Lyrics · Exodus
Blood of the Covenant
Exodus 21:1-24:18
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About this song
About this song
This song belongs to the Exodus collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.
- Bible book
- Exodus
- Collection
- Exodus
- Musical styles
- World Music
About the passage
Exodus 21: The covenant reaches the doorway, the sickbed, and the open pit
Exodus 21 moves from Sinai’s compact commandments into case law, where responsibility has to be worked out inside households, injuries, property ownership, and unequal social status. A Hebrew male servant receives a limit on service, yet family rules can make release painfully complicated. A daughter sold into a household receives protections tied to marriage obligations without the institution itself disappearing. Killing is distinguished by intent, kidnapping is condemned, and bodily injury generates compensation, punishment, or release depending on the case. The chapter does not hide the lower legal status of enslaved people, even while granting them specific protections. Liability then reaches animal owners and people who create hazards. A previously dangerous ox changes its owner’s responsibility, and an uncovered pit creates an obligation even without hostile intent. The chapter’s many distinctions keep justice from becoming a single slogan. Authority, ownership, violence, and negligence all carry consequences shaped by what was known and what was done.
Study Exodus 21 in depthExodus 22: What is owed, what is protected, and whose cry is heard
Exodus 22 begins with restitution for theft and damage, then widens into questions of custody, borrowing, marriage obligations, worship, lending, and protection of people with less power. Different losses produce different payments, and possession alone is not treated as proof of theft when property disappears. Oaths, judges, evidence, and the terms under which goods changed hands all matter. The chapter then places severe boundaries around sorcery, bestiality, and sacrifice to other gods before turning toward strangers, widows, fatherless children, and poor borrowers. Here Egypt becomes an ethical memory: Israel knows what it means to be a stranger, and the LORD promises to hear the cries of those who are afflicted. Even a lawful pledge has to be returned by sunset when it is also someone’s only covering. The chapter closes with first claims on produce and firstborns, respect for authority, and a food restriction that reaches all the way to meat torn in the field.
Study Exodus 22 in depthExodus 23: Justice without favorites, rest without exceptions
Exodus 23 gathers courtroom integrity, treatment of enemies, agricultural rest, annual worship, and the journey toward the promised land into one covenant frame. False reports, majority pressure, favoritism, and bribes are all denied the right to determine judgment, while even an enemy’s wandering or burdened animal still creates an obligation. Rest then extends beyond one weekly schedule to the field itself, where the seventh year leaves produce for the poor and the beasts. Three annual feasts bind agricultural abundance to remembered deliverance from Egypt. The chapter then looks ahead: an angel will go before Israel, bearing extraordinary authority because God’s name is in him. Entry into the land remains tied to exclusive worship and is described as gradual rather than instantaneous, since empty territory brings its own danger. The promises are large, but the chapter keeps giving them practical edges: witnesses, livestock, fields, calendars, roads, boundaries, and the risks of adopting another people’s gods.
Study Exodus 23 in depth