March 1, 2022: Day 46 – Deuteronomy 21-25 and Mark 11

Moses prepares the people of Israel to take over the land flowing with milk and honey and provides them with even more laws which they have to follow.  Chapter 21 deals with how to handle a dead body and who is at fault and how to absolve the closest town from a death that is not attributed to anyone.  In that chapter we begin a series of laws dealing with purity of women and the responsibility of men to take as wives and honor the children of all of their wives.  Remember, this was a polygamous society so very different from what we know.

Chapter 22 describes the responsibilities that we have to our neighbor, whether we think we have to or not, we need to look out for our neighbors.  Chapter 23 describes who is welcome and who is not welcome to worship the Lord God, and it is all dependent upon their nationality.  Again, very different from our approach today.  24 contains a number of different laws from kidnapping to paying the wages of the poor before nightfall comes.  

Mark gives us the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Remember, we are one week away from the death of Jesus so the time is waning.  He clears out the temple because of the money changers and declares that the temple is to be a house of the Lord, not a house of commerce.