I think God gets a bad rap concerning the Mosaic law. Some of you people tend to think was that the Mosaic law represented God's idea of a Utopian society; It wasn't. He was dealing with a tribal people just recently were removed from slavery. The treatment of women, the treatment of slaves, and the treatment of strangers were raised by the Mosaic law. Up until then none of these had any legal recourse. Also, making a law and changing the norms of a society are 2 different things. Look at Afghanistan or even Pakistan. Pakistan has had laws forbidding female circumcision for years and yet the society still practices it. Honour killings are taking place even here in Canada. Point is: you can only move a society in small increments. Given the society and time God was working with He moved things quite far.
For you who might think the Israelites would have followed God blindly consider this: The first generation{after slavery} died in the desert because they refused to follow God into the promised land. The second generation crossed the Jordan and after the waters closed up God ordered them all circumcised; Something they were commanded to do in the Mosaic law at 8 days old. Male circumcision was actually commanded as far back as Abraham(about 500 years before Moses). Yet as a group these Israelites had neglected it.
The Mosaic law was enacted without a police force. The judicial system was appointed from the tribes and likely fair but, untrained. The tribes once established were spread out with only 7 annually religious observances in the Capital to link them. Given all that; I would still rather have been found a stranger in their lands than any nation around them at the time. Actually that still holds true today.
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