God's nudge. First, in Yitro, there were the Asherita di Brut, the ten utterances, or general

principles. Now in Mishpatim come the details. Here is how they begin. If you buy a Hebrew

servant to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year he

shall go free without paying anything.

But if the servant declares, I love my master and my wife and children and don't want

to go free, then his master must take him before the judges.

He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

Now there's an obvious question. Why begin here? There are 613 commandments in the terror.

Why does Mishpatim, the first law code, begin where it does?

The answer is equally obvious. The Israelites suggest endured slavery in Egypt. There must be a reason why this happened.

For God knew it was going to happen. Evidently, he intended it to happen, because centuries before,

he'd already told Abraham that it was going to happen. This is what we read in the 15th chapter of Barashitas. The sun was

setting, Abraham fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then

the Lord said to him, no, for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a

country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.

It seems that this was the necessary first experience of the Israelites as a nation.

From the very start of the human story, the God of freedom sought the free worship of free

human beings. But one after another, people abused that freedom. First Adam and Eve,

then Cain, then the generation of the flood, then the builders of Babel. God began again,

this time not with all humanity, but with one man, one woman, one family who would become

pioneers of freedom. But freedom is difficult. We each seek it for

ourselves, but we deny it to others when their freedom conflicts with ours. So deeply is this

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