The laws continue in chapters 22 and 23 — dozens of specific cases, each one a window into what God’s justice looks like when it touches the ground of real life. Restitution for stolen oxen. Care for a borrowed animal that gets hurt. The rights of a woman who has been taken advantage of. What to do with a sorceress, with a foreigner, with a judge who takes bribes, with a poor man whose cloak has been taken as a pledge.

One thread runs through all of them: the people on the margins are not invisible to God’s law. They are centred by it.

Do not oppress a foreigner. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. Do not charge interest to the poor. These are not social policies added as an afterthought. They are the heartbeat of a God who has always moved toward the vulnerable. Any reading of Scripture that produces contempt for the poor and the stranger has missed something fundamental about the God who wrote it.

Exodus 23 moves into the rhythm of the year: sabbath for the land, three festivals, the promise of an angel going before them into the land. God promises to drive out the nations little by little — not all at once, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals multiply against them. He will do it at the pace that the situation can bear.

— Little by little. God’s deliverances are sometimes total and immediate. But often they come incrementally — at the pace the person or the people can receive and hold. The process is part of the provision.

God does not always clear the land in a day. Sometimes the little by little is the mercy — because if everything were removed at once, something worse would fill the space. Trust the pace of what He is doing. The incremental is not the slow. It is the wise.

Chapter 24 is where everything culminates — and it is one of the most extraordinary scenes in Exodus. Moses writes down everything the Lord has said. He rises early in the morning, builds an altar at the foot of the mountain, and sets up twelve stone pillars — one for each tribe. Young men offer burnt offerings and peace offerings. And Moses takes half the blood in basins.

He reads the Book of the Covenant to the people. They say: we will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey. And Moses takes the blood and sprinkles it on the people. And says:

“This is the blood of the covenant

that the Lord has made with you

in accordance with all these words.”

— Exodus 24:8