Community Laws: Defining and Protecting the Community · These last chapters of the central law code have a “flavor” of concern for a compassionate and caring community that takes seriously the claims of kinship and the needs of the weak and vulnerable. That community itself, however, needs clear definition and measures to protect its religious distinctiveness and purity. This need explains the presence, alongside laws that immediately appeal to us by their charitable nature, of other laws that appear much harsher and exclusive.

23:1–8  The assembly of the LORD means the assembly of those who belong fully to the covenant community and gather for worship, for the reading of the law, or for festivals. This body is not quite coextensive with the whole nation, which includes various people who a…