what we have already seen in the previous section, which will be important for our use of Old Testament law as New Testament Christians. Let’s review what we have learned from this episode and apply it to slavery, patriarchy, and polygamy. First, we should not take the case law as necessarily communicating what we might call God’s creation or Edenic ideal. God takes the people of the time in which they find themselves (in the hardness of their hearts) and moves them closer to that ideal. How do we