I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 30-31.

While we today have a problem with the command here that when a woman makes a vow it can be canceled by her father if she still lives in his household, or by her husband if she is married, there is a lesson to be learned from this.  First, if the father or husband does not see a problem with the vow when they first hear it, they lose the right to cancel it later.  Second,, we should all take the time and effort to run a commitment we are considering past at least one other person before we make it.  If you are married,  I strongly recommend running a commitment past your spouse before you make it.  If you are single, running it past your parents if they are still around (especially the one of the opposite sex to yourself) would be wise, or someone else whose judgment you trust if your parents are not an option.

One thing that struck me was the way that a bunch of laws and other instructions were placed in this account between when God told Moses to destroy the Midianites for seducing the Israelites to idolatry and the account of them doing so.  I think the writer did this to give us the sense that the laws Moses gave the people were spelled out in response to circumstances which arose as they traveled through the wilderness.  I think that the laws recorded in Exodus through Deuteronomy represented Moses’ rulings as cases were brought before him which the previously expressed law did not clearly address.  However, the writer recognized that recording all of those cases would make it too hard to follow what was a command and what was a description of the case brought before Moses.  I do not believe that all of these laws were strictly in response to the specific cases, more a matter of a case illustrated that there were areas where what had already been recorded did not give adequate guidance to resolve an issue.