“Every ruling has a cause, and every command or prohibition has a benefit or purpose.”
Legal commands and prohibitions are not to be treated as isolated words detached from their reformative function. A command establishes a required action, while a prohibition can restrain injury or disorder. Where a boundary is set in response to a harmful custom, that boundary reveals a significant aspect of the law’s purpose.
This does not license a reader to invent an exhaustive rationale for every rule. What the legal text establishes and what an interpreter identifies as its wisdom are connected, but they are not identical forms of knowledge.