As the frame for the law, the Mosaic covenant defines the limits of the law's

content and primary application. Moreover, the covenant frame stretches and
hangs the canvas of the law so that those who look at it can see it well and
become sensitive to the spirit with which God gave it to Israel. The spirit of the law
is basically this: God expects the people whom he has redeemed (see Exod. 19:4)
to take their covenant commitment to him seriously (Exod. 19:5a) because he
takes his covenant commitment to them seriously (Exod. i9:5b-6a).
The first list of key words for the Old Testament law occurs in Genesis 26:5, where
the LORD himself testified to Isaac that "Abraham obeyed me and kept my
requirements, my commands, my decrees, and my laws" (Gen. 26:5). This
combination of terms apparently refers to the Mosaic law as given at Sinai (e.g.,
Deut. 11:1). True, Abraham did not live under the law. But Moses as the writer of
the Pentateuch was already living under the law when he wrote Genesis. Since
Abraham was a righteous man, Moses therefore described him in terms of the law
which defined righteous living in Moses" day, that is, in his own mind and in the
minds of his readers.
Any one of the terms in Genesis 26:5, or almost any combination of them, can
refer to the Mosaic law in general, yet each of them also carries relatively distinct
nuances even when they refer to the same body of laws. The Old Testament law is
basically a combination of two types of law: divine decrees and divinely
determined judicial ordinances or precedents, some of which were very similar to
other ancient Near Eastern laws. Other words that refer to or describe the Mosaic
law relate in various ways to these decrees and ordinances.
The analysis of Old Testament law has focused for several decades on the
distinction between laws that unconditionally and categorically assert right and
wrong (apodictic law) and laws that define specific cases and prescribed legal
consequences (case or casuistic law).ia The latter is the conditional ("If...then...")
case law while the former expresses categorical affirmations or prohibitions such
as those found in the Ten Commandments. Each commandment of apodictic law
applies to every case that could possibly be covered by the word used. It refers to
no individual cases and no punishments. This means, "It keeps the strictly legal
purpose of the commandments in the background, thus making their moral import
stand out more clearly."A3
The study of the formal apodictic and case law styles has undergone considerable
refinement and modification in recent decades. Case laws, for example, are
sometimes divided into two main types: first, remedial laws in which the "if 5 clause

described the vi- olation of someone's rights and the "then" clause prescribed the
appropriate compensation or retaliation (e.g., Exod. 21:20 "If a man beats his male
or female slave