Love the Law

The verses I reference in these posts on Economic Life were not cherry picked or pulled out randomly. Several years ago, I grasped the implications of Psalm 119:97-100.

Oh, how I love your law!
I meditate on it all day long.
Your commands are always with me
and make me wiser than my enemies.
I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes.
I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts.

I had never loved the law. I simply did not care about it. I knew that Jesus was very clear that it had not been set aside, but it did not seem to be relevant to the economic and political issues that I was studying. When I discovered that love of the law is the key to wisdom, I realised that I needed to study the law in detail.

Since I gained that understanding, I have studied the Torah quite seriously. I did a course in the Hebrew language to assist. I would not say that I love it yet, but I have found it to be a rich treasure of wisdom, particularly on economic and political issues.

To support my detailed study of the law, I copied all the laws and commands in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy into a spreadsheet. I left out those that referred to the sacrifices and the priesthood, because I assumed that they had been fulfilled in Jesus and no longer needed to be obeyed. This left me with about 250 commands that I grouped together into about twenty-five categories. One of my categories was Economic Life. More than thirty commands fell into this category. I will cover them all in this series of posts. So what I am doing is quite systematic.