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.

23:9–14  These two laws show that the old saying “cleanliness is next to godliness” is more biblical than some may have imagined! The req…