The Lord is preparing the Israelites to form their own government and society in the promised land. He's providing them with legal regulations, with instructions for how to treat their fellow man, and with instructions for how to relate to Him. They are to live as God tells them to live, not as the heathen nations around them live.
To further imprint the idea of "differentness" or "separateness" upon their minds, the Lord provides this next group of instructions to illustrate His point that the people are not to mix pagan religious customs with their worship of the Lord and that they are not to intermarry with idolaters. "Keep My decrees. Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two different kinds of material." (Leviticus 19:19) The New Testament contains a similar warning about not entering into close partnerships with those who don't serve our God. "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14) A believer should not marry an unbeliever. A believer should not form a business partnership with an unbeliever. The Lord isn't saying we can't have friends who are unbelievers or that we can't work in a place where some of our co-workers aren't Christians. He's saying we can't be part of an intimate personal or business relationship with someone who doesn't share our faith. That's why He uses the term "yoked" to present us with the visual of two animals hooked together in a yoke to pull a plow or a cart or a wagon. They have to be able to pull together and work as a team. That means they must be of equal size and strength. You don't put a puny little anemic ox in a yoke with a large and muscular and robust ox. That's a recipe for disaster. In the same way, you can't form a successful partnership in marriage or in business if one of you serves the Lord (is the strong ox) and the other doesn't (is the weak ox).
Verses 20 through 22 involve a form of infidelity. "If a man sleeps with a female slave who is promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there must be due punishment. Yet they are not to be put to death, because she had not been freed. The man, however, must bring a ram to the entrance to the tent of meeting for a guilt offering to the Lord. With the ram of the guilt offering the priest is to make atonement for him before the Lord for the sin he has committed, and his sin will be forgiven." (Leviticus 19:20) Earlier in our study of the Old Testament we looked at the various types of slavery in ancient times and talked about how a person might end up in the position of a slave. One way a young woman might end up a slave is if her family was not able to provide for her or if her parents owed a debt they couldn't pay. The young woman might be taken into the household of a well-to-do man as a slave to perform household services in exchange for her room and board because her parents were too poor to keep taking care of her. Or the woman might be taken into the household of her parents' creditor to work off the debt. In many of these cases, the young woman might be betrothed by her master to one of his sons. When both she and the son to whom she was promised became of marriageable age, the wedding ceremony would take place and she would be given the status of a free woman.
Engagement in ancient times was a legal contract, almost as binding as marriage, and to be unfaithful to one's betrothed during the engagement period was treated as harshly as adultery. What we see happening in verses 20 through 22 is the young slave woman and a man other than her fiancé engaging in consensual intercourse. But because the woman is not yet a free woman, she isn't considered as guilty as the free man she's slept with. Because of her position in society, she is used to doing what she is told and feels less freedom to say "no" when this man says and does things to entice her into an illicit relationship with him. We don't know what the "due punishment" of verse 20 is, but it is not the death penalty which could be legally imposed in the Old Testament when married people were caught committing adultery. The man is the only one who must bring a guilt offering to the Lord, and that's how we know he is held more accountable than the slave woman.
The man who has had intercourse with a woman promised to someone else is a cheater and a thief. He should have regarded that woman as unapproachable, but instead he is guilty of alienating her affections from her fiancé. He has committed a trespass against both the woman (because although the text indicates she was a willing sexual partner, she was not a free woman used to making decisions for herself) and against the woman's betrothed. The Lord is teaching the Israelites, and us, to respect the relationships of others. I saw a meme posted on Facebook yesterday and agree with it wholeheartedly and feel it applies to this portion of our study today. It said, "Your soul mate is not someone else's spouse." In the case of today's study, the man's soul mate was not the woman who was legally bound to another man in a contract of engagement. He had no right to approach her the way he did. The woman bears some guilt because she could have appealed to her master or to her betrothed to defend her honor. As a slave and as an engaged woman, she was under the protection of the head of the household, but perhaps in her heart she wondered whether this man with his smooth words was a better mate for her than the man to whom she was legally engaged. As the saying goes, sometimes the reason the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence is because it's on top of the septic tank. It might look good on the surface, but underneath it's a deep and filthy trap.
Now the Lord gives some agricultural advice. "When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God." (Leviticus 19:23-25) The people will increase the fertility of these trees by leaving the fruit alone for several years. During the first three years they are not to touch the fruit. During the fourth year they are to give thanks to the Lord for the fruit and make offerings to Him for it. But only when the fifth year comes do they eat it.
I think this advice is meant to be practical and taken at face value but also I think it's meant to be of spiritual aid to the people. Waiting until the fifth year to eat the fruit teaches them patience. Living in these carnal human bodies, we all have a tendency to become impatient. When we ask the Lord to bless us or to change a situation, we want Him to do it right now, don't we? When He doesn't do it right now we often find we haven't developed much patience in our spiritual life. If the delay causes us to lose heart that God will ever come through or if it causes us to doubt God's love and His good intentions toward us, then we know we need to work on our patience skills. God will do what needs to be done in the right way and at the right time---and not a moment sooner. He will take action at the precise moment when it will bring Him the most glory and when it will strengthen our faith the most. Just like a farmer who knows better than to harvest his fields in the wrong month, the Lord doesn't bring the harvest of blessing or the harvest of change into our lives at the wrong time. Over and over and over the Bible encourages us to "wait upon the Lord" and the Bible assures us that "at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up". (Galatians 6:9)
I don't know how long you've waited for something to change. I don't know what kind of blessing or miracle you're asking the Lord for. But don't give up. Wait upon the Lord. Like the man waiting for the fifth year to harvest the fruit from a tree, we must wait for the right timing of the Lord. There have been big prayer requests the Lord has answered for me on the very day I made them and there have been big prayer requests I had to wait years to see answered. I have unbelieving relatives and friends for whom I've been praying for decades. I'm still waiting to see them come to the Lord. We must not give up, no matter how long we've been praying for a certain situation or for a certain person. The Lord wants us to develop patience and strength. He doesn't want us to be weak and fragile in our faith. The harvest could be just around the corner and He wants us to have the stamina to reap the harvest and enjoy it when it comes!
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