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In this book he surveys four major law collections in Exodus–Deuteronomy and shows how each enabled the people of Israel to create and sustain a community of faith. His monograph is the first comprehensive introduction to biblical law published in English in over thirty years. It has been written for students beginning a first degree in theology and like-minded readers.  

Morrow treats the Pentateuch’s major legal collections as dynamic systems of thought that worked to facilitate ancient Israel's efforts at self-definition. The impetus for creating and transmitting collections of biblical law can be connected to four different social contexts: (1) Israel at the holy mountain (the Ten Commandments); (2) Israel in the village assembly (Exodus 20:22–23:19); (3) Israel in the courts of the Lord (priestly and holiness rules in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers); and (4) Israel in the city (Deuteronomy). Particular attention is given to a description of their literary organization in canonical form and representative instructions. Taken together, they illuminate the religious worldview an individual law collection intended to express.

The dynamism of biblical law is apparent in the ways it mediated the need for both stability and adaptability in ancient Israel’s attempts at community-making. In this respect, the book underscores the fact that a plurality of social models have been preserved in legal collections—ones that both complement and diverge from each another. While their writers and editors sought to affirm a continuing identification with the Mosaic tradition, they also had to adapt to new times and new social challenges. For that reason, many chapters also show how legal principles in the Torah were addressed by communities of Jews identifiable in the first century of the Common Era, including the primitive church, the Dead Sea Scroll sect, and the proto-rabbinic movement.