Parashat Mishpatim, Selling ourselves into slavery by the work of sin.

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This week’s reading,
Shemot / Exodus 21:3-22:3
, discusses how a man is to treat his slaves if he is a slave
owner.  The Scriptures detail selling one’s self, selling one’s daughter,
and treating slaves fairly.  Shemot / Exodus
states that 21:7 ‘If a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do.  21:8 ‘If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He does not have authority to sell her to a foreign people because of his unfairness to her.  21:9 ‘If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters.  21:10 ‘If he takes to himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights.  21:11 ‘If he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of oney.  (NASB)
  Attitudes have changed over the centuries toward slavery but regardless of whether slavery was approved of or disapproved of, God needed to instruct how to treat slaves in a humane way and with respect.  Today, it is unthinkable that one could even bring one’s self to sell his own daughter into slavery being a product of his flesh and bone.  The fact that this existed is not contested because there are instances
where in the Scriptures a man has sold himself into slavery because of a great amount of debt. 
This week I want to look at how yielding ourselves to sin, draws a parallel to what we are reading here on slavery from this week’s Scripture portion?  I believe that yielding ourselves to sin after we are redeemed by the blood of Yeshua, we are essentially selling ourselves back into slavery by the work of sin.  Read More here.

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Duane D. Miller received his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. Degree in Chemical Engineering from The University of Akron Ohio. He is currently a Chemical Engineering Researcher. Duane’s research expertise has focused upon functional materials development for the control, conversion, and release of process gases in Energy production technologies. His R&D interests include computational chemistry, developing novel technologies for converting biomass to fuels and studying their fundamental interactions during the chemical conversion process. His past experience includes sorbent development for pre- and post-combustion CO2 and SO2 capture, selective absorption of H2S from methane streams, O2 capture for oxy-fuel combustion, photocatalytic reduction of alcohols, NOx reduction catalysis, the development of oxygen carriers to combust fossil fuels (CH4 and coal) for the chemical looping combustion processes, and the extraction of rare earth elements using patent pending sorbents. His research expertise has focused on operando-characterization using Infrared, Raman, and UV-Vis spectroscopy to observe the nature of the catalytic active sites and reaction intermediates under realistic reaction conditions, allowing direct correlation of molecular/electronic structures with catalyst performance during Gas-Solid / Liquid-Solid Adsorption and Photocatalytic Processes with real time online analysis of reaction products using ICP-MS and mass spectrometry. His current work involves a multi-disciplinary approach to developing, understanding, and improving the catalytic gasification of coal and methane, high temperature chemical looping combustion, and the catalytic decomposition and gasification of biomass and coal using novel microwave reactor.​ He has been studying the Hebrew Scriptures and the Torah for 20+ years and sharing what he has learned. The studies developed for MATSATI.COM are freely to be used by everyone, to God be the Glory!