Parashat Mishpatim follows the revelation at Sinai and insists that divine truth does not remain suspended in awe but is realized through structure, law, and responsibility, translating the Ten Utterances into the Book of the Covenant, where civil legislation, social ethics, and religious obligation form a single moral ecosystem. The portion opens not with ritual piety but with labor law, regulating the eved ivri, the Hebrew servant, whose service is limited to six years, decisively rejecting permanent exploitation and asserting that even economic dependence must preserve human dignity; the option to remain with a master, marked at the doorpost, reframes servitude as chosen relationship rather than coerced fate, a model that still challenges modern systems of work, debt, and consent. Mishpatim then addresses personal injury and damages, articulating “an eye for an eye” as proportional justice, understood in tradition as financial restitution rather than physical revenge, redirecting society away from vengeance and toward accountability, while laws of liability for negligence, such as goring oxen and uncovered pits, insist that moral failure includes what one allows to happen through carelessness. Interwoven throughout is a fierce concern for the vulnerable: Israel is commanded not to oppress the ger, the stranger, grounding empathy in collective memory, “for you were strangers in Egypt”, and economic power is restrained through prohibitions against neshech, “biting” interest, alongside the requirement to return a poor person’s essential cloak before nightfall, establishing that survival and dignity override contractual advantage. Alongside these social laws, Mishpatim outlines sacred rhythms and boundaries, naming the three pilgrimage festivals that structure the year around freedom, provision, and gratitude, and repeating the prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk, a command that later tradition explicitly links with firstfruits and tithes, suggesting that blessing must never be turned inward in cruelty. In this light, the system of tithes clarifies the ethical logic at work: one tithe sanctifies personal rejoicing before God, another sustains the Levite, and a third is designated for the stranger, orphan, and widow, those described as especially dear to God, so that provision flows outward rather than being hoarded. When the tithe meant to be shared is withheld, the Torah warns, abundance itself becomes distorted, like nourishment transformed into harm, and kindness curdles into judgment. The portion culminates in the public ratification of the covenant, as Moses builds an altar and twelve pillars, reads the law aloud, and the people respond with na’aseh v’nishma, “we will do and we will hear,” binding themselves to action before full understanding. A vision of sapphire beneath the divine presence suggests that law itself rests on something luminous, and as Moses enters the cloud for forty days, Mishpatim leaves a lasting claim: spirituality is proven not in moments of ecstasy but in systems, how wealth is shared, risk is managed, and the powerless are protected, making justice the daily language of covenantal life.