in its original application, but in its deeper and more important one.
But we run the risk of fumbling those deeper and more important applications of the Law if we fail to begin our interpretation with a full and proper understanding of what the Law would have meant in the setting of those who first received it. Always begin your interpretation of the Law of God – as of the rest of Scripture –with a clear understanding of what it would have meant for those who first received it.
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