Law

What the Law is

The first five books are called the Law, but the name can mislead. In Hebrew they are the Torah, which means instruction or teaching, and most of their content is story rather than statute. Genesis contains no laws at all.

They run from the creation of the world to Israel standing on the edge of the promised land, and they set up everything that follows: a good world, a broken one, and a God who binds himself by promise to put it right through a particular family.

How to read them

Read the narrative first and the legal material second. The laws in Exodus through Deuteronomy are given inside a story — after the rescue from Egypt, not before it — and that order matters to how Christians have always understood them. Christians across traditions agree that these books are scripture and that Christ fulfils them; they differ on how particular commands apply now, so hold those questions lightly and read for the shape of the whole.