Parasha Mishpatim
53 commandments covering civil law, ethics, and the covenant ratified at Sinai.
Overview
Parasha Mishpatim follows immediately after the Ten Commandments with a detailed body of civil and moral law — covering servants, personal injury, property damage, loans, justice, and the treatment of strangers. It is the Torah first comprehensive legal code.
The Story
God gives Moses a series of laws: the treatment of Hebrew servants, penalties for violence and injury, laws of property and theft, the prohibition of oppressing strangers, the Sabbatical year, the three pilgrimage festivals, and the prohibition of boiling a kid in its mother milk. Moses reads the laws to the people; they respond: "All that God has spoken we will do and we will hear." Moses ascends the mountain for forty days to receive the stone tablets.
Significance for Noahides
Mishpatim grounds the lofty revelation of Sinai in the practical details of daily life. The laws of justice, the protection of the vulnerable, and the prohibition of bribery are universal moral imperatives. The principle "an eye for an eye" is interpreted by the rabbis as monetary compensation — a system of proportional justice, not literal retaliation.