"I the Lord do not change" (Malachi 3:6),
the same yesterday, today, forever (Hebrews 13:8).
Words etched into pulpits and whispered over bread,
as if constancy were the highest virtue,
as if sameness were holiness itself.
So tell me, when you hold this book close to your chest,
do you see the slave's back breaking under the rod?
"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you;
from them you may buy slaves" (Leviticus 25:44).
And if the slave does not die but lingers for a day or two—
well, the owner is not to be punished,
because "the slave is his property" (Exodus 21:21).
Immutable, they say. Righteousness carved in stone.
And what of the violated woman,
dragged into the field, her scream lost in the open sky?
"If a man meets a virgin not pledged to be married
and rapes her, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver.
She shall be his wife because he violated her" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).
Justice wrapped in a bride price,
her future chained to the hands that tore it away.
Unchanging, they say, as the stars stay fixed in their places.
What of Lot, offering his daughters
to the mob outside his door?
"Do not do anything to these men,
for they have come under the protection of my roof.
Here, take my daughters instead" (Genesis 19:8).
We tell that story to show God's wrath,
to warn of cities turned to salt—
but never to ask what kind of protection
puts daughters in the mouths of wolves.
Or the Levite who sliced his concubine into twelve pieces
and sent her across Israel's borders,
a grotesque letter carried by flesh.
She was not even given a name (Judges 19).
Was this righteousness?
Does justice walk with a knife
and parcel itself out in bloody fragments?
And still we hear:
"His ways are higher than your ways,
and his thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9).
An explanation wrapped in mystery,
so we do not ask what it means to be bound
to laws that bless injustice with divine ink.
The unchanging God said it; that makes it holy.
Jesus himself said,
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law;
I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).
Fulfill them—those ancient commands,
those absurdities we dare not examine too closely.
The whip, the silver shekels, the offering of daughters—
all part of a holy plan, a mosaic of obedience.
But of course, none of that matters.
Because if God commanded it, it had to be just, right?
Every lash and every broken promise,
every child burned in conquest,
every nameless woman discarded in a field—
all righteous, all holy, all beyond our grasp.
Immutable, they say.
Immutable, because holiness is always holy
if spoken by a voice wrapped in light.
Immutable, because injustice can wear
the robes of justice if a deity wills it so.
