Annual Reading Schedule - Torah Given Through Mosheh - Week 46 - Various Laws & Penalties (Deuteronomy 17:14-23:25)

There are three places in the Torah that teach "eye for eye", "tooth for tooth", etc.. Those include:
1) When a pregnant woman is hit and children come out (Exodus 21:24)
2) When a blemish is inflicted upon a neighbor (Leviticus 24:20)
3) When someone bears false witness (Deuteronomy 19:21)

Yahushua was not teaching in Matthew 5:38-39 that there should be no penalties for these things. Yahushua was teaching to yield to those who harm us and not seek to harm them back. Yahushua was teaching forgiveness to others which then can lead to their repentance. If the person who harmed us has realized what they did wrong and repented, we should forgive them. The law does not completely prohibit forgiveness. However, while we are all given time from Yahweh to repent, that doesn't mean there will be no penalties. At some point, there can be penalties if Yahweh determines there to be. Also, in a situation where we are living "in the Kingdom" with the proper Yisra'elite judicial system in place, elders, priests, King, etc., there could be times where the law "And let your eye not pardon" (Deuteronomy 19:21) would be in effect in certain situations. In society, if there are never any penalties, nobody would fear and some could feel emboldened to do as they want. Sometimes judgments must be passed speedily (Ecclesiastes 8:11) to deter people from doing evil and send a clear message (i.e. "And let the rest hear and fear, and never again do this evil matter in your midst." – Deuteronomy 19:20).

However, in saying that Yahushua was teaching to yield to those who harm us and not seek to harm them back, that doesn't mean we can't defend ourselves in all situations or that we should never physically attack someone. See the reading notes for Week 27 of the Annual Reading Schedule, specifically the question "What does it mean to "not stand against the blood of your neighbor" as mentioned in Leviticus 19:16?". Yahushua was teaching we should not harm them back IN AN ATTEMPT TO EXECUTE JUDGMENT ON THEM. There is due process in the Torah which must be followed. We can't just go around executing judgment without due process.

In Deuteronomy 22:11 it states to not put on a garment of different kinds, of wool and linen together. A similar command is found in Leviticus 19:19 to not put on a garment woven of two sorts of thread. Three possible views on this are:

1) Avoid any garment mixing plant and animal threads/fibers together, or
2) Avoid any garment mixing any two different threads/fibers together, or
3) Avoid any garment mixing specifically wool and linen only together

These views result from three ways of viewing Deuteronomy 22:11. Deuteronomy 22:11, which specifically mentions wool and linen, can be viewed either as

1) Very specifically identifying what is prohibited from Leviticus 19:19, or
2) Just giving one of many possible examples of what is prohibited in Leviticus 19:19.

I’m not 100% certain on the correct interpretation, so to be sure I’m not breaking the command I choose to avoid mixing any two threads to the best of my ability. However, my views on the details of this have changed over time.

For many years I interpreted this to mean to include also to not wear any shirts with 50% cotton and 50% polyester. I also had removed tags in clothing for years, not knowing what the tags were made out of and seeing that tags on cotton shirts did not seem to be made from cotton. However, I now think that it’s possible, based on information online, that maybe polyester and certain other synthetic fibers should be treated similar to how metal is treated in this verse:

Exodus 39:3 And they beat out sheets of gold and cut it into threads, to work it in with the blue and purple and scarlet material, and the fine linen, the work of a skilled workman.

Here in Exodus 39:3 we see they wove in gold thread, essentially, with linen. I think in the past I was hesitant to trust anyone about anything and didn’t want to say polyester is OK or that mixing it with cotton is OK if I am wrong, because I don’t want to sin or cause others to sin; but the information I see online indicates that polyester and a few other synthetic fibers are actually probably sourced from oil.

After thinking about this, I would categorize oil in the same category as metal: it’s not a plant, it’s not an animal, it’s just something out of the ground. Yes oil may have been from an organic material in the past, but I certainly wouldn’t categorize it as a plant or animal in its current state. So I think my view is now that polyester is probably OK to use, and even to mix in with other fibers, because all the information I can find indicates it’s sourced from oil which I would say makes it in the same category as gold or any other mineral or thing out of the ground.

We can probably think of polyester as a plastic, basically. When it is heated, it could melt from what I found online, and function different from how plants or animals would under heat, which is additional evidence it’s probably right to categorize polyester and other oil-based synthetic fibers in a different category than plants or animals – like metal is separate and can be mixed in as we see in Exodus 39:3.

I do not see Deuteronomy 22:11 being applied to sandals, only garments, although I do try to make sure I do not have shoes with both plant and animal content. Most of the shoes I wear are 100% man-made or a mixture of man-made materials along with plant materials (i.e. rubber, etc.).

Many of the commandments in Deuteronomy 22 are related. For example:

1) No various seeds in vineyard
2) No mixing of two different animals
3) No garments of various kinds of thread
4) Laws related to when a man goes into a woman

While these laws may appear at first to be unrelated, we can see the purity and set-apartness of Yahweh's people. We are not a common people. Remember that in Genesis 1 the light and the darkness were separated. So there is an order to all things. Just as we are not to sow the field with mixed seed, a woman is not supposed to have seed from more than one man in her either. In fact, if you study the various Hebrew words for "whore", "whoredom", "whoring" etc. you will find that in the ancient Hebrew pictographs it shows more depth as to what these words mean because of the letters nun and taw which may be in some of these Hebrew words. The letter nun is a picture of a seed (sperm-like appearance in ancient Hebrew) and the letter taw is the picture of two crossed sticks that can mean "mark" or "covenant". When a man and woman join together as one flesh, that is part of the covenant process – but she should only be doing that process with one man. We are to have pure clean garments of one kind. Everything done according to Yahweh's perfect order is done in a way that does not combine things that should not be joined together. Sha'ul (Paulus – Paul) discusses this also in 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 and 2 Corinthians 6:14-17.

Also, refer to Jeremiah 3:1 which shows that the woman is like the land, which then shows the man is like the seed, which then shows a clear link between these commands related to a man and woman staying pure and not sowing your field with mixed seed.