Parashat Mishpatim Exodus 21:1-24:18 and Exodus 30:11-16
Dear TBE Community,
After the momentous giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, the slow, sacred work of becoming a nation begins in this week’s parasha. Revelation gives way to regulation. Vision is followed by legislation. Now that the Israelites have a constitution, the grind of daily law begins.
On the heels of thunder and lightning come the mishpatim – literally laws, rules – the black letters that govern the rhythms of human life: damages and debts, labor and liability, responsibility and compromise. If Sinai was covenant proclaimed, Mishpatim is covenant practiced. Not only between God and the people, but between people and people: Holiness translated into human interaction and interconnectedness.
Among these laws one command is repeated twice:
“You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20)
In fact, no commandment is repeated more often in the entire Torah; not even the command to keep Shabbat, or to love God. Thirty-six times Torah reminds us that we were strangers in a strange land, and therefore must not treat strangers as we were once treated.
The commentators debate the paired verbs: do not wrong and do not oppress.
“Wronging” may refer to deception: do not cheat, mislead, or exploit the newcomer who does not yet know the language, the currency, the unspoken rules. Do not take advantage of the vulnerable outsider.
“Oppressing” may refer to more systemic subjugation: do not force them into labor you would not accept yourself; do not put them into a dependency from which they cannot escape. Wronging is cruel. Oppressing is more corrosive still, because it renders the other powerless, trapped, and because it willfully benefits from that weakness.
Egypt did not merely “wrong” the Israelites. Egypt made them dependent, slaves. Without divine intervention, without miracles, there was no way out.
The amazing thing about Torah is how realistic it is about human nature. Torah knows that having suffered oppression does not automatically make one incapable of oppressing others.
Experience alone does not guarantee empathy, as Nehama Leibowitz points out: “How often do we find that the slave or exile who gains power and freedom… finds compensation for former sufferings by giving free rein to tyrannical instincts when he has the opportunity to lord it over others?” (Studies in Shemot, Mishpatim 3)
Which is why the Torah offers a second version of the command:
“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9)
Rashi sees an admonishment in the first version: If you wrong and oppress the stranger, they can wrong and oppress you in turn – after all, you came from strangers, too. So just as the luck turned for the Israelites, the luck might one day turn for the stranger. But, he also adds, regarding the second version: You know the feelings of a stranger, you know how painful it is to be oppressed. So channel that!
Maybe Rashi wants to be realistic too: Sometimes, humans in a society will be decent to one another because the alternative is daunting. As we discussed in our Pirkei Avot study group yesterday: Constitutional compliance can protect everyone from unrestrained raw human nature, which is why, for example, traditionally, Jewish communities pray for the welfare of the government of the country they live in. At the same time, he appeals to the good in human nature, the capacity to have compassion, to put oneself into someone else’s shoes – to have empathy that leads to ethical and righteous choices: You know the pain. Let that knowledge influence your behavior.
Torah insists that memory become moral imagination. Revelation without compassion is incomplete. Freedom without restraint is hollow and meaningless. Empathy is the portal to making ethical and righteous choices.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch