| “Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers [different] seeds … Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together … Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together” (Deuteronomy 22:9-11). |
| Perhaps you are surprised that the Lord would give these instructions to the children of Israel. After all, what could be wrong with sowing a vineyard (a field where you grow grapes) with different kinds of seeds? When I was growing up, I lived on a fruit farm, and we used to grow grapes. We grew several different kinds of grapes — some were purple, some were red, and some were green. We grew them in the same field, but the Israelites were not to do that. |
| Also, they were not to plow with an ox and an ass (a donkey) together. They probably would not work very well together, for an ox tends to go slowly and steadily, while a donkey might be stubborn and slow sometimes, and want to go fast at other times. |
| Finally, they were not to make a piece of clothing with different kinds of material. They were not to mix wool and linen in the same piece of clothing. Today many different kinds of material are used to make clothing. Some of it is natural material, such as wool, but other material is synthetic, or manmade, such as rayon, nylon, acrylic, Gore-Tex, spandex, etc. More than half of the fibers used in clothing today are synthetic. In many cases these different kinds of fibers are mixed together in a piece of clothing. Again, the children of Israel were not to do this. |
| They did not understand why the Lord told them to do this, but there is a lesson for us in what the Lord told them. God does not like mixtures, because it reminds us that you and I, as Christians, are not to mix with this world. A few days ago, we saw that the Israelites were not to eat land animals unless they had a cloven hoof, and we saw that this also teaches us the truth of separation. God wants His people to be separate from this world, and all of these mixtures in our verses for today were telling the Israelites not to mix things. We are not under the law today, but we can remember the lesson that God teaches us in these instructions. |
