(2) The law of Mercy.  This law is found in the instructions concerning the priesthood and the sacrifices.  Through these were seen; (a) the need of an atonement for the sinner’s guilt; (b) the need of inward cleansing on the part of all; (c) the redemption of the forfeited life of the sinner by another life being substituted in its stead and only by that means; (d) the fact that God would punish wrong-doing and reward righteousness.  This is also called “The Law of Holiness” or “The Ceremonial Law” and was intended to show Israel man’s sinfulness and how a sinful people could approach a holy God and themselves become holy.  It, therefore, deals with such matters as personal chastity, unlawful marriages and general social purity and the religious behavior by which they were to be absolved from all impurity and symbolically to be made pure again.

(3) The Law of Justice.  This is composed of miscellaneous civil, criminal, humane and sanitary laws, calculated to insure right treatment of one another and thus promote the highest happiness of all:  (a) There was to be kindness and justice to each other including slaves, and also to domestic animals; This is beautifully shown in the provisions for the treatment of the poor, the aged and the afflicted; (b) The rights of property were to be sacredly regarded and all violations of such rights severely punished as in the case of fraud or theft; (c) Laws of sanitation and health guarded the imprudent against the contraction of disease and protected the wicked or careless against its spread and thereby saved Israel from epidemics of malignant disease.  Thus the right of the innocent and helpless were insured; (d) The sanctity of the home and of personal virtue was held inviolable and every transgressor, such as the man who should commit adultery with another man’s wife, was put to death; (e) Life was to be sacred.  No man being able to give it was to take it from another and so the murderer was to pay the penalty by giving his life.

These laws were so amplified as to meet every demand of the domestic, social, civic and industrial relations of the nation.  There could hardly be designed a happier life than the proper observance of all these laws would have brought to Israel.  This legislation reached its noblest expression in the law of the neighbor:  “Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18).  It is the final word in all right relation to others.

The Journey to Kadesh-Barnea.  After camping before Sinai a little more than a year, during which tune they received the law and were gradually organized into a nation, the cloud by which they were always led from the time of their departure to their entrance to Canaan, arose from the tabernacle and set forward.  It led them by a way that we cannot now trace but which Moses says was eleven days’ journey from the sacred mountain. (Dt. 1:2).

A few notable events of this journey are recorded. (1) The fire of Jehovah that burned in the camp because of their murmuring. (2) The appointing of seventy elders to share with Moses the burden of the people. (3) The sending of the quails and the destruction of those that lusted. (4) Miriam, the sister of Moses, was smitten with leprosy because with Aaron she rebelled against Moses and spoke disrespectfully of him.