Question: Aren’t the laws in the Law of Moses outdated and weird? Is there any value is studying them?
Reasonable: The Law of God that He gave through Moses is not weird. Read, for example, Exodus 21 and 22 and see how reasonable these laws were. These laws reveal a society that could order its behaviour by God’s design.
Dealing with Failure: The laws recognised that the Sin in men or women would mean they offended or harmed other men or women and so guidance was given how to deal with such things. Where the sin was expressly against God, the sacrificial law gave a way for the Israelite to approach God through a prescribed way to receive His forgiveness. Guidance was given to maintain health and a healthy life.
Practical Reasons: Sometimes the laws were very obvious in the practical outworking. Sometimes they were to keep Israel from becoming like their pagan neighbours. On a few rare occasions the reason for a law was unclear and we await scientific evidence to clarify what we don’t see at the moment. Some of the ceremonial law is repetitious as it seeks to convey the details of what needed to be done to restore a broken relationship with the Lord. For that reason it may not be the most edifying reading, and because it no longer applies to us (because Jesus has come and fulfilled the Law – see the New Testament) that should not deny value in our studying it to see how it worked in the lives of this embryonic people.
Variety: Some of the laws we find integrated within our own modern laws. Some of them fly contrary to the philosophical position we have taken today in the West (e.g. death penalty) and some of them would no longer have any relevance in our modern Western societies (e.g. laws on slavery, or the ceremonial or sacrificial laws).
Value: These were God’s laws for that society at that time. The Ten Commandments span history in their ongoing application but it is difficult to apply laws for a primitive agricultural society to our modern, highly technological society. The value in examining them is twofold: to see God’s wisdom for that nation and to observe principles that should under gird any society on this world that belongs to God.
(The above is abstracted from the book “God’s Love in the Old Testament” referred to on the blog. Use the link to go to the book for a detailed working out of this answer)
