Deuteronomy 19–25

Specific Laws for a Chosen People

Deuteronomy 19–25 contains specific laws and commandments concerning many different areas of daily life, including farming, family relationships, warfare, religious cleanliness, and doing business. Some of these laws may sound odd, but each is based on some principle the Lord wanted Israel to remember. By giving these rules and commandments, the Lord provided continual, sometimes daily, reminders of principles He wanted the Israelites to learn. For example, in Deuteronomy 22:9 the Lord told the Israelites not to sow a field with two different kinds of seeds. Sowing seeds was an important part of life, and whenever they sowed they were reminded that, as Israelites, they were not to mix their seed with another, or, in other words, they were not to marry out of the covenant. Some of the principles behind the laws in Deuteronomy 19–25 may be harder to see than others, but if we read these chapters and seek for the principle that could be drawn from each specific practice, we may find that these laws are not so strange at all—especially for a people “slow to remember the Lord their God” (Mosiah 13:29).