One Generation
not want to surrender power.The second group does
not want to abandon the fruits of the intellectual,
emotional, and economic investment it made by
accepting the methodology and most of the conclu-
sions of humanistic higher education.
This commentary series challenges the legitima-
cy of the corrupt bargain made between humanist-
certified Christian scholars and those who certified
them: the surrender of education, and therefore
everything the humanist academy claims to speak
to authoritatively, to those who say that the God of
the Bible and His revelation are irrelevant to formal
education.
Christian scholars, in their professional work,
have preferred to bow to the god of the academy
rather than bow to the law of God. This has been
going on from the day that philosophical defenders
of the Christian faith first invoked Greek philosophy
as the basis of their defense. In short, it is an ancient
tradition. It is time to call a halt to it.
Because this is an economic commentary, it is
narrowly focused.The entire series on the Pentateuch
was designed from the beginning as a model for
other academic disciplines in the social sciences. The
Bible speaks to the fundamental issues of every
generation, and it speaks specifically. Every academic
discipline must be restructured in terms of the Bible.
This project demonstrates that such a reconstruction
is possible.
About the Author
Gary North is the author of over 40 books. He is the
founder of the Institute for Christian Economics. His
books have been translated into Russian, Spanish, and
Korean. His favorite reply to his critics is, “You can’t
beat something with nothing.”
Cannot Complete the Inheritance and Dominion completes Gary
Kingdom of God North’s economic commentary on the Pentateuch,
which he began writing in 1973. This seven-volume
set lays the exegetical groundwork for the develop-
his statement is obvious. The Church of Jesus Christ has been laboring for almost two
ment of an explicitly biblical economics, which must
thousand years to extend the kingdom of God in history. Today’s Church is the heir of
begin with the doctrine of the covenant—specifically,
all the efforts, miracles, and legacies that have preceded it. Each generation inherits
the covenant’s five-point structure.
something from the previous generations. Each generation leaves a legacy to the next.
The Book of Deuteronomy is an unknown book
Generation by generation, God’s kingdom is extended by His Church.
among Christians in the pews. Deuteronomy is not
The basis of this improvement and growth over time is inheritance. Today’s generation
read today.There is a reason for this: Deuteronomy lays
of Christians is heir to all the accumulated legacies of past generations. There is succession
down the law. So does the Book of Exodus, but Exodus
in history—succession by covenant.
contains a lot of historical information. Pastors can
Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth preach from it without touching on biblical law and
covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a its continuing authority. Leviticus has a lot of law in it,
thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy but there is so much material on the sacrifices and the
them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. ceremonies that pastors can preach on Leviticus’ many
Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, “types” of this or that New Testament theme. They can
which I command thee this day, to do them. (Deuteronomy 7:9-11) avoid the law. Like Exodus, Numbers has historical
information in it.
The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the five books of Moses, which we call the
Not so with Deuteronomy. From its opening sec-
Pentateuch. It is the book of inheritance. Moses read the law of God to the generation that
tion to the end, Deuteronomy lays down the law. This
would inherit the land of Canaan, the fourth generation of the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt,
and Dominion
is why pastors avoid this book like the plague of biblical
just as God had promised Abraham (Genesis 15:16). Then, under Joshua, the men of the fourth
leprosy. On every page, it proclaims, “trust and obey,
generation were circumcised, after they had come into the Promised Land (Joshua 5:7). On
for there’s no other way.” Protestants sing these words,
this judicial basis, they inherited the land.
but they do not believe them. They proclaim: “We’re
The Pentateuch is structured in terms of the five-point covenant model: transcendence
under grace, not law!” They are wrong. They are under
(God the Creator), hierarchy (God the Liberator), ethics (God the Law-Giver), oath (God the
humanist civil courts and humanist lawyers. They will
Sanctions-Bringer), and succession (God the Deliverer). The Book of Deuteronomy, like the
remain in this condition of bondage until they discover
Book of Exodus and the Book of Leviticus, is also structured by this five-point model.
an explicitly biblical answer to this question: “If not
Deuteronomy is the book of Israel’s inheritance. Israel’s covenantal succession from
biblical law, then what?”
Abraham to Joshua was confirmed historically by God through the defeat of the Canaanites
The Pentateuch sets forth laws which, when
in the Book of Joshua. But Moses formally passed on this inheritance before he died.
obeyed, make socialism impossible to establish. They
Deuteronomy is Moses’ recapitulation of the law. By means of their adherence to God’s
also make the Keynesian “mixed economy” impossible
law, he said, the Israelites could maintain the kingdom grant established by God with Abraham.
to establish. Yet other biblical laws make the modern
But they would lose their landed inheritance through disobedience, to be restored only after
and Dominion
libertarian society impossible to establish. Thus, the
a period of captivity in a foreign land (Deut. 30:1-5).
suggestion that biblical law remains authoritative
Deuteronomy’s message is clear: grace precedes law, but God’s revealed law is the basis
today is resisted fiercely by the powers that be.
of maintaining the kingdom grant. Transgress this law, and the expansion of God’s kingdom
The kingdom of God must replace the kingdom
in history will suffer a setback for one or more generations. The kingdom inheritance is
of Satan in history, which is the kingdom of self-
reduced by God’s negative sanctions in history (Deut. 28:15-66). But this inheritance is never
economic commentary
proclaimed autonomous man. Part of this replacement
permanently lost. It compounds over time. The compounding process—growth—is the basis
of the triumph of the kingdom in history. an process is the reconstruction of all modern academic
Deuteronomy
disciplines in terms of the Bible. Any attempt to do
economic commentary this is resisted strongly by two groups: non-Christian
scholars and Christian scholars. The first group does
on
an
on continued on back flap…
Deuteronomy
North Gary North
Inheritance and Dominion
Books by Gary North
Marx’s Religion of Revolution (1968) [1989]
An Introduction to Christian Economics (1973)
Puritan Economic Experiments (1974) [1988]
How You Can Profit From The Coming Price Controls
(1974, 1976, 1977, 1978)
Unconditional Surrender (1981, 1988, 1994)
Successful Investing in an Age of Envy (1981)
The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (1982, 1987)
Government by Emergency (1983) [1991]
Last Train Out (1983)
Backward, Christian Soldiers? (1984)
75 Bible Questions Your Instructors Pray You Won’t Ask
(1984) [1988, 1996]
Coined Freedom (1984)
Moses and Pharaoh (1985)
The Sinai Strategy (1986)
Conspiracy: A Biblical View (1986) [1996]
Honest Money (1986)
Fighting Chance (1986), with Arthur Robinson
Unholy Spirits (1986) [1988] [1994]
Dominion and Common Grace (1987)
Inherit the Earth (1987)
Liberating Planet Earth (1987)
Healer of the Nations (1987)
The Pirate Economy (1987)
Is the World Running Down? (1988)
When Justice Is Aborted (1989)
Political Polytheism (1989)
The Hoax of Higher Criticism (1990)
Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (1990)
Victim’s Rights (1990)
Judeo-Christian Tradition (1990)
Westminster’s Confession (1991)
Christian Reconstruction (1991), with Gary DeMar
The Coase Theorem (1992)
Politically Incorrect (1993)
Salvation Through Inflation (1993)
Rapture Fever (1993)
Tithing and the Church (1994)
Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (1994)
Baptized Patriarchalism (1995)
Lone Gunners for Jesus (1995)
Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (1996)
Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (1997)
INHERITANCE AND DOMINION
An Economic Commentary on
Deuteronomy

Gary North

Institute for Christian Economics

Tyler, Texas
 Copyright, Gary North, 1999

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

North, Gary.
Inheritance and dominion : an economic commentary
on Deuteronomy / Gary North.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-930464-78-8 (hc.)
1. Dominion theology. 2. Bible O.T. Deuteronomy
Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Economics—Religious
aspects—Christianity. 4. Inheritance (Christian theology)
I. Title.
BT82.25.N674 1999
222’.15077–DC21 99-19743
CIP

Institute for Christian Economics

P.O. Box 8000
Tyler, TX 75711
This book is dedicated to my wife

Sharon Rose North

who persuaded me to begin my

Pentateuch commentaries in 1973.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I: Transcendence/Presence (1:1–5)

1. A Transcendent Yet Present God . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Part II: Hierarchy/Representation (1:6–4:49)

2. A Delayed Inheritance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3. Delegated Authority and Social Order . . . . . . . . . 31
4. The Face of Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5. Bureaucratic Counsel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6. The Skills of Foreign Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7. Transferring the Inheritance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
8. Evangelism Through Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
9. Hear, Fear, and Testify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
10. Removing the Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Part III: Ethics/Boundaries (5–26)

11. Judicial Continuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
12. Sabbath and Liberation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
13. Law and Sanctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
14. The Wealth of Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
15. Law and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
16. Genocide and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
17. By Law or By Promise? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
18. Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory . . . . . . . . . 189
19. Chastening and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
20. Overcoming Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
21. The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth . . . . . . 221
22. Disinheriting the Heirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
23. Overcoming the Visible Odds . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
24. Inheritance, Servitude, and Sonship . . . . . . . . . . 277
25. Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration . . . . . . . . 285
26. Oath, Sanctions, and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . 300
27. Rain and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
28. Law, Sanctions, and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
29. Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance . . . . . 329
30. Communal Meals and National Incorporation . . . . 348
31. Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
 Table of Contents (continued)

32. The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing . . . . . . 373

33. Commerce and Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
34. Tithes of Celebration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
35. The Charitable Loan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
36. Consuming Capital in Good Faith . . . . . . . . . . . 430
37. Individual Blessing and National Feasting . . . . . . . 438
38. Casuistry and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
39. Israel’s Supreme Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
40. Boundaries on Kingship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
41. Levitical Inheritance Through Separation . . . . . . . 494
42. Landmarks and Social Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . 504
43. The Penalty for Perjury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
44. A Hierarchy of Commitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
45. A Few Good Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
46. Limits to Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
47. Fruit Trees as Covenantal Testimonies . . . . . . . . 563
48. Double Portion, Double Burden . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
49. Executing a Rebellious Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
50. Lost and Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
51. Nature’s Roots and Fruits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 622
52. The Rooftop Railing Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629
53. Laws Prohibiting Mixtures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638
54. The Fugitive Slave Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649
55. Usury Authorized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658
56. Vows, Contracts, and Productivity . . . . . . . . . . . 670
57. Free for the Picking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
58. Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity . . . . . . . . . . . 703
59. Wages and Oppression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720
60. Gleaning: Charitable Inefficiency . . . . . . . . . . . 729
61. Unmuzzling the Working Ox . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745
62. Levirate Marriage and Family Name . . . . . . . . . 757
63. Just Weights and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
64. The Firstfruits Offering: A Token Payment . . . . . . 808
65. Positive Confession and Corporate Sanctions . . . . . 814

Part IV: Oath/Sanctions (27–30)

66. Landmark and Curse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 820
67. Objective Wealth and Historical Progress . . . . . . . 824
68. The Covenant of Prosperity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 841
69. Captivity and Restoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 846
70. Life and Dominion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 852
 Table of Contents (continued)

Part V: Succession/Inheritance (31–33)

71. Courage and Dominion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 858
72. Law and Liberty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 865
73. A Song of Near-Disinheritance. . . . . . . . . . . . . 874
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877

Appendix A – Modern Economics as a Form of Magic . . . 891

Appendix B – Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism . 909
Appendix C – Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire . . . . . . 922
Appendix D – The Demographics of American Judaism:
A Study in Disinheritance . . . . . . . . . . 937
Appendix E – Free Market Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . 956
Appendix F – The Economic Re-Education of
Ronald J. Sider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 993
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1010
 Foreward
FOREWORD

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books

there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the lesh. Let us hear the
conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments:
for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into
judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil
(Eccl. 12:12-14).

The Book of Deuteronomy is an unknown book among Chris-

tians in the pews. Two weeks before I completed the inal draft of
this book, I heard a sermon on the ninth commandment. The pastor
cited Deuteronomy 19, the section dealing with the penalty for false
witness. The woman next to me whispered to me, “Where is Deu-
teronomy?” She is a dedicated Christian lady and a teacher in an
adult Sunday School. She had just completed a summer school
course at a fundamentalist seminary. For her, Deuteronomy is a
closed book, a lost book. She is not alone.
Deuteronomy is not read because Deuteronomy lays down the
law. So does the Book of Exodus, but Exodus contains a lot of his-
torical information in it. Pastors can preach from it without touching
on biblical law. Leviticus has a lot of law in it, but there is so much
material on the sacriices and the ceremonies that pastors can
preach on Leviticus’ many “types” of this or that New Testament
theme. They can avoid the law. Like Exodus, Numbers has histori-
cal information in it.
Not so with Deuteronomy. From its opening section to the end,
Deuteronomy lays down the law. This is why pastors avoid this
book like the plague of biblical leprosy. On every page, it pro-
claims, “trust and obey, for there’s no other way.” Protestants sing

i
ii DEUTERONOMY

these words, but they do not believe them. They proclaim: “We’re
under grace, not law!” They are wrong. They are under humanist
civil courts and humanist lawyers. They will remain in this condi-
tion of bondage until they discover an explicitly biblical answer to
this question: “If not biblical law, then what?”

The Economics of the Pentateuch

I began this economic commentary on the Bible in the spring of
1973. In August of 1977, I went into high gear: ten hours a week, 50
weeks a year. I am writing this on September 2, 1997. I have in-
vested slightly over 10,000 hours in this writing project since 1977.
With the completion of the Pentateuch, I have reached the end of
phase one of this project.
No one before me had bothered to write an economic commen-
tary of the Pentateuch. A major reason for this neglect is that there
has never been any demand for such a Bible-based study. The econ-
omists are operational atheists, and so are the Christians. Both
groups search for social truths through supposedly neutral reason. I
wrote this commentary, above all, because I was curious about what
God’s law says about economics. I had to do the exegetical work to
ind out, since no one else ever had. I learn best by research and
writing. It took a large investment of time for me to ind out.
Was it worth it? To me personally? No. “Curiosity wore out the
cat.” But lots of projects that are necessary for Christian dominion
are not worth it for those who do them. Writing this commentary is
my calling, not my occupation. It is the most important project I can
do in which I would be most dijcult to replace. I don’t get paid in
money for doing it. On the contrary, I have to work an extra ten or
more hours a week to produce the materials that generate the dona-
tions that inance the publication of this commentary.
Why do I think this commentary is important? Six reasons.
First, it is important for God’s people to understand what the Bible
has to say in every area of life. The church cannot bring an efective
covenant lawsuit against society if its members do not know what
the Bible says is wrong, legally and morally, with every area of soci-
ety. Sin reigns wherever God’s law doesn’t. To reduce sin, we must
extend the rule of God’s law. God’s law is as comprehensive as sin.
When empowered by the Holy Spirit, Christians can use the law to
overcome progressively the rule of sin in every nook and cranny in
which it reigns. God’s law is Christendom’s tool of dominion.
 Foreward iii

Oops. There I go again, using a naughty word: Christendom.

Protestants for over a century have not used it in public except as a
pejorative. Christendom implies that the city of God can have visi-
ble manifestations in history — in the church (“well of course”), the
family (“OK, we can accept that”), and the State (“Wait a minute —
that sounds like theocracy to us!”).
I could ask the typical Christian: Is there sin in personal life —
personal self-government? His answer: “Yes.” What is the solution?
Answer: “God’s grace and God’s . . . uh, hmmm; oh, yes, God’s
principles!” (This sounds a lot safer theologically than God’s law.)
What about sin in the church — church government? What is the so-
lution? “God’s grace and God’s principles!” What about sin in the
family — family government? Solution? “God’s grace and God’s
principles!” What about the State — civil government? “Democracy
and natural law!”
A second reason why this commentary is important is that there
is a relationship between corporate obedience to God’s law and
corporate success in history. This relationship is denied by anti-
theonomists, most notably Meredith G. Kline. My goal is to per-
suade Christians to begin obeying God’s Bible-revealed law in
preparation for preaching it, imposing it, and beneiting from it.
Third, I want this economic commentary to serve as a model for
other practical and theoretical Bible commentaries in the social
sciences.
Fourth, I am tired of hearing the Christian scholar’s familiar slo-
gan, “The Bible isn’t a textbook in [academic discipline],” the disci-
pline in which he was formally certiied by humanists in some
institution of higher learning, and for which is a mouthpiece for a
baptized version of humanism’s conclusions. The Bible is indeed
not a textbook. But it does provide the governing interpretation and
many facts necessary for writing accurate textbooks.
Fifth, I want to write a textbook someday on Christian econom-
ics as a irst step in restructuring the Christian curriculum. To do
thus, I irst must know what the Bible says about economics. The
Pentateuch was the place to start: the law.
iv DEUTERONOMY

Time for a Change

There is a sixth reason. I am convinced that P. A. Sorokin was
correct a generation ago: the West is facing a monumental break-
down.1 We live in a culture which rests on the humanistic presupposi-
tion that anything that cannot be touched, measured, or manipulated
by scientiic techniques is not socially relevant. Sorokin called it
sensate culture. No society can survive indeinitely that holds such a
view, he said. He believed that Western culture is facing a complete
breakdown. So do I. He wrote his prediction in 1941. We are now a
lot closer to the breakdown than we were back then — morally,
iscally, and above all, technically. I refer to the Year 2000 problem,
also known as the Millennium Bug: the inability of mainframe com-
puters to recognize 00 as 2000 when they roll over in the year 2000.
They have not been programmed to recognize the irst two digits of
the century: 19 or 20. We are, in fact, only months away from that
day of reckoning.
The world’s division of labor will collapse if there is a break-
down in the means of payment: bank money. If this happens, there
will be a worldwide disaster. In the aftermath of that disaster, not to
mention during it, Christians will be among the local competitors
for social and political inluence. They are not ready for this huge in-
crease of responsibility, but it is coming anyway.
After the crisis period ceases to be life-threatening, I expect
theonomy to receive a hearing among Christians, who will be facing
that ancient political problem: “You can’t beat something with noth-
ing.” The civilizational vacuum caused by the Year 2000 breakdown
— if it hits with society-shattering force, as I expect it will — will create
new demand for solutions. With demand there will come supply.
I now possess a monopoly: an economic commentary on the
Pentateuch. Maybe I can at long last generate a some demand at
something above zero price. Maybe its publication will no longer
demand subsidies from ICE’s supporters. But without fractional re-
serve banking and today’s high-tech division of labor, meeting this
demand will not be easy.
Here is the looming social problem, in the words of real estate
master Jack Miller: “Voters will call for a man on a white horse, and

1. Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (Oxford, England: Oneworld, [1941] 1992).
 Foreward v

there are a lot of guys out there with brown horses and whitewash.”
To distinguish accurately between white horses and whitewashed
horses, you need to have a model for white horses (Rev. 19:14). The
Bible provides this model. The problem is, this model is found
mainly in the Old Testament. Christians today prefer men on
brown horses to the Old Testament.

A Weak Reed
Christians prefer amuent bondage under free market humanism
to searching for an alternative, for they recognize where the answer
will lead: either to their belated acceptance of Christian theocracy
or their belated public acceptance of the legitimacy of some other
theocracy. Christians want to believe that they can avoid theocracy.
They can’t. Theocracy (theos = God; kratos = rule) is an inescapable
concept. It is never a question of theocracy vs. no theocracy. It is a
question of which God rules. That which a society believes is its
source of law is its operational god.2
Christians do not want to admit this fact of political life, either to
the public or to themselves. It embarrasses them. Typical are the
views of Dr. Ralph Reed, an articulate, 36-year-old political techni-
cian who built Pat Robertson’s political training organization,
Christian Coalition, until 1997, when he resigned to become an in-
dependent political consultant. To him, politics is a profession. He
walked away from considerable inluence in the national media,
which he enjoyed solely because he ran a national organization that
in 1994 had over a million people in its computerized data base,
which generated donations of $20 million a year3 — in short, a major
political force. He has not been heard from since. I doubt that he
will be.
Before he decided that running individual political campaigns
for money is a far better use of his time than shaping and articulating
the political agenda of millions of American evangelicals — a conclu-
sion I wholeheartedly agree with, given his views of what constitutes
legitimate political compromise — he wrote Active Faith (1996). It
was published by the Free Press, a secular international book

2. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 5.
3. Ralph Reed, After the Revolution: How the Christian Coalition is Impacting America (Dallas:
Word, 1996), p. 200. For future reference, gold was at $350/ounce in this period.
vi DEUTERONOMY

publisher owned by the huge Simon & Schuster publishing com-

pany. He received that book contract because he possessed a great
deal of national inluence. A year after its publication, he possesses
almost none. I bought the book in a used book store in September,
1997, for half price.

Clinton, Yes; Rushdoony, No

In that book, he speciically attacked Christian Reconstruction. He
did so within the context of his defense of President Clinton: “I oppose
President Clinton’s policies. But I do not despise him. Nor do I despise
Mrs. Clinton, who has come under a blizzard of attacks in recent
times. If Bill Clinton is a sinner, then he is no worse or less than you
or me.”4 This statement placed him in the camp of the loyal opposi-
tion. This is where a day-to-day political operative always has to be.
But for a man living just before a time of monumental change — pos-
sibly civilizational change — to become a member of the loyal oppo-
sition is to betray the future on behalf of the present. It means
tinkering with peripheral issues at a time when shaping the future
requires a principled break with the present order. Political opera-
tives exchange inluence in the future for inluence in the present.
They are paid to do that. Their creed is: “Business almost as usual.”
Dr. Reed has done well what he has been paid to do: keep the deck
chairs of the Titanic neatly arranged in a group efort with Mr. Clinton.
He gives no indication that he believes the ship of state is sinking. He
remains optimistic. He is wrong. It is surely sinking. Above all, it is
sinking morally. It is therefore only a matter of time before it sinks visi-
bly, just as the Soviet Union sank, overnight, in August of 1991. In the
1980’s, the West’s politicians bet on the success of Gorbachev’s re-
forms and his political survival. They lost this bet. Dr. Reed is making a
similar bet regarding the future of American politics.
Christian Reconstructionists are on the other side of this bet. Al-
most no one else is — surely not in the Christian community. We are
not on this side of the bet based on our interest in politics as such.
We are on the other side because of our conviction that God will es-
tablish His kingdom in history, which includes politics. God says of
the power of every covenant-breaking social order, contrary to

4. Ralph Reed, Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (New
York: Free Press, 1996), p. 261.
 Foreward vii

political operatives in every generation: “I will overturn, overturn,

overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is;
and I will give it him” (Ezek 21:27).
Dr. Reed wrote in 1996: “Some of the harshest criticisms of
Clinton have come from the ‘Christian nation’ or Reconstructionist
community, which argues that the purpose of Christian political
involvement should be to legislate biblical law. Some of the more
unyielding elements even advocate legislating the ancient Jewish
law laid out in the Old Testament: stoning adulterers, executing ho-
mosexuals, even mandating dietary laws.”5 Unyielding elements?
Unyielding to what? To President Clinton? Most of the Reconstruc-
tionist authors I know ignore the man and his wife. We are not all
that interested in politics. I have written far more in criticism of
George Bush’s New World Order rhetoric than I have written about
Bill Clinton. Both Rushdoony and I publicly opposed Bush’s inva-
sion of Iraq in 1991. It is also worth noting that I do not remember
seeing Mr. Reed take on Mr. Bush’s New World Order rhetoric in
print, although this may be because I have not spent much time
reading things written by Mr. Reed.
I am aware of no Christian Reconstructionist who believes that
the State should enforce the Mosaic dietary laws. Rushdoony per-
sonally adheres to the dietary laws, and he has written, possibly, up
to a total of three whole pages on this topic, scattered among his tens
of thousands of pages of books and articles. He has never called for
the State to enforce them. Dr. Reed may or may not understand
this. Either he has misunderstood Rushdoony’s position on the di-
etary laws, or else he is cynically misrepresenting it. In either case,
he has called his own would-be scholarship into question.

Faking It Academically
Next, he misinformed his readers about Reconstructionism’s es-
chatology. He described it as premillennial. Here, he moved from
merely misleading rhetoric to good, old fashioned ignorance of the po-
sition of those whom he criticized. He hasn’t a clue that he is dealing
with postmillennialists — something that, by this stage, I should imag-
ine that everyone else who knows anything about Reconstructionism
understands. “Led by R. J. Rushdoony, a theologian who serves as

5. Idem.
viii DEUTERONOMY

the intellectual fountainhead of the movement, they believe that the

primary objective of Christian activism should be to perfect society
so that it is ready when Christ returns for His millennial reign.”6 On
the contrary, we teach that the progressively righteous society is the
millennial kingdom made visible in history. Christ reigns in history
through His people, not in person. This is the traditional post-
millennial argument — nothing unique here — but Dr. Reed is oblivi-
ous to it. Yet he speaks as if he were a master of Reconstruction’s
literature.
By now, I suppose I should be used to this treatment. Our critics
are legion. In most cases, they are not scholars. They do not know
how to debate in public. They do not have the training or the incli-
nation to engage in scholarly debate. But Ralph Reed earned a
Ph.D. in history at an academically rigorous institution, Emory Uni-
versity, one of the most liberal universities in the United States. Had
handed in an equally unsupported critique of some liberal igure or
movement to one of his liberal professors, he would have received
an F. “Don’t submit your right-wing fundamentalist tirades in my
class, sir. This is not scholarship; this is character assassination, and
shoddy scholarship, too.” Obviously, Dr. Reed did not do this when
his liberal professors were grading him. He survived. But once out
from under their control, he has reverted to form. He is a political
operative with footnotes — although not enough of them. His main
professional concern is neither theology nor truth; it is politics.
The basic rule of scholarship is that you must understand your
opponent’s position and summarize it accurately before you attack
it. The humanists are way ahead of most Christians in matters aca-
demic. Christians too often ignore the rules of honest criticism. This
leaves them vulnerable to rebuttals such as this one. They wind up
looking like dolts, with or without Ph.D.’s. While we Recon-
structionists are often highly critical of other intellectual positions,
no one has ever accused us of not providing the footnotes that prove
that our targeted victims have written exactly what we say they have
written. Dr. Reed has abandoned both his humanist training and
the ninth commandment here. He ofers not a single footnote in his
attack on Christian Reconstruction. He does not understand our po-
sition, yet he writes authoritatively as though he has mastered it. He

6. Ibid., pp. 261–6 2.

 Foreward ix

dismisses it without understanding it, except for its current political

liabilities, which he does not mention. It is just as well that he has
disappeared from public view. For sincere but uninformed Chris-
tians to follow a man who conducts himself in public in this manner
would be a blot on the church. Christ deserves better.

“Moses Was a Tyrant”

Dr. Reed is shocked — shocked! — at Christian Reconstruc-
tionism’s hostile attitude toward taxpayer-funded education. “Many
reject school choice and eforts to reform public education as
short-sighted and self-defeating. Instead, they call for the eventual
elimination of public schools.”7 He has that right. Oppose the public
schools? Opposed to the idea that education can ever be religiously
neutral? Can such things be? Dr. Reed can see clearly where this is
leading: to tyranny. Reconstruction promotes the tyranny of par-
ents’ control over their own children’s education through direct pa-
rental control over its funding. He might well have added that we
also promote the same negative view of State-funded retirement
programs and State-funded medicine. Dr. Reed understands ex-
actly what this means in the late 1990’s: lost elections. And so, he
writes, “Reconstructionism is an authoritarian ideology that threat-
ens the most basic civil liberties of a free society.”8 Yes, it does: the
civil liberty to steal by means of the ballot box, which is modern pol-
itics’ most cherished principle.
Let us be quite clear about his position. Dr. Reed is arguing that
the God of the Old Testament laid down as mandatory an
authoritarian system of civil laws which “threatens the most basic
civil liberties of a free society.” He is not saying that Christian
Reconstructionists have misinterpreted Old Testament law. On the
contrary, he is saying that we have promoted, as he so delicately
puts it, “the ancient Jewish law laid out in the Old Testament.” Be-
cause of our deviant practice in this regard, he insists, the pro-family
movement “must unequivocally dissociate itself from Reconstruc-
tionism and other eforts to use the government to impose biblical
law through political action. It must irmly and openly exclude the

7. Ibid., p. 262.
8. Idem.
x DEUTERONOMY

triumphant and authoritarian elements from the new theology of

Christian political involvement.”9
Triumphant politics. Imagine that! Christian Reconstructionists
actually believe that the purpose of political action is — you won’t be-
lieve this — victory! They believe that civil laws cannot be religiously
neutral, and that — you won’t believe this, either — religious neutrality is
a myth. They believe, fantastic as it seems, that when Jesus said, “He
that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me
scattereth abroad” (Matt. 12:30), He was including civil law.
Dr. Reed has now disappeared from public view. I suppose that
he is out there somewhere, trying to line up some non-triumphalist
Christian politician to pay him a bundle of money to design a cam-
paign to reform public education. No doubt Dr. Reed thinks that all
it will take to please God in the political realm is a national Christian
political campaign based on the slogan, “Back to religious neutral-
ity: Equal time for Satan!” No more of that Old Testament stuf. God
was all wrong back then. God used to be the promoter of “an authori-
tarian ideology that threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free so-
ciety,” but no longer. God has changed His mind. He has come to his
senses. Dr. Reed and his political peers applaud God. God now has
their full approval. This no doubt is a great comfort to God.
Please do not imagine that I am contemptuous of Dr. Reed.
That would be like being contemptuous of an unhousebroken St.
Bernard puppy that has just relieved itself on the living room carpet.
The puppy did not know what else to do when nature called. Nature
called the puppy in the same way that natural law theory called Dr.
Reed, and the results are analogous. Dr. Reed does not know any
better: he has a Ph.D. from Emory University. The average carpet
owner knows enough to clean up puppy’s pile, but only after rub-
bing the puppy’s nose in it, so that he will not do it again. That is
what I am doing here with Dr. Reed.
Actually, Dr. Reed has done my educational work for me.
He used Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition to persuade mil-
lions of American evangelicals to get involved in politics. He
trained hundreds of thousands of them. These shock troops are now
ready for action. Meanwhile, their trainer has disappeared, just in
time for a worldwide crisis: in economics, politics, and legitimacy.

9. Idem.
 Foreward xi

The day of reckoning is looming. In its aftermath, Dr. Reed’s loyal

oppositionist views will be abandoned as naive, deeply compro-
mised, and no longer relevant. Christian activists will be compelled
by the crisis to ask themselves: “If not biblical law, then what?” In
the early 1990’s, Dr. Reed softened up the evangelicals for Christian
Reconstructionism, just as Dr. Ron Sider softened them up in the
late 1970’s. All it will take to complete the transition is a worldwide
economic crisis that takes place on Mr. Clinton’s duty watch. This
event has literally been programmed for us.
Dr. Reed was a minor igure, at best, in his brief days of public no-
toriety. He had inluence only because Pat Robertson hired him. On
his own authority, almost no one would ever have heard of him, as is
the case today. I have devoted this much space on him, not because
his views of Christian Reconstruction amounted to anything impor-
tant, but because his kind of compromise is dangerous to God’s king-
dom in times of major crisis. Christians are supposed to understand
their times. We have limited resources. We cannot ight every battle.
We must select our battles accordingly. To regard political tinkering
and the working out of marginal political compromises as a legiti-
mate substitute for prophetic confrontation at a turning point in his-
tory is a great mistake. It is the mistake of substituting the peripheral
concerns of the leeting present for the future of God’s kingdom in
history. I pray that you will not make this mistake.

When Establishments Fall

Phase two of Christian Reconstructionism will soon begin. Its
theoretical framework is now basically complete. It is almost time
for making preliminary local applications. It is time to say forth-
rightly, “No more loyal Christian opposition.” Why? Because there
will soon be no more opposition to be loyal to. The present Estab-
lishment is about to sufer a mortal blow. Today’s loyal Christian
opposition will be interred alongside the humanists’ civil order after
a joint funeral service. RIP.
We have seen this before. The early church in Jerusalem was part
of the loyal opposition. Not that Jesus Christ had been loyal. He had
been disloyal. The Establishment cruciied Him for His disloyalty.
He had told them plainly, “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom
of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). But it took the Jerusalem church
from the stoning of Stephen until Nero’s persecutions in A.D. 64 to
xii DEUTERONOMY

break with the Jewish political Establishment. The Christians inally

left Jerusalem permanently shortly after Nero’s death in A.D. 68, or
so church tradition says. Then, in A.D. 70, the Jewish political Es-
tablishment fell to pagan Rome’s Establishment. Rome’s army de-
stroyed Jerusalem. Never again would the church be in loyal
opposition to the Jewish political Establishment. That Establish-
ment was gone.
If this be triumphalism, make the best of it.

Conclusion
I began writing this commentary when Dr. Reed was 12 years
old. I think it will still be read in a hundred years, though not read
by many. Its longevity is made easier to secure because there is one
advantage that commentaries possess over other books: they help
pastors interpret dijcult Bible passages. The Pentateuch has many
dijcult passages.
This book is long because it is a Bible commentary relating to a
specialized area. A standard Bible commentary comments — or
should — on every passage. It cannot include much information on
any one passage. This commentary is diferent. It is designed to con-
vey extensive knowledge about a few verses that relate to the topic
at hand: economics. The reader is seeking more information per
passage than a standard commentary can provide. This book can be
read cover to cover, but it is designed to be read one chapter at a
time. I assume that a pastor who is preaching on one passage wants
information on this passage and no other, for today. The same is
true of a reader who reads a passage and wants to see if it has any
economic implications. This is the reason why the book is repeti-
tive. I assume that most people will not read it straight through, and
even if they do, they will forget what I say about a speciic passage.
They will come back to the book, if at all, for clariication regarding
one passage. A topical Bible commentary should meet the needs of
readers who are seeking clariication, one passage at a time.
I have spent over 10,000 hours trying to clear up a few of these
passages. I have scheduled another 7,500 hours or so. Let me say this:
after the irst 7,500 hours, it starts getting easier. I ofer this as encour-
agement to all those who would like to imitate my eforts. I also ofer a
warning: those who continue to insist that “there’s no such thing as
Christian economics” have their work cut out for them.
 Preface
PREFACE

And the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and
sware, saying, Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation
see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fathers, Save Caleb the
son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he
hath trodden upon, and to his children, because he hath wholly followed
the LORD. Also the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou
also shalt not go in thither. But Joshua the son of Nun, which standeth
before thee, he shall go in thither: encourage him: for he shall cause Israel
to inherit it. Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and
your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil,
they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess
it (Deut. 1:34B39).

The language of inheritance appears early in the Book of Deu-

teronomy. Inheritance is the integrating theme of the entire book, as
I shall argue in this commentary. The reader is hereby warned: if,
after reading this commentary, you ind that you agree with my the-
sis that the primary theme of the book is inheritance, then you
should be more willing to accept my thesis that the Pentateuch is
structured in terms of the ive-point biblical covenant model.1
Inheritance is a matter of ownership. Economics is also a matter
of ownership. Ownership is covenantal. This commentary series,
which I have worked on since 1973, is called An Economic Com-
mentary on the Bible. It is the thesis of this series that both economic

1. On the ive points, see Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd
ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992). The irst edition of this book was
published in 1987.

xiii
xiv DEUTERONOMY

theory and practice are inherently covenantal. I titled the irst vol-
ume, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. I argued there that God’s cove-
nant with Adam (Gen. 1:26B28) deines mankind. This thesis has
led me to argue that the fundamental economic issue is not scarcity,
contrary to virtually all economics textbooks. The fundamental
economic issue is ownership. The issue of ownership is always
covenantal. The legal question, “Who owns this?” is more funda-
mental than the economists’ initial question: “Why do I have to pay
something to obtain this?”

Scarcity
Humanistic economists begin their analyses with the question of
scarcity. They do so because of their quest for epistemological neu-
trality. They seek to begin with a common-ground observation
about the external world that is universally acknowledged and
therefore epistemologically neutral. They seek to avoid any appeal
to theology or other obviously value-laden presuppositions. But the
issue of scarcity is not epistemologically neutral. It is heavily value-
laden. But it is far easier to conceal this fact than to conceal the more
obviously value-laden doctrine of original ownership.
When would-be autonomous man begins his discussion of eco-
nomics apart from any consideration of the twin doctrines of cre-
ation and providence, he has assumed as incontrovertible what he
needs irst to prove, namely, that the creation is an autonomous
“given” and that man is an autonomous “given.” Far from being
neutral, this presupposition of man’s autonomy is an act of theft. It is
an application of the serpent’s rhetorical question: “Hath God
said?” (Gen. 3:1).
The methodological individualist begins with the presupposi-
tion of each man’s ownership of his own person.2 If followed to its
logical conclusion, this presupposition legalizes attempted suicide.
It does not deal with the issue of what adult children owe to their
parents, whose time and efort allowed them to survive. It treats the
individual as if there were no legal bonds of the family – a corporate
institution with claims on the individual. Are these claims morally

2. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles (Auburn,
Alabama: Mises Institute, [1962] 1993), p. 78.
 Preface xv

and legally valid? Morally neutral economic theory cannot say. So,
methodological individualists ignore the problem.
Even at best, this presupposition of self-ownership does not solve
the question of ownership of anything other than one’s own person.
How is ownership lawfully established over anything else? On the
one hand, is ownership established by a person’s verbal declara-
tion?3 If so, then what happens when one person’s declaration ex-
tends across a boundary that was established by some other person’s
declaration? Who decides which declaration’s claim is superior? By
what standard? On the other hand, is ownership established, as
4
John Locke argued, by mixing one’s labor with the soil? What kind
of labor? How much soil? This “soil” is representative soil, not lit-
eral soil. It is symbolic soil. The word assumes the prior existence of
some sort of moral and legal order.
The methodological collectivist assumes that society’s claims of
ownership are prior to the individual’s. But what is society? Are we
speaking of the State, i.e., civil government, when we say the word
“society”? Which State? What is it that establishes the prior jurisdic-
tion of this or that agency called the State? What if there are compet-
ing jurisdictions of various States? Whose jurisdiction is superior?
By what standard?

Scarcity Is a Covenantal Sanction

Sanctions are fourth on the list in the Bible’s ive-point covenant
model: transcendence, hierarchy, ethics, oath, and succession. As
applied to economic theory, these ive points are: primary owner-
ship, delegated ownership, boundary lines, scarcity, and inheri-
tance. Scarcity in the modern economic deinition – “at zero price,
there is greater demand than supply” – is the result of God’s curse
on the earth in response to Adam’s rebellion (Gen. 3:17B19).
If this is the case, then we should conclude that a reduction of
scarcity, i.e., economic growth, is the result both of Jesus Christ’s le-
gal status as God’s covenantally representative agent and His work
of redemption through God’s imposition of negative sanctions at
Calvary. The negative sanctions of Calvary were soon overcome in

3. This was the position of libertarian anarchist Robert LeFevre.

4. This was Rothbard’s position: idem. See Locke, Of Civil Government: Second Treatise
(1690), Chapter V, “On Property,” sections 27B28, 36.
xvi DEUTERONOMY

history by Christ’s bodily resurrection and His ascension. These

were divine positive sanctions that have enabled man’s overcoming
of the curse on the earth through economic growth. Humanistic
economists do not look at economic theory in this way.

Original Sovereignty
Economists should begin the study of economics with a ques-
tion: Who is originally sovereign? The Bible’s answer is clear: God.
He created the world. He therefore possesses original jurisdiction.
Through the rebellious actions of the serpent, Eve, and Adam, Satan
gained subordinate control over the earth. Adam, as God’s supreme
covenantal agent, had the authority to decide which sovereign he
would serve. By disobeying God, he transferred allegiance to Satan.
This was an act of covenant-breaking. It was also a representative
act: he did this in the name of his heirs. Those heirs of Adam who re-
main outside of God’s covenant of redemption necessarily deny the
ownership claims of God.
It is covenant-keeping man’s God-given assignment to extend
the kingdom of God in history, reclaiming territory that was lost by
Adam’s transfer of covenantal allegiance. This reclaiming of the
earth is a two-fold activity: fulilling the original dominion covenant
(Gen. 1:26B28) and reclaiming the lost inheritance from cove-
nant-breakers. The exodus, which disinherited Egypt, was followed
by Israel’s ratiication of the Mosaic covenant. A generation later,
the conquest of Canaan extended God’s kingdom in history by dis-
inheriting the Canaanites. This process of extending the kingdom is
a process of disinheritance/inheritance. Ultimately, it is Satan who
is being disinherited in history. When his covenantal subordinates
are disinherited, he is disinherited. To argue otherwise is to argue
that Adam’s transfer to Satan of his subordinate ownership of the
kingdom is a permanent condition in history. It is to argue that Jesus
Christ’s redemption of men in history and the Great Commission it-
self (Matt. 28:18B20) – reclaiming the world by means of the Holy
Spirit-empowered gospel of redemption (buying-back) – will pro-
duce only a series of Christian oases in a permanent desert of Satan-
ism. It is to argue that biblical eschatology is not an aspect of the ifth
point of the biblical covenant model: inheritance and disinheri-
tance. It is to argue against the Book of Deuteronomy as the Penta-
teuch’s book of guaranteed inheritance, to argue that the Pentateuch
is not structured in terms of the biblical covenant model. Those who
 Preface xvii

argue this way now face a lengthy refutation: An Economic Commen-

tary on the Bible. We shall see how the critics respond, now that my
commentary on the Pentateuch is completed. After seventeen years
of “no comment” by the theological critics – humanistic economists
do not go even this far – I think it is safe to say that “no comment”
will indeinitely remain their most carefully constructed response.

The Structure of the Pentateuch

Inheritance and Dominion is the culmination of my two-fold,
multi-volume assertion that the biblical covenant model has ive
points, and that the Pentateuch is structured in terms of the biblical
covenant model. I did not understand this when I began writing this
series. I discovered it only in late 1985, when Ray Sutton irst pre-
sented his covenant model in a series of Wednesday evening Bible
studies. I have argued for this position in detail in my “General
Introduction to The Dominion Covenant (1987),” published in the second
edition of The Dominion Covenant: Genesis.5 The biblical covenant
model has ive parts: the transcendence/presence of God; man’s hi-
erarchy/authority under God; ethics/law as the basis of covenant-
keeping man’s dominion in history, i.e., the extension of the bound-
aries of God’s kingdom; oath/sanctions as the basis of cause and efect
in history; and succession in history through corporate covenant re-
newal. If this argument is correct, then the ifth book of the Penta-
teuch should match the ifth point of the covenant: inheritance/
disinheritance, a two-fold process in history which mirrors the dual
covenantal sanctions of blessing and cursing.
Let us survey briely the primary integrating theme of each of the
Pentateuch’s ive books. Genesis reveals the absolute sovereignty of
God in creating the world and sustaining it in history. Exodus reveals
the deliverance of Israel in history by this sovereign God, who re-
quires His people to covenant with Him as His lawful subjects (Ex.
19). Leviticus reveals the law of God for Mosaic Israel: the stipula-
tions of Israel’s national existence as a covenantal unit. Numbers re-
veals God’s corporate sanctions in history: against Israel in the
wilderness because of unbelief, and against the Amorites outside the
borders of Canaan in the months preceding the invasion of Canaan.

5. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), pp. ixBxiv.
xviii DEUTERONOMY

Deuteronomy is the book of inheritance through covenant renewal,

revealing the imminent fulillment of the promised Abrahamic in-
heritance, which involved the disinheritance of the Canaanites.
Let us not mince words: a crucial ethical theme of Deuteron-
omy is the moral necessity of genocide. “And thou shalt consume all
the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye
shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for
that will be a snare unto thee” (Deut. 7:16). Israel’s defeat of Sihon
outside the boundaries of the Promised Land served as the model –
the covenantal down payment – for all of Canaan: “And we took all
his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the
women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain”
(Deut. 2:34). The inheritance by Israel mandated the disinheritance
of the Amorites.

Eschatology and Inheritance

This theme of inheritance/disinheritance is basic to covenantal
progression in history: the growth of the kingdom of God at the ex-
pense of the kingdom of Satan. In this sense, covenantal conlict is
what economists call a zero-sum game: the winner’s gains come at the
expense of the loser. Because of God’s common grace,6 this is not al-
ways true in history, although it was surely required by God to be
the case during the conquest of Canaan. It is always true in eternity.7
This covenantal fact of life and death raises the issue of eschatol-
ogy. The theological doctrine known as eschatology – the doctrine of
the last things is point five of the biblical covenant model. It cannot

6. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
7. Because of God’s common grace, covenant-keepers can benefit in history from the
blessings that God pours out on covenant-breakers. These blessings in history make the
covenant-breaker’s eternity of torment that much more horrifying. Having received more in
history, he comes under greater eternal condemnation. “But he that knew not, and did commit
things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given,
of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask
the more” (Luke 12:48). In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, we learn that we
are to do good to God’s enemies, so that He can pour coals of ire on their heads. “If thine
enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou
shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward thee” (Prov. 25:21B22).
“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written,
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the LORD. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he
thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of ire on his head” (Rom. 12:19B20).
 Preface xix

be separated from a theory of history, because eschatology is also

the doctrine of whatever precedes the last things. It is, in this sense,
the doctrine of the next-to-last things. Because there are three rival
theories of biblical eschatology – amillennialism, premillennialism,
and postmillennialism – each has a diferent conception of the next-
to-last things. Each theory has its own conception of social theory,
i.e., social cause and efect.
Biblical eschatology is the story of the replacement of Satan’s
stolen kingdom by God’s kingdom. The question that divides theo-
logians is this: To what extent is this process of replacement re-
vealed in history? Is history an earnest – a down payment – on the
eternity to come? Is there more or less continuity between history
and eternity? Do the wheat or the tares progressively dominate as
history unfolds? Amillennialism insists that history is a reverse fore-
taste of eternity: the righteous get weaker, and the unrighteous get
stronger. Premillennialism teaches the same with regard to the era
prior to Christ’s bodily return and His imposition of a comprehen-
sive international bureaucracy, stafed by Christians, for a thousand
years. Postmillennialism insists that covenantal history is the story
of lawful inheritance, secured by the death of the lawful Heir who
thereby becomes the Testator (Heb. 9:16B17). Eschatology is there-
fore also the story of disinheritance in history: covenant-keepers’ re-
claiming of the stolen legacy from covenant-breakers. Righteousness
will replace unrighteousness as the next-to-the-last things unfold.

The Fourth Generation

The key verse governing the inheritance of the land of Canaan
by Israel is Genesis 15:16: “But in the fourth generation they shall
come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”
The four generations that dwelt in Egypt were the sons of Jacob,
Jochebed’s (Num. 26:59), Moses’, and Joshua’s. It was under Joshua’s
leadership that his generation and their children invaded Canaan.
Joshua was the representative leader.
A theological question arises: Was God’s promise to Abraham
conditional or unconditional? Was it dependent on what Abraham
and his heirs would do (conditional), or was it a prophecy that could
not be thwarted by anything that man would do (unconditional)?
For that matter, is it legitimate even to distinguish between the two?
The traditional theological answer to this question is that the
Abrahamic promise was unconditional. This answer invokes Paul’s
xx DEUTERONOMY

arguments in Galatians 3. “And this I say, that the covenant, that

was conirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hun-
dred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the
promise of none efect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no
more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Where-
fore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions,
till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was
ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator” (Gal. 3:17B19). Paul
here was speaking of the Mosaic law, but theologians have ex-
tended his line of argumentation to the context of the Abrahamic
promise regarding Canaan.
To argue that a promise is unconditional is to argue for God’s
predestination. The theologian announces: “God’s promise to Abra-
ham was a prophecy.” Yet this statement begs the question. Is biblical
prophecy at least sometimes conditional? For example, Jonah proph-
esied that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days, yet Nineveh
escaped this curse through repentance. Was God’s promise to Abra-
ham that sort of prophecy, i.e., conditional on the ethical response of
those who heard it? Speciically, could the third generation have in-
herited Canaan, had the word of God been mixed with faith? “For
unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word
preached did not proit them, not being mixed with faith in them
that heard it” (Heb. 4:2).

The Doctrine of Predestination

God’s absolute predestination is central to the doctrine of the
unconditional promise. God promised Abraham that the fourth
generation would inherit. This can mean only one thing: they were
predestined to inherit. It was not merely statistically likely that they
would inherit; they would surely inherit. Yet the males born in the
wilderness were not circumcised. They were circumcised in a mass
ritual procedure at Gilgal after they had crossed the Jordan and were
inside Canaan’s boundaries (Josh. 5:4). To inherit, they had to be law-
ful heirs. The mark of Abrahamic heirship was circumcision. “And
ye shall circumcise the lesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token
of the covenant betwixt me and you” (Gen. 17:11). Circumcision
was the covenant sign. So, in order to fulill the Abrahamic promise,
the Israelites had to perform a mandatory work. This means that the
Abrahamic promise was conditional on works, yet at the same time, it
could not be thwarted, for the inheritance by the fourth generation
 Preface xxi

was predestined. This is the age-old issue of promise vs. works, un-
conditional promise vs. conditional promise.
Ephesians 2:8B10 solves this theological dilemma: not only are
covenant-keepers predestined to eternal life, they are predestined to
temporal good works. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any
man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we
should walk in them.” A covenantal promise is therefore ethically
conditional – the mandatory performance of good works – yet it is
also operationally unconditional, for these good works are part of the
predestined inheritance itself. Protestant fundamentalists quote
Ephesians 2:8B9: grace. Roman Catholics are more likely to quote
Ephesians 2:10: works. Theonomists quote the entire passage,
which includes the phrase, “which God hath before ordained that
we should walk in them,” i.e., predestination.
The Epistle to the Hebrews ties the doctrine of predestined
good works to the ethically conditional nature of the Abrahamic
promise. Hebrews 3 and 4 discuss the sabbatical rest which God
gives to His people. The Israelites of Moses’ generation did not en-
ter into the rest – Canaan – which God had ofered to them. The au-
thor cited Psalm 95: “Harden not your heart, as in the provocation,
and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers
tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I
grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in
their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I sware
in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest” (Ps. 95:8B11; cf.
Heb. 3:8B11). This means that God made a legitimate ofer to the
third generation: immediate inheritance. Moses made this plain in
his recapitulation of the events immediately following the exodus.

And I commanded you at that time all the things which ye should do.
And when we departed from Horeb, we went through all that great and
terrible wilderness, which ye saw by the way of the mountain of the
Amorites, as the LORD our God commanded us; and we came to Kadesh-
barnea. And I said unto you, Ye are come unto the mountain of the
Amorites, which the LORD our God doth give unto us. Behold, the LORD
thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the LORD
God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged. . . .
Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the command-
ment of the L ORD your God: And ye murmured in your tents, and said,
xxii DEUTERONOMY

Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land of
Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Whither
shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The peo-
ple is greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to
heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakims there. Then I
said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them. The LORD your God
which goeth before you, he shall ight for you, according to all that he did
for you in Egypt before your eyes; And in the wilderness, where thou hast
seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in
all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place. Yet in this thing ye
did not believe the LORD your God, Who went in the way before you, to
search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in ire by night, to shew you
by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day. And the LORD heard the
voice of your words, and was wroth, and sware, saying, Surely there shall
not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I sware
to give unto your fathers, Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it,
and to him will I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and to his chil-
dren, because he hath wholly followed the LORD (Deut. 1:18–21; 26–36).

How can we solve this seeming theological anomaly? God’s

promise was given to the fourth generation, yet He commanded the
third generation to begin the invasion of Canaan, promising to go
before them, leading them to victory, just as He had done in Egypt
and the Red Sea. The fulillment of the Abrahamic promise by the
fourth generation was historically conditional, i.e., dependent on
the faithlessness of the third generation. The beginning of the solu-
tion to this theological dilemma is found in Hebrews: “For we which
have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my
wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were
inished from the foundation of the world” (Heb. 4:3). These words
are unmistakably clear: “although the works were inished from the
foundation of the world.” This language – “before the foundation of
the world” – is found in the biblical passage which, more than any
other, teaches the doctrine of predestination, the irst chapter of
Paul’s epistle to the church at Ephesus. Paul wrote:

Blessed be the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, who hath
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: Ac-
cording as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having pre-
destinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, ac-
cording to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his
 Preface xxiii

grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved . . . . In whom also

we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the
purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
That we should be to the praise of his glory, who irst trusted in Christ. In
whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of
your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with
that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until
the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory
(Eph. 1:3B6, 11B14).

The Three-Fold Theme of Grace

Predestination, adoption, and inheritance: here is the three-fold
theme of God’s special grace to His people in history. This is not a
two-fold theme – adoption and inheritance – contrary to Arminians
and other defenders of the doctrine of man’s free will. Adoption in
Christ is the only judicially valid basis of any man’s claim to his
share of the inheritance of God’s kingdom, both in history and eter-
nity. Paul teaches that every redeemed person’s adoption by God in
history has been predestined before the foundation of the world.
The three-fold theme of predestination, adoption (judicial sonship),
and inheritance is the theme of the Book of Deuteronomy. God, in
His absolute sovereignty, predestined the fourth generation after
Abraham to inherit the Promised Land. Moses spoke the words re-
corded in Deuteronomy to the representatives of the fourth genera-
tion, just prior to Israel’s inheritance of the land under Joshua.
Similarly, God has predestined individual Christians to eternal sal-
vation, which is their lawful inheritance through judicial adoption
into God’s redeemed family. Paul’s words are clear: we have ob-
tained in history a down payment or “earnest” of this eternal inheri-
tance. “Ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the
earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession, unto the praise of his glory” (v. 13b, 14). The Greek
word translated here as “purchased possession” is elsewhere trans-
lated as “saving,” as in “the saving of the soul” (Heb. 10:39).
The Greek word that Paul used for “inheritance” is the same
one that Stephen used to identify God’s promise of Canaan to Abra-
ham: “And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to
set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a
possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child”
(Acts 7:5). Paul used this language of the seed, which alone lawfully
xxiv DEUTERONOMY

inherits, in order to identify those who are adopted by God the Father
through Christ’s sacriicial work of redemption: “And if ye be
Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the
promise” (Gal. 3:29).
Paul insisted in his letter to the Ephesians that this eternal and
historical inheritance of the kingdom of God is an inheritance of
righteousness only for those who are themselves righteous. “For this
ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous
man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of
Christ and of God” (Eph. 5:5). This kingdom inheritance comes ex-
clusively through God’s grace. Nevertheless, Paul was quite clear on
an equally important point: the earthly good works that are manda-
tory in the life of the true heir are as predestined as the adoption itself.

Imputation
The basis of the theological reconciliation of grace and good
works, or unconditional election and conditional inheritance, is the
doctrine of imputation. Participation in both of the two kingdoms in
history, Satan’s and Christ’s, is representational as well as individ-
ual. The sin of Adam is imputed to covenant-breaking man.
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: For
until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there
is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even
over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s trans-
gression, who is the igure of him that was to come” (Rom. 5:12B14).
There was a law that condemned all men to death: God’s command
to Adam not to eat of the forbidden tree. Adam’s heirs did not com-
mit this sin individually, but they all committed it representatively
through their father, Adam. So, death reigned from Adam to Moses.
The fact that Adam’s heirs did not (and could not – no tree) commit
Adam’s speciic sin made no diference in the question of life and
death. They all committed it. Adam’s representative act condemned
all of his heirs. The proof of this, Paul argued, is that they all died.
The law was still in force – not the Mosaic law but the Edenic law.
The sanction of death still ruled.
This judicial imputation of Adam’s sin is the historical starting
point of biblical covenant theology. To escape God’s declaration of
“Guilty!” to Adam, and thereby to Adam’s heirs, a person must
come under God’s declaration of “Not guilty!” to Jesus Christ and
 Preface xxv

His heirs. Adam’s sin is the judicial basis of the imputation of disin-
herited sonship to Adam’s heirs. Jesus Christ’s perfect humanity
(though not His divinity) is the judicial basis of the imputation of
adopted sonship to Christ’s heirs. “And not as it was by one that
sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation,
but the free gift is of many ofences unto justiication. For if by one
man’s ofence death reigned by one; much more they which receive
abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life
by one, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:16B17).

The Imputation of Righteous Works

Let us consider this theological doctrine from another angle: the
imputation of Christ’s good works. As surely as Christ met the com-
prehensive demands of God’s law, so also do all those people to
whom His perfection is imputed by God. Christ’s imputed perfec-
tion is deinitive. At the moment of their regeneration, people re-
ceive Christ’s perfection judicially through grace. Then they are
required to strive in this life to meet Jesus’ standard of moral perfec-
tion. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). This condition of perfection is
achieved by covenant-keepers only in the world beyond history.
But the goal of perfection is still our mandatory standard, “Till we all
come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
Both conditions are true of covenant-keeping men in history:
perfection and imperfection. First, imperfection: “If we say that we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we
confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not
sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (I John 1:8B10).
This condition relates to progressive sanctiication in history. Sec-
ond, perfection: “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that
doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that
committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the begin-
ning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not
commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, be-
cause he is born of God” (I John 3:7B9). In the day of inal judgment,
God looks at Christ’s perfection in history, not our sins in history.
xxvi DEUTERONOMY

The redeemed person’s moral condition, deinitively and inally, is

representatively perfect: sin-free. This is because of the representa-
tive imputation of Christ’s perfection. But the redeemed person’s life
in history is a progressive overcoming of sin, which is always present.
The doctrine of imputation is the theological basis of reconcil-
ing God’s conditional and unconditional promises. An uncondi-
tional promise rests on the predestinating work of God in history to
bring the recipients of the promise to that degree of moral perfec-
tion and judicial righteousness required to obtain the promise. No
promise is devoid of stipulations. The covenantal question is this:
Who lawfully performs these stipulations on behalf of the heirs?
Paul provided the answer in Galatians 3. His message in Galatians 3
is that the promise is more fundamental than the law. Yet the prom-
ise was not in opposition to the law, nor was the law absent from the
conditional terms of the promise.

And this I say, that the covenant, that was conirmed before of God in
Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot dis-
annul, that it should make the promise of none efect. For if the inheritance
be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by
promise. Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of trans-
gressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it
was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a
mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of
God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given
life, verily righteousness should have been by the law (Gal. 3:17B21).

Did the Israelites have to be circumcised in order to inherit the

land? Yes. To become an heir of God’s promise to Abraham’s seed,
you had to be circumcised. Yet the promise to Abraham was none-
theless unconditional. How could it be both? Because of Christ’s work
as the judicial representative of all redeemed men. The promise to
Abraham – and through him, to his heirs – was always conditional
on Jesus Christ’s fulilling of God’s law in history. This is why Paul
invoked an otherwise peculiar grammatical argument: “Now to
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And
to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ”
(Gal. 3:16). God’s promise to Abraham was unconditional for the fourth
generation only because this promise was conditional on the historical work
of Jesus Christ as redeemed mankind’s judicial representative. Had Jesus’
perfectly obedient life not been predestined by God before the
 Preface xxvii

foundation of the world, there would have been no judicial basis of

redemption, and therefore no unconditional promises in history.
The only promise that would have been fulilled in history would
have been God’s promise to Adam: “But of the tree of the knowl-
edge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

The Hatred of God’s Law

By linking covenant-keeping with God’s blessings in history,
and covenant-breaking with God’s curses in history, the theonomist
challenges just about everybody. Not only does he challenge all
other religions, including humanism, he also challenges premillen-
nialists and amillennialists. There can be no escape from this con-
frontation. The doctrine of eschatology (point ive) raises the issue
of historical sanctions (point four). These, in turn, raise the issue of
biblical law (point three). The consistent theonomist insists that bib-
lical law, God’s predictable historical sanctions, and eschatology are
“a package deal,” to use modern American slang. They are un-
breakably interlocked. Defenders of non-theonomic views of escha-
tology are not always consistent in their rejection of this package. A
few of them may not openly reject theonomy’s insistence on the
covenantal continuity of biblical law and God’s visible, predictable,
corporate historical sanctions, although most of them do. Their re-
jection of postmillennialism eventually leads most of them to reject
theonomy’s view of law and sanctions.
Modern Christians are generally opposed to biblical law. This is
one reason why they are opposed to postmillennialism. Instead of re-
jecting biblical law on the basis of their anti-postmillennialism, many
of them are anti-postmillennial because of their rejection of the con-
tinuing authority of biblical law and its mandated civil sanctions.
For these critics, the Book of Deuteronomy is an ofense. When pushed
to state their views, they come out against Deuteronomy. The size of this
commentary indicates why they are so hostile to Deuteronomy: Deuter-
onomy contains the most comprehensive presentation of God’s law.
A good example of this hostility appears in a critique of my 1984
essay on the free market economy and the Mosaic law.8 I have spent

8. I have reprinted this essay as Appendix E.

xxviii DEUTERONOMY

my career arguing that the Bible’s covenantal law-order, when

obeyed, must produce a free market economy. Critics of the free
market within Christian circles are upset with this argument. Chris-
tians who received graduate education in the social sciences in secu-
lar universities9 prior to about 1980 are almost universally skeptical of
the free market. When they are faced with the teachings of the Old
Testament regarding the mandatory nature of private property and a
highly limited civil government (I Sam. 8:15, 17), their reaction is not
to abandon their commitment to socialism or the mixed economy.
Rather, they openly reject the Old Testament. For example, William
Diehl, a defender of economist John Maynard Keynes’ defense of the
civil government-guided economy, responded as follows to my brief
theonomic defense of the free market: “That the author is strong on
‘biblical law’ is apparent. The essay provides us with thirty-nine Old
Testament citations, of which twenty-three are from the book of Deu-
teronomy. Alongside these imposing Old Testament references the
reader is given only nine New Testament citations, of which only four
come from the mouth of Jesus. Notwithstanding one of North’s con-
cluding statements that we need ‘faith in Jesus Christ,’ this essay
might more properly be entitled ‘Poverty and Wealth according to
Deuteronomy.’ The teachings and parables of Jesus are rich with ref-
erences to wealth, poverty and justice. Why has the author chosen to
ignore these? Can it be that the words of the Master are an embarrass-
ment to the advocates of a free-market system?”10
I reply that the words of the Master are also the words of the Book
of Deuteronomy. To imply otherwise is to imply that Marcion’s sec-
ond-century defense of a two-gods authorship of the Bible is ortho-
dox. Marcion’s position was unorthodox then, and it still is. Was
Deuteronomy revealed by some other god than the God of the Bi-
ble? No. So, Mr. Diehl was indulging in rhetoric. When rhetoric un-
dermines orthodoxy, it should be sacrifced for the sake of
orthodoxy. I ask: What is wrong with Deuteronomy’s discussion of
the causes of wealth and poverty? God should not be placed in the

9. This means every graduate liberal arts program except at unaccredited Bob Jones
University.
10. William E. Diehl, “A Guided-Market Response,” in Robert Clouse (ed.), Wealth and
Poverty: Four Christian Views of Economics (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1984),
p. 66.
 Preface xxix

dock just because Deuteronomy does not conform to the incoherent

speculations in Mr. Keynes’ General Theory.
Is there evidence that God’s commandments in Deuteronomy
were annulled by the New Covenant? Some commandments have
been annulled, such as the law of genocidal annihilation. That was a
one-time event. It is the job of the expositor to examine which Mo-
saic laws have carried over into the New Covenant and which have
not. But for a critic of the free market order, or any other aspect or
social product of Deuteronomy, blithely to dismiss Deuteronomy’s
authority over him and his academic speculations without showing
what has been annulled and why, is to play with ire.
Modern man arrogates to himself the right to pick and choose
from God’s revelation, a practice which Rushdoony calls the smor-
gasbord approach to the Bible. Modern academic evangelicals
come in the name of the latest humanist fad, indulging in the
rhetoric of contempt for God’s law. Joseph Sobran, a Roman Catholic
columnist with a gift for the English language, once wrote that he
would rather belong to a church that is 5,000 years behind the times
than one that is hujng and pujng to keep up with the spirit of the age.
Put another way, better Eastern Orthodoxy than the World Council of
Churches. Better the Athanasian Creed than the Social Gospel.
Mr. Diehl’s rhetoric implies that what Jesus taught was in oppo-
sition to what Deuteronomy teaches. This needs to be proven, not
merely stated. But because Mr. Diehl’s rhetorical response is all that
is left for a critic of the free market order who comes in the name of
Christ, I have decided to move to the Gospels when I complete this
commentary on Deuteronomy. With thousands of pages of com-
mentary on the Pentateuch behind me, I can now safely move to the
New Testament. I have proven my point with respect to the
Pentateuch. God’s law provides the legal framework for a free market
social order and undermines the theory of socialism. Until at least
one critic of the free market produces a comparably detailed com-
mentary on the economics of the Pentateuch, readers of my multi-
volume series should withhold judgment regarding the standard re-
plies by Christian defenders of socialism and the mixed economy:
1) the Bible does not ofer a blueprint for economics; and/or 2) the
Bible is opposed to the free market. Assertions without proof are
merely rhetoric. To my critics, I will say it one more time: You can’t
beat something with nothing.
xxx DEUTERONOMY

Deinitions
Throughout this book, I refer to the theocentric foundations of
the laws. I begin my study of a law with an implied question: Why
did God give it? I begin to search out my answer with a brief discus-
sion of God in His relation to the creation. This is a basic principle
of biblical hermeneutics that I did not employ prior to Tools of Do-
minion (1990).
I also employ the terms land law, seed law, and cross-boundary
law. I came up with this classiication in my commentary on Leviti-
cus. A land law refers to a law that was binding exclusively inside
the Promised Land. A seed law had to do with the preservation of
the tribes as separate entities. A cross-boundary law was one that ap-
plied both inside and outside of the Promised Land. It is still binding
unless annulled by the New Covenant.

Conclusion
Deuteronomy is the Pentateuch’s book of inheritance/disinheri-
tance. Its theme is three-fold: predestination, adopted sonship, and
inheritance. The fourth generation after the descent into Egypt
would surely inherit. This had been predestined by God. This in-
heritance was nonetheless ethically conditional: primarily depend-
ent on Jesus Christ’s representative perfect work and secondarily
dependent on Joshua’s decision to circumcise the nation at Gilgal
(Josh. 5:3). To maintain this inheritance – the kingdom grant – Israel
would have to obey God’s law. Disobedience would produce disin-
heritance, which Jesus announced to the religious leaders of Israel:
“Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from
you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt.
21:43). The adopted Israelite heirs were inally replaced in A.D. 70
by gentile adopted heirs. “But as many as received him, to them
gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe
on his name” (John 1:12).
Deuteronomy ofers the basics of biblical economics. The eco-
nomics it teaches is free market economics. This is why Christian
economists of the socialist or Keynesian persuasion do not spend a
lot of time commenting on the details of Deuteronomy. Deuteron-
omy is an afront to their economics.
 Introduction
INTRODUCTION

These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side
Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between
Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab (Deut. 1:1).

The Hebrew words that begin this book of the Bible, ‘eleh
dabarim or devarim, mean simply “these words.” But this is not the
name which has come down through time to Jews and gentiles.
Deuteronomy is the book’s commonly accepted title. Deuteronomy
is an Anglicized derivative from the Greek: second (deutero) law (no-
mos). It comes from the Septuagint’s1 rendering in Greek of the
words mishneh torah,2 or copy of the law. “And it shall be, when he
sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a
copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the
Levites” (Deut. 17:18).3
What were the words of Moses? A recapitulation of God’s law.
This is why the laws of Deuteronomy repeat so many of the laws of
Leviticus, e.g., Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. This recapitula-
tion of the law was preparatory to national covenant renewal at Gil-
gal (Josh. 5).The generation born in the wilderness had not visibly
covenanted with God: no circumcision. Most – probably all – of the
members of the exodus generation except Moses were dead by
now.4 Aaron died (Num. 20:28) just prior to the wars against King

1. The Septuagint translation of the Old Testament into Greek: second century B.C.
2. The title of Maimonides’ twelfth-century commentary on the law, written from 1177 to
1187. It ills 14 volumes in the Yale University Press edition, The Code of Maimonides.
3. New Bible Dictionary (2nd ed.; Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1982), p. 280.
4. The exception was Caleb (Deut. 1:36).

1
2 DEUTERONOMY

Arad, King Og, and King Sihon (Num. 21). It was time for national
covenant renewal, which had to precede national covenantal inher-
itance. Deuteronomy presents the judicial basis and promise of this
inheritance.
This presentation of the law was made “on this side of Jordan in
the wilderness.” This is an inaccurate translation. The Hebrew word
translated “this side” should be translated “opposite side,” i.e., east
of the Jordan or across the Jordan. The King James translators
sometimes translated ayber as “other side.”5
Moses died on the wilderness side of the Jordan. Yet the context
of this passage indicates that the word should be translated “other
side.” If Moses wrote these words, he must have been writing from
the perspective of the nation after it had crossed the Jordan. He was
on the other side of Jordan when he wrote of the other side as the
other side. That is, he wrote Deuteronomy as if he were writing to
people settled in Canaan. He was writing in the conidence that
Israel would be successful in the conquest of the land. He was writ-
ing to those who had already inherited. The future-orientation of
the Book of Deuteronomy begins in its irst sentence.

Higher Critics and Their Baptized Agents

Higher critics of the Bible argue that Moses did not write these
words. These words were supposedly written centuries later by
some ecclesiastical oicial inside the land. That is to say, higher crit-
ics implicitly argue that the Book of Deuteronomy is a pack of lies
written by one or more forgers.6 But, being mild-mannered academ-
ics as well as wolves in sheep’s clothing, they do not use such words
as lies, forgers, and deception. They prefer such sophisticated terms
as myths, redactors, and weltanschauung.

5. “And they came to the threshingloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they
mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father
seven days” (Gen. 50:10). “From thence they removed, and pitched on the other side of
Arnon, which is in the wilderness that cometh out of the coasts of the Amorites: for Arnon is
the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites” (Num. 21:13). Yet in one case the
word is translated both ways in one verse: “For we will not inherit with them on yonder side
Jordan, or forward; because our inheritance is fallen to us on this side Jordan eastward”
(Num. 32:19).
6. Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition;
Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Appendix J: “Conspiracy, Forgery,
and Higher Criticism.”
 Introduction 3

One argument against the higher critics is the integration of the

ive books of Moses. The Pentateuch is a remarkable structure. How
did hordes of redactors re-write the Pentateuch, line by line, without
undermining the integration of the ive books? How was it that this
structure, which generations of higher critics failed to perceive, was
understood by each of the redactors? How was it that generations
of tiny revisions maintained this structure, which was invisible to
academic specialists – even Germans! – until the work of George
Mendenhall in the mid-1950’s?
The Pentateuch is structured in terms of a covenant. The ive
books of Moses parallel the ive-point biblical covenant model.7
This model deines covenant theology. This ive-point structure is
8

clearest in the Book of Deuteronomy: transcendence (1:1B5); hier-

archy (1:6B4:49); ethics (5B26); sanctions (27B30); and continuity
(31B34).9 Jordan divides the book into ive parts: 1) steward as
vice-gerent, 2) new cosmos,10 3) Moses’ sermon on the Ten Com-
mandments, 4) implementation, and 5) succession.11 This ive-point
model also governs the structure of Exodus12 and Leviticus,13 as well
as the Ten Commandments14 and the ive sacriices of Leviticus.15
This covenantal structure was common to Hittite treaties in the
second millennium, B.C. This was Mendenhall’s point and Kline’s.
If the Book of Deuteronomy was put into its inal form in, say, the

7. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), General Introduction; Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic
Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Preface.
8. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 72B75.
9. This is Sutton’s version of Meredith Kline’s proposed structure. Meredith G. Kline,
Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy: Studies and Commentary (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1963), pp. 48B49; Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper:
Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), pp. 21,
41, 59, 77, 96.
10. Two sets of ive points each (1:6B46; 2:1B4:40).
11. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 4.
12. Sovereign God (1B17), judicial appeals courts (18), laws (21B23:13), oath (23B24), and
inheritance (25B40). North, Tools of Dominion, p. 93.
13. Sacriices (1B7), priestly cleansing (8B16), laws of separation (17B22), covenant-renewal
festivals and covenant-breaking acts (23B24), and inheritance (25B27). North, Leviticus, pp.
44B45.
14. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), pp. xivBxxii.
15. North, Leviticus, pp. xlixBliv.
4 DEUTERONOMY

seventh century B.C., how was it that it was structured in terms of a

treaty structure in wide use almost a thousand years earlier?
Despite this obvious problem, professedly conservative Bible
commentaries still promote some version of higher criticism. The
New Bible Dictionary, co-published by InterVarsity Press in England
and Tyndale House in the United States, asserts: “But none of these
statements permits the conclusion that Deuteronomy as we have it
today came completely, or even in large measure, from Moses him-
self. One has to allow for editorial activity and adaptations of origi-
nal Mosaic material to a later age.”16 Let us translate this into
non-Ph.D. English: “One has to allow for post-Mosaic forgeries by
non-inspired charlatans who adapted the original Mosaic material
to the interests, information, and perspectives of their age, fooling
the likes of you, my academically uncertiied Christian reader, gen-
eration after generation.” The author says as much: “However, it
became necessary in new situations to represent the words of Moses
and to show their relevance for a new day.”17 Then he escalates his
rhetoric: “While there seems little reason to deny that a substantial
part [which part?] of Deuteronomy was in existence some centuries
[how many?] before the seventh century BC, it is not possible [for
humanist-certiied Christian scholars] to say how much of it com-
prises the ipsissima verba of Moses himself.”18 How impressive:
ipsissima verba. I would call his language struttissima verba. “Hey, all
you untrained bumpkins out there who still believe in the inspired
word of God, who still believe in the words of Jesus, which
identiied the author of the law as Moses. You don’t have a Ph.D. is-
sued by some secular university. You poor, pathetic people are
struggling to earn a living, while we Christian academics live of of
your tithes, your oferings, or maybe even your taxes through a
tax-funded university faculty. Personally, I live of of public tax money.
See what we can do! We can undermine your faith at your expense.
We can toss around Latin phrases. I guess that shows you what we
are.” Yes, it does. And also what they believe: “Hath God said?”
Those thoughtful people who, in a century or a millennium from
now, may relect on why the twentieth century was almost devoid of

16. New Bible Dictionary, p. 283.

17. Idem.
18. Ibid., p. 284.
 Introduction 5

Bible commentaries that were conident in the cultural relevance of

the Bible, or in principles drawn from the Bible, or in the probable
success of the gospel in transforming culture, need only consider the
emasculating efects of such prevarications as we ind in The New Bi-
ble Dictionary, written for educated laymen by humanist-trained and
humanist-certiied academic evangelicals. Cautious Christian au-
thors refuse to use words that relect what they are really saying.
Forgers in retrospect become “editors.” Revisions made centuries
later by these clever and unscrupulous forgers become “relevance
for a new day.” The verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible be-
comes a mish-mash of “fragments.” The Bible as delivered to the
saints becomes a grab-bag of updates, revisions, and improvements
on the revealed word of God. The timeless authority of the Bible is
jettisoned for the timely authority of academic relevance. The word
of man triumphs in history, revision by revision, leaving saints in ev-
ery age without an inspired anchor linking heaven and earth, eternity
and time. Man is thereby unchained covenantally, which is what cov-
enant-breaking man since Adam has wanted to be. Twentieth-cen-
tury evangelical churches are deeply compromised with modern
pagan culture, rarely more visibly or more dangerously than in the
Christian college and seminary classroom.

Sanctions and Inheritance/Disinheritance

The promised negative sanction against the generation of the
exodus had been imposed by God: they would not enter the Prom-
ised Land (Num. 14:23). This exclusion was a secondary form of
disinheritance. The primary form was genocide. This is what God
had initially threatened. “I will smite them with the pestilence, and
disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier
than they” (Num. 14:12). Moses countered this with the ultimate
prayer: an appeal to God’s reputation.

And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for
thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;) And they
will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou LORD
art among this people, that thou LORD art seen face to face, and that thy
cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by daytime in a
pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of ire by night. Now if thou shalt kill all this
people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will
speak, saying, Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the
6 DEUTERONOMY

land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilder-
ness (Num. 14:13B16).

Inheritance can be secured in one of two ways: disinheritance or

adoption. Either God displaces the present owners and transfers
ownership to His people, or else He incorporates them into His peo-
ple through adoption, which then secures the inheritance. There is
no third way. Inheritance and disinheritance are two sides of the
same coin. They are an aspect of God’s sanctions, positive and nega-
tive, in eternity but also in history.
Sihon’s resistance to Israel was part of this preliminary process
of inheritance/disinheritance. “But Sihon king of Heshbon would
not let us pass by him: for the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and
made his heart obstinate, that he might deliver him into thy hand, as
appeareth this day. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have be-
gun to give Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that
thou mayest inherit his land. Then Sihon came out against us, he
and all his people, to ight at Jahaz. And the LORD our God delivered
him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people.
And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the
men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none
to remain: Only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the
spoil of the cities which we took” (Deut. 2:30–35). This was a system
of dispossession: “And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he
chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with
his mighty power out of Egypt; To drive out nations from before
thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee
their land for an inheritance, as it is this day. Know therefore this
day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven
above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. Thou shalt
keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I com-
mand thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy chil-
dren after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the
earth, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever” (Deut. 4:37–40).
This dispossession was supposed to be total: “But of the cities of
these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheri-
tance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt ut-
terly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the
Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the
LORD thy God hath commanded thee” (Deut. 20:16–17).
 Introduction 7

The Book of Deuteronomy is the Pentateuch’s book of inheri-

tance. It follows the Pentateuch’s book of sanctions, Numbers. The
account of the preliminary dispossession on the wilderness side of
the Jordan is found in Numbers 21. The signiicance of this initial
warfare was announced by Moses to the generation of the conquest.
Moses framed his discussion of the events of Numbers 21 in terms of
God’s program of inheritance/disinheritance.

Social Theory and Eschatology

The ifth point of the biblical covenant model is succession.
19

The ifth point is judicially connected to the fourth: sanctions. Cor-

20

porate sanctions are applied by God in history in terms of point

21
three: law. Any discussion of biblical law that ignores corporate
sanctions and succession is incomplete. Any discussion that self-
consciously separates them is incorrect.
Succession is an aspect of eschatology. The eschatological ques-
tion regarding history is this: Who shall inherit the earth? The Bible is
clear: covenant-keepers.

His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth
(Ps. 25:13).

For evildoers shall be cut of: but those that wait upon the LORD, they
shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9).

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the
abundance of peace (Ps. 37:11).

For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be
cursed of him shall be cut of (Ps. 37:22).

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5).

This eschatological outlook is denied by premillennialists and

amillennialists. This is why they have a major problem with the
Book of Deuteronomy, the premier book of inheritance in the Old

19. Sutton, That You May Prosper, ch. 5.

20. Ibid., ch. 4.
21. Ibid., ch. 3.
8 DEUTERONOMY

Testament. To deal with this book, they have to argue that the cor-
rosive efects of sin always lead men to break the covenant and lose
the inheritance. This is why covenant-keepers supposedly will not
inherit the earth. The problem with this argument is two-fold: 1) it
necessarily makes covenant-breakers the inheritors, thereby deny-
ing the plain teaching of Scripture; 2) it relegates the New Testa-
ment doctrines of the bodily resurrection and ascension of Christ to
the realm of eschatological adiaphora – things indiferent to the faith.

Dispensationalism
It should come as no surprise that C. I. Scoield ofered fewer
notes to the Book of Deuteronomy than to any other book in the
Pentateuch: a grand total of three. Not until we reach Deuteronomy
16 do we ind a Scoield note, and this is a brief one on the feasts of
Israel.22 The next one appears in chapter 28, a one-sentence note
describing chapters 28B29 as part of chapter 30’s “Palestinian Cove-
nant.”23 The third note is attached to Deuteronomy 30:3, a descrip-
tion of the seven-part “Palestinian Covenant.” Scoield said that Israel
“has never as yet taken the land under the unconditional Abrahamic
Covenant, nor has it ever possessed the whole land . . .”24 This note
implies the necessity of a future restoration of the nation of Israel to
the land of Palestine.
I have dealt with the supposed unconditionality of the Abrahamic
promise of the land.25 The relevant point here is Scoield’s silence on
the ethical terms of the Mosaic covenant and their judicial connec-
tion to the New Testament, including corporate sanctions and in-
heritance. He moved from the Palestinian Covenant’s conditions
back to the Abrahamic covenant’s supposed lack of conditions,
ignoring both the issue of circumcision as a condition of inheritance
and the question of predictable covenantal sanctions in New Cove-
nant history. He also removed the question of eschatological in-
heritance from the realm of law and historical sanctions. His theol-
ogy moves the question of inheritance from conditionality to
unconditionality, i.e., from corporate covenantal obedience as the

22. Scoield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1909), p. 234n.
23. Ibid., p. 245n.
24. Ibid., p. 250.
25. Preface, above, and Chapter 17, below.
 Introduction 9

basis of inheritance in history to corporate covenantal disinheri-

tance: the church’s removal from history by the pre-tribulation Rap-
ture and its replacement as God’s heir in history by a Jewish
millennial church.
The New Scoield Reference Bible (1967) did add a few more notes
to Deuteronomy, but all but one of them avoided any discussion of
God’s law, His corporate sanctions in history, and inheritance/dis-
inheritance. This exception supports my point. It added material to
Scoield’s note to Deuteronomy 30:3 on the Palestinian Covenant.
“No passage of Scripture has found fuller conirmation in the events
of history than Dt. 28B30. In A.D. 70 the Jewish nation was scattered
throughout the world because of disobedience and rejection of
Christ. In world-wide dispersion they have experienced exactly the
punishments foretold by Moses.” Here the editors implicitly admit-
ted that the Mosaic covenant is still in efect in New Testament
times: its negative sanction of dispersion has been applied in New
Testament history. This was a remarkable admission theologically:
the assertion of covenantal continuity from Moses down to the modern state
of Israel. But this Mosaic sanction is said to apply to Jews; there was
no mention of Christians in the note. This aspect of covenantal con-
tinuity is not much emphasized by dispensational theologians, for
obvious reasons: the camel’s nose of covenantal continuity is now
inside the tent of New Testament history. Dispensational theology’s
“Great Parenthesis,” known as the Church Age, is apparently not
completely parenthetical, covenantally speaking. If this covenantal
continuity is still in efect today, then there will presumably be a res-
toration of the Mosaic law during the Millennial Age. The editors
hint obliquely at this possibility: “In the twentieth century initial
steps toward a restoration of the exiled people to their homeland
have been seen.”26
If this negative corporate sanction is still being applied to the
Jews in a predictable fashion – indeed, the most predictable corpo-
rate sanction in history – then there is no reason to believe that the
Mosaic covenant governing the Jewish Millennial Church will be
revoked at that late date. For some unstated reason, God is still en-
forcing His negative corporate sanction on lo-ami (not His people)
during the period of their not being His people, while refusing to

26. The New Scoield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 251n.
10 DEUTERONOMY

bring positive corporate sanctions to His people in the Church Age.

God’s predictable negative corporate sanction curses the Jews, but
His corporate sanctions are inoperable one way or the other for
Christians. This peculiar system of Church Age sanctions – “heads,
Jews lose, but Christians don’t win; tails, covenant-breakers win” –
leaves covenant-breakers as the heirs during the Church Age. This neces-
sarily relegates both Jews and Christians to the fringes of social dis-
course. According to dispensational theology, Jews and Christians
have nothing covenantally relevant to say about God’s law and cor-
porate sanctions during the Church Age. Covenant-breakers heart-
ily agree, and then enthusiastically seek to disinherit Jews and
Christians culturally whenever the latter seek to act in the name of
God’s revealed law.
Dispensational theology is self-consciously based on an escha-
tology: the disinheritance of Christians and Jews during the Church
Age. That is to say, dispensationalism is a Church Age eschatology of in-
heritance by covenant-breakers. Dispensationalism denies the existence
of covenant sanctions in the Church Age, except insofar as such
sanctions are exclusively negative and condemn Jews. Because
dispensationalism is a theology of corporate inheritance and disin-
heritance apart from predictable covenantal sanctions, its advocates
have no way to construct an explicitly biblical social theory during
the Church Age. They deny the existence of any connection be-
tween the church’s covenantal obedience and its prophesied inheri-
tance in history. They in fact deny that the New Testament church
has any connection with the Mosaic covenant’s conditionality and
Old Testament prophecies regarding inheritance in history. In
this regard, dispensationalism, historic premillennialism, and
amillennialism, are all agreed, which is why none of them has been
able to develop an explicitly biblical social theory.27 This has been
the theological foundation of what I have called the pietist-humanist
alliance.28
Dispensational theology can be traced back to 1830. Since
1830, there has not been a single published dispensational book on
Christian social theory. The dispensational movement has been

27. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990).
28. For a detailed study of this alliance, see Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals
Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1995), Part 3.
 Introduction 11

systematically silent on Christianity’s social and political responsi-

bilities in the New Testament era. Also, there have been no books
describing any judicial continuity between the gentile church’s
covenantal responsibilities and the millennial Jewish church’s
covenantal responsibilities. There has been no book-length discus-
sion regarding any judicial continuity between the Church Age and
the Millennial Age. In short, dispensationalism has been silent in
the area of social theory. This is not an accident or an oversight on
the part of dispensationalists. This is the inevitable result of the radi-
cal judicial discontinuities that are basic to dispensational theology:
Mosaic law, New Testament law, and millennial law. This is why, in
the words of dispensational defender Tommy Ice, “Premillennialists
have always been involved in the present world. And basically, they
have picked up on the ethical positions of their contemporaries.”29

Conclusion
Deuteronomy recapitulated God’s law in preparation for
Israel’s national covenant renewal through circumcision (Josh. 5).
Moses looked forward to Israel’s conquest of Canaan. The law
would provide the judicial basis for Israel’s maintaining the king-
dom grant.
The Pentateuch is structured in terms of the ive points of the
covenant. This fact testiies against higher critics who would deny
the Mosaic authorship. The Pentateuch’s structure compares with
the treaties of kings of the second millennium B.C. It was written in
that era.
The ifth point of the covenant is inheritance/disinheritance.
This is the primary theme of Deuteronomy. The book is inherently
postmillennial. Dispensationalism denies this, of course. But by ac-
knowledging that Jews after A.D. 70 have been under the cove-
nant’s negative sanctions, the editors of the New Scoield Reference
Bible thereby acknowledged covenantal continuity, Old Testament
to New Testament. But by ignoring the continuity of the covenant
with respect to the church, they placed Christians under the rule of
covenant-breakers. Neither the Jews nor the Christians are the

29. Tommy Ice, response in a 1988 debate: Ice and Dave Hunt vs. Gary North and Gary
DeMar. Cited in Gary DeMar, The Debate Over Christian Reconstruction (Atlanta, Georgia:
American Vision Press, 1988), p. 185.
12 DEUTERONOMY

recipients of corporate covenant blessings this side of the millen-

nium. The cultural pessimism of dispensationalism is inescapable. It
ofers no cultural hope for the Church Age, so it places no value on
the development of biblical social theory. In contrast, theonomic
postmillennialism ofers both hope for the church and incentives for
those Christians who would develop an explicitly biblical social the-
ory. Deuteronomy, more than any other book in the Bible, ofers
the judicial content of such a reconstruction.
Part I: Transcendence/Presence (1:1–5)

1
A Transcendent Yet
A TRANSCENDENT YETPresent
PRESENTGod GOD
These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side
Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between
Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab. (There are
eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadesh-
barnea.) And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on
the irst day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel,
according unto all that the LORD had given him in commandment unto
them; After he had slain Sihon the king of the Amorites, which dwelt in
Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, which dwelt at Astaroth in Edrei: On
this side Jordan, in the land of Moab, began Moses to declare this law. . .
(Deut. 1:1–5).

By the time of the opening words of the Book of Deuteronomy,

all the ighting men of the generation of the exodus were dead. In
his recapitulation of the story of the wilderness, Moses said: “So it
came to pass, when all the men of war were consumed and dead
from among the people. . .” (Deut. 2:16). Then Moses re-told the
story of the defeat of Sihon (vv. 26–35). This event had taken place
before Deuteronomy’s narrative began (Num. 21:21–26).
The death of the exodus generation points to the covenantal is-
sue of inheritance. Deuteronomy is the Pentateuch’s book of inheri-
tance. Inheritance is point ive of the biblical covenant model. The
death of the exodus generation had prepared the nation of Israel for
the long-promised inheritance: “But in the fourth generation they
shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet
full” (Gen. 15:16).
Meredith Kline identiies this introductory passage as the pre-
amble of the covenant or treaty between God and Israel. “Ancient

13
14 DEUTERONOMY

suzerainty treaties began with a preamble in which the speaker, the

one who was declaring his lordship and demanding the vassal’s alle-
giance, identiied himself.” Deuteronomy’s opening words, “these
are the words,” were common in extra-biblical treaties.1 Who, then,
was the sovereign? Was it Moses himself, as Jordan argues?2 Or was
it God?

Moses the Mediator

These opening words reveal that Moses spoke them. The ques-
tion is: In what capacity? It had to be as a delegated agent. “Moses
spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all that the LORD
had given him in commandment unto them; After he had slain
Sihon the king of the Amorites. . .” (vv. 3b–4a). Who had achieved
the victory over Sihon? God: the same God who had sustained
them in the wilderness for four decades. The implication was that
God is sovereign over all earthly kings, even as Moses was sover-
eign over Israel’s civil rulers (Deut. 1:13–18). God was also present
with the Israelites, delivering their enemies into their hands – as
present as Moses had been in rendering civil judgment (Ex. 18).
That is, God is above mankind, yet He is specially present with His
chosen people.
This makes God diferent from both the god of deism and the
god of animism. The god of deism is too distant from his creation to
inluence it. His lack of immanence destroys his sovereignty. His
personalism is limited; it applies only to his own being. The world is
impersonal. English Deists may never have argued this way, since
they were heavily inluenced by Christianity, but this is the theoreti-
cal meaning of deism. The god that made the cosmic clock no lon-
ger interferes with it. At most, he tinkers at the edges of creation. In
contrast, the god of animism is a part of the creation and is therefore
unable to inluence it as a sovereign master. He is immersed in it. He
cannot remove himself from it in order to command it. His lack of
transcendence destroys his sovereignty. His personalism is limited;
he shares it with the world he did not make.

1. Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy: Studies
and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1963), p. 50.
2. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 58.
 A Transcendent Yet Present God 15

The God of the Bible is sovereign over the world because He

made it out of nothing. He is present with the world because He
providentially sustains it. The world is personal because God is per-
sonal. It does not share in God’s being, but it relects His being. “For
the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly
seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal
power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).
The Bible teaches cosmic personalism.3

Mediation
This passage resembles part two of the biblical covenant model,
which Kline calls historical prologue.4 Yet Kline lists it as part one:
“Preamble: Covenant Mediator.”5 Mediator implies hierarchy; hi-
erarchy is also point two of the biblical covenant model.6 Why,
then, do both Kline and Sutton designate this brief section as part
one? If this is merely for the sake of argument, to make the Book of
Deuteronomy it the ive-point covenant model, then the power of
their argument is weakened.
This is a question regarding the Person who is represented by
the mediator. God revealed Himself to Old Covenant people
through prophets; Moses was the greatest of these prophets.7 The
words of Moses His servant could be trusted, and had to be obeyed,
because God is above men, and He brings judgments in history in
terms of His Bible-revealed law. The law-giver is God, the sanc-
tions-bringer. Sihon and Og learned the hard way that God is totally
sovereign. To present Himself to the generation of the conquest,
God announced His law and sanctions through Moses.
The announcement of God’s law and God’s sanctions points
back to the giving of the law in Exodus. Exodus is the second book of
the Pentateuch. It corresponds to the second point of the covenant.
Kline calls point two “historical prologue.” 8 Moses subsequently

3. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 1.
4. Ibid., p. 52.
5. Ibid., p. 50.
6. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 2.
7. Ibid., ch. 1. John the Baptist was his equal (Matt. 11:11).
8. Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy: Studies
and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1963), p. 52.
16 DEUTERONOMY

recapitulated in Deuteronomy the story of God’s dealings with Is-

rael for 40 years in the wilderness (1:6–4:49). God is the God of his-
tory because He is ruler over history: hierarchy. He brings His word
to pass. In the Book of Genesis, He revealed Himself as the Creator.
In Genesis, He presented an account in the irst chapter in terms of
what He repeatedly said: “Let there be,” and the immediate results
of His words in history. When God presented Himself in the Old
Covenant, He did so, not by announcing a theological proposition,
but by declaring what He has done in history. He named Himself:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
Then He gave a detailed account of His acts. Similarly, we read in
the opening passage in Deuteronomy, “Moses spake unto the chil-
dren of Israel, according unto all that the LORD had given him in
commandment unto them” (v. 3b). Who is the Lord? The Person
who only recently had destroyed Sihon and Og (v. 4), the Person
whose law Moses was about to reveal.

Four Decades
The Book of Deuteronomy begins six months after Aaron died,
in the eleventh month (Deut. 1:3). This marked the end of the wil-
derness period. Miriam had died in the irst month (Num. 20:1).
The irst month of which year? It had to be the fortieth year. Num-
bers 20 begins with the death of Miriam and closes with the death of
Aaron (v. 28). Aaron died at age 123 (Num. 33:39) in the fortieth
year after the exodus: “And Aaron the priest went up into mount
Hor at the commandment of the LORD, and died there, in the forti-
eth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of
Egypt, in the irst day of the ifth month” (Num. 33:38). The phrase,
“the irst day of the ifth month,” refers to Aaron’s death. It cannot
refer to the exodus itself, which took place on the fourteenth day of
the irst month: Passover (Ex. 12:18).
Deuteronomy (“second law”) announces the terms of the cove-
nant. It is the second reading of the law. Why a second reading? Be-
cause this was preparatory to an act of covenant renewal. The fourth
generation after the journey into Egypt (Gen. 15:16) was about to
experience corporate covenant renewal. This took place inside the
Promised Land at Gilgal: mass circumcision (Josh. 5:5). Before they
were told by Joshua to participate in this act of covenant renewal, the
generation of the conquest was required to hear the law read in public.
 A Transcendent Yet Present God 17

It was not just that they had to hear the law. They also had to be
reminded of the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt (Deut. 4:20, 34,
37), as well as God’s miraculous preservation of Israel in the wilder-
ness (Deut. 8:3–4). The law of God and the nation’s deliverance by
God were linked: “These are the testimonies, and the statutes, and
the judgments, which Moses spake unto the children of Israel, after
they came forth out of Egypt” (Deut. 4:45). Because the deliverance
and preservation of Israel in the wilderness were clearly miraculous
events, the God who performed these miracles is above history:
transcendent. But because He spoke through Moses, God was also
present with His people. His transcendence in no way undermines
His immanence – immanence in the sense of presence. He is not
part of the creation, but He is present with His people.9

Conclusion
The opening passage in Deuteronomy identiies Moses as the
spokesman for the God who had delivered Israel and had also de-
feated two great Canaanite kings. Then begins a presentation of this
sovereign King’s law. But before this law was announced by God’s
prophet, the Israelites had to be reminded of the power of God in
history. God’s law is not some sort of natural law order that was part
of the cosmos and therefore not distinguishable from the cosmos. It
is not a system of impersonal law. It is the law of the God who is sov-
ereign over history.
To persuade the Israelites that He could deliver the long-
expected inheritance into their hands, God spoke through Moses.
He spoke of His demonstrated power over two Canaanitic kings.
He spoke also of His law. As sovereign over history, God is the sanc-
tions-bringer in history. He delivers His promised inheritance in
history. He announced His law through Moses after He had slain
Sihon and Og. First had come the display of His power; then came
the revelation of His law. He possessed the authority to impose His
law because He is sovereign over history.

9. Jesus Christ was God incarnate in history. This is the ultimate manifestation of both
presence and immanence. God was in the world but not of it. In His capacity as perfect man,
He was of the world. In His capacity as God, He was not.
Part II: Hierarchy/Representation (1:6–4:49)

2
A DelayedINHERITANCE
A DELAYED Inheritance
The LORD our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt
long enough in this mount: Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the
mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain,
in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the
land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river
Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the
land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
to give unto them and to their seed after them (Deut. 1:6–8).

The theocentric focus of this command is stewardship-ownership.

Stewardship is the representative control over an asset on someone
else’s behalf. It implies hierarchical authority: owner > steward >
asset. This transfer of ownership of the Promised Land was legally
grounded in God’s oath to Abraham, which He had renewed with
Isaac and Jacob. The third generation had refused to obey this com-
mand. This led to the wilderness wanderings. Moses began his ex-
position of God’s dealings with the exodus generation with a
discussion of the dominion assignment given to the nation at Horeb.
The historical context of this assignment had been a miracle, fol-
lowed by a rebellion, followed by another miracle. This was clearly
a land law. It governed the conquest of Canaan.
The irst miracle was the manna (Ex. 16). The nation would re-
ceive free food six days a week. This did not satisfy them. They also
wanted water. The manner of their complaint constituted their re-
bellion. This was followed by the second miracle.

And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the
wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of
the LORD, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people

18
 A Delayed Inheritance 19

to drink. Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us
water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with
me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD? And the people thirsted there for
water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is
this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children
and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, What
shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me. And the
LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the
elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine
hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in
Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it,
that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of
Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because
of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the
LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not? (Ex. 17:1–7).

Moses then told the story of his establishment of the civil hierar-
chy, with himself as the supreme judge over Israel (Deut. 1:12–17).
This incident is presented in Exodus 18. In between was the battle
against Amalek, where Moses sent Joshua into battle while he him-
self stood on a nearby hill. Moses raised his hands above his head,
and Israel prevailed. But when his arms grew weary, he let them
down, and Amalek prevailed. Aaron and Hur then held Moses’
hands high, and Israel prevailed (Ex. 17:8–13). In that battle, Israel
was victorious. This was the third miracle.

Israel’s Refusal to Fight

For a younger generation that knew these stories, Moses’ words
suggested what lay ahead: warfare. Joshua would be leading the na-
tion into battle, his reward from God because of his courageous rec-
ommendation a generation earlier. Their parents had been told by
God at the time of that earlier battle with Amalek that it was time to
conquer Canaan. Their parents had not accepted this assignment.
The three miracles – manna, water out of a rock, and military vic-
tory through Moses’ raised hands – had not persuaded them that
Moses’ leadership could be relied on, that he had a unique position
as God’s spokesman. They did not believe Moses because they did
not believe God.
Moses then reminded them of God’s repetition of the command
to conquer the land. This took place at another mountain, the
mountain of the Amorites (Deut. 1:19). “And I said unto you, Ye are
20 DEUTERONOMY

come unto the mountain of the Amorites, which the LORD our God
doth give unto us. Behold, the LORD thy God hath set the land be-
fore thee: go up and possess it, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath
said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged” (vv. 20–21). Moses
was speaking to the generation of the conquest; the ighting men
were all dead (v. 2:16). Nevertheless, he spoke of his having spoken
to “you.” He reminded them of their parents’ decision not to accept
the words of Joshua and Caleb (vv. 22–25). He applied their rebel-
lion to their children because it was a covenantally representative
act. “Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the
commandment of the LORD your God: And ye murmured in your
tents, and said, Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth
out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites,
to destroy us” (vv. 26–27). Their parents had refused to listen to
Moses. “Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them.
The LORD your God which goeth before you, he shall ight for you,
according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes; And
in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God
bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, un-
til ye came into this place. Yet in this thing ye did not believe the
LORD your God, Who went in the way before you, to search you out
a place to pitch your tents in, in ire by night, to shew you by what
way ye should go, and in a cloud by day” (vv. 29–33).
It was at this point that God had disinherited the exodus genera-
tion: “And the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth,
and sware, saying, Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil
generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fa-
thers” (vv. 34–35). Had the sins of the fathers condemned the sons?
Moses would later reveal this law: “The fathers shall not be put to
death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for
the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deut.
24:16). Yet the sons had wandered with their fathers for up to 40
years. Their inheritance had been delayed. The efects of their fa-
thers’ sin had been borne in part by the sons. There is covenantal
representation in history. There is hierarchy. Their parents had
been in authority. They had made a bad decision that afected their
children. The children had participated in the sins of their fathers in
the same way that they had participated in the sin of Adam.
Covenantal continuity in history is based on covenantal representa-
tion. Sons inherit from fathers; they also participate in the sins of
 A Delayed Inheritance 21

their fathers, which can be seen in the size and timing of the in-
heritance.
Moses reminded them of the two exceptions to the curse: Caleb
(v. 36) and Joshua. “But Joshua the son of Nun, which standeth be-
fore thee, he shall go in thither: encourage him: for he shall cause
Israel to inherit it” (v. 38). For four decades, Moses had encouraged
Joshua. Now the time had arrived; Joshua’s time had come. It would
be his assignment to cause Israel to inherit the Promised Land. The
children of the exodus generation would gain what their parents
had forfeited. The day of inheritance was imminent.
Their parents had rebelled by attacking the Amorites. As pre-
dicted, Israel lost that battle (vv. 41–44). From that point until the re-
cent victories over Arad, Sihon, Og, and Moab-Midian, Israel was
not allowed to ight. Israel was not entitled to the lands of Edom and
Moab (Deut. 2:5, 9). They had to buy whatever they wanted: “Ye
shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also
buy water of them for money, that ye may drink” (v. 6). They had
forfeited their inheritance; so, God refused to allow them to engage
in military conquest. If they would not ight to inherit Canaan, they
would not be allowed to ight to inherit other nations’ inheritances.

Compound Growth
The conquest of Canaan was a unique event. The land had been
assigned to Israel in Abraham’s day. But there was a time limit on
the fulillment of this promise: four generations. “But in the fourth
generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the
Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16). God had commanded the third
generation of Israelites to conquer Canaan. He commanded them to
do what He had prophesied to Abraham would not take place: con-
quest by the third generation. How was this possible? I have dealt with
this question in my commentary on Numbers. I wrote,

The third generation was called upon by God to conquer the

Canaanites immediately after the exodus. “And I said unto you, Ye are
come unto the mountain of the Amorites, which the LORD our God doth
give unto us. Behold, the LORD thy God hath set the land before thee: go up
and possess it, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not,
neither be discouraged” (Deut. 1:20–21). Yet the fourth generation was the
promised heir (Gen. 15:16). How could God require the third generation
to conquer Canaan?
22 DEUTERONOMY

This military conquest could have been achieved by the third genera-
tion’s transfer of title to the inheritance to the fourth generation immedi-
ately following the exodus. This could have been achieved judicially by a
transfer of military authority to the fourth generation, which was repre-
sented by Joshua and Caleb. These two men spoke for the fourth genera-
tion and its interests: immediate invasion. The other ten spies spoke for the
third generation. Had the third generation’s representatives accepted the
testimony of Joshua and Caleb, and had they been willing to transfer mili-
tary leadership to Joshua and Caleb, Israel would have entered Canaan as
the conqueror a generation early.
The judicial issue, and therefore the prophetic issue, was representa-
tion. Which generation’s representatives would represent all of Israel in
the imposition of corporate sanctions? The answer of the third generation:
“Ours.” This decision, publicly manifested by the congregation’s attempt
to stone Joshua and Caleb (Num. 14:10), sealed their doom. They would
all die in the wilderness (Num. 14:33).1

The exodus generation’s sin in rejecting God’s command had

condemned them to wandering. The Amorites, i.e., the residents of
Canaan and the immediate surrounding areas – Arad, Sihon, and
Og– were given extra time by God to work out the implications of
their respective faiths. They were allowed to develop their rule in
certain city-states. They had an important purpose in covenant his-
tory. They became negative examples for Israel: how not to wor-
ship and live. This leads me to a conclusion: sin compounds over time.
It gets worse. It feeds on itself, building to a crescendo. The
Amorites were illing up their cup of iniquity. In this sense, there is a
kind of positive de-sanctiication that parallels positive sanctiicat-
ion. Evil grows to the point where God will tolerate it no longer.
Then He cuts it short.
They were building up an economic inheritance for the fourth gen-
eration of Israelites. “And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall
have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cit-
ies, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things,
which thou illedst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not,
vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt
have eaten and be full. . .” (Deut. 6:10–11). Nevertheless, Canaan’s

1. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), p. 139.
 A Delayed Inheritance 23

spiritual inheritance was an abomination. Israel would inherit the for-

mer but was forbidden to claim the latter.
How could this be? If Canaan’s spiritual inheritance was abomi-
nable, why not also the economic results of that inheritance? If the
spiritual roots were perverse, why not also the fruits? How could an
evil tree produce good fruit? “For a good tree bringeth not forth cor-
rupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Luke
6:43). This is the question of common grace.2

Common Grace and Inheritance

Because man is made in the image of God, he cannot avoid cer-
tain common beliefs and evaluations. “Drop dead!” is a universally
recognized negative phrase, just as “O, king, live forever” was a
common term of respect in many ancient kingdoms, even though
3
obviously impossible to fulill in history. Certain features of life are
almost universally accepted as being desirable. Wealth is one of
them, though not necessarily great wealth, which most men and so-
cieties acknowledge brings with it unpleasant consequences. Good
health is another. Nowhere is there anyone who would deny the
truth of North’s universally preferable trade-of: “It is better to be
rich and healthy than it is to be poor and sick.” (Of course, this must
be qualiied by the economist’s ceteris paribus: other things remain-
ing equal.)
God makes health a universal goal for mankind. Sickness is uni-
versally regarded as a curse. There is no church ritual for anointing
someone with oil in order to make him sick. There are common fea-
tures of life that everyone acknowledges as preferable. People seek
to attain these preferred conditions of life. Men possess commonly
agreed-upon goals: wealth in general, health in general. This is an
aspect of common grace. It makes economic cooperation possible
among men of all religious and philosophical views. Common
grace is why the eforts of Canaanites in building up their farms and
vineyards produced an inheritance for Israel.
The question is: How? How did morally corrupt people achieve
these positive economic results? The answer is common grace. Men

2. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
3. I Kings 1:31; Nehemiah 2:3; Daniel 2:4; 3:9; 5:10; 6:6, 21.
24 DEUTERONOMY

agree on the desirability of certain results. This does not validate

their logic or other culturally derived methods of coming to conclu-
sions. It does not validate their worship of idols in seeking God’s
favor. But it does mean that there must be a common acceptance of
certain principles of action in order for individuals to prosper.
One of these principles is thrift. Men through hard experience
are taught to “save something for a rainy day.” They are told: “waste
not, want not.” They learn that “a penny saved is a penny earned.”4
They learn not to eat their seed corn. Another principle is hard
work. Men labor to subdue the earth in order that the earth might
bring forth its fruits. The earth blooms because men work hard over
time to convert the ground into something desirable.

Covenantal Limits to Growth

The life spans of men are shorter in the post-lood world than
they were before. Moses wrote: “The days of our years are threescore
years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet
is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut of, and we ly
away” (Ps. 90:10). There are limits to the growth of capital under the
authority of any individual. For the compounding process in the
broadest sense to continue, he must ind associates who share his
vision and skills, so that he may make them heirs by leaving his cap-
ital to them.
By shortening men’s life spans, God made the inheritance-
disinheritance factor predominant in the building of His kingdom.
If men lived as long as Methuselah, there would have been only
one-tenth of the number of generations. The compounding process
of evil would not have been undermined nearly so efectively as it
has been by the multiplying of generations. The godly inheritance
compounds through the generations through the church. It cannot
compound long term through either the family or the State. The
family inheritance is too easily dissipated through bad marriages,
broken covenants, or unmotivated heirs, while the State is not cre-
ative. No institution matches the church for long-term compounding:
succession. By shortening men’s lives, God has subsidized the church’s ad-
vantage until such time as Christians are in a majority.

4. Assuming a rate of zero income taxation. In high income tax brackets, a penny
saved is 1.4 pennies earned.
 A Delayed Inheritance 25

The Bible’s system of covenant sanctions is clear: covenant-

keepers inherit; covenant-breakers do not. Covenant-breakers are
eventually disinherited by covenant-keepers. “A good man leaveth
an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sin-
ner is laid up for the just” (Prov. 13:22). This transfer of inheritance
was by war in the case of the Canaanites. But after this, Israel was to
extend its process of progressive inheritance through disinheritance
by economic means. One of the means of extending their dominion
was extending credit. “For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he
promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou
shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they
shall not reign over thee” (Deut. 15:6). Their possession of wealth
would multiply at the expense of covenant-breakers.

And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy
body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land
which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open
unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his
season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto
many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the LORD shall make thee
the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not
be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy
God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them: And
thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this
day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them
(Deut. 28:11–14).

Nevertheless, covenant-breakers were not to be forced to bor-

row. Then how was it that their progressive disinheritance by Israel
would be accomplished voluntarily? Why would they go into debt
to Israel? For the same reason and in the same way that Esau was
willing to sell his inheritance to Jacob (Gen. 25:30–33). Esau was
more present-oriented than Jacob was. He valued present gratiication
more highly than Jacob did. Jacob was willing to give red pottage to
Esau in exchange for Esau’s future birthright. A voluntary exchange
became possible because the two men had diferent time perspec-
tives. Jacob was upper class; Esau was lower class.5

5. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 18.
26 DEUTERONOMY

So, there are limits to growth for the covenant-breaker. The ulti-
mate limit is eschatological: the inal judgment. God will bring to a
close the conlict between covenant-keepers and covenant-
breakers. But prior to this eschatologically representative event,
God disinherits those who hate Him. He allows covenant-breaking
societies to compound their sin and their wealth for a few genera-
tions, but He allows covenant-keepers to multiply their righteous-
ness and wealth for many generations. “Thou shalt not bow down
thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing
mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my command-
ments” (Ex. 20:5–6). This does not mean thousands of people; it
means thousands of generations. The literalism of “thousands of
generations” would mean at least 80,000 years (40 x 2 x 1000). I be-
lieve this language is symbolic; it means until the end of time.6 A
lengthy passage later in Moses’ monologue makes this time per-
spective clearer. First comes God’s covenant promise. Next comes
God’s fulillment of the promise by giving victory to His people.
This should produce in them ever-greater covenantal obedience,
which in turn will produce ever-greater blessings. This is the com-
pounding process, and it is tied to corporate obedience. The com-
pounding process is covenantal.

But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath
which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with
a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the
hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he
is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them
7
that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;
And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not

6. Here is one reason why I believe this. Our memories are limited. We cannot recall
more than a tiny fraction of our own lives. In studying the records of history, we can discover
and then summarize only a few representative fragments. We remember far less than we
read. So, if mankind survives for tens of millennia, men in the future will ind it impossible to
master the covenantal past, even when they live long lives (Isa. 65:17B20). The longer the race
survives, the less we can understand of man’s history. We become overwhelmed by its
complexity and diversity.
7. Here, only a thousand generations are mentioned, not thousands. The language of
thousands of generations is symbolic.
 A Delayed Inheritance 27

be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Thou shalt
therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments,
which I command thee this day, to do them. Wherefore it shall come to
pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the
LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he
sware unto thy fathers: And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply
thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy
corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the locks of
thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee. Thou
shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren
among you, or among your cattle. And the LORD will take away from thee
all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou
knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee. And
thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver
thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their
gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. If thou shalt say in thine heart,
These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them? Thou shalt not
be afraid of them: but shalt well remember what the LORD thy God did
unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt (Deut. 7:8–18).

The covenant-breaking society can experience long-term growth.

But the long-term growth of a covenant-breaking society is vastly
shorter than the long-term growth open to a covenant-keeping soci-
ety. The compounding process in any ield produces accelerating
growth. When you re-invest the earnings, and these investments
also participate in the compounding process, the numbers get astro-
nomical very fast. The higher the rate of growth, the faster the things
being compounded reach high numbers.
What God was telling Israel was that covenantal obedience pro-
duces growth. Growth produces victory. No matter how low the
rate of growth, if the compounding process can go on long enough,
it will engulf the world. It will reach environmental limits of growth.
This is God’s way of pointing to the end of time. There are environ-
mental limits to growth. The world is not ininite. There is just so
much “stuf” to inherit. There is also a temporal limit to growth: the
inal judgment. The existence of compound growth for cove-
nant-keepers points to the inal victory in time of God’s kingdom. It
also points to the disinheritance of Satan’s kingdom in history.
28 DEUTERONOMY

Cutting Of Growth
The key to the compounding is continual reinvestment. It does
not matter how low the rate of growth is; if this growth continues
through time long enough, it will eventually swallow up everything
in the environment that feeds it. This is the message of Aesop’s fable
of the tortoise and the hare. The hare achieves a rapid conquest over
space, but he does not sustain it. The tortoise can achieve only a
slow conquest of space, but he never quits moving forward. The tor-
toise eventually overtakes the sleeping hare. “Slowly but surely” is a
familiar folk phrase that illustrates this principle of comparative
growth. So is “steady as you go.”
God cuts of the growth of covenant-breaking societies. They
grow only until their iniquity becomes full. Then they either fall or
are converted to faith in God. Their growth ceases if they continue
to reject God. They experience setbacks. Meanwhile, the com-
pounding process goes on for covenant-keeping societies. Even if it
is cut of temporarily, it returns.
The church is the heir of this covenantal promise. It survives all set-
backs. Its growth may slow down for a time. Covenant-breaking orga-
nizations and even whole societies may outrun the church for a time.
But the church is never stopped. It is like the tortoise in the fable.
Biblical principles of limited civil government, free trade, thrift,
and freedom of contract produce compound economic growth. As
the West has applied these principles, it has grown rich.8 All other
social orders have fallen behind the West in this regard. The lure of
wealth is universal. The West’s principles of economics are now be-
ing adopted by societies in Asia. The economic results of this adop-
tion have been spectacular since the end of World War II. But these
principles of economic development have been secularized by their
expositors. These principles have been explained as contract-based,
not covenant-based. No sovereign, personal God is said to sustain
the growth process. In fact, economists have been more ready than
any other academic group to dismiss God as irrelevant to theory.
They were the irst academic profession to secularize their discus-
sions: in the late seventeenth century.9

8. Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, Jr., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic
Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
9. William Letwin, The Origins of Scientiic Economics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T.
Press, 1963), ch. 6.
 A Delayed Inheritance 29

The growth of economic output has led to the growth of popula-

tion. All over the non-industrial world, populations are growing as
never before in man’s history. In the wealthy West, however, repro-
duction rates are falling. Were it not for immigration, these rates
would be much lower. So, we see the covenantal realm of Satan ex-
panding. The West has generally abandoned Christianity, and the
Third World has yet to adopt it. The growth in the number of cove-
nant-breakers is dwaring the growth of covenant-keepers. This has
put the church on the defensive.
If widespread revival does not come before the end of time, and
if compound economic growth nevertheless continues, then the
covenantal social theory implied by the Book of Deuteronomy can
be said to have been annulled at some time prior to the twentieth
century, presumably by the New Covenant. If Mosaic social theory
is no longer in efect, then there can be no social theory that is ex-
plicitly based on the Bible. If there is no predictability between cor-
porate covenant-breaking and God’s corporate negative sanctions,
then biblical social theory is not possible. This would place Chris-
tians at the mercy of covenant-breaking social philosophers. The
wisdom of covenant-breaking man would triumph: one or another
of the competing, irreconcilable systems of social cause and efect.
Christians would be asked to baptize the reigning social theories of
their nation. No doubt they would do so; they have done so ever
since the days of the early church, when Christian apologists
adopted Greek categories of philosophy in the name of Christ.10 But
this would not solve the problem of discovering what God has spo-
ken authoritatively in New Covenant history.

Conclusion
When God’s people refuse to seek His wisdom and obey His
word, they forfeit many opportunities. This was true in the wilderness
era. It is equally true in the modern world. When God’s law is not
honored by God’s people, they always ind themselves progres-
sively enslaved by covenant-breakers: psychologically, philosophi-
cally, culturally, economically, and politically. God prophesied this,
too (Deut. 28:15–20). This corporate cursing cuts of the growth

10. Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian &
Reformed, 1969), Part IV: “The Church Fathers.”
30 DEUTERONOMY

process. If corporate blessing were never restored, covenant-

breakers would be given equal footing with God’s people. But this
cutting of of God’s people is always temporary (Deut. 4:25–31).
Even though one generation may forfeit great opportunities, a
subsequent generation can make up for lost time. Succession covers a
multitude of losses. The goal, then, is to train up the next generation,
provide it with capital, and keep the compounding process alive. As
the capital base of money, talent, wisdom, and experience contin-
ues to grow, the society can live of the “interest.” That is, subse-
quent generations are not required to save as religiously. As time
goes on, the investment begins to sustain more and more projects.
Dominion is extended because of the covenant community’s access
to a huge capital base. It can aford to make some mistakes. It need
not guard its wealth so closely. But it must not live exclusively on ac-
cumulated capital. Each generation must leave its legacy to the next.
Each generation should leave God’s covenant society a little richer.
Biblical society is value-added society.
The exodus generation had refused to honor the compounding
process. They had forfeited its opportunity to inherit through
Joshua’s leadership. They had held on tightly to power and author-
ity by refusing to surrender the inheritance to the fourth generation
after the spies’ return from the Promised Land. The third generation
could have inherited through the military leadership of Joshua, but
they refused. Thus, they broke the compounding process. They
wandered in the wilderness until all of them died except Joshua and
Caleb. Then the compounding process could begin again, and with
an enlarged capital base: the wealth of Canaan.
 3
Delegated
DELEGATED Authority and
AUTHORITY ANDSocial Order ORDER
SOCIAL

And I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear you
myself alone: The LORD your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye are
this day as the stars of heaven for multitude. (The LORD God of your
fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you,
as he hath promised you!) How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance,
and your burden, and your strife? Take you wise men, and understanding,
and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you
(Deut. 1:9–13).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s delegation of judicial

authority to men. Unlike God, no man is omniscient. Men must cre-
ate alternatives to omniscient judgment. Moses had been burdened
with the task of rendering judgment to all the people prior to Exo-
dus 18. But he could not govern as the patriarchs had governed.
There were too many Israelites. Israel needed a judicial hierarchy.
While this law resembled a seed law in the sense that it derived
from the fulilled promise of seed to Abraham, it in fact was a
cross-boundary law that applies to every commonwealth larger
than an extended family. The problem of the division of judicial
labor is to be solved by the creation of a hierarchical appeals court.
Here Moses reminded the conquest generation of the nation’s
irst major crisis of authority. Exodus 18 records the event in detail.
A long line of disputants formed outside Moses’ tent every day.
“And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the
people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the
evening” (Ex. 18:13). His father-in-law warned him that the magni-
tude of this burden as a judge would overwhelm Moses as well as
the people. “Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people

31
32 DEUTERONOMY

that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able
to perform it thyself alone” (v. 18). He counselled Moses to establish
a hierarchical chain of command. There would be judges of tens,
ifties, hundreds, and thousands (v. 21): 60,000, 12,000, 6,000, and
600, or 78,600 judges.1
These judges were untrained and untried. They could provide
only imperfect justice, but they could do this on a systematic basis,
day in and day out. This was better for Israel than the perfect justice
provided by Moses, since to gain access to this justice, men would
spend their days waiting in line. The value of their time was greater
than the cost of imperfect justice.2
Moses agreed to accept Jethro’s suggestion. He must have rec-
ognized the truth of Jethro’s warning. There was not enough time
and not enough Moses to provide justice to the entire nation. The
burden of delayed justice would oppress the people. Meanwhile,
Moses would waste away. And after he was dead, where would the
people receive justice? Who would then render perfect justice?
Better to train up a generation of judges in preparation for the transi-
tion. Better to establish a tradition of imperfect judges rendering im-
perfect justice on a widespread basis. Swift imperfect State justice is
preferable to delayed perfect justice.

The Decision to Delegate

One of the most precious of scarce economic resources is mana-
gerial talent. It commands a high price in a competitive, growing
economy. No one knows how to mass produce it. There are so many
competing management training systems available that no one
knows which one is most efective. In diferent kinds of businesses,
diferent management skills seem to be required. So, because the sup-
ply of efective managers is limited, they command a high price. Soci-
eties seek substitutes for management talent, such as compensation
by commission (self-motivation) and new computerized techniques
for handling information.

1. This was Rashi’s eleventh-century estimate: Rabbi Solomon (Shlomo) Yizchaki. Rashi,
Chumash with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi’s Commentary, A. M. Silbermann and M.
Rosenbaum, translators, 5 vols. (Jerusalem: Silbermann Family, [1934] 1985 [Jewish year:
5745]), II, p. 95.
2. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 19.
 Delegated Authority and Social Order 33

The creative person usually inds it dijcult to delegate all but

the simplest tasks. He does not trust his subordinates’ eforts. He
may be willing to delegate to those who have special information in
areas he is unfamiliar with, but the more talented he is in several ar-
eas, the less willing he is to delegate.
The division of labor is hampered by those who refuse to dele-
gate. The English economist David Ricardo ofered an example of
two producers, one of whom is more productive than his trading
partner in producing a particular product. Because his skill is even
greater in producing some other product, which commands a
higher price, which his trading partner wants to buy, he should al-
low the trading partner to produce the irst product and then trade
for it. Similarly, a soldier who can shoot straight when under ire,
but who also types fast, should concentrate on his unique advan-
tage: shooting. There are more skilled typists than skilled shooters.
Their value to an army is less than the value of straight-shooting,
front-line soldiers. Even if the typist is a less-skilled typist than the
straight-shooter is, the army could be overrun if the men on the
front lines cannot shoot straight. That semi-skilled typist should be
recruited from a pool of men who cannot shoot straight under ire.
The general who stafs his headquarters with near-sighted men
who are skilled managers would be wise to delegate management to
them. His job is to design better battle plans than the enemy general
does. Only if the task of the senior commander is to hold together
skilled generals who are in competition with each other should he
be known for his management skills.
In efect, the delegator is asking his subordinates to trade with
him. They will provide certain forms of output within the company;
he will provide other forms. His job is to put together a team whose
combined output is greater than the sum of the individual parts of
that team would have been, had he not organized it. If he is success-
ful, he multiplies his eforts. He gains the output of others in a com-
bined efort.

Multiplication and Authority

Moses ofered a prayer of blessing in the middle of his exposi-
tion on the hierarchy of civil authority. The King James translators
placed this prayer in parentheses. “(The LORD God of your fathers
make you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you,
as he hath promised you!)” (v. 11). He had just told them that God
34 DEUTERONOMY

had already multiplied their numbers. They had witnessed this

growth. Now, he prayed for more.
This is the dominion impulse. It involves the multiplication of
all assets, including population.3 He immediately asked the proper
question: How could he bear the burden on him as the supreme
civil judge? He saw clearly that as the number of people multiplied,
the number of disputes would multiply. It is likely that the number
of disputes would rise even faster than the number of people. With-
out imposing new rules of behavior, doubling the number of people
in a room will more than double the noise, as people talk louder to
overcome the noise of additional people talking. The same is true of
lawsuits in a litigious society.
Moses had understood that the blessing of additional people
would soon become a curse if the judicial order were not restruc-
tured. Jethro ofered the solution: a series of appeals courts. Any
growing organization faces a similar problem. As the number of de-
tails increases, there must be institutional alterations to keep the de-
tails from overwhelming the system. A well-designed system must
either ind ways of standardizing ways of dealing with these details
or else ind ways of resisting growth. For example, a company that
pursues growth must avoid the temptation to tinker with the struc-
ture of the irm in order to deal uniquely with lots of unique prob-
lems in unique ways. It must devise standard ways to deal with
unique problems. If it tries to deal with too many unique problems,
its ability to grow will be thwarted. It will become bogged down in
details. It must treat unique problems as parts of larger aggregates to
which familiar rules apply. It must smooth over the small distinc-
tions. This is especially true of a price-competitive irm that seeks
growth through cost-cutting and mass production.
Similarly, a civil government must resist the temptation to solve
every social problem, review every case, and establish case law pre-
cedents by creating solutions to dijcult and non-standard disputes.
“Hard cases make bad law” is an ancient saying in the common law
tradition.
There must be an increase in authority as complexity increases.
The question is this: Where should this increase take place? At the
top of the social system or the bottom? The traditional socialist

3. North, Moses and Pharaoh, ch. 1.

 Delegated Authority and Social Order 35

argument is that increasing social complexity requires more central-

4
ization and more planning at the top. Government must assert its
authority, central government above all. This argument was chal-
lenged by Hayek in the late 1930’s and 1940’s: as societies grow
more complex, he argued, they must decentralize. Central planners
do not possess sujcient knowledge to micro-manage a growing
economy. Social complexity is too great. The only source of knowl-
edge sujcient to manage this growing complexity is the free mar-
ket, with its price system, its sanctions (proit and loss), its
specialization of knowledge, and its decentralized power.5
Because God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent,
complexity is not a threat to Him. He can decentralize authority to
man without any fear of losing His sovereignty. The same pattern is
mandated for man: the willingness to decentralize, to delegate au-
thority. By delegating authority, men reap the beneits of the divi-
sion of labor. Others are given opportunities to serve in a leadership
capacity. The talents of more men are called forth by a system of
rules that allows those with skills to rise in the hierarchy.
Second, there are multiple hierarchies in a biblical society.
There is no unitary system of authority which grants all the favors
and garnishes all the acclaim. There are many areas of service and
many chains of command. The civil hierarchy is severely limited by
biblical law in what it can lawfully do. It can suppress public evil
through the imposition of negative sanctions. But this leaves open
many other areas of productivity, power, and honor within a bibli-
cal society.
Thus, by limiting the power of civil government as well as its ju-
risdiction, biblical law creates the judicial basis of a society that can
grow in complexity without mandating the concentration of power
to preserve social order. In fact, an increase in social order should
accompany the multiplication of wealth, numbers, and knowledge.
What creates social disorder is sin and its outward manifestations,

4. The classic statement of this position is Chapter 3 of Frederick Engels’ Socialism:

Utopian and Scientiic (1882). This chapter irst appeared in Engels’ Herr Eugen Dühring’s
Revolution in Science (1878), Part III, Chapter II. See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected
Works (New York: International Publishers, 1987), vol. 25, pp. 254–71.
5. F. A. Hayek, “Economics and Knowledge” (1937); “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
(1945); reprinted in Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (University of Chicago Press,
1948), chaps. 2, 4.
36 DEUTERONOMY

not complexity as such. If the increasing complexity of society is the

result of voluntary human action under God’s law – self-government
under God – then it is not a threat to social order. On the contrary,
this complexity is a blessing for the social order. When each man can
ind his unique area of maximum service – to God and man – social
order lourishes. The extension of the division of labor allows men to
match their highly specialized productive talents with consumer de-
mand. The multiplication of producers extends each man’s authority
by narrowing his area of service. This increase in authority is the out-
come of his increased productivity. He has access to additional capi-
tal because investors shift their investments from less productive
workers to more productive workers. It is not necessary for the State
to centralize its authority in a doomed quest for greater social order.
If it does, there will be a decrease in social order.
When men complain that “things are getting too complicated
these days,” they mean that they are having trouble keeping up with
social change. Their surroundings are changing fast. Yet every man
loves to discover an opportunity to better himself that had not ex-
isted before. But every new opportunity adds to the complexity of society.
With every new opportunity comes the potential for a better world.
The fact is, a member of some primitive tribe can learn to operate
an electric light switch as efortlessly and as absent-mindedly as any
modern man does, and in just as few tries. Within a few months, he
will want his own motorbike. Complexity comes in deceptively sim-
ple steps.
If some people want simplicity, they can buy it. The Amish live
simple lives, but most people think the price is too high: eighth-
grade educations, no automobiles, no computers, no electricity (ex-
cept in the barn), and, above all, no buttons or zippers. The visible
mark of the true “plain person” is hook and loop clothing. The visi-
ble mark of heresy is the button and eye. A zipper indicates
full-scale apostasy. And so it should, for the zipper is one of modern
man’s most amazing little technologies, so simple by most men’s
standards that they pay no attention to it. Yet who can explain it?
Like a sewing machine’s stitch, the zipper is incomprehensible to
most people. Dedicated resistance to zippers must mark the
anti-complexity worldview of the Amish: the temptation of the
seemingly simple and cheap device that opens the door to complex-
ity on a scale that no previous civilization could have imagined. To
 Delegated Authority and Social Order 37

the Amish, a zipper is as welcome as it would have been to the high

priest of Israel, had one been installed on the veil of the temple.
When sin multiplies, however, an increase in State authority
may be called for. This extension of authority should not be central-
ized. The threat to liberty of central authority is too great. Even with
God’s agent Moses as the supreme civil judge, Jethro warned that Is-
rael would sufer. Moses possessed too much authority. Better to de-
centralize State authority to untrained judges than to concentrate
authority in one man. Such centralized authority will undermine
freedom, reduce complexity, reduce the division of labor, and cut
short the multiplication of wealth. Men will stand in long lines seek-
ing justice rather than getting on with living.

Conclusion
Moses had to delegate authority in order to save himself and the
nation from exhaustion. The complexity of a large society over-
whelms the best eforts of the best men at the top to deal with the in-
evitable disputes that arise among men. The solution is judicial
decentralization and the delegation of judicial authority. This brings
forth new knowledge that would not have manifested itself in a sys-
tem of concentrated political power.
But how are disputes to be handled? By a ixed law, a predict-
able legal order, and self-government. Biblical social order begins
with grace. The civil manifestation of this grace is God’s revealed
law. “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and
just, and good” (Rom. 7:12). “For we know that the law is spiritual:
but I am carnal, sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14). To deal with the multi-
plication of disputes, society requires the multiplication of judges,
not all of whom are civil magistrates. A society that seeks multiplica-
tion as well as the concentration of political power will ind that
these goals are unattainable, long term. The fall of the Soviet Union
in 1991 is the most graphic proof of this in modern times, and per-
haps in all history: an enormous empire, based on the concentration
of power, simply collapsed in a period of three days, at the cost of
only three lives. The Soviet Union had strangled itself in bureau-
cracy and misinformation, and had lost the will to resist, let alone
expand. The top-down hierarchy of the centrally planned economy
becomes unproductive and socially brittle.
A biblically structured social order reveals a multiplicity of
hierarchies, each with its own jurisdiction, none with inal earthly
38 DEUTERONOMY

jurisdiction, all governed by God’s Bible-revealed law. There must

be ordained judges in a series of appeals courts, both civil and eccle-
siastical. Voters in both church and State must retain the authority
to revoke the ordination of these judges. Where the voters’ author-
ity is absent, in either church or State, the institutional supreme
court inevitably becomes a legislative body. It asserts some form of
divine right theory: the denial of any earthly appeal beyond the
court’s authority.6

6. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 10.
 4
TheFACE
THE Face of
OFMan
MAN

Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as
well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment
is God’s: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will
hear it (Deut. 1:17).

Men are to fear God more than they fear men. Moses warned
judges not to fear any man to the point of rendering false judgment
in God’s name. He who is ordained by law to speak as God’s judicial
representative must speak an honest word. This is the basis of the
overriding principle of biblical law: the rule of law. “One law shall
be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth
among you” (Ex. 12:49).1 The corollary to the rule of law is the prin-
ciple found in this verse: no respect of persons. This law is repeated
throughout Scripture.
There is a theocentric framework for this law: God as supreme
judge. “For there is no respect of persons with God” (Rom. 2:11).
“And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threaten-
ing: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there re-
spect of persons with him” (Eph. 6:9). “And if ye call on the Father,
who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s
work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear” (I Pet. 1:17). The
warning is clear: “But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin,
and are convinced of the law as transgressors” (James 2:9). Judges
must render impartial judgment in God’s name, on His authority.

1. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 14.

39
40 DEUTERONOMY

This was not a seed law or a land law. It was a cross-boundary law –
perhaps the cross-boundary law: the rule of God’s law.
The governing principle of biblical civil justice is victim’s
rights.2 To achieve the rule of law in speciic case law applications,
the judge must protect the victim. The judge must declare his judg-
ment in terms of God’s law and the evidence in front of the court.
Nothing must interfere with his declaration: not bribes, not favorit-
ism, and not fear of repercussions. “Ye shall not be afraid of the face
of man; for the judgment is God’s.”

Fear: An Inescapable Concept

The civil judge hands down judgment in God’s name. He acts
as a representative of God, declaring God’s judgment in history.
This is what makes a civil judge a minister of God. Men are to fear
him because of his ojce as God’s judicial representative. “For he is
the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is
evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the
minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth
evil” (Rom. 13:4).
Men must fear God. The fear of God is the beginning of wis-
dom. The Old Testament declares this repeatedly. “And the spirit of
the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understand-
ing, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of
the fear of the LORD” (Isa. 11:2).3 Men will either fear God or fear
some aspect of the creation. They will either begin with God’s wis-
dom or man’s wisdom, but the beginning of wisdom is fear. The
man who fears nothing is a fool. He has not understood the threat of
God’s eternal negative sanctions. “And fear not them which kill the
body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is
able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).
The judge is cautioned not to fear the face of man. This language
is obviously symbolic. No one fears the face of man. Men fear the
vengeful impulses which lie behind grim faces. “But unto Cain and
to his ofering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his
countenance fell” (Gen. 4:5). Cain’s face foretold trouble to come

2. Gary North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
3. Job 28:28. Psalms 111:10. Proverbs 1:7; 9:10; 15:33.
 The Face of Man 41

for Abel. No judge is to fear such a face. He is to fear God and hell,
not those standing before the bar of justice.
Unrighteous men are to fear a righteous judge. “For he is the
minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil,
be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister
of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil”
(Rom. 13:4). In a perverse society under the rule of evil men, a righ-
teous judge must live under the threat of negative sanctions.

Time Perspective and Sanctions

Basic to all human action is the concept of time preference. We
act in the present. We are responsible in the present. We consider
the future in making our decisions in the present, but we value the
present more than we do the future. We apply a discount to the fu-
ture. Economists call this discount the rate of interest.
People vary with respect to their assessment of the importance of
the future. Some people are more future-oriented than others. They
understand that success in the future is heavily dependent on actions
taken in the present. They are willing to sacriice present enjoyment
for the sake of future enjoyment. They will save money at a much
lower rate of interest compared to the rate which must be ofered to a
present-oriented person in order to persuade him to save.
Edward Banield has deined class position in terms of time
perspective. An upper-class person is more future-oriented than a
middle-class person, who is in turn more future-oriented than a
lower-class person.4 An upper-class person may not have more
money early in life than a middle-class person – a medical student,
for example – but over time his devotion to thrift and hard work will
normally produce personal wealth.
This insight regarding time perspective has implications for law
enforcement, especially sanctions. If a person is extremely present-
oriented, he cares little about the distant consequences of his ac-
tions. He discounts the future pain so heavily that present enjoy-
ment looms far larger in his decision-making. Even if he thinks he
may be caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced, he dismisses the
end result as relatively meaningless. He subordinates then to now.

4. Edward Banield, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1970), ch. 3.
42 DEUTERONOMY

Because God’s law must be implemented without respect to

persons, both the present-oriented person and the future-oriented
person face the same civil sanctions. The existence of time prefer-
ence tells us that a greater number of present-oriented people will
commit crimes than future-oriented people. They fear the future
less. The threatened civil sanctions do not appear equally threaten-
ing. Economic theory tells us that when the price of anything is low-
ered, more of it will be demanded. The price of criminal behavior is
perceived to be lower by a present-oriented person than by a future-
oriented person.

Capital Punishment
To deal with extreme present-orientation, God’s law establishes
the sanction of execution. The magnitude and permanence of this
negative sanction impresses even the present-oriented criminal.
Discounting death to zero price takes a unique degree of commit-
ment to the present. Most criminals are not this present-oriented.
The biblical case for capital punishment rests on the principle
that some crimes are an especial afront to God. He demands that
the convicted criminal be delivered immediately into His court. In
the case of murder, the victim cannot announce a lesser penalty.
Unlike Jesus on the cross, who asked God to forgive those who per-
secuted Him, the murder victim is silent. God therefore requires the
criminal’s execution.
A positive side efect of capital punishment is the inability of the
criminal to gain revenge against those who condemned him. Those
who commit crimes so heinous that the State may not legally punish
them with anything less than execution are unable to threaten
judges and jurors. When the State substitutes other penalties, the
criminal can later seek revenge. In the name of leniency to criminals,
the State places at risk those law-abiding citizens who announced
judgment in God’s name.
In the United States, the abandonment of capital punishment
was accompanied by an unprecedented increase in crime, 1960 to
1975.5 It was an era in which traditional conservative humanism was

5. James Q. Wilson, Thinking About Crime (New York: Basic Books, 1975), ch. 1; U.S.
Senator James L. Buckley, “Foreword,” Frank Carrington, The Victims (New Rochelle, New
York: Arlington House, 1975).
 The Face of Man 43

visibly replaced by various forms of liberal humanism. The State

substituted new sanctions for old. It sought to heal evil men rather
than condemn them. It sought to rehabilitate criminals rather than
punish them. The healing State became the lenient State – lenient
on criminals, but harsh on their victims and those who lived in fear
of criminals. This was consistent with left-wing humanism’s concept
of the State as an agency of healing, of positive sanctions.
The previous decade had launched an era of judicial activism,6
but in 1960 there were still signs culturally that an older conserva-
tive humanism prevailed in the thinking of the general public. Yet
within one decade, 1960 to 1970, this older attitude was abandoned
by policy-makers and judicial theorists. For decades, liberal elitists
and academics had called into question the legitimacy of traditional
negative sanctions against crime. The 1950’s marked the last decade
of the common man’s dam of resolve. As Irving Kristol has written,
“Prior to the victory of modern liberal dogmas in the early 1950s,
the police and the courts could cope with common street crime, as
well as burglaries or robberies, without having to defer to a catalog
of criminals’ constitutional rights, most of which, at the time, were
still undiscovered. It may have made for less perfect justice, but it
did deter wanton criminality among the young and ensured a more
trusting, less fearful society.”7 A new judicial activism silenced con-
servative critics. The book title chosen by Karl Menninger, one of
the reformers, said it all: The Crime of Punishment.8 The liberal elite
succeeded in persuading voters to abandon “wild west” justice: the
justice of predictable negative sanctions. The result was an unprece-
dented increase in crime.

Liberty and Justice

Liberty requires the rule of law. The rule of law means predict-
able law. Men must believe that evil-doers will be punished if the
evidence testiies against them. Their victims will be economically

6. The symbolic igure here was U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren,
beginning with his appointment to the Court in 1953. The “Warren Court” was decidedly
liberal.
7. Irving Kristol, “The Way We Were,” Wall Street Journal (July 14, 1995).
8. Karl Menninger, M.D., The Crime of Punishment (New York: Viking, 1968).
44 DEUTERONOMY

rewarded by criminals, even if this means selling the criminals into

slavery until their victims are repaid.
The predictability of the law increases the likelihood that nega-
tive civil sanctions will be imposed. The criminal already discounts
the personal cost of negative future sanctions. High time preference
– a steep discounting of the future – is one aspect of criminal behav-
ior generally.9 If the criminal understands that most crimes go un-
solved and that most solved crimes go unpunished, his heavy
discounting of the future drives his present costs of crime almost to
zero. This increases the amount of crime in society: as the cost of
something falls, more of it is demanded. By increasing the predict-
ability of negative sanctions, the legal system decreases the amount
of crime by raising its cost to criminals.
There is another aspect of discounting: the victim’s. The victim
estimates the likelihood of negative sanctions’ being imposed on the
criminal. If the likelihood is low, why go to the trouble of seeking
justice? Why take the risk? Also, will the victim be rewarded if the
criminal is convicted? Is there the possibility of positive sanctions?
The more likely the positive sanctions, the more likely the victim
will cooperate with law-enforcement ojcials in solving the crime.
The irst stage in the retreat of a society from the rule of biblical
law is the substitution of an ideal of social revenge for the biblical
ideal of victim’s rights. The ideal of victim’s rights is always aban-
doned by the humanist State, which regards all crime as crime
against the State. The humanist State imposes negative sanctions,
but always at taxpayers’ expense. The symbol of this legal order is
the prison. The negative sanction of prison brings no positive sanc-
tions to victims except in the sense of revenge. The biblical judicial
ideal of victim’s rights fades; it is replaced either by a theory of so-
cial revenge or by a theory of criminal rehabilitation. They can
trade places back and forth in the public’s estimation over time, as
each is tried and found wanting.
In both cases, the citizenry fears the criminal. In the irst case,
the criminal is locked up for years. He is removed from the presence
of law-abiding people. He associates with a caste of professional

9. Edward Banield, “Present-Orientedness and Crime,” in Randy E. Barnett and John

Hegel III (eds.), Assessing the Criminal: Restitution, Retribution, and the Legal Process (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1977), pp. 140–41.
 The Face of Man 45

criminals in prison. He is prohibited from making economic restitu-

tion to his victims. Citizens fear the criminal’s social redemption
(“buying back”) through personal restitution (“paying out”). They
have no trust in biblical law as a means of restoration. They trust
only in the State’s vengeance. “Lock him up and throw away the
key!” In the second case, he is paroled early and released back into
society before he makes restitution to his victims. Citizens receive
into their midst hardened criminals. They learn to fear these men,
who in turn fear neither God nor law-abiding men.
When the fear of evil men undermines a community’s fear of
God, that community is eventually going to experience tyranny.
The worst men will claw their way to the top through the imposition
of fear. A subculture based on rule by fear has an enormous compet-
itive advantage in a society that fears men more than it fears God.
When this subculture becomes dominant, the rule of law becomes
the rule of criminals.
The mark of a community’s commitment to liberty is its com-
mitment to biblical law. God’s law must be enforced. The counte-
nances of the citizenry must be set against the countenances of
criminals. The citizenry represents God. Ordained civil agents rep-
resent the people before the face of God and represent God before
the faces of criminals. Civil authority lows from God to citizens to
the civil magistrate.10 They are judges insofar as they bring sanc-
tions, positive or negative, against their ordained representatives.
They are told not to fear the face of man.

Conclusion
The rule of law requires the honoring of the principle of no re-
spect for persons. God’s law is uniied, for it relects His moral unity.
It is universally binding, for He is universally sovereign. Judgment
should not be made unpredictable through the imposition of unpre-
dictable sanctions. “Diferent strokes for diferent folks” is not a bib-
lical principle of justice.
When the sense of justice departs from a society, that society be-
comes vulnerable to appeals by criminals, guilt-manipulating politi-
cians, revolutionaries, tyrants, and others who ofer to get even with

10. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 4.
46 DEUTERONOMY

the present order: the politics of revenge. When statist revenge is

substituted for personal restitution, a society searches in vain for a
judge who will bring stability, peace, and justice. When statist reha-
bilitation is substituted for personal restitution, a society also
searches in vain for stability, peace, and justice. In both cases, lib-
erty is at risk. The predictability of just laws becomes either the pre-
dictability of unjust laws or the unpredictability of any law.
The issue here is hierarchy. The law is enforced by legal repre-
sentatives, who serve as God’s agents and also as the community’s
delegated agents. The judge must not fear law-breakers, for he de-
clares God’s law. He must fear God, not men. Criminals must fear
judges, who speak in the name of God and who mandate God’s civil
sanctions. One mark of a disintegrating social order is the criminals’
loss of fear of the law. When judges in turn fear law-breakers, this fear
spreads to the entire society. Courage is basic to law-enforcement as
well as to military orders. There is supposed to be a covenantal hier-
archy of fear: judges must fear both God and the voters; criminals
must fear God and the judges. The society of Satan is based on a per-
verse hierarchy: criminals fear other criminals; judges and citizens
fear criminals. They fear the faces of evil men.
 5
Bureaucratic Counsel
BUREAUCRATIC COUNSEL

Behold, the LORD thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and
possess it, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not,
neither be discouraged. And ye came near unto me every one of you, and
said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land,
and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities
we shall come. and the saying pleased me well: and I took twelve men of
you, one of a tribe (Deut. 1:21–23).

The theocentric principle of this law is the omniscience of God,

an incommunicable attribute. Men are not omniscient. They need
means of increasing information. In this case, Israel needed spies.
The spies would enter the land, evaluate its vulnerability to inva-
sion, and return to speak accurately on God’s behalf. They were to
think God’s thoughts after Him, as faithful representatives.
Moses here recounted the story of the exodus generation’s re-
bellion against God’s command that they immediately conquer
Canaan. God gave the command, and the people did not initially
reject it. Instead, they added a suggestion, namely, that they be al-
lowed to gather information regarding the best route into Canaan
for military purposes. Moses approved of this request. He selected a
representative from each of the tribes to conduct the reconnaissance
operation.
What appeared to be a sensible pre-war tactic turned out to be
the irst in a series of retreats. The nation did not want to challenge
the residents of Canaan, but their leaders did not admit this in the
early stages of the operation. Moses went on to recount the story of
their rebellion, how the exodus generation and those men old
enough in the next generation to have participated in the conquest

47
48 DEUTERONOMY

had been prohibited from entering the land. Only Caleb and Joshua
were excepted (Deut. 1:36, 38). They had shown resolve regarding
the conquest; for this, they were spared the ignominy of having their
personal inheritance in the land revoked by God. The next genera-
tion would inherit: “Moreover your little ones, which ye said should
be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge
between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I
give it, and they shall possess it” (v. 39).
God’s negative sanction of disinheritance matched the nation’s
negative strategy of non-confrontation. He wanted Israel to disin-
herit the Canaanites; this negative sanction would have been a posi-
tive sanction for Israel. This was what economists call a zero-sum
game: the gains of the winners are ofset by the losses of the losers.
Warfare has this characteristic. Israel wanted to avoid war; so, the
spies recommended non-confrontation. This would have perma-
nently disinherited Israel and permanently conirmed the continu-
ity of inheritance in Canaan. Disinheritance is an inescapable concept.
Either Israel would be disinherited or the Canaanites would be. By
escaping the sanction of war, Israel wanted to escape war’s negative
sanctions. But this granted immunity to Canaanites. It also consti-
tuted a negative sanction against Israel’s heirs. Ultimately, it consti-
tuted a negative sanction against God, who had promised Abraham
that the fourth generation would inherit (Gen. 15:16). Had Israel’s
strategy of non-confrontation been allowed to stand, God would
have been exposed before His enemies as one who would not or
could not fulill His promises.

A Matter of Strategy
God had a strategy: the conquest of Canaan. This strategy was
announced three times: to Abraham once and to Moses twice, at the
beginning and end of the wilderness period. First, He had told
Abraham that his heirs would conquer Canaan in the fourth genera-
tion after their descent into Egypt. This was Joshua’s generation. Sec-
ond, He told the nation to begin the ofensive campaign (Deut.
1:21). This was their responsibility, God said, yet anyone who knew
of the promise to Abraham would have known that this generation
would not conquer. The only way for the third generation to partici-
pate in the conquest of Canaan was to surrender leadership to the
fourth generation. Third, at the end of the wilderness period, God
 Bureaucratic Counsel 49

told Moses and Joshua that the conquest must begin soon. This was
carried out under Joshua.
The conquest of Canaan was ethically and prophetically man-
datory; the question was: Which generation would carry it out?
Those to whom the command to march into Canaan was irst given
soon rebelled against this strategy. They rebelled, not by citing the
speciic details of the Abrahamic promise – fourth generation, not
third – but by announcing that the Promised Land was not worth
the military efort to inherit. “And they brought up an evil report of
the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying,
The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that
eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it
are men of a great stature” (Num. 13:32). In short, they tampered
with the visible evidence. They said that this place could not possi-
bly be the Promised Land of milk and honey. The land ate up its
normal inhabitants; you had to be a giant to prosper.
The recalcitrant captains should have gone to Moses with this
request. “Tell God that we are not ready to lead this campaign. He
told our father Abraham that the fourth generation would conquer
Canaan. We are not that appointed generation. We respect the de-
tails of His prophecy. We do not want to get ahead of God’s pro-
phetic timetable. We also do not want to get behind. We are ready
to transfer leadership of the army of the Lord to our older sons, un-
der Joshua’s command.” Had they put their request in terms of
God’s promise to Abraham, they would have demonstrated their
commitment to His word. Instead, they tried to thwart His word by
declaring the land unit to conquer.
God’s strategy was military conquest. The details of this opera-
tion were left to Moses and the captains of God’s holy army. God
did not tell them the best route into Canaan. He did not do their tac-
tical work for them. He announced to Moses the timing of the con-
quest, but He left to Moses and his advisors the responsibility for
implementing the general strategy.
Moses accepted the ofer of the captains to allow spies to go into
the land for reconnaissance purposes. This seemed to be a tactical
matter. What he did not understand until after their return was that
this request was not tactical; it was strategic. The generation of the
exodus had no intention of risking their lives to conquer Canaan.
God had spoken, but perhaps they could buy more time. The request
50 DEUTERONOMY

regarding the tactical reconnaissance operation was their means of

delaying the implementation of the mandated strategy.

Rule by Committee
God announced the strategy. The task of the supreme com-
mander is to design a military strategy. Military strategy is focused
on a narrow goal: victory or stalemate, never defeat. This is why
warfare lends itself to the establishment of a supreme commander.
The society agrees on the fundamental goal: the avoidance of de-
feat. Because there is this unanimity of opinion and a narrowly
deined performance standard, it is possible for a central planner to
design a strategy. A military strategy lends itself to unitary deci-
sion-making. A senior representative of the nation must devise a
wartime military strategy. The nation’s other representatives may
approve or disapprove of the strategy; they may or may not be able
to veto it if they do not approve. Lower-level representatives also
afect strategy through approving or disapproving something that
the senior representative has submitted for consideration. A com-
mittee cannot efectively design a strategy. The committee’s divi-
sion of labor is valid for counsel but not for innovation.
The Bible recommends a multitude of counsellors.

Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsel-
lors there is safety (Prov. 11:14).

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of

counsellors they are established (Prov. 15:22).

For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of coun-
sellors there is safety (Prov. 24:6).

The larger the multitude of counsellors, the less likely that they
will be able to devise an alternate strategy. The larger the group, the
less likely the agreement. A strong ruler knows that he is far less
threatened by a large group of advisors than a small group. It costs
too much for the members of a large group to combine against him.
There are many competing strategic details to resolve, many com-
peting egos to assuage. The Bible recommends a multitude of coun-
sellors; it does not recommend a multitude of strategists. This system
 Bureaucratic Counsel 51

is designed to increase the wisdom of the decision-maker and at the

same time strengthen his authority.
This process of centralized strategic planning through diversiied
counsel is clearly true of military matters, but it is also true of eco-
nomic organizations. Counsel is not the same as strategic deci-
sion-making. Devising a corporate strategy is the responsibility of one
person who has been delegated the authority by the owners to repre-
sent the corporation. He is held responsible by owners or whoever is
legally represented by this supreme commander. This is not true of
counsellors. When asked, counsellors raise objections, comment on
risks, suggest alternatives, and generally enable the commander to
count the costs of his strategy. They do not design a strategy.
Jesus used the analogy of military strategy to describe personal de-
cision-making. “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth
not down irst, and counteth the cost, whether he have sujcient to
inish it? Lest haply [it happpen], after he hath laid the foundation,
and is not able to inish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Say-
ing, This man began to build, and was not able to inish. Or what
king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down irst,
and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him
that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the
other is yet a great way of, he sendeth an ambassage [ambassador],
and desireth conditions of peace” (Luke 14:28–32). We are to count
the costs before we begin the action. Counsellors help us to estimate
costs more accurately.
Committees can veto plans; they are rarely able to establish
plans. The voices of the members are not uniied. The division of in-
tellectual labor produces cacophony in a committee. The unitary
design needed for a successful strategy does not come from a com-
mittee. Folk wisdom understands this: “A camel is a horse designed
by a committee.” The division of intellectual labor does not produce
a uniied design because none of the committee’s members is will-
ing to take inal responsibility for a strategy created by all the other
members.
The supreme commander trusts his own judgment more than
he trusts the judgment of a committee. He relies on a committee to
suggest several alternatives; he does not rely on it to produce a strat-
egy. He refuses to be held responsible for a strategy designed by
competing men who in turn will not take personal responsibility for
the committee’s collective decision, if any. He understands that
52 DEUTERONOMY

committees can sometimes veto a strategy; they can select someone

to design a new strategy; but they cannot devise a strategy.

To Veto God
Israel’s spies attempted to veto God’s announced strategy, but
they proposed no agreed-upon alternative. God had announced the
overall strategy and the timing. Any attempt on the part of the cap-
tains or the spies to thwart that strategic plan was a form of rebellion.
God did not ask the Israelites to accept or reject His strategy. He al-
lowed them only to seek out information which would have enabled
Moses to design tactics to implement God’s overall strategy.
The committee of spies returned to give an account of Canaan
that was at odds with everything God had told them. Only Caleb
and Joshua publicly defended the basis of God’s strategy, namely,
the vulnerability of the Canaanites to immediate invasion. “If the
LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us;
a land which loweth with milk and honey” (Num. 14:8). For his
public defense of God’s strategy, Joshua was appointed by God to
succeed Moses and to direct Israel’s inheritance: “But Joshua the
son of Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall go in thither: en-
courage him: for he shall cause Israel to inherit it” (Deut. 1:38). He
and Caleb could have led the army to victory 40 years earlier than
they eventually did.
Had the spies been allowed to speak authoritatively for Israel,
God would have executed the entire nation (Num. 14:11–12). Ca-
naan would have remained occupied by the Amorites indeinitely.
That is, the Amorites would have inherited the inheritance which
God had promised to Abraham’s seed. It was this possibility that
Moses raised in his debate with God: God’s vow to destroy the
Amorites would not be fulilled; so, His enemies would mock Him
(vv. 13–16). God heeded this warning (v. 20). God then applied neg-
ative sanctions. The spies had sought to veto God’s strategy, but
God vetoed them. He executed them on the spot with a plague
(v. 37).
As is so often the case, ten of the spies had a hidden agenda. It
relected the nation’s hidden agenda, which became clear only in
retrospect: to avoid military conlict with Canaan. To conceal this
agenda, they recommended the reconnaissance. God knew their
agenda, yet he did not tell Moses to call a halt to the reconnaissance.
He allowed Moses to approve the spies’ tactic. Moses would learn
 Bureaucratic Counsel 53

soon enough what the spies’ hidden agenda was. The spies’ report
discouraged the nation. “And ye murmured in your tents, and said,
Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land
of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.
Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart,
saying, The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great
and walled up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of
the Anakims there” (Deut. 1:27–28).
The committee’s report had undermined the Lord’s recently an-
nounced strategy: to invade Canaan immediately (v. 21). Moses
could not persuade them to believe God (v. 32). The authority of the
committee’s majority report was overpowering when combined
with the fears of that generation, fears which the people had repeat-
edly expressed to Moses. The spies had corroborated what the na-
tion had feared: the Promised Land was illed with giants. Despite
the fact that God cut down all of the nay-sayers on the committee,
the people did not change their minds regarding God’s strategy.
The majority report had truly spoken for them judicially. Only
Moses’ intercessory prayer had saved them from God’s wrath.

Sovereign Counsellors
The people who are represented by the decision-maker are sov-
ereign over him. They have the authority to thwart their economic
and political representatives. God holds them responsible for what
their leaders do.1 This is why biblical law places centralized military
decision-making authority into the hands of one man. The people
can see who is responsible for making plans. This is much less true
when committees make the plans. Members of committees hide
from the sovereign people. They seek to avoid the limelight. They
seek to transfer responsibility by spreading it among many others.
When things go wrong, a committee is like a circle of men, each
pointing to the man next to him. “He did it. Blame him.”
Does this biblical structure of authority imply central planning?
In military matters, yes. In military afairs, the decisions of the strat-
egist have the characteristic of being all or nothing. A mistake can

1. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 4.
54 DEUTERONOMY

2
lead to national defeat. What about economic planning? Is it also to
be centralized? Within one irm, yes. The owner or senior manager
has to be held accountable. Accountable to whom? First to the share
owners, but inally to the consumers. The share owners are legally
sovereign; the consumers are economically sovereign.3 There has to
be a central ojcer who announces the company’s general strategy.
In a proit-seeking enterprise, the primary strategy is to make a
proit. The company’s general rules and compensation schemes set
the boundaries of proit-making eforts. These are announced and
enforced by central management. Senior managers allow lower-
echelon managers and salesmen to apply the general rules to
speciic cases, where central management does not have immediate
access to local information.
For the owners to exercise legal sovereignty, managers must be
under the control of the owners. Owners must be allowed to replace
managers. This is why it is important for business law to allow proxy
ights and corporate take-overs. If the diversiied owners of shares of
the company are not allowed by existing management or the civil
government to throw out the existing management, then the author-
ity of the owners is thwarted. Government regulations that prohibit
“predatory corporate raiders” subsidize the existing managers, in-
creasing their immunity from proit-seeking share owners who
would prefer to sell at a proit to raiders who see ways of increasing
the market value of the company’s assets and shares.4

Consumer Sovereignty
In a free market economy, the ultimate institutional sovereign is
collective: consumers. Their individual decisions to buy or sell pro-
duce a collective result: an objective array of prices. Their decisions
also produce proits or losses for speciic sellers. So, inal sover-
eignty in a free market is difuse. The free market allows buyers and

2. Even here, the Mosaic law divided national authority. Both a civil representative and
then two priests had to blow the pair of trumpets: irst the civil ruler, then the priests (Num.
10:2–9).
3. On the distinction between legal sovereignty and economic sovereignty, see ibid.,
pp. 436–39. Owners tell managers what to do; consumers tell owners and managers if what
was done was proitable.
4. Henry G. Manne, Insider Trading and the Stock Market (New York: Free Press, 1966),
ch. 11.
 Bureaucratic Counsel 55

sellers to come together and make individual exchanges volun-

tarily. Because ownership is difuse, sovereignty is difuse. Because
accurate knowledge is difuse, ownership is difuse, for people spe-
cialize in those productive services that they understand best and
therefore possess a comparative advantage. The free market re-
wards the pooling of accurate knowledge through the price system.
The competitive bidding of buyers against buyers and sellers
against sellers produces an array of publicly available prices. These
prices convey information to other buyers and sellers. They also
convey motivation for sellers to meet the demands of consumers on
a cost-efective basis.
In a free market, the goals of asset owners are complex and shift-
ing. The operations of a free market are not like a military campaign.
In a military campaign, the goals of citizens are highly focused: the
avoidance of defeat, preferably through victory. The narrow focus
of this common goal mandates central planning by a supreme mili-
tary commander. Military victory through the concentration of
speciic military forces is very diferent from economic victory,
which comes mainly through the pooling of highly difused knowl-
edge – the most valuable economic resource – through a system of
rewards and punishments, i.e., proit and loss.
In a free market, the consumers are a multitude of counsellors.
Sellers must meet consumer demand proitably, or else they will go
out of business. The counsellors possess legal authority: the legal
right to buy or refrain from buying. They also possess economic au-
thority: they own an asset (money) that they can use to buy other as-
sets. The opinions of these counsellors can be ignored by sellers, but
always at a price: reduced sales, reduced income. Thus, senior deci-
sion-makers in proit-seeking irms must take seriously the opinions
of consumers, whose counsel has money attached to it.
The Bible exhorts decision-makers to seek a multitude of coun-
sellors. In economic afairs, this means that they must seek out rep-
resentatives whose opinions relect the opinions of the consumers.
This is why statistical sampling techniques are widely used by busi-
nesses. This is also why such techniques are used by politicians seek-
ing election in a democracy.
In a free society, the counsellors are sovereign, either as con-
sumers or civil voters. They bring sanctions, both positive and nega-
tive, through money or votes. Decision-makers must pay attention
to counsellors when the counsellors are armed with such sanctions.
56 DEUTERONOMY

The counsellors possess lawful authority. In the free market, as in a rep-

resentative democracy, the biblical principle of a multitude of counsel-
lors is greatly honored through appropriate systems of sanctions.
In an unfree society, central planners strip consumers and vot-
ers of any meaningful authority. The result is always the same: re-
duced wealth. This is why socialism always impoverishes all but the
senior politicians and their favored counsellors. After the fall of
Communism in the late 1980’s in Eastern Europe and in the USSR
in 1991, citizens of the formerly Marxist tyrannies learned just how
far behind the capitalist West they had been. Their richest leaders
were poor by comparison to the West’s middle class, a fact that the
leaders had learned at the 1980 Olympics, which were held in
Moscow. Visitors from the West were visibly far richer than the
Soviet tyrants. This huge disparity of wealth could no longer be eas-
ily ignored in the USSR. The Communist leaders’ wealth was a
joke; they were being laughed at by the West. The West’s political
conservatives could dismiss the USSR as nothing more than “Ban-
gladesh with missiles.”5 This condescension by the West broke the
tyrants’ conidence in the beneits the Communist system had pro-
duced for them. Within a decade, European Communism was
abandoned in a series of bloodless coups. European Communist
parties changed their names.
Western college professors were the last to learn. As late as
1989, the world’s most popular college-level economics textbook
still asserted: “The Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what
many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy
can function and even thrive.”6 Within two years, the Soviet Union
no longer existed. It had visibly collapsed economically by 1989
and politically in August of 1991.

Conclusion
God was Israel’s strategist. Moses was His mouthpiece, His
chief of staf. When the spies attempted to replace God’s strategy
with their own, they became rebellious. They attempted to usurp a

5. Richard Grenier’s phrase.

6. Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus, Economics (13th ed.; New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1989), p. 837. Cited in Mark Skousen, Economics on Trial (Homewood, Illinois:
Business One Irwin, 1991), p. 214.
 Bureaucratic Counsel 57

degree of authority that did not belong to them. Rather than re-
maining content with gathering information useful in the imple-
mentation of God’s strategy, they tried to replace that strategy. He
brought judgment against them individually and against the nation
that consented to their report. The ten spies died immediately; the
generation died of, one by one, over the next four decades.
Devising a strategy is not a project for a committee. A strategist
is wise to consult committees and people with expert knowledge,
but the vision and integration required for a successful strategy are
not provided by committees. Those who make up a committee are
not individually responsible for the outcome of a strategy to the de-
gree that a supreme commander is. To match personal responsibil-
ity with strategy, a society or an organization must place one person
in charge. Two captains of equal rank cannot successfuly command
a military unit. Two admirals cannot direct a ship. The centraliza-
tion of strategic authority is inevitable. Committees can implement
strategies; they cannot design them. Hierarchy is visible and legal in
a military chain of command.
In a free society, wise rulers seek out counsellors who relect the
opinions of citizens and consumers, who exercise control through
the authority to impose sanctions: votes or money. This is what pub-
lic opinion polls and market research are all about: seeking out rep-
resentative counsellors who can serve as surrogates for the society’s
inal counsellors, the people. In an unfree society, rulers strip the
people of the authority to impose meaningful sanctions. God brings
such societies under judgment. He strips economic planners of the
ability to gain accurate information.7 The citizens of such societies
withhold accurate information and their productive eforts from the
rulers. The familiar phrase of workers in Soviet Russia is representa-
tive: “The government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work.”

7. Ludwig von Mises, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920), in

F. A. Hayek (ed.), Socialist Economic Planning (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1935] 1963),
ch. 3.
 6
THE The SkillsOF
SKILLS of FOREIGN
Foreign Trade
TRADE

And command thou the people, saying, Ye are to pass through the
coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir; and they
shall be afraid of you: take ye good heed unto yourselves therefore: Meddle
not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a
footbreadth; because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.
Ye shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also buy
water of them for money, that ye may drink (Deut. 2:4–6).

The theocentric principle of this law is God as the sovereign

Owner who allocates national lands as He sees it. He has placed
boundaries around certain nations. This land law regarding Israel’s
wilderness wandering was based on a broader principle of justice:
the prohibition against theft. Israel was told not to seek another in-
heritance besides the land of Canaan. Esau’s land was listed as
of-limits; so was Moab’s (v. 9). Israel had no legal claim to any other
nation’s inheritance besides Canaan’s. To have set their eyes on any
land but Canaan would have been a violation of the tenth com-
mandment, the command against covetousness.
God told them to buy meat and drink with money. They had
been given money by the Egyptians. Israel had gained the inheri-
tance of many of Egypt’s irstborn sons, who had all perished on
Passover night. Israel had been capitalized by the Egyptians, who
had illegally held them in bondage. Even after the capital losses im-
posed by Moses after the golden calf incident (Ex. 32:20), Israelites
still had money. This is an indication of the importance of money in
a lawful inheritance. It is not to be despised by critics of free market
capitalism or the traditional family.

58
 The Skills of Foreign Trade 59

1
Money has been deined as the most marketable commodity. It
has the widest market of all commodities. Wherever men go, there
are other men who want to exchange more specialized goods and
services for money, the less specialized good. Money is the most liq-
uid asset. This means that it can be exchanged for other valuable as-
sets rapidly without advertising costs and with no discount.
Money is an ideal form of wealth for men on the move. It is
readily transportable, easily divisible, and has a high value in rela-
tion to its volume and weight. Money was what Israel needed for a
40-year march through the wilderness. Had there been no other na-
tions to trade with, money would have done them far less good,
since men cannot eat money. But men can surely eat the things that
money can buy, and there were many cultures along Israel’s jour-
ney with one thing in common: a desire for more money.

Voluntary Trade
Because the Israelites had money, they could trade with those
foreigners along the way who had meat and drink for sale. In the
wilderness, meat and drink were in short supply. The Israelites pos-
sessed money, but they could not eat their money. On the other
hand, the nations they passed by had meat and drink. Pre-exodus
Egypt had been the richest kingdom in the region around Sinai.
Now the Israelites possessed much of the transportable wealth of
Egypt. A series of mutually proitable exchanges became possible.
The nations had what Israelites wanted, and vice versa.
The Israelites possessed an advantage: the nations were afraid
of them (Deut. 2:4). Israel had just defeated Egypt. They had
crossed the Red Sea miraculously. This was a demonstration of su-
pernatural power that threw fear into the hearts of the Edomites. But
God warned Israel not to use force to extract wealth from Edom. He
told them to be peaceable people, for other nations lawfully pos-
sessed their own inheritances. There were legal boundaries around
their possessions.
This made trade a major source of increased wealth for the Isra-
elites. Israelites would give up money, which was of low value to them,
in exchange for meat and drink. Giving up money for consumer

1. Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit (2nd ed.; New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1953), p. 32. The irst German edition was published in 1912.
60 DEUTERONOMY

goods meant the de-capitalization of Israel’s distant future. But men

live in the present; they must eat and drink in the present. God al-
lowed them to make the decision: money as part of the inheritance
for the next generation vs. meat and drink in the present.
Israelites were not to place their hope in money. They were also
not to place their hope in any military conquest other than in or
around the land of Canaan. So, with respect to portable wealth,
those who gave up money for meat and drink were more pres-
ent-oriented than those Israelites who refused to trade. They be-
came spenders rather than savers. They valued the pleasures of
meat and drink more than they valued their money. They knew that
the next generation would conquer Canaan. At that future point, the
spoils of Egypt would be rendered relatively less valuable. It was
productive real estate that would then be valuable, for it would pro-
duce wealth for the whole nation.
The spoils of Egypt became the means of immediate gratiicat-
ion for some Israelites. The value to them of meat and drink in the
present far outweighed the discounted future value of money.
Money could not be invested at high rates of return by a nation wan-
dering in the wilderness. It would not compound for entrepreneurs.
The Israelites of the exodus generation knew they would not be al-
lowed to spend their money in the Promised Land. What good was
money to them? It was either a means of buying pleasure in the
present or a means of transferring an inheritance to their children.
But their children had been guaranteed an inheritance in Canaan.
So, why not spend money?
Money was less valuable to the exodus generation than meat
and water. Meat and water were less valuable to some Edomites
than money. Because each participant in an exchange values what
the other has more than what he has, both of them can increase their
satisfaction by a voluntary exchange. God told Moses to instruct the
nation that from now on, and for the next four decades, voluntary ex-
change would be the only lawful avenue of their wealth-generating
activities with other societies. They had to learn to prosper through
peaceful exchange. Violence should not become a means of increas-
ing the nation’s wealth.
This set a pattern for post-conquest relations with the nations
around Israel. Israel restrained itself when it possessed what ap-
peared to be a military advantage. Israel would not have retained an
advantage, had they violated the boundaries that God had placed
 The Skills of Foreign Trade 61

around the nations, but the nations did not know this. Israel had to
rely on trade to get what it wanted. This must have made an impres-
sion on the nations in the region. If anyone wanted access to the
wealth of Israel, he could gain it by ofering an Israelite an advantage.
The Israelites were ready to trade. They were not in the empire-
building business. They were in the “let’s make a deal” business.
This forced wealth-seeking Israelites to become skilled bargain-
ers. They could not rely on military force to gain what they wanted.
They had to learn self-restraint. Weak nations must do this of neces-
sity. Strong nations are wise to do this. The example of Switzerland
is over ive centuries old. That nation displays a ferocious determi-
nation to defend its territory from military invasion, yet displays
complete neutrality outside its borders. It is an armed camp inter-
nally and a disarmed sales force externally. A banker defends his
bank’s vault. He also makes visitors welcome when they come to
deposit money or borrow at rates proitable to the bank. Switzer-
land has become the banker for the world’s central banks.2

A Matter of Positioning
Israel gained a reputation in the wilderness for trading rather
than ighting. This was probably what lured Arad, Sihon, and Og
into suicidal attacks on Israel just prior to the conquest of Canaan.
Those powerful kings assumed that trade-seeking Israel could not
defend herself. They were wrong. Israel was about to become the
most battle-hardened military force in the region. But for almost
four decades, Israel had positioned herself as a non-violent trading
nation, a wandering people without a home base. Trading nations
that gain the reputation of being unwilling to ight become vulnera-
ble to aggressive nations that prefer conquest to trade.3 This was not
Israel’s condition, but it appeared to be Israel’s condition immedi-
ately prior to the irst battles of the conquest.
After the conquest, Israel allowed foreigners to live inside her
borders. The rule of law did not discriminate against foreigners who
lived inside non-Levitical walled cities. They could buy and sell

2. The Bank for International Settlements is headquartered in Basle. This is the central
banks’ clearing house, the central bankers’ central bank.
3. This is why Switzerland has had to maintain itself as an armed camp to defend its
autonomy and neutrality. The Swiss avoid a reputation for softness.
62 DEUTERONOMY

homes and leave an inheritance to their children (Lev. 25:29–30).

Furthermore, one law governed all traders (Ex. 12:49). This was un-
heard of in the ancient Near East. In all other societies, the cities’
gods were local. If you did not have legal access to the religious rites
of these local gods, you had no legal standing. These rites excluded
foreigners and women.4 But Israel’s God was a cosmic God. His
transcendent authority was not dependent on geography. So, Israel
became a place where all people could seek freedom from arbitrary
civil government and legal protection for their property.
This positioned Israel as a trading nation. Israel welcomed trad-
ers as no other Near Eastern nation did. But this positioning had be-
gun prior to the conquest. When Israel had no homeland, she
sought no nation’s wealth through conquest. Similarly, when Israel
gained a homeland, she was commanded by God to seek no foreign
national’s wealth through oppression. In both instances, Israel
gained wealth through trade. Israel extended the division of labor
by abandoning force. She tempted the best and the brightest wealth-
seekers from other societies to share their skills and information vol-
untarily through trade.
Israel for centuries was a nation located on important trade
routes. With access to the Mediterranean, Israel was one of a hand-
ful of neutral trading nations that operated outside of the jurisdiction
of the great land-based empires: Egyptian, Hittite, and Babylonian.5
But a successful trade route is more than a matter of geography. It is
also a matter of legal protection. From its days in the wilderness,
Israel began building its reputation as a nation conducive to foreign
trade. Revere writes of the coastal trade city: “Its main function was to
guarantee neutrality. Continuity of the supply of goods was essential,
since it could not be expected that traders – under the dijcult con-
ditions of archaic long distance travel – would come to an outlying
place unless they knew for certain that a safe exchange of goods was
possible. The presence of a strong military power on the spot would
unfailingly frighten them away. Political neutrality, guarantee of

4. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book II, Chapter
VIII.
5. Robert B. Revere, “‘No Man’s Coast’: Ports of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in
Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, edited by Karl Polanyi,
Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Peterson (Chicago: Regnery, [1957] 1971), ch. 4.
 The Skills of Foreign Trade 63

supplies, protection of the lives and property of strangers had to be

assured before trade could start. A prior understanding between the
corporate parties was therefore needed, usually based on regular
treaties. Such an understanding, no doubt, would include facilities
for disembarking, lading, portage, storage, grading of goods and the
ixing of equivalencies backed by the coastal authority. Without this
mechanism of the port of trade, there could be no regular trading.”6
God’s prohibition against the multiplication of horses by the
king was unquestionably part of this arrangement (Deut. 17:16).
The presence of a large ofensive army – an army with chariots or
cavalry – would send mixed signals to the land-based empires that
used the coastal port cities as foreign trade centers. A safe, innocu-
ous coastal nation was not bothered by the great empires until well
into the eighth century B.C., when Assyria began its conquests.7 The
empires avoided establishing cities in the coastal areas, possibly be-
cause trading cities might have opened these closed societies to new
ideas and an uncontrolled wealth. Foreigners were kept at a dis-
tance through the use of neutral coastal ports and State-authorized
caravans to and from those ports.
Positioning is very important in establishing a market. When
men think of a particular good or service, they think of the product,
company, or nation that supplies the best known (best positioned)
item. Israel’s positioning under God’s law was as a nation where
voluntarism brought wealth to all market participants, including
foreigners. Wealth lows into those nations in which property is pro-
tected and contracts are enforced impartially. God established “no
trespassing” boundaries around other nations’ assets as well as neigh-
bors’ assets. When it came to protecting private property, with the ex-
ceptions of rural land and the homes of Levites in Levitical cities
(Lev. 25:32–33), “otherhood” in Israel was not diferent judicially
than “brotherhood.” This judicial condition is the mark of a trading
nation.

6. Ibid., p. 52. Mosaic law was adamant about the evil of false weights and measures (Lev.
19:35–36; Deut. 25:13, 15; Prov. 11:1; Prov. 20:23).
7. Ibid., p. 58.
64 DEUTERONOMY

Conclusion
From the beginning of their wandering in the wilderness, the Is-
raelites knew that they were not allowed to take land from the
non-Amorite cities in the region. Those cities were the lawful posses-
sion of others. God honored the property rights of other nations that
worshipped false gods. Even though these nations were afraid of Is-
rael, they were not to be exploited. Israel was not to take advantage of
them. Instead, the Israelites were told to trade for whatever they
wanted from those nations. Voluntarism rather than military strength
was to be the basis of gaining ownership of other nations’ goods.
This was supposed to set the pattern for Israel’s future economic
dealings with foreign nations. Without the threat of violence facing
them, other nations would come to regard Israel as a place to do
business. If they wanted to beneit from Israel’s productivity, they
could bargain with Israelites. Without fear of coniscation, they
could bring something valuable into Israel in search of a trading
partner. Their property would be protected by Israelite law and cus-
tom. This safe haven for private property irrespective of national or-
igin would make Israel a cross-roads for proit-seeking foreign
traders. Egyptians could seek out Israelites or Babylonians or Hit-
tites to do business. Israel could become one of the neutral, inde-
pendent, coastal nations that served the great empires as common
centers of trade.
God would soon give Israel the geographical location that could
make the nation a foreign trade center. But irst, He imposed a law
that favored foreign nations: the protection of their property. By
honoring this law prior to the conquest of Canaan, Israel would
mark itself as a nation where private property was safe. Israel would
become known as a trading nation rather than an aggressor nation.
This reputation would position Israel as a regional trade center,
bringing income from foreign traders seeking opportunities. This was
part of God’s program of foreign missions through law: “Keep there-
fore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in
the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say,
Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what
nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD
our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is
there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this
law, which I set before you this day?” (Deut. 4:6–8).
 7
TransferringTHE
TRANSFERRING the Inheritance
INHERITANCE

Get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward,
and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine
eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and
encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people,
and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see (Deut.
3:27–28).

God was about to ordain a new leader over Israel. As Lord of

the cosmos, God possesses the authority to select His representa-
tives. This authority is the theocentric principle undergirding this
law. Moses was told to be a mentor to Joshua in these last days of
wilderness wandering. The older man would prepare the younger
to take authority over the nation. This transfer of personal authority
represented the coming transfer of the inheritance to Israel. Joshua
would command Israel after Moses died. Only then would the ac-
tual transfer of land take place. God was about to remove the au-
thority of Canaan over the land. Israel’s task was to enforce this
transfer of ownership. This was clearly a land law. More than this: it
was a one-time land law in Israel’s history.
Moses asked God if God would allow him to go into the Prom-
ised Land (v. 25). God told him not to ask for this again (v. 26).
Moses had been forbidden to cross over because he had struck the
rock twice with the rod in order to call forth water, after God had
told him to speak to the rock but not strike it (Num. 20:8, 11–12).1

1. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), ch. 11.

65
66 DEUTERONOMY

This negative sanction against Moses was a prohibition against his

participation in the inheritance. Moses had identiied himself as a
spiritual member of the exodus generation, a man who trusted more
in signs and wonders than in the promises of God.
The sanctions of God are the means of inheritance. Positive
sanctions are inheritance sanctions; negative sanctions are disin-
heritance sanctions. The focus of sanctions, point four of the bibli-
cal covenant model, is point ive: inheritance and disinheritance.
Positive sanctions are given to covenant-breakers ultimately to in-
crease the inheritance of covenant keepers. “A good man leaveth
an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sin-
ner is laid up for the just” (Prov. 13:22). The New Heaven and New
Earth are the eternal inheritance of the righteous (Rev. 21:1). The
historical model for this inal transfer of inheritance is the conquest
of Canaan. The wealth created by covenant-breakers became the
inheritance of covenant-keepers. “And it shall be, when the LORD
thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto
thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great
and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all
good things, which thou illedst not, and wells digged, which thou
diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not;
when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou for-
get the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt,
from the house of bondage” (Deut. 6:10–12).
Joshua inherited Moses’ mantle of authority. He replaced Mo-
ses in the civil hierarchy. This transfer of authority was the judicial
basis of the fourth generation’s inheritance of Canaan.

Heirs and Inheritance

Covenant-breaking man is short of time. He has to earn a very
high rate of return in order to accumulate vast wealth in one life-
time. He has to compound this wealth at rates that are abnormally
high. This means that he must bear greater risks. He may lose all of
his capital in a bad transaction. The second commandment states
speciically that covenant-breakers exercise only a few generations
of rule, while covenant-keepers extend and compound their rule for
thousands of generations, i.e., permanently. “Thou shalt not make
thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath
the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve
 Transferring the Inheritance 67

them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation
of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them
that love me and keep my commandments” (Deut. 5:8–10).
The covenant-keeper can rest content with ordinary rates of
growth, for he believes that his heirs will continue the process. The
goal of the covenant-keeper is steady expansion, year by year, gen-
eration by generation. The continuity provided by the covenant releases
covenant-keepers from a frantic search for abnormally high rates of return. If
each generation is faithful in building up the inheritance, and if each
generation trains up a faithful generation, the compounding process
brings success. It is more important to raise up a faithful, competent,
future-oriented generation than to make high rates of return for one
generation, only to see the next generation renounce the faith, in-
herit, and squander the legacy. This breaks the covenant and dissi-
pates the inheritance.
Compound growth becomes negative because of covenantal re-
bellion (Deut. 28:38–40). This thwarts the compounding process. It
sets the next generation back one or more generations. The threat of
covenantal forgetfulness is always before us: “But thou shalt remem-
ber the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get
wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy
fathers, as it is this day” (Deut. 8:18). So is the threat of negative re-
turns: “And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and
walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify
against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which
the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye
would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God” (Deut.
8:19–20).
God told the exodus generation that they would not inherit.
This prophecy pressured that faithless generation to consider the fu-
ture of their children. Only through their children would they par-
ticipate in the inheritance. They could have participated in the
conquest by transferring military leadership to their sons at the time
they sent in the spies. This was not what that generation wanted.
Even Moses wanted to escape this negative sanction. He wanted to
walk into the Promised Land as the national leader. God would not
allow it. His word was unbreakable. No member of that generation
would inherit personally. The inheritance of the nation of Israel
would be attained through the disinheritance of the exodus generation.
68 DEUTERONOMY

Because the exodus generation refused to disinherit the Canaanites

through their sons, God disinherited the exodus generation. The
Canaanites enjoyed an extra generation of dominion over the land.
God told Moses to encourage Joshua. Joshua would lead the na-
tion into Canaan. He would therefore replace Moses as the nation’s
prophetic leader. He would command God’s holy army. He needed
training, even at this late date. He needed a word of blessing. Moses,
as the supreme commander, was uniquely able to provide this bless-
ing. It was like the blessing of a patriarch to his son. This time, how-
ever, the inheritance would not be a bloodline inheritance, as had
been true of patriarchy. It was a judicial inheritance based on per-
sonal confession: Joshua’s confession before the council of spies.
Joshua, not Moses’ son, was the heir of the ojce of national prophet.
As Moses’ successor, Joshua would have to lead as Moses had.
He would have to exercise courage. He was the representative
agent in the conquest. He had been such a representative at the
council; now he would be the senior ojcer. He had demonstrated
courage then; he would have to demonstrate it again. Moses had re-
cently testiied to God’s omnipotence, at the very end of his career.
“O Lord GOD, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness,
and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth,
that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might?”
(v. 24). It was this confession that Joshua needed to accept intellectu-
ally and internalize emotionally in his role as national leader.
Through Joshua, the entire nation was duty-bound to accept it and
act in terms of it. This testimony, if acted upon, would be the basis of
their inheritance.

Courage Through Obedience

Shortly prior to his death, Moses gave this advice to Joshua: “Be
strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people unto
the land which the LORD hath sworn unto their fathers to give them;
and thou shalt cause them to inherit it” (Deut. 31:7b). God repeated
this to Joshua immediately prior to the crossing of the Jordan River:

Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass,
that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying,
Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou,
and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the chil-
dren of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that
 Transferring the Inheritance 69

have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this
Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the
Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be
your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the
days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail
thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this peo-
ple shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their
fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou
mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant
commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou
mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not
depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that
thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then
thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good suc-
cess. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be
not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest (Josh. 1:1–9).

This more detailed version of Moses’ instructions made it clear

that the basis of Joshua’s courage would be his commitment to the
law of God. As the national leader, it was his task to read the law
daily and meditate on it. The law was not to depart out of his mouth;
that is, his words of judgment (point four) were always to be
grounded in the law (point three). The basis of the inheritance (point
ive) would be their adherence to the law. If they ever departed from
the law, they would forfeit their inheritance:

Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: thou
shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou shalt plant a
vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof. Thine ox shall be slain
before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof: thine ass shall be violently
taken away from before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee: thy
sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to res-
cue them. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people,
and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long:
and there shall be no might in thine hand. The fruit of thy land, and all thy
labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be
only oppressed and crushed alway (Deut. 28:30–33).

Courage is a product of covenantal faithfulness. Without co-

venantal faithfulness, courage will depart: “In the morning thou
shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say,
70 DEUTERONOMY

Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith
thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see”
(Deut. 28:67). Courage increases, or should increase, when men ex-
perience victories. That is, when they gain positive sanctions or, in
wartime, inlict negative sanctions, they grow more conident. But if
they refuse to trust God as the source of their victories, two unpleas-
ant things can result: 1) cowardice because they do not trust God to
deliver their enemies into their hands as He has in the past, and 2)
defeat through overconidence in their own power. Israel in the wil-
derness sufered from both amictions: cowardice after the spies’ re-
port and overconidence immediately thereafter, when they attacked
Amalek against God’s express command (Num. 14).
When God instructed Moses to build up Joshua’s courage, He
was telling Moses to relate the whole law to Joshua and the nation.
The Book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ response to God’s command.
The recapitulation of the law ends with Moses’ inal words to Joshua
(Deut. 31:23). The law would serve Israel as the basis of the inheri-
tance. Through the Mosaic law, Israel would maintain the kingdom
grant from God.2 Grace precedes the law. The promise to Abraham
preceded the kingdom grant. “For if the inheritance be of the law, it
is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise”
(Gal. 3:18). But Israel could not retain this grant if she violated
God’s law. “Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and
unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may
live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fa-
thers giveth you. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command
you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the
commandments of the LORD your God which I command you”
(Deut. 4:1–2).

Conclusion
The exodus generation had been disinherited at the time of the
council of spies. This negative sanction transferred the inheritance
to their children. The parents would not enjoy the fruits of military
victory. They preferred fruits without risk. They lost their inheritance.

2. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), pp. 8–10.
 Transferring the Inheritance 71

God required courage from the next generation. They could not
be risk-avoiders and also heirs. Under Joshua, they were coura-
geous, though not enough to drive all of the Canaanites out of the
land. “As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children
of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the
children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day” (Josh. 15:63; cf.
17:12–13). As a result, God ceased to support them militarily. Just
before his death, Joshua announced: “Know for a certainty that the
LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from be-
fore you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges
in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from of this
good land which the LORD your God hath given you” (Josh. 23:13).
This was an announcement of disinheritance, in contrast to Moses’
prophecy of inheritance at the time of his death. Joshua’s prophecy
was fulilled partially at the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian
captivities. It was fulilled completely in A.D. 70.
What the nation learned at the captivity was that courage and
obedience are linked. They could not maintain their courage apart
from obedience. Without courage, they would eventually surrender
the inheritance. Without obedience, they would lose their courage.
 8
Evangelism THROUGH
EVANGELISM Through LawLAW
Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD
my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to
possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your
understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these
statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them,
as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what
nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all
this law, which I set before you this day? (Deut. 4:5–8).

The theocentric principle undergirding this law is God as the

Lawgiver. Moses, as the representative of God before Israel and Is-
rael before God, here announced a principle of dominion: the power
of the specially revealed law of God in reducing foreigners’ resistance
to Israel. Israel’s reputation would be elevated above that of other na-
tions to the extent that other nations acknowledged the legitimacy of
God’s law, which they would do, Moses said. Israel, as the nation that
was governed by God’s law, would become pre-eminent among the
nations – not politically but in terms of its moral inluence. Israel’s
reputation would accompany individual Israelites. This reputation
would confer an advantage on the nation’s foreign representatives.
They would be seen as agents of the most just God. In this sense,
Israel’s authority was moral. It was based on God’s law. Israel’s au-
thority was to be based on a hierarchy of righteousness. Israel would
represent God to the nations.
This was a land law insofar as Israel had to obey it. It was a
cross-boundary law insofar as foreign nations were required by God
to acknowledge the wisdom of God’s revealed law. Clearly, it was

72
 Evangelism Through Law 73

primarily a cross-boundary law. It had to do with the universal wis-

dom of God’s law.
God expected foreign nations to hear of His law. How could this
take place? Why should foreigners care anything about the laws
governing a small nation like Israel? Normally, foreigners had little
incentive to learn about the laws of a foreign nation. But two groups
would pay attention: foreign traders and political representatives of
foreign nations. Traders especially would pay attention, since their
capital was at risk while inside the boundaries of a foreign nation.
Foreigners normally had no legal standing in any nation of the an-
cient world, for they could not participate in the rites of the city’s lo-
cal gods. But in Israel, a cosmic God had announced that every
foreigner had legal standing in the search for justice: “One law shall
be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth
among you” (Ex. 12:49). A foreigner who had been cheated by an
Israelite could bring the cheater before a civil court.
Israel would become a center of trade to the extent that she en-
forced God’s law. This would bring foreigners into Israel, either as
short-term opportunity-seekers [nokree ] or as permanent residents
[geyr ] . The story of how property was safe in Israel, courts treated all
men the same, and oppression of foreigners was a violation of the
law would have spread rapidly. Such a legal order was unheard of in
the ancient world.

Justice Is a Universal Goal

There are many deinitions of justice, but rare is the nation that de-
nies the legitimacy of justice. Men seek justice, often with greater fervor
than they seek money. They regard justice as one of society’s major
goals. They want to live under a civil government that ofers justice.
God revealed that the nations would respect His law. They
would recognize that the Mosaic law was a great legal order that
relected a great God. Israel, as God’s unique national representa-
tive, would bask in the sunlight of God’s justice.
How could this be if all men have fundamentally diferent con-
cepts of justice? The very possibility of other nations’ honoring God
by acknowledging the justice of Israel’s legal order points to the ex-
istence of common elements of justice that cross borders and eras.
74 DEUTERONOMY

God places in the heart (conscience) of every man the work of the
law – not the law itself (Heb. 8:10), but the work of the law (Rom.
2:14–15).1 This knowledge is suppressed by covenant-breaking men
in the inal stages of their rebellion (Rom. 1:18–22), but it is part of
every person’s legacy as a human. The work of the law is in every
person’s heart. But covenant-breakers’ active suppression of this
revelation is why every appeal to the authority of a universal logic
or ethic is doomed. The work of the law is innate to man, but no logi-
cal system that presupposes the sovereignty of man’s mind can logi-
cally come to a belief in the sovereignty of God. Thus, every attempt
to invoke natural law theory as the basis of long-term social order is
biblically spurious. A covenant-breaking man’s knowledge of the
work of the law is held innately, not logically. It is suppressed ac-
tively, not passively. His knowledge condemns him eternally, and
at best allows him to prosper for a time prior to his rebellion against
the truth. The positive sanctions covenantally connected to men’s
external conformity to the work of the law eventually undermine
the ethical rebel’s sense of autonomy, which in turn leads him into
external rebellion, just as God’s blessings on Sodom and Canaan
did. Conformity to “natural law” – the work of the law in men’s
hearts – will bless covenant-breaking men temporarily, but in bless-
ing them, it eventually condemns them or their heirs in history. It
cannot bring them to a knowledge of the truth. We are not saved by
law. Neither are societies.
Most Protestant theologians have insisted that this is the case
with respect to individuals, but they have denied that this insight ap-
plies to society. Lutherans have been most forthright in this incon-
sistency. Luther’s two-kingdoms theory rested on his theory of two
radically distinct forms of law: spiritual law governing Christians
and natural law governing societies.2 He had no theory of Christian
law for Christian societies, for his amillennial eschatology denied
the possibility of a Christian society in history.
To the extent that Christians have shared his eschatology and
his social theory, they have adopted his ethical dualism. Every
Christian theologian or social theorist who invokes natural law

1. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans,
1965), I, pp. 74–76.
2. Charles Trinkaus, “The Religious Foundations of Luther’s Social Views,” in John H.
Mundy, et al., Essays in Medieval Life (Cheshire, Connecticut: Biblo & Tannen, 1955), pp. 71–87.
 Evangelism Through Law 75

theory is an ethical dualist. Some are quite forthright about this; oth-
ers are not. But we should recognize the covenantal confession of
the ethical dualist whenever we come across it: a denial that the
law-order revealed in the Mosaic law is in any way binding on soci-
eties and civil governments today. The more adamant dualists argue
that Christians can live under any legal order without compromising
their faith, with only one exception: biblical civil law. Every legal or-
der is permitted except the only one which God ever commanded:
biblical civil law. In the social theory of the hard-core Christian ethi-
cal dualist, all civil legal orders are equal, but one is less equal than
others: biblical civil law.
Covenant-keeping men can and do depart from the proclama-
tion of, and adherence to, God’s revealed law. This is why Israel was
warned: “Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest
thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they de-
part from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons,
and thy sons’ sons” (Deut. 4:9). This does not mean that they can
completely suppress their knowledge of what God expects from
them. It means that they refuse to obey the things that they know to
be true. Their consciences become seared (I Tim. 4:2).
The power of Israel’s testimony to the nations would be the fact
that Israel’s civil courts would not misuse their power to impose
unjust decisions on foreigners. As in the case of Israel’s time in the
wilderness, when God restrained them from coniscating the inheri-
tances of other nations (Deut. 2:4–6), so would God’s restraint of un-
just judges provide a unique testimony. Foreigners who lived in fear
of injustice in other nations would be able to live in peace and pros-
perity inside Israel. The power of Israel’s judicial testimony would
be great because it was granted freely to the weak. In Israel, the
three representative groups that were singled out as deserving of
special judicial scrutiny, lest oppression raise its head, were widows,
orphans, and strangers. “Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment
of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say,
Amen” (Deut. 27:19; cf. Deut. 14:29; 24:17, 19–20).

Increased Trade, Increased Evangelism

When a minority group without power is protected by law,
members of that group spread the word. Such were strangers in
Israel. When Israelite traders would come into a foreign nation
whose agents traded regularly in Israel, they would probably have
76 DEUTERONOMY

received special consideration from the local sellers, despite the fact
that the local courts granted no special consideration to foreigners.
There is a tendency for good deeds to be repaid by those who seek a
continuing proitable relationship. In this sense, Israel was in a posi-
tion to set the judicial agenda outside of its own borders. Its testi-
mony to the otherwise oppressed would have strengthened God’s
hand, and the hand of God’s agents, in nations whose representa-
tives had been treated well in Israel.
The great empires of the second millennium B.C. did not estab-
lish jurisdiction over port cities on the coasts. They allowed these
cities to operate under local jurisdictions.3 This indicates that the rul-
ers understood the power of foreign ideas. The major clearing cen-
ter for new ideas was a port city. Here men gathered from many
nations, selling many wares, and telling stories of many gods. But
one God, above all others, was a threat to the sovereignty of a host
nation’s gods: Israel’s. This God claimed a universal reign irrespec-
tive of geography. To make this claim believable, Israel was required
to enforce God’s law fairly and without discrimination against for-
eigners. All men are the same under God. His rule extends to all men.

The Extent of World Trade

The question arises: How important was world trade in the an-
cient world? The modern historian assumes cultural evolution. He
assumes that modern ships alone have made world trade possible.
Prior to medieval times, he assumes, trade was limited to the Medi-
terranean Sea, expensive and infrequent land journeys, and coastal
shipping. This assumption is incorrect. World trade has brought
contacts between distant cultures for millennia. Only in the second
half of the twentieth century has the extent of this trade become visi-
ble to a handful of specialists. The academic world dismisses the
evidence because the evidence calls into question the long-held
assumptions about the technological accomplishments of pre-modern
societies.
It is appropriate at this point to reproduce a section from my
Introduction to Leviticus: An Economic Commentary, on the extent of

3. Robert B. Revere, “‘No Man’s Coast’: Ports of Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in
Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, edited by Karl Polanyi,
Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Peterson (Chicago: Regnery, [1957] 1971), ch. 4.
 Evangelism Through Law 77

world trade before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Modern man
thinks of cross-oceanic trade as a recent phenomenon. It isn’t. It
goes back to the era of Abraham, at least. Missionary activity was to
be a part of this trade.

*********
There were traders from Northern Europe operating in North
America in the early second millennium B.C.: Abraham’s era. In-
scriptions of one of these visits were discovered in the 1950’s in On-
tario, Canada.4 It should therefore surprise no one that Jews were
trading in North America as early as Jesus’ time, and perhaps centu-
ries earlier. There is evidence – automatically dismissed as fraudu-
5
lent (“forgery”) by establishment scholars – that someone brought
the message of God’s Ten Commandments to the American south-
west before the time of Jesus, possibly centuries before. I refer to the
inscription, written in a Hebrew “stick” script,6 which records the
decalogue. It was written on a boulder weighing 80 tons, located 30
miles southwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the town of Los
Lunas.7 The script (alphabet) dates from the twelfth century B.C.8
Professor Robert Pfeifer of Harvard University’s Semitic Museum
irst translated the inscription in 1948.9 A more recent translation
than Pfeifer’s reads:

I [am] Yahve your God who brought you out of the land of the two
Egypts out of the house of bondages. You shall not have other [foreign]
gods in place of [me]. You shall not make for yourself molded or carved
idols. You shall not lift up your voice to connect the name of Yahve in hate.
Remember you [the] day Sabbath to make it holy. Honor your father and
your mother to make long your existence upon the land which Yahve your
God gave to you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery or
idolatry. You shall not steal or deceive. You shall not bear witness against

4. Barry Fell, Bronze Age America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), ch. 1.
5. See “Los Lunas Attracts Epigraphers,” Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers, XII (Aug.
1985), p. 34. See also Fell, Bronze Age America, p. 44.
6. Donald Cline, “The Los Lunas Stone,” ibid., X:1 (Oct. 1982), p. 69.
7. David Allen Deal, Discovery of Ancient America (Irvine, California: Kherem La Yah,
1984), ch. 1.
8. Barry Fell, “Ancient Punctuation and the Los Lunas Text,” Epigraphic Society Occasional
Papers, XIII (Aug. 1985), p. 35.
9. A photocopy of Pfeifer’s translation appears in Deal, Discovery, p. 10.
78 DEUTERONOMY

your neighbor testimony for a bribe. You shall not covet [the] wife of your
10
neighbor and all which belongs to your neighbor.

It mentions two Egypts, an obvious reference to the two regions

of Egypt, upper (close to the head of the Nile) and lower (close to the
Mediterranean).11 As to when the inscription was made, George
Morehouse, a mining engineer, has estimated that this could have
taken place as recently as 500 years ago and as far back as two millen-
nia.12 A “revisionist” who has studied the inscription in detail believes
that the text may be from the era of the Septuagint, i.e., over a century
before the birth of Jesus – surely no comfort for conventional textbook
authors. The stone’s tenth commandment prohibiting covetousness
mentions the wife before property, a feature of the Septuagint text.13
(The problem with this revisionist argument is that this “Septuagint”
structuring of the text is also found in Deuteronomy 5:21.)
Evidence of the ancient world’s advanced tools, maps,14 interna-
tional trade, and highly sophisticated astronomical and observational
science15 never gets into college-level world history textbooks. The
evidence is automatically rejected or downplayed by conventional
– and woefully uninformed – historians because it breaks with the
familiar tenets of cultural evolution. Time is supposed to bring sci-
ence, technology, and cultural advance. Cultural evolution, not
cultural devolution, is supposed to be mankind’s legacy to future gen-
erations. The thought that international trade across the oceans ex-
isted ive centuries before Columbus, let alone ive centuries before
David,16 is an afront to cultural evolutionists.

10. L. Lyle Underwood, “The Los Lunas Inscription,” Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers,
X:1 (Oct. 1982), p. 58.
11. New Bible Dictionary (2nd ed.; Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1982), p. 302.
12. George E. Morehouse, “The Los Lunas Inscriptions[:] A Geological Study,” Epigraphic
Society Occasional Papers, XIII (Aug. 1985), p. 49.
13. Michael Skupin, “The Los Lunas Errata,” ibid., XVIII (1989), p. 251.
14. Charles Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (Philadelphia: Chilton, 1966).
15. O. Neugebauer and A. Sachs (eds.), Mathematical Cuneiform Texts (New Haven,
Connecticut: American Oriental Society, 1945); Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker,
Egyptian Astronomical Texts, 3 vols. (Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Press, 1960);
Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (2nd ed.; Providence, Rhode Island: Brown
University Press, 1957); Livio C. Stecchini, “Astronomical Theory and Historical Data,” in
The Velikovsky Afair: The Warfare of Science and Scientism, edited by Alfred de Grazia (New
Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1966), pp. 127–70. See also Giorgio de Santillana
and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time (Boston: Gambit,
1969).
16. Fell, Bronze Age America.
 Evangelism Through Law 79

This is probably why a book like Patrick Huyghe’s Columbus

Was Last (1992) had to be published by an obscure New York com-
pany, Hyperion, which allowed it to go out of print within a year. It
also explains why there is so little awareness regarding amateur
archeologist Emilio Estrada’s 1957 discovery of buried Japanese
pottery on the coast of Ecuador: Japan’s Jomon-era stone-age pot-
tery.17 Scholars do not want to face the obvious question: How did it
get there? And why are there artistic similarities between the
China’s Shang dynasty and the Mesoamerica Olmec culture – large
cats (sometimes without their lower jaws), the dragon, and the use of
jade – which overlapped each other from the ifteenth to the twelfth
centuries, B.C.?18 Why were the implements and techniques used by
the Mayans to make bark paper ive centuries before Christ so similar
to the implements and techniques used by the Chou dynasty in the
same era? Of 121 individual traits, the two systems shared 91, half of
which were non-essential, and the other half, while essential, had al-
ternative approaches available.19 Why didn’t the Mesoamerican
techniques match papermaking techniques used by cultures in other
parts of America?20 Why do Mayan stone art works after 500 B.C.
shift from earlier forms to match Asian art forms of the same era?21
Meanwhile, at the other end of the hemisphere, slate technolo-
gies have been discovered in burial sites of the ancient Red Paint
(red ochre) People in Maine and Labrador. These artifacts match
slate technologies in Scandinavia. The era of conjunction was some
4,000 years ago.22 Huyghe writes: “The principal deterrent to the
notion of historical contact is the widespread belief that ancient man
was incapable of making ocean voyages in primitive boats. But
there is certainly no doubt that Europeans had oceangoing
watercraft quite early. Bronze Age rock carvings in Europe show
plank-built ships were sailing Atlantic coastal waters more than
4,000 years ago.”23

17. Patrick Huyghe, Columbus Was Last (New York: Hyperion, 1992), ch. 2.
18. Ibid., p. 84.
19. Ibid., pp. 86–87. See Paul Tolstoy, “Paper Route,” Natural History (June 1991).
20. Ibid., p. 87.
21. Ibid., pp. 87–91. See Gunnar Thompson, Nu Sun (Fresno, California: Pioneer, 1989).
Thompson is director of the American Discovery Project at California State University,
Fresno.
22. Ibid., pp. 52–54.
23. Ibid., p. 54.
80 DEUTERONOMY

How many people know that the Carthaginians were sending

trading ships to North America in the late fourth century B.C.?
Throughout the eastern United States, Carthaginian coins from the
325 B.C. era have been discovered near navigable rivers and of the
Atlantic coast.24 Beginning in the late eighteenth century, farmers in
New England started digging up hoards of Roman coins.
Few people know that numerous commercial bronze replicas of
Assyrian deities have been discovered in Cuenca, Ecuador. The
Phoenicians were producing these replicas on Cyprus as early as
600 B.C. Carthage, an ofshoot of Phoenecia, exported them to bar-
barian peoples.25 We know that after 300 B.C., Carthage began to
mint electrum coins: mostly gold, but with some silver. Where did
Carthage get the gold? These fake deities in South America are evi-
dence that Carthage imported gold from South America through
the sale of these replicas.26 These trips would also explain where
Carthage got the pine lumber for building huge warships27 until the
end of the irst Punic War with Rome in 241 B.C.28 (In that war,
264–41 B.C., Carthage lost 334 of these giant ships.)29 Barry Fell
speculates that before the defeat, they had brought trees as ballast
from North America, which is why we discover bronze coins there.
They bought lumber from the Indians.30 After 241 B.C., Carthaginian
trade with the Americas ceased.
Roman trade replaced it.31 Paintings of Roman-Iberian coins ap-
pear on cave walls in Arkansas and as far west as Castle Gardens, near
Moneta (“money”), Wyoming.32 There were Iberian-based banks all
across North America in the time of Jesus. These contacts continued,
and they left traces. “In 1933, an astonished Mexican archeologist
excavated a terra-cotta head of a Roman igurine of the third century
A.D. from an undisturbed ancient grave sealed under the Calixtlahuaca
pyramid, thirty-ive miles southwest of Mexico City.”33

24. Barry Fell, Saga America (New York: Times Books, 1980), pp. 25–26, 62, 64.
25. Ibid., p. 82.
26. Ibid., p. 85.
27. Quinquiremes: ive rowers per oar, 250 rowers, 120 marines plus ojcers: 400 men per
ship. Ibid., p. 75.
28. Ibid., p. 76.
29. Ibid., p. 75.
30. Ibid., p. 86.
31. Ibid., chaps. 6, 7.
32. Ibid., pp. 134–35, 144, 148–49, 159–60.
33. Huyghe, Columbus Was Last, p. 98.
 Evangelism Through Law 81

The Carthaginians and Romans were late-comers. The Scandi-

navians were trading in North America during the Bronze Age, pos-
34
sibly as early as 1700 B.C. – the era of Joseph in Egypt. A visiting
Norwegian sailor-king left an account of one of these visits in what is
now called Petroglyph Park in Peterborough, Ontario, in Canada.
He had an inscription chiseled into rock, written in a nearly univer-
sal alphabet of the ancient world, ogam consaine,35 and another alpha-
bet, equally universal, Ti nag, an alphabet still employed by the
Tuaregs, a Berber tribe in North Africa. The Norse inscription was
accompanied by a comment written by an Algonquin Indian scribe
in a script common among the pre-Roman Basques, but using a
form of the Algonquin language still understood.36 The inscription
was discovered in 1954.37
This same Basque script was also employed by the Cree Indians
well into the nineteenth century. It was not known to be related to
Basque until Fell transliterated into Latin consonants a document
written in this “Indian” script. The document had been sent to him
by a Basque etymologist who had been unable to decipher it. When it
was transliterated, the Basque scholar recognized it as a pre-Roman
dialect of the Basque tongue, one which was still in use in the medi-
eval period.38 Some of the words are virtually the same in both the
Algonquin and ancient Basque tongues.39 (Fell also reads Greek,
Latin, German, French, Danish, and Gaelic; he has a working knowl-
edge of Sanskrit, Kuic Arabic, and several Asian and African lan-
guages.)40
41
A thousand years before the birth of Jesus, Celtic traders were
serving as missionaries in North America, bringing the stories of
their gods across the continent: central and Western Canada, and
as far south as Nevada and California. The petroglyphs of this era

34. Fell, Bronze Age America, ch. 1. The dating is calculated by the zodiac data in the
inscription: ch. 5, especially pp. 127, 130.
35. A gift to man from the Gaulish god Ogimos, god of the occult sciences. Ibid., p. 165.
36. Ibid., p. 36. For additional information, see Huyghe, Columbus Was Last, ch. 5.
37. Ibid., p. 39.
38. Ibid., p. 146. Comparisons of the North American Indian script and the ancient Basque
script appear on pages 148–49.
39. Ibid., p. 151.
40. Huyghe, Columbus Was Last, p. 59.
41. Fell, Bronze Age America, ch. 14.
82 DEUTERONOMY

42
reproduce Norse gods whose names are in ogam. Needless to say,
none of this information has moved into college history textbooks.
Textbooks include only certain kinds of texts. Textbook authors dis-
miss all such petroglyph evidence as “forgeries” – the same way
they dismiss the texts of the Bible that challenge their concept of
chronology. But this is beginning to change. A few academic spe-
cialists are beginning to admit that there is something of value in
Fell’s work.43 We can therefore predict the traditional three stages of
academic surrender: 1) “It isn’t true.” 2) “It’s true, but so what?” 3)
“We always knew it was true.” As of the inal decade of the twentieth
century, we are still in stage one.
If Celtic traders were able to bring their gods to North America,
so were Jewish traders. God expected them to do this. To some ex-
tent, they did, as the Los Lunas stone indicates. But they did not do
it on a scale that matched the Celts. The requirement that they re-
turn for Passover each year must have inhibited their journeys. This
was a barrier to world evangelism. It was a temporary barrier. Is-
rael’s old wineskins would inevitably be broken because the geo-
graphical boundaries of the Mosaic law would eventually be broken
if God’s law was obeyed. Population growth would have seen to
that. So would the cost of journeying to Jerusalem, especially for in-
ternational Jewish traders. But even if the Mosaic law was disobeyed,
those wineskins would be broken. This is what took place deinitively
with Jesus’ ministry, progressively with the establishment of the
church, and inally in A.D. 70.44 The ire on God’s earthly altar was
extinguished forever.
When, sixty years later, Bar Kochba revolted, the Romans
crushed the revolt in 135. There is a continuing stream of archeological
discoveries indicating that some of the survivors led to Tennessee and
Kentucky. An early ind in Bat Creek, Tennessee, by Smithsonian
ield assistant John Emmert in 1889 is a ive-inch stone inscribed
with eight Hebrew characters. The signiicance of this was denied
by the Smithsonian’s curator, who claimed this was Cherokee syl-
labic script. As the saying goes, “Nice try, but no cigar” – he had
read it upside-down. Over half a century later, Hebrew scholars

42. Ibid., chaps. 7–13.

43. Cf. David H. Kelley, “Proto-Tiinagh and Proto-Ogham in the Americas,” Review of
Archeology, XI (Spring 1990).
44. David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
 Evangelism Through Law 83

turned it right-side up and discovered these consonants: LYHWD.

In the early 1970’s, Brandeis University’s Hebraicist Cyrus H.
Gordon identiied the era of the style of these letters: Bar Kochba’s.
He translated the phrase: “A comet for the Jews,” which was a stan-
dard phrase during the revolt. Similar coin inds from this era had
been made in Kentucky, which Gordon believed had not been
faked.
Needless to say, none of this is in the textbooks. Neither will you
ind a reference to the massive 1,375-page two-volume bibliography
Pre-Columbian Contacts with the Americas Across the Oceans, which con-
tains over 5,500 entries.45 For those of you who want to spend a life-
time following the trails into and out of America, here is the place to
start.

*********

Conclusion
The Mosaic law was to serve Israel as a means of worldwide
evangelism. Someone carved the Ten Commandments into a boul-
der in New Mexico in the days of Jesus or earlier. Some Israelite un-
derstood the truth of Deuteronomy’s assertion that the law of God is
a powerful tool of evangelism. Oppressed men respond well to civil
justice. The civil law of God was simple enough for traders and resi-
dent aliens to learn. They would know their rights before God.
Their chief civil right in Israel was equality before the law. This was
a unique right in the ancient world, where civil rights were tied to
civil rites. Foreigners had no civil rites in the ancient city-states, so
they had no rights. This was not so in Israel.
One of the self-inlicted wounds of modern Christianity is
Christians’ denial of the continuing validity of biblical law in New
Testament times. They have stripped the church of one of its premier
tools of evangelism: the proclamation of universal justice. God has
given them their request – a world not under God’s Bible-revealed
covenantal law – and has thereby brought them under the rule of
covenant-breakers.

45. Provo, Utah: Research Press, 1989. Compiled by John L. Sorenson and Martin H.
Raish.
 9
Hear,
HEAR, Fear,AND
FEAR, and Testify
TESTIFY

Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget
the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart
all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons;
Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb,
when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will
make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that
they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children
(Deut. 4:9–10).

The theocentric basis of this law is the fear of God. As covenantal

agents of God, fathers were required to teach their sons and grand-
sons the law of God. The family’s hierarchy was to extend Israel’s
national covenant into the future. This was a not a seed law in the
sense of a tribal law. It was an ajrmation of the covenant in the life
of Israel. It is a universal law that is to govern covenant-keeping fa-
thers throughout history. Only when God is no longer to be feared
does this law cease in history, “that they may learn to fear me all the
days that they shall live upon the earth.”
Moses spoke these words to people who could remember the giv-
ing of the law. Through their parents’ oath of allegiance to God, they
had participated in the sealing of the covenant at Sinai-Horeb (Ex. 19),
immediately prior to God’s giving of the Ten Commandments
(Ex. 20). Moses warned them not to forget, and to tell what they had
seen to their children and grandchildren.
The threat to Israel was a break in this verbal inheritance. There
was a risk that their memories of this covenantal event might depart
from Israel. But how? Through a failure to tell this story. The focus
of this warning was not primarily individual; it was corporate. Old

84
 Hear, Fear, and Testify 85

people remember the events of their youth even when they forget
their own names. The memory spoken of here was corporate mem-
ory, i.e., the transmission of the story. If this story should ever de-
part out of the nation’s corporate heart, it would no longer deine
Israel. It would no longer motivate them to fear God and obey Him.
The transmission of Israel’s inheritance rested on the telling of
this story. Here, Passover was not the focus; the giving of the law
was. Passover was to remind them of the great deliverance from
Egypt, which Moses called the iron furnace (Deut. 4:20). But the
story of the giving of the law was equally important. It was not just
that God had delivered them out of bondage; it was that He had also
delivered to them His law. The events surrounding the covenantal
meeting between God and Israel at Mt. Horeb had to be repeated to
the next generation. They had heard God (v. 12). They were not
eyewitnesses to God; they were earwitnesses to God. They were re-
quired to pass on this story just as they had received it: verbally.

Hearing Is Believing
Modern man has a phrase, “Seeing is believing.” The technology
of photography launched a new era. Men could at last record faithful
images of what they had seen. This elevated the eye to a position of
authority that it had enjoyed only in trials, where witnesses had to
conirm the event. Now the photograph replaced one of the wit-
nesses. But this legal authority as a witness is about to depart unless
modern computer technology is reversed. The technology of digital
imaging is going to make possible the altering of photographic im-
ages to such an extent that seeing will no longer be believing.
The rise of modern science is generally explained in terms of
the rise of experimentation. Only whatever can be measured is said
to be scientiically valid. The repeatability of an experiment is the
source of its validity: other scientists can see the same results. But
the description of these experiments is always conveyed verbally.
Words must accompany the images and mathematical formulas in
order for others to understand the procedures and repeat them.
Never has seeing been believing except for the individual who saw.
To transmit a description of what he saw to others requires more
than images. It requires words. The images conirm the words. Images
do not speak for themselves. Facts do not stand alone. Facts are
never brute facts; they are always interpreted facts.
86 DEUTERONOMY

This does not mean that seeing is irrelevant. I think of the scene
in a Marx brothers movie where Groucho is discovered in the arms
of some young woman. “What are you going to believe,” he asks the
intruder, “me or your own eyes?” Eyes are a valid source of informa-
tion, but there is always an interaction between sight and interpreta-
tion. The persuasive power of belief and habit is usually greater than
the power of sight. The Israelites saw the Red Sea open before them;
then they crossed over dry land; then they saw the water close over
the Pharaoh’s army. Still, they soon ceased to believe that this uniied
event was in any way relevant for their new trials. Seeing was believ-
ing, but what Israel believed was highly restricted through their lack
of faith. Seeing lasts only for a moment; then memory takes over –
memory iltered by faith.
Hearing is repetitive. For those who did not see, as well as for
those who saw but never learned the lesson, hearing is the dominant
mode of communication.1

Hearing and Obeying

There is a strong ethical element in the Hebrew verb “to hear.”
The word for “hear” in Hebrew is the same as the word for “obey”:
shawmah. “As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the
strangers shall submit themselves unto me” (Ps. 18:44; emphasis
added). “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep
my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all
people: for all the earth is mine” (Ex. 19:5; emphasis added). “And
he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the
people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be
obedient” (Ex. 24:7; emphasis added).2 When God speaks, men
should obey. When those in authority speak of God, the listeners
should obey. This is why telling the story of the giving of the law was
mandatory in Israel. The story was intended to persuade men to
fear God, hear God’s law, and obey what they heard.
Stories possess great authority when told by those in authority
and conirmed by others in authority. The command to tell the story
of the giving of the law was directed to parents and grandparents:

1. Reading involves sight, but prior to the advent of photography, reading was mainly
hearing through the eyes.
2. See also Genesis 22:18; 26:5; 27:8, 13, 43; 28:7; Exodus 15:26; 18:24.
 Hear, Fear, and Testify 87

people in authority. Children look up to their elders – literally when

children are young. The awe associated with tall parents is analo-
gous to the awe associated with God. The Israelites repeatedly ex-
pressed fear of the giants in the land; it was this that kept the exodus
generation from the inheritance. They feared the children of Anak:
“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the
giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we
were in their sight” (Num. 13:33; cf. Num. 14:28). They saw other
“men of great stature” (Num. 13:32).
Israel’s spies had seen giants. But seeing was not to be believing.
Hearing was to be believing. Moses said: “Hear, O Israel: Thou art
to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and
mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, A people
great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest,
and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the chil-
dren of Anak!” (Deut. 9:1–2). Not only were the Israelites to hear;
they were to obey. It was time to claim the inheritance. But to do
this, they had to trust what they heard, not what they saw.

Obedience and Inheritance

The basis of maintaining the covenant’s kingdom grant is obedi-
ence to the terms of the covenant. An inheritance can always be dis-
sipated. It can shrink to a shadow of its former self when the faithful
become a remnant. The captivity brought home this point. Israel
forfeited the original inheritance during the exile. Most Israelites re-
mained behind, content with life in Assyria-Babylon-Persia. Only a
remnant returned to the land on a permanent basis. The others
came only at Passover.
The problem with maintaining the compound growth of an
original grant of capital is that growth can turn negative. This delays
the conquest. The kingdom’s era of expansion is replaced by an era
of contraction. The problem is, when you lose half of your capital,
you must double it to get even. Large losses are dijcult to over-
come. Growth seems almost automatic during the growth phase. It
is taken for granted. Yet a 20 percent per annum increase becomes
exponential in just a few years. Such rates of growth cannot be sus-
tained. The expanding capital base runs up against the limits to
growth. Those who pursue wealth-building as if such rates can be sus-
tained for part of the economy without comparable rates of growth
throughout the whole economy eventually reach environmental
88 DEUTERONOMY

limits. The investor runs out of investments that enable him to rein-
vest his proits at 20 percent. The compounding process slows. To
sustain such high rates of growth, men often adopt techniques of
debt: leverage. The threat to debt is two-fold: 1) mass inlation,
which destroys the currency unit; 2) economic contraction, which
bankrupts the debtors.

Bastardy and Culture

Moses told his listeners to teach the next generation. They were
also to teach their grandchildren. This would either constitute a
double witness – parents and grandparents combined – or else it
would overcome the defection of the children. The grandparent fac-
tor becomes a kind of covenantal insurance policy against a break-
down in the inheritance process.
This is why bastardy is such a threat to a society. When fathers
are absent, mothers must sustain the legacy. They do not enjoy the
beneits of the division of labor. This places heavy burdens on
mothers and children. Mothers must earn money to support their
children. They must also allocate time to teach them. The covenantal
legacy is threatened by a break in continuity. Grandmothers may in-
tervene at this point, caring for the children while mothers are at
work. If the grandmothers fail in their task of transmitting the story
of the covenant, the third generation is cut loose from the covenant.
This is when the breakdown begins.
This has now taken place in the United States among the black
population. In the early 1960’s, the rate of black illegitimacy was
about 25 percent: high. By the 1990’s, it had reached the two-thirds
level.3 In the inner cities, it was above 80 percent.4 The social break-
down in the black community that was predicted by Harvard pro-
fessor Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965 has taken place. Crime has
escalated; welfare dependency is becoming universal among un-
married mothers.
There has been a one-generation cultural echo: black to white.
The rate of illegitimacy among whites was 22 percent in the early
1990’s – only slightly under the rate of black illegitimacy in the early

3. Jason DeParle, “Census Reports a Sharp Increase Among Never-Married Mothers,”

New York Times (July 14, 1993).
4. Charles Murray, “The Coming White Underclass,” Wall Street Journal (Oct. 29, 1993).
 Hear, Fear, and Testify 89

5
1960’s. By 1990, one quarter of children in the United States were
growing up without fathers. Writes Nicholas Davidson: “This is the
greatest social catastrophe facing our country. It is the root of the ep-
idemics of crime and drugs, it is deeply implicated in the decline in
educational attainment, and it is largely responsible for the persis-
tence of widespread poverty despite generous government support
for the needy.”6 Some 70 percent of all the juveniles in U.S. correc-
7
tional facilities grew up without fathers in the household. There is
no indication that this demographic process is decelerating; on the
contrary, it is accelerating. Between 1983 and 1993, the birthrate for
unwed mothers in the United States rose by 70 percent.8
When the covenantal legacy is lost by three successive genera-
tions, it takes a religious revival to restore it. In my day, this will have
to come from outside the secular entertainment media – music, tele-
vision, and movies – and the secular schools, which combined eat up
almost all of the daylight hours of every child. The govern-
ment-funded school systems that are universal in the West in the
twentieth century have divorced learning from the Bible. This has
replaced the Christian covenantal inheritance for the vast majority
of residents in the West.

Restoring the Testimony

When Christian parents send their children to secular public
schools, they are inevitably telling their children that knowledge –
useful knowledge – has nothing to do with the Bible. Yet the words
of Moses convey the opposite viewpoint: the knowledge of God’s
revelation in the Bible is the foundation of all useful knowledge. The
parents then have a major problem: to persuade their children of
the moral consistency of the parents’ outlook, which is pro-secular
education and pro-Bible. They do this by appealing to the tradi-
tional argument of the two hermetically sealed compartments of
revelation: biblical and natural. Somehow, the two are consistent,
yet they are separate. This outlook a jrms that the Bible does not

5. Ibid.
6. Nicholas Davidson, “Life Without Father,” Policy Review (Winter 1990), p. 40.
7. Philip F. Lawler, “The New Counterculture,” Wall Street Journal (Aug. 13, 1993).
8. Stephen A. Holmes, “Birthrate for Unwed Mothers Up 70% Since ‘83, Study Shows,”
New York Times (July 20, 1994).
90 DEUTERONOMY

instruct natural revelation. But because of the hierarchical structure

of all knowledge – from God to man – this argument cannot be sus-
tained. Either secular presuppositions regarding cause and efect in
history replace the Bible’s providential view of cause and efect, or
else the Bible’s cosmic personalism is substituted for the cosmically
impersonal universe of humanism. We cannot begin our reasoning
process from the presupposition of the autonomy of nature and hu-
man thought and then logically reach the conclusion that God is to-
tally sovereign in history. We cannot reason consistently from the
god of humanism – evolving nature as interpreted by autonomous
man – and end with the God of the Bible.
The philosophical dualism of a majority of modern fundamen-
talists and evangelicals rests on their theory of knowledge: two
sources of truth. This presupposition has led Christian philosophy
into compromises with humanism from the days of the early de-
fenders of the faith.9 It has culminated with the widespread support
by Christians of the compulsory, tax-supported school. Christians
send young children into an educational hierarchy in which the
God of the Bible is either ignored or ridiculed. This has broken the
covenant of the modern evangelical church. This substitution of
covenants begins in kindergarten. It accelerates through graduate
school. The American graduate school has been secular from its be-
ginnings in the late nineteenth century.10 The opinions of a majority
of college-educated Protestant evangelicals are not signiicantly
diferent from the opinions of college-educated non-Christians.11
This is not surprising, since the colleges require all of their faculty
members to have earned graduate degrees from secular universi-
ties. The professorial drift on campus into liberal humanism is
disguised by a cloak of verbiage about Christian relevance in a plu-
ralistic world. Such relevance usually is said to be available by bap-
tizing some discarded humanistic fad.
At the end of the twentieth century, writes David Wells, “It is
only where assumptions in culture directly and obviously contradict

9. Cornelius van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian &
Reformed, 1969).
10. George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to
Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), ch. 9.
11. James D. Hunter, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (University of Chicago Press,
1987).
 Hear, Fear, and Testify 91

articles of faith that most evangelicals become aroused and rise up

to battle secular humanism’; aside from these speciic matters, they
tend to view culture as neutral and harmless. More than that, they
often view culture as a partner amenable to being coopted in the
cause of celebrating Christian truth.”12 But it has not been secular
humanism that has been co-opted; it has been modern evangelical-
ism. “Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms
with the modern world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.
The recovery of dissent is what is most needed, and the path to its
recovery is the reformation of the church.”13
Wells is speaking of upper-middle-class, well-educated men and
women who are beneiciaries of humanist culture. He subsumes
under his label all the pietist-fundamentalist-charismatic church
growth proponents who dismiss theology as irrelevant.14 But this cat-
egorization is misleading without extensive qualiications. Pietistic fun-
damentalists have generally resisted the inroads of modernism, and
the six-day creationists still do in academic areas related to origins.
Fundamentalists have defended Scoield’s rejection of the Enlighten-
ment ideal of inevitable progress, while rejecting both Darwinian liber-
alism and post-World War II evangelicalism. Bob Jones University
surely has had no alliance with modernism. “We’re reactionaries and
proud of it!” has been the cry of millions of fundamentalists, espe-
cially prior to 1976, when some of them began to take tentative steps
back into American political life, from which they had been absent as
an identiiable voting bloc since 1925. Wells is also not speaking of
the Christian home school movement or the new theocrats who
have at most made a grudging temporary truce, not an alliance, with
humanism’s mandatory institutions. These people are dissenters,
which is why evangelicals do not ind them respectable. When par-
ents take their children out of the public schools, they have joined
the ranks of the dissenters, for the public schools have long served
as America’s only established church.15
There has been an implicit, unspoken alliance between Chris-
tians and right-wing Enlightenment culture since at least 1700. In

12. David F. Wells, No Place for Truth; or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 11.
13. Ibid., p. 288.
14. Ibid., p. 289.
15. Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York:
Harper & Row, 1963), p. 68.
92 DEUTERONOMY

the name of Sir Isaac Newton, right-wing humanists have presented

their case for universal principles of knowledge, law, and culture.
But this implicit alliance was not self-consciously adopted in the
name of an alliance; it was believed by the Christians to be inher-
ently Christian.16 The fact that Newton hid his Unitarianism from
his superiors at Cambridge in order to retain his teaching position
only added to the confusion.17 After Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859)
destroyed the foundations of this Newtonian-Christian synthesis,
American fundamentalists began to distance themselves from mod-
ernism. This self-conscious distancing escalated rapidly after the
Scopes anti-evolution trial in 1925,18 and escalated again after the
publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961. Newtonian mechanism still
has its adherents in Christian scientiic circles, for it is seen as the
only alternative to both evolutionary Darwinian organicism and
Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty. Nevertheless, there has been
a major break with modernism in the realm of creationism. This
break has dismayed the neo-evangelicals, who strive to make peace
with modern science at the expense of the Bible. What Wells says
about evangelicals applies to the American Scientiic Ajliation, a
group of Trinitarian scientists who reject the six-day creation.19 It
does not apply well to the Creation Science movement.
The restoration of Christian culture can come only from outside
the existing educational system. The churches must abandon the
lust for certiication through secular college education, beginning
with the removal of all requirements for candidates for the ministry
to attend State-accredited colleges and seminaries. Parent-funded
Christian education, beginning at the lowest level, must steadily
replace the tax-funded system of State-accredited secular education.
The graduate schools will be the last to fall. This means that curricu-
lum materials must be written which are systematically in opposition
to the presuppositions of modern secularism. The Bible must be
placed above conventional curriculum materials.

16. Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher (1721).

17. Gale E. Christenson, In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and His Times (New York:
Free Press, 1984), ch. 10: “Heretic: Sotto Voce.”
18. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth
Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), ch. 21.
19. Henry M. Morris, A History of Modern Creationism (San Diego, California: Master, 1984),
pp. 130–44.
 Hear, Fear, and Testify 93

The problem here is that the academic accreditation system was

deliberately designed to keep out graduates of non-approved insti-
tutions. This keeps non-certiied people from entering the profes-
sions. Academic accreditation has been the humanists’ means of
centralizing the curriculum of all schools, not just tax-funded
schools. This system was designed by a liberal Baptist minister,
Frederick Gates, and sold to his employer, oil billionaire and liberal
Baptist John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who in turn persuaded the U.S.
Congress to authorize the incorporation of the General Education
Board in 1903. “It would be dijcult to overstate the value of the
work the GEB did in the ensuing half century. Ironically, it seems
largely forgotten today. . . . To understand the GEB, one must see it
as an agency of change, one of such remarkable accomplishments
that it is scarcely an exaggeration to refer to it as revolutionary.”20
One of its major accomplishments was “reforming college adminis-
tration and developing professional standards for graduate educa-
tion throughout the United States. . . .”21 Furthermore, “the work
was done very quietly, with great circumspection and skill, for the
good reason that, like any agent of change, the GEB was up against
some form of established opposition in each of its successive mis-
sions. . . .”22 By the time it was voluntarily shut down in 1960, the
year John D., Jr., died, it had expended $324 million on its many
projects.23 Some $208 million had gone into higher education.24 But
setting standards for lower-level schools was also part of the plan.
The GEB was the main factor behind the creation of the public school
system in the American South, through the funding of one professor-
ship in education in every major state university in the South, and
through lobbying in every state capital. From a few hundred schools
in 1900, the South’s public school system grew to thousands in the
1920’s.
For non-parochial school, non-immigrant group Protestants in
the United States to break with this entrenched monopoly would

20. John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 70.
21. Idem.
22. Ibid., p. 71.
23. Ibid., p. 75.
24. Ibid., p. 79. The two main igures in distributing the funds in the early years were Jerome
Greene and Abraham Flexner. Idem.
94 DEUTERONOMY

have seemed impossible in 1960, but since that time, the Christian
school movement has grown rapidly. The deterioration of the public
schools has paralleled and accelerated the exodus of the Christians.
These are self-reinforcing phenomena. Christian-fundamentalist cur-
riculum materials are still highly inluenced by traditional secular out-
lines, and none of them is at a truly high level academically – there is
no market at today’s prices for such an academically rigorous curricu-
lum – but independent Christian schools represent an advance over
what existed a generation earlier. A minority of Christian parents
has begun to take seriously Moses’ words regarding the necessity of
teaching their children the stories of the Bible. These stories, when
coupled with the law of God, provide God’s people with the means
of conquest: the cultural compounding process. But so much
covenantal capital was dissipated by Christians in the twentieth cen-
tury that it will take centuries to reclaim lost ground unless a revival
– very high compound growth – should begin and be sustained. But
in the past, revivals have never been sustained.
The church must tell the story and show people how to apply it
in New Covenant times. Parents must tell the story to their children.
But the presumed judicial discontinuity between the Old Covenant
and the New Covenant has created a problem. Of what relevance to
the kingdom inheritance is the giving of the law at Horeb, if there is
no continuity between the Ten Commandments, the case laws of
Exodus, and New Covenant historical sanctions? If there is no visi-
ble kingdom of God in history that is tied covenantally to God’s re-
vealed law,25 and if there is no predictability between corporate faith
and corporate sanctions,26 then the story becomes little more than a
testimony to personal moralism, if that. It loses its character as in-
heritance-preserving. This is the situation in the post-Puritan West.
The assumption of judicial discontinuity has undermined the rele-
vance of what had been a mandatory story.

25. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
26. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), ch. 7.
 Hear, Fear, and Testify 95

Conclusion
Moses warned his listeners not to skip a generation. Parents
were told to tell their children about the meeting between God and
Israel at Mt. Horeb. God delivered the law to them at that time. Re-
spect for the law was given added support by the testimony of par-
ents and grandparents who had heard God speak in history
This covenantal legacy was to be handed down verbally, gener-
ation by generation. This legacy would in turn undergird the legacy
of land, which followed the giving of the law and the wilderness
experience. Moses understood the threat of a break in Israel’s
covenantal inheritance, which above all was an inheritance of law.
The authority of God’s law was to be attested to by the testimony of
the parents, who could trace back their unbroken testimony to the
revelation of God at Mt. Horeb. When the children heard about
God from their household elders, they were to fear God. They were
to obey Him. The fear of God was to lead to the expansion of the in-
heritance, generation after generation.
 10
RemovingTHE
REMOVING the Inheritance
INHERITANCE

When thou shalt beget children, and children’s children, and ye shall
have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a
graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of
the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger: I call heaven and earth to
witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from of the
land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your
days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed. And the LORD shall scatter you
among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen,
whither the LORD shall lead you. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of
men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor
smell (Deut. 4:25–28).

This was a warning. Its theocentric basis is the second com-

mandment: God as a jealous God.1 He alone is to be worshipped.
Moses warned of sanctions to come, sanctions based on the second
commandment. Moses prophesied that the people would build an-
other golden calf to serve as their god. A calf would again serve as
the nation’s representative to the world of spirits and power. There
is no exclusively future tense in Hebrew, but it is clear from the
structure of the passage that Moses’ comments were directed at a
distant generation. That generation would be carried into captivity,
where they would be forced to worship lifeless foreign gods. The na-
tion’s punishment would it the crime.

1. The second commandment was the second in the list of ive priestly laws in the
Decalogue. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), pp. xv–xvi.

96
 Removing the Inheritance 97

The Prophet’s Job

A biblical prophet, as God’s voice of authority (point two), set
forth the law of the covenant: point three.2 Then he warned what the
penalties would be if the people broke the law: point four.3 Biblical
negative prophecy was always ethically conditional. Sometimes
these conditions were explicit. If the listeners would turn from their
covenant-breaking ways, the sanctions would not arrive.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Arise, and
go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work
on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand
of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the pot-
ter to make it. Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, O house of
Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the
clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel. At
what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom,
to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against
whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that
I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in
my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, where-
with I said I would beneit them (Jer. 18:1–10).

Sometimes, the ethical conditions were implicit. For example,

God told Abraham that his heirs would conquer Canaan in the
fourth generation (Gen. 15:16). Yet God told the third generation to
invade the land. He knew that they would disobey Him, which is
why He could be speciic with Abraham. The prophecy was ethi-
cally conditional; God knew that the prophecy’s conditions would
not be met by the third generation. God also knew that the
Canaanites would not repent. Thus, the promise to Abraham was
historically reliable. God had predestined the fourth-generation
Israelites to covenantal victory and the Canaanites to covenantal

2. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 3.
3. Ibid., ch. 4.
98 DEUTERONOMY

4
defeat. God had ordained the Canaanites to condemnation. They
fully deserved to be annihilated. This in no way denies the fact that
the prophecy regarding their defeat was conditional.
Moses spoke here of successive generations. The King James
translators properly inserted “ye,” although the Hebrew text does
not include the plural pronoun. His warning was directed at the
conquest generation, but it is clear that God’s sanctions would come
much later, to future generations that would rebel: “ye shall have
remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a
graven image, or the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the
sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger” (v. 25). Moses
spoke to those future generations through their covenantal repre-
sentatives: the generation of the conquest. He could do this because
he knew that his words would persevere. He had already warned
this generation to tell their children and grandchildren the story of
the giving of the law (vv. 9–10). In order to preserve the landed in-
heritance, he said here, all successive generations would have to
obey the terms of the covenant. That is to say, the maintenance of the
kingdom grant was conditional. It always is. This raises the enduring
theological question of the relationship between prophecy, promise,
and conditions.

Prophecy, Promise, and Conditions

This issue of covenantal conditionality has been a favorite de-
bating topic for hundreds of years among technically precise Cal-
vinists, who regard themselves as covenant theologians. This debate
never gets settled. Paul’s words are the point of contention: his con-
trast between law and promise. “For if the inheritance be of the law,
it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise”
(Gal. 3:18). Covenant theologians have argued that there are uncon-
ditional promises in the Bible; otherwise, there can be no true prom-
ises, and therefore no true grace in history.
I shall do my best here to clear up this matter.5 Paul’s contrast
between law and promise seems absolute, but it really isn’t. There

4. “For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this
condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying
the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 4; emphasis added).
5. Fat providence!
 Removing the Inheritance 99

was an unstated condition in God’s promise to Abraham that nei-

ther Paul nor the theologians mention: sexual union. Putting the
matter in biological terms, Paul’s allegorical contrast between Sarah
and Hagar was not based on the diferences between the normal
conception method and the virgin birth. “For it is written, that Abra-
ham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a
freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the
lesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise” (Gal. 4:22–23). The
promise to Abraham regarding Isaac was conditional. It was biolog-
ically conditioned, and it was also ethically conditioned. He was not
to imagine that Sarah would become the judicial equivalent to the
mother of the messiah. God’s promise to Abraham was not on a par
covenantally with the messianic promise of the virgin birth (Isa.
7:14), although it was analogous to it. Isaac was not Jesus. Had Abra-
ham misinterpreted God’s promise in terms of the virgin birth, he
would have been ethically out of line. He would not have gone into
Sarah’s tent. The prophecy would not have been fulilled.
Conclusion: we must not attempt to separate historical conditions
from the fulillment of biblical prophecy. Historical conditions are an in-
escapable aspect of every human action. No Calvinist argues that
God sovereignly predestinates occasional events in an otherwise
chance-governed world. That argument is the Arminian’s intellec-
tual burden. The Calvinist argues that God predestinates every-
thing. The Calvinist speaks of the decree of God as providentially
undergirding all that comes to pass. In short, as I have said from
time to time, God does not predestinate in a vacuum. The fulillment of a
speciic prophecy is not some imposed event that God inserts into
an otherwise autonomous low of historical events. The Arminian
thinks it is, but the Arminian is wrong.
Human action is therefore inescapable in the fulillment of ev-
ery covenantal promise. Human action, in turn, is always ethically
conditional, for everything that men say, think, or do is under the
authority and jurisdiction God’s comprehensive law (Matt. 15:10–20).
To argue otherwise is to adopt antinomianism: a theology of neu-
tral, impersonal gaps in the law of God. The antinomian’s view of
prophecy parallels his view of ethics. He sees the fulillment of bibli-
cal prophecy as a discontinuous intrusion by God into the autonomous
processes of history, in much the same way that he sees the jurisdic-
tion of God’s law as sporadic and under tight boundaries. In his view,
history is mostly autonomous and chance-conditioned. History is
100 DEUTERONOMY

not predestined and decree-conditioned. History is not seen by the

Arminian as covenantal in the sense of being the providential out-
come of human action within the context of God’s sovereignty, au-
thority, law, sanctions, and inheritance. But for a covenant theologian
to defend the total separation of promise from ethical conditionality is
necessarily to adopt some form of Arminianism-antinomianism: the
God of the Bible as the God of the intrusion, whether historical or
judicial.

Invoking Covenantal Witnesses

Moses invoked heaven and earth to witness against the nation
that day (Deut. 4:26). This is covenantal language. Moses was not
invoking living organisms. He was not a believer in Gaia, the
earth-goddess. He was invoking a double witness. He was putting
the nation on alert: these two cosmic witnesses would stand guard,
day and night, to testify against them. A double witness was re-
quired to convict someone of a capital crime. “At the mouth of two
witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put
to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to
death” (Deut. 17:6). Heaven and earth are the limits of history; there
is no place for men to commit sin that is outside of the boundaries of
heaven and earth. David asked rhetorically: “Whither shall I go
from thy spirit? or whither shall I lee from thy presence? If I ascend
up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold,
thou art there” (Ps. 139:7–8). There is no escape from God and His
word. “Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might
instruct thee: and upon earth he shewed thee his great ire; and thou
heardest his words out of the midst of the ire” (Deut. 4:36).
God had said to Cain, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy
brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). Blood
has no vocal chords. But Abel’s blood was in the ground, and God
saw this evidence of murder. The existence of historical evidence in
the presence of an omniscient God constitutes a valid witness
against lawless men. What Moses was saying was that God would
see their acts of rebellion, their worship of rival gods. This evidence
could not be covered up in God’s cosmic court. The evidence would
cry out against them. This would constitute a covenantal witness
against them.
The proof of God’s covenantal sovereignty is the inheritance.
When Israel successfully claims this legacy on Canaan’s battleields,
 Removing the Inheritance 101

Moses announced, Israelites will know that God can and will en-
force the terms of His covenant. The positive sanction of gaining the
inheritance will testify to the reality of the negative sanction of its fu-
ture revocation. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after
them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt;
To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to
bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.
Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is
God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else.
Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I
command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy chil-
dren after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth,
which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever (Deut. 4:37–40).

Israel will break the covenant, Moses announced. This was a

prophecy. He knew this was coming unless Israel avoided rebellion.
Moses did not mention the possibility that Israel might not rebel,
i.e., the conditional nature of the prophecy. The condition of
covenantal faithfulness would not be met. Moses spoke in advance
to those in the midst of rebellion. God in His mercy will not kill
them all for their false worship. Instead, He will strip them of their
inheritance, but only for a time. He will hear their cries for deliver-
ance, even as He had heard their cries when they were in Egypt. He
will remain faithful to His covenant with Abraham, even though the
nation would wander into prohibited worship. But there will be a
price to pay. There will be corporate negative sanctions. The cove-
nant was still in force.
By invoking heaven and earth, Moses was making this issue a
matter of covenantal sanctions. Covenant sanctions are predictable
in the ethically conditional sense of “if . . . then.” A prophet’s task
was to persuade his listeners of the predictability of these sanctions.
That which identiied an Old Covenant prophet was the speciic
time frame of the predicted sanctions. With the closing of the canon
of Scripture, this ojce was annulled. No man’s word today is law-
fully elevated to the authority of the Bible. Moses, however, was the
nation’s premier prophet. His words became part of Scripture,
which is why his warning had judicial authority down through his-
tory. In Jesus’ parable of the rich man and the poor man, He has
Abraham invoke Moses and the prophets. “Abraham saith unto
102 DEUTERONOMY

him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And
he [Dives] said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them
from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear
not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though
one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:29–31).
It is clear that Moses did not believe that Israel would listen to
his words. He knew they would rebel. This passage was designed to
comfort them in a time of captivity. God would deliver them out of
captivity as surely as He had prophesied through Moses that He
would deliver them into captivity. The promise of deliverance out of
was as certain as the promise of deliverance into. Sin being what it is,
bad situations are easier to get into than out of. But foretelling the fu-
ture is a mark of supernatural authority, and God was telling them in
advance what would take place. Israel could trust His word.

Removing the Inheritors

Land is not mobile; people are. The threat to Israel’s landed in-
heritance was two-fold: 1) invasion by other nations; 2) Israel’s re-
moval from the land. Under the judges, invasion was the problem.
Centuries later, removal was the threat. The greater of these threats
was removal, which is the focus of this prophecy. God threatened to
remove the inheritance from Israel by removing Israel from the
inheritance.
Under the judges, Israel faced domination by nearby nations
that forced Israel to pay tribute. These nations sought tribute, not
permanent slaves. They did not seek to carry the people out of the
land. Later, under Assyria and Babylon, which were building great
empires, Israel was led into captivity. This was the focus of Moses’
warning, almost a millennium before Babylon carried of Judah.
The prophetic time perspective was long.
The greatest threat to their liberty would be their forced subor-
dination to foreign gods. “And there ye shall serve gods, the work of
men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat,
nor smell” (v. 28). To be forced to serve dead idols was a terrible
prospect. But Moses knew where rebellious men’s hearts are: in
their earthly possessions. So, he prefaced this ultimate curse with a
this-worldly curse: captivity. They will lose their property. They will
lose their military strength. This will culminate in their subordina-
tion to dead idols.
 Removing the Inheritance 103

The basis of military success, David told Israel generations later,

is not weaponry. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we
will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Ps. 20:7). He was
merely rephrasing Moses’ warning to Israel’s kings not to multiply
horses (Deut. 17:16). Moses made it clear that their covenantal faith-
fulness alone would preserve their independence as a nation. This
independence would someday be withdrawn.
Moses ofered hope to the scattered captives. “But if from
thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt ind him, if thou
seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in
tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the lat-
ter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient
unto his voice; (For the LORD thy God is a merciful God;) he will not
forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fa-
thers which he sware unto them” (vv. 29–31). Nevertheless, the full
Mosaic covenant would never be restored to Israel. The civil cove-
nant would be broken forever. After the remnant of Israel returned
from captivity, the nation did not enjoy sustained political inde-
pendence. The age of the empires had arrived. Control over Israel’s
politics passed from the Medo-Persians to Alexander the Great and
his successors, and from them to Rome. This loss of civil authority
protected the nation from idolatry. Israel never again worshipped
the gods of Canaan. Those gods had been defeated twice: by Israel
under Joshua (partial) and by Assyria and Babylon (total), which re-
placed the Israelites with foreigners who did not worship the local
gods of Canaan. Power would no longer come from Canaan’s gods
under the captivity. Without power, the gods of the ancient world
had no claim on men’s allegiance. The gods of the ruling empire
would dominate while Israel was absent from the land.
When the remnant of Israel returned, pagan gods were seen as
enemies, the gods of their conquerors. Israel’s leaders could not
worship these alien gods and still retain the allegiance of the nation.
Israel did not again turn to idols. Israel’s post-exilic temptations
were legalism, Greek philosophy, and Hellenic culture, not dead
idols. The captivity cured them of their older bad habits.
It was one thing for foreigners to reside in Israel as conquerors
before the exile. It was quite another for them to remove Israelites
from the land. This was the conclusion of pre-exilic idolatrous reli-
gions. Idolatrous worship in the pre-empire phase was local wor-
ship. The sovereignty of a god was manifested in his ability to
extend visible rule to his people. Ancient civil theology was power
104 DEUTERONOMY

6
religion. The success of a god was tied to the success of his people
militarily. This is why an invading army was less of a threat to Israel
than captivity, and less of a covenantal sanction. Israel’s continuing
presence in the land seemingly testiied to the nation’s continuing
covenant with God. Israel’s defeat was not total. So, to break them
of this idolatrous way of thinking, God told them that His covenant
with them was valid irrespective of their geography. They would be
carried of, yet this would not break God’s authority over them or
His ability to deliver them. On the contrary, their military defeat
would conirm the terms of His covenant. Unlike all the other reli-
gions of their day, Moses announced, Israel’s military defeat and
geographical scattering would conirm them as God’s people.

Counting the Cost of Rebellion

Moses presented a real-world problem before them. Like every
prophet who invoked covenant sanctions, he challenged them with
a cost-beneit analysis. What was the cost of rebellion? Captivity.
What was the cost of captivity? Loss of land, loss of authority, and
loss of the temple.
The prophet had a dijcult task of persuasion. He came before
people who were conident that the sanctions would not come, ei-
ther because “we’re really not all that bad,” or because “God’s sanc-
tions are symbolic, not historic” or because “God will not see us,” or
because “God is merciful,” or because “we have the temple.” People
want to commit sin with abandon. They want cost-free sinning.
They refuse to acknowledge that sin has signiicant costs attached.
Then there is future-orientation. Present-oriented people dis-
count the future. They apply a high discount to future costs and fu-
ture beneits. They are the grasshopper in Aesop’s fable of the ant
and the grasshopper, a story resembling a biblical injunction: “Go
to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which hav-
ing no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer,
and gathereth her food in the harvest” (Prov. 6:6–8). Present-oriented
people regard the pleasures of sin as immediate, and therefore highly
valuable, whereas future costs are distant, and therefore not a
signiicant factor in decision-making today. Such an outlook is the

6. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985).
 Removing the Inheritance 105

antithesis of Moses’ time perspective, for Moses was highly fu-

ture-oriented. “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused
to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; Choosing rather to sufer
amiction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin
for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than
the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of
the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the
king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:24–27).
The Israelites prior to the exile returned to idolatry, generation
after generation. No matter what negative corporate sanctions God
imposed, Israel returned to idolatry. Moses had warned a future
generation of the wrath to come, but no rebellious generation read
his warning with this mental reservation: “This might mean us.”
Like the men in Noah’s day, who married and gave in marriage, and
were carried away in the lood, so is every generation entrapped by
sin. “I’ll think about it tomorrow” is the appropriate tombstone
marker for generations of covenant-breakers.
In the Old Testament, there is only one example of national re-
pentance prior to the imposition of negative covenant sanctions:
Nineveh (Jonah 3). A king in Israel might occasionally repent
representatively and thereby defer the corporate sanctions (e.g.,
Josiah and Hezekiah), but Jonah alone was able to see national re-
pentance from the bottom up. The king of Nineveh repented last,
not irst (Jonah 3:6). It was this repentance which gained Assyria the
positive corporate sanctions that transformed her into an empire,
which then brought the long-prophesied negative sanction of cap-
tivity to Israel. Moses’ prophecy was fulilled because Nineveh re-
pented long enough to build up its strength as an empire.

Discounting the Cost of Rebellion

Moses warned the generation of the conquest about the cost of
idolatry. That generation was soon to compromise with idolatry by
allowing idolatrous Canaanites to remain in the land (Josh. 15:63;
17:12–13). The Book of Judges shows how God delivered Israel into
the hands of idolatrous foreign nations because of Israel’s idolatry.
Moses’ warning was not taken seriously enough to change men’s be-
havior. Each generation imagined that the covenant’s negative
sanctions would be delayed indeinitely. Each generation failed to
count the cost. The debt to God kept growing, compounding so as to
become unpayable. The debts inally came due at the time of the exile:
106 DEUTERONOMY

And the LORD God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, ris-
ing up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people,
and on his dwelling place: But they mocked the messengers of God, and
despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD
arose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought
upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the
sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young
man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into
his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the
treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king, and of his
princes; all these he brought to Babylon. And they burnt the house of God,
and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof
with ire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had
escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were ser-
vants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia: To fulil
the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed
her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulil
threescore and ten years (II Chron. 36:15–21; emphasis added).

Present-oriented people count temporally distant costs diferently

than future-oriented people do. Future-oriented people discount
those costs at a far lower rate than present-oriented people do. The
burden of those future costs looms greater in the mind of a fu-
ture-oriented person. He pays closer attention to them. This is equally
true of future blessings. The future looms larger in the thinking of a fu-
ture-oriented person than in the thinking of a present-oriented person.
Israel did not respond in the present to the threat of negative
sanctions in the distant future. But it is the mark of spiritual maturity
that a nation does pay attention to the distant future in making its
decisions. Nineveh responded, but Jonah had prophesied a rela-
tively short time period: 40 days (Jonah 3:4). Total judgment in 40
days caught their attention. An unspeciied time period did not mo-
tivate Israel.

Conclusion
Deuteronomy 1:6–4:49 made clear to the conquest generation
that God is above all other gods and all other kings: hierarchy. He
has the power to deliver His people both out of bondage and into
bondage. No one can stay His hand. Moses presented a detailed ac-
count of how God had delivered their fathers out of Egypt and
through the wilderness. In recent days, God had delivered Sihon
 Removing the Inheritance 107

and Og into their hands, destroying them completely. The prelimi-

nary phase of the conquest was now completed. Moses concluded
his historical account with a warning of covenantal judgment to
come. This prophesied judgment was speciic: their removal from
the land to a foreign nation. The moral cause would be idolatry:
worship of the gods of Canaan. The resulting sanction would be
their cultural subordination to foreign idols. The penalty would it
the crime. But Moses did not put a time limit on the fulillment of
this prophecy. It was open-ended. This did not reduce its threat to
Israel. There were no cases of open-ended covenant lawsuits against
Israel in the Bible that were not eventually prosecuted by God. The
inal one came in A.D. 70.7
The nation did not respond in a way which indicated that they
took Moses’ warning seriously. The Israelites became idolatrous
again and again. They did not learn their lesson under the judges.
But God gave them time to change their ways. He gave them so
much time that they discounted the future costs of rebellion to
something approaching zero. In the face of mercy, sinners contin-
ued to sin. But eventually the bills came due.

7. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth,
Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
Part III: Ethics/Boundaries (5–26)

11
JudicialCONTINUITY
JUDICIAL Continuity
And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the
statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may
learn them, and keep, and do them. The LORD our God made a covenant
with us in Horeb. The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but
with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. The LORD talked
with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the ire (Deut.
5:1–4).

This passage begins the third and longest section of Deuteron-

omy: the law. The theocentric focus of this law is God as the cove-
nant-maker. The covenant’s authority extends through time,
generation after generation. “The LORD made not this covenant with
our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this
day.” God had appeared to Israel at Horeb almost four decades ear-
lier. Prior to His giving of the Ten Commandments, He appeared to
the nation in ire and smoke: “And mount Sinai was altogether on a
smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in ire: and the smoke
thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount
quaked greatly” (Ex. 19:18). Sinai and Horeb are interchangeable
names in this case, since it was at Horeb that the Israelites wor-
shipped the golden calf in Moses’ absence (Ps. 106:19).
Moses spoke here of the covenant God made with them. He
said that this covenant was not the covenant that God made with
their fathers. God made this covenant with those still alive: face to
face. Some of the listeners had been young men or children at the
time of that initial covenant act (Ex. 19). But what about those who
were now under age 40? Those alive at the time of Moses’ second
presentation of the law had not all been alive at the irst presentation

108
 Judicial Continuity 109

of the law. What did Moses mean when he said, “The LORD made
not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all
of us here alive this day” (v. 3)? This sentence cannot be taken liter-
ally, nor was it so understood in Moses’ day. How should it be
taken?

Face to Face
To make sense of the passage, we should consider in detail an-
other literal phrase that cannot be taken literally: face to face. “The
LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of
the ire” (v. 4). We know this cannot be taken literally because of
what God revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai:

And he [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, I
will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name
of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,
and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. And he said, Thou canst
not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said,
Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it
shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift
of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will
take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall
not be seen (Ex. 33:18–23).

So, we know that Moses did not speak to God face to face. Yet a
few verses before this passage, we read: “And the LORD spake unto
Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned
again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young
man, departed not out of the tabernacle” (Ex. 33:11). The key
phrase here is this: as a man speaks to his friend. God spoke to Moses
as someone bonded to Him through shared experiences and shared
goals.
Not only did the Israelites not speak to God literally face to face,
they avoided speaking to Moses face to face after his return from the
mountain. “And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Mo-
ses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come
nigh him. And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers
of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with
them. And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he
gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him
110 DEUTERONOMY

in mount Sinai. And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put
a vail on his face” (Ex. 34:30–33). The glory of Moses was more than
they could stand, let alone the glory of God.
Yet in the confrontation between God and Moses regarding the
ten spies’ false testimony regarding Canaan, and the people’s will-
ingness to stone Joshua and Caleb, Moses reminded God that He
had called Israel out of bondage and had promised to deliver
Canaan into their hands. Moses asked: What if God destroys the na-
tion irst? This will lead God’s enemies to mock Him. “And they will
tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou
LORD art among this people, that thou LORD art seen face to face, and
that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them,
by daytime in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of ire by night”
(Num. 14:14). But God is not seen face to face. What the Israelites
saw was the glory cloud by day and the pillar of ire by night. In this,
God manifested Himself to them. This was the literal application of
“face-to-face.” Israel was in God’s presence, as in the presence of a
friend, when they were led by the glory cloud.
The reference is partially symbolic – the glory cloud – and par-
tially ethical: the relationship between friends. Thus, whenever this
ethical bond is broken by Israel through rebellion, Israel will no lon-
ger enjoy its face-to-face relationship with God. “Then my anger
shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them,
and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and
many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in
that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not
among us? And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evils
which they shall have wrought, in that they are turned unto other
gods” (Deut. 31:17–18). “And he said, I will hide my face from
them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward
generation, children in whom is no faith” (Deut. 32:20).

“Not With Our Fathers”

This phrase seems to refer to the patriarchs. Moses spoke to the
nation about God’s new covenant, a covenant not made with their
fathers. Moses was the father of the exodus. His generation had led
Egypt. Yet he spoke here of the fathers. Such a reference points
back to the generations that preceded his.
What covenant was Moses speaking about? The covenant whose
stipulations are the Ten Commandments. Moses was preparing his
 Judicial Continuity 111

listeners for a second reading of the Decalogue (vv. 6–21). This had
been a new covenant for Israel, one which provided the general princi-
ples of law by which the nation would judge and be judged. God had
made this new covenant with those alive that very day.
But what of those who had not been alive at Sinai-Horeb? They
were listening now. They would soon hear the law read to them again,
though modiied slightly: the justiication for the sabbath, i.e., their de-
liverance out of Egypt (v. 15). The important factor here was the conti-
nuity provided by the Mosaic law. The covenant was the same because
the law was the same. The covenant had been made with them at
Horeb because the law had not changed. The constancy of the Mosaic law
was the judicial foundation of the continuity of the Mosaic covenant. The act of
covenant renewal which would transfer the inheritance to the next
generation would be grounded in the same commandments that had
grounded that original covenant at Sinai-Horeb.
The covenant had been made between God and all of the listen-
ers because the covenant establishes continuity: God’s sovereignty,
His authority, His law, His oath-bound historical sanctions, and His
system of inheritance. Point ive – inheritance – is possible only be-
cause the covenant can be renewed through the generations. This
covenant renewal system is what links the generations. The link is
the covenant, not biology. The biblical covenant is not a blood cove-
nant; it is a confessional covenant. It is established by oath, not genet-
ics. By birth, men are automatically consigned to Adam’s covenant of
death. They enter God’s redemptive covenant only by oath.
Were the patriarchs participants in God’s redemptive covenant?
Of course. Then why did Moses exclude them from this covenant?
Because this covenant had been and would continue to be the his-
torical manifestation of God’s redemptive covenant for a new era.
There was a new priesthood: Aaron’s. There was therefore a new
covenant with a new set of stipulations. “For the priesthood being
changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Heb.
7:12). There was absolute continuity of redemption; there was only
partial continuity of administration. Circumcision remained; Pass-
over was new.
God had made this new covenant with Israel. This covenant, as
with the redemptive covenant in every era, included an administra-
tive means of succession. The covenantal mark was still circumcision,
but this mark was not sujcient. There also had to be annual cove-
nant renewal: Passover.
112 DEUTERONOMY

The question arises: Did they actually celebrate Passover in the

wilderness? The biblical texts do not say. Numbers does not pro-
vide information of events beyond the irst two years until two years
before the conquest.1 Passover is not mentioned in the interim pe-
riod. They celebrated it in the irst year (Num. 9:5), prior to their re-
bellion against Joshua and Caleb (Num. 14). The next reference to
Passover is at the end of the wlderness era, when Moses told the
conquest generation the proper date for celebrating it (Num. 28:16).
It appears as though they had not celebrated it in the interim.
Here is the theological problem: grace and law. The Passover
was a means of grace, but it was closed to those who were not cir-
cumcised (Ex. 12:48). The conquest generation was not circumcised
in the wilderness. This took place only after they had crossed into
Canaan (Josh. 5:5). They immediately celebrated passover (Josh.
5:10–12). God timed their entrance into Canaan in terms of the
Passover. If Passover had been celebrated in the wilderness, either
these people had been excluded or else admitted apart from the
mark of the covenant. Exclusion seems unlikely. What about partic-
ipation? The Old Testament is silent.2
We must decide despite the absence of evidence: either there
was no formal covenant renewal in the wilderness (no Passover) or
there was grace shown to the conquest generation, i.e., access to
Passover apart from circumcision. What do we know for sure? The
parents refused to circumcise their children; they were in rebellion.
It would have been consistent with this rebellion to have refused to

1. R. K. Harrison, Numbers: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker,

1992), p. 431.
2. Paul wrote, “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all
our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink
the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that
Rock was Christ” (I Cor. 10:1–4). The drink that counted spiritually as the wine of the Lord’s
Supper was water from the rock. But this took place only twice. What was the spiritual meat?
Manna? How could this have counted as Passover? The manna did not appear on the
sabbath; a double portion appeared the day before, and this portion did not rot the next day
(Ex. 16:22–25), unlike any extra quantity saved on other days of the week (v. 20). If manna
counted as a sacrament, as did the water from the two rocks, then excommunication meant
exclusion from the community as a whole. Not to have access to manna meant death. Those
banned from the community were also banned from the manna. In any case, Paul was
speaking of New Testament sacraments: baptism (the cloud and sea) and the Lord’s Supper:
wine (water from the two rocks) and bread (manna?). He was not speaking of circumcision
and Passover.
 Judicial Continuity 113

celebrate the feasts. They had cut themselves of from the future by
refusing to: 1) conquer the land themselves or 2) turn power over to
their adult sons to lead them into the Promised Land. They had also
been unwilling to participate representatively in the conquest
through faith in their sons’ future victory. The mark of this unwill-
ingness was their refusal to circumcise their sons. My conclusion:
they did not celebrate Passover.

To Maintain the Grant

Moses introduced this third section of the Book of Deuteron-
omy with a call to Israel to learn, keep (guard),3 and do the statutes.
He reminded them that God had made His covenant with them.
They participated in the original covenant just as if they had been
there at Sinai when God appeared in the iery cloud and gave them
the commandments. Judicially, God had made the covenant with
them through their legal representatives, their parents. The cove-
nant at Sinai was their covenant, for God would deal with them as
friends, face to face. He had broken of relations with their fathers after
the rebellion of the spies. Only God’s promise to Abraham to deliver
Canaan into Israel’s hands had preserved them. Moses had pleaded on
this basis in order to save the entire nation (Num. 14:13–17). On the
basis of that promise, to be fulilled soon by the fourth generation
(Gen. 15:16), the face-to-face relationship with Israel had been main-
tained. Thus, the covenant was far more their covenant than it had
been for their fathers at Sinai, who had broken it repeatedly. The
very uncircumcised condition of the fourth generation testiied to
the degree that their fathers had broken the covenant.
To maintain the covenant, Moses announced, they would have
to obey God. The continuity of law had not been broken. This was
what linked them to their fathers. It was also what would link their
descendants to them. The inheritance was grounded in God’s prom-
ise to Abraham; maintaining it would be grounded in their obedi-
ence to God.

3. “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim,
and a laming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24);
“And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my
brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9; emphasis added).
114 DEUTERONOMY

The focus of Moses’ immediate concern was the conquest. He

was about to recapitulate the law because a new generation had suc-
ceeded the old. To them the Abrahamic promise applied. The cove-
nant was their covenant far more than it had been their fathers’
covenant, for they were the heirs of the promise. They had to under-
stand the judicial relationship between God, covenant, law, sanc-
tions, and inheritance. To maintain the grant, they had to obey.

Grace, Law, Grace

God granted them the inheritance, not on the basis of what they
had done but on what He had promised. As heirs of the promise,
they were heirs of grace. They had not earned the inheritance. It
was theirs because God had promised Abraham that the fourth gen-
eration would inherit. They would have to ight to win it, but the
promise was their motivation. As recipients of God’s grant, they
could ight in great conidence. They had already learned this in the
war against Midian, in which not one Israelite warrior had died
(Num. 31:49).
The land lowing with milk and honey would soon be theirs.
This was grace. They would receive an infusion of capital to replace
whatever they had spent of Egypt’s spoils. This capital would not
just be money; it would be land. To this grant of land they would
add their creativity and labor. This would in turn produce great
wealth, if they continued to obey.
This means that Israel’s greatest visible capital asset was the law
of God. The law would serve them as their tool of dominion.4 But
without God’s grace, God’s law is incapable of delivering the goods
long term. The law always condemns those who seek to use it for
their own purposes. Adherence to the law produces wealth, but this
wealth then becomes a snare for its owners (Deut. 8:17–18). Men
sin. Without grace, men cannot fulill the stipulations of the cove-
nant. Habakkuk announced this principle clearly: “Behold, his soul
which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his
faith” (Hab. 2:4). Faith in God’s redemptive grace, not faith in man’s
creative power, is the basis of covenant blessings. Through faith,
men obey; through obedience, they maintain the covenant grant.

4. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
 Judicial Continuity 115

Conclusion
God spoke through Moses to the generation of the conquest. He
told them that He had made a covenant with them. God was dealing
with them just as if they had been the irst to make this covenant
with Him. This was a new covenant which the patriarchs had not known.
It was a fulillment of the promise made to Abraham. Moses told
them that God had spoken to them out of the ire at Mt. Sinai, even
though many who were listening to Moses had not been born at that
time. He told them that God had spoken face to face with them,
even though no man had seen God’s face. God had established a
covenant at Sinai, and they were part of this covenant. They were
about to inherit the land, fulilling the Abrahamic promise. The con-
tinuity of both promise and law placed them inside the covenant.
To re-conirm this covenant, Moses would now read the Ten Com-
mandments to them. First, he referred to the covenant-making event
of Exodus 19: the face-to-face meeting between Israel and God at Mt.
Sinai. This event was followed by Exodus 20: the giving of the
Decalogue. Second, they were now going to hear the law again. This
was evidence that God was still dealing with Israel on a face-to-face
basis. God had not changed, and neither had the terms of His cove-
nant, with one exception: the reason given for the sabbath. If Israel
remained faithful to the terms of this covenant, the nation would
maintain the kingdom grant that was embodied in the land.
 12
SabbathAND
SABBATH and Liberation
LIBERATION

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou
shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of
thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant
and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou
wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought
thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm:
therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day
(Deut. 5:14–15).

In the Exodus version of the fourth commandment, the

theocentric focus is clearer: God made the earth in six days and rested
the seventh. God as the Creator is its primary message. This version is
diferent. It has to do with justice: masters and servants. Egypt had
been unjust; therefore, God had delivered His people out of Egyp-
tian bondage. The Exodus version is clearly a cross-boundary law.
This version, however, is clearly a land law. It has to do with the his-
tory of Israel. Unlike the other nine commandments, this one creates
problems of interpretation based on land law vs. cross- boundary law.
The Ten Commandments listed in Deuteronomy 5 are the same
that appear in Exodus 20. There is only one variation: the reason
given for the sabbath. In Exodus 20, the reason given is creational:
“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD
blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (v. 11). This reason rests
on something that God did. The reason given in Deuteronomy 5
rests on something that the Israelites had been. The focus of Deuter-
onomy 5:15 is on the Israelites’ experience in Egypt. What had

116
 Sabbath and Liberation 117

been their condition? They had been servants. Egyptians had ruled
over them. The implication is that the Egyptians had not allowed
them to rest. Deuteronomy 5:15 contrasts with Exodus 20:11, but the
contrast is implicit, not explicit. Exodus 20:11 tells us what God did.
Deuteronomy 5:15 implies that the Egyptians did something else.

A Nation of Former Servants

The exodus generation was a generation of slaves. They had
grown up under bondage. Their thinking was shaped by their life-
long condition as subordinates. They had not been allowed to make
important decisions for themselves. They had been told what to do
under threat of physical sanctions. When Moses had challenged
Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s response was to add new work requirements: to
ind a substitute for straw in their brick-making. That is, their pun-
ishment was additional work. Moses had asked Pharaoh to allow
the people time of for worship. Pharaoh’s answer was to make them
work even harder, despite the fact that their production would be
less ejcient, economically speaking. Work had been a negative
sanction in Egypt’s slave society.
The irst case law in Exodus 21 has to do with slave marriages
(vv. 2–6). The second case law governs the sales of daughters as ser-
vants (vv. 8–11). God caught their attention by announcing laws
that were intimately connected with what their previous condition
had been. They had been slaves; here were rules that protected
slaves. The question arises: Why did God not ofer in Exodus 21:11
the justiication for the sabbath given in Deuteronomy 5:15? Sec-
ond, why didn’t He give the creational justiication for the sabbath
to the conquest generation? Wasn’t the conquest generation more
like God in His capacity as builder? Weren’t they about to build a
new civilization? But this is not what we ind.
Moses in the irst section of Deuteronomy 5 made the connec-
tion between the establishment of the national covenant at Sinai-
Horeb and this generation. He spoke of God as having made the cove-
nant with them personally. Here, Moses repeated the connection. Who
had been servants in Egypt? Those listening to him. Yet chronologi-
cally speaking, this was incorrect. The generation of former slaves
had died of. Their slave mentality had condemned them to wander
in the wilderness for four decades. Their fear of confrontation had
led them into sin (Num. 14). They had not been willing to accept
God’s assignment of military conquest. But Moses spoke as if all of
118 DEUTERONOMY

his listeners had just come out of Egypt. “And remember that thou
wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God
brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched
out arm.”
The continuity of the covenant, as manifested above all in Pass-
over, linked all successive generations of Israelites with the exodus
generation. Passover was a rite of passage: passage out of bondage.
Israel had no rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. The bar
mitzvah is a modern rite. The Old Covenant had only two rites of
passage: from the family of Adam into the family of Abraham (cir-
cumcision) – clearly a matter of adoption – and from the slave’s life
to the liberated man’s life (Passover). Both rites were manifestations
of God’s grace. The irst rite was a one-time event; the second was
an annual event. The irst rite placed a man deinitively under the
terms of God’s covenant; the second was an act of covenant re-
newal. The Passover celebrated what God did immediately after the
irst Passover meal was eaten. The meal reminded Israelites of their
slave condition. This is why they were required to eat bitter herbs
(Ex. 12:8).
The conquest generation did not ritually enter the family of
Abraham until Gilgal, on the far side of the Jordan (Josh. 5:5). Yet
they had already begun to inherit in terms of God’s promise to
Abraham (Num. 21). Their willingness to ight was proof of their
membership in Abraham’s line of descent. Israel had been a family.
Abraham’s name had meant “father of multitudes.” Israel had be-
come a multitude in Egypt (Ex. 1:7). But Israel in Egypt was not yet
a nation because she was a slave. Not until Israel swore covenantal
allegiance to God at Sinai and received the law did Israel become a
nation. Prior to this corporate covenantal event, Israel had been an
extended family.
Now, for the second time, Israel received the Mosaic law. The
people did not have to swear allegiance. This had been done repre-
sentatively once and for all by their parents in Exodus 19. Moses
had already pointed back to the events of Exodus 19, in preparation
for the reading of the law. He would do so again upon the comple-
tion of his reading of the law (vv. 22–33). With the reading of the
law, Moses renewed the national covenant. This public event was to
be repeated every seventh year after they came into the land (Deut.
31:10–13).
 Sabbath and Liberation 119

The Day of Liberation

Deuteronomy 5:14 speaks of strangers in the gates. The lan-
guage refers to the existence of gates. Israel in the wilderness had no
gates. The gate was a judicial boundary. As with any boundary, the
gate separated insiders from outsiders. Those inside the boundary
were under the rule of law that governed the jurisdiction. Inside this
boundary, God said, all men must be treated the same. “One law
shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that
sojourneth among you” (Ex. 12:49).
The sabbath law governed everyone inside the national bound-
aries of Israel. This included strangers, manservants, and maidser-
vants. It also included animals. One year in seven, it even included
the land, which was to receive a year of rest (Lev. 25:4–5).
By giving a new reason for the sabbath, Moses established a
sympathetic link among the listeners, their deceased parents, and all
the servants whom the listeners might employ in the future. The
sabbath became a day of liberation for all Israel, but especially those
in bondage. The sabbath pointed to a future day of liberation. God had
worked six days and had rested on the seventh. This pointed to
Israel’s day of liberation at the end of her week. The bondservant was
not to be required to work on the sabbath (Deut. 5:14). The conclusion
is inescapable: a day of liberation would come for Israel’s bondservants.
Egypt had refused to honor the sabbath with respect to servants,
which was the crucial test of sabbath-keeping. The Israelites had
been forced to work without a day of rest. They had also not been al-
lowed to worship God. Moses’ challenge to Pharaoh was that the
people be allowed to have time of from work in order to worship
God. Pharaoh understood what this meant: a direct challenge to his
status as a divinity in Egypt. If he granted this time of relief from
work, he would have ritually acknowledged his subordination to the
God of Israel. He refused to allow this.1 Israel did not get her rest pe-
riod until the day after Passover. Israel’s day of rest was her day of
liberation.
Egypt was condemned in God’s eyes by the fact that the Egyp-
tians did not allow their servants a day of rest. What He allowed
Himself at the end of the creation week, Egypt did not allow for the

1. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985).
120 DEUTERONOMY

slaves: a day of rest. The Egyptians had assumed that they owned all
of the output of their servants. They had assumed that God owned
none of this output. In short, they had assumed their autonomy
from the Creator God. They had placed themselves under the bu-
reaucratic rule of a supposed divine monarch, the Pharaoh, while
extending his rule over their slaves. The legal condition of the slaves
relected the Egyptians’ own legal condition: servants of Pharaoh.
Their servants were their judicial representatives. This is why the
sabbath law singled out servants. How men treat their servants is
how their superiors will treat them. Their servants become their repre-
sentatives. This hierarchical principle of subordinate representation gov-
erns one’s placement among the sheep or the goats at the inal
judgment (Matt. 25:31–46).
The sabbath law in Deuteronomy 5 warned Israel: to ignore the
sabbath law is to become like the Egyptians. The evidence of how
well Israelites obeyed the sabbath law would be seen in how they
treated their servants. So it had been for Egypt; so it would be for Is-
rael. The sabbath was Israel’s representative principle of liberation. If Is-
rael refused to honor it, the nation would again come under the
negative sanction of slavery. This was why Judah went into captivity
to the Babylonians. The nation had not allowed the land its sabbath
rest periods (Jer. 50:34).

Literal Texts for Less Literal Purposes

There are discrepancies between the Exodus 20 account and the
Deuteronomy 5 account. A minor one is the diference between the
two versions of the law against covetousness. In Exodus 20, the prohi-
bition begins with the neighbor’s property and moves to the neighbor’s
wife (v. 17). The reverse is the case in Deuteronomy 5:21. Similarly,
the blessing attached to the ifth commandment in Exodus 20:12 was
long life in the land. In Deuteronomy 5:16, the promise is more gen-
eral: “that it may go well with thee, in the land. . . .” But the discrep-
ancy between the two justiications for the sabbath is not minor. The
two accounts are totally diferent.
How, then, are we to interpret Moses’ words? “These words the
LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of
the ire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice:
and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone,
and delivered them unto me” (Deut. 5:22). If God added no more
words than the words which Moses had just repeated, then what of
 Sabbath and Liberation 121

Exodus 20:11? These surely were words in addition to Deuteron-

omy 5:15. If some archeologist in Israel should ever discover the
fragment of the broken tablet on which the sabbath law appeared,
what would it say? Would it repeat both justiications or just one? If
only one should appear, then one of the written accounts of the giving
of the Decalogue is incomplete. If one of the accounts is incomplete,
then the words, “he added no more,” cannot be taken literally.
This discrepancy cannot be a function of Moses’ lagging mem-
ory. “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he
died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” (Deut. 34:7).
He was in the inal stages of writing down the Pentateuch (Deut.
31:9). He would die within a few weeks, and possibly within a few
days. The suggestion that he would not have remembered what God
announced at the sealing of the national covenant, or what God
wrote on the tables of the law for 40 days (Ex. 24:12, 18; Deut. 9:9), or
what Moses wrote on the tables of the law for 40 days (Ex. 34:28),
would be ludicrous.
Higher critics like to think that diferent editors revised the two
passages. But what forger would have been sujciently stupid to re-
vise part of the Ten Commandments? The Decalogue was the heart
of Israel’s religion. Of all the passages in the Pentateuch to tamper
with, the Decalogue would have been the last choice of a clever
forger. Every torah scroll in the nation would have been diferent
from his revision. Only at the time of the rediscovery of the law un-
der Josiah would such a forgery have been possible (II Ki. 22). But
what would have been the forger’s motivation? Why not just
re-write the seemingly deviant passage in the rediscovered scroll to
make it conform to your scribal agenda? Why change one without
changing the other? Why create a visible discrepancy? The higher
critic must attribute a degree of stupidity to the forger that calls into
question the intelligence necessary to become a successful forger. A
forger this stupid would not have possessed the intellectual skills nec-
essary to become a “redactor,” according to the canons of higher crit-
icism: a master of the existing biblical texts and a master of deceit.2

2. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), Appendix C: “The Hoax of Higher Criticism.” See also Gary
North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer version; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Appendix J: “Conspiracy, Forgery, and Higher
Criticism.”
122 DEUTERONOMY

A Question of Covenantal Purpose

My assumption is that God did verbally announce both reasons
for the sabbath at the original sealing of the national covenant, but
the words on the tablets included only the more general justiication:
the creation account. The number-one question in the Book of
Exodus is this: Who is Moses’ God? Answer: the God of the patri-
archs (Ex. 3:15). This was what God told Moses to tell the rulers of
Israel (Ex. 3:16). This answer looked back to the stories found in the
irst book of the Pentateuch, the book of origins. This God was the
God of creation, which Moses asserted in the opening words of
Genesis.
At the time of the sealing of the national covenant, the Israelites
had just passed through the Red Sea. This event would have been at
the forefront of concern for any nearby pagan nation that might
hear of this deliverance. Who are the Israelites? Who knows? Who
cares? But a God who can part the waters of the Red Sea is a God to
be reckoned with. What He did at the Red Sea pointed to His sover-
eignty as Creator. The God of creation rules over nature. A creation-
based justiication of the sabbath would have been understood by all
nations. The Exodus justiication of the sabbath is consistent with
the purpose of the book: to announce the authority of God. This au-
thority is absolute because He is the Creator.
The Deuteronomy version applies speciically to Israel’s his-
tory. Moses in Deuteronomy was announcing a link between the
generation of the exodus and the generation of the conquest. This
link was covenantal-judicial: the Decalogue. It was also historical.
Moses in Deuteronomy was making it clear to that generation that
they were the heirs of all that had taken place in Egypt, before most
of them had been born. The justiication for the sabbath in Deuter-
onomy is historical-participatory. This its Moses’ covenantal goal for
Deuteronomy better than Exodus’ creational justiication does,
namely, to ajrm point ive of the covenant: inheritance. This is the
primary theme of Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 5:22 reads: “These words the LORD spake unto all
your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the ire, of the cloud,
and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more.
And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto
me.” The degree of literalism in Moses’ words here must be judged by
two things: the context of his monologue on the Decalogue and the
written record in Exodus. The context here was national covenant
 Sabbath and Liberation 123

renewal and inheritance. The written record in Exodus was more uni-
versal: the authority of God as Creator. Conclusion: God and Moses
wrote on the tablets what we read in Exodus 20:11, not what we read
in Deuteronomy 5:15.

Conclusion
The sabbath law explicitly governed the treatment of subordi-
nates. The test of how a man honored the sabbath was how he
treated his subordinates. This is true in both versions of the law.
The justiication for the sabbath law in Deuteronomy 5 is
diferent from the justiication in Exodus 20. In the earlier version,
God’s creation week is used to justify the sabbath: a cross-boundary
law. In the second version, Israel’s time of bondage in Egypt is given
as the reason. In the irst version, God set the positive pattern for all
superiors in history. In the second, Egyptians set the negative pat-
tern. God gives men a weekly day of rest out of mercy. Israelites had
to do the same for their subordinates. In both versions of the sab-
bath law, subordinates are the focus of concern. How men treat subor-
dinates relects their obedience to God’s law. From God to the lowest
subordinate, each ruler in the hierarchy is supposed to honor the
sabbath principle of rest.
The day of rest is by implication the day of liberation. The day
of rest is the model of the inal liberation from bondage to sin. We la-
bor today to enter into rest later, just as God did. “There remaineth
therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his
rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after
the same example of unbelief” (Heb. 4:9–11). There have been peri-
ods of liberation throughout covenant history. Israel did not remain
a slave to Egypt indeinitely. This implied that no nation or people
will be in servitude to any other indeinitely. This also implied that
servitude will eventually end. The deinitive abolitionist act oc-
curred in Christ’s ministry, when He fulilled the jubilee laws (Luke
4:18–21). With the abolition of the jubilee laws also went Israel’s
permanent slave laws (Lev. 25:44–46).
The Hebrew sabbath was intended to relieve men from the
bondage of labor once a week. By honoring the sabbath, they ac-
knowledged publicly that they were not in bondage to the futile
quest for more. The quest for more is a hard task-master. It knows
no limits. The Hebrew sabbath announced: “Enough for now!”
124 DEUTERONOMY

Until men are willing to believe this and act in terms of it, they re-
3
main slaves to one of two idols, either nature or history. (Philoso-
phy and religion are social phenomena – idols of history – that
attempt to make sense out of nature and history.) Regarding a land
ruled by either of these idols, it can accurately be said, as the fearful
spies said of Canaan, “The land, through which we have gone to
search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof” (Num.
13:32b).

The New Testament Sabbath

The New Testament’s covenantal deliverance of God’s people
out of the Old Covenant was presented by the author of the He-
brews as an aspect of the sabbath (Heb. 4). This deliverance was
achieved deinitively by Jesus Christ in His earthly work, whose
eforts serve as a model for our earthly labors: “For he that is entered
into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did
from his” (v. 10). Covenant-keepers enter God’s rest deinitively
through faith in Christ: “For we which have believed do enter into
rest” (v. 3a). They must strive toward this rest historically: “Let us la-
bour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same
example of unbelief” (v. 11). They achieve rest at the inal judg-
ment. This is in the future: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the
people of God” (v. 9).
One theological reason why the New Covenant sabbath is the
irst day of the week rather than the last is that Christ’s entrance into
the heavenly places as the high priest took place in the past. Our rest
has been attained deinitively and representatively through Christ.
We look back in faith to His attainment of deinitive rest on our be-
half, even though we also look to the end of time for its inal con-
summation. The irst day of the week – the eighth day4 – is our day
of rest because of our testimony that, judicially speaking, we have al-
ready entered into our promised rest through Christ’s representa-
tion on our behalf.

3. Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with
American Society (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, [1983] 1993), p. 11.
4. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 72–73.
 13
Law
LAW andSANCTIONS
AND Sanctions
Ye shall observe to do therefore as the LORD your God hath
commanded you: ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. Ye
shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God hath commanded you,
that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may
prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess (Deut. 5:32–33).

God as the Lawgiver is the theocentric focus of this law. This

case law was therefore a cross-boundary law. It was not a tribal law.
It was a law of national inheritance in Canaan, since it referred to
the land. The question is: Was it exclusively a land law? I argue that
it extended beyond the boundaries of Israel, for the Mosaic law was
inherently expansionist and evangelical. Paul universalized it.
Moses informed the conquest generation that God had spoken
these words to him immediately after the giving of the law in Exo-
dus 20. The phrase, “ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to
the left,” occurs repeatedly in the Pentateuch and in Joshua. The
model was the march through the Red Sea: “But the children of
Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters
were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left”
(Ex. 14:29). They were safe on dry land in between two mountains
of water. This judicial principle also underlay the decisions of
Israel’s civil judges (Deut. 17:8–11) and the king: “That his heart be
not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the
commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he
may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the
midst of Israel” (Deut. 17:20). This principle was to become the ba-
sis of Israel’s extension of dominion over other nations: “And the
LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be

125
126 DEUTERONOMY

above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto
the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this
day, to observe and to do them: And thou shalt not go aside from any
of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to
the left, to go after other gods to serve them” (Deut. 28:13–14).
The phrase also appears in the Book of Joshua, at the beginning
of the conquest and at the end of his rule, when he transferred au-
thority to the judges. The people told him: “Only be thou strong
and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to
all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not
from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper
whithersoever thou goest” (Josh. 1:7). Decades later, he told the rul-
ers: “Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is
written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside there-
from to the right hand or to the left” (Josh. 23:6). Solomon echoed
this: “Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot
from evil” (Prov. 4:27).

Ethical Cause and Efect

The basis of long-term success in history is adherence to the
laws of God. This is stated clearly in the text. Moses exhorted the
nation to obey God in order to prolong their lives in the land. This
was a national extension of the Decalogue’s familial rule: “Honour
thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land
which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 20:12). Paul pointed out
that this was the irst commandment to which a promise was at-
tached (Eph. 6:2). This is a very important observation. A promise
in the Bible is always conditional. This is because a promise is al-
ways covenantal, and covenants are always ethically conditional.
Calvinists speak of unconditional election, but this phrase is techni-
cally incorrect. Election from the beginning was always conditional
on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ in history. God imputes – unilater-
ally declares judicially – the perfect righteousness of Christ to indi-
vidual sinners, but this perfect righteousness was not unconditional.
It was conditional down to the last jot and tittle of the law. “For who-
soever shall keep the whole law, and yet ofend in one point, he is
guilty of all” (James 2:10).
God’s promise to Abraham regarding the inheritance was not
made in terms of the Mosaic law. Paul wrote: “And this I say, that
the covenant, that was conirmed before of God in Christ, the law,
 Law and Sanctions 127

which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that
it should make the promise of none efect. For if the inheritance be
of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by
promise” (Gal. 3:17–18). Yet there was a law implicitly attached to
the Abrahamic covenant promise: the law of circumcision. The
conquest generation had to be circumcised before the conquest
could begin within the Jordan’s boundaries (Josh. 5:5). There were
conditions attached to the promise.
Paul said that the commandment’s positive sanction of long life
for those who honor parents was a promise. This was obviously a
conditional promise. This conditional promise was explicitly part of
the Mosaic law. God extended this same promise from the family to
the nation when He broadened the stipulations of the covenant to
the whole of the Mosaic law.
Covenant law has sanctions attached. These sanctions are positive
and negative. These sanctions are the means of inheritance. The neg-
ative sanctions are the means of disinheritance, while the positive
sanctions are the means of inheritance. This means that point three
of the biblical covenant model – ethics – is inextricably connected
with point four: sanctions. Point ive – inheritance – is the result of
point four. They are a consistent, judicially unbreakable unity. Thus,
God’s promise of inheritance to Abraham’s heirs was inextricably
bound to the stipulation of the Abrahamic covenant: circumcision.
Similarly, God’s promise to the Israelites regarding the maintenance
of the covenant grant was inextricably bound to the stipulations of the
Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant’s stipulations were far more
comprehensive than the Abrahamic covenant’s had been. “Ye shall
walk in all the ways which the LORD your God hath commanded you,
that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may
prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess” (Deut. 5:33).
The Israelites were told to obey God in order to receive speciic
beneits. The presentation of the law was in terms of results: beneits
for obedience, set-backs for disobedience. God did not present the
covenant as a system of rules that was in no way connected with out-
comes. On the contrary, God presented His law in terms of the wis-
dom of pursuing righteousness because of the beneits. “Doing well
by doing good” is the very essence of biblical ethics. More
speciically, doing well in history by doing good is biblical. Anyone
who suggests that God has created an ethical system that promises
only “pie in the sky bye and bye” has either not understood the
128 DEUTERONOMY

biblical covenant model or else he has denied that this Old Cove-
nant ethical system extends into the New Covenant. In the second
case, he needs proof based on the New Covenant. It is not sujcient
1
to assert such a conclusion without exegetical proof. Solomon said:
“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt ind it after many
days” (Eccl. 11:1). “And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto
you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the
gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time,
houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and
lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life”
(Mark 10:29–30).

Straight and Narrow, Deep and Wide

The road to success for Adam prior to the Fall was broad. He
could do anything he wanted to without fear of loss, with one excep-
tion. For Abraham, this road was narrower. He had to circumcise
the males of his household. For Moses, the road was narrower still.
More things were placed of-limits. In some areas, the New Cove-
nant is even narrower. For example, divorce is no longer lawful
merely on the basis of a written declaration by a husband (Matt.
5:31–32); it was under the Mosaic law (Deut. 24:1). On the other
hand, the minutia of the dietary laws have been annulled com-
pletely (Acts 10; I Cor. 8). So, certain ethical limits have been tight-
ened; ritual limits have been loosened. Mosaic land laws, seed laws,
and priestly laws have been annulled.2 But the requirements for ex-
tending the kingdom have been made far more rigorous, especially
geographically.3
Predictable, historical, visible corporate sanctions are un-
breakably attached to God’s law. This is covenant theology’s
explanation of God’s promise of the church’s visible victory in his-
tory. This promise is what amillennialists and premillennialists
deny; they preach the visible cultural defeat of the church in history.

1. Since 1973, theonomists have been waiting for this proof.

2. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), pp. 637–43.
3. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
 Law and Sanctions 129

This is why premillennialists and amillennialists either deny cove-

nant theology or else deine it in such a way that the law’s sanctions
are removed. We are told that there is no possible widespread cul-
tural victory for the church in history because of the following rea-
sons: 1) the Mosaic law has been completely annulled; 2) the
covenant’s historical sanctions are no longer predictable; or 3) the
promise of the church’s defeat in history has replaced the promise of
Israel’s victory in history, at least in this dispensation. None of these
theological arguments is correct.4
Because God’s covenant is a uniied system, God’s law, His his-
torical sanctions, and our inheritance are an unbreakable unity. The
inescapable reality of God’s predictable sanctions in history is why it is
theologically mandatory to link theonomy with postmillennialism. Non-
theonomic postmillennialism can exist without theonomy, but
theonomy cannot exist without postmillennialism, assuming that
we deine theonomy in terms of the ive points of the biblical cove-
nant. Of course, it is quite possible to discuss all ive points inde-
pendently, and many Calvinists do: God’s sovereignty without
God’s law, God’s sanctions without church hierarchy, and so forth.
This is the way that Reformed Baptists adhere to Calvinism: without
the covenant. It is also the way that most Presbyterians adhere to
Calvinism. Protestants have been doing this for centuries. But if we
speak of biblical covenant theology, we must speak of an integrated
system: all ive points. Deuteronomy is clearly structured in terms of
these ive points. So is Leviticus.5 So is the Pentateuch.6
Covenant theology identiies the straight and narrow path. It ar-
gues that because God is absolutely sovereign, every fact of history
operates under His authority. God has given to covenant-keepers
the hierarchical authority to extend His kingdom in history. They
are to do this in terms of His Bible-revealed law, the tool of domin-
ion.7 Covenant-keepers who possess lawful, ordained authority are
required to bring predictable individual sanctions in terms of God’s
law: speciic cases. God also brings corporate sanctions in terms of

4. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology (Tyler,

Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992).
5. North, Leviticus, pp. 44–45.
6. Ibid., pp. xlii–xlix.
7. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
130 DEUTERONOMY

His law. This is why covenant-keepers inherit progressively over

time, while covenant-breakers are progressively disinherited. “A
good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the
wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just” (Prov. 13:22).
The ethically straight and narrow path leads to widespread do-
minion in history. Those who remain on this path inherit the earth.

His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth (Ps. 25:13).

For evildoers shall be cut of: but those that wait upon the LORD, they
shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9).

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the
abundance of peace (Ps. 37:11).

For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be
cursed of him shall be cut of (Ps. 37:22).

Deuteronomy and Inheritance

The word Deuteronomy is an English transliteration of the
Greek words for second and law. Deuteronomy is the second presen-
tation of the law. Moses read the Decalogue to the people in Deuter-
onomy a second time. Why? Because this was part of an act of
national covenant renewal. The long-promised Abrahamic inheri-
tance was about to be claimed by the fourth generation. Yet this
generation had not been circumcised. Legally, they were outside
Abraham’s family covenant.
Moses’ second reading of the law was a recapitulation of the
events of Exodus 19 and 20, which is why Moses told that story and
read that law. Because the Aaronic priesthood remained the same,
this was not a new covenant with a new law. It was covenant renewal.
Only through national covenant renewal, which involved circumci-
sion, could this generation inherit. They were still technically outside
the full covenant, Abraham’s covenant of the promised inheritance.
They had to go through a separate act of covenant renewal because of
the rebellion of their parents in not circumcising them. Their parents
had clearly broken the Abrahamic covenant. They had, judicially
speaking, placed their children outside the inheritance. It was as if
they said to themselves, “Since we cannot inherit, our children will
 Law and Sanctions 131

not inherit, either.” These were present-oriented people without a

sense of dominion, without a commitment to kingdom-building.
By reading the law to the uncircumcised generation, Moses
turned their minds back to the irst event in national covenant-
making: the covenant established at Sinai-Horeb (Ex. 19, 20). This
reading was an act of covenantal subordination (point two).8 This
followed the irst covenantal step in the conquest: the total destruc-
tion of Arad’s kingdom (Num. 21:1–3), a whole burnt ofering (point
9
one). Moses was preparing them for the next covenantal step: cross-
ing the Jordan, a boundary violation signifying the conquest of Ca-
naan (point three). Then would come the next covenantal step:
circumcision, an oath sign (point four). Then would come the next
covenantal step: the total destruction of Jericho, another whole burnt
ofering on Canaan’s side of the Jordan (point one). Only then would
come the full conquest: inheritance (point ive).

Conclusion
The law of the covenant was Israel’s tool of dominion. Israel
was about to inherit, according to God’s promise to Abraham. But
inheriting is not the same as maintaining. To maintain the kingdom
grant, Israel would have to obey God.
This passage ofers a conditional promise: long life in the land as
a positive sanction for obedience. God’s promises are reliable. This
means that His corporate historical sanctions are predictable. Pre-
dictable in terms of what standard? His Bible-revealed law. Biblical
law begins with the Ten Commandments, which Moses has just read
to them. It also includes case laws or application laws, which he will
read to them later. The important point is that the law of the covenant
and the maintenance of Israel’s kingdom grant in history were linked
by the presence of God’s predictable corporate sanctions.
Paul’s citation of the ifth commandment and its positive sanction
of long life ajrmed the continuing validity of a crucial aspect of the
Mosaic covenant. He universalized this promise: from long life in the
land of Canaan to long life on earth. This was not an act of covenantal
annulment. It was the antithesis of covenantal annulment. This fact con-
stitutes a major exegetical dilemma for those who oppose theonomy.

8. Exodus is the book of the covenant (Ex. 24:7).

9. North, Leviticus, ch. 1.
 14
THEThe Wealth OF
WEALTH of Nations
NATIONS

Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments,
which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them
in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest fear the LORD thy
God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command
thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that
thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it;
that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the
LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that loweth with
milk and honey (Deut. 6:1–3).

Moses was repeating himself. The same principles of interpreta-

tion apply here as in Deuteronomy 5:32–33. Moses had just given a
similar message: obey the law, enjoy long years, and have things go
well for you: “Ye shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your
God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well
with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye
shall possess” (Deut. 5:33). He added three extra themes here:
intergenerational covenant-keeping, population growth, and inher-
ited wealth.

Intergenerational Covenant-Keeping
“Thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son”: this phrase reminded
Moses’ listeners that their ethical responsibilities did not end with
themselves; they extended down to those who would eventually in-
herit. “Keep all his statutes and his commandments,” Moses told
them. To preserve the inheritance intact through the generations,
each generation would have to bear the responsibilities associated
with training up the next two generations.

132
 The Wealth of Nations 133

This law places grandparents into the chain of family command.

The grandparents have responsibilities to preserve whatever capital
they have accumulated. But this capital base is more than market-
able wealth. The crucial capital asset is ethics. Without this, market-
able wealth will inevitably be dissipated. This is the message of
Deuteronomy 28:15–68.
Obviously, parents have greater covenantal authority over chil-
dren than grandparents do. Parents are God’s designated mediators
between God and their children. The question is: Will the grand-
children mimic their parents or their grandparents? Which repre-
sentative model will be dominant? There is always the possibility
that grandchildren will model themselves after their grandparents.
Folk wisdom has a saying: “We make our grandparents’ mistakes.”
Each generation sees more clearly the mistakes of their parents, and
so seeks to avoid them. This leads to a kind of generation-skipping.
We have seen this in the twentieth-century United States. The
1920’s were years of ethical rebellion: the “roaring twenties.” This
was a time of economic growth, sexual experimentation, artistic cre-
ativity and degeneracy, and present-orientation. In the United
States, it was a time of illegal drugs: alcohol. The 1930’s followed:
the Great Depression. The children of the “lappers” of the 1920’s
grew up in the depression years and World War II. They grew up in
hard times, marched of to war, saw death on a massive scale, came
home, started families, worked hard, saved their money, and en-
joyed a growing prosperity without social rebellion. These children
of the Great Depression bore the “lower children” who came of age
in the late 1960’s, a time of economic growth, sexual experimenta-
tion, artistic creativity and degeneracy, and present-orientation.
The marijuana-smoking lower children had far more in common
with their hip-lask grandparents than with their parents. The 1970’s
brought a reaction somewhat like the 1930’s: economic recessions,
stagnation of per capita economic growth, a glum reaction against
deviant behavior, and a growing conservatism. The children of the
lower children became far more like their grandparents. The nos-
talgia among the young for the socially conservative 1950’s began in
the late 1970’s and escalated in the 1980’s.
The point is, there is no automatic straight-line social develop-
ment. Societies are linear only in the broadest sense. They can expe-
rience culture-shattering crises that break the covenant. When this
happens, people may react the way their grandparents did when
134 DEUTERONOMY

facing similar crises. There is a kind of cultural echo efect: grand-

parents to grandchildren.
There is also an economic echo efect. De Tocqueville observed
in the 1830’s that there was a rags-to-riches-to-rags phenomenon in
the United States. This was an era of great economic freedom in
which there were very few welfare guarantees by the State. “. . . I
know no other country where the love of money has such a grip on
men’s hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of
permanent equality of property. But wealth circulates there with in-
credible rapidity, and experience shows that two successive genera-
tions seldom enjoy its favors.”1
The responsibility of the grandparents is even greater if they
live in the households of their children and have responsibilities of
supervising their grandchildren. This is the case in many black2
households in the United States today, where grandmothers raise
the grandchildren while their unmarried mothers work. The break-
down of the black family since the 1940’s has led to a situation
where two-thirds of the children today are born illegitimate – over
80 percent in inner-city areas.3 This has put enormous economic
pressure on unmarried mothers and has added heavy social respon-
sibilities on grandmothers, who are also frequently unmarried.
Third-generation illegitimate children are becoming common. This
has led to what appears to be irreversible poverty – irreversible
without a moral transformation or an economic collapse.4 The liber-
alization and feminization of black churches and the rise of the wel-
fare State have left black families with few moral resources, such as
fathers. White illegitimacy is now in the 22 percent range. There

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited by J. P. Meyer (12th ed.; Garden

City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1848] 1969), p. 54.
2. When Negroes were called Negroes by Negro leaders, it made things easier for whites.
But the old word was abandoned when representatives of the American black power
movement of the late 1960’s learned how to manipulate the white media’s representatives
through calculated guilt manipulation and violent rhetoric, which was exactly what TV
newscasters and journalists needed to get air time – the holy grail for TV newscasters and
journalists. These Marxist and secular interlopers had to come up with a new word to
describe their race as part of their systematic program to replace the older generation of
Christian Negro leaders, who had preached – literally – nonviolence. The black power
movement was a lash in the pan, but their re-naming of Negroes has stuck. I defer to
convention here. I think people should get to call themselves whatever they want to.
3. Charles Murray, “The Coming White Underclass,” Wall Street Journal (Oct. 29, 1993).
4. It is easier in 1997 to predict the latter than the former.
 The Wealth of Nations 135

appears to be a one-generation echo efect racially: from blacks to

whites. In the early 1960’s, black illegitimacy was about 25 percent,
while White illegitimacy was about 5 percent.
Clearly, there has been a breakdown in social values. The re-
treat of Christian orthodoxy in the United States, especially in
non-rural areas outside of the South, which began around 1890, has
broken the covenant. Within a century, there were signs of break-
down everywhere: legalized pornography (late 1950’s), rising crime
rates (1960–), the drug culture (late 1960’s), legalized abortion
(1973), a rising divorce rate (at least half of all marriages fail), rising
welfare dependency, and collapsing standards in the government
schools – all compounded in the black inner cities. From the genera-
tion that grew up in the 1890’s – the “gay nineties,” in which secular-
ism made its irst major cultural gains – to the children who are
coming of age to vote in the 1990’s, it took only four generations:
from my grandparents to my children. It did not take long. The bro-
ken social covenant of the “gay nineties” has produced a culture in
which almost nothing remains of the ideal of Christendom.
The covenantal question is this: How long can long-term eco-
nomic growth be sustained by a society that is growing ethically per-
verse? Is economic growth self-sustaining irrespective of moral
vision? Not if the inner city is a valid example. Economic growth is
the product of certain attitudes toward the future: future-orientation,
peaceful exchange, honest dealing, legitimate private ownership,
minimal civil government, predictable civil government, and so on.
These attitudes are becoming less common in the inner-city ghetto.
These are not the attitudes of men with no fathers, no wives, poor
educations, and no jobs. They are surely not the attitudes of drug
addicts.

Population Growth
The next covenantal promise as a positive sanction is this one:
“that ye may increase mightily.” This increase is numerical. Biologi-
cal expansion is the product of two things: high birth rates and low
death rates. A high birth rate is a covenantal promise: “There shall
nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of
thy days I will fulil” (Ex. 23:26). So is a low death rate: “Honour thy
father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;
that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in
the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Deut. 5:16).
136 DEUTERONOMY

The compound growth process is governed by what has be-

come known as the law of 73. The annual rate of growth divided
into the number 73 gives the period of time it takes for the popula-
tion to double. A 7.3 percent per annum growth rate will produce a
doubling in ten years. A 10 percent growth rate will produce a dou-
bling in 7.3 years. This means that a 3 percent per annum increase
will produce a doubling in a little over 24 years. This will increase a
population by a factor of 16 in a century. This is serious multiplica-
tion. Anything that multiplies by a factor of 16 in a century gets
very, very large in a millennium.
Israel began with about 2.4 million people. In just two centuries,
with a 3 percent growth rate, the population would have been 614
million people. Twenty-four years after that, it would have been
over 1.2 billion – the estimated population of China today. This
would have been two centuries before the Davidic kingdom. This
obviously was not going to happen – not within the geographical
conines of tiny Israel. But there is no doubt that once compound
growth produces an upward-pointing curve, the population ap-
proaches its environmental limits very fast. With a low growth rate,
it takes a long time to reach the point when the population curve
turns upward, but once it does, it reaches its limit fast.
There are two limits to growth, each corresponding to one of man’s
two idols: physical environment and time. The corresponding idols
are nature and history.5 If any population compounds, it will usually
run out of space before it runs out of time. In a world in which time is
considered functionally unlimited, growth’s limits are said to be envi-
ronmental. Why is time considered functionally unlimited? Because
any rate of growth, no matter how low, reaches its environmental
limits within the conines of historical time. Cosmic evolutionary
time therefore is not an environmental limit in such a world. The
only question is the rate of growth in comparison to the perceived
environmental limits.
With the coming of quantum physics in the late 1920’s – the
physics of the subatomic world – and the invention of the silicon
computer chip in the 1950’s, a handful of creative writers have be-
gun to speculate about a realm that has no physical limits, a realm in

5. Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with
American Society (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, [1983] 1993), p. 11.
 The Wealth of Nations 137

which there is no law of diminishing returns. As proof, they point to

the fact that the speed of the computer chip has doubled every 18 to
24 months since the late 1950’s: “Moore’s Law.”6 This is the highest
decades-long growth rate of anything known in man’s history. Chip
speed increases so rapidly that by the time a buyer receives delivery
of the fastest microcomputer on the market – delivery generally
takes up to three weeks – it is likely that an even faster microcom-
puter will be advertised in the same price range. But while limits to
growth may not actually exist in the subatomic world – which I
doubt – they surely exist in the capital markets. It costs billions of
dollars to construct a new computer chip factory in the 1990’s. Until
these costs cease to rise, there will still be an economic limit to the
rising speed of the chips, although what that limit is, no one on earth
knows.7
What may apply to subatomic physics does not apply to repro-
duction rates. There are biological limits to growth. These limits are
either environmental or chronological. Either the population runs
out of space or the world runs out of time. When the population in
question is man, analysts assume that mankind must run out of
space or the things necessary for man’s survival that are produced in
space. Put another way, modern man assumes that time is functionally
limitless. There will be no inal judgment in historical time. There
will only be the slow erosion of the universe as it moves over billions
of years toward its own heat death: the triumph of physical entropy
over life.8 The heat death of the universe is the only temporal limit
acknowledged by modern man: time runs out because there is noth-
ing left by which time can be measured.
This leads modern man to a conclusion: mankind must reach
environmental limits soon. Man’s population has already turned the
corner; it is on the upward slope of the exponential curve. At pres-
ent population growth rates, men will approach ininity as a limit
within a few centuries. So, demographers and social commentators as-
sume that there must be a reversal of man’s growth within a century or

6. First observed by Gordon Moore, co-inventor of the computer chip in the 1950’s.
7. I would guess that the economic crisis produced by the Year 2000 computer glitch is
that limit.
8. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), ch. 2.
138 DEUTERONOMY

so: war, plague, famine, or population control – either State-imposed or

free market-imposed.
The covenantal question is this: How long can any population
grow in the face of widespread paganism and apostasy? (Atheism is
a little-shared view.) Israel did not grow. After the exile, only a
handful of Israelites returned to the land. Israel from that time on
was under the domination of a series of empires until Rome ex-
pelled all of them from Palestine in A.D. 135, after Bar Kochba’s re-
bellion. It was a small, isolated nation. Nothing like the promise of
Deuteronomy 6:3 took place.
The promise was conditional. It rested on ethics. Israel rebelled
continually. But inherent in that promise was a covenantal possibil-
ity: the illing of the earth. That had been true since the days of
Adam and Noah, both of whom were told by God to multiply. Cov-
enant-keeping men would have run out of time before they ran out
of space.
The command to multiply, coupled with the economic means
of multiplication, points to the end of time. Modern man does not
want to acknowledge the end of time. Thus, he is trapped in a di-
lemma: he must accept the limits to growth. He wants to ajrm the
compound growth of knowledge and wealth, yet this is impossible
in a world of unlimited time. We run out of space, if nothing else.
So, a few men are willing to listen to another scenario: war, plague,
famine, and population control. Nature has always kept mankind in
check, but for now, it no longer does. History is supposedly un-
bounded; so, it cannot replace nature as the imposer of limits: no
inal judgment. This leaves it to warring man or scientiic man or
sovereign nature, which will produce some man-killing bacterium
or virus, to impose the inevitable negative corporate sanctions. A se-
ries of best-selling books in the mid-1990’s on the potential for killer
plagues testiies to modern man’s wondering about limits. He sees
the efects of compound growth, and he knows this growth cannot
go on for centuries. The question is: What will stop it?9

9. Again, I believe that the predictable efects of the Year 2000 will stop it in 1999 or 2000.
For how long, I do not know.
 The Wealth of Nations 139

Milk and Honey

Moses spoke of “the land that loweth with milk and honey.”
10

This language was covenantal. It was not to be taken literally. What

this covenantal language meant was that the new land would be a
good place to raise cattle and bees, as well as all the other good
things of rural living. Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh
took this language so seriously that they gave up their claims on
land across the Jordan because what they found outside the bound-
aries of Israel was good for cattle. Moses granted them their request.
The language of lowing milk and honey testiied to a land that
would provide covenant-keeping people with the comforts of mid-
dle-class living, however deined. Solomon prayed: “Two things
have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: Remove far
from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed
me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and
say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name
of my God in vain” (Prov. 30:7–9).
The covenantal imagery of milk and honey meant that no mat-
ter how fast Israel’s population grew, there would be wealth for all.
This meant that the economic limits to growth inside Israel would
expand with the population. But this promise obviously had limits.
Space is in ixed supply. There are always spatial limits to growth for
populations that occupy space. We do not live in the quantum.
What this promise clearly pointed to was emigration out of Israel:
the extension of Israel’s holy commonwealth ideal beyond the geo-
graphical conines of Palestine. This expansion would force major
adjustments in such geography-based rituals as festivals held in a
central city. The very promise of population growth pointed to a
new covenant with new legal requirements.
This law promised covenant-keepers that their growth in num-
bers would never be threatened by the limits of their environment if
they obeyed God’s law. Their numbers and their wealth would
grow together. There would be milk and honey for all. This promise
is anti-Malthusian to the core. Malthus’ suggestion in his then-
anonymous Essay on Population (1798) that human numbers expand
geometrically, while food expands only arithmetically, makes no

10. American parents used to sing to their children of the big rock candy mountain, where
lemonade rivers lowed.
140 DEUTERONOMY

sense biologically. Humans eat things that multiply. Why edible

things cannot be cultivated to multiply faster than we do, he never
said. One seed of corn produces an ear; one ear produces hundreds
of seeds. Corn multiplies a lot faster than men do. Malthus dropped
the phrase in later (signed) editions. Nevertheless, it is that phrase
from the irst edition which is most closely associated with his name:
the Malthusian thesis. It is far more powerful rhetorically than it
ever was logically or has been empirically since then.
Modern man, beginning in the eighteenth century, has found
ways of multiplying food faster than men. The price of food as a per-
centage of family income has been dropping steadily for two centu-
ries. This development what has fueled the increase in man’s
population. Economic growth – milk and honey – has more than
kept pace with man’s population. The poor in any industrial nation,
and in most non-industrial nations, eat better today than their ances-
tors did two centuries ago. Even the things that we should not eat in
large quantities, and which our ancestors could not aford to eat in
large quantities, such as sugar, we eat because we want to and can
aford to. Our ancestors had to content themselves with honey.
Americans consume over 100 pounds of sugar a year. Sugar beets,
not honey bees, have made it possible for dentists to make a good,
upper middle-class living. (Speaking of dentistry, what advocate of
“simpler living” and a “return to nature” is prepared to go back to
the pre-anesthetic dentistry of 1840?)
England’s adoption of free market capitalism in the eighteenth
century ratiied the trustworthiness of Moses’ covenantal promise.
We live in a land lowing with milk and honey, but with very few ur-
ban lies and hardly any bee stings. Should we conclude that Israel
could not have made a similar discovery? Israel failed to experience
long-term per capita economic growth, not because Israel lived way
back then, but because Israel was covenantally unfaithful.

The Wealth Formula

Moses set forth a conditional promise: population growth and
per capita economic growth in exchange for corporate covenantal
obedience. Had Israelites conformed to the terms of the covenant,
Israel would have experienced the same kind of compound growth
that the West has enjoyed since the mid-eighteenth century.
Wealth is so widespread today that we fail to recognize the mag-
nitude of what the West has experienced over the last two centuries.
 The Wealth of Nations 141

The economic condition of the average Englishman in 1750 was far

closer to the economic condition of the average Israelite in Joshua’s
day than it was to the average Westerner today. Travel was just
about as slow. The cost of travel was just about as high. Metallurgy
was superior, but medicine probably was not. The physical pain of
life’s disasters was no diferent. A ire could wipe out a family’s
wealth just as completely in 1750 A.D. as in 1400 B.C. Mortality
rates for children were high in England. We do not know what they
were in Israel. Communications were much better in England be-
cause of the printing press, but widespread illiteracy made this a
beneit mainly for the elite. For the wealthy and well educated, life
was substantially advanced beyond Joshua’s day – more sophisti-
cated toys – but for the average farmer, it was not much diferent.
For the average English coal miner, it was worse. On the whole, the
typical Israelite would have recognized the life style of England in
1750 as being marginally more productive than Israel’s, but proba-
bly not worth putting up with the English climate (and surely not
with English cooking).
Had he visited any modern industrial nation, he would have
recognized this world as beyond the dreams of kings. Ours is a
radically diferent world economically from 1750. The diference
is not in raw materials. Those have not changed. The “limits to
growth” doom-sayers might even argue there are fewer resources
today. The diference is in science, technology, and rates of capital
formation. But how did these changes come about? Through
changes in economic organization. The chief diference is in the
power of the institutions of capitalism to draw forth productive ideas
from millions of people and then supply entrepreneurs with the cap-
ital required to transform a handful of these ideas into con-
sumer-satisfying output.11 The diference, in short, is in the division
of labor, just as Adam Smith wrote in 1776. The structure of produc-
tion of the pin factory in chapter 1 of Wealth of Nations has been imi-
tated around the world, and its output had multiplied 500-fold by
the inal decade of the twentieth century. But how could this have
been accomplished? By improving industrial output on average by

11. John Jewkes, David Sawyers, and Richard Stillerman, The Sources of Invention (2nd ed.;
New York: Norton, 1969).
142 DEUTERONOMY

12
a little under three percent per annum since 1776. From about
1870 until the 1990’s, the annual economic growth rate in the
United States was 3.25 percent.13 What is a barely measurable im-
provement in one factory’s production on an annual basis becomes
a world-transforming miracle in a little over two centuries, i.e., the
amount of time from the death of Moses to the beginning of Gid-
eon’s judgeship. Putting it diferently, this would have been from
Moses’ death to the birth of David’s grandfather’s grandfather’s fa-
ther. The West, beginning with Great Britain, found a way to sustain
compound economic growth of somewhat under three percent per
annum despite wars and revolutions. This discovery has changed
the world.
Who is to say that a society that honored the Mosaic law could
not have done the same? Who is to say that compound economic
growth could not have begun 14 centuries before the death of Jesus
Christ rather than 17 centuries after?

Conclusion
Moses delivered to Israel the judicial foundation of long-term
economic growth. Through God’s grace, the nation could adhere to
the Mosaic law. This would have produced the growth in popula-
tion and per capita wealth promised by Moses. But God, in His sov-
ereignty, did not predestine Israel to obey. The growth opportunity
was lost. But this does not mean that the potential for enormous
long-term growth was not available to Israel.
Had Israel continued to grow as fast as the world’s population
has grown since 1776, the illing of the earth would have been com-
pleted millennia ago. But it was not God’s time. The rate of popula-
tion growth will vary until such time as God has determined that
time must end. We will run out of time before we run out of raw ma-
terials, space, and productive new ideas. Time, not nature, is the
crucial limit to growth.

12. Walt W. Rostow estimates the average annual increase of world industrial production as
2.84 percent per year. Rostow, The World Economy: History & Prospect (Austin: University of
Texas, 1978), p. 48. Such a precise igure is spurious. The incomplete documentary evidence
and the dijculty of comparing rates of growth in diferent periods and nations make such
statistics little more than informed guesses. But “less than three percent” seems like a reasonable
guess until someone can prove that this guess is extremely high or extremely low.
13. Milton Friedman, “Getting Back to Real Growth,” Wall Street Journal (Aug. 1, 1995).
 The Wealth of Nations 143

Modern man in his heart fears the idol of history more than he
fears the idol of nature, so he has invented a mythology – uni-
formitarianism – which comforts him by assuring him that mankind
has all the time in the world. “There’s plenty more where that came
from!” Billions of years have passed, we are assured, so billions must
lie ahead. “No inal judgment anytime soon!” Modern man then
pretends to fear nature: the resource limits to growth. He invents
whole philosophies to deal with nature and nature’s limits.14 He
whistles past the graveyard, telling himself that mankind will run
out of resources before we run out of time. He forgets Moses’ words.
It is God who is to be feared, not nature. It is the ixed supply of
time, not the far less ixed supply of raw materials, which threatens
every covenant-breaking man and covenant-breaking mankind as a
whole. Time is the only irreplaceable resource, and it is in short sup-
ply. Nothing points this out to man more efectively than the multi-
plication of man. God’s dominion command (Gen. 1:28; 9:1), when
obeyed, forces men to hear the ticking of the prophetic clock. Either
we must lower the rate of population growth to zero or less, or face
judgment: at the hand of God or the hand of the idol of nature. Cov-
enant-breaking man prefers to deal with the idol of nature, with
whom he believes he can work out a peace treaty on terms satisfying
to man.

14. North, Is the World Running Down?

 15
Law
LAW andINHERITANCE
AND Inheritance
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love
the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in
thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and
shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest
by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou
shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets
between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house,
and on thy gates (Deut. 6:4–9).

This passage begins with what have become the most famous
words of Judaism, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD,”
called the shawmah Israel, or “hear, Israel.” In Hebrew, the word for
“hear” is the word for “obey”: shawmah. The passage then adds what
became some of the most famous words of Jesus: “And thou shalt
love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy might” (v. 5).1 Moses then told the nation that these
words must become central to the nation, with each father teaching
them to his son from morning to night (v. 7). The theocentric focus
of this law is obvious: God as the one and only God.
The phrase “morning to night” indicates the comprehensive au-
thority of biblical law. All day long, the law of God applies to the
afairs of men. Fathers were to spend time with their sons, either in
the ields or in the family business. Sons were to receive knowledge
of the law in the context of proitable labor. The familiar phrase,

1. “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the irst commandment” (Mark 12:30).

144
 Law and Inheritance 145

“learning by doing,” was applicable. It was a system of instruction we

might call “learning while doing.” The law was not some abstract legal
code. It was an integrated system of rules that was supposed to be
taught in the context of daily living. God’s Bible-revealed law was not
to become peripheral in the lives of God’s covenant people. It was to
be central. It was to govern men’s activities throughout the day. It was
to be memorized, discussed, and acted upon by young and old. Fathers
were not to tell their sons, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Their lives were to
become consistent with their words. The sons would hear God’s law
and see their fathers carrying it out. This law mandated a mastery of
the details of biblical law to all those who were covenanted to Him.
All of this has been lost to modern man. Today, formal educa-
tion is not Bible-based, family-based, occupation-based, or personal.
It is humanism-based, State-based, abstract, and bureaucratic. It is
also intensely feminine in the early years.

The Feminization of Early Education

One of the monumental and as yet unsolved problems of mod-
ern society is that women teach boys: either mothers or female
school teachers. The context of teaching is the classroom or home,
not the work place. This means that education for males has moved
away from the father-son apprenticeship model, which was clearly
the Mosaic norm, to the classroom, where education is bureaucratic,
impersonal, and abstract – separated from a father’s discipline and
his occupation. This is also generally true of home schooling. Educa-
tion in the modern world is almost completely feminized until the
high school level.
There are economic factors for this change. Women can be em-
ployed less expensively than men. Their income is normally sup-
plemental to their husbands’ income, or else they are single and can
share the expenses of an apartment with other women. They can
aford to work for less than a man can, especially a married man.
The “school marm” has been a ixture of American education since
at least the mid-nineteenth century. When the knowledge of Latin
ceased to be the criterion for all teaching positions, women began to
replace men as teachers below the college level. College education
was closed to all but a tiny minority, mainly masculine, throughout
the world until the late nineteenth century. In the United States, the
creation of state-funded land-grant universities, beginning with
Federal legislation that set aside Federal land for state-funded agri-
cultural schools (1862), changed this by opening up college to both
146 DEUTERONOMY

sexes. The elective system, which scrapped compulsory Latin and

classical education, as well as compulsory chapel attendance, began
2
at Harvard University in the 1880’s and spread rapidly. This
moved higher education from theology – Latin had for centuries
3
been the international language of theologians – to science and the
liberal arts. This was a worldwide shift in higher education. It re-
placed knowledge of Latin with the college diploma as the basis of
access to teaching and ministerial positions. But college attendance
was still highly restricted until after World War I. The great expan-
sion of State-funded college education came after World War II.
Women gained equal access to higher education, both economi-
cally and legally. Nevertheless, more than any other college major
except possibly home economics, elementary education has been
the choice of women, which is why it has the lowest prestige of any
ield except home economics.
There is another important economic reason for the abandon-
ment of apprenticeship: the extension of division of labor made pos-
sible by modern capital accumulation. Specialization accompanies
capitalization. Fathers today are employees, not owners. They are
not given time by their employers to teach their sons on the job. The
extreme division of labor made possible by modern capitalism
makes it unlikely that a son will follow his father in a family busi-
ness. There is no family business, and the son’s skills are diferent
from his father’s. A father cannot easily teach his sons their lifetime
trade. Men change occupations several times in a career. The re-
structuring of modern corporations due to international competition
is now threatening the lifetime employment practices of earlier gen-
erations, even in patriarchal Japan. So, education has to be per-
formed in a specialized classroom setting, as it has always been for
the very rich and well-placed elite corps of students who have been
trained to staf the bureaucracies in man’s history. But what has
worked well for an educated and privileged elite has not worked
equally well for the mass of students. Beyond basic literacy, the
training appropriate for an elite bureaucracy is diferent from the
training appropriate for students who do not it into a book-oriented
bureaucratic setting. Meanwhile, the impersonalism of a classroom
has replaced the personalism of apprenticeship all over the world.

2. George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to
Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 187–89.
3. Ibid., pp. 37–38.
 Law and Inheritance 147

The feminization of American culture begins in the grammar

school classroom. Socially, it is regarded as “women’s work” to
teach young children. There is a social stigma attached to men who
4
teach young children. Thus, the success indicators of American
education through age 11 or 12 are female standards: sitting quietly
at a desk, good penmanship, neatness, and unquestioned sub-
ordination to authority. Boys who meet these criteria tend to be
regarded by other boys as sissies, i.e., imitation girls: non-athletic,
non-confrontational, and bookish. There is a stigma attached to
“book learning” for little boys. Mark Twain’s character Huckle-
berry Finn is representative. Huck is an outdoorsman, someone
who cannot stand Aunt Polly’s feminine world. His friend Tom
Sawyer is somewhere in between, but it is Huck, not Tom, who in-
carnates the masculine image of mid-nineteenth-century American
youth.
For a century, the Boy Scouts ofered an extra-curricular alter-
native to the feminized classroom, but scouting came midway in a
boy’s life. The Cub Scouts, a later development than the Boy
Scouts, is run by mothers. Male scoutmasters run the Boy Scouts;
boys are eligible when they turn 10½. Scouting has faded in popu-
larity in the late twentieth century, reducing boys’ personal contact
with masculine authority except in the principal’s ojce. Positive
sanctions and most negative sanctions are imposed by women until
children reach high school. In the inal two years of high school,
boys’ academic achievement shoots ahead of girls’ achievement in
math and science, but this comes at age 15 or 16, late in the maturity
5
process.

4. This is why a day care center can be such a proitable family-run business: most men
refuse to do it. This reduces competition. Meanwhile, unmarried women seek out male role
models for their young children.
5. Reasons ofered for this change have been both social and genetic. Social arguments
include these. First, there are more male teachers at the high school level, who regard spirited
intellectual competition as manly. They reward boys’ behavior: more aggressive, questioning.
Second, girls who are equally competitive with boys tend to be regarded as masculine and
perhaps a threat to male egos. Girls who want to be popular with boys tend to be quiet, refuse
to ask questions, and play the feminine role: submissive. They fall behind academically,
especially in math and science. Girls test at 50 points below boys on the Scholastic
Achievement Test in math: 450 vs. 500 out of 800 maximum. Jane Gross, “To Help Girls
Keep Up, Girls-Only Math Classes,” New York Times (Nov. 20, 1993). Problem: the girls do
not test lower than boys in the language arts. Are they more aggressive in language arts
classes? This seems doubtful. Another explanation is genetic: girls think more abstractly than
boys until puberty, when boys begin to catch up and then excel.
148 DEUTERONOMY

In the inal decades of the twentieth century, the gang has re-
placed the family for teenage ghetto youths whose fathers are either
absent or inefectual. The gang is exclusively male, although there
are female gangs that are extensions of male gangs. The gang is
bound by a self-maledictory blood oath and some form of initiation
rite of passage. It becomes the educator for rebellious young men
who have rejected the public school. It is far closer to the appren-
ticeship ideal. It ofers an apprenticeship in crime.

The Myth of Religious Neutrality

The move from the personalism of apprenticeship to the
impersonalism of the classroom is economics-driven: a group of
parents shares the cost of a tutor. There is a loss of personalism.
There is a move from practical wisdom to instruction in abstract ma-
terial and rote memorization. This is a continuing problem for mod-
ern education, as it has always been in bureaucratic or priestly
education. The medical profession in the twentieth century has
adopted internship as a way to imitate apprenticeship: on-the-job
training after graduation from medical school.
The decline of apprenticeship has paralleled the rise of secular
education: results-based rather than ethics-based. The sellers of ed-
ucational services have always sought access to a wider market of
potential buyers by establishing common-ground, religiously neu-
tral education. This has been going on since the earliest days of uni-
versity education in the twelfth century: the rise of scholasticism
and also the revival of Roman law at the University of Bologna.6
Specialized instruction in technological ields also lends itself to the
myth of neutrality. Graduate school education in the United States,
except for theological seminaries, has been secular from its origins
in the inal quarter of the nineteenth century.7
The advent of Unitarian, state-funded education in nineteenth-
century America separated religious confession from education.
Progressive education has always been messianic: the substitution

6. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 123–31.
7. Marsden, Soul of the American University, ch. 9.
 Law and Inheritance 149

8
of the government school for God as the agent of redemption. It
has been at war with the educational criteria of Deuteronomy 6.

Solutions
Parents have the legal option of delegating authority to other
teachers. The classic biblical example of this is God’s delegation of
authority over His son to earthly parents. The Old Covenant exam-
ple is Hannah’s vow to delegate Samuel’s upbringing to Eli the
priest (I Sam. 1). The parent must be sure that the teacher will be
equally faithful in teaching the law to the child. A parent can send
his child to live with a man who will apprentice the child. Also, a
parent can hire a tutor, which is a traditional exception to direct par-
ent-child instruction. This is an expensive solution. Both approaches
retain the personalism of parent-child instruction.
There are those who reject the biblical right of the parent to
delegate the teaching function, but all such objections end at the
time that the child is eligible for college. At age 18, the critics of
earlier delegated education insist that the parent now possesses
this right of delegation. The child is said to have become account-
able, and the parent therefore becomes free from the teaching ob-
ligation when the child graduates from high school. Yet the parent
still pays the child’s bills. In the Mosaic covenant, reaching age 20
authorized a man to join God’s holy army (Ex. 30:14).9
Parents are required by God’s law to educate their children,
morning to evening. But because of the division of labor, some
parents are better teachers than others. As specialization increases,
the teaching skills of some parents become more evident. Parents
will trade of: one parent comes in and teaches a group of students
math and science; another teaches music; another teaches a foreign
language. To deny the legitimacy of joint teaching is to assert the

8. R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education: Studies in the History of the
Philosophy of Education (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1963).
9. High school graduation, especially the prom, serves unojcially as a similar twentieth-
century rite of passage in the United States. The most persuasive study of this topic is Jean
Shepherd’s hilarious short story, “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories,” in the book
with the same title (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976).
150 DEUTERONOMY

ridiculous: the equal ability of all people in every ield. The asser-
10

tion that a mother may not lawfully teach any children but her own
is an assertion that: 1) all mothers are equally gifted teachers; or 2)
any diferences in teaching skills are irrelevant or insigniicant in the
outcome of education; or 3) children should be deprived of the spe-
cialized skills of several teachers until after high school. All three
arguments are doomed. Parental concern for their children’s educa-
tion, as well as widespread parental exhaustion and defeat in the
face of chemistry, physics, and calculus, will eventually overcome
the arguments of the “parents-only” purists. Only if some imper-
sonal high school curriculum appears in which the children teach
themselves, either by computer or by private study, can the par-
ents-only argument become remotely plausible. But even in such a
case, the parent must delegate instructional responsibilities to the
author of the software or the books. We are back to square one: par-
ents are commanded to teach their children by means of biblical
law. Either this responsibility may be delegated or else all pro-
grammed education from outside the family must cease.
Parental sovereignty over education must be restored. The fun-
damental starting point in the reconstruction of education is therefore
the removal of all State funding and regulations. This includes tax-
funded educational vouchers.11 Economic sovereignty must match le-
gal sovereignty. He who pays the piper should call the tune.

The Covenant Model

The entire passage, Deuteronomy 6:4–15, constitutes a single
covenantal command. The structure of this passage parallels the
biblical covenant model: all ive points. Point one, transcendence/
presence, is summarized by the opening: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD

10. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diferences of
administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same
God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to proit
withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of
knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of
healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to
another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation
of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man
severally as he will” (I Cor. 12:4–11).
11. Gary North, “Educational Vouchers: The Double Tax,” The Freeman (May 1976);
North, “Vouchers: Politically Correct Money,” ibid. (June 1995).
 Law and Inheritance 151

our God is one LORD.” This God is the Creator God of the patri-
archs. He is not some local deity. He speaks with a uniied voice. He
speaks to men clearly in the midst of history.
Point two, hierarchy/authority, is seen in the command to love
Him, and not just love Him, but love Him with everything man has
at his disposal: heart, soul, and strength. Men must place their lives
at God’s disposal, doing in love whatever He commands.
Point three, ethics/boundaries, is found in the command to
place God’s words or commandments at the center of our lives.
Men must teach these laws to their children down through the gen-
erations. Biblical law is to become the framework of interpretation
of every person’s life, governing what he does and says from morn-
ing to night. Even the boundaries of a man’s house were supposed
to be marked by the presence of the written law.
Point four, oath/sanctions, appears in the next section of the
passage. God promises to deliver the wealth of the Canaanites into
the hands of the Israelites. For the Canaanites, this will constitute
negative sanctions. For Israel, it will constitute positive sanctions.

And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into
the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Ja-
cob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And
houses full of all good things, which thou illedst not, and wells digged,
which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst
not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget
the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the
house of bondage (vv. 10–12).

The Israelites were told to fear God because of this, and to swear
their oaths by His name: “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and
serve him, and shalt swear by his name” (v. 13).
Point ive, succession/inheritance, is found in the covenantal
threat of disinheritance: “Ye shall not go after other gods, of the
gods of the people which are round about you; (For the LORD thy
God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God
be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from of the face of the
earth” (vv. 14–15).
This passage later became the legal basis for the covenant law-
suits brought by the prophets against Israel. Here, in one brief pas-
sage, we ind the outline of God’s covenantal dealings with Israel
until the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70. As a geographically based
152 DEUTERONOMY

nation, Israel was removed twice from the land: at the captivity and
at the diaspora under Rome. They were scattered across the face of
the earth. But as a people, they were not destroyed from the face of
the earth. After their return from the exile, Jews did not again pur-
sue the gods around them. After the diaspora under Rome, they re-
mained an identiiable people.
The problem today is the growing sophistication of covenant-
breakers. The gods of Canaan did not reappear in history. Other
gods did. They have ofered power and inluence – positive sanc-
tions – to those who are willing to worship them. Such worship has
become progressively more intellectual and moral than liturgical,
more a matter of replacing biblical laws with other laws. Rather
than teaching one’s sons the law of God, men have turned over their
sons to be trained by certiied educators who are far more familiar
with rhetoric than law.

Teaching the Next Generation

The passage following this one instructs covenant-keepers to in-
struct their children in the law of God. Parents are warned that chil-
dren will ask questions about the meaning of God’s law. “And when
thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimo-
nies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD our God
hath commanded you?” (Deut. 6:20). We might expect the required
answer to be related to the person of God, holiness of God, or some
other lofty speculation. Not so. The answer is to be tied to the corpo-
rate blessings of God in history.

Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in
Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand: And the
LORD shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pha-
raoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes: And he brought us out
from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware
unto our fathers. And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to
fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us
alive, as it is at this day. And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to
do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath com-
manded us (vv. 21–25).

God had delivered them from bondage in Egypt. Then He had

imposed negative sanctions on Pharaoh and his household. Next,
 Law and Inheritance 153

He had brought them into the Promised Land. This was the ful-
illment of a promise to the patriarchs. God commanded Israel to
obey Him, “for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as
it is at this day.” That is, God has established a cause-and-efect rela-
tionship in history between covenant-keeping and corporate bless-
ings. The basis of Israel’s preservation of its inheritance in the land
was covenantal obedience to the speciic terms of God’s revealed
law. The children of Israelites were to be instructed in two things:
the history of Israel and the law of God. They were to be told that
these two courses of study are covenantally related. The basis of the
relationship between history and law is point four of the biblical
covenant model: sanctions.
A mark of rebellion against God’s covenant is the denial of this
ixed relationship. To study history apart from God’s law is to lay the
foundation for national disinheritance. If the events of history have
nothing predictable to do with God’s law, then history becomes the
product of forces other than God and His covenant. God’s law then
becomes, at best, a guide for personal ethics, a guide that cannot
deinitively be shown to advance the careers of those who adhere to it.
It is basic to modern Christian theology to deny that such a cor-
porate cause-and-efect relationship exists in New Testament times.
If it did exist, then Christians would be compelled to preach, teach,
and obey biblical law if they want to prosper. This thought is anath-
ema to modern theologians, so they deny that success in history has
anything to do with God’s law as revealed in the Bible, especially
the Old Testament. Calvinist theologian Meredith G. Kline writes
that ethical cause and efect in history are, humanly speaking, essen-
tially random. “And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must
run its course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning
principles of common grace and common curse, prosperity and ad-
versity being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable be-
cause of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses
them in mysterious ways.”12
If they had ever heard about it, Kline’s position would be too much
for most Christians. You have to be trained for years as a professional
theologian in order to believe anything as ethically antinomian and as

12. Meredith G. Kline, “Comments on an Old-New Error,” Westminster Theological Journal,

XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
154 DEUTERONOMY

culturally futile as Kline’s position. Christians ind it dijcult to teach

their children that obedience to God produces random results in
history, whether corporately or personally. So, they search for com-
mon-ground ethical principles of individual action, hopefully
shared by all honest men, that will reintroduce ethics into the dis-
cussion of historical cause and efect, but without any invocation of
the Bible and God’s predictable sanctions, which would reintroduce
the embarrassing issue of biblical law. They are apt to cite Benjamin
Franklin’s famous eighteenth-century motto in Poor Richard’s
Almanack, “Honesty is the best policy.” This is a statement of per-
sonal faith rather than a developed social theory. This declaration is
devoid of biblical covenantal content because: 1) the deinition of
honesty is not tied to the Bible; 2) the deinition of “best” is not tied
to the Bible; and 3) there is no way to demonstrate a link between
the two.
There is a practical problem with Franklin’s motto. With no ex-
plicit biblical laws to adhere to, no God-invoked historical sanctions
to undergird it, and no common deinition of “best policy,” this
common-ground humanist faith can lead to a morally questionable
career such as Franklin’s. He hired men to serve under him who he
knew were British spies, most notably Edward Bancroft, during his
term of service as an ambassador to France during the American
Revolution. He refused to tighten security in the Paris ojce, despite
continual warnings to do so. He met secretly with Paul Wentworth,
the head of Britain’s agents in France. He was known to the British
secret service as “72” and “our leading man.” Franklin’s biographer
Cecil Currey concluded: “Benjamin Franklin wanted to win the Amer-
ican Revolution. No matter who lost – the United States, France, Eng-
land – Benjamin Franklin wanted to win. In some ways he did. His
honor remained intact. He gained new renown. He was rewarded
by a grateful nation with additional positions of public responsibil-
ity. His secrets generally remained hidden.”13 In Franklin’s case, dis-
honesty was the best policy during his career in France. If America
lost, he would survive as a covert friend of Britain; if America won,
nobody would believe his duplicity other than his political enemy
John Adams and his fellow ambassador in Paris, Arthur Lee, both of

13. Cecil V. Currey, “The Franklin Legend,” Journal of Christian Reconstruction, III (Summer
1976), p. 143.
 Law and Inheritance 155

whom suspected him. He got away with it. (Two professional histo-
rians have written on Franklin’s status as a possible double agent
and ally of British spies. One did so anonymously and did not go
14
into teaching; the other saw his book consigned to what he later
called “historical limbo.”15)
The problem is, those who say they are God’s chosen people
have been hesitant or openly resistant to teaching their children that
God commands obedience and imposes sanctions in history in
terms of this obedience. They have tried to ind alternatives to such
a revelationally grounded concept of historical cause and efect.
They have sought broader ethical principles that have been sanc-
tioned by covenant-breakers. In short, they have substituted new
laws for old and new sanctions for old, which ultimately implies new
gods for old.

New Gods for Old

Consider post-exilic Israel. The experience of the exile broke
Israel’s habit of worshipping the idols of the land of Canaan. But the
people continued to substitute new gods for old. In the name of the
God of the Bible, they worshipped more subtle gods than those rep-
resented by physical idols. Greek philosophy and literature became a
snare for a minority of well-connected Jews during the three centuries
before the birth of Jesus. This was Judaic Hellenism. But the Jews’
commitment to cosmopolitan Hellenism did not overcome their
commitment to a proto-Talmudic law.
The idols of ancient paganism were deaf, dumb, and blind
(II Ki. 19:17–18; Dan. 5:23). They judicially represented demonic
forces whose ofer of power and wealth was limited to geographical
regions. They were not universal gods. To sustain an empire, a ruler
had to destroy the authority of local gods by destroying their tem-
ples and their cities’ walls or by removing the people from their
walled city-states. The smashing of a city’s walls represented the

14. The author of 1789, distributed by the John Birch Society. He later worked on the staf
of a famous conservative U.S. Senator.
15. Currey, “Franklin Legend,” p. 150. See also Currey, Code Number 72: Ben Franklin:
Patriot or Spy? (Englewood Clifs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972). His previous book on
Franklin was Road to Revolution: Benjamin Franklin in England, 1765–1775 (Garden City, New
York: Anchor, 1968). The earlier book was favorably received by historians. It was not
controversial. It was not memorable. It was safe.
156 DEUTERONOMY

destruction of its gods, as the fall of Jericho indicated. Jericho was

Israel’s model: total destruction. But this was a one-time event. For
the inheritance to survive, Israel could not repeat this act of total
devastation. Instead, Israel was commanded to commit genocide or
remove from the nation all of the inhabitants of Canaan’s cities.
This was why God allowed Israel to leave the cities’ walls intact: the
removal of the former residents was sujcient. But this complete re-
moval was also covenantally necessary: should any of them re-
main in the land, they would lead the Israelites into false worship
(Deut. 7:1–5).
After the exile, the Jews faced a new problem: syncretism. The
religion of the empires was a religion of cooperating gods. The heart
of this religion was politics. The political order replaced the priestly
order. The various priesthoods became functionaries of the State.
Their task was to secure the favor of all of the gods of the conquered
cities. Today, we call this religion pluralism. While the modern
world’s version of syncretism is not openly idolatrous, the result is
the same: the substitution of political salvation in history for the rule
of local gods.16

Covenant-Keeping and Worldly Success

Deuteronomy 4 identiies covenantal faithfulness as the basis of
continued dominion in the Promised Land. The sanction of removal
from the land is clearly a negative sanction, a divine punishment.
The implication is that covenantal faithfulness brings positive sanc-
tions: economic success. We read in Deuteronomy 8 that compound
economic growth is a public testimony to the cause-and-efect rela-
tionship between man’s covenantal faithfulness and God’s positive
sanctions in history. “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God:
for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may estab-
lish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day”
(Deut. 8:18).
The problem is that the positive sanctions can lead to
covenantal rebellion: “And thou say in thine heart, My power and
the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17).
The blessing of God can become the basis of covenant-breaking

16. See Appendix C, below: “Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire.”

 Law and Inheritance 157

man’s belief in the autonomy of man. The blessing becomes a snare.

The gods of modernism are the gods of man’s autonomy. They are
the product of mankind’s success. The gods of modernism are secu-
larized versions of covenantal truths. Does number really rule the
world? No, but God in His wisdom created a world in which some
of the numerical inter-relationships discoverable through man’s
mind are found to govern some of the operations of nature, thereby
making science possible. Is compound economic growth really pos-
sible? Yes, for a time, when men honor God’s law, especially God’s
laws restricting the claims of the State on the wealth of men (I Sam.
8:15, 17). But time will run out – something that compound growth
in a inite world points to. Is science a tool of dominion? Yes, but not
when scientists adopt theories of origin and providence that place
impersonal randomness and unbreakable law on the dialectical
throne of an autonomous universe.
The legitimate goal of success in history is to be attained by the
means of grace. The covenantal faithfulness of God’s people leads
to success. Success can be sustained, however, only by continuing
covenantal faithfulness. When men believe they have discovered
the secret of compound growth apart from the law of God, they
have said in their heart that the power of man’s mind in guiding his
hand is the source of our wealth. This confession of faith is the es-
sence of modernism. It is the mark of apostasy. A world built in
terms of such a confession cannot be sustained long term.

Conclusion
The command to worship God by obeying His law was tied to
sanctions: positive (inheritance) and negative (disinheritance). The
ultimate threat to the Israelites was that God would remove them
from the land if they worshipped the gods of Canaan. This was a
land-based command. The gods of Canaan were the great threat to
them: land-based gods. If the Israelites did not have the moral
strength to separate themselves spiritually and ritually from the
gods of the land, God would separate them from both the land and
its gods.
The sanctions related speciically to the inheritance and disin-
heritance of the land of promise. This threat was fulilled twice: at
the exile and after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The question
arises: Were the sanctions more general than this? That is, was the
command to worship God a cross-boundary law and therefore valid
158 DEUTERONOMY

in the New Covenant? Yes, because the God of Old Covenant Israel
is a universal God: the one and only true God. No other god may
safely be worshipped.
When God ordered Israel to hear, He simultaneously ordered
Israel to obey. The Christian community has ceased to hear or
obey, except highly selectively. The churches’ self-conscious rejec-
tion of God’s Bible-revealed law, its mandated sanctions, and Chris-
tians’ kingdom inheritance in history has undermined their assertion
of God’s absolute sovereignty (partial, says the Arminian) over his-
tory and the church’s authority in history. A God who is not com-
pletely sovereign over history is not the Creator God of the Bible
who providentially ordains everything that comes to pass. He does
not issue announcements to pagan rulers as God did to King Cyrus:

Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have
holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to
open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; I will
go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces
the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: And I will give thee
the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou
mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of
Israel. For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even
called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not
known me. I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside
me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know
from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I
am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I
make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things (Isa. 45:1–7).

A partially sovereign god cannot legitimately assert his authority

in history. No wonder, then, that modern Christians are convinced
that their partially sovereign God has not issued unique laws as tools
of dominion, nor has He ofered a world-conquering vision to His
followers. A God who does not impose predictable corporate sanc-
tions in history is in no position to guarantee his followers a visible
kingdom in history as a reward for obeying His laws.
 16
GenocideAND
GENOCIDE and INHERITANCE
Inheritance
When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites,
and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the
Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and
mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before
thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no
covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make
marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his
daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son
from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the
LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye
deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their
images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with
ire (Deut. 7:1–5).

The theocentric focus of this law is the inal judgment, when God
will cut of for all eternity all those who oppose Him. This focus was
not clear to Israelites, for Israel had no concept of the inal judgment,
which is a New Testament doctrine. The inal judgment is the ulti-
mate example of inheritance and disinheritance. The bodily resurrec-
tion to eternal life and the bodily resurrection to eternal death (Rev.
20:14–15) are the models of earthly inheritance and disinheritance.
This law mandated genocide. Theologically, it relected the inal
judgment: God’s absolute, eternal disinheritance of covenant-
breakers. What God told Israel do to the Canaanites is representative
of what He will do in eternity to those who refuse to covenant with
Him in history. There will be no post-resurrection covenants. De-
struction will be total: worse than annihilation – eternal damnation.

159
160 DEUTERONOMY

Adam’s broken covenant will remain broken for all eternity. This was
the theological foundation of genocide under the Old Covenant.
Israel’s inheritance of Canaan was to be complete. Therefore, so
was the Canaanites’ disinheritance. The existing inhabitants of the
land were to be driven out of the land or annihilated, preferably the
latter. The Israelites were warned by God not to make a covenant of
any kind with them. This included the marriage covenant, but it also
included ecclesiastical and civil covenants. The separation of God
from the idols of Canaan was to be total. This separation was to be
enforced by the sword.
God forbade them to show any mercy to the inhabitants. Geno-
cide had to include infants and children. We know this because of
God’s requirements regarding Israel’s subsequent dealings with the
Amalekites. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, in-
fant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (I Sam. 15:3). This
was repayment for an event that had taken place four and a half cen-
turies earlier: the refusal of Amalek to allow Israel to pass through
their land at the time of the exodus. This established a condition of
permanent warfare between Israel and Amalek. “For he said, Be-
cause the LORD hath sworn that the LORD will have war with Amalek
from generation to generation” (Ex. 17:16). This was reajrmed just
before the conquest: “Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the
way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he met thee by
the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble
behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not
God. Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee
rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt
blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt
not forget it” (Deut. 25:17–19). Samuel reminded Saul just before
the inal battle, over four centuries later: “Thus saith the LORD of
hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait
for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt” (I Sam. 15:2).
Saul lost his kingship for his refusal to destroy the animals and the
king of the Amalekites (I Sam. 15:27–28). God has a long memory
when it comes to imposing negative sanctions.
Total warfare against a city had already taken place outside Canaan:
at Hormah, where the Israelites destroyed Arad’s kingdom (Num. 21:3).
It would happen one time inside the land: at Jericho. It was also to
 Genocide and Inheritance 161

have taken place under Saul. In all three cases, there were to be no
spoils of war; everything was to be destroyed. But with respect to
capital rather than people, Canaan was not to be totally destroyed.
Israel would lawfully claim the wealth of Canaan as an inheritance.

Idol Speculation
Modern scholarship assumes that men’s faith in God is based on
deep-rooted psychological needs (which modern scholars have
failed to overcome through the techniques of modern rationalism),
tradition (which has been uprooted by modern society), and fear of
the unknown (which has been superseded by fear of the known),
rather than on the actual existence of a supernatural realm that
afects cause and efect in history. The god of modern man is the
noumenal god of Kant: dwelling impersonally beyond history in a
realm of mystery that is related to history only through the autono-
mous ethical consciousness of individual men.1 Scholars assume
that primitive men, past and present, have been unable to recognize
the random character of many seemingly coordinated yet improba-
ble events in history. Primitives have attributed these improbable
events to a supernatural being’s active intervention in history.
The scholars have misunderstood both the events and the prim-
itives. The ancients understood full well the distinction between a
random, improbable series of events and supernatural intervention
into nature. For example, after each of the cities of Philistia was
struck by a plague whenever the Ark of the Covenant was brought
inside its boundaries, the priests advised the rulers to perform an
empirical test. “Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch
kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart,
and bring their calves home from them: And take the ark of the
LORD, and lay it upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which ye re-
turn him for a trespass ofering, in a cofer by the side thereof; and
send it away, that it may go. And see, if it goeth up by the way of his
own coast to Beth-shemesh, then he hath done us this great evil: but if
not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote us; it was a
chance that happened to us” (I Sam. 6:7–9). It had not been chance,
they soon learned: the oxen took the cart and the Ark back to Israel.

1. Richard Kroner, Kant’s Weltanschauung (University of Chicago Press, [1914] 1956).

162 DEUTERONOMY

So, too, did Solomon understand the diference between a world

governed by a combination of impersonal chance and impersonal
fate vs. a world governed by a sovereign God. Solomon in his pain
of recognition admitted what modern man prefers to suppress: be-
lief in a world governed entirely by impersonal chance or imper-
sonal fate or an impersonal mixture of the two leads to the madness
of meaninglessness.

The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness:
and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. Then
said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me;
and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is
vanity (Eccl. 2:14–15).

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one
thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all
one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is
vanity (Eccl. 3:19).

All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to
the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that
sacriiceth, and to him that sacriiceth not: as is the good, so is the sinner;
and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. This is an evil among all
things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also
the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart
while they live, and after that they go to the dead (Eccl. 9:2–3).

Solomon, speculating as a philosopher, looked at death and saw

it as the great leveling agent. He argued that if temporal life is all
there is, then nothing has meaning, for one life cannot be distin-
guished from another, one species from another. To divinize the
temporal by denying the supernatural is to surrender all meaning to
death: the death of meaning.
The ancients were far wiser than modern man, for they tried
to structure their lives in terms of a ritually responsive supernatu-
ral realm rather than an inherently incomprehensible impersonal
realm.2 They believed that local gods governed their lives rather

2. Kant’s noumenal realm is incomprehensible to the mind of man, yet it is held in

dialectical tension with the partially knowable phenomenal realm. Man’s mind supposedly
holds the two realms together.
 Genocide and Inheritance 163

3
than distant butterlies. They did not deny what their eyes occa-
sionally showed them, namely, that the supernatural can directly
inluence the course of history. They understood that priestly magic
was not always trickery.
This understanding was the basis of their worship of local dei-
ties. Idols served as links in history between demons and men. The
Bible speaks of idols as blind and deaf, but it does not speak this way
of demons. It makes the point that an idol is not a god. The idol
merely represents sources of supernatural power that men invoke
by covenant oath and correct ritual procedure. Israel was warned
not to establish covenants with the Canaanites, for the Canaanites
invoked demons through their idols. God told Israel to destroy the
idols of Canaan, not because idols can see and hear but because
they represent covenantal links between men and the occult realm
of the demonic.
Because there are demons who act in history, they persuade
men to believe that by invoking this or that deity, men can manipu-
late the cosmos. “As above, so below” is magic’s statement of faith.
The usual perception of the one who believes in magic is that proce-
durally precise rituals performed here below can invoke power
from on high to afect things here below. This is correct only insofar
as Satan is the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2). In fact, magic
invokes power from below.4 Men can manipulate local things, such
as a voodoo doll, in order to produce speciic efects at a distance.
This is neither mind over matter (“telekenesis”) nor words over mat-
ter. It is the invocation of demonic beings that have been given

3. The “butterly efect” is modern science’s latest phrase to describe the efects of the
unknown. A butterly’s luttering wings can supposedly set up wind patterns that produce a
hurricane a continent away. Men probably do not believe this about literal butterlies and
literal hurricanes, but they do believe that unnoticed, seemingly random, and incalculably
undetectable causes produce measurable results. The irst kind of event is too small for man to
control; the second may be much too large to control. Man is trapped in a cosmic maelstrom
not of his own or anyone else’s making. The phrase “butterly efect” was popularized in
James Gleik’s best-selling book, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987). For a
cogent rebuttal, see Stanley L. Jaki, The Only Chaos and Other Essays (Lanham, Maryland:
University Press of America, 1990). Jaki is a Roman Catholic priest, physicist, and historian of
science. Gleik is a New York Times reporter. Gleik is far better known than Jaki. (And, because
of his development and sale of the New York City local Internet service, the Pipeline, far
richer.)
4. R. J. Rushdoony, “Power from Below,” Journal of Christian Reconstruction, I (Winter,
1974).
164 DEUTERONOMY

limited powers in history, such as the efects produced by Satan in

his testing of Job.
The ancients knew that these powers can be invoked and ma-
nipulated by men for the ends of men. Idols of the ancient city rep-
resented demons who participated in the covenantal life of the
family, clan, and city. This is why Paul warned that to participate in
cultic feasts is to participate in devil worship: “What say I then? that
the idol is any thing, or that which is ofered in sacriice to idols is
any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacriice,
they sacriice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye
should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the
Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s ta-
ble, and of the table of devils” (I Cor. 10:19–21). This clear warning
regarding covenantal meals is in the chapter preceding his descrip-
tion of the church’s covenantal meal.
Modern rationalists interpret the Bible so as to remove all traces
of supernaturalism. They view the realm of the demonic as nonexis-
tent, as impotent in history as carved idols or as impotent as God.
They view the demonic as a self-serving invention of priestly magi-
cians. Even a few Christians assume this: speciically, certain sleight-
of-hand artists known today as magicians. They are not magicians;
they are illusionists. Magic uses ritual to link supernatural forces to
history: “as above, so below.” But modern magicians view the su-
pernatural as an illusion and their illusions as real.5 I exchanged a
long series of detailed letters with one such Christian illusionist who
insisted that Satan and his demons have never had any supernatural
power in history. This man denied that the magicians of Egypt pos-
sessed supernatural powers, denied that the sticks they threw down
actually turned into snakes, despite the clear statement of the text of
the Bible that this took place (Ex. 7:12). No, he insisted, they merely
used trickery to make it look as though they had conjured up snakes.
On this point, he insisted, the Bible cannot possibly mean what it
speciically says. I pointed out to him that this is the humanist’s her-
meneutics: interpreting the Bible in terms of modern man’s
anti-supernatural presuppositions, dismissing the God of the Bible
along with the priests of Egypt. He did not change his mind. He

5. The most prominent illusionist denier of the supernatural is known professionally as the
Amazing Randi.
 Genocide and Inheritance 165

viewed the priests of Egypt simply as skilled tricksters, as he is. That

is, he chooses to believe that he and his humanist peers are every bit
as clever as they were.
Modern man wants it both ways: to be as clever as the ancients
but far wiser. Modern man may be as clever; he is surely less wise.
The priests of Egypt and Phoenicia could distinguish among
chance, demons, and God. They could devise accurate tests to eval-
uate which was the dominant factor in particular situations: “Then
the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the inger of God: and Pha-
raoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as the
LORD had said” (Ex. 8:19). Modern man is more like Pharaoh than
his magicians. As Jaki says, that which parades as modern scientiic
cosmology does not include the fear of God, which is the beginning
of all wisdom.6

Localism or Cosmos
What holds the world together? The New Testament makes it
clear: He who was born of God and woman does, “In whom we
have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:
Who is the image of the invisible God, the irstborn of every crea-
ture: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that
are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or do-
minions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him,
and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things con-
sist” (Col. 1:14–17). The unity of the cosmos is secured by the sovereignty of
God. Behind the seemingly ininite and therefore humanly immea-
surable particulars of history and nature is cosmic personalism: a
Creator-Sustainer God who has counted the hairs of every head
(Matt. 10:30), or as modern man would put it, the subatomic particles
of every galaxy. Butterlies and hurricanes are all part of God’s decree.
Ancient religion did not emphasize the coherence of the cos-
mos, for the primary categories of ancient religion were pantheistic
and animistic. The gods of Canaan were regarded by the inhabit-
ants as local gods. They were cultic gods in the sense of familistic,
clan-based, and civic. This was the common theological outlook of

6. Jaki, The Only Chaos, p. 7.

166 DEUTERONOMY

7
the ancient world, including Greece and Rome. The boundaries of
a city marked the limits of a local god’s sovereignty. Beyond those
boundaries he could extend his reign only through military tri-
umphs by members of his cult. When Ben-hadad’s advisors ex-
plained the defeat of Syria by Israel, they invoked the localism of
Israel’s God (I Ki. 20:28). This public theological assessment led to
the destruction of Syria’s army by Ahab’s troops. Evil as Ahab was,
God gave him the victory rather than to allow Ben-hadad imagine
that the God of Israel was some local Near Eastern deity whose sov-
ereignty was threatened by the military forces of Syria. God con-
trolled events outside the geographical boundaries of Israel. The
kings of the earth were required to acknowledge this. Adam had
known and was required to acknowledge this verbally and ritually;
so are the rest of us.
The idols of Canaan were representational. They mediated
oath-bound covenants. This was why Israel was required to destroy
the idols, groves, and other representations of demonic authority.
The nations of Canaan were in covenantal subjection to cove-
nant-breaking supernatural beings represented by idols. These be-
ings promised power to men and delivered on the promise enough
of the time to keep the power-seekers in covenantal bondage. God
did not require the death of every man, woman, and child in Canaan
merely because a handful of professional illusionists had used their
skills to establish local priesthoods. Had the cults of Canaan been, cos-
mically speaking, nothing more than income-producing enterprises
of prestidigitators who today would be entertaining crowds in Las
Vegas gambling casinos, God would not have mandated genocide.
God promised to give Israel victory over the inhabitants of the
land. This meant that every human covenantal agent of demonic
forces had to die, so that there would be no further invocation of lo-
cal demons. The demons of the ancient city operated inside geo-
graphical boundaries imposed by God. No demon could exercise
its powers at will across the face of the earth. Thus, when a city fell to
an invader, the participants on both sides recognized that the gods
of the victorious city had participated in the defeat of the gods of the

7. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955).
 Genocide and Inheritance 167

defeated city. Jesus made it clear that civil war is characteristic of

Satan’s kingdom.

Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and
dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake
and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of
David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast
out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. And Jesus knew their
thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is
brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall
not stand: And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how
shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by
whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges.
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is
come unto you (Matt. 12:22–28).

Annihilation: Sanctions Applied

Israel’s defeat of the cities of Canaan was to relect God’s defeat
of the demons that were worshipped in those cities. To this extent,
the magical formula, “as above, so below,” was correct.8 What men
would see on earth would relect the warfare in heavenly places.
This is why God required total annihilation. There would hence-
forth be no reasonable doubt: the God of Israel is sovereign. But
Israel always doubted. This is why Israel failed to drive out or de-
stroy all of the inhabitants. Israel’s doubt regarding the trustworthi-
ness of God’s promise of total victory, as manifested by Israel’s
comprehensive negative military sanctions in Canaan, laid the
foundation of Israel’s subsequent bouts with idolatry.
The military sanctions were comprehensive, but they were not
total. The army of Israel drove out most of the land’s inhabitants,
but it did not drive out all of them (Josh. 15:63; cf. 17:12–13). This
failure gave a foothold to the few remaining Canaanites to lure the
Israelites into idol worship. The idols of Canaan represented de-
mons whose power had not been totally extinguished by God because
Israel had failed to destroy every trace of their places of covenant re-
newal and the people who were under these pre-invasion cove-
nants. Just before his death, Joshua announced: “Know for a certainty

8. The request in the Lord’s Prayer, “in earth, as it is in heaven,” is a call for ethical
correspondence, not metaphysical. It is preceded by “thy will be done” (Matt. 6:10).
168 DEUTERONOMY

that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations
from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and
scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from of
this good land which the LORD your God hath given you” (Josh. 23:13).
Thorns in your eyes: here was a powerful image to warn men of the
efects of idolatry.
The Israelites had to move from word to deed. God’s word
speciied total annihilation. This was the mandatory deed. By re-
moving the idols and the inhabitants, Israel would inherit every-
thing worth inheriting.

Human Capital and Technology

The division of labor is basic to wealth. To increase the division of
labor, men save – restrict their present consumption – in order to pro-
duce capital goods that they expect will produce consumer goods and
services in the future. Thrift inances the increase of goods and services.
In recent decades, it has become more clear to economists that
human capital is a very valuable resource.9 Genocide is the antithe-
sis of the division of labor: the systematic destruction of highly de-
veloped human capital. While Israel was promised the vineyards
and houses of their enemies, there was no doubt that the skills used
to produce such wealth would perish with the destruction of the in-
habitants. Nevertheless, God required annihilation. This would re-
duce the division of labor compared to what it could have been
through local trade.
Why did God require this? What cost-beneit analysis informed
God that it was better for Israel to reduce the division of labor by de-
stroying the inhabitants of the land? We can only guess, but our
guesses can be informed guesses.
The essence of magic is the principle of something for nothing,
or at least something costly for something seemingly inexpensive.
Light a few candles, recite some incantations, paint a design on
some convenient surface, and presto: you get what you want. There
is no requirement that the participants plan and save for the future,
or select the proper mix of land, labor, and capital. There is no
doubt that the Canaanites had understood conventional economic

9. Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1981).
 Genocide and Inheritance 169

planning, which is why they left a legacy to Israel. But undergirding

their concept of scientiic cause and efect was their reliance on su-
pernatural forces that promised something for practically nothing.
The demons required covenantal subordination. Their covenants
elevated magical formulas and rituals above rational planning and
prayer. The productivity of economic planning was assumed by
Canaanites to require rituals such as human sacriice and temple
prostitution. Power from below was understood as necessary for
power in history. It was this invocation of magical power through
debauchery and murder that God would not tolerate.
Rational planning there was in Canaan. The physical capital left
by the inhabitants proved this. But technology is not neutral. Tech-
nology is applied cosmology. It is governed by assumptions regard-
ing cosmology: cause and efect. These assumptions govern the
development and application of technology. The assumptions gov-
erning Canaanite technology were so demonic that God wanted Is-
rael to destroy all traces of that cosmology by destroying all those
who professed it. The ultimate resource is not the human mind, con-
trary to modern economists. The ultimate resource is a confession of faith
which acknowledges the God of the Bible as the master of the universe and
the source of man’s abundance (Deut. 8:18). The theological content of the
Christian confession of faith and the scientiic worldview that it pro-
duces are the source of long-term economic growth.
Modern technology is the outworking of what the world called
technology before the seventeenth century: grammar.10 Modern tech-
nology rests on the grammar of science. So did late medieval technol-
ogy, which was highly sophisticated both in theory and application.11
Modern man invokes the repeatable wonders of science through
written formulas governed by a series of assumptions regarding
cause and efect. The grammar of mathematics underlies modern
technology, but this grammar is not autonomous; it rests in turn on a
host of presuppositions regarding the coherence of man’s reasoning
processes and the relation of this coherence to the external world.12

10. Jaki, The Only Chaos, p. 124.

11. Ibid., ch. 3.
12. Vern S. Poythress, “A Biblical View of Mathematics,” in Gary North (ed.), Foundations
of Christian Scholarship: Essays in the Van Til Perspective (Vallecito, California: Ross House
Books, 1976), ch. 9; cf. Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Efectiveness of Mathematics in
the Natural Sciences,” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, XIII (1960), pp. 1–14.
170 DEUTERONOMY

To what extent is the grammar of science and number depend-

ent on the grammar of faith? Canaan’s buildings did not fall down.
Canaanites’ ields continued to produce food despite their denial of
God’s sovereignty. Their accumulated capital was transferrable.
How was this possible? Because man is made in the image of God.
This common humanity brings with it common knowledge by
means of common grace.13 Such knowledge, like the knowledge of
cooking, is afected by time and place; it produces recognizable
variations, but like recipes, it is repeatable and therefore transferra-
ble. Accurate scientiic formulas are valid whenever invoked, or so
the theory of modern science announces. Their accuracy is not im-
mediately dependent on a personal confession of correct theology.
This is what distinguishes chemistry from alchemy. But scientiic
formulas are not invoked outside of the processes of history. These
processes are always covenantal. Scientiic formulas and their appli-
cations are inluenced by covenantal cause and efect in history.
Some societies inherit; others are disinherited. The point is, because
scientiic formulas and the knowledge that underlies them are trans-
ferrable – universal, in other words – they and their products can be
inherited. This is why the wealth of the sinner can be laid up for the
just (Prov. 13:22).

Economic Growth Through Imported Knowledge

14
Economic growth is a process of compounding. The division
of labor is extended over time, not just across borders. The exten-
sion of per capita wealth through the extension of the division of la-
bor is dependent on the maintenance of social order. It is not just
free trade across borders that makes men rich. There must be sav-
ing, wise investing, and scientiic discovery.15 There must be social
development, which includes a progressive commitment to the
moral boundaries imposed by biblical law. What the conquest of
Canaan teaches us is that God calls to a temporal halt the path of eco-
nomic development of certain social orders. This is not a random

13. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
14. See Chapter 14.
15. John Jewkes, David Sawyers, and Richard Stillerman, The Sources of Invention (2nd ed.;
New York: Norton, 1969).
 Genocide and Inheritance 171

cessation of development. Inheritance and disinheritance are linked

covenantally. Jeremiah announced: “Thus saith the LORD against all
mine evil neighbours, that touch the inheritance which I have
caused my people Israel to inherit; Behold, I will pluck them out of
their land, and pluck out the house of Judah from among them. And
it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them out I will return,
and have compassion on them, and will bring them again, every
man to his heritage, and every man to his land. And it shall come to
pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by
my name, The LORD liveth; as they taught my people to swear by
Baal; then shall they be built in the midst of my people. But if they
will not obey, I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation, saith
the LORD” (Jer. 12:14–17).
Canaan’s division of labor was soon to be cut of. It was about to
be replaced by Israel’s division of labor. Canaan’s approach to sci-
ence and technology had to end. A new social order would use
Canaan’s physical capital to extend God’s dominion. The genocidal
disinheritance of Canaan would provide the physical inheritance of
Israel. This inheritance was not to include knowledge that was in any
way dependent on the invocation of Canaan’s gods. “And ye shall
overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves
with ire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and
destroy the names of them out of that place” (Deut. 12:3). Israel failed
in this exercise of religious intolerance, which is why Joshua warned
against invoking the names of regional gods. “That ye come not
among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make
mention of the names of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, nei-
ther serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them” (Josh. 23:7).
God is the Creator, the source of all accurate knowledge. His
universalism gives His people an enormous advantage. They are in
a position to make productive use of the discoveries of other nations
and other religions. But the use of such information is limited by
biblical law. To the extent that such information is dependent on
the invocation of the name of any other god, it may not be used by
His people.
This means that occult knowledge is forbidden. Knowledge that
is available only to the initiate into a cult or secret society is not
valid, although this knowledge may be true within limits. But if such
knowledge can be separated from the name of the god invoked by the
cult, it is eligible to become part of the covenant-keeper’s inheritance.
172 DEUTERONOMY

An example would be the mathematical knowledge developed within

the conines of the Pythagorean cult. Initiation into that oath-bound
cult would have been forbidden to covenant-keeping Israelites, but
both studying and applying the Pythagorean theorem regarding
right triangles would have been legitimate activities. The truth of the
theorem is not dependent on the ritual practices of the cult. The the-
orem became part of the inheritance of the West, which for a millen-
nium meant Christendom.
The key issue is the oath: to swear by. The oath places man
covenantally under the god invoked by the oath. Wealth, including
knowledge, that is obtainable only through such oath-taking is not
part of a legitimate inheritance. If the secrets of the cult pass into the
public domain, as Pythagorean mathematics did, then covenant-
keepers may lawfully put them to good use. Using Euclidian geome-
try is valid because there is no oath involved. But to seek member-
ship in the cult in order to gain inside knowledge of its economically
advantageous secrets, even to make them public, would be valid only
as part of a government-directed spying operation in a war efort,
such as was used in the conquest of Canaan: the spies (Josh. 2). It
would then be a matter of military conquest, not economic gain. It
would be a matter of the sword, not the purse. Industrial spying is
therefore invalid, even if done by governments, as it surely is in the
modern world. So is joining a secret order that promises business or
political success. C. S. Lewis called this the desire for membership
in the inner ring, and he warned against it.16

Universal God, Regional Capital

God is not threatened by other gods. Over time, His people be-
come less threatened by other religions. The Israelites were forbid-
den to speak the names of other gods. “And in all things that I have
said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of
other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth” (Ex. 23:13). Is
this law still in force? If it is in force, is it to be taken literally? Or is it
an injunction against invocation? The prophets mentioned the
names of other gods. So did Stephen at his stoning (Acts 7:43). This
was an aspect of the study of comparative religions: announcing the

16. C. S. Lewis, “The Inner Ring” (1944), in Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
(New York: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 93–105.
 Genocide and Inheritance 173

superiority of God to His rivals. The prohibition against speaking

the names of other gods must have been an injunction against an-
other kind of speaking, namely, covenantal or magical invocation.
After their return from the Babylonian captivity, the Jews did
not again go after other gods. Their susceptibility to idolatry had
ended. Hellenism and legalism became national problems, but idol-
atry did not. The threat today is the threat of syncretism, also known
as pluralism: the acceptance of anti-theistic presuppositions by the
covenant-keeping community.17
The universality of God and His covenants makes it possible for
covenant-keepers to accept the non-oath-bound indings of rival re-
ligious worldviews. God’s church is not regional, nor was it ever in-
tended to be. It crosses the boundaries of geography and time. The
church in the broadest sense is the means of absorbing new infor-
mation and making such information even more productive. It is to
disseminate information and vision. Christendom’s productivity is
supposed to undermine all covenant-breaking social orders, bring-
ing them face to face with the sanctions of God in history: positive
and negative. This ofensive conquest is not by the sword but by
faith and productivity.
Discoveries always cross borders. Useful knowledge cannot be
monopolized for long. The question is: Will covenant-keepers gain
and retain the dominant inluence in the interpretation and applica-
tions of these discoveries, or will their covenantal enemies gain con-
trol over Christians by means of these discoveries? In other words,
whose inheritance is it? There can be no neutrality. One side or the
other will inherit. The idea that these discoveries are covenantally
neutral is incorrect. Truth comes only from God, and this includes
the interpretation of theories and facts. Meanwhile, truths that are
accepted by covenant-breakers are always misinterpreted because
they deny God as the origin of all truth. As time goes on, this
misinterpretation becomes more consistent, i.e., more consistently
wrong. Truths are not regarded by covenant-breakers as testimonies
to the God of the Bible (Rom. 1:20–25). Such truths are always held
down through unrighteousness, which brings God’s judgment in
history: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in

17. See Chapter 15, above: section on “New Gods for Old.”
174 DEUTERONOMY

unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). The visible sign of such judgment is

open homosexuality (Rom. 1:26–27). Legalized homosexuality in
any society is a curse of God for corporate unbelief. It is a prelude to
corporate destruction.
So, the beneits of science and technology are always dependent
on the proper use of knowledge. If covenant-keepers are unable or
unwilling to set the terms of discourse for new discoveries and the
application of old ones, then the wealth generated by these discov-
eries will eventually undermine faith: “And thou say in thine heart,
My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth”
(Deut. 8:17). This will eventually result in negative sanctions: “And
it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after
other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you
this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD
destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not
be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God” (Deut. 8:19–20).

Open Borders
The Israelites were not going to be welcomed by the Canaanites.
Even if they had come peacefully, they would not have been wel-
comed. They represented a threat to the Canaanite social order.
They were people who were covenanted to another God. Religious
pluralism was impossible. One side or the other would win.
Israel later welcomed strangers from other lands. Why weren’t
those immigrants a threat to Israel, just as Israel had been to Ca-
naan? First, because immigrants entered Israel on Israel’s terms:
open obedience to God’s civil law was required. Proselyting for a ri-
val god was a capital crime (Deut. 13:6–10). Second, because the
gods of such immigrants would not be local gods. These immigrants
had left the domain of their regional gods. Idols of non-universal
gods were not a major threat to Israel. As for gods making universal
claims, there were none in the pre-captivity, pre-empire Old Cove-
nant era. All rival gods were local. After the Babylonian captivity, the
gods of a series of empires shared their pantheon with conquered dei-
ties of conquered nations. These were not universal gods in the sense
that Israel’s God was: a God who shared no pantheon space with ri-
vals. The gods of Greece were local and animistic or else politically
contrived Olympian gods. In contrast, Greek philosophy made uni-
versal claims, and Hellenism did become a major problem for Jews
and Christians. But Hellenism was not tied to idols.
 Genocide and Inheritance 175

Israel allowed open borders because God did not allow public
proselyting or public observance of rival religions. The civil order
was established by a covenantal oath to God. He, and He alone, was
the acknowledged sovereign of Israel. In Elijah’s day, this law was
being violated by priests of Baal. His confrontation on Mt. Carmel
was designed to end this practice. “Then the ire of the LORD fell, and
consumed the burnt sacriice, and the wood, and the stones, and the
dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all
the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD,
he is the God; the LORD, he is the God. And Elijah said unto them,
Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they
took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and
slew them there” (I Ki. 18:38–40).
The main threat of immigration is covenantal, not economic. The
increase in the national division of labor that takes place when immi-
grants arrive is a net beneit. The judicial problem arises because of
the rival gods and rival philosophies that immigrants bring with
them. The religious pluralism of modern Western politics relegates
non-political covenants to adiaphora: things indiferent to political re-
ligion, so long as they do not infringe upon the realm of political reli-
gion. But we have found that political pluralism is as theocratic as any
other religion. It will not tolerate challenges to its inal authority from
any realm outside of politics. Decade by decade, political religion ex-
tends its claims over all the other areas of life.
The modern immigrant brings with him gods that are as univer-
sal in their claims as the God of the Bible is. The local gods of an-
cient paganism are barely remembered, let alone understood. How
can a society survive the claims to authority of the representatives of
rival universal gods? How can these universal claims be harmonized
with the universal claims of modern political religion? Harmonizing
these claims has been the long-term national experiment of the En-
lightenment era, beginning around 1700.
A businessman likes to have a growing supply of laborers who
compete against each other to sell him their labor time. Immigra-
tion is a blessing for the employer. It increases the supply of labor,
thereby lowering costs. But what if, after ive years, these immi-
grants could vote themselves a share of his business? Then he would
be more careful about who gains access to the nation. Naturalization
makes the immigrant a participant in the modern welfare State: a
citizen. He can lawfully exercise the civil sanction of voting. He can
176 DEUTERONOMY

therefore gain legal entitlements to other people’s wealth. So, modern

political pluralism, when combined with the welfare State, creates a
state of afairs in which those who already have the vote and capital
resist the arrival of immigrants who bring rival philosophies regard-
ing what constitutes the good society and the legitimate means of
obtaining it. In 1650, Northern Europe had been battling invading
Turks for two centuries. Today, there are so many Turks living in
Germany that the Germans could not expel them even if they
wanted to: the Turks would take too much money out of German
banks. Turks do not become secular humanists just because they
live in Northern Europe. The diferential in birth rates make it clear
where pluralistic Europe is heading: toward Islam. Islam is not plu-
ralistic. When they at long last have the votes to do so, Muslims will
change the rules. They always do. It is part of their religion.
The economist reduces everything to economics: cost-beneit
analyses. Economics is as relentless in its extension of its reduction-
ism as any other academic worldview. What is signiicant politically
for an economist is whatever he can reduce to it economic con-
cepts.18 The economist is unwilling to acknowledge that politics is
covenantal even though it is based on a binding oath of allegiance
under a monopolistic legal order, which in turn has its origin in
God’s common grace civil covenant. Marriage and the church are
also covenantal and so do not readily lend themselves to economic
reductionism.19 This is why the economist sounds unbelievable
when he discusses immigration as if it were little more than interna-
tional job-seeking. The immigrant no longer brings idols with him.
Instead, he brings a worldview tied to another religious order. This
worldview has legitimacy equal with all others in a pluralistic politi-
cal order. Idols in Mosaic Israel did not. When he becomes a

18. See, for example, James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent:
Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1962). Over two decades later, Buchanan won the Nobel Prize in economics, presumably for
this work more than his subsequent studies. (Tullock, a lawyer with no formal economic
training, was not mentioned publicly by the Nobel Committee.)
19. One of the unresolved problems in economics is the economic analysis of prostitution.
While the economist argues that “everything has a price,” no unmarried economist
acknowledges publicly that he much prefers sex from a prostitute to sex in marriage because
of prostitution’s tremendous cost savings. “Don’t buy: rent!” Few men say that renting sexual
favors from strangers is a better deal for them than bearing the burden of supporting a wife.
Sex available for hire makes it inherently less valuable in most would-be buyers’ eyes than
marital sex.
 Genocide and Inheritance 177

naturalized citizen, the modern ex-immigrant can work to impose

this worldview by voting.
American Constitutional political theory relies on some version
of Madison’s theory of factions in Federalist 51 to save republican
democracy from Balkanization. Madison argued that political fac-
tions would cancel each other out, leaving commitment to the com-
mon civil order as the binding national confession. This implicitly
assumed that there is a widely agreed-upon common source of jus-
tice, although Madison, like the U.S. Constitution, did not mention
natural law. His argument was very close to Rousseau’s argument
for the absolute sovereignty of the General Will, expressed only
through politics, over all other voluntary contracts and institutions.
Madison’s theory privatizes non-political relations, removing them
from issues of State; Rousseau’s absorbs all other relations into poli-
tics. I call Madison’s view political Unitarianism.20 The end result is
the same: the common bond of politics.
Because covenantal consensus breaks down when the census re-
veals diversity, modern pluralistic society faces a crisis: cacophony.
As Cornell University professor W. Pearce Williams put it in a 1983
letter to the New York Times, “we live in a consensual society in
which we often have to do things we don’t want to do, or even think
are wrong, because we have agreed to abide by majority rule. De-
stroy that argument, and the result is not freedom but anarchy – a
condition which the United States seems rapidly approaching.”21
Immigration is from two sources: foreign countries and moth-
ers’ wombs. The abortion movement is an anti-immigration move-
ment of unique commitment. The abortionists resent the welfare
implications of motherhood, but they also resent it with respect to
the State. They see babies as welfare cases. Margaret Sanger was the
founder of Planned Parenthood, still the best organized pro-
abortion organization in the United States. In her book, The Pivot of
Civilization (1922), she criticized the inherent cruelty of all welfare
states. She insisted that organized eforts to help the poor are the
“surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding, and is perpet-
uating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents,

20. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 450–52.
21. Cited in Jaki, The Only Chaos, p. 43.
178 DEUTERONOMY

22
and dependents.” Such charity must be stopped, she insisted. The
fertility of the working class must be regulated in order to reduce the
production of “benign imbeciles, who encourage the defective and
diseased elements of humanity in their reckless and irresponsible
swarming and spawning.”23 Swarming (like insects), spawning (like
ish): here was marvelous zoological rhetoric from the lionized
founder of Planned Parenthood. “If we must have welfare, give it to
the rich, not the poor,” she concluded.24 “More children from the it,
less from the unit: that is the chief issue of birth control.”25 For abor-
tionists, the womb is an open border. They seek to kill all those who
would cross it without authorization.
What is the biblical solution? Respect for covenantal oaths. The
marriage oath creates a claim on open entry for the biological fruit
of marriage. This legal claim must be defended by the civil govern-
ment if mothers seek to revoke it. Second, the civil oath grants au-
thority to impose God’s sanctions. Those who are not under the
terms of the civil oath should not be allowed to impose its terms on
others. Thus, immigration is economically legitimate. What is not
legitimate as a Christian ideal is a civil oath that does not bind men
to allegiance to the God of the Bible. God brings negative sanctions
against all rival civil oaths, and open immigration leads to two such
sanctions: the breakdown of society (anarchy) or the substitution of
a theocratic oath to a rival god. Roger Williams’ experiment in tiny
Rhode Island – a civil order without an oath to God – became the
irst operational model of the Enlightenment’s much larger experi-
ment in religious pluralism. We can safely predict concerning how
this professedly neutral civil covenant will end: broken.

Conclusion
God told Israel to conquer Canaan by force. The Israelites were
prohibited from making any sort of covenant with them. The best
way to prevent this was to destroy every last one of them, so that the
nation would not be in a position to make additional covenants.

22. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s, 1922), p. 108; cited in
George Grant, Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood, 2nd ed. (Franklin, Tennessee:
Adroit, 1992), p. 27.
23. Sanger, ibid., p. 115; cited in Grant, ibid.
24. Ibid., p. 96; cited in Grant, ibid., p. 28.
25. Sanger, “Birth Control,” Birth Control Review (May 1919); cited in Grant, ibid., p. 27.
 Genocide and Inheritance 179

This reduction in the available division of labor obviously was a

threat to the transfer of local knowledge: either saving knowledge to
the Canaanites or destructive knowledge from the Canaanites. The
beneits of whatever technical knowledge possessed by the Canaanites
would not ofset the liabilities of the covenantal worldview which ac-
companied their technical knowledge. Israel was more vulnerable to
the knowledge possessed by Canaan than Canaan was to the knowl-
edge possessed by Israel. This would not always be true, but it took
the captivity and the occupation of the land by outsiders – later
called Samaritans – to reduce this vulnerability. Any surviving
post-conquest local gods of Canaan had by then been visibly de-
feated by the gods of Assyria, Babylon, and Medo-Persia. In terms
of the theology of the ancient Near East, this defeat had removed
them permanently as historical forces to contend with or contend
for. No society invoked the gods of Canaan after the rise of the
empires.
 17
BYBy LawOR
LAW or By
BY Promise?
PROMISE?

All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye

observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the
land which the LORD sware unto your fathers (Deut. 8:1).

The theocentric framework of this law is the dominion cove-

nant: the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:26–28). God
established His authority over mankind with these words, even be-
fore He created man. This case law therefore was no seed law or
land law.
Deuteronomy 8 is by far the most important passage in the Bi-
ble dealing with the topic of Adam Smith’s classic 1776 book, An In-
quiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It announces
the covenantal pattern for economic growth: grace, subordination,
law, sanctions, and inheritance. It lists the unmerited gifts that God
gave to Israel, from their deliverance out of bondage to the raw ma-
terials of the Promised Land. This is all grace. Twice it calls upon the
Israelites to remember God’s grace (vv. 2, 18). This is a call to subor-
dination. Four times it reminds them to keep God’s commandments
(vv. 1, 2, 6, 11). It speaks of the positive sanction of economic
growth (v. 13) and the negative sanction of expulsion from the land
(vv. 19, 20). Yet the entire chapter deals with the inheritance: the
land of Israel. To maintain this inheritance, the Israelites had to
obey God’s Bible-revealed law. In other words, their maintenance
of the inheritance was ethically conditional.
The passage begins with a call to obedience. Moses warned the
generation of the conquest to obey all of God’s commandments.
The theme of covenantal faithfulness through national obedience is
continual in Deuteronomy, for only through corporate covenantal

180
 By Law or By Promise? 181

obedience to the Mosaic law could the conquest generation main-

tain its inheritance. The language of the text is clear: collecting the
promised inheritance was conditional. “All the commandments
which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may
live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD
sware unto your fathers.”
This verse raises a theological problem regarding the terms of
inheritance. God had sworn to the patriarchs that He would give the
land to Israel. He had promised Abraham that the fourth generation
would inherit (Gen. 15:16). The theological question is this: Was
Israel’s inheritance legally secured by God’s promise or by their
obedience to the law?

Circumcision and Inheritance

In the context of God’s promise to Abraham that his seed would
inherit, Paul wrote: “For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more
of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise” (Gal. 3:18). Paul
was speaking of Jesus Christ, not the Israelites, as the inheriting
seed. He was speaking of the kingdom of God, not the land of
Canaan. Nevertheless, the judicial question was the same in both
cases: By law or by promise? Paul argued clearly: by promise. On this
passage, Protestantism rests much of its case for salvation by grace
rather than works: “That the blessing of Abraham might come on
the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise
of the Spirit through faith” (v. 14).
Yet there is no doubt that one legal condition for Israel’s inheri-
tance was circumcision. Abraham was required to circumcise his
household’s males (Gen. 17:12–13). They, in turn, were supposed to
circumcise their household males. The generation of the exodus
had failed to do this, so Joshua had the conquest generation circum-
cised as soon as they crossed the boundary of the Jordan River
(Josh. 5:7). The promise was valid, but to qualify judicially as the
generation of the conquest, all the males had to be circumcised.
Wasn’t circumcision a work of the law? Yes. So, if inheritance was
by circumcision, how could it be by promise?

Who Was a Lawful Heir?

To make sense of this seeming anomaly, we should seek a solu-
tion in the judicial nature of the Abrahamic promise. The fourth
182 DEUTERONOMY

generation would inherit, God had promised. He had sealed that

promise with a covenantal oath-sign: passing a ire between pieces
of a dismembered animal (Gen. 15:17). This was a sanctions-bound
self-maledictory oath: “So let it be done unto Me if I do not bring to
pass what I have promised to Abraham.” But what constituted a
generation? Judicially, this had to mean circumcised sons. A man was
not an Israelite by birth; he was an Israelite by covenant. “And the
uncircumcised man child whose lesh of his foreskin is not circum-
cised, that soul shall be cut of from his people; he hath broken my
covenant” (Gen. 17:14).
The external mark of this covenant was circumcision. The same
was true corporately of the inheriting generation. They would not
become that promised generation by birth; they would become that
generation by covenant. The promise was secure; nevertheless,
conforming to the deinitional terms of the promise mandated the
work of circumcision: no circumcision – no generation; no genera-
tion – no fulillment of the promise. So, the judicial basis of the
fourth generation’s inheritance was law: circumcision. Yet the judi-
cial basis of the possibility of inheritance was promise.
This two-fold conclusion is inescapable: promise as the judicial
basis of God’s granting of the inheritance to Israel through Abra-
ham; Israel’s obedience as the judicial basis of His assigning it to them
as promised. The special form of obedience was the oath. Circumci-
sion was an oath sign.
Protestant commentators have gone out of their way to avoid
discussing the fourth generation’s circumcision as the judicial re-
quirement of collecting the inheritance. It is clear why they have
done this: the Pauline doctrine of inheritance by promise. While
James did not write about the judicial basis of Christ’s inheritance,
we can be fairly sure what he would have written: inheritance by
Christ’s obedience. To mark Himself as the heir – the lawful heir – of
the promise, Christ had to obey the law. The situation facing the
fourth generation was analogous: to mark themselves as the lawful
heirs of the promise, they had to obey the law.
Paul wrote of Abraham, “For the promise, that he should be the
heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the
law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of
the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none
efect” (Rom. 4:13–14). But on what is saving faith grounded judi-
cially? On the substitutionary atonement of Christ. This atonement
 By Law or By Promise? 183

was grounded judicially in the perfection of Christ, who obeyed the

whole of the law of God. He was a perfect sacriice; no other would
have sujced to placate God’s wrath. “Though he were a Son, yet
learned he obedience by the things which he sufered; And being
made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all
them that obey him” (Heb. 5:8–9). Christ’s legal sonship was marked by
His perfect obedience, even unto death. Analogously, the fourth genera-
tion’s heirship was marked by their circumcision, even unto risking
death, i.e., their temporary military incapacity while inside the
boundaries of the Promised Land.
Protestants speak of unmerited grace. With respect to the recipi-
ents of grace, grace is indeed unmerited. Men do not merit God’s fa-
vor on their own account. But with respect to the judicial basis of
grace, it is completely merited by the perfect life, death, and resur-
rection of Jesus Christ. Unmerited grace is grounded in Christ’s
merit through obedience. This merit is a legal claim, and as heirs to
grace, this legal claim passes to the elect. Salvation is legally claimed
by the elect, not on the basis of their obedience, but on the basis of
Christ’s obedience. Grace is grounded in the law and one man’s perfect
fulilling of its stipulations.
So, to discuss Israel’s inheritance in terms of promise only or
law only is to discuss half of the legal transaction. The inheritance
was established by grace through God’s promise, but there was sup-
posed to be obedience on the part of the fourth generation. While
God might have graciously delivered the land to them despite their
legal condition as uncircumcised men. Joshua understood the legal
conditions of the inheritance. Israel might, by God’s grace, inherit
without obedience, but they were supposed to obey. This was Mo-
ses’ message to them, too: maintenance of the kingdom grant was condi-
tional. As the author of the Hebrews put it, “And being made
perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that
obey him” (Heb. 5:9).

Maintaining the Kingdom Grant

“All the commandments which I command thee this day shall
ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and pos-
sess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.” This was not
the announcement of the judicial deinition of what constituted the
fourth generation, namely, circumcision; this was an announce-
ment of a covenantal link between obedience and inheritance. How
184 DEUTERONOMY

can we make theological sense of Moses’ words? He invoked the

promise while mandating obedience.
First, we must ask: Did Moses expect the blessings listed in Deu-
teronomy 8 to unfold sequentially? Did he mean to say that the
fourth generation had to obey the commandments in order for God
to multiply them, to be followed by their conquest of the land? Ob-
viously not, since he was preparing them for the conquest, not for a
long period of population growth as the means of military conquest.
Their multiplication would come after they had secured the land.
Yet the text places multiplication prior to the securing of the land. If
we were to take his words as sequentially meaningful, his call to obe-
dience would make no chronological sense. The conquest would be
delayed for another generation. But the fourth generation had to
inherit.
Second, we must ask: What was Moses getting at? Answer: the
requirement that they obey God in order to possess the land, main-
tain the land, and multiply in the land. They obeyed God irst by
submitting to circumcision. This act of obedience preceded the con-
quest. While they might have relied on God’s grace to enable them
to conquer the land without being circumcised, instead they relied
on God’s grace to enable them to escape military defeat during their
time of physical incapacity.1 In both scenarios, they had to rely on
grace. The form which grace took in that instance was the promise,
which Moses cited. The promise they could be sure of. The question
was: How best to claim the grace-based inheritance. By refusing to be
circumcised or by risking a military set-back? They chose the latter.
Grace precedes law in both God’s covenant of creation and
His covenant of redemption. He gave the law to Adam (Gen. 2:16)
after He had given Adam life and land (Gen. 2:7–14). This is the
covenantal pattern: grace precedes law. James Jordan is correct:
“God’s Word is always promise before it is command. . . . God al-
ways bestows the Kingdom as a gift before presenting us with our
duties in it.”2 The kingdom had been bestowed on Abraham as a
gift. That is, the land had long ago been assigned to Abraham’s
heirs. God had assigned the land to Israel by grace and promise, but

1. They knew the story of Shechem: how Simeon and Levi had slaughtered them while
the Shechemites were recovering from circumcision (Gen. 34:25–26).
2. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 7.
 By Law or By Promise? 185

He had not yet passed legal title to the new owners. That would
come through military conquest. They had received the law at Sinai
four decades earlier, not four centuries earlier. They had been
tested in the wilderness in terms of the Mosaic law, and the fourth
generation had passed these tests. After the conquest, they would
have to remain judicially faithful in order to retain possession.
Grace always precedes law in God’s dealings with His subordi-
nates. We are in debt to God even before He speaks to us. The land grant
was based on the original promise given to Abraham. That promise
came prior to the giving of the Mosaic law.3 This is why Jordan says
that the laws of Leviticus are more than legislation; the focus of the
laws is not simply obedience to God, but rather on maintaining the
grant.4 The basis of maintaining the grant was ethics, not the
sacriices. Man cannot maintain the kingdom in sin.5
Moses continued: “And thou shalt remember all the way which
the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to
humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (v. 2). This
would seem to violate the principle of grace preceding redemption.
God had humbled them in order to see whether or not they would
obey Him. The giving of the law at Sinai was followed by the nega-
tive sanction of national humiliation. Only four decades later was
the prospect of inheritance before them. This seems to point to an-
other pattern: law-humiliation-grace.
To whom was Moses speaking? To the heirs of a formerly en-
slaved nation. The giving of the law did not take place in an histori-
cal vacuum. It took place after a series of miraculous deliverances.
The giving of the Mosaic law was the culminating act of national de-
liverance. Grace precedes law, but it does not annul law. Law
conirms grace. It ratiies a prior gift of God.

Covenantal Predictability and Social Theory

Is the historical fulillment of God’s promises separate from the
law? Not according to Moses. Is this fulillment separate from the re-
cipients’ fulillment of the law? Only partially. Grace may bring

3. Ibid., p. 8.
4. Ibid., p. 9.
5. Ibid., p. 11.
186 DEUTERONOMY

fulillment despite a period of rebellion. Nevertheless, there is a

covenantal pattern announced in the law, but especially in Deuter-
onomy: obedience brings blessings; disobedience brings cursings.
Inheritance and disinheritance are not random; they are predict-
able covenantally. They are not predictable perfectly in all cases be-
cause grace is greater than sin. Negative sanctions are sometimes
delayed despite sin (e.g., the Amorites in Canaan, Abraham to Mo-
ses – an example of common grace).6 But our ajrmation of grace
must not become an ajrmation of historical indeterminism regard-
ing corporate blessings and cursings. If grace is invoked to deny the
consequences of law, then he who so invokes grace has become an
ally of covenant-breakers. He has denied the covenant. He has denied
the historical relevance of God’s law in history. But history does not
take place in a judicial vacuum. Other law-orders will be imposed in
order to govern men, including Christians. We must decide: God’s
law or chaos? God’s law or tyranny?
Whenever the covenantal predictability of corporate inheri-
tance and disinheritance is denied, a uniquely biblical social theory
becomes impossible. This is why Lutheranism has always been in-
capable of producing independent social theory. Luther was ada-
mant about the irrelevance of Christianity for legal theory. To
rulers, he wrote: “Certainly it is true of Christians, so far as they
themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law [n]or sword,
and have need of neither. But take heed and ill the world with real
Christians before you attempt to rule in a Christian and evangelical
manner.”7 As for true Christians, “these people need no temporal
law or sword. If all the world were composed of real Christians, that
is, true believers, there would be no need for or beneits from
prince, king, sword, or law.”8 Luther was an ethical dualist.9 Because
Lutheranism denies any relevance to biblical law in the arrival of
corporate blessings, it must invoke ethical dualism: natural law or
pagan law for the civil sphere, personal morality for the individual

6. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
7. Martin Luther, “Temporal Authority: To What Extent Should It Be Obeyed?” (1523),
Luther’s Works (1962), XLV, p. 91.
8. Ibid., p. 89.
9. Charles Trinkaus, “The Religious Foundations of Luther’s Social Views,” in John H.
Mundy, et al., Essays in Medieval Life (Cheshire, Connecticut: Biblo & Tannen, 1955),
pp. 71–87.
 By Law or By Promise? 187

Christian, and silence regarding the church. But what is true of

Lutheranism is equally true of any form of Christianity which uses
the doctrine of grace to annul the covenantal predictability of histor-
ical sanctions. When Calvinism abandons faith in covenantal predictabil-
ity in history, it ceases to be Calvinism; it becomes Lutheranism.
Protestant social theology has almost always been Lutheran in
content, if not form: an unstable mixture of personal Christian mo-
rality combined with humanistic, common-ground natural law the-
ory. Personal morality is regarded as having had no meaningful
implications for the development of social theory. This delivers so-
cial theory into the hands of covenant-breakers and their intellec-
tual allies within the church, who share the covenant-breakers’
assumptions regarding the possibility of both ethical neutrality and
epistemological neutrality, as well as the irrelevance or even harm-
ful efects of Old Testament law on society. When theonomists chal-
lenge this unojcial but long-term alliance, they are challenged with
some variation of the following: “The LORD look upon you, and
judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes
of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their
hand to slay us” (Ex. 5:21).

Conclusion
Moses told the conquest generation to obey God’s law. Yet he
also cited the promise. He said that the long-term success of the con-
quest was dependent on their continued covenantal faithfulness.
Yet the promise God made to Abraham was secure: sealed by an
oath-sign. Their conquest of the land was guaranteed. Yet they were
told to obey God’s laws. There can be no doubt that Moses invoked
both the law and the promise. This is what troubles Protestant
commentators.
The solution to the problem is to recognize the judicial basis of
the promise, which was a form of grace. All grace is grounded judi-
cially on the perfect fulillment of the whole of God’s law. There
must be perfect obedience. “For whosoever shall keep the whole
law, and yet ofend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).
There can be no separation of law and promise, for promise is
grounded in law. The question is: Whose obedience? The answer is
inescapable: Jesus Christ’s obedience. So, the fulillment of any prom-
ise rests judicially on the fulillment of the demands of the law.
Grace is present because of the representative character of Christ’s
188 DEUTERONOMY

fulillment, just as the curse is present because of the representative

character of Adam’s Fall. Imputation by God is fundamental: the
imputation of Christ’s perfection or the imputation of Adam’s sin.
God looks on each person and imputes – declares judicially – one or
the other moral condition. Then He pronounces sentence: “Guilty”
or “Not guilty.”
The Israelites would soon mark themselves as lawful heirs to the
promise through circumcision. This they did under Joshua. In the
wilderness, it had not mattered so much that they were not circum-
cised, but after they crossed the boundary of the land, they would
have remained profane – sacred boundary violators – had they not
become circumcised.10 To avoid remaining profane, they submitted
to circumcision. Then they proceeded to remove the truly profane
nations from the land.
Moses was also warning them in this passage about the ethical
basis of maintaining the kingdom grant. A nation of covenant-
breakers could not indeinitely occupy the Promised Land. God
would remove them (Deut. 8:19–20).

10. On the concept of the profane, see Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 6.
 18
Miracles,
MIRACLES, Entropy, AND
ENTROPY, and Social
SOCIALTheory
THEORY

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led
thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to
know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his
commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and sufered thee to hunger,
and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers
know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man
live. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these
forty years (Deut. 8:2–4).

The theocentric focus of this law is the absolute sovereignty of

God over the creation, including man. God broke the laws of nature
in order to sustain His people in the wilderness. This should per-
suade all men to obey God. God had fed Israel miraculously with
manna. In the midst of their national humiliation, there had been
life-giving grace. But that was not all: “Thy raiment waxed not old
upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years” (v. 4). Their
clothes had not worn out. Their feet had not become swollen. Mo-
ses made it clear that God’s grace had not been a one-time event. It
had been a continuous process for four decades. He reminded them
of this because a miracle sustained for decades ceases to be regarded as
a miracle. It becomes a familiar aspect of daily life. It seems to be an in-
herent part of the environment, but it isn’t. Men expect beneits in this
life. When these beneits are continual, men regard them as normal.
This law was not a land law. It related to Israel’s wandering, but
its intent was man’s universal obedience: “And he humbled thee,
and sufered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou
knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee

189
190 DEUTERONOMY

know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” Jesus cited
this law to Satan in the famous stones-into-bread temptation (Matt. 4:4).
It is clearly a cross-boundary law.
A miracle is abnormal. It is a supernatural act of deliverance or
blessing which disrupts the normal pattern of events. But the nor-
mal pattern of events is itself a manifestation of grace, beginning
with life itself. This grace need not imply God’s favor; it is neverthe-
less an unmerited gift to men and angels, both fallen and unfallen.1
Both historical continuity and discontinuity are acts of God’s grace.
The former is so continuous – a series of life-sustaining acts strung
together ininitesimally close – that its gracious character is per-
ceived only through faith, which in turn is an initially discontinuous
event that through self-discipline is supposed to become continuous.
The miracles of the wilderness era were so continuous that they
took on the appearance of common grace. Moses reminded Israel
of the special position which the nation had in God’s eyes, as proven
by their patch-free clothing. God had actively intervened in history
to sustain them in preparation for the promised day of judgment.
The day of judgment is a day of sanctions, positive and negative, de-
pending on one’s covenantal status. The day of negative sanctions
was about to arrive inside the boundaries of Canaan. For the Israel-
ites, this would bring the promised inheritance. For the Canaanites,
this would bring the promised disinheritance; their cup of iniquity
was at long last full (Gen. 15:16).

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

I have written a book on the apologetic uses and misuses –
mostly misuses – of the second law of thermodynamics.2 I wrote it
for two reasons: 1) to refute a socialist propagandist who had pre-
sented a defense of State economic planning in terms of the need to
reduce entropy; 2) to refute modern Creation Science insofar as the
second law has been invoked to thwart the construction of an explicitly

1. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 2.
2. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1988).
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 191

creationist social theory. In both cases, the theorists have misused the
second law of thermodynamics.
The irst law of thermodynamics is called the law of the conser-
vation of energy. It states that the total energy of the universe – a
supposedly closed system – does not change. Potential energy may
become kinetic (changing) energy, but total energy does not
change. Modern physics is built on this law. The condition de-
scribed by the irst law of thermodynamics is one reason why there
can never be a perpetual motion machine. It would have to produce
more usable energy (work) than it began with. It would have to do
its work and then re-supply itself with an amount of potential energy
equal to or greater than it expended in doing the work. This is some-
times called a perpetual motion machine of the irst kind.
The second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed sys-
tem, potential energy can become kinetic energy, but kinetic energy
– energy transformed – cannot become potential energy. Therefore,
the energy available for usable work declines over time (classical
thermodynamics). As an example, temperature moves from hot to
cold, but it does not move from cold to hot unless external heat is
applied. Another example: a brick may fall from a wall to the
ground, but it will not rise from the ground to the wall unless addi-
tional energy is added to the process from outside the system, such
as someone who lifts it. Put chronologically, time does not move
backward. Contemporary humanism teaches that from the moment
just after the Big Bang until that frozen waste called the heat death of
the universe, energy is dissipated.3 Sir Arthur Eddington called this
time’s arrow, and it creates a serious cosmological problem for evo-
lutionists. Time’s arrow proceeds from order to disorder, whereas
evolution’s arrow supposedly moves from less order to greater or-
der – from the simple to the complex. These two processes have yet
to be reconciled by means of an appeal to the thermodynamic laws
governing the universe as a closed system.
In any physical process – potential energy to kinetic energy –
there will always be heat loss or heat dispersion, also described as
an increase in randomness, within a closed system (statistical ther-
modynamics). This loss of coherence is sometimes called entropy.

3. But will electrons quit moving? Will atoms still be there? Does the second law apply to
the subatomic realm?
192 DEUTERONOMY

Entropy is a measure of the increase in randomness. The work per-

formed by a machine is a one-time event. The energy has been dissi-
pated, some of it into heat loss. In a machine without oil or some
other lubricant, the grinding of metal is audible to all: heat is being
produced and then dissipated. There is no lubricant in nature that
can overcome all of this heat loss. This is entropy’s law. This is a sec-
ond reason why there can be no perpetual motion machine: heat
loss. The machine cannot regain all of the energy expended in work
because some of that kinetic energy is lost through heat dispersion.
Perpetual clothing is the equivalent of a perpetual motion ma-
chine. This passage proves that, in principle, a perpetual motion
machine is possible, but it takes supernatural resource inputs to
make it run. The system – nature – is not closed all of the time.
Whenever it is closed, however, clothing always wears out through
friction. Everything wears out. Feet swell and then wear out. People
attached to feet wear out. This is the second law of thermodynamics
at work. Where work is performed in a closed system – no new infu-
sions of energy or anything else from outside – the second law guar-
antees that there is a permanent loss of potential energy, so that
some day, potential energy will dissipate – become random – and
cease to perform any work. The universe eventually will go into per-
manent retirement, sometimes called the heat death of the universe.
This is inevitable, unless . . . unless the second law of thermodynam-
ics is violated by what is known in Christian circles as the inal judg-
ment, or unless the second law of thermodynamics is violated by
miracles, or unless the second law of thermodynamics is not actually
a law but merely a familiar process regionally and temporally that is
not in fact universal. Most physicists regard it as universal,4 which is
why most physicists: 1) deny any inal judgment other than the im-
personal heat death of the universe; 2) deny the existence of miracles.
Once you admit the existence of miracles that are generated
and sustained from outside the system of the universe, you thereby
deny the universality of the second law of thermodynamics. If the
universe is an open system, then the second law need not always ap-
ply. Unless you see God as a kind of pipeline operator who siphons
of useful energy from other parts of the universe in order to over-
come the negative efects of entropy in this region of the universe,

4. They are not equally sure regarding the subatomic realm.

 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 193

you must regard miracles as a violation of the second law. To deine

miracles as consistent with the second law, you would have to ex-
plain the patch-free clothing of the Israelites as having caused a loss
of potential energy somewhere else in the immense closed system
called the universe. “Entropy still ruled in the wilderness, but its
efects on Israelite clothing were ofset by God, who drained of po-
tential energy from some other region.” Ultimately, this strictly
physical approach to miracles would force Christians to explain the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ in terms of permanently
lost potential energy and the existence of a heat sink into which
wasted energy was dispersed.

5
In the Garden of Eden
Adam had a nose. He had a sense of smell. But what was there
to smell? The fragrance of lowers is a product of the second law of
thermodynamics: the move from order to disorder. The millions of
tiny particles that activate our sense of smell are distributed ran-
domly, which is why we smell them rather than step in them. They
do not pile up.
Consider another example. What if Adam had wanted to build
an internal combustion engine? Without a carburetor, the liquid
known as gasoline would not power an automobile except in one
iery propulsion event. The carburetor breaks up the liquid into tiny
droplets and distributes them randomly in a heat chamber where
these particles can be ignited safely by an electric spark. Were it not
for the second law of thermodynamics, there would be only one ex-
plosion, not thousands per minute.
What if Adam had wanted to play a friendly game of solitaire?
He would have pulled out a deck of cards and shumed them. No
cheating here! Shuming a deck of cards makes the order of the cards
unpredictable. Why? Because their order has moved toward ran-
domness. Why? Because of the second law of thermodynamics.
This means that the second law of thermodynamics operated
before the Fall of man. This was admitted once by Henry M. Mor-
ris, who elsewhere has built his apologetic for creationism on the
second law. In an essay addressed primarily to scientists rather than

5. This section is based on “Entropy in the Garden of Eden,” Is the World Running Down?,
pp. 124–26.
194 DEUTERONOMY

the general Christian public, he made this statement regarding the

operation of the second law in Eden: “The formal announcement of
the second law in its post-Fall form is found in Genesis 3:17–20. . . .
Thus, as best we can understand both Scripture and science, we
must date the establishment of the second law of thermodynamics,
in its present form at least, from the tragic day on which Adam
sinned. . . .”6 To speak of the “second law in its post-Fall form” and
“in its present form at least” is an unobjectionable way to discuss the
second law. It suggests that we must distinguish the pre-Fall and
post-Fall operations of the second law. This implies that we should
distinguish a cursed from an uncursed operation of that law. We live
in a cursed-entropy world, not an entropy-cursed world. But as far as I am
aware, nowhere else in his writings does Morris discuss the implica-
tions of this distinction, nor do his colleagues in the Creation Sci-
ence movement. This is a major weakness in that movement. A
discussion of entropy prior to Adam’s Fall is long overdue in Cre-
ation Science – so overdue that I suspect that a full discussion would
raise objections to the ways in which the movement has used the
second law in the past, as well as the ways in which the members of
the movement have refused to use it.
The correct use of the second law of thermodynamics in Chris-
tian apologetics mandates tight constraints. To argue that the world
is running down because of entropy is incorrect. Prior to Adam’s re-
bellion, the second law of thermodynamics operated in a world that
was in no way running down. The second law today operates
diferently from the way it did in Eden. That is, the physical efects of
the second law of thermodynamics were in some fundamental way
changed by God after the Fall of man. These efects have been
cursed.
Entropy is a fact of life, like death and taxes. Prior to the Fall of
man, it was equally a fact of life, before death and taxes had ap-
peared. Despite entropy’s cursed efects, we can and should work to
achieve longer life spans and lower taxes. The Bible prophesies a fu-
ture era of longer life spans (Isa. 65:20). Why not lower taxes to
match? Why not reductions in entropy? Entropy is a cost. We can

6. Henry M. Morris, “Thermodynamics and Biblical Theology,” in Emmett L. Williams

(ed.), Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (Norcross, Georgia: Creation Research
Books, 1981), pp. 129–30.
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 195

ind ways of lowering costs. Motor oil reduces metallic friction and
therefore reduces entropy. With respect to entropy’s economic
costs, they have been steadily reduced since the Industrial Revolu-
tion. That entropy exists, there can be no doubt, although if it oper-
ates in the subatomic realm, it has not yet manifested itself. That
entropy, as a cost of production, can have signiicant efects on a
particular social order is also not doubted. But that a serious social
theory can be constructed in terms of entropy as an ever-growing
social cost is highly doubtful, as socialist Jeremy Rifkin’s failed at-
tempt indicates. He ceased writing about entropy within a few years
after he announced it as a major intellectual breakthrough, substitut-
ing time-management as the culprit of capitalism.

Continuity and Discontinuity

The Christian’s case against Darwinian evolution can be based
on the second law of thermodynamics only on the unstated assump-
tion that today’s universe is not governed by the physical laws of the
pre-Fall universe. The Christian must be very careful how he uses
the second law. He cannot accurately say that entropy did not exist
in Eden, because it did operate there. Pollen’s move from an ordered
to a disordered (random) state – entropy – was what activated
Adam’s sense of smell. What was missing in Eden was hay fever, not
entropy. Entropy was not cursed before the Fall; today it is. But this
is not how modern defenders of Creation Science usually state their
case. They state it incorrectly, as if the second law of thermodynamics
did not operate prior to the Fall. They do not distinguish between the
uncursed and cursed efects of the second law; instead, they distin-
guish between a world before the second law was imposed by God
and today’s fallen world under its despotic rule. They argue that the
second law came into existence as a result of God’s curse. Morris
writes: “This law states that all systems, if left to themselves, tend to
become degraded or disordered. . . . This, then, is the true origin of
the strange law of disorder and decay, universally applicable, all-
important second law of thermodynamics. Herein is the secret of all
that’s wrong with the world. Man is a sinner and has brought God’s
curse on the earth.”7 In 1982, he wrote: “It is well to be reminded

7. Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record: A Scientiic and Devotional Commentary on the Book of
Beginnings (San Diego, California: Creation-Life, 1976), p. 127.
196 DEUTERONOMY

that the two greatest laws of science – the universal principles of

conservation and decay – are merely the scientiic formulations of,
first, God’s completed and conserved work of creation, and second,
His curse on the creation because of sin.”8 It is as if he had forgotten
his properly qualiied statement in 1981: “The formal announce-
ment of the second law in its post-Fall form is found in Genesis
3:17–20. . . . Thus, as best we can understand both Scripture and sci-
ence, we must date the establishment of the second law of thermo-
dynamics, in its present form at least, from the tragic day on which
Adam sinned. . . .”9 Morris’ inaccurate formulation of the second
law is widely cited in creationist circles, where it is invoked repeat-
edly in the apologetic against Darwinism. Hardly anyone knows
about his correct formulation, which would force creationists to
qualify this apologetic and thereby weaken it rhetorically, though
strengthen it logically.
Invoking the second law of thermodynamics is a strictly nega-
tive apologetic tactic, and, as we shall see, it falls on deaf humanist
ears. The Christian uses this argument to refute a Darwinist’s asser-
tion that ours is the only world there has ever been or will ever be.
The Christian says: “If this really is the only world there has ever
been, then the second law of thermodynamics tells us that things
could not have evolved from less order to more order. Entropy de-
nies Darwinism.” To which the faithful Darwinian replies: “But the
second law applies only to closed systems, and the earth is not a
closed system.” The proper Christian response is: “Then how did
the universe itself evolve from disorder to order?” To which the no
longer faithful Darwinian responds: “In the nanosecond of the Big
Bang, when the second law did not apply.”
The Darwinist must invoke cosmic discontinuity – the evolutionist’s
equivalent of the Bible’s doctrine of creation out of nothing – in order
to secure the present continuity of nature’s evolutionary processes.
Many leading Darwinists have now capitulated to discontinuity, e.g.,
defenders of what is known as “punctuated equilibrium,” the physi-
cally unexplainable, extremely rapid, comprehensive biological trans-

8. Henry M. Morris, Evolution in Turmoil (San Diego, California: Creation-Life, 1982),

p. 174.
9. Morris, “Thermodynamics and Biblical Theology” (1981), op. cit., pp. 129–30.
Emphasis added.
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 197

10
formations of entire species. But this does not shake their faith in the
naturalism of the laws of evolution, any more than the existence of
miracles shakes the Christian’s faith in the universality of the laws of
thermodynamics. Each side explains the existence of exceptions to
the not-quite universal laws of thermodynamics in terms of its respec-
tive presuppositions regarding the origins of the universe. In short,
neither side is willing to admit that the universe has been governed
by the second law of thermodynamics throughout history, if we
deine history as including either the garden of Eden or the Big Bang.
The Christian’s legitimate apologetic use of the second law of
thermodynamics is therefore extremely limited in scope: to force
the Darwinist to abandon uniformitarianism, i.e., the original Dar-
winian doctrine that the processes of nature that we observe today
have always been operational. This doctrine is what provided the
pre-Darwinian geologists with their evolutionary time scale, which
was crucial to their denial of the accuracy of Genesis 1. This discov-
ery of what John McPhee has called “deep time” led to the next in-
tellectual revolution: Darwinism.11 Darwin adopted Hutton’s and
Lyell’s uniformitarian geology before he restructured biology.12 But
rare is the contemporary Darwinist who is silenced by the uni-
formitarian argument for cosmic continuity. He is willing to invoke
cosmic discontinuities whenever convenient, now that he and his
peers have agreed that Darwin’s continuity-based arguments have
permanently shoved the Bible’s God out of the universe and out of
men’s thinking. Having made such efective epistemological and
cultural use of Darwinian continuity, evolutionists today feel secure
in invoking discontinuity whenever convenient, in much the same
way that the creationists invoke miracles. Punctuated equilibrium –
unexplainably huge discontinuities in macro-evolution – is modern
Darwinism’s equivalent of the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea.
Darwinists want their cosmic miracles to be impersonal, so as to
avoid considering God’s inal judgment. They want inal judgment

10. The main proponent in the United States is Harvard University paleontologist Stephen
Jay Gould.
11. McPhee is quoted by Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s Arrow/Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor
in the Discovery of Geological Time (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1987), p. 2.
12. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 182–84.
198 DEUTERONOMY

to be the impersonal eternal heat death of the universe long after

they and everything else has died, not the highly personal eternal
lames of the lake of ire. In contrast, Christians want their historical
miracles to be personal, long before everything has died, in order to
invoke God’s inal judgment. They want to escape the meaningless-
ness of the impersonal heat death of the universe in order to believe
in the meaningfulness of God’s highly personal judicial declaration,
“Not guilty!”

13
Is the Social World Running Down?
Those who invoke the second law as an argument against Dar-
winism are almost always premillennialists. Most of the others are
amillennialists. As pessimillennialists, they also are highly tempted
to argue that the social order is analogous to the physical order. It,
too, is visibly running down. Nothing can restore it except: 1) the
premillennial return of Jesus Christ to set up an earthly millennial
kingdom (where the second law will be annulled or else overcome
by regular miracles); 2) the amillennial return of Christ at the inal
judgment (after which the second law will be annulled).
Not many pessimillennialists will actually go into print on this
point. In a lyer produced by the Bible-Science Association and the
Genesis Institute (same address), we read the following: “The creationist
realizes that the world is growing old around him. He understands that
things tend to run down, to age, to die. The creationist does not look
for the world to improve, but to crumble slowly — as in erosion, de-
cay, and aging.”14 This is a philosophy of self-conscious defeat, a cry
of cultural despair. It is also not the kind of philosophy that anyone
would normally choose to challenge socialists or other humanists.
The whole idea of social entropy as an aspect of physical en-
tropy is wrong-headed. First, the entropic process of cosmic physi-
cal decay takes place in humanistic time scales of millions of years.
Such a time scale is irrelevant for social theory, whether Christian or
pagan. Societies do not survive for millions of years – not so far,
anyway.

13. This section is based on Is the World Running Down?, ch. 3: “Entropy and Social
Theory.”
14. What’s the Diference? Creation/Evolution? (no date), p. 2.
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 199

Second, what does it mean to say “the world will [or will not] im-
prove”? What world? The geophysical world? What does an ethical
or aesthetic term such as “improve” have to do with the physical
world? Scientiic evolutionists have been careful to avoid such
value-laden adjectives with respect to historical geology or biology,
at least with respect to the world prior to mankind’s appearance.
Without a moral evaluator, says the Darwinist, there can be no
meaning for the word “improve.”
Christians should be equally careful in their use of language.
The Christian should argue that God evaluates any improvement or
degeneration in the external world, and therefore men, acting as
God’s subordinates, also make such evaluations. But there is no au-
tonomous impersonal standard of “world improvement,” as any evo-
lutionist readily admits. So, the lyer apparently had as its point of
reference not the geophysical world but rather man’s social world.
The lyer says that things tend to run down. “Evolution de-
mands that things ‘wind up’ even as we see them run down. There-
fore the evolutionist looks for things to improve.” This implies that
Christians should not look for things to improve. Again, what do we
mean by “improve”? If things only tend to run down, this implies
that sometimes things don’t run down. If so, then there must be de-
cay-ofsetting progressive forces in operation. What might these be?
The main one is the gospel of salvation. Regeneration restores ethi-
cal wholeness to men. Another ofsetting factor is obedience to the
law of God. God’s law enables men to rebuild a cursed world. In
other words, ethics is fundamental; entropy isn’t. This is why entropy,
to the extent that any such phenomenon applies to the afairs of
men, is only a tendency.
The reason why I keep citing this short document (tract) is be-
cause it is the one creationist document I have seen that even men-
tions social theory, and even then only vaguely. I would have been
happy to consider other documents from Creation Scientists that
deal with entropy in relation to social theory, but I have been un-
able to ind any. In 1988, I searched the complete set of the Creation
Social Sciences and Humanities Quarterly and found nothing on the
topic. There is zero interest in this topic in modern evangelicalism.
There is almost as little interest in the relationship between
creationism and the social sciences. By 1895, 36 years after the pub-
lication of Origin of Species, Darwinism had captured virtually every
academic ield. By 1995, 34 years after the publication of Morris
200 DEUTERONOMY

and Whitcomb’s Genesis Flood, this thin quarterly magazine had 600
subscribers.
Why this silence on social theory? It may be that the entropy
paradigm is so powerful that six-day creationists have become pessi-
mistic about the possibility of constructing the foundations of a
self-consciously biblical social science. Perhaps they have been
bamed by some variation of this question: “If entropy is the domi-
nant factor in life, how can there be progress in social institutions,
including the family and the institutional church?” The answer that
I ofer is simple enough: both the resurrection and bodily ascension
of Jesus Christ have made possible the historical overcoming of
many of the cursed aspects of entropy in the physical universe, and to
whatever extent that entropy-related curses afect social institutions,
these efects can be ofset even more rapidly than in the physical
realm. Why? Because the three main institutions of society – family,
church, and State – are covenantal. Point four of the biblical cove-
nant model – sanctions15 – ofers legitimate hope in comprehensive
healing in history. This healing is both personal and institutional.16
The closer we get to man, who is made in God’s image, the more the
covenant’s sanctions of blessings and cursings become visible.
I suspect that there is a better explanation for pessimillennialists’
silence on social theory. It is not that pessimillennialists have become
paralyzed in their development of social theory by the power of the
concept of entropy. Rather, it is the other way around: their pessi-
millennialism has governed their use of the concept of entropy. Their
inherently pessimistic social theory has led to a particular applica-
tion of the entropy concept: the denial of entropy in the pre-Fall
world. They see physical entropy much as they see the social world:
inherently debilitating rather than cursed in its efects. They see en-
tropy as the dominant factor in a physical world governed by physi-
cal decay; they see disorder as the dominant factor in a social world
governed by moral decay. They see isolated islands of physical or-
der in a world of escalating physical disorder; they see isolated is-
lands of social order in a world of escalating social and moral decay.
They view the physical universe as declining into oblivion apart

15. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 4.
16. Gary North, Healer of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for International Relations (Ft. Worth,
Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 201

from occasional miracles; they see history as declining into oblivion

apart from rare events of individual salvation. The physical world
must march toward physical chaos until God calls the process to a
halt at the inal judgment. The social world must also march toward
social chaos until God calls the process to a halt at the inal judg-
ment. In neither case does the New Testament doctrine of Christ’s
bodily resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God play any
theoretical role. In both cases, the Old Testament’s curses are left
unafected by the New Testament’s blessings. In both cases, the Old
Testament’s tale of rebellion and destruction is dominant. In neither
case does New Testament biblical theology play any role. The New
Testament’s message of comprehensive redemption – the Great
Commission – is denied in the name of the Old Covenant’s
pre-ascension setbacks.
When I published Is the World Running Down?, I did not expect
Creation Scientists to respond to it in print. I was correct; almost no
one did. More to the point, no one in the movement has ever writ-
ten a book on entropy and social theory; mine remains the only
Christian book that deals with the subject, which minimizes the con-
nections between physical entropy and social entropy. I admit
freely that physical entropy imposes costs on production processes,
but the key question is social: Which social order best encourages
the discovery and implementation of technological reductions in
these costs? Creation Scientists do not bother to ask this question.
The Creation Science movement has not produced a single social
theorist since The Genesis Flood appeared in 1961. This is ominous
for the Creation Science movement. It means that the movement’s
attempt to reconstruct modern natural science has not only failed to
persuade the vast majority of natural scientists, it has persuaded no
social scientists. Why is this ominous? Because the success of Dar-
winism can be measured by its penetration of all other academic
ields within a single generation.
As I said earlier, three decades after the publication of Darwin’s
Origin of Species, the worldwide intellectual community had become
overwhelmingly Darwinian. In almost every academic discipline in
the social sciences and the humanities, Darwinists had laid totally
new intellectual foundations; each ield had been totally recon-
structed to conform to Darwinism. By 1890, the Progressive Move-
ment in the United States was ready to restructure civil government
and social theory, including theology, in terms of the Darwinian
202 DEUTERONOMY

17
ideal of scientiic central planning. So were Progressivism’s cous-
ins in Europe, the Social Democrats. The absence of any similar
efort, let alone success, among Creation Science’s adherents out-
side of the natural sciences, indicates that there is either something
missing in or radically wrong with the movement’s entropy apolo-
getic. This was one of my main themes in Is the World Running
Down?: the incompatibility of Creation Science’s entropy apolo-
getic with biblical social theory. Our physical world is not a closed
system; neither is our social world. God intervenes in nature and
history. He intervened in the corporate life of Israel during the wil-
derness period, overcoming entropy in the area of apparel.

Pessimillennialism and Social Theory

I argue that the Creation Science movement has a hidden but
widely shared eschatological agenda: pessimillennialism. Dis-
pensational premillennialists and amillennialists want to believe
that the social world must continue to deteriorate alongside the
physical world, and a whole lot faster. They accept what might be
called “the uniformitarianism of social deterioration.” Evil is always
compounding in such a view. This steady increase in evil is fast ap-
proaching that point on the social graph when the curve will turn
sharply upward and begin to approach ininity as a limit: the expo-
nential curve. In other words, pessimillennialists believe that things
will soon get so bad socially that Jesus will just have to come again in
person to straighten everything out by force. This time of exponen-
tial social evil is almost upon us; therefore, they conclude, the Sec-
ond Coming is just around the corner. They believe that there is not
enough time remaining to reverse this process of deterioration.
Furthermore, there is no possibility of doing so: social entropy is as
universal as physical entropy is. No long-term reversal of social
entropy is compatible with the entropy apologetic. The institutional
church is seen as socially impotent; the gospel is seen as exclusively
personal; and fulilling the Great Commission18 is seen as an impos-
sible dream.

17. Sidney Fine, Laissez Faire and the General-Welfare State: A Study of Conlict in American
Thought, 1865–1901 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), Part 2.
18. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 203

Until Creation Science begins to have an impact on social

thought, it will be unable to counteract Darwinism, which long ago
reconstructed social theory in its own image. The presuppositions
underlying modern biological evolution appeared irst in the social
theories of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, not in
the natural sciences.19 Then, after 1880, the free market social theory
of pre-Darwinian evolutionism was abandoned; replacing it was re-
form Social Darwinism: State planning. Evolutionistic social theory
laid the foundations of biological Darwinism, just as pessimillennialism
laid the foundations of Creation Science’s entropy apologetic. Until the
eschatological agenda of Creation Science is openly discussed, Cre-
ation Science will continue to be irrelevant outside of the natural sci-
ences. Until pessimillennialism is abandoned by Creation Science,
Creation Science will continue to be irrelevant in the area of social
theory. Pessimillennialism makes impossible the development of a
speciically biblical social theory.20
Premillennialists presumably believe in “universal social en-
tropy.” But there is neither a formula governing social entropy nor
any way scientiically to identify or measure this supposed phenom-
enon, unlike physical entropy. Premillennialists implicitly assume
that this universal social entropy will be reversed or ofset during the
future millennium. They do not say this explicitly, however. Premil-
lennialists refuse to discuss the topic of entropy’s operations during
the coming millennium. Perhaps they choose not to think about
such matters; in any case, they refuse to write about them. Henry M.
Morris ignores the topic in his commentary on the Book of Revela-
tion. He says that entropy will be repealed after the inal judgment,21
but he is conveniently silent with respect to entropy during the
millennial kingdom. Most premillennialists believe that things will
no longer decline morally and socially during the millennium.22

19. F. A. Hayek, “The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design” (1967), in
Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (University of Chicago Press, 1967), ch. 6; S.
S. Schweber, “The Origin of the Origin Revisited,” Journal of the History of Biology, X (1977), pp.
229–316.
20. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990).
21. Henry M. Morris, The Revelation Record (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1983),
p. 441.
22. An exception is accountant-turned-theologian Dave Hunt. See Hunt, Beyond Seduction:
A Return to Biblical Christianity (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 1987), p. 250. For a critique,
see Is the World Running Down?, pp. 257–63.
204 DEUTERONOMY

Presumably, premillennialists also believe that the efects of physi-

cal entropy will somehow be ofset during the millennium. They
never discuss this, and so I cannot know for sure what they believe
on this point. I doubt that they do, either. On the other hand, if en-
tropy’s efects will be ofset cosmically, then the millennium will
constitute one gigantic miracle. If they will be ofset at a price by nor-
mal scientiic and technological progress, then we can in theory do
the same thing now without the bodily return of Jesus to rule from
Jerusalem or Colorado Springs or wherever He will set up head-
quarters. In either case, entropy is not a permanently debilitating
factor in social organizations. Either a series of miracles will ofset it,
as took place in the wilderness era, or mankind’s eforts in reducing
costs will ofset it.
Amillennialists see no permanent future reversal of social de-
cline in history; a better day is not coming on this side of the Second
Coming. In this sense, amillennialists are what Rushdoony once
said they are: premillennialists without earthly hope. Neither of
these pessimillennial creationist groups sees any advantage in de-
voting time and money to a study of biblical social theory. Why
bother? Isn’t everything going to hell in an entropic handbasket? Is
not everything doomed? Wouldn’t any investment of time and
money in developing a creationist social theory constitute a waste of
scarce economic resources, like polishing brass on a sinking ship?
Moses had an answer for such rhetorical questions: no!

Conclusion
A very clever professor of engineering once stated a speciic
form of the second law of thermodynamics: “Confusion (entropy) is
always increasing in society. Only if someone or something works
extremely hard can this confusion be reduced to order in a limited
region. Nevertheless, this efort will still result in an increase in the
total confusion of society at large.”23 If knowledge were the product
of physical creation – or if life were – then his theorem would be
correct in this sin-cursed (but not entropy-cursed) world. Moses’ ac-
count of the wilderness indicates that life is not strictly physical.
Other laws apply. It is worth noting that the famous physicist, Erwin

23. W. L. Everitt, Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. Cited in
Paul Dickenson, The Ojcial Rules (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978), p. 48.
 Miracles, Entropy, and Social Theory 205

Schrödinger, insisted that life is governed by laws diferent from

those established by modern physical theory. In his book, What Is
Life?, he wrote: “What I wish to make clear in this last chapter is, in
short, that from all we have learnt about the structure of living mat-
ter, we must be prepared to ind it working in a manner that cannot
be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics.”24
To persuade Israel that promise precedes law, and therefore
that grace precedes law, Moses reminded them of their experience
in the wilderness. God had overcome the laws of nature by feeding
them with manna and by keeping their clothing from wearing out.
In modern terminology, God had suspended the second law of ther-
modynamics. Entropy in these areas had been reduced to zero.
There had been neither wear nor tear on their clothing.
This was miraculous. Moses expected Israel to understand this.
God’s active intervention into the processes of nature had been con-
tinuous for four decades. He had overturned the laws of nature in
order to humble them without killing them. To keep them both
humble and alive in the wilderness as a test of their covenantal com-
mitment, He had performed a series of miracles that constituted one
long miracle. They had passed the test. Now, Moses was telling
them, God would secure the long-promised kingdom grant for them
through military conquest. But their continued covenantal corpo-
rate obedience would be required by God in order for the nation to
maintain this kingdom grant.
This Mosaic world-and-life view ofers hope for society. When-
ever men remain covenantally faithful through obedience to God’s
Bible-revealed laws, social progress is not only possible, it is as-
sured. God’s kingdom grant was given to the church by Jesus after
His resurrection: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.
Amen” (Matt. 28:18b–20). This kingdom grant was sealed by His
ascension in history. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believ-
eth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works

24. Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Cambridge
University Press, [1944] 1967), p. 81.
206 DEUTERONOMY

than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatso-

ever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be
gloriied in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it”
(John 14:12–14). Therefore, Jesus instructed us, “If ye love me, keep
my commandments” (v. 15).
The Great Commission will be fulilled prior to the inal judg-
ment: “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the
kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all
rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put
all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all
things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which
did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued
unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put
all things under him, that God may be all in all” (I Cor. 15:24–28).
The termination of entropy’s curse will coincide with the termination
of death: the last enemy to be subdued. No more worn-out clothes
and no more swollen feet: what was in the wilderness evermore shall
be, world without end, amen.
 19
ChasteningAND
CHASTENING and Inheritance
INHERITANCE

Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his
son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep the
commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear
him. For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of
brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and
hills (Deut. 8:5–7).

The theocentric focus of this passage is stated in the passage:

God as the chastener of His son, Israel. Israel’s judicial position as
an adopted son was the basis of both types of sanction: positive
(Promised Land) and negative (chastening). The proof of God’s neg-
ative sanctions would be Israel’s imminent inheritance of the Prom-
ised Land. This was not a seed law. Its intent was universal:
“Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy
God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him” (v. 6).
Deuteronomy follows Numbers, the book of sanctions. Moses
here tells Israel that they must obey God’s commandments in order
to escape His chastening, but also because God was about to lead
them into the Promised Land. The covenantal link between historical
sanctions and earthly inheritance is as unbreakable as the link between
God’s revealed law (“commandments”) and sanctions (“chastening”).
Put another way, the covenantal link between historical sanctions and
eschatology is as ixed as the covenantal link between law and historical
sanctions. Put a third way, historical sanctions are the covenantal link
between law and eschatology. Put comprehensively, theonomy is not
simply a matter of God’s law; it is a matter of the covenant: God’s abso-
lute sovereignty, man’s subordinate authority, Bible-revealed law’s

207
208 DEUTERONOMY

continuity, historical sanctions’ predictability, and postmillennialism.

Put as a slogan, theonomy is a package deal.

Israel as God’s Son

“Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man
chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.” This
warning ajrmed the legal status of Israel as the son of God. More
than this: Israel was God’s irstborn son. “And thou shalt say unto
Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my irstborn:
And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if
thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy
irstborn” (Ex. 4:22–23). As the irstborn son, Israel was entitled to a
double portion of the inheritance (Deut. 21:15–17). This relected
the greater responsibility of the irstborn son in representing the fa-
ther and the covenant line. The irstborn was supposed to declare
his father’s word to the younger sons. The younger sons would grow
up under the authority of the irstborn son. His authority was psy-
chologically derived from his age, but it was judicially derived from
his status as heir. The heir spoke his father’s word authoritatively.
This placed an added responsibility on Israel’s shoulders to de-
clare God’s commandments to the gentiles. Judicially speaking, the
gentiles were the younger sons. They were not to speak authorita-
tively to Israel; the opposite was true. This was why God raised up Jo-
nah as a prophet to bring God’s covenant lawsuit against Nineveh.
The Promised Land was Israel’s double portion. Deuteronomy
8 devotes considerable space to a detailed description of the mani-
fold blessings of the Promised Land (vv. 7–13). There was to be no
question in their minds that this constituted a double portion. This
was the preferred land. It was not then the barren, parched land that
it is today. It was still a land where a ram could get its horns caught
in the branches of a thicket on top of a mountain (Gen. 22:13). To-
day, the mountains of Palestine are barren.
Israel was required to obey God’s commandments as a repre-
sentative son. Israel was under the covenant. In order to declare the
covenant authoritatively, a person must be under the terms of the
covenant. To remind them that they were under these terms, Moses
warned them of God’s chastening. There had been negative sanc-
tions imposed on national Israel for her disobedience. These sanc-
tions testiied to Israel’s status as a son. Chastening was a negative
sanction intended to restore the father-son relationship. It was not a
 Chastening and Inheritance 209

sanction designed to beat down and destroy those brought under

them. It was not the permanent negative historical sanction that
God demanded that Israel impose on the inhabitants of Canaan.
Israel’s status as a irstborn son reveals why God told Israel to
destroy Canaan. The Canaanites were second-born sons of God:
disinherited sons. They were occupying the inheritance of the
irstborn son. But why did this give Israel the right to kill them? In
the Mosaic law, there was only one case where a family member
was authorized to take part in the execution of another family mem-
ber: when the convicted member had tried to lure the sanc-
tions-bringing member to worship a false god (Deut. 13:6–10).
Canaanites were a threat to Israel because they would eventu-
ally lure Israel into false worship. This was the reason God gave
Israel for destroying the Canaanites. The presence of Canaanites in
the land would be a constant source of temptation (Ex. 34:11–16). If
allowed to remain in the Promised Land, the Canaanites would
eventually become bonded to Israel through marriage (Ex. 34:16).
As the second-born sons in the household, they would lead Israel
into rebellion against the Father. God knew this, and so He an-
nounced that He had judged the Canaanites in advance and had
found them guilty. Israel had to serve as God’s executioner. The
irstborn sons and the second-born sons could not occupy the same
landed inheritance.
This theme of the inheritance of the irstborn and second-born
sons is found repeatedly in Genesis. Again and again, the irstborn
son proved to be the disinherited son. It began with Adam’s rebel-
lion; the inheritance was transferred to God’s chronologically sec-
ond-born son, Jesus Christ.1 The second-born Son became the irst-
born judicially. This theme of the rebellion of the irstborn contin-
ued with Cain’s slaying of Abel. Esau was also the irstborn, but God
told Rebekah that the younger would rule the elder (Gen. 25:23). This
repeated reversal of the legal pattern of inheritance was based on
God’s grace in re-inheriting the younger brother through adoption
while condemning the disinherited older brother. The Canaanites
as elder brothers had gained possession of the land, but as disinherited

1. Paul established the distinction between the irst Adam and the second or last Adam,
Jesus Christ: “And so it is written, The irst man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam
was made a quickening spirit” (I Cor. 15:45).
210 DEUTERONOMY

sons, their claim was invalid. Israel, by God’s grace, had become the
irstborn son with lawful title.

Sufering and Imposing Negative Sanctions

Moses had already reminded them that God had humbled them
in the wilderness (Deut. 8:2). This sufering was a form of chasten-
ing. Their sufering was to remind them that they were under the
terms of God’s covenant as a son. God had already called them to
impose His permanent negative historical sanctions on the wilder-
ness side of the Jordan. This had led to the expansion of Israel’s in-
heritance. Reuben (Israel’s irstborn), Gad, and half the tribe of
Manasseh inherited this land (Num. 32:33). This served as a down
payment on the national inheritance. God had shown that He
would deliver their inheritance to them through military conquest.
They should not fear their enemies.
The four decades of negative sanctions were not intended to de-
stroy them but rather to conirm them in the covenant. They were
sons, not bastards. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening,
God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the fa-
ther chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all
are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons” (Heb. 12:6–8).
The legal bastards – disinherited sons – were about to be publicly
disinherited.
Sonship is by oath consigned. There must be a physical repre-
sentation of this covenant oath in order for it to become the legal
basis of inheritance. The Israelites had not yet been circumcised,
which is why they had to be circumcised before they could begin
the war to inherit Canaan (Josh. 5:8). Outside of Canaan, they had
already begun the conquest, but the actual inheritance of the trans-
Jordan lands was delayed until after the defeat of Canaan (Deut. 3:20).
The tribes dwelling on the wilderness side of the Jordan also had
to be circumcised before lawful title to the inheritance could be
legally transferred by God to His irstborn son. Israel’s physical
sufering at Gilgal was preparatory to the far worse physical
sufering of the Canaanites. Israelites had to experience the negative
physical sanction of circumcision before they could lawfully impose
the negative physical sanction of death inside the boundaries of the
Promised Land.
 Chastening and Inheritance 211

Those who were formally under God’s covenant sanctions were

the only people authorized by God to impose negative civil sanc-
tions in Israel. Citizenship is established by oath. Those who seek to
impose negative civil sanctions and participate in the political sacra-
ment of voting must irst place themselves formally under the terms
of God’s two covenants, church and State.2

Conclusion
Moses announced the requirement that Israel, as the son of
God, was required to keep God’s commandments. God had been
humbling them for four decades. Now, He was about to bring them
into a bountiful land which would be their inheritance. The se-
quence was as follows: negative sanctions as a means of maturity
through chastening, obedience to God’s law as an ethical require-
ment, and inheritance in history. The chastening, while a negative
sanction, was in fact conirmation of their legal position as inheriting
sons. So, this negative sanction was a form of grace. Once again, we
are reminded that grace precedes law. But this passage also indi-
cates that law precedes the transfer of the inheritance in history.
The second-born gentile sons of Canaan had been disinherited
by God in Abraham’s day: “But in the fourth generation they shall
come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full”
(Gen. 15:16). This verbally imputed disinheritance – what we might
call deinitive or judicial disinheritance – was to be achieved progres-
sively: “I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the peo-
ple to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn
their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which
shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from be-
fore thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest
the land become desolate, and the beast of the ield multiply against
thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until
thou be increased, and inherit the land” (Ex. 23:27–30). This disin-
heritance was to be inally achieved in history: “When the LORD thy
God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it,
and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the

2. This principle of civil law remains covenantally authoritative. It is dishonored in New

Testament times by every system of civil government that bases citizenship on anything other
than public Trinitarian confession and communing membership in the institutional church.
212 DEUTERONOMY

Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the

Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater
and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver
them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them;
thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto
them” (Deut. 7:1–2).
The covenant’s development in history is relected in the struc-
ture of the covenant: sovereign grace, hierarchical sonship, law,
sanctions, and inheritance. The conquest of Canaan, from God’s
deinitive promise to Abraham regarding the inheritance of Abra-
ham’s sons to the inal defeat and disinheritance of the Canaanites,
is representative of all of man’s history. While this covenant se-
quence was always broken by Old Covenant Israel, as represented
by the survival of a remnant of Canaanites in the land, the New
Covenant sequence moves toward historical fulillment of this se-
quence. “For evildoers shall be cut of: but those that wait upon the
LORD, they shall inherit the earth” (Ps. 37:9).
 20
Overcoming Poverty
OVERCOMING POVERTY

A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt
not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose
hills thou mayest dig brass (Deut. 8:9).

This description appeared in a passage devoted to the domin-

ion. It related to Israel’s inheritance of the land, but its ethical inten-
tion was universal: “Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments
of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him” (Deut. 8:6).
It was not a seed law or land law.
This description of a land without scarcity seems consistent with
the sabbatical year of release from debt: “At the end of every seven
years thou shalt make a release. And this is the manner of the re-
lease: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall re-
lease it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother;
because it is called the LORD’S release. Of a foreigner thou mayest ex-
act it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall
release; Save when there shall be no poor among you; for the LORD
shall greatly bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee for an inheritance to possess it” (Deut. 15:1–4). But it seems in-
consistent with Deuteronomy 15:11: “For the poor shall never cease
out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open
thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in
thy land.” God’s ajrmation that they would eat bread without
scarceness – the abolition of poverty – did not negate the sabbatical
year law, which implied that this law would cease when there was
no more poverty in the land. But He also promised that there would
always be poverty in the land. How can all this be sorted out
biblically?

213
214 DEUTERONOMY

Biblical Scarceness vs. Economic Scarcity

The word translated here as “scarceness” occurs only once in
the Old Testament. It is derived from a Hebrew word, miskeluth,
meaning poverty, which is found only in Ecclesiastes. “Better is a
poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more
be admonished” (Eccl. 4:13). “Now there was found in it a poor wise
man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remem-
bered that same poor man. Then said I, Wisdom is better than
strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his
words are not heard” (Eccl. 9:15–16). Miskeluth in turn derives from
the Hebrew word translated as “folly”: siklooth. This word is also
conined exclusively to verses in Ecclesiastes, such as in Ecclesiastes
2:13: “Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light
excelleth darkness.” Siklooth is derived from sawkal’: silliness. “And
Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept
the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded
thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon
Israel for ever” (I Sam. 13:13).
By tracing the origins of these words, we see a connection:
scarceness, poverty, folly, silliness. The essence of silliness is that
men refuse to keep God’s commandments, as Samuel told Saul.
Obedience brings wealth. This is the core meaning of Moses’ de-
scription of the Promised Land. The land contains a sujcient sup-
ply of scarce economic resources to enable a covenant-keeper to eat
bread. This concept is diferent from the economists’ concept of
scarcity.
The economist deines scarcity in terms of price. At zero price,
the demand for a scarce economic resource will be greater than its
supply. This was surely not what Moses had in mind: “. . . a land
whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass”
(Deut. 8:9b). Any expenditure of labor is a payment. The copper of
Israel was not obtainable apart from labor.1
The Promised Land was not outside of history and its cursed
scarcity. It was a place with sujcient resources that a folly-avoiding
person who obeyed God’s commandments would not sufer pov-
erty. David observed: “I have been young, and now am old; yet

1. The King James translators always translated the Hebrew word for copper as brass, an
alloy of copper and zinc.
 Overcoming Poverty 215

have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”
(Ps. 37:25). Poverty in Israel would be abnormal for covenant-
keepers if Israel remained faithful to God. This wealth principle was
not conined to Mosaic Israel.

The Ultimate Resource

The ultimate resource is not human creativity, contrary to Julian
Simon’s book.2 Rather, it is God’s covenant. Not creativity as such
but adherence to God’s law is what brings forth the positive creativ-
ity that sustains long-term economic growth. Human creativity can
sometimes be perverse, and it then brings forth not wealth but pov-
erty. Warfare is sometimes such a counter-productive endeavor.
Covenant-keeping is the key to wealth. It is the wealth formula. A
society does not need resources other than liberty, a willingness to
work hard and wisely in terms of God’s moral standards, and some
way to transport products to and from the world outside. The tiny
community of Hong Kong since 1945 has become a formidable
economic competitor in several ields, most notably in textiles and
inancial services.3 The United States government has long been
pressured by American textile and clothing manufacturers to legis-
late import quotas against clothing exported by this geographically
tiny (a little over 400 square miles) society of six million hard-working
people,4 so competitive are Hong Kong’s manufacturers. Hong
Kong has almost no natural resources. It has to import at least 90%
of everything it consumes. Only one-seventh of its land is arable.5 Its
only natural resource of any consequence is its harbor. Meanwhile,
other parts of the world are awash in natural resources, but they are
also awash in envy, crime, government regulations on the economy,
and present-oriented people who choose not to save. These societ-
ies are marked by their poverty.

2. Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1981).
3. I am reviewing this passage in August of 1997, a few weeks after political authority over
Hong Kong was transferred by Great Britain to Communist China.
4. In 1945, about 600,000 lived there. Alvin Rabushka, Hong Kong: A Study in Economic
Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 11.
5. Ibid., p. 12.
216 DEUTERONOMY

Israel’s Natural Resources

Israel had many natural resources. It also had access to the
Mediterranean Sea. It was “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines,
and ig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey”
(Deut. 8:8). The threat to Israel’s prosperity was not the threat of
natural resource depletion. God did not warn them to use civil gov-
ernment coercion to conserve resources. He warned them against
forgetting where they had received these resources:

Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his com-
mandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee
this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly
houses, and dwelt therein; And when thy herds and thy locks multiply,
and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multi-
plied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God,
which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bond-
age (Deut. 8:11–14).

Covenantal forgetfulness would eventually produce covenantal

faithlessness. This would lead to God’s corporate negative sanctions
against them (vv. 19–20). If they enjoyed the gifts without remem-
bering and worshipping the Giver, then their prosperity would not
survive. It was God’s covenantal administration that would enable
them to prosper in the Promised Land.

Land and Labor

The list of resources emphasized agriculture, herding, and min-
ing. These were traditional occupations in the ancient world, along
with seafaring, trade, and textiles. The Promised Land’s geography
ofered all of them. The economist generally refers to these re-
sources as land.6 The Promised Land was illed with resources. The
Israelites could therefore look forward to prosperity. They were not
expected by God to believe in Hong Kong economics: compound-
ing creativity that makes land valuable mainly as a consumer good

6. In this technical sense, the sea is land. Because of its liquid status, the sea and rivers
present problems for assigning ownership. That which lows is dijcult to isolate; that which
cannot be isolated is dijcult to own and disown. It is this problem which leads to pollution,
both liquid and air-borne: using water and air as free resources to reduce production costs.
 Overcoming Poverty 217

rather than land that supplies raw materials. Even today, Hong
Kong’s economic success is almost beyond the willingness of uni-
versity-educated people to understand, accept, or believe. This was
especially true prior to 1980. As Rabushka wrote in 1979, “One can,
I think, count the number of American economists who study Hong
Kong’s political economy on the ingers of one hand, or at most
two.”7
The idea that widespread prosperity can be attained without the
natural resource of land is not readily believed. This was especially
true before Bill Gates became the richest man in America at age 30
by owning and improving software code. To go from about $50,000
in 1981 to $100 billion in 1999 by means of magnetic ones and zeros
embedded on pieces of plastic – plus the ability to persuade millions
of buyers that these inexpensive pieces of plastic are useful – would
have appeared impossible in 1981. Today, however, creating this
kind of personal wealth seems possible only by doing highly creative
things with magnetic ones and zeros.
Nevertheless, a great deal has changed in people’s thinking
since 1980. This change accelerated rapidly among the West’s intel-
lectual elite after the highly popular (in the Western media, but not
in the USSR) Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev publicly admitted
the collapse of the Soviet economy in 1989, which in fact had not
collapsed at all, since it had never been sujciently productive to
have collapsed. The Soviet Union had always been little more than
a Third World country, i.e., dependent on government aid and
loans from Western banks. It had an insane economic system, a fact
made hilariously clear in Leopold Tyrmand’s 1972 book, The Rosa
Luxemburg Contraceptive Cooperative. Communist nations’ poverty
had been visible to anyone who visited them with open eyes and no
socialist presuppositions, i.e., people other than Western intellectu-
als.8 What collapsed in 1989 was Western intellectuals’ faith in the
productivity of the State’s direct ownership of the means of produc-
tion. This collapse was seen within a few months in America’s book
stores: $24.95 books written by Marxist college professors were

7. Rabushka, Hong Kong, p. 2.

8. Sylvia R. Margulies, The Pilgrimage to Russia: The Soviet Union and the Treatment of
Foreigners, 1924–1937 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968); Paul Hollander,
Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1981).
218 DEUTERONOMY

being sold in discount bins for a dollar or two. After the failed Com-
munist coup in late August of 1991, such books became very dijcult
to ind except for a few titles in university book stores, where ten-
ured Marxist professors who pretend that their worldview hasn’t be-
come a joke, even among their liberal academic colleagues, still
assign them to students who have no way to escape. Yet new Marx-
ist book titles had illed whole bookcases annually prior to 1989.

The Wealth Formula

What God told Israel was this: the maintenance of the kingdom
grant was conditional. They had to keep God’s commandments. He
did not tell them that He would miraculously add new supplies of
iron and copper if they proved to be obedient. He would multiply
them and their locks. He would multiply their vines. They would
get wealthier, step by step. The heart of this system of economic
growth was the covenant: law, positive corporate sanctions, and
compound economic growth. God gave them the wealth formula.
They did not adopt it. This had to wait until the late eighteenth cen-
tury. When men at long last accepted it, they entered into the world
of compound economic growth, where growth in output of two per-
cent per year for two centuries brings personal wealth beyond the
dreams of kings in 1800. Computer technology has converted sili-
con – sand – into wealth beyond anything ever dreamed by the an-
cient and medieval magicians and alchemists. But the modern
world has reversed the covenantal imagery of blessing. “That in
blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed
as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea
shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (Gen.
22:17). God views sand as cheap and children as valuable. The
modern world sees children as a liability and sand as an asset.9 This

9. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Two years later, beachfront
property in southern California began to soar in value even faster than other southern
California real estate did. Sand was now seen as being both scarce and desirable. A beach
bum’s lifestyle – clinging, irritating sand and blinding sun, with its cancer-causing,
wrinkle-producing, “skin like leather by age 35" tanning – became the lifestyle of choice for
present-oriented rich people. They became willing to pay extreme price premiums for truly
mediocre housing to gain easy access to this unproductive, responsibility-avoiding lifestyle. I
grew up in that once middle-income environment, 1953–59, and was happy to leave. The
now middle-aged kid brother of one of my best friends in high school remains one of the
ever-popular Beach Boys, still singing for Rhonda to help him. But for me, ”Surf’s up!" meant
“I’m gone!”
 Overcoming Poverty 219

is why the modern world is headed for judgment. A good, old fash-
ioned plague would change modern man’s imputation of economic
value. So would the bankruptcy of government-funded pension
plans.

What the Land Might Lack

Trade is the voluntary, non-coercive means by which a person
who has more of some item than he wants, compared to how much
he wants what someone else has, is able legally to get his hands on
the other person’s goods. Each person enters into an exchange be-
lieving that he will be better of after the exchange.
This is as true statistically of nations as of individuals. Residents
of a nation that lacks some resource can buy it from residents in an-
other nation. For example, in the late 1970’s, Hong Kong imported
85 percent of its food and exported 90 percent of its manufactures.10
Meanwhile, some nation grew the food that it sold to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong residents wanted food more than extra clothing; the
other nation’s residents wanted clothing more than extra food.
Hong Kong was in efect manufacturing food; its trading partner
was in efect growing clothing. The same sort of arrangement cate-
gorizes trade between the United States and Japan.
It was not necessary that God ill the Promised Land with every
conceivable natural resource. It was only necessary that He give
them His law and the grace to obey it, which allows men’s creativity
to lourish. This creativity is the basis of most economic growth.
Raw materials have always been available. What makes them valu-
able is men’s knowledge of productive, consumer-satisfying things
to do with them. What makes them worth searching for and digging
up is the income potential provided by other men with other things
to exchange. He who has the productive skills that produce the
inished products that consumers desire to buy will not lack any-
thing in whatever land God places him, but only for as long as there
is freedom.

10. Rabushka, Hong Kong, pp. 2–3.

220 DEUTERONOMY

Conclusion
The Promised Land was not a land literally lowing with milk
and honey. It was a land that possessed great advantages, not the
least of which was its location on a widely used trade route. It had
minerals. It had room for sheep. It had a climate it for agricultural
production. It had not yet been stripped of its fertility by millennia
of ecological exploitation and neglect.
The key to prosperity in the land of Israel was covenantal faithful-
ness, not government-planned resource conservation. To continue to
eat bread without scarceness, Israel would have to avoid the folly of cov-
enant-breaking. The land was bountiful, which was appropriate for an
inheritance. But the land was to be understood as a manifestation of
God’s grace. Subordination follows grace; law follows subordination;
sanctions follow law; and an inheritance either multiplies, stagnates, or
contracts in terms of men’s sanctions and God’s. For those who kept
the covenant, the land would lack nothing, even as Hong Kong lacks
nothing. When a nation is productive, it can buy whatever it does not
have. When God said “thou shalt not lack any thing in it,” He did not
mean that the land contained everything they needed. It would con-
tain the people of the covenant. Covenantal faithfulness, not minerals
and climate as such, would enable them to escape the burden of
poverty.
 21
The Covenantal Ideal of Economic
THE COVENANTAL IDEALGrowth
OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy
God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget
not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his
judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when
thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt
therein; And when thy herds and thy locks multiply, and thy silver and thy
gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be
lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out
of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; Who led thee through that
great and terrible wilderness, wherein were iery serpents, and scorpions,
and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out
of the rock of lint; Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy
fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee,
to do thee good at thy latter end; And thou say in thine heart, My power
and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt
remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get
wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy
fathers, as it is this day (Deut. 8:10–18).

The theocentric focus of this law is God as the gracious Pro-

vider. God demands thankfulness on the part of the recipients of
His grace. The message here is clear: covenant-keepers can become
spiritually forgetful as a direct result of the visible blessings of God.
As a result of the gift, they forget the Giver. That covenant-breakers
forget the God who gave them their blessings should come as no
shock, but this warning was directed at covenant-keepers.

221
222 DEUTERONOMY

Because the sin of covenantal forgetfulness is universal, this law

was not a seed law or land law. Those theologians who argue that
this was exclusively a land law want to escape from its implications:
God brings sanctions in history against those who forget Him. The
problem is, when they argue this way, they strip the covenant of its
predictability and therefore also its authority in history. Those who
forget God are supposedly in no worse shape in history, and per-
haps far better shape, than those who remember Him.

Social Theory
Forgetfulness is an aspect of point two of the biblical covenant
model: hierarchy. The covenantally forgetful man forgets some-
thing quite speciic: his complete dependence on the grace of God.
Moses here listed the external blessings that God had given them in
the wilderness, a hostile place that would not sustain a large popula-
tion. They had received water out of the rock and a daily supply of
food. In the wilderness, they had been kept humble and subordi-
nate by their reliance on God’s miracles. God would soon give them
blessings after they conquered the Promised Land. The transfer of
inheritance from Canaan to Israel would be an aspect of God’s
comprehensive deliverance of the nation out of bondage and into
freedom. Their freedom would initially be accompanied by a dis-
continuous increase in their external wealth: military victory. Then
this wealth would multiply.

Miracles as Welfare
The move from Egypt to Canaan is a model of the move from
slavery to freedom. The model of a free society is not Israel’s mirac-
ulous wilderness experience, where God gave them manna and re-
moved many burdens of entropy. The predictable miracles of the
wilderness era were designed to humble them, not raise them up.
The wilderness experience was not marked by economic growth
but by economic stagnation and total dependence. They were not
allowed to save extra portions of manna, which rotted (Ex. 16:20).
On the move continually, they could not dig wells, plant crops, or
build houses. At best, they may have been able to increase their
herds, as nomads do (Num. 3:45; 20:4; 32:1). The wilderness experi-
ence was a means of teaching them that God acts in history to sustain
His people. The wilderness economy with its regular miracles was
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 223

not to become an ideal toward which covenant-keepers should strive.

Israel longed for escape from the wilderness. It was God’s curse on
the exodus generation that they would die in the wilderness.
The wilderness economy was a welfare economy. The Israelites
were supplied with basic necessities even though the people did not
work. But they lacked variety. People without the ability to feed
themselves were fed by God: same old diet. People without the abil-
ity to clothe themselves were clothed by God: same old fashions.
Israel wandered aimlessly because the nation had refused to march
into war. They were not it to lead, and so they had to follow. They
were welfare clients; they had no authority over the conditions of
their existence. They took what was handed out to them. And like
welfare clients generally, they constantly complained that their life
style just wasn’t good enough (Num. 11). They had been unwilling
to pay the price of freedom: conquest (Num. 14). God therefore
cursed them to endure four decades of welfare economics. The only
good thing about the wilderness welfare program was that it did not
use the State as the agency of positive blessings. No one was coerced
into paying for anyone else’s life style. God used a series of miracles
to sustain them all. There was no coercive program of wealth redis-
tribution. Israel was a welfare society, not a welfare State.
The lure of the welfare State remains with responsibility-avoiding
men in every era. It was this lure which attracted the crowds to Jesus.
“Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye
seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of
the loaves, and were illed” (John 6:26). They wanted a king who
would feed them. They viewed Jesus as a potential candidate for
king because He could multiply bread. They associated free food
with political authority. He knew this, and He departed from them
(John 6:11–15).
Men in their rebellion against God want to believe in a State
that can heal them. They believe in salvation by law. They prefer to
live under the authority of a messianic State, meaning a healer State,
rather than under freedom. They want to escape the burdens of per-
sonal and family responsibility in this world of cursed scarcity. They
want to live as children live, as recipients of bounty without a price
tag. They are willing to sacriice their liberty and the liberty of oth-
ers in order to attain this goal.
One mark of spiritual immaturity is the quest for economic
miracles: stones into bread. The price of this alchemical wealth is
224 DEUTERONOMY

always the same: the worship of Satan. “And when the tempter
came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that
these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:3–4). Modern welfare
economics teaches that the State can provide such miracles through
positive economic policy, i.e., by taking wealth from some and
transferring it to others, either directly or through monetary
inlation. This belief is the presupposition of the Keynesian revolu-
tion, which dominated twentieth-century economic thought,
1936–1990. John Maynard Keynes actually described credit expan-
sion – the heart of his system – as the “miracle . . . of turning a stone
into bread.”1
When Israel crossed into the Promised Land, the identifying
marks of their wilderness subordination were removed by God: the
manna and their permanent clothing. This annulment of the welfare
economy was necessary for their spiritual maturation and their lib-
eration. The marks of their subordination to God would henceforth
be primarily confessional and ethical. The only food miracle that
would remain in Israel would be the triple crop two years prior to a
jubilee (Lev. 25:21). God promised to substitute a new means of Is-
rael’s preservation: economic growth. No longer would they be
conined to manna and the same old clothing. Now they would be
able to multiply their wealth. The zero-growth world of the welfare
society would be replaced by the pro-growth world of covenantal
remembrance.

The Power to Get Wealth

This passage includes this command: “But thou shalt remember
the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth,
that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers,
as it is this day” (v. 18). This verse is one of the most important
verses in the Bible regarding wealth. Covenantally speaking, it is the

1. Keynes (anonymous), Paper of the British Experts (April 8, 1943), cited in Ludwig von
Mises, “Stones into Bread, the Keynesian Miracle,” Plain Talk (1948), reprinted in Henry
Hazlitt (ed.), The Critics of Keynesian Economics (Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1960),
p. 306.
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 225

Bible’s most important verse on the nature and purpose of wealth. It

states that wealth is a means of God’s establishment of His covenant.
The covenant is established by grace. God brings covenant-
breakers under His covenant through adoption. Israel’s adoption
by God is the biblical model (Ezek. 16:6–13). Adoption takes place
by God’s declarative judicial act: God announces His lawful claim
on His children. God told Moses: “And thou shalt say unto Pha-
raoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my irstborn: And I
say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou re-
fuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy irstborn”
(Ex. 4:22–23). God’s claim superseded Pharaoh’s false claim of
ownership. God’s deliverance of Israel out of Egypt’s bondage was
His declaration of a superior claim of jurisdiction. Liberty under
God was the alternative to servitude under Pharaoh.
God delivered Israel progressively out of bondage: out of
Egypt, through the wilderness, and into Canaan. So, the judicial re-
ality of Israel’s deinitive liberation by God was established visibly
through Israel’s progressive deliverance out of the burdens of
Adam’s curse. Israel survived in the wilderness through a series of
miracles: the overcoming of scarcity (manna and water), the over-
coming of entropy’s curse (wear and tear), and the overcoming of
their enemies in battle.
Why the need for progressive deliverance? Why not instant lib-
eration? Moses gave them the answer: their need for humility. God
had humbled them in order to prove them (vv. 2, 16). They had not
been morally it to inherit immediately after their deliverance from
Egypt. The irst generation was still a nation of slaves. They had the
slave’s mentality. They could not forget the onions of Egypt (Num.
11:5). They remembered onions and forgot God. This element of
covenantal forgetfulness would remain Israel’s great temptation un-
til their return from the exile. They kept forgetting that God was the
source of their blessings. They kept returning to idolatry.
Their power to get wealth in the Promised Land was analogous
to their experience of miracles in the wilderness. The wilderness
miracles were designed to strengthen their faith in a God who deliv-
ers His people in history and who fulills His promises to His people
in history. The problem was that the continuity of these miracles be-
came a part of Israel’s predictable environment. Israel began to take
them for granted. Moses twice repeated the fact that God had hum-
bled them in the wilderness (vv. 2, 16). Moses wanted them to
226 DEUTERONOMY

understand that the threat of being humbled is always present with

the promise of covenantal blessings in history. The wilderness mira-
cles had been designed by God to remind Israel that God was their
deliverer. Moses then extended this principle: wealth was to remind
them that God is their deliverer.
God delivers men visibly through covenantal blessings. These
blessings can be measured: “And when thy herds and thy locks
multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou
hast is multiplied. . .” (v. 13). What is visible to all testiies to the exis-
tence of a covenantal realm of bondage and deliverance that is in-
visible. This is a manifestation of the covenantal principle of
representation (point two): the visible testiies to the existence of the
invisible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20a). Jesus’
miracles of healing were examples of this principle of representa-
tion. They authenticated His messianic ojce under God.2
The visible blessings of God in history are to remind men of the
blessings of God in eternity. The visible curses of God in history are
to remind men of the curses of God in eternity. But in Old Covenant
Israel, there were no clear distinctions between eternal negative
sanctions and eternal positive sanctions. Not until the last section of
the Book of Daniel was the doctrine of the bodily resurrection
clearly enunciated (Dan. 12:2–3). The grave seemed to cover all
men equally. The distinction between paradise and hell is a New
Testament doctrine. So, the focus of Old Covenant covenantal
sanctions was historical.

Economic Growth
Moses enunciated here for the irst time in recorded history the
doctrine of permanent economic growth. In all other ancient societies,

2. “And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus
seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven
thee. And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And
Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is
easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that
the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,)
Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house”
(Matt. 9:2–7).
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 227

history was seen as cyclical. Men viewed history much as they

viewed nature. The fruitfulness of spring and summer would inevi-
tably be overcome in the fall and winter. The idea of linear history –
temporal beginning and end – was not believed because the cove-
nant-breaking world rejected the cosmic judicial basis of linear his-
tory: creation, Fall, redemption, and temporal consummation. The
twin idols of nature and history were cyclical in covenant-breaking
religion. Only the new idol of autonomous philosophy ofered some
possibility of linear development: the growth of knowledge. But this
came late in ancient man’s history. Philosophy appeared in Greece
at about the time that Israel was sent into exile and ceased worship-
ping the carved idols of Canaan.
In Israel, the doctrine of compound economic growth (Deut. 8)
preceded by 900 years the doctrine of the bodily resurrection (Dan.
12:2). Moses taught Israel that compound economic growth is possi-
ble through covenantal faithfulness. If Israel remembered God as
the source of their wealth – an act of covenantal subordination – and
continued to obey His law as a nation, then God would shower
them with even more wealth. This wealth was designed to conirm the
covenant. God’s covenantal blessings and cursings had been visible
in the wilderness, Moses reminded them. The curses were designed
to humble them, he said. Then what of the prophesied blessings?
Moses was equally clear: they were designed to conirm the cove-
nant. God would continue to deal with Israel covenantally, which
meant that they could expect visible blessings and visible cursings
in terms of their own ethical response to these blessings. Do not for-
get who provided these blessings, Moses warned, when blessings
multiply. These external blessings would not be covenantally neu-
tral. They would be signs of the continuing covenantal bond be-
tween God and Israel.
Economic growth was an aspect of the covenant. The presence of
the covenant should be recognized in the compounding of wealth. If visible
blessings conirmed the covenant over time – a progressive fulill-
ment – then economic growth was in principle as open-ended as the
covenant. The covenant is perpetual; so is the possibility of long-
term economic growth. Economic growth would not automatically
cease because nature is cyclical. Economic growth would com-
pound through the seasons because the covenant transcends the
seasons.
228 DEUTERONOMY

Sanctiication is progressive. The blessings of God are supposed

to compound because the visible conirmation of God’s covenant in
history is designed to reconirm the terms of the covenant to each
succeeding generation. Each generation is to experience positive
feedback: blessings, remembering, obedience, blessings. This pro-
cess of economic growth is what makes possible an ever-increasing
inheritance. God’s gracious kingdom grant is progressively appro-
priated by the heirs through the progressive conirmation of the
covenant. The goal is the conquest of the whole earth through con-
version and conirmation. “And Jesus came and spake unto them,
saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Fa-
ther, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matt. 28:18–20).3

The Idea of Progress and Inheritance

The ideal of economic growth parallels the ideal of progress in
history. Moses made it clear that the covenantal faithfulness of Is-
rael was not a static ideal. History is progressive because corporate
sanctiication is progressive. It is not simply that history is linear; it is
also progressive. This section of Deuteronomy is important because
it sets forth the ideal of progress. God had delivered Israel from
bondage. He had led them through the wilderness. Now, in
fulillment of His promise to Abraham, He was about to lead them
into the Promised Land. In the Promised Land, they could legiti-
mately expect the multiplication of both their numbers and their
wealth. “And when thy herds and thy locks multiply, and thy silver
and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied”
(v. 13). This multiplication process is basic to the fulillment of the
dominion covenant given to Adam and Noah. But this process is at
bottom covenantal, not autonomous. It is an aspect of God’s positive
historical sanctions in response to corporate covenantal faithfulness.
To sustain corporate progress, two ideas must be widespread in
a culture: the idea of linear history and the idea of progressive corporate
sanctiication. When the idea of linear history is absent, men do not

3. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 229

sustain hope in the future of corporate progress, for progress must

inevitably be swallowed up in the retrogressive phase of the next
historical cycle. The Great Reversal will overcome the hopes and
dreams of all men. It will cut short every program of social improve-
ment. The discontinuity of reversal will always overcome the conti-
nuity of progress.4 In short, if history is not linear, the visible inheritance
will eventually be destroyed. The visible distinctions between cove-
nant-breaking societies and covenant-keeping societies will disap-
pear or be made operationally irrelevant by the magnitude of the
Great Reversal. Such an outlook requires the following re-writing of
the second commandment: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to
them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, vis-
iting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me, and doing the same unto
them that love me, and keep my commandments.”
When the idea of progressive corporate sanctiication is absent,
men do not sustain hope in the either the supposed mechanism or
the supposed organicism of progress. Progress is, at best, limited to
an elite core of individuals: a matter of inner discipline, secret
knowledge, capital accumulation (e.g., money-lending), or mystical
retreat from history. When a society loses faith in corporate prog-
ress, its citizens lose a major incentive to forego consumption in the
present for the sake of greater future income. Men become more
present-oriented than those in societies that retain faith in corporate
progress. They apply a higher rate of discount (interest) to future in-
come. The rate of economic growth slows as the rate of saving
drops. If there is no possibility of sustained covenantal progress
based on a distinction between the earthly fate of the wicked vs. the
earthly fate of the righteous, then the present consumption of capital
is the recommended policy. Solomon summarized this view:
“There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just
men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked;
again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the
work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity. Then I com-
mended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun,
than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with

4. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), chaps. 4, 7, 8.
230 DEUTERONOMY

him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under
the sun” (Eccl. 8:14–15). In short, if there is no visible corporate
sanctiication, then the visible corporate inheritance will also be dissipated.
The pagan ancient world did not have a doctrine of compound
economic growth because it had no doctrine of sustainable corpo-
rate progress. J. B. Bury wrote in 1920 that the idea of progress
requires faith in the inevitability of mankind’s autonomous ad-
vancement. This advancement must not be the result of any outside
intervention; it must be man’s gift to man.5 It is not sujcient for the
development of the idea of progress that men recognize the exis-
tence of advancement in the past. The question is this: Must there
be inevitable long-term advancement in the future?6 Belief in prog-
7 8
ress is an act of faith. Classical Greece did not possess this faith.
“But, if some relative progress might be admitted, the general view
of Greek philosophers was that they were living in a period of inevi-
table degeneration and decay – inevitable because it was prescribed
by the nature of the universe.”9 As Bury noted, Greek science “did
little or nothing to transform the conditions of life or to open any
vista into the future.”10 What was true of Greek thought was equally
true of every ancient society except Israel. The world was in the grip
of an idea: cyclical history.
Science was stillborn in every society in which belief in cyclical
history was dominant.11 Physicist and historian Stanley Jaki has
presented a series of masterful expositions of the relationship
between the Greeks’ view of cyclical history and their failure to ex-
tend the science they discovered. The Christian ideal of progress
made possible the advancement of Western science; it was not
Renaissance science that launched the modern idea of progress.

5. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Growth and Origin (rev. ed.; New York:
Dover, [1932] 1955), p. 5.
6. Ibid., p. 7.
7. Ibid., p. 4.
8. Idem.
9. Ibid., p. 9.
10. Ibid., p. 7.
11. Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (rev. ed.;
Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986). Cf. Jaki, The Savior of Science (Washington, D.C.:
Regnery Gateway, 1988), ch. 1; The Only Chaos and Other Essays (Lanham, Maryland:
Academic Press of America, 1990), ch. 5.
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 231

12
Contrary to Ludwig Edelstein, the Greeks did not take seriously
the idea of progress, for they believed, among other anti-progress
ideas, in the Great Year of the cosmos: the 26,000-year rotation of
the heavens, an idea that was denounced by several church fathers
from Origen to Augustine.13 Belief in this Great Year was common
in many ancient societies. It was important in Platonic thought.14
15
Priests and astrologers noticed the precession of the equinoxes.
Ancient astronomers knew that every few thousand years, the pole
star changes. We know today that the wobbling of the earth’s axis is
the cause; the earth whirls like a spinning top with an inclined axis.
Ancient societies explained this odd movement in terms of the un-
balanced rotation of the heavens. The heavens were seen as rotating
around the earth as if the stars were part of a system analogous to a
broken mill.16 Paralleling this, classical thought developed the cycli-
cal idea of an original golden age which was followed by degenera-
tion,17 and which will be followed by a new golden age.
Edelstein sees the documentary evidence of classical optimism
as being “widely dispersed”18 – another phrase for “scattered and
unsystematic.” He sees the idea as “popular in antiquity,” but his
presentation of the scattered and fragmentary evidence is insujcient
to prove his case. Edelstein, as is the case with the vast majority of
modern historians, sees in Renaissance science the recovery of the
lost classical scientiic heritage.19 Yet the primary origin of the de-
tails of Renaissance science was the deliberately unacknowledged
science of the late middle ages, a fact demonstrated by physicist
Pierre Duhem in ten detailed volumes. The demonstrated fact of the
medieval origins of modern science has been ignored or actively
suppressed by the humanist academic world. The irst ive volumes
of Duhem’s Le Système du Monde were in print in 1917; the second

12. Ludwig Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1967).
13. Jaki, The Only Chaos, pp. 74–75.
14. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols., The Spell of Plato (4th ed.;
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), I, p. 19, and the footnotes: pp.
208–19.
15. See any standard encyclopedia under “precession.”
16. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An essay on myth and the
future of time (Boston: Godine, [1969] 1977), ch. 9.
17. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 109–201.
18. Edelstein, Idea of Progress, p. xxxii.
19. Ibid., p. 141.
232 DEUTERONOMY

ive volumes appeared only in 1954–59. In between, the French ac-

ademic community and publishing world suppressed their publica-
tion because they undermined one of the most cherished myths of
the Enlightenment, namely, that medieval science was “medieval.”
The story of this exercise in humanist academic censorship has
been written by Jaki.20 Duhem is still unknown to most historians.
An exception is Robert Nisbet, who ofered two brief, favorable sen-
21
tences in his History of the Idea of Progress (1980). Yet Nisbet repeat-
edly relies on Edelstein’s book to defend his own view that the
classical world accepted the idea of progress.22
It was Christianity, with its doctrine of creation, Fall, redemp-
tion, and the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20), that brought to-
gether the Old Covenant idea of God’s positive corporate sanctions
and the New Covenant idea of world transformation. The twin doc-
trines of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and His ascension to
the right hand of God made possible the overcoming of the more
cyclical Old Covenant pattern of man’s ethical Fall, his ethical re-
demption by God, and a subsequent fall. Christ’s resurrection and
ascension were deinitive historical acts of victory over the familiar
cycle of fall-redemption-fall. “And if Christ be not raised, your faith
is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen
asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in
Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen
from the dead, and become the irstfruits of them that slept” (I Cor.
15:17–20). Christ’s bodily resurrection set forth the personal model;
His bodily ascension set forth the civilizational model. The ascen-
sion proved His post-resurrection claim of total power over history
(Matt. 28:18–20).

20. Stanley L. Jaki, “Science and Censorship: Hélène Duhem and the Publication of the
‘Système du Monde,’” Intercollegiate Review (Winter 1985–86), pp. 41–49. Cf. Jaki, Uneasy
Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem (Boston: Martinus Nijhof, 1984).
21. Robert A. Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), pp. 78,
101.
22. Ibid., ch. 1. Nisbet was heavily inluenced by his teacher, Frederick Teggert, who
compiled a book of classical references to progress: The Idea of Progress (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1949).
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 233

Finitude: Things and Time

Twice, God told mankind to multiply: Adam (Gen. 1:28) and
Noah (Gen. 9:1). This command was a call to ill the earth. This is
the dominion covenant. But it was also necessarily a call for man to
acknowledge the limits of time. At some point in the future, the do-
minion covenant will be fulilled. That day will mark the end of his-
tory. “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the
kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all
rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put
all enemies under his feet” (I Cor. 15:24–25). At that point, a new
covenantal order will come into existence: an eternal order.
There is no possibility of permanent long-term growth in a inite
universe. Nothing compounds indeinitely. At some point, the pop-
ulation reaches the limits of growth. At any positive rate of growth,
wealth approaches ininity as a limit when the curve turns upward
and becomes what we call an exponential curve.

The Realm of the Quantum

The only thing in our recent history – or any history – that does
seem to grow without meaningful limits is the capacity and speed of
computer chips, which doubles at least every two years, possibly ev-
ery eighteen months.23 At this rate of growth, the computer chip will
equal man’s brain capacity sometime in the second half of the
twenty-irst century. Then, two years later, it will be twice as large.
But what of the cost of manufacturing these chips? The cost of
building a single chip production plant is running into the billions of
dollars. At some point, the cost of pursuing Moore’s law – the dou-
bling of microchip capacity every two years – should reach the lim-
its of capital available to build the production facilities. The big
questions are these: Will the chips ever be used to create less expen-
sive chip production facilities? Will microchips be used to design
microfactories? Will the capacity of the chips overcome the cost of

23. This is known as Moore’s law. This “law” was articulated in the 1960’s by Gordon
Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp., the creator of the modern microcomputer chip. A similar
relationship law is Metcalfe’s law: the cost-efectiveness of computer networks grows
exponentially to the number and power of the terminals. George Gilder in 1997 added a third
“law” governing telecommunications bandwidth. He forecasted that the supply of bandwidth
will triple every year for the next 25 years. Gilder Technology Report (Feb. 1997), p. 1.
234 DEUTERONOMY

capital? Will the “intelligence” of the chips lower the cost of their
production? If so, then we will have arrived at a state of afairs in
which the law of decreasing returns is overcome in one area of life,
and the most important area economically: the cost of obtaining us-
able information (though not necessarily wisdom).
Is this state of afairs conceivable? Yes. Raymond Kurzweil, a
developer of computerized machines that convert written text into
voice patterns, thereby allowing the blind to read, has stated that
most of the cost of a computer comes from the chips, and all but
about two percent of the cost of the chips derives from the cost of
the information embodied on them.24 George Gilder concludes:
“Driving the technology in the quantum era will not be Goliath fabs
[fabrication factories] that can produce millions of units of one de-
sign but lexible design and manufacturing systems that can pro-
duce a relatively few units of thousands of designs.”25
The linear increase in the speed of the chips seems to violate a
fundamental economic law: the law of diminishing returns. But
even if exponential linearity is possible in the quantum realm of the
microcosm, as Gilder asserts, men so far can gain access to this
microcosmic realm only through physical production of the gate-
ways into the microcosm: the chips themselves. The non-quantum
realm of chip manufacturing is still governed by the law of diminish-
ing returns, as enormous capital losses in chip manufacturing testify
from time to time. Yet even if this ever ceases to be true, there is still
no reason to accept Gilder’s moral vision: “Overthrowing matter,
humanity also escapes from the traps and compulsions of pleasure
into a higher morality of spirit.”26 Gilder has confused the realm of
the quantum with the human spirit, a mistake going back to Kant’s
theory of the noumenal realm. The antinomies separating the realm
of the quantum from the realm of molecular reality are analogous to
those separating Kant’s noumenal from his phenomenal. The im-
personal quantum realm has no ethics; neither does the impersonal
phenomenal realm of cause-and-efect science. This is the problem
with Kant’s nature/freedom or science/personality dualism. The

24. Cited in George Gilder, Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 328.
25. Ibid., p. 329.
26. Ibid., p. 381.
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 235

God of the Bible is shoved out of both realms. So is His law. So are
His sanctions.

Population Growth Consumes Space

We live in the space-time continuum, however much we can
make use of quantum physics. We are not subatomic creatures. The
impossibility of indeinite compound growth of both humanity and
man’s wealth points to the limit of time. There will come a time
when the physical room for mankind’s multiplication will no lon-
ger allow any extension of the covenantal process of dominion. At
that point, the Genesis command to multiply must end. A new cos-
mic order will be imposed by God, i.e., a new covenantal order
(II Pet. 3:10). Progressive sanctiication in history will have fulilled
the terms of the dominion covenant.
Our world is generally governed by the laws of thermodynam-
ics, even though there are exceptions, e.g., miracles.27 The irst law
of thermodynamics establishes the ixity of matter-energy: the
initude of the creation. This law is as important covenantally as the
second law, which establishes a one-way move from potential en-
ergy to used-up energy that can no longer do any work. Both laws
point to initude. Both laws establish theoretical limits to growth. Sec-
tions of the universe can be rearranged by man, but to do this, man
must tap the energy or matter of the universe. This matter-energy is
inite. Because of the cursed nature of the second law, so is time.
Time’s arrow moves in only one direction.
At today’s rates of change, the second law seems to establish a
cosmic limit of eons of time. How much time, no one can say for
certain, but the estimates tossed out by cosmologists are never less
than tens of billions of years. In stark contrast, human population
growth accelerates the coming of the end of time, for it approaches
ininity as a limit at an accelerating rate after the curve becomes
exponential. The tens of billions of years supposedly remaining un-
til either the heat death of the universe or the collapse back to the
omega point of another Big Bang – though smaller than the irst one,
says the second law – are covenantally little more than conceptual
side shows. Astronomical time becomes irrelevant eschatologically in the
face of man’s compounding population growth. What is signiicant

27. See Chapter 18, above.

236 DEUTERONOMY

eschatologically is population growth: the biological ability of man’s

population to reach the environmental limits of growth within a few
centuries, or a few millennia if life outside the earth is environmen-
tally sustainable. At two percent growth per annum, it will not take
tens of billions of years for mankind to ill up the cosmos. Six billion
people growing at two percent per year become 327 billion people
in two centuries, 2.4 trillion in three centuries, or (I think improba-
bly) 52 quadrillion, 600 trillion in eight centuries.
Of course, there can be catastrophes. Population growth can be
reversed. So can economic growth. But the West’s attainment of
sustained positive economic growth rates in the range of over two
percent per year since the late eighteenth century has placed before
mankind a believable vision of wealth beyond the dreams of ava-
rice. When it comes to compound growth, a little goes a long way
remarkably fast.

The Zero-Growth Movement

The ideology underlying the zero-growth movement – both
population growth and economic growth – rests on a recognition
that mankind will reach its environmental limits to growth relatively
soon unless the compounding process ceases. There is a legitimate
sense of foreboding associated with this temporal limit, a realization
that man’s deinition of himself and his meaning in history will
change radically when mankind’s population reaches its environ-
mental limits, which will not take two centuries if present growth
rates continue. This sense of foreboding is the sense of impending
doom, either eschatological or cultural – the transformation of the
Enlightenment’s commitment to growth. The defenders of the zero
growth school of thought call for coercive State action to begin to
impose judicial limits to growth now, before mankind’s population
reaches its environmental limits. They want men to begin to come
to grips emotionally with the limits of growth. They correctly sense
that there is some eschatological connection between nature’s limits
and man’s temporal limits. There is a connection: the fulillment of
the dominion covenant and therefore its temporal annulment, ei-
ther through a new revelation from God, which the New Testament
does not allow (Rev. 22:18), or else the end of time.
Biblically speaking, long-term compound growth of both men
and per capita wealth is the result of covenantal faithfulness. The ju-
dicial condition for maintaining such growth is freedom. The zero
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 237

growth movement must therefore overcome freedom in the name of the envi-
ronment. It is quite open in its call to place political restraints on eco-
nomic freedom. Mankind’s ability to multiply both man and things
over time is seen as the great threat to the survival of “the good life,”
as deined by academics and intellectuals who have already attained
historically great wealth, especially leisure. If the price of extending
such freedom and therefore such wealth to the masses of humanity
is the continuation of economic growth, and if humanity keeps multi-
plying because of its increasing wealth, therefore making mandatory
even greater economic growth, then the zero growth movement is
ready to establish a new international world order that will use
coercion to end the growth process.
The zero growth movement is a movement of “haves” who are
determined to keep most of what they have and deny an opportu-
nity to the “have nots.” The multiplication of scarce positional
goods – goods that relect social status and which lose their utility as
status goods when lots of people can buy them28 – threatens the pres-
ent social order in which the rich and their well-paid spokesmen are
visibly on top. By calling a halt to aggregate economic growth, the
zero growth movement seeks to stabilize today’s production of posi-
tional goods and the wealth to buy them.
The zero growth movement is to positional goods in general
what California’s Coastal Land Commission is to socially prime wa-
terfront area property. Such property would lose its status as socially
prime if agents of the middle class could buy up valuable land and
build time share apartments and condominiums for re-sale. Thus,
the land’s present owners have used the State to prohibit such pur-
chases. In the name of preserving the natural environment, the pres-
ent owners of this highly unnatural environment – expensive
homes, electricity lines, phone lines, etc. – keep out the rif-raf.
They have made it illegal for their money-seeking neighbors to sell
property to your agents and mine: real estate developers. The
phrase “real estate developers” is a hated phrase in socially prime
circles, for it means “the middle class.”29

28. Fred Hirsch, The Social Limits to Growth (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 11.
29. Thomas Sowell, Pink and Brown People and Other Controversial Essays (Stanford,
California: Hoover Institution Press, 1981), p. 104. This essay appeared originally in the Los
Angeles Herald Examiner (March 23, 1979): “Those Phony Environmentalists.”
238 DEUTERONOMY

Meanwhile, the middle class does the same thing to the lower
middle class through zoning commissions. Zoning commissions
keep apartments and mobile home parks out of middle-class neigh-
borhoods. The freedom of buying and selling threatens today’s dis-
tribution of positional real estate. Existing owners of such real estate
cannot aford to buy all of these goods, so they use the State to re-
strict such purchases by newcomers. This raises the social value of
existing property by lowering its market value. This is a State sub-
sidy to those present owners of real estate who seek maximum status
income rather than maximum money income.

Idolatry, Autonomy, and Power

Moses warned them of the major temptation that lay ahead:
“And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand
hath gotten me this wealth” (v. 17). The wealth that would inevita-
bly come from God as a way to conirm their keeping of the cove-
nant would lead them into temptation. The covenant’s ethically
governed cause-and-efect sanctions in history would not sustain
their faith in God. Israel would forget the sovereign Giver. They
would attribute their wealth to another sovereign: themselves.
We know that Israel constantly worshipped idols until the era of
the exile. These idols were fertility gods. Yet Moses’ warning did
not identify idolatry as the great threat to Israel, but rather self-
worship. Moses did not warn them that they would attribute to idols
the source of their wealth, yet this is what they did do for the next
eight centuries. Israelites did not sacriice their children by requir-
ing them to pass through secular universities; they required them to
pass through ire (II Ki. 17:17; Ezek. 23:37). How can we reconcile
this seeming discrepancy?
The pre-exilic idol was a representational link between man and
the supernatural. By making their requests known to the idol, men
sought their own ends. But the idol was not regarded as autono-
mous; it was part of the continuum between man and cosmic
sources of power. The idol had to be constructed by man. This cre-
ative act transferred to man partial authority over the process of en-
vironmental manipulation. The god represented by the idol
required man to become part of this creative process. Without man
and the work of his hands, the god represented by the idol would
lack something important: man’s piety and fear. The god would also
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 239

not be fed. For paganism, unlike Old Covenant religion, sacriices

and oblations were the care and feeding of gods.30
Pagan religion is a system of mutually beneicial transactions.
Man gets what he wants by placating a god who wants something
from man. Man and god are part of a larger cosmic process in which
each of them achieves his goals through a division of labor. Both
man and his god confront impersonal fate, impersonal chance, or
both, depending on the situation, and each requires the services of
the other in order better to attain his own goals. Neither can claim
absolute autonomy, for each is entwined in impersonal cosmic
forces, and each works most efectively in cooperation with the
other.
Then in what sense could the covenant-breaking Israelite say to
himself that the power of his hands had brought him his wealth?
Only in the sense of his shared authority in the process of
wealth-getting. He would beg before an idol, and the god repre-
sented by this idol would then include him in the process of wealth-
creation. It was man’s request and man’s ritual obeisance that made
possible the creation of wealth. An idolatrous man would subordi-
nate himself to an idol in some proscribed sense – some set of for-
mal ritual boundaries – but not in the way that a covenant-keeper
subordinates himself to a God who is completely autonomous and
above the creation’s processes. In idolatrous religion, there is no
complete autonomy, but there is also no complete subordination.
Both pagan man and his god were involved in a cosmic battle
against impersonal forces and boundaries. Sometimes they joined
forces; sometimes they did not. Pagan man saw his gods as only rel-
atively more powerful than he was. It was a matter of degree. Thus,
by linking himself to an idol, man could increase his likelihood of
getting his own way by conforming ritually to a relatively more
powerful being. But classical paganism saw man and god as co-
laborers in the ields of fate or luck/chance.31
By placating a god through idolatrous worship, pagan man be-
lieved that he could in some way manipulate this god into doing
man’s will. Man’s cleverness in getting a good deal determined the

30. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991),
p. 148.
31. Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action
from Augustus to Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, [1944] 1957), pp. 157–59.
240 DEUTERONOMY

degree of his success as a bargainer. Man knew that he could not get
something for nothing out of the deity, but he sought transactions
that were weighed heavily in man’s favor: something for practically
nothing. The closer he came to this favorable exchange rate, the
better he could claim, “My power and the might of mine hand hath
gotten me this wealth.” By getting a god to do man’s will on man’s
terms, pagan religion sought greater autonomy. What pagan man
did not want was a god who drove a hard bargain.

Autonomy as Power Over Nature

Man’s quest for autonomy is a quest for power: self-made law.
In the West, what is called autonomy is power over nature. To gain
such power, man requires knowledge of nature’s processes and
sujcient capital to exploit this knowledge. Law is generally re-
garded as natural, i.e., outside of man yet discoverable by man. In
the most consistent forms of humanism, however, law is seen as
man-made, i.e., an order imposed on the “raw stuf” of nature by
man’s creative mind. This suggestion seems crazy to most “com-
mon sense” rationalists, but it is inherent in Kant’s revision of philo-
sophical categories. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant concluded:
“Thus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle
nature, we ourselves introduce. We could never ind them in appear-
ances, had not we ourselves, or the nature of our mind, originally set
them there.”32 So, the judicial debate in the West has been between
the advocates of judge-discovered law (e.g., English common law)
and legislator-made law (e.g., European civil law).33 Neither side ac-
cepts the legitimacy of God-revealed law. Such a view would under-
mine man’s claim to autonomy.
In contrast to Western rationalism, Eastern man seeks an escape
from law and nature by immersion in the cosmic unity, which is im-
personal and non-judgmental. Buddhist D. T. Suzuki announced:
“Buddhism does not condemn this life and universe for their wick-
edness as was done by some religious teachers and philosophers.
The so-called wickedness is not radical in nature and life. It is

32. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781), A 125. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 147.
33. Cf. N. Stephen Kinsella, “Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society,”
Journal of Libertarian Studies, XI (Summer 1995), pp. 134–81.
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 241

34
merely supericial.” The Eastern mystic sees both nature and law
as illusions, as fetters on true understanding. But the nirvana of
sellessness involves a surrender of personal autonomy in order to
gain autonomy from nature and law: incorporation into the monis-
tic one.35 There is also pantheism, which completely denies man’s
autonomy and seeks immersion in monistic nature. But Eastern
mystical man is as adamant as Western rational man regarding the
illegitimacy of God-revealed law in the sense of publicly declared
universal standards. Revealed law points to an autonomous God
who dictates to an eternally subordinate man. Eastern man is willing
to forfeit his autonomy for the sake of ontological wholeness, but
only to impersonal, monistic, non-judgmental forces.
Autonomy is a unique characteristic of God. God alone estab-
lishes the law. Man is a creature; he must conform himself to na-
ture’s laws or else seek to escape from nature, which also means
escaping from meaning and sensibility. So, what Western man
means by autonomy is a knowledge of impersonal law which gives
him the ability to gain control over nature for his own ends. Knowl-
edge is power. While man does not make the law, as the discoverer
of law he can use it to manipulate nature. He seeks a proitable bar-
gain from nature. It is not that he created the law; he merely exploits
it for his own purposes. This is also the goal of idolatrous pagan
man: not autonomy from his deity but a cost-efective manipulation
of nature through his deity. Modern man subordinates himself to an
impersonal law-order with limited jurisdiction over him in order to
gain a lever over nature. Similarly, pagan man subordinates himself
to a personal deity of limited jurisdiction over him in order to gain a
lever over nature. Modern man acknowledges his subordination to
law in general in order to exercise control over things in particular. Pa-
gan man acknowledges his subordination to a local deity in order to
exercise control over things in particular. Modern man hopes to use
the law to beat the law. Pagan man hopes to use the deity to beat the
deity.

34. D. T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (New York: Schocken Books, [1907] 1963),
p. 128. Schocken Books is a Jewish publishing house.
35. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 364–67.
242 DEUTERONOMY

The Curse on the Quest for Autonomy

Moses foretold blessings if Israel obeyed God: an extension of
the nation’s wealth beyond the inheritance from Canaan. But if they
rebelled, they could expect an analogous disinheritance: “And it
shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after
other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you
this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD
destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would
not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God” (vv. 19–20).
Here Moses raised the issue of false worship, which is always en-
meshed in the quest for autonomy. While they would claim that the
might of their hands had created their wealth, in fact they would
worship false gods. They would claim autonomy, but they would
practice idolatry. They would claim to be in control, but in fact they
would ind themselves in moral bondage. God would then apply his
corporate sanctions in history. They would be expelled from Ca-
naan as surely as the Canaanites had been. Not all of the Canaanites
were expelled by Israel (Josh. 15:63; cf. 17:12–13). Similarly, not all
of the Israelites were taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar; he
left the poorest people behind (II Ki. 24:14).
God promised to visit the same kinds of sins with the same nega-
tive sanctions. Inside the boundaries of Israel, false worship would
no longer be tolerated. The Promised Land was under the covenant.
The nation would visibly come under negative sanctions if they
worshipped other gods.
So, long-term economic growth cannot be sustained by any so-
ciety unless its members honor the terms of the law. This does not
mean that only confessing nations can experience economic growth.
It does mean that when prosperous nations grow lax about enforc-
ing the biblical principles of civil law, they will ind that their wealth
dissipates. The blessings of external covenant-keeping will fade
when men cease to honor the civil principles of biblical law: private
property, freedom of exchange, restitution, honest weights and
measures, and so on. But will men honor these principles even
though they do not honor the God who established them? This
question has not been resolved, since men learned the wealth for-
mula of private property and limited civil government only since
the late eighteenth century, in a Protestant nation.
 The Covenantal Ideal of Economic Growth 243

Conclusion
Deuteronomy 8 sets forth the basis of compound economic
growth. It ties sustained economic growth to corporate cove-
nant-keeping. In doing so, it establishes eschatological limits to
growth. In a inite world, nothing grows forever. Therefore, long-
term economic growth as a predictable reward for corporate cove-
nant-keeping becomes a testimony to the potential brevity of history.
This brevity can be overcome through corporate covenant-
breaking – the quest for autonomy – and God’s predictable negative
historical sanctions. Nevertheless, Deuteronomy 8 moved the dis-
cussion of time from the cosmos to the covenant. It moved from cos-
mically imposed cyclical history36 to God-imposed linear history. In
doing so, this passage broke with ancient cosmology. Modern
evolutionism’s cosmology is equally incompatible with it.
Covenantal history is not subsumed under vast quantities of cos-
mic time; on the contrary, it is determinative of cosmic time. Posi-
tive covenant sanctions, not the second law of thermodynamics,
determine the limits of history. Deuteronomy 8 establishes not
merely the covenantal possibility of compound economic growth
but the covenantal requirement of such growth. A failure of a soci-
ety to achieve this is a sign of its covenant-breaking status, whether
permanent or temporary.
This brings me to a conclusion: the zero growth movement is a
covenant-breaking movement with a covenant-denying eschatol-
ogy. Humanism’s “limits to growth” philosophy is misconstrued. It
focuses on physical limits to growth – inescapable in a inite world –
in order to call men to impose anti-growth policies through political
coercion. The biblical goal is to call on mankind to extend existing
environmental limits to growth through production, including espe-
cially the production of additional human beings. Our awareness of
the existence of inal limits to growth should inspire us to pursue growth
through personal capital accumulation and the de-capitalization of the
State. The environmental limit of time is our great enemy, not the
environmental limit of raw materials, including living space. By ex-
tending man’s dominion to the inal limits of the environment’s abil-
ity to sustain human life, man reaches the eschatological limit of

36. Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1959).
244 DEUTERONOMY

time. It is our God-assigned task to ill the earth, not to impose politi-
37
cal limits on growth. The biblical concept of “ill the earth” does
mean there are inal limits.
The traditional plea of the foreign missions fund-raiser is woe-
fully incomplete: “When that last sinner is brought to saving faith in
Jesus Christ, Christ will return in glory!”38 Christ will return in glory
when mankind has fulilled the dominion covenant, which includes
the Great Commission.39 That last sinner, whoever he or she may
be, will complete the Great Commission, but only after mankind
has completed the dominion covenant. The ideal of growth will
never end in history. It is an eschatological corollary of history. Our
task as covenant-keepers is to bring on the end of history by work-
ing to reach mankind’s limits to growth.

37. State land, including rain forests (such as on the Olympic coast of Washington State)
and jungles, should be auctioned of by the State to the highest bidders. The income
generated by such sales should then be used to pay of government debt. Government debt is
a great civil evil in our day. As the supply of privately owned rain forests and jungles grows
smaller, their prices will go up. Corporations or other well-capitalized groups can then buy
them up to construct rain forest preserves or jungle preserves, turning them into non-proit
wild life parks, or scientiic research centers, or proit-seeking adventure theme parks. “Save
the tigers” will become an ecologically attainable goal when the breeding of tigers for
tiger-hunting game preserves becomes proitable. Meanwhile, it is not the State’s job to set
aside wild life preserves at taxpayers’ expense, any more than it is the State’s job to set aside
preserves for smallpox germs. When you hear the politically correct words, “protect the
environment from man,” think “smallpox.” If men are willing and able to pay for cleared land
where a snake-infested jungle now stands, it should be cut down and plowed under. This is for
private owners of jungles to decide, not State bureaucrats. An ecological problem today is
this: men are burning down government-owned rain forests to get access to free land. When a
private irm can increase its wealth by burning down part of a government-owned rain forest,
the government has in efect posted a large sign in front of every rain forest: “Burn Me!” Some
gasoline and a match are a lot cheaper than a sealed-bid auction.
38. I heard just such a plea sometime around 1965. I heard it again in early 1997 at a
church-sponsored missions conference. Eschatology afects missions.
39. Gentry, Greatness of the Great Commission.
 22
Disinheriting the
DISINHERITING THEHeirs
HEIRS

And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk
after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you
this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD
destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be
obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God (Deut. 8:19–20).

The theocentric principle undergirding this warning is the doc-

trine of God as the sanctions-bringer in history. The language of
negative sanctions here was absolute. These sanctions were histori-
cal. This law was not a seed law. It did not apply exclusively to tribal
relationships. It was a land law because it applied to Israel’s survival
inside Canaan’s boundaries. But was it exclusively a land law? That
is, does the same negative sanction of national removal from the
land threaten every covenanted nation? This seems unlikely. Inva-
sion, perhaps, but not actual removal. Mass conversion to a rival
faith, as in North Africa, 632–732, and Constantinople, 1453, but
not actual removal. What Israel did to Canaan was a one-time
event: genocide. Similarly, what Assyria did to the Northern King-
dom and Babylon did to Judah were unique events, analogous to
what Israel had done to Canaan.
We can also ask: Do nations lawfully covenant with God in New
Testament times? This text does not say, but the context of this text
was a universal aspect of the covenant: covenantal forgetfulness and
God’s desire that all nations obey Him. “Therefore thou shalt keep
the commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to
fear him” (v. 6). Thus, if forgetfulness is a permanent covenantal
problem, it must still apply to nations, for the nation is the context of
the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20).

245
246 DEUTERONOMY

To Perish
The Hebrew word translated as “perish” is elsewhere translated
as “destroy.” In this context, the word seems to mean total destruc-
tion: the same degree of destruction that God was asking them to
bring against the Canaanites. God had used Israel to destroy Arad
completely, whose newly ownerless land Israel had then inherited,
as promised. “And Israel vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If
thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly
destroy their cities. And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel,
and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them
and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah”
(Num. 21:2–3). The destruction of Canaan was to be comparable:

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are
passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan; Then ye shall drive out all the
inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and
destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:
And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein: for I
have given you the land to possess it. And ye shall divide the land by lot for
an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more
inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man’s
inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the
tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit. But if ye will not drive out the inhabit-
ants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which
ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides,
and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. Moreover it shall come to
pass, that I shall do unto you, as I thought to do unto them (Num. 33:51–56).

This was a command in the form of a prophecy. God warned

the Israelites that if they did not bring total destruction to the
Canaanites, the Canaanites would remain in the land to vex them
spiritually. If Israel then worshipped the gods of Canaan, God
would impose the negative sanction that He had instructed Israel to
bring against Canaan.
Yet this language of total destruction was conditional. There
was always to be the possibility of forgiveness on God’s terms when
He dealt with Israel. This meant that there would not be total
destruction.

Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD
your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the
 Disinheriting the Heirs 247

likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee. For the
LORD thy God is a consuming ire, even a jealous God. When thou shalt be-
get children, and children’s children, and ye shall have remained long in
the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image, or the
likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to
provoke him to anger: I call heaven and earth to witness against you this
day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from of the land whereunto ye go
over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall
utterly be destroyed. And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations,
and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the LORD
shall lead you. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands,
wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But if from
thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt ind him, if thou seek
him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation,
and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn
to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; (For the LORD
thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor
forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them (Deut. 4:23–31).

So, on the one hand, there would be what God described as to-
tal destruction. On the other hand, captivity abroad would be substi-
tuted for total destruction. “And ye shall perish among the heathen,
and the land of your enemies shall eat you up” (Lev. 26:38). Israel
would perish as captives perish, not as the families of Korah and
Dathan had perished: “They, and all that appertained to them, went
down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they
perished from among the congregation” (Num. 16:33).

The Prophesied Seed

There was one promise that was not conditional: Jacob’s. “The
sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between
his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the
people be” (Gen. 49:10). This was a messianic prophecy, not a
covenantal prophecy. Old Covenant messianic prophesies were not ethically
conditional. Nothing that man could do to rebel against God would in
any way hinder the scheduled advent in history of the messiah.
This being the case, the corporate negative historical sanction of
destruction could not be total. The language of total destruction had
to be interpreted in terms of the messianic prophesies. The destruc-
tion of Israel would be analogous to the destruction of Canaan: not
total, as God had required, but partial, as Israel had actually imposed.
248 DEUTERONOMY

A remnant of Canaan remained in the land; so would a remnant of

Israel also remain during the Babylonian captivity. “And he
[Nebuchadnezzar] carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes,
and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and
all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort
of the people of the land” (II Ki. 24:14). A remnant of captives also
would return.
God did not intend that the language of total destruction be in-
terpreted literally, for He had already given Israel a pair of promises
that made total destruction impossible. First, there would be an in-
heriting seed of Judah. Second, there would be an opportunity to re-
pent in a foreign land. The symbolism (rhetoric) of Deuteronomy
8:19–20 was not to be understood by Israel as negating the eschatol-
ogy of the messianic promises and the ethically conditional status of
pre-messiah covenantal lawsuits against Israel. Judicial theology always
prevails over biblical symbolism; the latter is in service to the former.1
The promised messianic inheritance assured Israel of some
minimal degree of continuity. The inheritance would not be com-
pletely removed from the nation at least until Shiloh appeared. Is-
rael would not be removed from the face of the earth, although
Israel might be removed from the face of the land. This physical re-
moval was the covenantal threat set before them in Deuteronomy
8:19–20. Part of the landed inheritance would be removed from
them and transferred to others. Upon their return, the old laws of
landed inheritance would be modiied to include strangers. Israel
would no longer have a monopoly of ownership in the Promised
Land. “And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an
inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you,
which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as
born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have in-
heritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to
pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give
him his inheritance, saith the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 47:22–23).
There could be no legitimate doubt in the mind of any Israelite
that Israel could lay claim to Canaan unconditionally. Israel would
gain legal title through conquest, but this legal title was no better

1. This is a basic principle of the hermeneutics of Christian Reconstruction and the

Calvinist tradition generally.
 Disinheriting the Heirs 249

than their corporate maintenance of the terms of ownership. These

terms were covenantal. They involved biblical law. God reserved
the right to evict Israel from the land if the terms of His contract
were not honored.
Bodily eviction was the primary threatened sanction here. God
would use another nation to sweep them out of the land, just as He
had used them to sweep out the Canaanites. God was jealous; He
would not tolerate false worship by His people. The negative sanction
of disinheritance would remind them of their conditional status as in-
heriting sons. The Babylonian captivity would remind them of this
conditional inheritance. Upon the remnant’s return from captivity, the
new terms of landed inheritance would remind them that landed in-
heritance would no longer rest legally on the original conquest under
Joshua. It would rest on a family’s mere presence in the land at the time
of the captives’ return, even a gentile family (Ezek. 47:22–23). The ju-
dicial threat of Deuteronomy 8:19–20 was this: if Israel did not pre-
serve the monopoly of God’s public worship in the land of Israel,
God would not preserve Israel’s monopoly of landed inheritance.
This post-exilic inclusion of strangers in the inheritance pointed
to a broadening of the covenant to include the gentiles. With the
fulillment of the messianic prophecies, the gentiles became
co-heirs of the entire covenantal inheritance. “For as many of you
as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is nei-
ther Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither
male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be
Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the
promise” (Gal. 3:27–29). This lay in the distant future in Moses’ day,
but the unconditional nature of Jacob’s prophecy pointed eschatologi-
cally to a day of gentile inheritance. First, the scepter would depart from
Judah. Second, no matter how comprehensive His language of destruc-
tion and disinheritance, God would preserve a remnant of Israel.

Predictable Corporate Sanctions

Deuteronomy 8:19–20 established speciic negative sanctions.
The law of the covenant did not stand alone. To this law were at-
tached sanctions. In this instance, the negative sanction of national
eviction was built into the Mosaic law. To discuss God’s covenant
law-order apart from God’s predictable corporate sanctions in history
is at best a theological mistake and at worst a mark of self-conscious
antinomian rebellion. It is comparable to discussing history apart from
250 DEUTERONOMY

eternity and its two-fold sanctions. To say that heaven and hell are
not predictable is to deny Christian orthodoxy. In fact, it is the de-
nial of a literal hell and a literal lake of ire that is the premier mark
of heresy in the twentieth century. This denial of predictable sanc-
tions has been moved from eternity to history. It is widely believed
among Protestant scholars today that there are no predictable di-
vine sanctions in history.
This denial of predictable historical sanctions, if true, would
make impossible the creation of a uniquely biblical social theory. If
God does not bring predictable corporate sanctions in history in
terms of His Bible-revealed law, then Christians and Jews must
adopt some version of natural law theory or democratic theory or
some other humanist system of man-imposed sanctions in their
search for social predictability. Sanctions are an inescapable con-
cept in social theory. It is never a question of sanctions vs. no sanc-
tions. It is always a question of which sanctions imposed by whom
in terms of which law-order. There is no escape from this limit on
man’s thinking. If there were no predictable relationship between law and
sanctions, there could be no social theory. Men would not be able to
make sense biblically of their social environment.

Political Theory
Political theory should be justiied in terms of social theory. Pol-
itics is a subset of a more comprehensive system of sanctions: a
higher law and therefore higher sanctions. In modern humanist po-
litical theory, political representatives are believed to represent
larger social forces. As such, they impose civil sanctions as stewards
or legal representatives of these forces. These forces may be seen as
personal or impersonal, but they are always believed to be partially
predictable by man.
The justiication for civil sanctions rests on a formal appeal to a
speciic theory of justice. Justice is always deined as a coherent sys-
tem of law and sanctions. In all widely held theories of politics, jus-
tice can be legitimately sought in the realm of politics only because
justice is understood as being broader than politics. Men believe
that they must submit to negative institutional sanctions because they
believe that these sanctions in some way will prevent or forestall the
imposition of even more threatening negative sanctions by some-
thing more powerful and more menacing than man and his sanctions.
 Disinheriting the Heirs 251

Consider a simple example. Residents of urban areas located

close to earthquake faults elect political representatives who pass
laws establishing building codes that reduce the threat of collapse
during an earthquake. The impersonal seismic forces that produce
earthquakes are understood as governed by the laws of geology.
These laws can be studied and catalogued. While individual earth-
quakes may not be predictable very far in advance, the statistically
predictable occurrence of earthquakes in general is widely believed.
This predictability is what justiies the building codes. Negative civil
sanctions for violating these building codes are regarded as legiti-
mate because of the statistical predictability of earthquakes. The
lesser threat of civil sanctions is justiied in terms of the larger threat
of collapsing buildings.
The laws of geology do not autonomously justify such building
codes. There must be an added element of moral law. The State is
seen as the preserver of the peace. It is assumed by voters that a city
full of dead and dying people after an earthquake may not be peace-
ful. Building codes will therefore help to preserve the peace, just as
ire codes do. Other moral arguments could also be introduced: the
State as insurer, protector, or healer. These additional elements are
used to justify civil building codes in seismically vulnerable regions.
Conclusion: a knowledge of physical laws is necessary but not
sujcient to justify negative civil sanctions.
On what basis are laws against certain immoral public acts
justiied? What if there were no overarching system of moral law
with predictable sanctions attached? That is, if God did not threaten
to bring coercive sanctions against society in general for tolerating
certain immoral acts, would there be a legitimate reason for the State
to bring coercive sanctions against those who commit such acts? This
is the issue of what is commonly designated as a victimless crime. Econ-
omist and legal theorist F. A. Hayek has written: “At least where it is
not believed that the whole group may be punished by a supernatural
power for the sins of individuals, there can arise no such rules from
the limitation of conduct towards others, and therefore from the set-
tlements of disputes.”2 In short, “no God–no victim.”

2. F. A. Hayek, Rules of Order, vol. 1 of Law, Legislation and Liberty (University of Chicago
Press, 1973), p. 101.
252 DEUTERONOMY

The judicial case against the sale of addictive drugs might be

made in terms of addiction as a potential source of crime. Question:
On what judicial or moral basis can negative civil sanctions be im-
posed on potential causes of future crimes? Wouldn’t this open the
door to civil sanctions against all sorts of not-yet-crimes and
might-become-crimes? Could the State then be restrained from be-
coming tyrannical? The State would then replace God as the per-
ceived victim of victimless crimes. Its majesty would be seen as
threatened by such activities, and many are the actions that might
challenge this majesty. If drug addiction is uniquely threatening to
social peace, those who defend the imposition of civil sanctions
against addictive drug sales must make their case based on the statis-
tical relationship between widespread addiction and crime. This is
because the case for negative civil sanctions against the sale of ad-
dictive drugs cannot be made directly from biblical law. There is no
biblical civil law against drunkenness except in the case of the rebel-
lious son. But gluttony is also speciied in the text as a mark of his re-
bellion (Deut. 21:20). No one suggests negative civil sanctions
against the sale of fattening foods. Governments have passed end-
less laws against the sale of drugs in response to the steady increase
in middle-class addiction, which has accompanied the breakdown
of biblical faith. The nineteenth century, which has few such laws,
was not cursed by an addicted population. Humanist society has
failed. Laws against drug sales cannot restore the lost faith in God
and meaning. They merely raise the price of rebellion, but at the
cost of a great loss of honest people’s liberties.
Modern social theory has abandoned the idea that God brings
predictable sanctions in history in terms of His law. This includes
most Christian social theory, such as it is. Theonomy is the main ex-
ception to this rule. For humanist social theory, the idea of God’s
sanctions in history is relegated to adiaphora: things indiferent to the
humanist faith. Mirroring this humanistic outlook is modern Chris-
tian theology, which relegates civil law to adiaphora. For humanists,
God’s law and His sanctions in history are irrelevant to their
worldview; for most Christians, God’s law and sanctions in history
are equally irrelevant to their worldview. On this shared testimony,
the humanist-pietist alliance has rested for three centuries.3 Political

3. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989).
 Disinheriting the Heirs 253

pluralists have always declared this confession of faith, from Roger

Williams to the Christian Coalition.4 To the extent that Christians
are beginning to consider the possibility that God brings predictable
corporate sanctions in history, to that extent they have moved away
from political pluralism and toward theonomic covenantalism.
The dividing issue here is the question of the source of our
knowledge of these laws and also their divinely imposed sanctions.
If the source is believed to be shared by all rational men irrespective
of their belief in the Bible as the unique, revealed word of God, then
natural law theory undergirds social theory, either as some variant
of medieval scholasticism or right-wing Enlightenment humanism.
In both cases, Protestants ind themselves under the domination of
humanism, either by way of Greece or Scotland, Aristotle or the two
Adams: Ferguson and Smith. On the other hand, if the source of this
knowledge is not shared, but is found exclusively in the Bible, then
theonomic covenantalism undergirds social theory.

4. As I wrote in the Foreword, the Christian Coalition is a political action organization. It

was created by cable television multimillionaire entrepreneur Pat Robertson. In its 1995
political testament, Contract With the American Family, the organization announced the
standard pluralist-Unitarian worldview that has governed the United States since the late
nineteenth century. Ralph Reed, Jr., its Executive Director, proclaimed: “We believe in an
America where all citizens are judged on the content of their character, and not on their
gender, race, religion, or ethnic background” (pp. ix–x). This is the standard pluralist-humanist
litany, “without respect to race, color, creed, or national origin.” It places character above
theological confession (creed). It deines the content of character apart from the Bible. The
document correctly invokes Roger Williams as the originator of the American doctrine of the
separation of church and State (p. 5). It rewrites colonial history, just as third-rate humanist
high school history textbooks have done for a century, by claiming that the Puritans had led
from “the European system of ojcially sanctioned ‘state religions’” which “beneited neither
the state nor the religion involved” (p. 5). In fact, Massachusetts and Connecticut maintained
state-established Congregational churches well into the 1820’s. The document calls for
tax-funded education that maintains “traditional values” (p. 13), which was exactly what
Unitarian Horace Mann called for when he promoted the public school movement in
Massachusetts in the 1830’s: traditional values stripped of all theological content. Contract
With the American Family (Nashville, Tennessee: Moorings, a division of Random House,
1995) is subtitled: A bold plan by Christian Coalition to strengthen the family and restore
common-sense values. This is an appeal to something resembling eighteenth-century Scottish
common-sense rationalism, which did not survive Darwinism and modern existentialist
philosophy. The last major institution to defend Scottish rationalism was Princeton
Theological Seminary, which went liberal in 1929. See Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the
Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1996), ch. 10.
254 DEUTERONOMY

Sanctions and Sovereignty

Rushdoony has written that the source of a society’s law is its
god.5 This is an accurate observation, but it is incomplete as stated.
The source of a society’s sanctions is also its god. I will go farther: if
a society distinguishes sharply between the source of its law and the
source of its sanctions, the latter is the god of that society. In general,
however, societies regard the source of law and sanctions as the
same.
There is always some degree of schizophrenia regarding a soci-
ety’s god because there are multiple sources of sanctions in history.
In the twentieth century, Protestants have given lip service to God
as sovereign over history, yet they also have denied that God’s law
has any place in civil law codes. But if God is over history, yet
without predictable sanctions in history, He becomes analogous to
the god of deism. Christian social theory then becomes something
analogous to Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy. Protestant
Christians for three centuries have gone a long way down this road
in the direction of operational deism. They ajrm that God brings
sanctions against societies, but not in terms of biblical law. God sup-
posedly brings sanctions in terms of natural law. He has revealed
Himself equally clearly to all rational men regarding His universal
but theologically neutral moral law, i.e., natural law. This universal
revelation is said to supersede biblical law, which was supposedly
annulled by the New Testament. This removes fundamental law
from the Bible and transfers it to logic, custom, or power. It there-
fore establishes the political sovereignty of man, who no longer must
confess faith in the God of the Bible in order to rule legitimately in
civil society.
To the degree that a system of cosmic or social sanctions is re-
garded as unpredictable in history, to that same degree are sanc-
tions-bringing representative agents freed from observing the
details of cosmic or social law. They can substitute other laws that
are in no clear way governed by cosmic or social law. The sover-
eignty of God progressively becomes the sovereignty of man, which
in turn elevates the sovereignty of the State, which is seen increas-
ingly as the ultimate sanctions-bringer in history.

5. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
p. 5.
 Disinheriting the Heirs 255

Conclusion
The covenantal threat listed here was disinheritance. Moses was
preparing the conquest generation for a military campaign. The
military spoils would be the long-deferred inheritance: Canaan.
The threat of disinheritance was a powerful threat for such a group.
Israel had waited four centuries for the fulillment of God’s promise
to Abraham. Now, at the very time of fulillment, Moses warned
them that if they broke covenant with God by worshipping other
gods, God would remove them from the land. The irst step toward
apostasy, Moses warned, was their vain imagining that they, rather
than God, were the source of their wealth (v. 17).
The threat was their removal from the land. God would remove
them as surely as He would soon remove the present inhabitants.
This promise of disinheritance was no less reliable than the promise
of inheritance to Abraham. Inheritance was about to take place;
they could rest assured that disinheritance would also take place. If
they worshipped the gods of Canaan, God would remove them
from those regions in which local deities were believed to exercise
their sovereignty. If Israelites attributed to themselves and their
adopted local gods the wealth they would enjoy in Canaan, God
would deal with them in the same way. This warning established a
fundamental principle of covenant theology: similar corporate sins
bring similar negative corporate sanctions in history.
Whenever those who call themselves by God’s name refuse to
believe this principle, even going so far as to deny its continuing au-
thority, they ind themselves on the defensive. Those who worship
other gods and obey other laws promise positive sanctions in history.
If those who are called by God to worship Him and obey His laws
refuse to acknowledge the threat of negative corporate sanctions in
history, they become “we, too” social theorists. “Our way is just as
good as your way.” This eventually becomes, “Our way is pretty
much the same as your way, since God is the author of universal
truth. Your way obviously works – positive sanctions abound – so we
will restructure our way to mimic your way.” As dispensational pub-
licist Tommy Ice has put it, “Premillennialists have always been in-
volved in the present world. And basically, they have picked up on
the ethical positions of their contemporaries.”6 In this, they have not

6. Tommy Ice, response in a 1988 debate: Ice and Dave Hunt vs. Gary North and Gary
DeMar. Cited in Gary DeMar, The Debate Over Christian Reconstruction (Atlanta, Georgia:
American Vision, 1988), p. 185.
256 DEUTERONOMY

been alone. Christian social theorists have been doing this from the
beginnings of systematic Christian social theory in the medieval
West. They have followed the lead of the early church’s apologists,
who imported the wisdom of Greece in the name of common-
ground truth.7

7. Cornelius Van Til, A Christian Theory of Knowledge (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian &
Reformed, 1969), ch. 4; cf. Van Til, Christianity in Conlict (Syllabus, Westminster Seminary,
1962).
 23
Overcoming THE
OVERCOMING the Visible
VISIBLEOddsODDS
Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to
possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced
up to heaven, A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom
thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before
the children of Anak! Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy
God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming ire he shall
destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou
drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto
thee. Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast
them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath
brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations
the LORD doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness,
or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but
for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out
from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD
sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Understand
therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess
it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stifnecked people (Deut. 9:1–6).

Moses here presented a prophecy. This prophecy, as with all

biblical prophecies, had an ethical component. God always deals
with men covenantally, and the covenant rests on God’s law.1 This
prophecy announced the near-term fulillment of God’s original prom-
ise to Abraham. That promise had linked Israel’s victory to Canaan’s
immorality: “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again:

1. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 3.

257
258 DEUTERONOMY

for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16). The iniq-
uity of the Amorites was now full. The day of the Lord was at hand.
This prophecy was ethical, as all but messianic prophecies were.
The Israelites were commanded to begin the conquest. This com-
mand rested on God as sovereign over history. His prophecy re-
garding the fourth-generation’s conquest of Canaan was about to
come true. The theocentric nature of this prophecy is obvious.
God’s decree is sovereign.
This was a land law. It related to the conquest. But it had impli-
cations far beyond the conquest. It related corporate disobedience
to defeat in history as a general principle. As Orwell might have put
it in Animal Farm: “Original sin is total, but some sins are more total
than others.”

The Day of the Lord

“Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day.” This an-
nouncement was not supposed to be taken literally. The Israelites
did not cross the Jordan that day. Moses still had a great deal more
to tell them, as the length of the remainder of this commentary indi-
cates. Moses did not die that day. After he died, the nation mourned
30 days (Deut. 34:8). Then they crossed the Jordan. So, what did
Moses mean by “this day”?
The “day” referred to here was the day of the Lord. This phrase
refers in Scripture to a period of divine judgment that constitutes a
turning point in a society’s history. The phrase does not occur in the
Bible until the prophets; it occurs most often in the Book of Isaiah.
Generally, it refers to a period of negative corporate sanctions.2
“Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a de-
struction from the Almighty” (Isa. 13:6). Occasionally, the phrase
“that day” is used to describe a time of national restoration: positive
corporate sanctions. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the
Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant
of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and

2. “For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and
upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low” (Isa. 2:12). “And the loftiness of
man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD
alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isa. 2:17). “Therefore the LORD will cut of from Israel head
and tail, branch and rush, in one day” (Isa. 9:14).
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 259

from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and
from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an
ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and
gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the
earth” (Isa. 11:11–12). The day of the Lord was a period of national
sanctions: inheritance and disinheritance. Usually, it meant disin-
heritance for rebellious Israel and inheritance for some invader. In
this context, however, it meant Israel’s inheritance and Canaan’s
disinheritance.
The Bible uses the language of heavenly transformation to de-
scribe covenantal-political transformations. This is clear in Isaiah’s
prophecy regarding the defeat of Babylon by Medo-Persia (Isa.
13:1). “Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath
and ierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the
sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constella-
tions thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in
his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And
I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniq-
uity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will
lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more pre-
cious than ine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out
of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his
ierce anger” (Isa. 13:9–13). This same cosmic language was in-
voked prophetically by Jesus to describe the fall of Jerusalem in
A.D. 70: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the
sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars
shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be
shaken” (Matt. 24:29). The Bible uses the language of cosmic trans-
formation to describe national disinheritance: the end of an old
world order. An old world order is then replaced by a newer world
order. The inal new world order in history is Jesus Christ’s. No
other will ever replace it. “And in the days of these kings shall the
God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed:
and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break
in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for
ever” (Dan. 2:44).
The time period of judgment normally lasts for longer than a
day, but the inal consummation comes on one day, the day of inal
judgment being the archetype. It is marked by either the total
260 DEUTERONOMY

3
destruction of the unrighteous or their unconditional surrender.
The siege of Jerusalem, which ended the Old Covenant order, took
far more than a day, but it was consummated with a day of destruc-
tion: the burning of the temple – not by ojcial command – by a pair
of Roman soldiers. The Jewish defector Josephus, who became a
court historian for the Roman emperor, referred to this as “that fatal
day.”4 This iery event marked the demise of the Mosaic priesthood
in Israel. It also marked the origin of Rabbinic Judaism, or as
Neusner calls it, “the Judaism of the two Torahs,” i.e., the Old Testa-
ment and the Mishnah/Talmud.5 The teachers of the oral law had
followed the Pharisees rather than the Sadducees; their ideas tri-
umphed among the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem.6 From that time
on, those who proclaimed themselves as the legitimate heirs of
Moses added their respective authoritative commentaries on the
Old Testament: the New Testament for Christians and Mishnah/
Talmud for Jews.7 In both cases, the respective interpretive com-
mentaries were assumed by their adherents to take precedence op-
erationally over the Old Testament, although neither group
challenged the authority of the Old Testament.8 Both sides acknowl-
edged the radical covenantal discontinuity that had taken place with
the burning of the temple. The Old Order was gone forever. It can-
not possibly replace the New World Order of Jesus Christ, for no
order ever will.
This is why dispensational theology is utterly wrong about: 1) the
removal of the church from history by the Rapture; 2) the absence of
every trace of the New Testament order during the interim period of
seven years until Christ returns bodily to set up His millennial king-
dom; and 3) the substitution of a Jewish theocratic-bureaucratic order
during the millennium, where temple sacriices of bulls and sheep

3. Gary North, Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory (3rd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1988).
4. Flavius Josephus, The Wars of The Jews, VI:IV:5.
5. Jacob Neusner, An Introduction to Judaism: A Textbook and Reader (Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), p. 157. Neusner is the most proliic scholarly author in
modern history; his bibliography runs over 30 single-spaced pages, over 400 volumes.
6. Herbert Danby, The Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, [1933] 1987), p. xiii.
7. An exception is the Karaite sect of Judaism, which acknowledges the authority only of
the Pentateuch. They organized themselves as a separate sect in the eighth century, A.D. Paul
Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 169.
8. Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah (University of
Chicago Press, 1986), p. xi.
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 261

and goats will be restored. Although dispensational theologians re-

fuse to say this in print, these animal sacriices would have to replace
the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is said by dispensationalists
to memorialize the death of Christ. What will the “memorials”
9
(Scoield’s term) of the animal sacriices symbolize? There is no
equality possible; one sacriicial “memorial” or the other must be
authoritative.
There will be no revival of a Jewish theocratic order10 because
Jesus Christ is not a bigamist with two brides and a diferent sacra-
mental system for each of them. The gentile church is not Leah with
the Jewish church serving as Rachel, or vice versa. There is only one
bride for the Bridegroom. There is also only one inal world order: Jesus
Christ’s. It will never be broken by an eschatological discontinuity:
the Rapture, followed by a Great Tribulation period. We learn this
from Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares. “He said unto them,
An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou
then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye
gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow
together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the
reapers, Gather ye together irst the tares, and bind them in bundles to
burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matt. 13:28–30). Jesus
explained: “The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is
the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the
tares are gathered and burned in the ire; so shall it be in the end of
this world” (vv. 39–40). There will be no uprooting of either wheat
or tares, the church or the rebels, until the end of time.

9. See the comments on Ezekiel 43:19 in the original Scoield Reference Bible (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1909), p. 890, and suggestion number one in the New Scoield
Reference Bible (Oxford, 1967), p. 888n. Suggestion number one is that these animal sacriices
will be memorials, just as Scoield wrote. Suggestion number two simply scraps the whole
temple-sacriice scheme by allegorizing the passage – a familiar approach of dispensational
“hermeneutical literalists” whenever their professed hermeneutics leads them into some
embarrassing exegetical dead end. The authors were too timid to say which suggestion they
prefer.
10. If, as the dispensationalists argue, “Israel always means Israel and not the church,” then
the millennial age must be Jewish. Dispensationalists appeal to the Psalms to describe the
restored kingdom. As postmillennialist O. T. Allis wrote a generation ago, “According to
Dispensationalists the Psalms have as their central theme, Christ and the Jewish remnant in
the millennial age.” Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (Philadelphia: Presbyterian &
Reformed, 1945), p. 244.
262 DEUTERONOMY

Moses told Israel that a day of covenantal discontinuity had ar-

rived. There would soon be a covenantal displacement in the land of
Canaan. The Levitical laws governing landed inheritance (Lev. 25)
and all the other Mosaic land laws would soon have a meaningful
geographical context. A new world order was about to replace the
Canaanites’ old world order. The magnitude of this covenantal dis-
continuity would be visible to all. Everyone would know in retro-
spect that God alone had been behind this transformation because of
the disparity in physical size between the winners and the losers. The
multitude of Israelite ants would consume the Anakim elephants.

The Bigger They Are

The Anakim were large people, probably Goliath-sized. Goli-
ath was a little over nine feet tall (I Sam. 17:4). Spies sent by Moses
to survey Canaan had reported: “And there we saw the giants, the
sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own
sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (Num. 13:33).
The region around Canaan had been the home of several groups of
these giant peoples. “The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a peo-
ple great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; Which also were ac-
counted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims”
(Deut. 2:10–11). The Hebrew word translated giant is rawfaw.
Og of Bashan was a giant. He was described by Moses as the last
of them. “For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of
giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in
Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length
thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man”
(Deut. 3:11). A man who sleeps in a bed that is over 13 feet long and
six feet wide is either a giant or else worries a lot about falling out of
bed. Og’s size did him no good militarily. “And the rest of Gilead,
and all Bashan, being the kingdom of Og, gave I unto the half tribe
of Manasseh; all the region of Argob, with all Bashan, which was
called the land of giants” (Deut. 3:13). The military success of Israel
over Og of Bashan was a trans-Jordan preliminary testament: Israel
would inherit Canaan despite the presence of giants.
Which giants? Wasn’t Og the last of them? In what sense was
Og the last of the remnant of giants, when Anakim still dwelt in Ca-
naan? Moses said: “For only Og king of Bashan remained of the
remnant of giants.” What did Moses mean by this? Was Og even
larger than the others? The size of his bed indicates that he was. A
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 263

man the size of Goliath does not need a bed over 13 feet long. Og
was the largest giant of all, the last of the original race mentioned in
Genesis 6:4.11 Canaan’s Anakim were accounted as giants (Deut. 2:11,
20). When God enabled Israel to conquer Og, He showed Israel
that the “not quite giants” would not be a large problem.
Other tribes of peoples accounted as giants had been conquered
by Israel’s relatives, Esau and Ammon. “That also was accounted a
land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites
call them Zamzummims; A people great, and many, and tall, as the
Anakims; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they suc-
ceeded them, and dwelt in their stead: As he did to the children of
Esau, which dwelt in Seir, when he destroyed the Horims from be-
fore them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead even
unto this day” (Deut. 2:20–22). If the heirs of evil Esau and the even
more evil Ammon had inherited the lands of the giants, then Israel
should not fear the Anakim. The issue was ethics, not size, as the
text indicates.
Israel in David’s time faced Philistine heirs of the giants. In each
case, the giants lost their battles with individual challengers from
Israel (II Sam. 21:16–22). The old phrase, “the bigger they are, the
harder they fall,” is well illustrated by the fate of the giants.

Counting the Costs

Moses had sent out spies to survey the land and report back
(Num. 13). The sight of the giants had terriied some of the spies
(v. 33). What they had personally seen made a greater impression
on them than what they had heard from God through Moses. Then
Joshua and Caleb reminded them of what they had heard. “If the
LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us;
a land which loweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye
against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are
bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is
with us: fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them
with stones. And the glory of the LORD appeared in the tabernacle of

11. The legend of these giants can be found in Hesiod’s Theogany, lines 53–54. This is
probably an eighth-century work contemporary with the ministry of Isaiah. See also Jane
Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (2nd ed.; New Hyde Park,
New York: University Books, [1927] 1962), pp. 452–53.
264 DEUTERONOMY

the congregation before all the children of Israel” (Num. 14:8–10).

This did no good; in fact, it outraged the other spies. When men’s
hearts are rebellious, what they see means more to them than what
God has told them. That was the ten spies’ problem. Each of them
substituted “I saw with my own eyes” for “Hear, O Israel.”
We are told to count the cost of our actions. Jesus warned His lis-
teners regarding the cost of discipleship. He used the analogy of mili-
tary planning. “Or what king, going to make war against another
king, sitteth not down irst, and consulteth whether he be able with
ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thou-
sand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way of, he sendeth an
ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever
he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disci-
ple” (Luke 14:31–33). This requirement to count the cost led to
Moses’ decision to send out the spies. But what ten of the dozen spies
forgot was this: facts are to be interpreted in terms of God’s word. Facts are
not autonomous; there are no “brute facts.” Facts are always inter-
preted facts. They are interpreted correctly by God because they
have been created by God. They are what God says they are because
He created them that way. Van Til has put it this way: “The
non-Christian assumes that man is ultimate, that is, that he is not cre-
ated. Christianity assumes that man is created. The non-Christian
assumes that the facts of man’s environment are not created; the
Christian assumes that these facts are created.”12 The spies were sup-
posed to interpret what they saw by what God had told them. Law-
rence “Yogi” Berra, the former New York Yankees baseball star
and a legendary coiner of classic obvious phrases,13 once said, “You
can observe a lot just by looking.” But far more important than look-
ing is interpreting. Accurate interpreting begins and ends with hear-
ing and believing the word of God.
Israel was facing what appeared to be enormous odds against
them. The spies’ own eyes seemed to tell them this. But men’s eyes
tell them nothing apart from men’s faith. Our eyes may conirm our
faith, fail to conirm it, or confuse us, but they do not operate autono-
mously. The information that eyes provide must then be interpreted.

12. Cornelius Van Til, The Christian Theory of Knowledge (n.p.: Presbyterian & Reformed,
1969), p. 14.
13. His most famous: “It’s déjà-vu all over again.” Another: “When you reach a fork in the
road, take it.”
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 265

The Israelites were told to estimate the odds in terms of God’s

promise to Abraham regarding the sins of Canaan: “But in the
fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of
the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16).

Judicial Blindness and Deafness

Soon after Moses announced the crossing of the Jordan, he re-
vealed to Israel the rules of warfare. The irst rule: “When thou goest
out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots,
and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy
God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt”
(Deut. 20:1). God subsequently warned them in the midst of the
conquest of Canaan: “Be not afraid because of them: for to morrow
about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel: thou
shalt hough [hamstring] their horses, and burn their chariots with
ire” (Josh. 11:6b). Israel defeated the initial wave of charioteers, just
as God had promised (Josh. 11:9). But the Israelites refused to be-
lieve their own eyes, just as they had refused to believe their own
eyes at the Red Sea. “And the children of Joseph said, The hill is not
enough for us: and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the
valley have chariots of iron, both they who are of Beth-shean and
her towns, and they who are of the valley of Jezreel” (Josh. 17:16).
“And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of
the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley,
because they had chariots of iron” (Jud. 1:19).
Israel’s theological inheritance to each succeeding generation
was reduced by the power of sight over hearing. They would not lis-
ten to God’s written word and His prophets. The Bible speaks of
hearing and seeing as ethical. What is foundational is not the physi-
cal acuity of man’s sight and hearing, but a man’s covenantal frame-
work of interpretation. Isaiah wrote: “Also I heard the voice of the
Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said
I, Here am I; send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye
indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and
shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. Then
said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted
without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be ut-
terly desolate, And the LORD have removed men far away, and there
266 DEUTERONOMY

be a great forsaking in the midst of the land” (Isa. 6:8–12). God

inlicted judicial blindness on the nation. Israelites would see and
hear, yet they would not perceive the covenantal meaning of what
they saw and heard. This biblical principle of judicial blindness was
basic to Jesus’ use of parables:

And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto
them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given
unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is
not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have
more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away
even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they see-
ing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in
them is fulilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall
hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not per-
ceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hear-
ing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart,
and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your
eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear (Matt. 13:10–16).

Paul also quoted Isaiah’s words in his inal recorded lecture to

the Jews: “Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and
shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For
the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of
hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart,
and should be converted, and I should heal them” (Acts 28:26–27).
The hearing that should govern men’s decision-making is covenantal
hearing.

Comparative Degrees of Moral Rebellion

The text says that God would soon give the victory to the Israel-
ites despite their unrighteousness. “Not for thy righteousness, or for
the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but
for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive
them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word
which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”
(v. 5). Three ideas are present here: 1) Israel is not righteous; 2) the
Canaanites are more unrighteous than Israel; 3) God’s promise to
Abraham will be fulilled.
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 267

The original promise had included a prophecy regarding the

sins of the Amorites: they would be illed, i.e., their national bound-
aries of tolerable rebellion would be breached. The promise of land
for Abraham’s heirs was not devoid of a speciic prophecy regarding
the ethical condition of the Canaanites. The fulillment of the prom-
ise was therefore as secure as the fulillment of the prophecy. The el-
ement of ethical conditionality had been present in the original
terms of the promise.14
The promise not only did not annul the ethical stipulations of
God’s covenant with Abraham; its fulillment would soon conirm
that covenant, Moses said. But the Israelites were not to regard the
fulillment of the original promise as a conirmation of their righ-
teousness. They were only to regard the fulillment as conirming
the Canaanites’ even greater unrighteousness. The illing up of the
Canaanites’ iniquity had placed a chronological boundary around
Canaan: the day of the Lord. The Canaanites would not extend their
dominion over the land beyond this chronological boundary, which
was both an ethical-covenantal boundary and a prophetic bound-
ary. God had announced to Abraham, “Thus far and no farther” re-
garding Canaan’s sins and its time remaining. Now He would fulill
His promise.

Canaanites Were Worse

Esau had defeated giants; so had Ammon (Deut. 2:20–22). Yet
Esau and Ammon were not paragons of national virtue. Ammonites
were so evil that it took ten generations of covenant membership to
enable an Ammonite to become a citizen of Israel (Deut. 23:3). Yet
God had delivered the giants into their hands. This victory was not
evidence of the righteousness of either Esau or Ammon. Compared
to the giants, however, they were better.
Moses warned Israel not to misinterpret the victory that lay
ahead. “Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God
hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness
the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wicked-
ness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before
thee” (Deut. 9:4). The Israelites could not legitimately regard them-
selves as morally deserving of the victory. They deserved nothing

14. Chapter 17.

268 DEUTERONOMY

special, but the Canaanites deserved worse. Their evil had multi-
plied over time. Their debts to God had compounded. Their day of
reckoning had almost arrived. The Israelites were to serve as agents
of God’s judgment. Morally speaking, the Israelites were in much
the same condition as the deceased reprobate at whose funeral the
best that the eulogizer could say about him was this: “His brother
was worse.” Israel, as God’s adopted son, was better than the
Canaanites, the disinherited sons of Adam.
Autonomous man has no legal claim on God. The temptation of
Israel was to regard the impending military victory as a sign of their
superior ethical standing before God. The lure, once again, was au-
tonomy. “For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to pos-
sess this land” was the ethical equivalent of “My power and the
might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17). Both
assertions rested on a belief in Israel’s autonomy. Moses warned
them: “Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not
this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a
stifnecked people” (Deut. 9:6). Then he recounted their experience
in the wilderness: “Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst
the LORD thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou
didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place,
ye have been rebellious against the LORD. Also in Horeb ye pro-
voked the LORD to wrath, so that the LORD was angry with you to
have destroyed you” (vv. 7–8). The cause, Moses reminded them,
was the golden calf incident (vv. 12–14).
The threat then had been national destruction. It still was (Deut.
8:19–20). When God had threatened to destroy them after the
golden calf incident, Moses had interceded with God, appealing to
His name and reputation. “Wherefore should the Egyptians speak,
and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the
mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn
from thy ierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Re-
member Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou
swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your
seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of
will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And the
LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people”
(Ex. 32:12–14). It would have been futile for Moses to have invoked
Israel’s righteousness as the basis of God’s extension of mercy. This
was still true for the generation of the conquest.
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 269

The Adamic Covenant

Canaanite civilization was unrighteous. More than this: it was
progressively unrighteous. It kept getting worse. It had therefore
reached its temporal limits. It had reached its boundaries of domin-
ion. Canaan was about to forfeit its inheritance.
If the unrighteousness of Canaan had progressed to such a de-
gree that God was willing to impose total negative sanctions, then
there must have been a standard of righteousness governing Ca-
naan. Negative sanctions without law is tyranny. God is no arbitrary
tyrant. Then on what lawful basis does God impose negative sanc-
tions? Paul wrote that the negative sanction of death rules in history
because the law of God condemns all of Adam’s heirs. “Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (For until the
law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them
that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression,
who is the igure of him that was to come” (Rom. 5:12–14). In short,
no negative sanctions–no law. The converse is also true: if negative sanc-
tions, then law.
Canaan was under covenantal stipulations. This was the judicial
basis of God’s prophecy against Canaan. Canaan had violated
God’s law long enough. The day of reckoning had arrived. This im-
plies that Canaanites were under law. Which law? Covenantal law to
which historical sanctions are attached.
This raises a crucial question: Which covenant? Canaan had not
formally covenanted with God as Abram had (Gen. 15:18). Canaanites
were not under the law of the covenant in the way that Abraham’s
heirs were. The transfer of inheritance was nevertheless about to
take place based on Canaan’s violation of God’s law. How could
this be?
The answer is found in the Adamic covenant. There is a univer-
sal covenant between God and Adam’s heirs. It operates in history.
Societies progress in terms of their conformity to the law of this
covenant. Societies also are cut short in history in terms of this law:
the second commandment. Moses had just reiterated the second
commandment: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor
serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth
generation of them that hate me” (Deut. 5:9). This warning was not
270 DEUTERONOMY

limited to Israel, since it spoke of God-haters, i.e., covenant-breakers.

The second commandment was the judicial basis of the negative
sanctions that Israel was about to impose on Canaan: the Canaanites’
sincere worship of false gods.
The Adamic covenant has corporate sanctions. It is not just a
law governing individuals. Not only do individuals die, civilizations
also die. Not only does God kill individuals, He also kills civiliza-
tions. God would soon prove this to Canaan and Israel. The Book of
Deuteronomy, as the book of the inheritance, is both a testament
and a testimony to the fact that God kills societies. He executes judg-
ment in history in terms of the Adamic covenant’s stipulations.
Adam ate from the forbidden tree; so, Adam’s heirs can distinguish good
from evil, just as the serpent promised. They cannot legitimately plead
ignorance of the law. That they actively suppress God’s truth in un-
righteousness, worshipping the creature rather than the Creator
(Rom. 1:18–22), testiies to their covenantal knowledge of the truth,
not their lack of knowledge.
Any suggestion that God does not hold all mankind responsible
for obeying His law must come to grips with the destruction of
Canaan. Why did God speak to Abraham of the growing iniquity of
the Amorites if there was no ethical standard governing Amorite
civilization? Because God brought judgment on Canaan, we must
ask: By what standard?
Moses had warned Israel in the passage immediately preceding
this one that if Israel worshipped other gods, God would bring the
same judgment against Israel that He was about to bring against
Canaan (Deut. 8:19–20). By worshipping other gods, men honor
the laws of other covenants. Covenants have stipulations. To adopt
other laws besides God’s law constitutes rebellion.
How can God legitimately hold covenant-breakers in the
Adamic sense responsible for breaking a corporate law-order that
they have never publicly ajrmed? Because they are covenant-
breakers in Adam, and they are also covenant-breakers on their
own account. Adam and his heirs are under corporate covenant
law as surely as they are under individual covenant law. Whole soci-
eties perish as surely as individuals die. The question then is: How
do Adam’s heirs know about the law-order under which they oper-
ate and for which God holds them corporately responsible? Paul
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 271

provided the answer: the work of the law is written in every person’s
heart.15 “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by na-
ture the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a
law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in
their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their
thoughts the mean [intervening] while accusing or else excusing one
another” (Rom. 2:14–15).

Natural Law and Common Grace

In the history of Western political theory, this judicial knowl-
edge has been referred to as natural law. In one sense, such knowl-
edge is inborn and therefore natural. It is built into the hearts of all
rational men. In another sense, it is supernatural: as an image of
God, each man relects God. Such knowledge is not sujcient to
bring all men to saving faith, but it is sujcient to condemn them be-
fore God. Such knowledge is sujcient to enable them to perceive
the external requirements of the common law. The question is: Will
they obey what they know to be true? The biblical answer is simple:
“If God gives them the grace to obey.” Grace in this sense is an un-
earned gift from God, i.e., a gift earned by Jesus Christ on the cross
but not earned by the recipients on their own account. Calvinist
theologians often call this unearned gift common grace. Calvin called
it general grace.16 Common grace enables men to obey at least some
of the works of the common law in their hearts. But when this com-
mon grace is removed from them in history, societies march into the
valley of the shadow of death.
Moses announced that Canaan was nearing the end of its long
march into destruction. Those Christians who deny the existence of
common grace in history have a major exegetical problem with Is-
rael’s conquest of Canaan. Why was Canaan condemned by God?
By what standard was Canaan condemned? How had Canaan illed
up its cup of iniquity by Joshua’s day? What should Christians call
those historical means by which God had earlier prevented them

15. On the distinction between the work of the law written in an unregenerate person’s
heart and the law written in the regenerate person’s heart, see John Murray, The Epistle to the
Romans, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1965), I, pp. 74–76.
16. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), II:II:17. Ford Lewis Battles
translation, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), I:276. See Battles’ footnotes on
the same page.
272 DEUTERONOMY

from following the dictates of their rebellious hearts? If the cup of in-
iquity was full in Joshua’s day, what had reduced the level of iniq-
uity in Abraham’s day? Without the concept of common grace, and
speciically corporate common grace, these questions are unanswer-
able covenantally.
Sects that refuse to acknowledge the existence of common grace
are unable to develop an explicitly biblical social theory or political
theory. They must therefore sit under the academic and judicial ta-
bles of covenant-breakers, praying to God that a few scraps will fall
from the tables occasionally to feed them (Matt. 15:22–27). They
necessarily must view the history of the church as one long march
into the shadow of death. They necessarily must adopt a view of
Christians as perpetual crumb-eaters in history. In other words, they
necessarily must adopt pessimillennialism, either premillennialism
or amillennialism.17 They must reject an eschatology that insists that
Christianity will triumph in history, for such a triumph would mean
that the positive sanctions of saving faith are in some way related ju-
dicially to the negative sanctions that disinherit covenant-breakers
in history. This triumphant scenario raises the issue of corporate
common grace and its removal from covenant-breaking societies in
history. In short, they cannot explain the covenantal relationship
between Israel and Canaan, between Christ and Caesar. So, they
simply ignore it.
There is no neutrality. To deny common grace is to ajrm a uni-
versal common law other than God’s covenant law. Some law must
rule society; sanctions must be applied in terms of some law. By de-
nying common grace in history, Christians necessarily ajrm the sov-
ereignty of natural law over God’s revealed law. They ajrm the
autonomy of Adamic law over Bible-revealed law. They ajrm cove-
nant-breaking man’s superior authority to interpret Adamic law apart
from God’s special grace of biblical revelation. If predictable sanc-
tions in history are not imposed by God in terms of the stipulations
of His Bible-revealed law, which has precedence over natural (Ad-
amic) law, then predictable sanctions in history must governed by

17. The Protestant Reformed Church openly denies common grace and ajrms
amillennialism. For a critique of the anti-postmillennial presentations of the Protestant
Reformed Church’s senior theologian, see Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., He Shall Have Dominion: A
Postmillennial Eschatology (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), Appendix A:
“Cultural Antinomianism.”
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 273

Adamic common law. One set of sanctions must become dominant

in society: either those that are attached to biblical law or those that
are understood by covenant-breaking men to be attached to what
they regard as uncursed natural law. There is no equality possible
here: one law-order must be superior to the other. The predictabil-
ity of corporate historical sanctions will be assessed by men in terms
of biblical law or natural law.
The triumph of Israel over Canaan tells us which law-order is
dominant – biblical law – but those who deny common grace do not
get the message. They are forced to explain the victory of Israel over
Canaan as some sort of anomaly in history. So also must they explain
the victory of Christ over Caesar, i.e., the replacement of pagan Rome
by Christianity. As far as cultural dominance in history is con-
cerned, critics of common grace think that God is on the side of cov-
enant-breakers. Their worldview is straightforward: evil must get
more powerful over time, while Christianity must get weaker.
The question then arises: Why should Christians attempt to de-
velop biblical social theory? Isn’t this in efect wasted efort eschato-
logically, an exercise in intellectual futility? By their actions,
pessimillennialists and the critics of common grace theology have
demonstrated that this is exactly what they believe. They have
counted the costs of dominion, which include the personal costs of
developing an explicitly biblical social theory. They have com-
pared these estimated costs with the estimated beneits of success.
They have weighed in the balance biblical social theory and biblical
social action, and they have found both wanting. Why? Because
their risk-reward estimates have been afected by their pessi-
millennialism. They have echoed the ten spies: “And there we saw
the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were
in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight”
(Num. 13:33). They have made it clear that they believe that in New
Covenant history, God is on the side of covenant-breaking societies.
In short, “Nice guys inish last.”18

18. Another baseball slogan. Leo Durocher is the source. Years later, he said that he was
misquoted. His reference to a last-place team was: “Nice guys. Finished last.”
274 DEUTERONOMY

Which Side Is God On?

The most important question in estimating the costs of any risky
action is this: Will God be pleased with what I am about to under-
take? To estimate the height of the Anakim was not dijcult. The
diference in physical stature between the Anakim and the Israelites
was obvious. Their eyes told them: seek peace, avoid confrontation.
But what they saw was not the heart of the cost-beneit analysis. The
heart of the matter was their heart before God. Were they going to
believe His promise or their own eyes?
Their problem was this: rebellious hearts make bad estimates. After
God had told the exodus generation that their representatives’ treat-
ment of Joshua and Caleb had doomed them to death in the wilder-
ness, they decided that it was time to march into battle. “And they
rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the
mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place
which the LORD hath promised: for we have sinned. And Moses
said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the
LORD? but it shall not prosper. Go not up, for the LORD is not among
you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalekites
and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the
sword: because ye are turned away from the LORD, therefore the
LORD will not be with you. But they presumed to go up unto the hill
top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and Moses,
departed not out of the camp. Then the Amalekites came down, and
the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and
discomited them, even unto Hormah” (Num. 14:40–45). Not until
the next generation came to maturity did Israel have a victory at
Hormah (Num. 21:3).
The Israelites were not supposed to go into battle unless the war
had been authorized by the priesthood. The tribes were to march
into battle only after the priests had blown the trumpets. “And the
sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they
shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your genera-
tions” (Num. 10:8). Bloodshed had to be preceded by the payment
of atonement money to the priests (Ex. 30:12–13).19 Under the Mo-
saic covenant, the priesthood had the exclusive authority to decide

19. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 32.
 Overcoming the Visible Odds 275

if God was on the side of Israel. Their declaration alone sanctioned

the war in God’s eyes; without this sanction, a war should not have
been sanctioned in the nation’s eyes.
The West has always placed the authority to declare war exclu-
sively in the hands of the national civil government. The churches
historically have had no interest in challenging this state of afairs.
At most, the medieval church claimed the right to impose a few of
the rules of warfare, such as truce days. Today, secular agencies do
this, most notably the International Red Cross. Once a war is de-
clared by the government, the churches immediately become vocal
supporters of the war efort.20 There is no further discussion about
the legitimacy of the war. Whatever discussion takes place must
take place before the war breaks out. Those who favor peace lose
the debate completely on the day that war is declared. All debate
ends. One mark of a society that has lost faith in its moral founda-
tions is the existence of such debate after a war begins. For example,
in the American Civil War (1861–65), by late 1864, after the fall of
the city of Atlanta, when the Confederacy was beginning to be seen
by its supporters as a lost cause militarily, a few Southern preachers
began to voice doubts about both the moral legitimacy of slavery
and the justness of the Confederacy’s cause. After the war ended in
defeat, almost no Southerner publicly lamented the demise of slav-
ery.21 The shock of military defeat had changed their minds. Moral
legitimacy had been determined on the battleield; the South’s
preachers merely relected the military results.

20. American clerics who opposed the World War I sometimes sufered civil sanctions:
arrest and imprisonment. A Church of the Brethren pastor was sent to prison for having
recommended to his congregation that they refuse to buy war bonds. He was tried after the
armistice in 1918 and sentenced to prison for ten years, later commuted to a year and a day.
H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, [1957] 1968), pp. 118–19. As the authors point out, clerical opponents of
the war were usually from smaller, poorer churches. Ibid., p. 117. For publishing an anti-war
book on prophecy, The Finished Mystery, in July of 1917, eight leaders of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, including Joseph Rutherford, were sentenced to 20 years in prison in June of 1918,
after World War I had ended. A Federal appeals court overturned this decision in 1919.
James J. Martin, An American Adventure in Bookburning In The Style of 1918 (Colorado Springs:
Ralph Myles Press, 1989), pp. 16–17. Martin’s account is more accurate than Peterson and
Fite’s (pp. 119–20).
21. One who did was the Presbyterian theologian Robert Dabney. See his book, A Defence
of Virginia [And Through Her, of the South] (New York: Negro University Press, [1867] 1969). Cf.
North, Tools of Dominion, pp. 234–35.
276 DEUTERONOMY

Conclusion
Moses told the Israelites that the day of the Lord had arrived.
The day of the Lord was a day of historical sanctions: positive for
Israel and negative for Canaan. While its completion would take
place only under Joshua – a six-year day of vengeance – the day had
already begun.
The day of the Lord is always a day of sanctions. Moses warned
Israel: the fact that God was going to use Israel to bring negative
corporate sanctions against Canaan should not lead them to con-
clude that they had any legal claim on God based on their own righ-
teousness. They would replace Canaan as God’s agents in the land,
but their legal claim to the land was based on two things only: God’s
promise to Abraham and the two-fold boundary that God had
placed on Canaan’s iniquity, ethical and temporal. God’s an-
nouncement of “no further dominion” for Canaan was not to be re-
garded as an announcement of unconditional dominion for Israel.
Dominion is by covenant, and God’s covenant is always ethically
conditional. The covenant has stipulations to which predictable his-
torical sanctions are attached. These sanctions are the basis of ex-
tending the inheritance. Canaan had forfeited its inheritance by
breaking the Adamic covenant’s corporate stipulations. These stip-
ulations were common grace stipulations.
The Canaanites looked invincible. They were in fact highly vin-
cible. They were guaranteed losers in history, according to the
Abrahamic promise, which was in fact an integral aspect of the
Abrahamic covenant. This promise was a prophecy regarding the
temporal limits of corporate rebellion. Canaan’s transgression of
the Adamic covenant’s boundaries would bring predictable nega-
tive sanctions in history. The prediction was the Abrahamic prom-
ise: “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for
the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16).
 24
Inheritance,SERVITUDE,
INHERITANCE, Servitude, andAND
Sonship
SONSHIP

I prayed therefore unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, destroy not
thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy
greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the
stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin: Lest
the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because the LORD was not able
to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated
them, he hath brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are
thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy mighty
power and by thy stretched out arm (Deut. 9:26–29).

The theocentric reference point here is God’s legal status as

Israel’s owner. Israel was God’s inheritance. To the extent that Israel
extended its national inheritance, God would extend His. This rela-
tionship was representative. Israel was required to act as God’s
agent, even as Adam was required to act as God’s agent.

Moses as the Replacement Patriarch

Moses summarized here the results of his verbal exchange with
God in Exodus 32, when God had ofered to establish Moses as the
patriarch of a new nation. That exchange had involved God’s ofer
of sonship to Moses, in efect making him a new Abraham.

And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it
is a stifnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may
wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of
thee a great nation. And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said,
LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast

277
278 DEUTERONOMY

brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty
hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he
bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from
the face of the earth? Turn from thy ierce wrath, and repent of this evil
against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to
whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply
your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I
give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And the LORD re-
pented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people (Ex. 32:9–14).

Moses had immediately interceded with God by appealing to

God’s reputation. If God slew Israel, the Egyptians would say that
He could not deliver on His promises. This would tarnish God’s
reputation, Moses implied. Moses appealed to the integrity of God’s
name, not to the non-existent integrity of Israel. God honored this
appeal to His own honor. He spared Israel.
God had promised Moses an inheritance: a new nation. As the
patriarch of such a nation, Moses would be acclaimed and honored.
In response, Moses reminded God that it was God’s honor that was
primary. As the patriarch of a new nation, Moses would gain the au-
thority to direct their future, to lead them in the paths that he would
choose. In efect, this new nation would become Moses’ servant, his
inheritance. His name would be on them. Moses would in fact re-
place Abraham as the founding patriarch, for the promise to
Abraham would be broken by the destruction of Israel. Either Israel
would not conquer in the fourth generation, contrary to God’s
promise (Gen. 15:16), or else Abraham’s name would be extended
in history only by Moses’ adopting a new nation. But that would
have violated Jacob’s promise regarding Judah’s bearing of the
sword until Shiloh came (Gen. 49:10). Moses countered God’s ofer
by invoking the names of the patriarchs with whom God had made
His covenant. That is, he appealed to God’s word. Finally, in the
speech to the conquest generation, he said that he had told God that
Israel was God’s inheritance (Deut. 9:26, 29). To have given Moses
a completely new inheritance, God would have had to disinherit
Israel completely. That would have been the same as disinheriting
His own word, Moses implied. This argument saved Israel, which
remained God’s inheritance.
 Inheritance, Servitude, and Sonship 279

God’s Name Was on Israel

God had placed His name on the Israelites through His cove-
nant with Abraham. He had changed Abram’s name to Abraham
(Gen. 17:5). Similarly, he had changed Jacob’s name to Israel
(Gen. 32:28). The authority to name someone is a mark of founda-
tional authority. Adam named the animals (Gen. 2:19); then he
named Eve (Gen. 2:23). In both cases, God had brought to Adam
the living objects to be named. Adam was the father of the human
race. God had created Adam, marking God as mankind’s father.
God’s authority was higher than Adam’s, for He had created Adam
and had named Adam. In this judicial sense, God’s name was on
Adam.
Because God had delegated to Adam authority over the cre-
ation (Gen. 1:26), He had Adam name the living creatures under his
immediate authority. So, God’s name was on the creation directly,
for He had created it, yet it was also on the creation indirectly, be-
cause Adam had named the animals, and His name was on Adam.
The world is therefore God’s lawful inheritance, both directly and
indirectly. God’s authority is both direct (providential) and indirect
(covenantal). That is to say, His authority is simultaneously unmedi-
ated and mediated. This is why the Bible ajrms both God’s abso-
lute predestination and man’s full responsibility for his own actions.
“And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe
unto that man by whom he is betrayed!” (Luke 22:22).
God had disinherited Adam by cursing his body and the ground
for his transgression (Gen. 3:17–19) and casting him out of the gar-
den (Gen. 3:24). But before issuing His curse, God had promised
the serpent that Eve would have an heir who would bring negative
sanctions against the serpent’s seed (Gen. 3:15). God did not exe-
cute Adam on the day of Adam’s transgression, for to have done so
would have cut of Adam’s seed. This would have made impossible
the promised seed’s ability to bring sanctions against the seed of the
serpent. God extended common grace – a gift unmerited by the re-
cipients – in the form of extended life and dominion in history to the
serpent, to Eve, and to Adam. He did this for the sake of the prom-
ised seed.1 This seed was Jesus Christ, who would inherit through

1. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 57–59.
280 DEUTERONOMY

Abraham. Paul wrote: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the
promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of
one, And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16).
God’s name is on God’s Son. His Son was incarnate in history in
the person of Jesus Christ. God’s name was therefore also on Abra-
ham, for through Abraham would God’s incarnate Son come in his-
tory. There was no escape from this judicial naming. As surely as the
promised seed would come in history to crush the head of the ser-
pent, God’s name was on Abraham and his descendants. As surely
as Adam was God’s servant, Abraham and his descendants were
God’s servants. This ojce of servantship was in fact sonship. God told
Moses: “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD,
Israel is my son, even my irstborn” (Ex. 4:22). But how had Israel
been restored to sonship after God’s disinheritance of Adam?
Through covenantal adoption.

Again the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, cause
Jerusalem to know her abominations, And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD
unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy fa-
ther was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in
the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in
water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None
eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee;
but thou wast cast out in the open ield, to the lothing of thy person, in the
day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted
in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I
said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live (Ezek. 16:1–6).

Israel was God’s inheritance because His name was on Israel

through adoption. God had named Jacob Israel, which relected His
position as Israel’s adopter. God’s inheritance was His possession.
The entire nation was spoken of by Moses as being God’s inheri-
tance. It was this judicial claim by God on national Israel which
alone had saved Israel from God’s wrath. By invoking the legal lan-
guage of inheritance, Moses had stayed the hand of God at the time
of the golden calf. Now Moses reminded his listeners of their posi-
tion as God’s inheritance. But this inheritance was reciprocal. God
became Israel’s inheritance. Moses stated this explicitly with re-
spect to the Levites, who had no landed inheritance in Mosaic
Israel. “Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his breth-
ren; the LORD is his inheritance, according as the LORD thy God
 Inheritance, Servitude, and Sonship 281

promised him” (Deut. 10:9). What was true of Levi as the priest-
hood of Israel in relation to the other tribes was also true of Israel as
the priesthood of humanity in relation to the other nations.

From Servitude to Sonship

This judicial position of being God’s inheritance is a position of
blessedness. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD: and the
people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance” (Ps. 33:12).
Nevertheless, to be part of another person’s inheritance is to be his
slave. Possessing such an inheritance down through the generations
was lawful in Israel under the jubilee code, but this inter-generational
slavery was limited to heathen slaves who had begun their term of
bondage when they were outside of the national covenant. “Both
thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be
of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy
bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strang-
ers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their
families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they
shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance
for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they
shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the chil-
dren of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour”
(Lev. 25:44–46).
This Mosaic law revealed a covenantal principle: better to be a
slave in the household of faith than to be a free man outside the cov-
enant. This principle did not end with Jesus’ fulillment of the jubi-
lee law (Luke 4:18–21). Its administration did, however. Under the
New Covenant, the highest ideal is liberty: “Art thou called being a
servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it
rather” (I Cor. 7:21). This liberty is possible because the covenant of
redemption is no longer tied exclusively or uniquely to member-
ship in any geographically and historically bounded nation. The
mediatory status of national Israel in the Mosaic covenant of re-
demption is forever annulled. Old Covenant Israel is no longer
God’s son. Old Covenant Israel was deinitively disinherited at the
cruciixion: the veil of the temple separating the holy of holies from
the common area was torn from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51). Old
Covenant Israel was progressively disinherited through its persecu-
tion of the New Testament church, and inally disinherited at the fall
of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. After that, Old Covenant Israel ceased to
282 DEUTERONOMY

exist. Its successor, rabbinic Judaism, possesses neither a temple nor

an animal sacriice system. The covenantally valid sacriicial ires of
the temple were extinguished forever when the unauthorized ire lit
by a pair of Roman soldiers burned the temple to the ground.2 The
Mosaic covenant has been forever annulled.
Under the Mosaic covenant, servanthood was a blessing be-
cause it was a form of preliminary sonship. The possibility of re-
demption from bondage was always present through adoption by
another Israelite.3 Meanwhile, the servant was under the household
covenant of the master. This brought blessings that were not avail-
able outside the household of faith.
The Mosaic covenant was itself a form of sonship that involved
servantship. The transfer of the inheritance from father to son was
marked by a change in practical status from servant to son. We see
this illustrated in the New Covenant’s replacement of the Old Cove-
nant. Because the New Covenant has replaced the Old Covenant,
covenant-keeping gentiles can become sons.

For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many
of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is nei-
ther Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor
female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye
Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Now I say, That the
heir, as long as he is a child, difereth nothing from a servant, though he be
lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the
father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the ele-
ments of the world: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent
forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that
were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And be-
cause ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and
if a son, then an heir of God through Christ (Gal. 3:26–4:7).

With the advent of the Son of God in history, Israel was ofered
its long-awaited opportunity to move from inheritance-servitude to in-
heritance-sonship. The price of this transition was two-fold: 1) Israel’s
public acknowledgment of Jesus as the messiah; 2) Israel’s public

2. See Chapter 23, above: section on “The Day of the Lord,” pp. 258–62.
3. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), pp. 510–11.
 Inheritance, Servitude, and Sonship 283

consent to the extension of adoptive sonship status to the prodigal

sons, i.e., the gentiles. But Old Covenant Israel, like the older
brother in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:28), was
hard-hearted. The older brother in the parable complained to his fa-
ther that the father had never slain a fatted calf for him. Where was
his reward as the irstborn son? This was Israel’s constant complaint
to God. “Where is our reward? We have been faithful. Where is our
fatted calf?” Moses warned them in this passage: with the golden
calf in Israel’s background, they should all be content with the fact
that God had not slain the nation at the foot of the altar.
A recurring theme in the Old Covenant is the rebelliousness of
the older brother, whose inheritance ordinarily was the double por-
tion (Deut. 21:17). Instead, the younger son inherited because of the
older brother’s rebellion, e.g., Seth over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael,
Jacob over Esau, Joseph over Reuben, David over Eliab, and ulti-
mately Jesus over Adam. The rebellious irstborn resents the faithful
second-born. “And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake
unto the men; and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he
said, Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left
those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naugh-
tiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see
the battle” (I Sam. 17:28). Then the younger brother inherits
through his covenantal faithfulness.
The Jews should have remembered all this when Jesus told His
parable of the prodigal younger brother who repented and the
stifnecked older brother who complained. The older brother re-
fused to rejoice with his father at the return of the younger brother
in humility. His father’s joy meant nothing to him; he cared only
about the honor shown to his prodigal brother. His brother’s humil-
ity had regained his access to the household and its rewards. What
was the public mark of his brother’s humility? His willingness to en-
ter his father’s household as a servant, not as a son (Luke 15:21). He
understood that servantship is preferable to life outside the house-
hold of faith. This realization is the only basis of a return to sonship
for prodigal sons. The sons of Adam are all prodigal sons.

Conclusion
Moses designated Israel as God’s inheritance. Their status as
God’s inheritance placed them in the judicial position of servants,
yet also as lawful sons. They owed God service, for the inheritance
284 DEUTERONOMY

is lawfully at the disposal of the heir. They were also subordinate to

God as the lawful heir. This is why Jesus’ parable of the servants who
kill the heir of the master so outraged the Jews (Matt. 21:38–46).
The inheritance does not exercise authority over its owner.
Moses made it clear to them that their status as God’s inheritance
placed them in a special judicial position: subordinate. What he did
not say, but which was implied by biblical theology, is this: legitimate
sonship always begins with servantship. Even sin-free Adam was not al-
lowed to touch all of God’s inheritance. Servantship is the training
required of all lawful sons. As the inheritance of God, Israel could
prove its legal status as the son of God. Israel would then inherit the
kingdom of God. The implied warning was clear: should Israel re-
bel against its judicial status as God’s inheritance – as bondservants
in the household of faith – God would disinherit Israel, just as He
had threatened to do after the golden calf incident. Next time, there
might not be a Moses to plead with God for mercy.
 25
Sonship,
SONSHIP, Inheritance, and
INHERITANCE, ANDImmigration
IMMIGRATION

And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to
fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to
serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep
the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee
this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the
LORD’S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had
a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even
you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of
your heart, and be no more stifnecked (Deut. 10:12–16).

The fear of God is the theocentric focus of this passage.

Covenantal faithfulness begins with fear (Prov. 9:10). Fear, obedi-
ence, and love were united in this passage. Israel was told to obey
God. The basis of this fear was legally grounded in God’s status as
Creator: “Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the
LORD’S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.” The back-
ward logic was sharp: from man’s obedience to God’s ownership.
The logic of the passage is that man’s absolute obedience is required
by God because God is the absolute owner of the universe. This
ownership included Israel, which owed a special debt to God as
God’s chosen nation. “Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to
love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all
people, as it is this day” (v. 15). God’s cosmic ownership identiies
this law as a universal law. It was not a seed law or a land law.
The fourth generation would soon be circumcised at Gilgal
(Josh. 5:7). The circumcision of their lesh would visibly bond them
with Abraham, but this circumcision of their lesh would not be

285
286 DEUTERONOMY

sujcient to maintain the kingdom grant. They would have to obey

God’s law. Moses referred to this as the circumcision of the heart.
Paul made extensive use of this metaphor in his development of
the New Covenant’s extension of the Old Covenant’s promises and
inheritance to the gentiles. The central issue is ethics, Paul insisted,
not circumcision. “For circumcision verily proiteth, if thou keep the
law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made
uncircumcision. Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righ-
teousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for cir-
cumcision? And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it
fulil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost
transgress the law? For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; nei-
ther is that circumcision, which is outward in the lesh: But he is a
Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in
the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of
God” (Rom. 2:25–29). This is exactly what Moses told them in this
passage. It is not who you are but what you do that determines how
God deals with you. God does not regard persons in declaring His
formal judgments. “For the LORD your God is God of gods, and
Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth
not persons, nor taketh reward” (Deut. 10:17).

Sonship and Inheritance

Moses was making a crucial covenantal observation. It was in
fact the most important aspect of the Mosaic Covenant: the mark of
true sonship is the circumcised heart. Ethics is more important than rit-
ual. The true son is the son who obeys his father. It was this message
that the Israelites forgot or denied by their actions, generation after
generation, culminating in the nation’s consummate rebellion: the
cruciixion of Jesus Christ. Jesus drove home Moses’ message in his
parable of the two sons: “But what think ye? A certain man had two
sons; and he came to the irst, and said, Son, go work to day in my
vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he re-
pented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise.
And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them
twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The irst. Jesus
saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the
harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto
you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the
publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it,
 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 287

repented not afterward, that ye might believe him” (Matt. 21:28–32).

The true Son of God, the true heir of Abraham, was murdered by
the would-be heirs. Jesus’ next parable revealed that He knew ex-
actly what they would do to Him: the parable of the husbandmen
who killed the heir (Matt. 21:33–46).

Circumcised Sons
Circumcision was the physical mark of subordination to the
Mosaic covenant. Circumcision was the Old Covenant’s oath-sign.1
Every biblical covenant must be ratiied by an oath, and this oath in-
vokes negative sanctions on the covenant-breaker.2 The negative
sanction of the cutting of the lesh was the judicial equivalent of in-
voking negative sanctions on the oath-taker for disobeying God’s
law. The covenant’s oath-sign invokes positive and negative histori-
cal sanctions in terms of the covenant’s stipulations. Circumcision did
not guarantee Israel’s inheritance; it merely invoked positive sanc-
tions for obedience, which in turn would ensure the inheritance.
Moses was warning his listeners: obedience to God was a more im-
portant sign of sonship than circumcision was. Circumcision invoked
God’s sanctions, but these sanctions were applied in terms of God’s
law. Point four of the biblical covenant model – oath/sanctions – re-
fers the oath-taker back to point three: ethics. The physical mark of
the Old Covenant was circumcision. But the other visible mark was
of much greater importance: obedience to the law. Circumcision
without obedience brings God’s negative sanctions. Jesus warned: “Every
tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into
the ire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every
one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven”
(Matt. 7:19–21). Circumcision without obedience is a curse, not a
blessing.
Moses’ words in this passage relect the biblical covenant
model. God, as the sovereign owner of heaven and earth (point
one), established His covenant with representatives (point two): the
patriarchs of Israel. He has placed Israel under His law (point

1. Meredith G. Kline, By Oath Consigned: A Reinterpretation of the Covenant Signs of

Circumcision and Baptism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1968), ch. 3.
2. Ibid., pp. 40–43.
288 DEUTERONOMY

three), to which are attached sanctions (point four). These sanctions

are invoked by circumcision; they are applied by God in terms of
obedience or disobedience. Corporate inheritance is the ultimate
positive sanction in history: the kingdom of God on earth.

His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth (Ps. 25:13).

For evildoers shall be cut of: but those that wait upon the LORD, they
shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9).

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the
abundance of peace (Ps. 37:11).

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5).

While Israel’s inheritance is not speciically mentioned in this

passage, this is the central theme of the Book of Deuteronomy. Mo-
ses did identify that generation as part of Abraham’s promised seed,
“even you above all people, as it is this day” (v. 15).
Israel could not rely on circumcision as the judicial basis of its
national inheritance. Maintaining the kingdom grant is always an
ethical task.3 Israel’s rituals were symbols of cleansing and restora-
tion, but they were useless if they were not accompanied by a
change of heart and behavior. Circumcision would condemn Israel
if the nation committed the sins of Canaan. Circumcision would bring
the Mosaic covenant’s negative corporate sanctions. Deuteronomy is the
second reading of the law because the Mosaic law was the written
testament that speciied the terms of the national inheritance.

Sons and Strangers

Sons inherit; strangers in the household do not. This had been
Abraham’s dilemma. “And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou
give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this
Eliezer of Damascus?” (Gen. 15:2). The judicial question is this:
Who is the true son with a lawful claim on the inheritance?

3. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 9.
 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 289

The true sons of God are those who obey Him. This raised a ma-
jor question for Israel, one which they never answered correctly:
Can a stranger become a son? The answer was covenantally obvi-
ous but repulsive to Israel: yes. The stranger, if he acts as a son
should act, is entitled to become the lawful heir. The son, if he acts
as a stranger to the covenant, is to be disinherited. Adopted sons re-
place biological sons as the lawful heirs. This is the message of the New
Covenant. The gentiles could become sons on the same basis that the
Jews could: obedience to God’s covenant, i.e., adoption. Both Jews
and gentiles need adoption, Paul wrote to the Galatians: “But when
the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the
law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are
sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, cry-
ing, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:4–6). Adoption had always been open to
gentiles in Israel, but it took up to ten generations for the heirs of
some strangers to achieve this (Deut. 23:3). Under the New Cove-
nant, adoption required a new oath-sign, baptism, and a new Pass-
over, the Lord’s Supper. As had been the case with the Mosaic
Covenant’s rituals, these new oath-bound rituals were not to be re-
garded as substitutes for obedience.

And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his command-

ments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a
liar, and the truth is not in him (I John 2:3–4).

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his com-

mandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight (I John 3:22).

And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in

him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he
hath given us (I John 3:24).

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God,
and keep his commandments (I John 5:2).

The true son does the will of his father. By identifying a man’s
works, others can identify his covenantal father. This covenantal con-
cept of sonship was why the circumcised stranger was a threat to the
self-esteem of covenant-breaking Israelites. The visible obedience of
covenant-keeping strangers testiied against the sonship of cove-
nant-breaking Israelites.
290 DEUTERONOMY

Those who were the biological heirs of the conquest generation

had an inheritance in the land. Immigrant strangers could not in-
herit rural land except through their adoption into a family line of
the conquest generation. But they could buy houses in the cities,
and they could become full citizens in the cities after several consec-
utive generations of circumcised heads of households. They could
become full sons of the covenant even though they could not inherit
rural land. This eventually placed a heavy social and psychological
premium on the possession of a claim to rural land. Land rather
than ethics became the chief diferentiating factor in the minds of
covenant-breaking heirs of the conquest generation.

Sacrosanct Land
The land became sacrosanct in the thinking of those Israelites
who placed formal title to land above obedience as the true mark of
sonship. “The land, the land” became their cry. The supreme mark
of their disinheritance would be their removal from the land. Rec-
ognizing this sinful outlook in advance, Moses warned: “And it shall
come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and
to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you,
and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from of the
land whither thou goest to possess it. And the LORD shall scatter thee
among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other;
and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fa-
thers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations
shalt thou ind no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest:
but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of
eyes, and sorrow of mind” (Deut. 28:63–65).
Assyria removed Israelites from the land in the Northern King-
dom in 722 B.C. In 586 B.C., Babylon removed most of those living
in the Southern Kingdom.4 A comparative handful returned from
the Babylonian captivity in 538; the vast majority remained behind
in Babylon. Moses saw this, too. “And ye shall be left few in num-
ber, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because
thou wouldest not obey the voice of the LORD thy God” (Deut. 28:62).
Only a remnant returned to Israel, as Jeremiah had foretold: “And I

4. Not all, however: “But Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard left certain of the poor of
the land for vinedressers and for husbandmen” (Jer. 52:16).
 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 291

will gather the remnant of my lock out of all countries whither I

have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they
shall be fruitful and increase” (Jer. 23:3). Rome removed most of
them permanently from the land in 135 A.D. after Simon bar
Kochba’s abortive rebellion (132–35).5 The diaspora had begun.
Without the laying on of hands (semikah), which could be done
lawfully only inside the boundaries of the land of Israel, a Jewish
court under Phariseeism had no authority to impose the punish-
ments mandated in the Bible. The development of an alternative
system of sanctions became a major task of Judaism after the failure
of Bar Kochba’s rebellion.6 The problem of rule outside the land
had appeared earlier, however, with the destruction of the temple.
The holiness of Israel could no longer be based on the presence of
the temple in the land. The Jews became in their own eyes the holiness of
God, replacing the temple. This meant that all Jews everywhere partici-
pated in this holiness. To attest to this separate judicial condition of
holiness, they needed to be judged by Jewish law, and this law could
invoke sanctions that were valid only inside the boundaries of Israel.
The holiness of the Jews had been a major doctrine of the Phari-
sees even before A.D. 70. This placed the Pharisees in a dominant
position within Judaism after A.D. 70.7 The Romans placed
Gamaliel – the son of Paul’s teacher8 – at the head of the Jews’ local
system of patriarchal rule.9 From the fall of Jerusalem until Bar
Kochba’s rebellion, the Jewish leaders began the work of codifying
the Pharisees’ oral law, but it remained oral.10 The greatest early
codiier was Rabbi Akiba, born around A.D. 50, who as an old man
died at the hands of the Romans after the failure of Bar Kochba’s
rebellion, which Akiba had supported.11 He had publicly identiied

5. Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz reports that Bar Kochba persecuted no one except
Jewish Christians, who refused to take up arms against Rome. Heinrich Graetz, A History of the
Jews, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1893), II, p. 412.
6. George Horowitz, The Spirit of Jewish Law (New York: Central Book Co., [1953] 1973),
p. 93.
7. Jacob Neusner, An Introduction to Judaism: A Textbook and Reader (Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), pp. 160–61.
8. Paul Johnson, A History of The Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 150.
9. Neusner, Introduction to Judaism, p. 159.
10. Ibid., p. 158.
11. Ernest R. Trattner, Understanding the Talmud (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1955),
pp. 101–2.
292 DEUTERONOMY

12
Bar Kochba as the messiah. Late in the second century A.D., Rabbi
Judah Ha-Nasi (“the Prince” or “the Patriarch”) completed the codiicat-
ion of the Pharisees’ oral tradition. This was the Mishnah.13 The Tal-
mud, a detailed and seemingly unstructured series of comments on
the Mishnah, was completed in Babylon around A.D. 500.14
These developments, which sealed of Judaism from the sur-
rounding Roman culture, moved in a direction opposite from de-
velopments in the early church. The New Testament’s inclusion of
gentiles into the kingdom’s inheritance was an extension of Moses’
original principle of sonship through obedience. Baptism merely
speeded up the process of inclusion: from several generations
(Deut. 23:3–8) to immediate covenantal membership. Inclusion
became deinitive at the time of baptism; the Mosaic law’s multi-
generation progressive inclusion process for immigrants was an-
nulled along with the jubilee law.

Visible Economic Evidence of Civil Justice

Moses went from a warning regarding stifnecked rebellion to a
discussion of God as the judge: “For the LORD your God is God of
gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which
regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward” (Deut. 10:17). Here is a
God to be feared. He cannot be bought of. An attempted bribe
brings no beneits in God’s court.
The proof of God’s imperviousness to any attempt to delect His
judgment is His treatment of those who are in no position to ofer a
bribe. God executes righteous judgment for the amicted: orphans,
widows, and strangers. “He doth execute the judgment of the father-
less and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and rai-
ment” (v. 18). These three groups were the Mosaic law’s symbols –
its representatives – of the judicially defenseless in Israel. Members
of these groups could not execute judgment in Israel. Who, then,
would represent them in a court of law? God would, Moses warned.
And since He would, His earthly judges had better do the same.
“Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of
Egypt” (v. 19). By reminding them of their stay in Egypt, Moses

12. Ibid., p. 137. The source for this is the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’an 4:7, 68d.
13. Graetz, History of the Jews, II, pp. 460–61.
14. Trattner, Understanding the Talmud, p. 55.
 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 293

recalled the penalty of injustice: national destruction. He also re-

minded them of the positive historical sanctions shown by God to
covenant-keepers who are unrighteously amicted by covenant-
breakers: “Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and
ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars
of heaven for multitude” (v. 22).
This was a clear prophecy of what would happen to Israel if the
nation’s leaders handed down corrupt judgments that respected
persons or bribes. Israel’s fate would relect Egypt’s fate. If Israel’s
judges did not honor the rule of law in its courts, treating strangers
the same as Israelites, then Israel would be brought low.
Israel had been a stranger in Egypt. At irst, Egypt had treated
Israel well. This had been manifested by Pharaoh’s elevation of Jo-
seph as second in command. Egypt had survived the famine be-
cause the Pharaoh had honored Joseph’s advice. Egypt received a
blessing through the stranger in her midst. Had Pharaoh returned
Joseph to prison, where he had been brought under negative judi-
cial sanctions unrighteously by Potiphar, Egypt would have sufered
a disaster. Egypt’s treatment of this stranger within her gates would
determine Egypt’s fate.
In a later generation, a new Pharaoh brought the Israelites un-
der bondage. This arrangement seemed to be proitable for a time.
The Pharaoh gained the beneit of cheap slave labor for at least a
generation. But this could not become a permanent relationship un-
der the law of God. The debt relationship for this evil – the negative
sanctions – compounded over time. The debts came due at the exo-
dus. Egypt was destroyed.
When had Israel’s population growth taken place? During the
good times, the days of liberty in Egypt. The multiplication of Israel
was what had frightened the Pharaoh of the oppression (Ex. 1:9).
That is, strangers lourished in Egypt. This is an important mark of a
righteous society: strangers lourish. The rule of law, if the law is just,
provides the judicial framework for economic growth. Immigrants
are notoriously thrifty and hard working compared to those who
stayed behind in the old country. What we call the Puritan work
ethic, which includes future-orientation and thrift, enables the im-
migrants to prosper. A society that oppresses strangers is unjust.
The blessings of justice can be seen in communities of immigrants
who prosper and eventually grow wealthy enough to move out of
their cultural ghettos in a generation or two. This has been the
294 DEUTERONOMY

15
experience of the United States. It has made the United States
unique in modern history, especially prior to 1924, when the immi-
gration laws were drastically tightened.16
Moses warned Israel to deal justly with orphans, widows, and
strangers. Yet if Israel did this, resident aliens would lourish eco-
nomically according to their talents and their work ethic. If Israel-
ites resented their success, as Egyptians had resented Israel’s
success, and began dishonoring God’s law by perverting justice to
strangers, then the days of vengeance would come. On the other
hand, Israel’s covenantal success would be manifested by the eco-
nomic success of resident aliens. The Mosaic law even provided for
the sale of poor Israelites into household servitude to resident aliens
(Lev. 25:47–52). The sign of God’s blessing would be rich strangers in the
land. To attempt to tear them down through judicial discrimination
would call forth God’s judgment against the nation.
The essence of envy is the desire to tear down someone else
merely because he is superior. Envy was the motivation of the
Philistines in illing in Isaac’s wells with dirt (Gen. 26:15). They did
not coniscate these wells for their own use; instead, they destroyed
his inheritance from his father. They were not made richer, but
Isaac was made poorer. This is the heart, mind, and soul of envy.
When a society compromises the rule of law in order to tear down
economically successful people, it slays the judicial goose that lays the
golden eggs. When a society knows this and does it anyway, it has be-
come consumed with envy. Its earthly reward will be an increase in
judicial arbitrariness, bureaucracy, and poverty, as well as class resent-
ment. It will grow worse, for the sin of envy cannot be placated. There
is always someone who is superior in some respect.17

15. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
16. America’s problem, unlike Mosaic Israel’s, is that the civil oath does not pledge citizens to
obedience to God and God’s revealed law. Thus, the immigrant can gain citizenship while
maintaining the religious oath which he brought with him. Because Western nations impose
only secular oaths on their citizens, immigrants who retain their alien religious oaths undermine
the remnants of the Christian social order that created the West. They are allowed to impose
political sanctions in terms of religious worldviews hostile to Christianity. The experiment in
secular civil government is not yet completed. It will end badly.
17. Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, [1966] 1969), pp. 251, 336. The novel by L. P. Hartley, Facial Justice, is a classic
statement of the insatiable nature of envy (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1960).
 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 295

The Open Invitation

The uncircumcised alien could prosper in Israel when God’s
law was enforced. This was another indication to Israel that physical
circumcision was not the heart of the matter; ethical circumcision
was. The covenantal issue was obedience to God’s law. If a resident
alien producer served Israelite consumers ejciently, he would
prosper. The Mosaic law invited aliens to come to Israel and serve
those living in Israel by producing on a free market. The Mosaic
law’s promise of equal justice would recruit productive people to Is-
rael – clearly a beneit to consumers in Israel. Political envy and
jealousy were held at bay by the Mosaic law. The stranger’s wealth
would not be extracted from him by coercive, arbitrary civil laws. Pri-
vate property would be secure when the Mosaic law was enforced.
This open invitation to immigrate to Israel was a means of in-
creasing Israel’s wealth. Attracting productive people is even better
than discovering valuable raw materials. Human creativity is more
valuable in the long run than raw materials are, whose prices tend to
fall in relationship to the price of labor in a growing economy.18
Again and again in history, societies that ind themselves in posses-
sion of valuable raw materials have fallen behind economically
within a century or less because governments extract the mineral
wealth. The State grows larger, strangling the productivity of its citi-
zens. The monarchy of Spain is the classic example. It controlled ac-
cess in and out of its American empire. It controlled the choke
points of commerce. This way, the king made sure that he received
his 20 percent share of the precious metals mined in his American
colonies.19 Spain’s government and monopoly controlled all aspects
of commerce.20 Spain’s monarchs misjudged the source of Spain’s
continuing wealth. The goose that would lay the most golden eggs
in the Americas was not Spain’s mining monopoly; rather, it was the
system of economic liberty that prevailed above the Rio Grande
River. Curtis Nettels, a specialist in American colonial history, con-
cludes regarding South America: “In the end the stiling efects of

18. Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1981).
19. Curtis P. Nettels, The Roots of American Civilization (2nd ed.; New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1963), p. 43.
20. Ibid., p. 45.
296 DEUTERONOMY

regulation contributed a major cause of the successful revolt of the

colonies during the Napoleonic wars.”21
Spain enjoyed the wealth of the South American and Mexican
gold mines for almost two centuries, but by the end of the seven-
teenth century, Spain’s economy had visibly begun to fall behind
England’s and even the Netherlands’, whose national income rested
on trade rather than mining. The absence of gold mining above the
Rio Grande in early North America made its economic triumph far
more likely in the long run. Men seeking liberty and individual eco-
nomic opportunity came by the tens of millions to the United States.
Liberty made the diference economically, not gold. A nation’s gold
mines eventually run out; liberty need not run out. Whether it does
or doesn’t depends on a society’s ethics.

Immigration and Membership Oaths

The possibility of immigration raised the issue of economic in-
heritance. Strangers in Israel could become legal heirs through
adoption by Israelite families. Blood-line inheritance was not the
basis of the Mosaic Covenant. The Mosaic Covenant was not a
blood-line covenant. It was an ethical-judicial covenant. Men were
by oath consigned, not by blood consigned. Israelites could not law-
fully pass laws or make judicial decisions that discriminated against
strangers. They could not lawfully place discriminatory judicial
penalties on strangers. Legislated envy was illegal in Israel. The gen-
tile had a protected position in Israel’s legal code. He could buy a
lawful inheritance inside Israel’s walled cities (Lev. 25:29–30). Ulti-
mately, he had a possibility of becoming a co-heir through adoption.
One mark of a free society is that strangers can lourish econom-
ically. The encouragement of immigration is part of biblical law.
The problem comes when the national civil covenant establishes
citizenship apart from a confession of faith, i.e., a covenantal oath of
allegiance to the God of the Bible and His law. When inheritance is
by mere physical presence, or by a pledge of allegiance to a secular
State, immigration becomes a covenantal threat to those who are al-
ready dwelling in the land. When the State is used as a means of co-
ercive wealth distribution – e.g., the modern welfare State – then the

21. Ibid., p. 47.

 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 297

immigrant becomes an economic threat: a potential drain on the

wealth of present residents.
The ultimate form of immigration is birth. The abortion move-
ment in the United States was founded on class hatred by dedicated
racists and eugenicists such as Margaret Sanger, who cried out
against the foreign-born working class because its members were
“benign imbeciles, who encourage the defective and diseased ele-
ments of humanity in their reckless and irresponsible swarming.”22
“More children from the it, less from the unit” she declared; “that
is the chief issue of birth control.”23 Sanger and her ideological asso-
ciates wanted to reduce the low of immigrants: crossing borders
and crossing birth canals. The irst step in their legislative agenda
was achieved through the legalization of birth control devices (the
elimination of a negative judicial sanction on voluntary exchange);
the second was the 1924 U.S. immigration law (the imposition of
new negative sanctions against immigrants); the third was the legal-
ization of abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 (the removal
of negative sanctions against abortionists and the imposition of per-
manent negative sanctions against infants).

Adoption in Family, Church, and State

Biblical inheritance is by sonship. Sonship is attained by means
of covenant oath and obedience. Biblically speaking, sonship is le-
gally open to anyone who is willing to ajrm the covenantal oath: in
family, church, or State. The biblical model for sonship is adoption.
In family afairs, the head of the household initiates the adoption
ofer at his discretion. Adopted sonship is not automatically granted
to everyone who seeks it. The family is a private institution grounded
in biology (Gen. 2:24) as well as by a covenant oath of mutual inti-
macy and sexual exclusivity. With respect to the Adamic family’s
civil status, the terms of its confession are private even though the
State lawfully regulates certain aspects of membership, such as its bio-
logical heterosexuality, and also enforces inheritance. No child is a
bastard under biblical civil law on the basis of his married parents’

22. Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s, 1922), p. 125; cited in
George Grant, Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood (Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit
Press, 1992), p. 27.
23. Sanger, “Birth Control,” Birth Control Review (May 1919); cited in idem.
298 DEUTERONOMY

refusal to confess the faith established by God’s law for the two
other public covenantal institutions, church and State. Neither is a
child who was not born into a family entitled to membership merely
because he confesses a married couple’s confession. Family cove-
nant membership is automatic through birth.24 There must not be le-
gal discrimination against the Adamic covenant family based on the
issue of confessional content other than the promise of exclusive
mutual bonding. This is not true of church and State.
In church and State, an open membership ofer – the ofer of
adoption – is automatically extended to the general public with the
original incorporation of either of these covenantal organizations.
These two institutions are public monopolies: the monopoly of the
sacraments and the monopoly of life-threatening violence. God has
established rules governing both of these monopolistic institutions.
Those who have gained early access to the beneits of membership
are not allowed by God to close these beneits to newcomers. Mem-
bership is open to all comers on the original terms of the covenant. In
neither church nor State are ojcers allowed by God to discriminate
against anyone who seeks membership through covenant oath. A racist
Trinitarian church has violated God’s law. So has an anti-immigration
Trinitarian State. So has anyone who seeks to substitute a covenantal
oath in either institution that denies the theology of the Athanasian
creed. Sonship is by oath. Public sonship is by public Trinitarian
oath. To substitute a new oath is to substitute a new covenant.25
This does not mean that Christians’ opposition to immigration
is illegitimate when the State has adopted a non-Trinitarian confes-
sion. Christians may legitimately seek to substitute a Trinitarian cove-
nant, which will require votes. If they see that certain immigrants
who confess a rival and highly aggressive religion are becoming eli-
gible for citizenship, then as a defensive political strategy for the
sake of the extension of the kingdom of God, they may legitimately
seek to work politically to cut of such immigration as part of their
goal of establishing a Trinitarian confession for the nation. But for

24. What distinguishes the Christian family from the Adamic family is infant baptism.
Children are supposed to be baptized as infants, thereby transferring to the institutional
church covenantal authority over the children through the parents. Baptists and
non-Christians deny the validity of this legal arrangement.
25. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), Part 3.
 Sonship, Inheritance, and Immigration 299

those Christians who deny the legitimacy of a Christian nation – the

vast majority of Protestant Christians today – any opposition to im-
migration is made in terms of non-confessional considerations. This
constitutes discrimination based on economic, racial, or other con-
siderations. The Bible condemns all such judicial discrimination ex-
cept against citizens of enemy nations during a declared war, which
would in efect constitute an invasion, or against immigrants
amicted with contagious deadly diseases, which would also consti-
tute an invasion.

Conclusion
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is also the be-
ginning of wealth. The circumcision of the heart – obedience to God
– is the basis of maintaining God’s inheritance and expanding it. The
circumcised heart is the mark of legitimate sonship.
This opened the possibility of inheritance to strangers in Mosaic
Israel. The immigrant, if he consented to circumcision, could look
forward to urban citizenship for his heirs. Even if he remained
uncircumcised, he was entitled to civil justice in terms of the Mosaic
law. The rule of law mandated by God: “One law shall be to him
that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you”
(Ex. 12:49). The Mosaic law’s protection of private property was
universal.
This was a major incentive for productive strangers to immi-
grate to Israel. They could enjoy the fruits of their labor despite their
alien legal status. There is no question that this aspect of the Mosaic
law was an aspect of Israel’s evangelism to the world (Deut. 4:5–8).26

26. See Chapter 8, above.

 26
OATH,Oath, Sanctions, AND
SANCTIONS, and Inheritance
INHERITANCE

Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him
shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy
God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine
eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten
persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven
for multitude (Deut. 10:20–22).

The theocentric focus of this passage is the fear of God. God is

sovereign over history, as Israel’s history had demonstrated. Such
fear should lead to covenantal swearing, Moses said: “to him shalt
thou cleave, and swear by his name.” Because of the presence of a
covenantal oath, this law is a universal law. It was not a seed law or
land law, although it had to do with the inheritance of Canaan. It
has to do with inheritance in general because the passage assumes
the presence of a covenantal oath.

Fulilled Promises
Israel’s oath-bound covenantal subordination had resulted in
the fulillment of two of God’s three promises to Abraham. First, the
promise of numerous descendants: “And he brought him forth
abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou
be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be”
(Gen. 15:5). The second promise had also been fulilled: collecting
the inheritances of Egypt’s irstborn. “And he said unto Abram,
Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not
theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall amict them four hundred
years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and
afterward shall they come out with great substance” (vv. 13–14).

300
 Oath, Sanctions, and Inheritance 301

The third prophetic promise had not yet been fulilled when Moses
spoke to the elders of Israel, but it soon would be: the inheritance of
Canaan. “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again:
for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (v. 16).
The fulillment of the irst two promises was supposed to pro-
duce conidence in the fulillment of the third: national inheritance.
The fulillment of all three promises was supposed to motivate the
nation to even greater covenantal faithfulness. “Therefore thou
shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes,
and his judgments, and his commandments, alway” (Deut. 11:1).
Joshua and the older members of his generation as children had
seen God’s historical sanctions on Egypt; the younger members and
their children had not. “And know ye this day: for I speak not with
your children which have not known, and which have not seen the
chastisement of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand,
and his stretched out arm, And his miracles, and his acts, which he
did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto
all his land” (vv. 2–3). God had destroyed Egypt’s army by burying
them all in the Red Sea (v. 4); He destroyed Dathan and Abiram by
having the earth swallow them (v. 6). The older members had seen
all this with their own eyes (v. 7). This was supposed to make the
conquest generation obedient. “Therefore shall ye keep all the com-
mandments which I command you this day, that ye may be strong,
and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it” (v. 8).
The sight of God’s sanctions in history is to become a means of
covenantal reinforcement.

Eschatological Inheritance
The exodus generation would have to inherit, just as Abraham
had inherited: through their heirs. They had been told this a genera-
tion earlier. “But your little ones, which ye said should be a prey,
them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have de-
spised” (Num. 14:31). The exodus generation had to content itself
with inheriting eschatologically. Their victorious heirs would represent
them. They would achieve their victory through their heirs, just as
God had promised mankind in His curse on the serpent (Gen. 3:15).
Eschatological inheritance is worth very little for men without
saving faith, especially present-oriented men without faith in the fu-
ture. Israel was about to become a nation of immigrants. The immi-
grant’s future-oriented ideal of making a better life for his children
302 DEUTERONOMY

and his grandchildren makes him a thrifty, hard-working, uncom-

plaining servant in society. Rarely do his grandchildren sustain ei-
ther his eschatological vision or his savings rate. They assume that
what they possess is normal and almost cost-free rather than the
unique inheritance of two generations of thrift and hard work. They
become historically forgetful. They become forgetful regarding the
way to wealth: a high savings rate, and service to the consumer.
Covenantal forgetfulness was the crucial economic threat to Israel,
which was about to become a nation of newly arrived immigrants.
Beware, Moses warned, that “thou say in thine heart, My power and
the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17).
The older generation’s weakness had been present-orientation:
a refusal to be content with eschatological inheritance. As soon as
Moses told them that they would not be allowed to conquer Canaan,
they rushed into a forbidden war with Amalek (Num. 14:44–45).
They immediately became overconident when they should have
been humble before pagan covenant-breakers for a generation. Pre-
viously, they had lacked conidence when they should have been
humble before God and therefore conident regarding their immi-
nent victory over covenant-breakers. In both cases, they did not
have conidence in the predictability of God’s historical sanctions:
1) negative corporate sanctions on Canaanites through Israel inside
the land; 2) negative corporate sanctions on Israel through Amalekites
outside the land.
These decisive events had been uniquely covenantal. First, the
Israelites had not believed in the historical relevance of point one of
the biblical covenant model: 1) the sovereignty of God over the
events of history; 2) His unique judicial presence with them as a na-
tion. Second, they had not accepted their national ojce as God’s
representative agent in bringing negative corporate sanctions
against Canaan. Third, they had not obeyed God’s revelation to
them: imminent victory over Canaan, said Joshua and Caleb; immi-
nent defeat by Amalek, said Moses. Fourth, they had initially sought
to avoid imposing God’s sanctions and then had sought to impose
sanctions on their own. Fifth, they had no patience with the doctrine
of eschatological inheritance. They were present-oriented.

Promise and Continuity

Moses pointed to the growth of Israel’s population. They had
arrived in Egypt as a handful; now they were a multitude. He cited
 Oath, Sanctions, and Inheritance 303

the words of God to Abram: the stars of heaven. God’s promise to

childless Abram had been fulilled. The change in name to Abra-
ham – father of nations or multitudes had been fulilled.
God’s revelation to Abram four centuries earlier had been reli-
able. The Israelites could see with their own eyes that God’s promise
had been fulilled. But this had been equally true of the preceding
generation. They had not believed their own eyes. They had not ac-
knowledged that they were living proof of the reliability of the
covenantal promise to Abram.1 They had not understood that
God’s oath in history had come true in history. They had not looked
to their own history, including their immediate history, with the
eyes of faith. The fulillment of God’s oath to Abram had been ig-
nored by the exodus generation. It had made no impact on their
thinking, their words, or their actions.
The Israelites of the exodus did not acknowledge the impor-
tance of continuity in history. The judicial basis of Israel’s continuity
was God’s oath to Abram. That which followed this oath had
conirmed the terms of the oath. The oath had not been mere
words; it had been a prophecy. This prophecy had come true in
their generation. But the fathers of the conquest generation had re-
fused to acknowledge that the fulillment of God’s oath in history
had transferred to them a heavy degree of responsibility. They no
doubt understood that this was the case, but they refused to ac-
knowledge it. They were determined not to enter the Promised
Land. They had no desire to transfer leadership to their sons under
Joshua, even though Joshua’s generation had been identiied pro-
phetically by God as the inheriting generation (Gen. 15:16). They
preferred not to inherit. They clung to their authority in the wilder-
ness rather than transfer it to their sons and march into Canaan.
They preferred to allow death to transfer this authority four decades
later. They preferred wandering in the wilderness to seeing the
fulillment of God’s covenant oath to Abram in their lifetimes.
God’s oath to Abram was the basis of their covenantal inheri-
tance as sons of Abraham. Their very self-deinition was tied to
God’s oath. This meant that it was tied to everything that had hap-
pened since then, for the events since the days of Abraham had
conirmed the oath. It was a true oath because it had been fulilled as

1. He had not yet been re-named in Genesis 15.

304 DEUTERONOMY

promised. Moses reminded the conquest generation: the handful

had become a multitude, as promised.
The God of Israel could foresee the future because He shaped
the future. The decree of God is sovereign over history. Faith in this
principle would enable the conquest generation to fulill the prom-
ise regarding the fourth generation. The inheritance was assured,
Moses told them. Why was he so sure? Because he understood the
history of Israel from the days of Abram to his own day. He under-
stood that continuity in history is covenantal. The continuity of history
rests on God’s covenant oath and His sanctions in history. These
historical sanctions conirm the original oath and bring it to pass in
history.
This means that inheritance in history is covenantal. It rests on God’s
oath. But God’s oath is tied to God’s law. This is why men are re-
quired to obey God. The fear of God produces obedience to God’s
law. Obedience brings God’s positive sanctions. Positive sanctions
bring the inheritance.

Continuity and Conquest

Point ive of the biblical covenant model is continuity. But this
implies succession in history. The Book of Deuteronomy makes it
plain that covenantal continuity involves inheritance. It is not merely that
Israel persevered as a nation. Israel inherited the Promised Land.
Israel’s perseverance was not supposed to be merely biological; it
was to be cultural and economic. Israel was to take possession of
wells that others had dug, vineyards that others had planted. Israel
was not to wander in circles in the wilderness. God’s promise to
Abram had been more than mere national survival; it had involved
the promise of inheritance.
The promise had been numerical: from no sons at all to sons
like the stars of heaven. That is, the fulillment of the promise could
be visibly measured in history. Obviously, that promise had been
igurative. Moses knew from the numbering how many people
constituted Israel. The symbolic language of the measureless stars
of heaven had pointed to a future census. The language of im-
measurability had pointed to measurability, i.e., confirmation. The
impossible would come true. Abraham’s new name would in fact be
confirmed in history. He was not merely to be the father of a hand-
ful; he was to become the father of nations. God asked him to be-
lieve this, which he did. Then it came true.
 Oath, Sanctions, and Inheritance 305

Covenantal continuity is the continuity of growth. It is not the

continuity of mere survival; it is the continuity of conquest. It is not
the continuity of life in the historical shadows; it is the continuity of
dominion. It is not the continuity of mere confession; it is the continu-
ity of kingdom extension. Whenever God’s people refuse to acknowl-
edge that the continuity promised to God’s people in history is a
continuity of expansion, dominion, and conquest, they begin to act
like the exodus generation. Their lack of faith produces timidity.
Timidity produces half-hearted measures. The lack of success of
half-hearted measures reinforces their lack of faith. They dwell in
the wilderness and call it the Promised Land in history. They spiri-
tualize the language of victory. They call a stalemate in the wilder-
ness a triumph of the kingdom.
Moses was preparing them for conquest. He did this by telling
them again and again to fear God. Why should they? Because God
is the God of the oath. He is the God of oath-bound sanctions in his-
tory. These historical sanctions conirm His oath by bringing expansion and
victory to His people. Moses was rallying the troops of the fourth gen-
eration by calling to their attention the history of God’s dealings
with earlier generations. He was calling them to military conquest in
history; so, he reminded them of their demographic expansion in
the past.
Moses told them to swear by God’s name. This was a call to cov-
enant renewal. They were to swear their oath to the God who had
sworn an oath to Abram. The promises attached to that oath had
been fulilled. This oath-bound God “hath done for thee these great
and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.” What they had
seen was preliminary to what they would soon see: the defeat of
Canaan. The defeat of Canaan had been part of the original oath
(Gen. 15:16). There was no legitimate reason to hold back any lon-
ger. The inheritance was at hand.

Conclusion
Moses told them to fear God and swear allegiance to Him. He
ofered as evidence the fulillment of the seemingly impossible
promise to Abraham: the multiplication of his heirs. Israel had
grown from 70 people to a multitude. Moses appealed to a positive
corporate sanction – multiplication – as a justiication of the require-
ment to fear God and swear allegiance to Him. Moses could also
have mentioned the prophesied capitalization of Israel through the
306 DEUTERONOMY

disinheritance of Egypt’s irstborn, which was God’s second prom-

ise to Abraham.
The third promise to Abraham, as yet unfulilled, was Israel’s in-
heritance of the land. This had been an eschatological inheritance
for the exodus generation, just as Abraham’s inheritance had been
eschatological: multiplication of his heirs, their spoiling of the Egyp-
tians, and the conquest of Canaan. The fulillment of this third as-
pect of the inheritance was as sure as the irst two had been. What
had seemed impossible to Abraham had already come true. Now
the third stage of the inheritance was about to come true. Moses was
arguing from the oath-bound covenant to the inheritance by way of
historically fulilled prophecy. The Abrahamic covenant’s oath had
invoked positive sanctions in history. These were sanctions of inher-
itance: heirs, capital, and land. Although Moses here mentioned
only the multiplication of Abraham’s seed, the other two sanctions
were part of the original promise. The Israelites were therefore re-
quired to obey God’s law (Deut. 11:1). Moses made it clear that all
three aspects of the covenant are linked judicially: obedience to
God’s law, predictable oath-bound corporate sanctions in history,
and corporate inheritance in history.
 27
Rain
RAIN ANDandINHERITANCE
Inheritance
For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of
Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and
wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: But the land, whither ye go
to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of
heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy
God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of
the year. And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my
commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God,
and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, That I will
give you the rain of your land in his due season, the irst rain and the latter
rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil
(Deut. 11:10–14).

This prophecy was not universal. It was tied to the land of Canaan.
Its theocentric focus is God’s sovereignty over the weather. While
this control is still a feature of God’s sovereignty, the prophecy was
speciic: specific boundaries, specific topography, and speciic
weather. As we shall see, the New Covenant established a diferent
principle for weather. It is no longer predictable in terms of national
ethics. It would be in the Promised Land: “Take heed to yourselves,
that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other
gods, and worship them; And then the LORD’S wrath be kindled
against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that
the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from of the
good land which the LORD giveth you” (Deut. 11:16–17).

307
308 DEUTERONOMY

Egypt vs. Canaan

Canaan, Moses promised, would be very diferent from Egypt.
One visible diference would be the source of water. The compari-
son was between watering with one’s foot and watering from on
high. What did it mean, “waterest with thy foot”? This probably re-
ferred to Egyptian irrigation. The Nile was the only source of water
in Egypt. A series of man-made canals directed the water to various
regions. Farmers tapped into the water supplied by these canals. A
farm’s irrigation system may have employed a series of small, foot-
activated water wheels to direct the low. This was W. M. Thomp-
son’s suggestion in 1880. He had seen nineteenth-century Egyptian
peasants use such devices. Or the verse may have referred to the
farmer’s moving of dirt with his foot to plug one furrow in order to
direct the water into another furrow.1 In either case, irrigating by
foot was a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. Much of the
farmer’s labor would have been devoted to directing the precious
water into the seeded soil.
This would not be a farmer’s main burden in the Promised
Land. In Canaan, God would bring water from the sky. From the
beginning of the year to the end, God’s eyes would be upon this
land (v. 12). This was a clear beneit compared with Egypt, where
the survival of the nation depended on the brief period each year in
which the Nile looded. This was the only source of Egypt’s water
and therefore its prosperity. Not so in Canaan. Under God’s direct
authority, the rain and the sun would nourish the land to enable it to
produce its wealth.

Bureaucracy and Waterworks

There was another important aspect of this blessing: the
reduction of administrative bureaucracy. We know that whenever an-
cient societies depended heavily on national irrigation systems and
sophisticated technologies of lood control, they became centralized
bureaucracies that were controlled by those with the astronomical

1. W. M. Thompson, The Land and the Book, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1880), I,
p. 22.
 Rain and Inheritance 309

2
and technical information necessary to plan agriculture. Wittfogel
calls these centralized civilizations hydraulic economies. “Time keep-
ing and calendar making are essential for the success of all hydraulic
economies. . . .”3 He classiies Egypt as a hydraulic economy.
We know that ancient Egypt possessed a sophisticated astro-
nomical calendar that charted the stars.4 One specialist in the an-
cient world’s systems of measurement has reported that the
Egyptians as early as the irst dynasty had measured the geography
of the Nile down to minutes of both longitude and latitude, from the
equator to the Mediterranean Sea. This could not have been done,
he argues, without highly advanced astronomical knowledge.5
6
Egypt was the classic model of an imperial bureaucracy. It is not
far-fetched to connect Egypt’s bureaucracy to Egypt’s dependence
on a single source of water.
The land of Canaan was a very diferent environment from
Egypt. Its source of water was the heavens. There could be no cen-
tralized control of the water supply. There was no way to gain a spe-
cial advantage through knowledge of the calendar combined with
knowledge of the rise and fall of a single river. The knowledge of the
seasons was available to any observant farmer. Knowledge of the
timing of the rain would not become the monopoly of any priestly
caste. This necessarily decentralized power in Israel.
As for the calendar, the priests had to share this knowledge with
the people. The three annual journeys to Jerusalem had to be timed
perfectly (Ex. 23:14–17). So did the day of atonement (Lev. 16:29–30).
The nation had to be told in advance when these times were so that
people could plan their journeys. The times of the year were to remain
common knowledge in Israel. The irstfruits ofering had to be made at
Pentecost, ifty days after Passover (Ex. 34:22; Lev. 23:15–17). The

2. Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1957).
3. Ibid., p. 29.
4. Henri Frankfort, et al., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative
Thought in the Ancient Near East (University of Chicago Press, [1946] 1977), p. 81.
5. Livio C. Stecchini, “Astronomical Theory and Historical Data,” in The Velikovsky Afair:
The Warfare of Science and Scientism, edited by Alfred de Grazia (New Hyde Park, New York:
University Books, 1966), p. 167.
6. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 2.
310 DEUTERONOMY

feast of Booths or Tabernacles was linked to the harvest (Lev. 23:39–43).

The Israelites understood the agricultural calendar.
The sabbatical year of release (Deut. 15), in which the reading of
the law to the assembled nation would occur (Deut. 31:10–13), had
to be known to all men in Israel, including strangers. This would in
turn provide knowledge of the timing of the jubilee year (Lev. 25).
None of this was secret information. Knowledge of God’s law and
knowledge of the calendar were linked.
The tribes had possession of information regarding their bound-
aries. This decentralized another form of knowledge in Israel: geog-
raphy. The four types of specialized knowledge by which Egyptian
bureaucrats controlled the nation – astronomy, the calendar, lood
cycles, and geography – were either possessed by all Israelites or
were irrelevant to agriculture in Israel.
God controlled the water supply, Moses said. For as long as
Israelites believed this, the priesthood could not plausibly assert
power over the afairs of the nation based on their special meteoro-
logical relationship with God. In fact, the opposite was true: the
false religion of the priests of Ahab’s reign was the cause of God’s
withholding of rain (I Ki. 17:1). A prophet who opposed the ojcial
priesthood to the point of commanding their collective execution
(I Ki. 18:40) was the mediatorial source of water in Israel: an anti-
bureaucratic igure if there ever was one.

Linear Time, Eschatological Time

Time for Israel was not cyclical; it was linear. It was linear because
it was eschatological. Dozens of prophecies were tied to Israel’s fu-
ture. Jacob-Israel’s prophecy regarding the coming of Shiloh was
the main one: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-
giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall
the gathering of the people be” (Gen. 49:10).
Astronomy in the ancient world produced a cyclical worldview.
The priests’ knowledge of the speciic positioning of the heavens
throughout the year was extremely sophisticated – far beyond that
possessed by most educated people in modern times. The ancients
knew about the wobbling of the earth’s axis, although they explained
this in terms of the wobbling of the heavens.7 They knew about the

7. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An essay on myth and the
future of time (Boston: Godine, [1969] 1977).
 Rain and Inheritance 311

26,000-year cycle of the pole stars. This “great year” led to a cyclical
view of history.8
They did not know about the hydrologic cycle: bodies of wa-
ter-evaporation-condensation-rain. They had a more direct view of
rainfall: the intervention of some deity. Moses called it “the rain of
heaven.” God views the land from heaven. He cares for it. He sends
the rain. The absence of rain should be seen as a covenantal curse:
“Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye
turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the
LORD’S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that
there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye per-
ish quickly from of the good land which the LORD giveth you”
(Deut. 11:16–17). This warning was fulilled under Ahab (I Ki. 17).
Thus, the cycle of rain was not to be understood as a cycle in the
sense of providing a model for time. Israel’s agricultural cycle
would be cyclical: rain, sun, harvest, planting, but always within the
framework of the three annual feasts and festivals. These festivals were
eschatological, always looking ahead toward the coming of the messiah and
His kingdom. The rain cycle was therefore covenantal. It would be
governed by the nation’s obedience or disobedience to God’s law.
Here was a crucial distinction between Israel and all other an-
cient nations: nature was not seen as normative. Its processes were seen
as dependent on the nation’s covenantal faithfulness. The opera-
tions of nature in Israel were diferent from its operations outside the
borders of the land. The Mosaic Covenant’s land laws and seed laws
were unique to Israel, for they were tied to the messianic prophe-
cies, especially the prophecy regarding Shiloh.9 Inside Israel’s bor-
ders, nature was an aspect of the special grace of the Mosaic
Covenant: “And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently
unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love
the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all
your soul, That I will give you the rain of your land in his due sea-
son, the irst rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy
corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy ields
for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full” (Deut. 11:13–15).

8. See Chapter 21, above: section on “The Idea of Progress and Inheritance.”
9. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 33.
312 DEUTERONOMY

Outside these borders, the common grace of the Adamic covenant

applied: “. . . for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45b).10
Jacob had gone down into Egypt because the common curse of
nature had impoverished him. God’s special grace had been shown
to Egypt through Joseph’s ability to interpret Pharaoh’s dream.
Egypt had grain for sale during the famine; Palestine did not. God
did not spare Egypt from nature’s curse by interfering with nature’s
processes. He spared Egypt by a special revelation in advance. God
had a plan for the sons of Jacob. This plan was larger than the plans
of the decision-makers. As Joseph said to his brothers, “But as for
you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to
bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen. 50:20).
Egypt’s salvation in a time of famine had been based on the Pha-
raoh’s power to tax one-ifth of the crops of Egypt (Gen. 41:34). He
had the power to place Joseph in charge of the entire operation:
“And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and
they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over
all the land of Egypt” (Gen. 41:43). This power was derived from
two sources: Egypt’s faith in the Pharaoh as a god and the priest-
hood’s knowledge of the cycles of the Nile. Joseph exempted the
priesthood from his famine-driven purchase of the land of Egypt in
the name of Pharaoh (Gen. 47:22). This indicates that the priests
had been the allies of Pharaoh in maintaining Pharaoh’s power over
the nation. The Mosaic law prohibited the exercise of such power
by any king in Israel (Deut. 17:16–17). Israel’s covenant-governed
hydrologic cycle reinforced this prohibition.

The Biblical Doctrine of Economic Growth

Because the Mosaic Covenant was eschatological, Israelites
could legitimately expect long-term per capita economic growth in
response to their faithfulness. The cyclical pattern of rain-sun-harvest
would not become a restriction on Israel’s development. On the con-
trary, the covenantal basis of this cycle guaranteed compound growth
in response to national covenantal faithfulness. The agricultural

10. Ibid., pp. 549–54.

 Rain and Inheritance 313

cycle was not dominant inside Israel’s borders; covenant law, its
sanctions, and linear time were.
The Mosaic Covenant’s positive sanction of growth – popula-
tion and productivity – meant that the Israelites were not prisoners
of nature. Nature is subordinate to God, and God ruled Israel by a
covenant. The Israelites could gain control over nature through na-
tional obedience. In Egypt, the priests and perhaps other initiated
specialists controlled the output of agriculture through their guild’s
knowledge of the calendar and the Nile’s lood pattern. Salvation
was by knowledge and power, not national obedience. In Israel,
none of this was the case. The wealth of national Israel would be the
product of ethics: the special grace of the Mosaic Covenant. Its posi-
tive economic sanctions were population growth and increased
wealth per capita. The biblical model for economic growth was
based on the existence of visible economic blessings as the means of
covenantal conirmation. “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy
God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may es-
tablish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this
day” (Deut. 8:18).
A cyclical worldview denies the long-run possibility of such pos-
itive economic sanctions. So does the modern world’s zero eco-
nomic growth model.11 The ancients believed that a cycle of growth
would always be undermined by a cycle of decay. The cosmic age of
gold was followed by ages of debased metals.12 This pattern of decay
was dominant in the thinking of cyclical cosmologists. The great
year would repeat its cycle, and social cycles must relect this cosmic
cycle.13
Moses denied the existence of any cosmic cycle when he told
the people that rain would come in terms of the covenant. The Mo-
saic Covenant was eschatological. Its sanctions had to be inter-
preted in terms of linear eschatology, not the great year. There
would be only one messiah, not an endless series of them.
The Bible’s primary theme is the transition from wrath to grace.
There would not be another Adam to repeat the transgression of

11. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 29.
12. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 105–200.
13. Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1959).
314 DEUTERONOMY

the irst Adam. On the contrary, the messiah would be a superior

Adam, a second Adam whose fulillment of the terms of the cove-
nant would forever replace the Adamic covenant and its tests and
sanctions. The New Heavens and the New Earth would replace the
present cosmic order. Yet there must be eschatological continuity
between history’s New Heavens and the New Earth and eternity’s:

For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former
shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice
for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing,
and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people:
and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of
crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that
hath not illed his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the
sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed (Isa. 65:17–20).

This prophesied era cannot refer to eternity, for sinners will still
be dwelling among the righteous. Death will still be present. The
prophesied millennial blessing of extended life expectancy is
earth-bound. No verse in Scripture more clearly refutes the
amillennial system of interpretation.14 This is why amillennialist
Archibald Hughes, in his book, A New Heaven and New Earth
(1958),15 refuses comment on this passage. He writes as though this
passage did not exist, despite the fact that his book invokes its lan-
guage. He comments exclusively on the New Testament’s passages
where this phrase occurs. He knows exactly what he is doing. He re-
fuses to discuss the historical aspects of kingdom inheritance in a
book devoted to the eternal inheritance. This is the heart of
amillennialism: it asserts a radical discontinuity between New Cov-
enant history and eternity.16
The Mosaic Covenant’s optimistic eschatological worldview
made possible the hope of sustained positive sanctions: a permanent
inheritance. The Bible ajrms that this covenantal inheritance cannot
be dispersed or destroyed in eternity. It will begin to manifest itself
in history. Over and over, the Old Testament ajrms this fact:

14. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), pp. 98–106, 213–14.
15. Archibald Hughes, A New Heaven and a New Earth: An Introductory Study of the Coming of
the Lord Jesus Christ and the Eternal Inheritance (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1958).
16. North, Millennialism and Social Theory, p. 123.
 Rain and Inheritance 315

His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth (Ps. 25:13).

For evildoers shall be cut of: but those that wait upon the LORD, they
shall inherit the earth (Ps. 37:9).

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the
abundance of peace (Ps. 37:11).

This inheritance is the kingdom of God. It is a kingdom visibly mani-

fested by its dominion in history. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar:

Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote
the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to
pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, bro-
ken to pieces together, and became like the chaf of the summer thresh-
ingloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for
them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and
illed the whole earth (Dan. 2:34–35).

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a king-
dom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to
other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms,
and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut
out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the
brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to
the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and
the interpretation thereof sure (Dan. 2:44–45).

Sustained economic growth is not only possible; it is normative.

It remains an ethical obligation for every covenant-keeping society.
This economic implication of the eschatology of the Mosaic Cove-
nant was not annulled by the New Covenant. The fact that Shiloh
came to fulill the terms of the Mosaic Covenant did not annul its es-
chatology. On the contrary, Jesus Christ announced that His deinitive
fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant in history must be progressively im-
plemented in history by His followers (Matt. 28:18–20). We call this the
Great Commission.17 Commission is the correct word: this world-
transforming task has been commissioned to us, and we are paid a
very high commission: 90 percent. God contents Himself with a

17. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
316 DEUTERONOMY

18
mere 10 percent: the tithe. As any salesman will tell you, a 90 per-
cent commission structure is a very great commission.

Conclusion
Moses told the Israelites that their inheritance in the Promised
Land would be something unique: an agricultural cycle marked by
covenantal sanctions, positive and negative. Their covenantal faith-
fulness would determine which category of sanctions they would
experience. This framework would apply to agriculture. The cove-
nant, not miracles of nature, would soon become normative inside
Israel’s national boundaries.
The Mosaic Covenant’s eschatological foundation would there-
fore govern the Mosaic economy in the broadest sense, Moses told
them. Negative corporate sanctions would not become permanent;
positive corporate sanctions could become permanent. Paganism’s
cyclical pessimism has no covenantal foundation, Moses implicitly
was telling them. Covenant-keepers will inevitably inherit the earth
in history. The kingdom of God is the universal kingdom in history
because it is the universal kingdom in eternity. While the Old Cove-
nant did not speak of eternity, it spoke very clearly about history. It
taught that history is covenantal, not cyclical. Moses said that this
fact would be seen by all Israel in the rain of heaven.

18. Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1994).
 28
LAW,Law, Sanctions,AND
SANCTIONS, and Inheritance
INHERITANCE

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your

soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as
frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children,
speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest
by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt
write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: That
your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land
which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven
upon the earth (Deut. 11:18–21).

The theocentric focus of this law is the authority of the word of God.
The laying up of God’s words in one’s heart and soul was described as
if the words were to be written on one’s hand or written down on
pieces of paper and pasted to one’s forehead. The language here was
analogical. God’s words are not literally stored up in the blood-
pumping organ we call the heart. They are, however, stored away in
the obedient covenant-keeper’s soul. They are to guide his actions.
These words must be reinforced throughout the day by personal
obedience and by teaching the next generation by word and deed.
The context of this passage was God’s law. Obeying the laws of
God is to become a way of life for all men. The covenant-keeper is
supposed to talk about the law from morning to night as he works
beside his children. The law governs every aspect of our lives, and
so we are to talk about it throughout the day. Our very conversa-
tions are to remind us of the comprehensive nature of God’s law.
Because God’s law is comprehensive, our discussion of the law is to
be comprehensive. Every covenant-keeper is to become an expert in the
law of God. He is to think about it, discuss it, and explore its

317
318 DEUTERONOMY

implications every day. Men are to discuss God’s law daily because
they are to honor it daily through obedience. Men are to use their
own words to build ethical hedges around their lives. Their own
words should serve as constant ethical reminders: guideposts. To ar-
gue that this law was exclusively a land law is to deny the previous
sentences in this paragraph.
Yet there was a sense in which this was a land law. The Ten
Commandments were to be written down on the doorposts of every
home. This was a literal requirement under the Mosaic economy. In
the United States in the 1950’s, families often placed a rubber door-
mat in front of the door that said, “welcome.” Those who came in
were irst supposed to wipe of the dirt from the soles of their shoes
by standing on the doormat and rubbing their shoes on it. Sym-
bolically, the Israelites were to wipe of their evil behavior from
their souls when they entered a home. In modern times, Orthodox
Jews seek to obey this law in a literal fashion. They place a tiny scroll
of the Ten Commandments inside a small storage device called a
mezuza, which is then ajxed to the front door of the home or busi-
ness. The problem with their interpretation of this law is that the
scroll inside a mezuza can’t be seen. The device can easily become a
kind of talisman. I have seen a Jew kiss his ingers and then touch
the mezuza on leaving his business. This is a way to show respect,
but the problem is that the stipulations of the law itself are not visi-
ble. This makes the mezuza analogous to the Ark of the Covenant,
where the tables of the law were stored. The idea of having the
Decalogue written on the doorposts was that it could be read by all
literate people who passed through the door. The same was true of
all gateways. This included the gates of the city, where the judges
met to decide cases. This law required that the Ten Command-
ments be written on the equivalent of the wall of a civil court.
Is this law still in force? The New Covenant indicates that there
has been a deinitive shift from external writing to internal writing.
The Epistle to the Hebrews twice asserts that the New Covenant has
fulilled the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:31–33: “For this is the cove-
nant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith
the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their
hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a peo-
ple” (Heb. 8:10). “This is the covenant that I will make with them af-
ter those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts,
and in their minds will I write them” (Heb. 10:16). I regard this as
 Law, Sanctions, and Inheritance 319

analogous to the circumcision of the heart, which is the fulillment of

the requirement of the circumcision of the lesh. “But he is a Jew,
which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the
spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God
(Rom. 2:29). The circumcision of the heart annulled the Old Cove-
nant’s requirement of the circumcision of the lesh. Similarly, em-
bedding the law of God into the heart in the New Covenant
annulled the law requiring the Israelites to write the Ten Com-
mandments on their doorposts and gates. It is not that the Israelites
were not also required to place the law in their hearts. They were, as
this Deuteronomic passage indicates. But this external requirement
is no longer judicially binding on covenant-keepers under the New
Covenant.

Teaching One’s Children

The proper method of writing the law on the heart is by instruc-
tion. Parents are to instruct their children throughout the day. This
is good for the children and better for the parent. The parent cannot
in good faith utter that famous disclaimer, “Do as I say, not as I do.”1
The law of God requires obedience. There is no legitimate escape
from the stipulations of the law. We are to keep the whole of the law
in our mandated quest for perfection.2 The child is to see consis-
tency between what the parent says and does.
The children are to internalize the law – write it in their hearts –
though hearing it, seeing parents applying it daily, and obeying it.
They mimic their parents, and in doing so, they reinforce the law of
God, which is already written on their hearts through the grace of
conversion. They are to achieve progressively daily what regenera-
tion has already done for them deinitively. The transition from
wrath to grace involves God’s preparation of the heart for the law. At
the time of redemption, God creates a special place in a covenant-

1. “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (I Cor. 11:1).

2. “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and
said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Gen. 17:1).
“Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God” (Deut. 18:13). “He is the Rock, his work is
perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he”
(Deut. 32:4). “Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to walk in his
statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day (I Ki. 8:61). ”Be ye therefore perfect,
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
320 DEUTERONOMY

keeping man’s conscience that is designed to house God’s law. Then

the covenant-keeper is supposed to work all of his life to ill up this
designated area of his conscience with practical knowledge of the
law. As he increases his understanding of how the laws are to be ap-
plied in speciic cases, he becomes a mature Christian.
Successful teachers tell us that the very process of teaching in-
creases the teacher’s understanding of the material taught. The pro-
cess reinforces what the teacher knows, imbedding it in his mind. If
he does not teach it, the material fades from his thinking. Like notes
taken in college and never reviewed or taught, yet never thrown away,
the note-taker’s memory of them fades. James wrote: “But be ye doers
of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if
any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man be-
holding his natural face in a glass [mirror]: For he beholdeth himself,
and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he
was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and
continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the
work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:22–25). Moses
warned Israel not to permit the forgetfulness born of inaction. The
mental notes taken in childhood must be reviewed and renewed
throughout life. The very act of imparting this knowledge to chil-
dren throughout the normal events of the day is a means of retaining
the law and writing it in the heart.

Van Til’s Childhood Experience

The Calvinist philosopher Cornelius Van Til described his
early years growing up on a Dutch farm in the late nineteenth cen-
tury: “Ours was not in any sense a pietistic family. There were not
any great emotional outbursts on any occasion that I recall. There
was much ado about making hay in the summer and about caring
for the cows and sheep in the winter, but round about it all there was
a deep conditioning atmosphere. Though there were no tropical
showers of revivals, the relative humidity was always very high. At
every meal the whole family was present. There was a closing as
well as an opening prayer, and a chapter of the Bible was read each
time. The Bible was read through from Genesis to Revelation. At
breakfast or at dinner, as the case might be, we would hear of the
New Testament, or of ‘the children of Gad after their families, of
Zephon and Haggi and Shuni and Ozni, of Eri and Areli.’ I do not
claim that I always fully understood the meaning of it all. Yet of the
 Law, Sanctions, and Inheritance 321

total efect there can be no doubt. The Bible became for me, in all its
parts, in every syllable, the very Word of God. I learned that I must
believe the Scripture story, and that ‘faith’ was a gift of God. What
had happened in the past, and particularly what had happened in
the past in Palestine, was of the greatest moment to me.”3
His parents understood the need of presenting the Bible to their
children day by day. The children learned that the Bible was very
important to their parents. It therefore became important for the
children. Years later, Van Til would tell his students at Westminster
Seminary that his father used to teach him and his brother as the
three of them worked in the ields on their hands and knees. His
brother’s son Henry later followed in his uncle’s footsteps to be-
come a professor and author.4 Henry’s son also became a professor
and an author.5 This inheritance began in the ields, with a father
teaching his sons the Bible and the catechism. The father was plant-
ing more than physical seeds as they worked.

The Christian School

The day came when Van Til’s parents sent him to a Christian
school. He remembered his vaccination decades later. “I can still
feel it.”6 The school was itself a form of vaccination: a vaccination
against covenant-breaking. The school was an extension of his fam-
ily. His parents had vowed at his baptism to instruct him in God’s
ways. “It was in pursuance of this vow that they sent me to a Chris-
tian grade school.”7 The school taught a curriculum from the point
of view of his Dutch Calvinist parents. “In short, the whole wide
world that gradually opened up for me through my schooling was
regarded as operating in its every aspect under the direction of the
all-powerful God whose child I was through Christ. I was to learn to
think God’s thoughts after him in every ield of endeavor.”8

3. Cornelius Van Til, Why I Believe in God (Philadelphia: Committee on Christian

Education, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, n.d.), pp. 5–6.
4. Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture (Philadelphia: Presbyterian &
Reformed, 1959).
5. L. John Van Til, Liberty of Conscience: The History of a Puritan Idea (Nutley, New Jersey:
Craig Press, 1972).
6. Van Til, Why I Believe in God, p. 6.
7. Ibid., p. 7.
8. Idem.
322 DEUTERONOMY

Sending children to a Christian school was common to conser-

vative Dutch households in his day, and remains so. The Christian
school has kept the Dutch community together in the United States,
and it has kept Dutch Calvinists together in the secular, cove-
nant-breaking Netherlands. The Christian school provides special-
ized education that parents are not always capable of providing.
The school is based on the biblical principle of the division of labor:
“Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And
God hath set some in the church, irst apostles, secondarily proph-
ets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps,
governments, diversities of tongues” (I Cor. 12:27–28).
The school provides specialized instruction. This instruction re-
places the father’s time in the ields or wherever he works. With the
vast increase in the division of labor since the Industrial Revolution
of the late eighteenth century, a father is less and less able to pass his
skills to his sons. He works away from home, and his skills rarely
match his sons’ abilities or interests. They learn their morality from
him, but not their occupations.
Education today is overwhelmingly formalized. From age ive
through graduate school, the student is educated in the classroom
education. Formal education is tied to the printed word. Appren-
ticeship has been replaced by classroom bureaucracy and written
examinations. The educational cost per student is far lower under
bureaucracy. In the eighteenth century and earlier, wealthy families
hired tutors for their children. The less wealthy had to settle for a
classroom setting: more students per instructor and therefore lower
cost per family. The wealthy in England have for two centuries sent
their sons to boarding schools in order to separate them from their
families. This is also done by the wealthiest old families in the
United States.9 This is a rite of passage into the elite of both societies.
The modern State seeks to steal the legacy of the faithful: the
hearts and minds of children. The educational bureaucrats today
have imposed a massive system of ideological kidnapping on the voters.
This is the inherent nature of all compulsory education, regulated ed-
ucation, and tax-funded education. Education is not neutral. The bu-
reaucrats have built a gigantic system of humanist indoctrination

9. Nelson Aldrich, Jr., Old Money: The Mythology of America’s Upper Class (New York: Knopf,
1988), pp. 144–58.
 Law, Sanctions, and Inheritance 323

with funds extracted from all local residents in the name of com-
mon-ground education. This justiication has always been a lie,
from Horace Mann’s public schools in Massachusetts in the 1830’s
10
until today. From the late nineteenth century until today, leading
American educators have been forthright in their public pro-
nouncements of their agenda. This agenda is deeply religious. John
Dewey, the “father” of progressive education, dedicated humanist,
and philosopher stated his position plainly: “Our schools, in bring-
ing together those of diferent nationalities, languages, traditions,
and creeds, in assimilating them together upon the basis of what is
common and public in endeavor and achievement, are performing
an ininitely significant religious work.”11 More than this: “In such a
dim, blind, but efective way the American people is conscious that
its schools serve best the cause of religion in serving the cause of so-
cial uniication. . . .”12

Enjoying the Inheritance

There is a positive sanction attached to the law governing judi-
cial instruction: “That your days may be multiplied, and the days of
your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to
give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth” (Deut. 11:21).
Long life in the land is a universally desirable gift from God. Nobody
appeared a second time before any king in the ancient world with
the greeting: “O, King, live briely.” They said, “O, King, live forever.”13
The promise of long life connects law and sanctions judicially.
In this case, the connection is stated positively: teach your children
God’s law, and both you and they will enjoy long life. This is an ex-
tension of the ifth commandment: “Honour thy father and thy
mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 20:12). Paul wrote: “Children, obey your

10. R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education: Studies in the History of the
Philosophy of Education (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1963).
11. John Dewey, “Religion and Our Schools,” Hibbert Journal (July 1908); reprinted in
Education Today, edited by Joseph Ratner (New York: Putnam’s, 1940), p. 80. This document
is reprinted photographically in David Noebel, et al., Clergy in the Classroom: The Religion of
Secular Humanism (Manitou Springs, Colorado: Summit Press, 1995), p. 19. Many other
statements like Dewey’s appear in this highly useful book.
12. Ibid., pp. 80–81; in Noebel, ibid., pp. 19–20.
13. I Kings 1:31; Nehemiah 2:3; Daniel 2:4; 3:9; 5:10; 6:6, 21.
324 DEUTERONOMY

parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother;
(which is the irst commandment with promise;) That it may be well
with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:1–3).
There is no question that Paul regarded the judicial link between
obedience to parents and long life on earth as a New Covenant phe-
nomenon. This means that the ifth commandment was not a land
law whose visible corporate sanction was tied exclusively to the Mo-
saic economy in Israel. The positive sanction of long life for obedi-
ence to parents has not been annulled by the transition from the Old
Covenant to the New Covenant. This implies that the positive sanc-
tion of long life for teaching one’s children about God’s law has also
not been annulled. What has been annulled is the circumscribed
geographical focus of the public reign of the original laws: the land
of Israel. Covenant-keepers are no longer promised that they will
live long in the land of Israel in peace and prosperity, handing down
the inheritance. Paul made it clear: the promise now applies to the
whole earth. The New Covenant rests on the Great Commission.
The predictable sanctions of God’s law now apply everywhere that
the gospel is preached and the covenant is ajrmed corporately.
This is what it means to disciple the nations. They are brought under the
discipline – the sanctions – of God’s covenant.
This is extremely signiicant for the development of Christian
social theory. The covenantal link between God’s Bible-revealed law and
His predictable corporate sanctions in history has not been broken by the ad-
vent of the New Covenant. In the case of Deuteronomy 11:21, the con-
nection was rigorously covenantal: 1) God has given His people the
land (transcendence); 2) parents teach children (hierarchy); 3) God’s
law is put into the heart (ethics); 4) Israelites can live long in the land
sworn by God to the fathers (oath); 5) their children can also live
long in the land (succession).

Inheritance and Disinheritance

The land would be someone’s inheritance, either Israel’s or the
Canaanites’. The alternative was for the land to return to the beasts,
which God would not allow (Ex. 23:29). Mankind, not the beasts, is to
exercise dominion over nature (Gen. 1:26; 9:1–3). The conserva-
tionist rhetoric about the sacred wilderness rests on very bad theology.
For Israel to inherit, the Canaanites would have to be disinherited.
This is the model for eschatology: the expansion of God’s kingdom
in history must come at the expense of Satan’s. To argue otherwise
 Law, Sanctions, and Inheritance 325

is to argue that Satan’s visible kingdom must expand at the expense

of God’s, which is exactly what amillennialists argue, and premil-
lennialists argue regarding the premillennial “Church Age.” In the
inal judgment, Satan and his covenantal subordinates will be totally
disinherited (Rev. 20:10). Covenant-keepers will then openly inherit
the whole earth, and both it and they will be relieved of the burden of
sin and its curses (Rev. 21). The conquest of Canaan was a type of
the inal judgment.
What would be the basis of Israel’s inheritance? Judicially, it
would be obedience: the covenantally representative obedience of
the coming messiah (Isa. 53). But obedience was not the whole
story; it never is. Sanctions are attached to God’s law. The sanctions
in this case would be conidence (positive) and fear (negative).

For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I com-

mand you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways,
and to cleave unto him; Then will the LORD drive out all these nations from
before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than your-
selves. Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be
yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphra-
tes, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be. There shall no man be
able to stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you
and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath
said unto you (Deut. 11:22–25).

The Israelites were supposed to have conidence in God as to-

tally sovereign over history. Next, they were supposed to trust Mo-
ses’ words as representing God. Third, they were supposed to trust
God’s law. Fourth, they were supposed to trust God’s prophecy of
the fear which He would place in the hearts of the Canaanites. Obe-
dience to God’s law was the key. Their obedience would prove their
faith in God and Moses’ words in God’s name. If they obeyed God’s
law, they would inevitably inherit the Promised Land.
The crucial theological point here is that inheritance is fundamen-
tally ethical. Obedience to God’s law is the inescapable component
of inheritance. Faith in God is important, but faith without works is
dead faith (James 2:17–20). It does not count. It is analogous to
someone who believes that the stock market will rise, but who then
refuses to invest his money in terms of what he believes. He refuses
to “put his money where his mouth is.” He does not participate in
the rise. His accurate forecast haunts him after it turns out to be true.
326 DEUTERONOMY

This, too, is a model for eschatology. “Lay not up for yourselves

treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:19–21). The person who
views the inheritance as ultimately eschatological must see to it that
he structures his life in terms of the covenantal stipulations govern-
ing this inheritance. “For what shall it proit a man, if he shall gain
the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
The Israelites would not be allowed to claim this victory without
risk, nor would they possesses it overnight. “I will not drive them
out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and
the beast of the ield multiply against thee. By little and little I will
drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit
the land” (Ex. 23:29–30). (There is nothing sacred about wilderness
areas. They are merely as-yet undomesticated regions, like the gar-
den of Eden prior to Adam.) The promise to Abraham regarding
the fourth generation’s inheritance of the land was God’s deinitive
eschatological announcement (Gen. 15:16). The military conquest
of Canaan would be the progressive fulillment of this prophecy. The
eventual displacement of the Canaanites would be the inal aspect of
this prophecy. To achieve this, the Israelites had to trust God’s
promises.
Again, this is a model for biblical eschatology. The inheritance
of the earth in history by God’s covenant people is deinitive, for
God has announced it repeatedly. The process of inheritance is ethi-
cal: ever-increasing obedience to God’s law, which is followed by
ever-increasing positive economic sanctions that conirm the cove-
nant. “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that
giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant
which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day” (Deut. 8:18). Cove-
nant-keepers are required to redeem the world for God, i.e., buy it
back. They are not to use military conquest or force; that was a
one-time event for Israel. They must buy it back by preaching the
gospel, obeying God’s law, and faithfully employing the wealth that
God pours down on them because of their obedience. Covenant-
keepers will inherit the earth progressively through their obedience
to God’s law, their conidence in the transforming power of the gos-
pel, their ability to meet consumer demand ejciently, their biological
 Law, Sanctions, and Inheritance 327

multiplication, their tithing to the church, and their charitable ser-

vice. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much:
and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10).
If there were no predictable corporate sanctions attached to
God’s law, we could have no conidence in the future success of the
kingdom of God in history. Our eschatological hopes would be ex-
clusively post-mortem. But the Bible teaches that what takes place
on earth is a down payment – an earnest – for what will take place
beyond the inal judgment. History points to eternity; earth points
to heaven. Jesus warned Nicodemus: “If I have told you earthly
things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heav-
enly things?” (John 3:12). At the inal judgment, covenant-keepers
will inherit the earth; covenant-breakers will be completely disin-
herited (Matt. 25:31–46). But inal judgment is preceded by progres-
sive judgment in history. What takes place in history mirrors the
inal inheritance and disinheritance, so as to provide a covenantal
warning in history. There must be sujcient continuity between his-
tory and eternity to provide covenant-keepers with legitimate
conidence and to provide covenant-breakers with legitimate fear.
The conquest of Canaan is the model for history, which in turn is the
model for eternity.

Conclusion
Moses gave Israel a command and a promise: law and sanc-
tions. He told them to mark their dwelling places by the law of God.
He told them to teach their children the law. In doing this, they
would hide the law in their hearts (Ps. 119:11). If they did this, Mo-
ses said, they would be visibly blessed with large families. They
would enjoy “the days of heaven upon the earth” (Deut. 11:21).
The covenantal link between obedience and visible sanctions
was basic to this passage. The inheritance was deined in terms of
heirs and their possession of land. Paul wrote that the same link
still operates under the New Covenant (Eph. 6:1–3). There is no way
covenantally to break the link uniting law-keeping, positive sanctions,
and inheritance, any more than there is a way to break the link
uniting law-breaking, disobedience, and disinheritance. These links
make possible the development of biblical social theory. Being possi-
ble, the development of an explicitly biblical social theory is a
covenantal mandate, part of the dominion covenant itself.
328 DEUTERONOMY

Because Christian theologians for nineteen centuries have ig-

nored or even denied the existence of these judicial links in the New
Covenant era, the church has never been able to develop an explic-
itly biblical social theory. The result is the Babylonian captivity of
the church today. And like the Hebrews during the original Babylo-
nian captivity, most Christians prefer ghetto life outside the Prom-
ised Land to the rigors of a life of rebuilding the nation’s broken wall
and the crumbling homes of their forefathers. For now, only a rem-
nant has decided to return.
 29
CommonCOMMON
Grace and GRACE
Legitimate
ANDInheritance
LEGITIMATE INHERITANCE

These are the statutes and judgments, which ye shall observe to do in

the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the
days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places,
wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high
mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall
overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with
ire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the
names of them out of that place (Deut. 12:1–3).

The theocentric focus of this law is the illegitimacy of all other

forms of worship. In the case of the gods of Canaan, illegitimacy
meant illegality. To destroy the name of every god of Canaan was a
morally mandatory act on the part of the Israelites. There was no
neutrality possible. There also was no possibility of a nameless God
in Israel. Either God’s name would be destroyed inside the bound-
aries of Israel or else the Canaanite gods’ names would be de-
stroyed. God made it clear: their idols had to be smashed. As with
their idols, so with their names: total elimination. “. . . make no men-
tion of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy
mouth” (Ex. 23:13b). This was a land law. It is no longer in force. It
had to do with the destruction of Canaanite civilization and the the-
ology of the ancient world: Canaan’s gods as local deities tied to the
land.
God refused to accept equality with other deities. This is as true
under the New Covenant as it was in the Old. “Then Paul stood in
the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that
in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld

329
330 DEUTERONOMY

your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE

UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him de-
clare I unto you” (Acts 17:22–23). The Athenians had added an
unidentiied god to their pantheon of deities just to make sure some
unacknowledged god would not bring negative sanctions against
them because they had ignored him. The God of the Bible was be-
ing treated by Athens as if He were one of these nameless gods. But
the God of the Bible cannot be placated with an altar to no god in
particular, or with any altar at all. Paul announced: “God that made
the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and
earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is wor-
shipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he
giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:24–25). An oc-
casional public sacriice does not impress Him. He is the Creator
God. What God demands is the sacriice of every person’s life, in
every area of his life. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mer-
cies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacriice, holy, ac-
ceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1).
He calls all men to devote the whole of their lives.1 This has to in-
clude civil afairs. But the modern church rejects this politically in-
correct conclusion.

Smashing Idols
The conquest of Canaan was a military action. The Canaanites
were to be completely destroyed. After the destruction of Canaan,
only the Amalekites deserved total destruction because of the evil
they had shown to Israel during Israel’s wilderness wandering. God
had established a covenant of total destruction with Israel against
Amalek: “And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial
in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put
out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses
built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi: For he said,
Because the LORD hath sworn that the LORD will have war with

1. This was what the American Communist Party demanded of its members. Benjamin
Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948). Before he
recanted, Gitlow had been the senior ojcial of the Communist Party of the United States of
America (CPUSA), and had held virtually every important ojce, including editor-in-chief.
He went to jail for his beliefs, 1919–21.
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 331

Amalek from generation to generation” (Ex. 17:14–16). Samuel re-

minded Saul of this covenant: “Samuel also said unto Saul, The
LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel:
now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to
Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from
Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they
have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (I Sam. 15:1–3). Saul lost his
kingship for showing mercy to Amalek’s king, as if his enemy’s
ojce as king made him an equal with Saul, and also for allowing the
Israelites to keep Amalek’s domesticated animals as spoils.2 Samuel
hacked Agag to pieces to demonstrate God’s covenant of total de-
struction (I Sam. 15:33). This was an extension of a pre-conquest
covenant of destruction. After Canaan was captured, no new war of
annihilation was valid.
That the annihilation of Canaan was to be a one-time event is
seen in the jubilee inheritance law. Every half century, ownership of
every piece of rural land reverted back to the heirs of the families of
the conquest generation (Lev. 25:13). But after Israel’s return from
the exile, the jubilee law was to be altered. “And it shall come to
pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to
the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children
among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country
among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you
among the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe
the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith
the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 47:22–23). Non-Israelites were not to be
driven out, nor were they to be disinherited. Why not? Because the
gods of Canaan by then had been annihilated in the hearts of men.

2. “But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of
the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but
every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly. Then came the word of the
LORD unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned
back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments” (I Sam. 15:9–11a).
332 DEUTERONOMY

God, Stars, and History

The ancient world believed that to defeat a city was to defeat
that city’s god or gods. To the degree that a conquering army spared
the lives of the citizens of a defeated city, to that extent was mercy
granted by the conquerors’ god to the losers’ god. To build an em-
pire, a conquering nation either had to remove the citizens of a de-
feated city and replace them with people who worshipped the
empire’s gods, or else the empire had to incorporate the defeated
city’s gods into the pantheon of the empire. Where no provision for
such incorporation existed theologically in the culture of the victor,
the victor had to annihilate or completely dispossess the losers. This
meant destroying all traces of their gods.
It was assumed that the gods of the two armies battled each other.
In other words, what took place on the battleield was matched by a
conlict in heaven.3 If there was conlict on the battleield, there had
to be conlict in heaven. There was no cosmic unity in paganism’s
nature; there was no absolute God who controlled what comes to
pass in history. “On irst looking upon the external world, man pic-
tured it to himself as a sort of confused republic, where rival forces
made war upon each other.”4 Two ways to conceive of unity in the
cosmos, through impersonal forces, are fate and astrology. The be-
lief that the heavens above are related to events on the earth below
is the theoretical basis of astrology, a common belief in the ancient
world and even today.
The ancient world believed that the heavens were related to
earthly history. Immanuel Velikovsky goes so far as to argue that
the Greek myth that Athena was born out of Zeus’ forehead had its
origin in the fact that the planet Venus was born in historical times:
a spin-of (literally) of the planet Jupiter. Venus was originally a
comet, he says, and it caused the events of the exodus.5 While I do
not think he is correct – God did not use Venus to bring the plagues
of the exodus on Egypt – there is no doubt that the heavens and the

3. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book III,
Chapter XV, pp. 205–6.
4. Ibid., III:II, p. 121.
5. Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1950),
p. 172.
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 333

gods were closely associated in ancient thought. This includes bibli-

cal thought. “The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of
Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of
money. They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera” (Jud. 5:19–20). This is not to be interpreted literally;
these words appear in Deborah’s song. Songs are exercises in
symbolism.
There is a biblical analogy between stars and earthly afairs. The
king of Babylon was described with an angelic-heavenly analogy: a
star-angel who sought to surpass God’s other star-angels. “How art
thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art
thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For
thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt
my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of
the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the
heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High” (Isa. 14:12–14).
(Lucifer was the morning star in the ancient world, i.e., Venus, but
only when it preceded the appearance of the sun. It was called
Hesperos when it followed the sun.) The host of heaven is described
as stars.

And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding
great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.
And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the
host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them” (Dan. 8:9–10).

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a ig tree casteth her
untimely igs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind (Rev. 6:13).

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his
heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast
them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready
to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born (Rev. 12:3–4).

Literal stars did not fall on earth, nor will they, contrary to
dispensationalism’s proclaimed hermeneutics of prophetic literal-
ism. God defeated Satan’s angelic host in history because of the in-
carnation of Jesus Christ in history. Satan and his host fell to earth.
The transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant was
marked by the casting down of Satan to earth. Preliminary phases of
334 DEUTERONOMY

this casting down began during Christ’s ministry. “And the seventy
returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject
unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as
lightning fall from heaven” (Luke 10:17–18). The inal act of heav-
enly disinheritance was post-cruciixion.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against
the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; nei-
ther was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was
cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the
whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out
with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salva-
tion, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his
Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them
before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of
the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their
lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in
them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is
come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath
but a short time. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth,
he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child (Rev. 12:7–13;
emphasis added).

My point here is that the ancient world viewed reality as a su-

pernatural realm. Men, local gods, and the heavenly orbs interacted
in history. For example, the appearance of the star of Bethlehem
was noted by non-Jewish star-gazers. They also understood what it
meant: the birth of a long-prophesied king. They asked Herod:
“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star
in the east, and are come to worship him” (Matt. 2:2). With the end
of the Old Covenant, these cosmic relationships ceased. The fall of
Jerusalem in A.D. 70 completed the prophecies regarding stars fall-
ing from heaven: the end of the Old Covenant order and with it, the
Mosaic order, with its temple sacriices. Prior to A.D. 70, there were
good reasons to believe in connections between the heavens and
the earth. These reasons were covenantal, not astrological or astro-
nomical. Men were to acknowledge that God governs both heaven
and earth. The world is governed in terms of ethics, for God created the
world. The prophet Amos said: “Ye who turn judgment to worm-
wood, and leave of righteousness in the earth, Seek him that
maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 335

into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth
for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the
earth: The LORD is his name: That strengtheneth the spoiled against
the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. They
hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that
speaketh uprightly” (Amos 5:7–10).

Genocide as Deicide
The destruction of Canaan would necessarily involve the de-
struction of Canaan’s gods. A defeated army meant the defeat of the
army’s gods. This was the theology of Canaan and the nations
around Canaan. This was not biblical theology. A defeat of Israel on
the battleield would be a sanction against the nation for its unrigh-
teousness. The Israelites would be subjected militarily or carried
into captivity as God’s predictable sanction against national rebel-
lion, Moses repeatedly warned. This would not testify to God’s
weakness but to His sovereignty. The victors who thought otherwise
would be punished. “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory
hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that
toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake
mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and
ye shall know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me” (Zech. 2:8–9).
Only with the transfer of the kingdom’s inheritance to a new nation,
the church of Jesus Christ, would inal destruction come to Old
Covenant Israel. Jesus warned Israel’s leaders: “Therefore say I
unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given
to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). This was
an implied threat: the destruction of Israel except insofar as Israel
united covenantally with this new nation in terms of the New Cove-
nant (Rom. 11).
Canaanite culture was so evil in God’s sight that it had to be de-
stroyed. Israel would soon serve as God’s sanctions-bringer in history.
There was to be no mercy shown, because the evil of Canaanite cul-
ture was too great. To show mercy to the Canaanites would be the
equivalent of accepting the evils which they had practiced. It would
be a grant of mercy to their gods. This is why Moses demanded the
total annihilation of both men and idols.
By publicly removing the Canaanites from history, God would
demonstrate His wrath against evil. He had already partially done
this with Egypt. This partial destruction had terriied the Canaanites,
336 DEUTERONOMY

according to Rahab (Josh. 2:9–11). God had already done it com-

pletely with the Canaanite cultures beyond the Jordan: Arad and
Bashan.
The gods of the land of Canaan would become a snare to Israel.
The very survival of these gods would testify either to Israel’s mili-
tary weakness or God’s inability to bring to pass what He had prom-
ised to Abraham: full inheritance. Such military weakness would be
interpreted by Israel in terms of Canaanite theology: the partially
successful defense of Canaan’s old order against the new order of
Israel. That is, the gods of Canaan would be seen as possessing par-
tial sovereignty in history. The absolute sovereignty of God would
be understood by covenant-breaking Israelites as a myth because of
the very survival of Canaan’s gods and Canaan’s original residents.
In short, neither mercy nor military weakness was allowed to Israel
by God during this one-time conquest.
The gods of the ancient world were local gods: gods of the na-
tion, city, or family. These gods were said to rule within certain geo-
graphical boundaries. Their power was tied to geography and to the
rites practiced by their followers. Fustel wrote: “There was nothing
more sacred within the city than this altar, on which the sacred ire
was always maintained.” The perpetual ire on the altar became
central liturgically to Mosaic Israel (Lev. 6:13), but this had not been
true in pre-Mosaic covenant religion. Israel could exist and even
prosper without this altar, as the Assyrian-Babylonian captivity in-
dicated, but God did demand sacriice inside the land, and the al-
tar’s ire was basic to this requirement. In other ancient religions,
however, a break in the ire’s continuity was considered cata-
strophic. For example, any virgin who allowed Rome’s sacred ire
to go out in the temple of Vesta was buried alive as a sanction.
Israel was told to break down Canaan’s altars. There could be
no rival sacred ire in Israel – not in the home, the city, or anywhere
else. “Burn their groves with ire,” Moses said. These destructive
ires were not sacred ires. They were merely military acts. It did not
require a Mosaic priest to ojciate at the destruction of a sacred
Canaanite altar. So it would be for Israel in A.D. 70, when Roman
soldiers burned the temple. No priest ojciated.

The Spoils of War and Common Grace

The destruction of Canaan’s altars served as a representative de-
struction of Canaan’s culture. With the exception of Jericho, which had
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 337

to be completely destroyed, the economic capital of Canaan became

part of Israel’s inheritance. If the Israelites killed the Canaanites and
smashed their implements of worship, they were entitled to the spoils
of war.
This means that the products of a culture are not inherently
tainted by the ethics of that culture. This fact legitimizes trade. It is
neither ritually polluting nor immoral to exchange goods and ser-
vices with someone who practices a rival religion. The fact that a
Canaanite had created something of value as a testament to his own
faith or religious premises did not pollute the item he created unless
it was actually used in some cultic rite. Canaan’s sacred implements
were targeted for destruction, but the common implements of life
that testiied to the Canaanites’ view of the sacred became legitimate
spoils of war.
This points to a theological distinction between common grace
and special rebellion. The sacred groves of Canaan were in fact
unholy groves, i.e., profane groves in which covenant-breakers
transgressed God’s standards of righteous worship. The lawful
boundaries of God’s sacred worship had been violated repeatedly
in Canaan, which is why their groves were profane. Special rebel-
lion had polluted these groves so thoroughly that Israel had to
smash them. But the other aspects of Canaan’s culture – orchards,
houses, ields, etc. – were part of the realm of the common. They
were neither sacred nor profane. The realm of the common is analo-
gous to the trees of Eden, except for the forbidden tree and tree of
life after the Fall: open to all men without covenantal restriction.
Thus, the capital of Canaan, like the capital of Egypt, could become
part of Israel’s inheritance.
Common grace is deined as God’s unmerited gifts to men irre-
spective of their covenantal confessions. Men do not earn these
gifts, nor is God required to provide these gifts by anything other
than His autonomous choice. But by His healing common grace,
God enables men of many religious confessions to become produc-
tive. This productivity beneits mankind. But in the final analysis,
God does this for the sake of His people, who will progressively in-
herit the earth in history. If the saints do not inherit in history, then
the productivity and wealth of covenant-breakers must be supplied
by God primarily for the purpose of condemning them in eternity,
as Dives was condemned (Luke 16:19–25). Their very productivity
will condemn them: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him
338 DEUTERONOMY

shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much,

of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12:48b). There would there-
fore be no continuity between the process of inheritance and disin-
heritance in history and God’s declaration of inal inheritance and
disinheritance in eternity. The process of corporate covenantal
sanctions in history would then have nothing predictable to do with
the corporate sanctions in eternity: saved vs. lost. In short, the
bodily resurrection and ascension of Christ in history – positive
sanctions for His perfect covenant-keeping – would have nothing
predictable to do with the outcome of the Great Commission in his-
tory (Matt. 28:18–20).
The complete disinheritance of Canaan was God’s means of de-
stroying the works of unrighteous men. But rather than destroying
their capital assets, God destroyed them and the ritual implements
for worshipping their gods. Even in the unique case of Jericho’s as-
sets, the precious metals were to go to the temple (Josh. 6:19). The
special grace of God would thereby overcome the special rebellion
of Jericho.
Because of the extent of the rebellion of the Canaanites, Israel
could not lawfully enslave them. Canaanites were not allowed to re-
main inside the boundaries of the land. To have allowed this would
have meant allowing the continuing presence of agents of Canaan’s
local deities. They would become evangelists for a false religion. Be-
cause pagan religion was expressly a religion of the land, the mere
presence of Canaanites would testify falsely to the partial sover-
eignty of Canaan’s gods. Any assertion of the partial sovereignty of
any god except the Bible’s God is inescapably a denial of the reli-
gion of the Bible. Thus, the presence of Canaanites inside Israel’s
boundaries posed too great a threat for Israel to bear safely. The Is-
raelites would eventually interpret the mere presence of Canaanites
as a partial victory of Canaan’s gods over Moses’ God, rather than
blaming their own fears and their disobedience to God. Such a false
view of God would lead to Israel’s rebellion and false worship:
idolatry.
The trickery of the Gibeonites overcame this rule, but they be-
came slaves to the temple (Josh. 9:27). Individual Israelites could
not proit from the trickery of Gibeon; the Levites alone did. The
special grace of God overcame His declaration of genocide against
Gibeon, but the priestly tribe alone proited. The Gibeonites and
their labor did not become part of the common grace inheritance of
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 339

individual families outside of Levi. The Gibeonites’ labor would re-

duce the burdens on Levi, not the burdens of any other tribe.

The Rejection of Christendom

“And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and
burn their groves with ire; and ye shall hew down the graven im-
ages of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God” (vv. 3–4). The principle
here is obvious: mandated negative sanctions imposed against
Canaan’s gods; none against Him. To leave Canaan’s idols intact
was illegal; to impose negative sanctions on God’s ritual imple-
ments was also illegal. There could be no judicial equality between
God and Canaan’s deities. There was no judicial neutrality possible.
To assert the equality of Canaan’s gods with the God of the Bible was to as-
sert a world without the God of the Bible.
The twentieth-century West is pluralistic. It has been marked by
a functional atheism unknown in any previous society. Most people
say that they believe in a god of some kind. Only in the formerly
Communist, former East Germany is admitted atheism as high as 40
percent of the population. In the nations of Western Europe, those
who claim to be church members constitute no less than 58 percent
of the population (The Netherlands) and as high as 98 percent (Ire-
land). Yet only in Ireland is once-a-month church attendance as
high as 82 percent; the second-place country is Italy, at 36 percent.
Some 93 percent of Denmark’s population claim to be church mem-
bers, yet once-a-month church attendance is about 4 percent. In the
United Kingdom, it is 11 percent; France is 13 percent; Spain is 14
percent; Germany is 21 percent.
The United States has higher attendance: in 1990, 40 percent of
those surveyed claimed to have attended religious services within
the previous week, although the only streets that experience trajc
jams on Sunday mornings are those located close to stadiums dur-
ing professional football season. Many Americans surveyed proba-
bly lied about their recent attendance, but at least they believed that
they should have attended. These percentages have stayed constant
for three decades. But in 1776, in what was then regarded as an in-
tensely Christian society, only 17 percent of the American popula-
tion were church members. This doubled to 34 percent by 1850 as a
result of the revival known as the Second Great Awakening. It climbed
to half the population by 1900. Demands on church members declined
340 DEUTERONOMY

throughout the nineteenth century, and have continued to decline.

Parallelling this increase in church membership has been the pro-
gressive secularization of American society.
Operationally, the public institutions of the West are atheistic.
The State is ojcially neutral religiously in the United States, and the
State demands sacriice of 40 percent or more of the citizenry’s in-
come. In Western European nations, what passes for tax-funded
Christianity is theological liberalism, which is humanism in clerical
robes. God’s name has been publicly disenfranchised. The ideal of
Christian civilization – Christendom – is ridiculed by Christians and
humanists alike as theocratic oppression, “medievalism,” and
“triumphalism.” Professed religious neutrality is the civil order of
the day. Civil neutrality has been a myth highly useful to humanists
in the early stages of their iniltration and transformation of Chris-
tian society.
The only alternative to Christian triumphalism is Christian
defeatism, but “defeatism” is word avoided like the plague by the es-
chatological defeatists who publicly ridicule triumphalism. Conser-
vative theological seminaries universally reject postmillennialism’s
triumphalism. In this, they are joined by the humanists, who govern
the present “neutral” social order. It is as if the leaders of Mosaic Is-
rael had joined political forces with the leaders of Canaanite society
in order to create a common pluralist civil order. This pluralist-
syncretist impulse was exactly what Moses warned against. It always
means the defeat of God’s people and their political subservience to
His enemies.
There is no legitimate confessional neutrality. There is no perma-
nent common confession in history between Christ and antichrist. “He
that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me
scattereth abroad” (Matt. 12:30). There is no middle ground between
Christian social defeatism and Christian social triumphalism. There
is therefore no permanent eschatological neutrality. Eschatology
cannot legitimately be dismissed as an aspect of adiaphora: things
indiferent to the faith. But this is not believed by the vast majority of
those who call themselves evangelical Christians today. In the name
of both amillennialism and premillennialism, the ancient ideal of
Christendom is dismissed as impossible in history and therefore ille-
gitimate as a goal.
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 341

The Kingdom of God, Sort Of

Pessimillennial pietists assert such incoherent judicial state-
ments as this one: “But the Kingdom of God is a rule, not a realm.”
What does this mean? It means that there is no biblically revealed law of
God worth enforcing by the State solely on the basis of its status as biblically
revealed. The kingdom of God supposedly has neither a uniquely
biblical civil law nor appropriate civil sanctions. This means that
God is on permanent leave as king in history. A king with no realm
is not a king; he is merely: 1) an abdicated monarch; 2) a publicly re-
jected monarch who used to have a realm; or 3) a would-be mon-
arch without enough dedicated followers to enforce his claim. This
means that “Thus saith the Lord!” is judicially irrelevant unless it is
accompanied by “Thus saith religiously neutral common-ground
logic.” The god of such a confessionally neutral civil realm is
self-proclaimed autonomous man. Anyone who asserts that “reli-
gious neutrality is a myth” without concluding that “political plural-
ism is therefore equally a myth” is sufering from self-delusion and
confusion on a crippling scale.
Pessimillennial pietists assert a two-stage kingdom of God: to-
day’s exclusively internal, spiritual manifestation of God’s kingdom
– “for Christians only” – and an exclusively future comprehensive
kingdom, when Jesus will come back to rule over His presently non-
existent realm. They write such things as this: “. . . Jesus spoke about
a Kingdom that had come and a Kingdom that was still to come –
one Kingdom in two stages. . . . The second stage, which will take
place when Christ returns, will assert God’s rule over all the uni-
verse; His kingdom will be visible without imperfection.”6 The au-
thors are telling us in no uncertain terms that there is no judicial,
confessional, and civilizational continuity in history between the irst stage
and the second stage of God’s kingdom.
In the irst stage, God supposedly has no realm. His people must
therefore content themselves throughout history with life in the con-
fessional equivalent of pre-Mosaic Canaan. They live today in what
is fast becoming a new Sodom, yet they seek to persuade each other
that all we need to do today is to restore the social order of Ur of the
Chaldees. If this blindness continues, they will eventually ind

6. Charles Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn, Kingdoms in Conflict (New York: William
Morrow, 1987), pp. 84, 85.
342 DEUTERONOMY

themselves, as Lot found himself, crying out to Sodomites: “Behold

now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I
pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in
your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they
under the shadow of my roof” (Gen. 19:8). Like Lot, they naively
believe that their homes somehow possess a widely acknowledged
immunity from social evil in today’s common-confession civil or-
der. They think that a common-confession State will protect their
rights as confessional Christians in the family and the church. But
the humanist State is at war with the Christian family and the Chris-
tian church. The State demands subservience by the family and the
church. This was also true in the Roman Empire, which is why the
war between Christianity and pagan Rome was absolute: a war to
the death.
Christians today believe in the possibility of a permanent com-
mon civil confession between Christianity and humanism. In its
more insightful moments, modern evangelicalism prophesies a
coming revival of Roman Empire-like tyranny. This was Francis
Schaefer’s point in How Should We Then Live? (1976). In fact, he
thought that the coming “imposed order” might be worse than
Rome’s. As an alternative, he called for a return to the Bible, not as a
utilitarian solution to cultural problems, but as a moral requirement.
“It means the acceptance of Christ as Savior and Lord, and it means
living under God’s revelation.” But as a consistent premillennialist,
he had never accepted the theocratic ideal of Christendom for the
era prior to the millennium. The best that Christians can legiti-
mately hope for, he said, is minority status. “Such Christians do not
need to be a majority in order for this inluence on society to occur.”7
This made no sense, given his premillennial eschatology. His
book and his ilm series surveyed the systematic growth of religious
self-consciousness on the part of non-Christians in the West: their
dedication to removing every trace of Christian inluence. The se-
ries began with a section on the persecution of Christians by the
Roman Empire. There is no doubt as to what he privately thought
must come: something far worse for the Church, namely, the Great
Tribulation. But he was not willing to admit forthrightly to his ilm

7. Francis A. Schaefer, How Should We Then Live? (Tappan, New Jersey: Revell, 1976),
p. 252.
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 343

audience and to his readers that this was the underlying eschato-
logical presupposition of his life’s work. This was why his work was
not a call to explicitly Christian social action but a survey of what
the Church has given up; not an explicitly biblical blueprint for so-
cial and cultural reconstruction but a cataloguing of Christendom’s
surrender and hand-wringing disguised as an intellectual’s cultural
critique; not a call for the progressive establishment of God’s king-
dom on earth in history but a program of religious common-ground
anti-abortion politics – yet somehow in the name of a non-utilitarian
Christianity. He forthrightly denied the legitimacy of a confessional
Christian nation.

In the Old Testament there was a theocracy commanded by God. In

the New Testament, with the church being made up of Jews and Gentiles,
and spreading all over the known world from India to Spain in one genera-
tion, the church was its own entity. There is no New Testament basis for a
linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole
“Constantine mentality” from the fourth century up to our day was a mis-
take. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of
Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to
the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the ojcial state religion.
Making Christianity the ojcial state religion opened the way for confusion
up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when
this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the
centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loy-
alty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.

We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it
another way: “We should not wrap Christianity in our national lag.”8

What he really meant, of course, is that we should not wrap our na-
tion in Christianity’s lag. But every nation must be wrapped in some
religious lag. There is no religious or ethical neutrality, after all. So,
we must ask ourselves, what lag did Francis Schaefer prefer that we
wrap our nation in? He never said, but since there is no neutrality,
there will always be a lag (i.e., a public symbol of political sover-
eignty). It lies high today in the name of neutrality, lapping over

8. Frances Schaefer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, Illinios: Crossway, 1981), p. 121.

344 DEUTERONOMY

the public school system. It lies high every time a nation defaults
from an explicit religion. That lag is the lag of secular humanism.
Jesus is described by Colson as a “King Without a Country.”
Yet this is hardly what Jesus announced: “Therefore say I unto you,
The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation
bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). Jesus has a country:
His church. This universal country is supposed to permeate every
country on earth, bringing them all under covenantal subordination
to Jesus Christ: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost” (Matt. 28:19). One piece of evidence of such national subor-
dination is the Trinitarian confession of the nation’s civil covenant.
Because Christians have ceased to believe this, they have allowed
and then promoted the substitution of other oaths and other cove-
nants, but always in the name of a purer, higher, and more mature
Christianity.

Kingdom Oath
The ideal of Christendom is out of favor today. Christendom is
the cultural manifestation of the Trinitarian kingdom of God, a so-
cial order founded on a confession of faith in the Trinitarian God of
the Bible. The rejection of the legitimacy of the visible kingdom of
God – and, by implication, of the Great Commission which under-
lies it – is universal, even inside the churches. The universal com-
mitment today is to political pluralism and the ideal of a religiously
oath-less civil order. But there are always oaths; the question is: To
which god? The God of the Bible or some rival god?
The most popular rival god today is the State. Men must swear
allegiance to the State and its constitution, not to God and His Bible,
when they seek or conirm their citizenship in today’s “neutral”
societies. Christian evangelicals accept this arrangement as both
normal and normative. Yet there has never been a single treatise
written by any Bible-ajrming Protestant Christian apologist for
pluralism that shows how the Bible’s required sanctions against false
worship are consistent with political pluralism, i.e., a common civil
oath. Christians speak today in defense of pluralism as if such a gen-
eral treatise had been written three centuries ago, with dozens of
monographs and textbooks following it through the centuries. They
act as though the civil religion of political pluralism is consistent
with – an extension of – the Bible. It never occurs to them that
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 345

political pluralism is a form of polytheism: equal time for all reli-

gions in civil afairs, equal time for all law-orders, equal time for cov-
enant- breakers and the gods they represent. The god of the State
then is elevated to the throne of civil power. This god banishes all
gods whose spokesmen do not acknowledge his sovereignty in his-
tory. Christian pluralism’s assertion of “equal time for Jesus” then
becomes humanism’s “no time for Jesus.” The Christians’ cries of
“Unfair!” accomplish nothing politically signiicant. There is no neu-
trality. There can be no covenant between Christ and Satan. But
Christ’s spokesmen for over three centuries have insisted that there
is such a covenant in the civil realm. The result has been exactly
what Moses said it would be: the cultural displacement of biblical reli-
gion by its enemies. The Trinitarians assent to a surrender to the civil
confession of the unitarians; then both groups surrender to the civil
confession of the humanists. Christians then ind themselves in the
absurd position of having to call for a restoration of the defunct
common-ground unitarian confession in the name of traditional
civil liberty. The humanists laugh in derision, having long since ab-
sorbed the unitarians into their ranks. The supposedly naked public
square is in fact fully clothed in the clerical robes of humanism.

Genocide and Economic Inheritance

The annihilation of Canaan’s population and the destruction of
Canaan’s implements of worship were mandated by God in order
to demonstrate His absolute sovereignty. The Canaanites had re-
belled long enough. Their evil had compounded too far for God to
tolerate it any longer. Their cup of iniquity was full (Gen. 15:16). In
terms of the pagan theology of the ancient world, the continuing tol-
eration of Canaan would have constituted God’s incomplete victory
over His rival gods, i.e., His limited sovereignty. In terms of Moses’
warning, Israel’s toleration of Canaanites would have meant that
His people were playing the harlot, or would soon do so, with the
gods of Canaan. Showing mercy to Canaanites would represent an
ethical failure on Israel’s part, not any sharing of sovereignty be-
tween God and the gods of Canaan.
Genocide was required inside the boundaries of the Promised
Land because the Israelites were spiritually weak. If the Canaanites
remained in the land, the Israelites would be lured into the power
religions of Canaan, just as they had been lured into the worship of
the golden calf. Inside the land’s boundaries, the Canaanites had
346 DEUTERONOMY

claimed sovereignty for their local gods. This claim had to be visibly
refuted by Israel’s annihilation of the Canaanites. For Israel to in-
herit the Promised Land, the Canaanites had to be disinherited. So
did the gods of Canaan and the theology of Canaan. The dominion
religion had to overcome the power religion by military action this
one time. The spiritual vulnerability of Israel had to be ofset by a
complete military victory.
But such was not to be. They were too weak spiritually to im-
pose God’s negative sanctions completely. They did not totally an-
nihilate the Canaanites. As Moses prophesied, Israel then fell back
into sin and idolatry. The incomplete military victory of the Book of
Joshua was followed by the repeated military defeats of the Book of
Judges. The Israelites imposed incomplete military sanctions
against Canaan; their enemies outside the land subsequently im-
posed far more complete military sanctions against the Israelites.
From this bondage the judges repeatedly delivered them.
This requirement of annihilation did not apply to the economic
assets of Canaan, which could be claimed by the Israelites as part of
their inheritance: the spoils of war. Canaan’s capital was the product
of false local religions, but it was also part of the general dominion
covenant: mankind’s mandatory subduing of the earth (Gen. 1:26).
The more general dominion covenant took precedence over the
special rebellion of Canaan. Only those highly specialized capital
goods that were expressly designed for false worship came under
the ban. With the exception of the precious metals of Jericho, which
were set aside for the tabernacle (Josh. 6:24), even the gold and sil-
ver implements of Canaan’s worship could be claimed by the con-
quering Israelites, though obviously not in the form of idols. Melted
down – transformed from speciic to general economic uses – the
precious metals of Canaanite religion could become the lawful in-
heritance of the Israelites. Here was another reason to burn the
groves of Canaan: Israelites could lawfully coniscate any gold and
silver. The common grace of God, as seen in the lawful use of
Canaan’s precious metals, added an incentive for the special judg-
ment of God against the special rebellion of Canaan.

Conclusion
The annihilation of Canaan was to be a one-time event. Other
rules of war applied to nations outside the boundaries of Canaan
(Deut. 20). God did not require that the names of gods outside the
 Common Grace and Legitimate Inheritance 347

land not be mentioned. The focus of God’s concern was Canaan

and its gods. After the exile, the inheritance pattern of the jubilee
year was to be extended to gentiles living in the land at the time of
Israel’s return (Ezek. 47:22–23). The law was altered because the
conditions had altered. Never again would Israel be tempted to
worship the gods of Canaan, for the authority represented by those
gods had been totally vanquished by the invading empires. Never
again did Israel worship the gods of Canaan.
The New Testament does not authorize either genocide or the
elimination of the mention of the names of other gods. The civil is-
sue in the New Testament is political sanctions, not military sanc-
tions. The legitimate possession of the civil authority to declare and
enforce God’s law is sujcient for covenant-keepers: sanctions by
Trinitarian oath. The names of other gods may be spoken. The rele-
vant covenantal question is: Whose name do citizens invoke in the
civil oath? In other words, by whose name are civil sanctions invoked?
Here, no neutrality is possible. The quest for such neutrality is the
quest for political polytheism.
 30
Communal Meals and National
COMMUNAL MEALS ANDIncorporation
NATIONAL INCORPORATION

But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all
your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek,
and thither thou shalt come: And thither ye shall bring your burnt
oferings, and your sacriices, and your tithes, and heave oferings of your
hand, and your vows, and your freewill oferings, and the irstlings of your
herds and of your locks: And there ye shall eat before the LORD your God,
and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your
households, wherein the LORD thy God hath blessed thee. Ye shall not do
after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right
in his own eyes. But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which
the LORD your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth you rest from all
your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; . . .(Deut. 12:5–10).

God’s name was to be placed publicly on Israelite society. Here

is the theocentric focus of this law: God as the owner of Israel. God
was to become central to the life of the nation. This shared confes-
sion would unify the nation. The unity of Israel was grounded in the
unity of God (Deut. 6:4). At the same time, the plurality of Israel was
grounded in the plural nature of God (Gen. 1:26; 11:7). This plural-
ity was to serve as the basis of Israel’s system of tribal localism and
political decentralization. Israel, like God, was to be both one and
many.

An Anti-Polytheistic Land Law

Canaan was a polytheistic culture. Israel was monotheistic,
though not unitarian. God is plural in His unity. “Let us make man

348
 Communal Meals and National Incorporation 349

in our image” (Gen. 1:26a). “Go to, let us go down, and there con-
found their language” (Gen. 11:7a). This language is dismissed by
unitarians as a so-called “plural of majesty,” meaning unitarian maj-
esty. On the contrary, such language announced early and emphati-
cally that God is plural, which is why He is majestic. The persons of
the Trinity operate as the ultimate team.
The equal ultimacy of unity and plurality in the Godhead is the
ontological foundation of man’s incorporation: the coming together
of many in a display of unity. Canaanitic culture was pluralistic be-
cause it was polytheistic. There was no single place of sacriice and
celebration in Canaan. The cities worshipped diferent gods. Ca-
naan was not incorporated as a unitary social order. City by city, so-
ciety by society, Israel captured the land. Altar by altar, the gods of
Canaan fell. Canaanite society possessed no sacriicial unity. Di-
vided, it fell.
Moses warned Israel that a new order would soon be incorpo-
rated in Canaan: uniied nation, uniied confession, uniied celebra-
tions. Israelites would henceforth be required to journey to a central
location to eat their sacriicial meals. These common meals would
mark the end of Israel’s pilgrimage. The feasts would be celebrated
familistically and nationally, not tribally. The dozen tribes had no
covenantal function during the national feasts. The Levites would
ojciate at the celebrations; the other tribes would have no role. The
tribes could not become what the cities of Canaan were: separate
centers of formal worship, each with its own god. This pointed
clearly to the centrality of worship rather than the centrality of politics
as the basis of national incorporation.
The great sin of Jeroboam was not his political secession from
national Israel, which God imposed as a punishment on King
Rehoboam for his ruthless increase in taxation (I Ki. 12:14–15). Je-
roboam’s great sin was his creation of a new priesthood and new
places of worship, which constituted idolatry (vv. 15–33). Jero-
boam’s motive was political. He interpreted Israel’s unity in terms
of politics. “If this people go up to do sacriice in the house of the
LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto
their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill
me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah” (v. 27). This was a
politician’s assessment of covenantal unity. He reimposed the multi-
ple worship centers that had prevailed in pre-Mosaic Canaan:
“Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold,
350 DEUTERONOMY

and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: be-
hold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan”
(vv. 28–29). It was this which God had expressly prohibited: “Take
heed to thyself that thou ofer not thy burnt oferings in every place
that thou seest: But in the place which the LORD shall choose in one
of thy tribes, there thou shalt ofer thy burnt oferings, and there
thou shalt do all that I command thee” (Deut. 12:13–14). Jeroboam
abolished central worship because he regarded politics as above
worship, whether in Jerusalem or in his newly established Northern
Kingdom. His idolatry was political. This is covenant-breaking
man’s perpetual temptation: to elevate politics over worship, the
kingdom of man over the kingdom of God.
God withered Jeroboam’s hand when the new king attempted
to bring sanctions against a prophet who condemned the new wor-
ship (I Ki. 13:4). The king then begged the prophet to restore his
hand, which he did. Then the king invited him to share a meal with
him. “And the man of God said unto the king, If thou wilt give me
half thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread
nor drink water in this place: For so was it charged me by the word
of the LORD, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by
the same way that thou camest” (vv. 8–9). Jeroboam fully under-
stood the covenantal function of shared meals. So did the prophet,
who refused to eat what was obviously a political meal in the pres-
ence of the king. He refused to sanctify Jeroboam’s political idolatry.1

Lawful Administrators
There would be blessings in the Promised Land, Moses said.
The main blessing would be land; the secondary blessing would be
peace; the tertiary blessing would be wealth. These positive sanc-
tions were to be accompanied by sacriice. “But when ye go over
Jordan, and dwell in the land which the LORD your God giveth you
to inherit, and when he giveth you rest from all your enemies round

1. In the United States, politicians occasionally meet with religious leaders of all faiths at
“prayer breakfasts.” These events are held mainly for the beneit of the politicians, who
thereby deflect public criticism by those religious leaders in attendance and also by others
who naively interpret these events as in some way holy. These are common grace events that
solidify support for political polytheism.
 Communal Meals and National Incorporation 351

about, so that ye dwell in safety; Then there shall be a place which

the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there;
thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt oferings, and
your sacriices, your tithes, and the heave ofering of your hand, and all
your choice vows which ye vow unto the LORD” (Deut. 12:10–11).
The required national sacriice included a shared meal or series
of shared meals. “And ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God,
ye, and your sons, and your daughters, and your menservants, and
your maidservants, and the Levite that is within your gates; foras-
much as he hath no part nor inheritance with you” (v. 12). The focus
of the national celebration was familial, but the Levite, as a member
of the ecclesiastical tribe, was to be invited into these family festi-
vals. His tribe was in charge of the covenantal sacriices; he was
therefore entitled to share in the familial celebration.
We see here three blessings: land, peace, and bread. The land
was administered by families; peace was administered by civil gov-
ernment; bread was administered ecclesiastically. I use the word
“administered” here covenantally: an oath-bound minister of God
who allocates the assets under his lawful jurisdiction. He acts as
God’s steward or trustee. What is signiicant here is this: bread is
covenantally ecclesiastical, not familial. Families owned the land that
produced the grain that made bread-making possible, but the
priestly tribe had primary claim on the bread. They were lawfully
entitled to a tenth of the land’s net output (Num. 18:21). This is be-
cause they administered the sacriices. So, the Levites were the ad-
ministrators – the representative agents – over the bread of the
nation.2 Their God-given legal claim on a token payment marked
them as the source of bread in the land. They represented God
when they collected the families’ tithes. They acted in God’s name
and on His behalf. “And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed
of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’S: it is holy unto the
LORD” (Lev. 27:30). The land was administered by families, but the
church had the fundamental legal claim over the output of the land:
bread. The Levites therefore had to be invited in by families to share

2. Joseph served as Egypt’s priest when he allocated grain and bread in Egypt. He was
Egypt’s administrator over bread. Joseph in efect had replaced Egypt’s chief baker, who had
been executed two years earlier, as Joseph had prophesied in prison (Gen. 40:22).
352 DEUTERONOMY

in the familial meals during the communal sacriices. The Levites

had first claim on these meals.
It is imperative that we understand that the Levites’ legal claim
to a tenth of every family’s bread was not based on the social ser-
vices which they provided.3 It was based on their lawful administra-
tion of the sacriices. As evidence, consider the fact that they did not
have to be invited in to share a family meal back home. Their lawful
claim to participation in the families’ meals existed only during the
national festivals, which centered around the sacriicial lame of the
altar.

Local and National Incorporation

The Levites were spread across the nation. They lived in cities
inside every tribe’s jurisdiction. Israel’s families were told to share
their meals with “the Levite that is within your gates” (v. 12). This in-
dicates that a local Levite journeyed to the central location alongside
residents of his region. The local Levite joined with local families to
share meals in a distant city. The tribal bond no longer functioned in
the place of sacriice. The national geographical bond did.
The tribes maintained a separate legal existence. They had
inluence over families through the laws of landed inheritance
(Lev. 25). They had inluence over geography because of the same
laws of inheritance. They defended their own land. This meant that
civil jurisdiction – bearing the sword – was in the hands of tribal
captains. In this sense, Israelite tribal law mirrored the Canaanite
system. What distinguished Israel from Canaan institutionally was its
common theological confession, including the mark of circumcision,
and common national celebrations. First, confession: “Hear, O Is-
rael: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deut. 6:4). Second, common
national celebrations, which are the focus of this passage. Common
theological confession bound Israel to one God by oath. Common

3. On this point, Rushdoony is dangerously wrong. He sees their claim as based on their
role as providers of social services. He insists that families administered the tithe by allocating
it to the representatives they deemed God’s best servants. He wrote in 1979, “What we must
do is, irst, to tithe, and, second, to allocate our tithe to godly agencies. Godly agencies means
far more than the church.” R. J. Rushdoony and Edward A. Powell, Tithing and Dominion
(Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1979), p. 9. For a detailed critique of Rushdoony’s
ecclesiology, which centers on his view of the allocation of the tithe, see Gary North, Tithing
and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Part 2.
 Communal Meals and National Incorporation 353

celebrations bound Israel to one God by eating. The celebrations

imposed an economic loss: costs of making the journey and any
oferings. They also involved economic gains to those who were
normally not included in family celebrations: the local Levites.
The overwhelming majority of the costs associated with na-
tional incorporation were ecclesiastically imposed. The costs of the
journey, the sacriicial oferings, and the shared meals were all im-
posed by laws regulating ecclesiastical sacriices. Families were
bound to the nation by means of theological confession and com-
mon sacriice, which involved a journey to a common location. At
the center of Israel covenantally were an implied ecclesiastical oath
(circumcision), an altar, and the Ark of the Covenant, which con-
tained the tables of the law (Deut. 31:26). None of these centralizing
features of Israelite society was uniquely tribal.
The incorporation of the one and the many in Israel was both
confessional and ecclesiastical. Mosaic civil law was enforced pri-
marily by tribal units of government, but neither the civil law nor its
required negative sanctions had its origin in tribal civil govern-
ments. Because civil law enforcement was administered primarily
by tribal governments in Mosaic Israel, this means that the unifying
forces of Mosaic Israel were not primarily civil. The tribes were subordi-
nate to the nation, but the nation was constituted by theological confes-
sion and maintained by ecclesiastical sacriice. The authority of these
two foundations of incorporation was ajrmed economically: losses
imposed by the costs of centralized worship. The tithe was paid lo-
cally to local agents of the cross-boundary national tribe: Levi. The
mandated national celebrations required the participation of local
Levites as guests at the family meals.
This law applied to all other holy oferings and sacriices, which
could not be lawfully ofered in the local community (Deut. 12:17–18).
The Levites would always possess legal access to the family’s com-
munion meals in the city of sacriice. “Take heed to thyself that thou
forsake not the Levite as long as thou livest upon the earth” (v. 19).
To refuse the Levite was to invite excommunication, and with it, the
loss of citizenship.

Intermediating Authorities
One of the fundamental themes in Western political theory
and also social theory has been the debate over the legitimacy of
intermediary institutions. Conservative political theory ever since
354 DEUTERONOMY

Edmund Burke’s Relections on the Revolution in France (1790) has ap-

pealed to local units of civil government as possessing lawful author-
ity. At least in theory, local units of civil government are supposed
to be the most important except during a war. Radical political the-
ory has ajrmed the opposite ever since Jean Jacques Rousseau’s So-
cial Contract (1762): the bond that unites men is their political
participation in a unitary national State, which incorporates the
General Will of the people. In between the national State and the in-
dividual there is no legitimate realm of independent civil authority.4
This debate over political theory has been parallelled in social
theory. A consistent follower of Rousseau denies the legitimacy of
any claim to independent authority made by non-civil, intermedi-
ary institutions generally, not just local or regional civil govern-
ments. In contrast, a consistent follower of Burke ajrms superior
authority of local non-civil institutions – family, church, voluntary
association – over the claims of the State, especially the national
State, outside of narrowly circumscribed areas of civil authority. In-
dependent, decentralized social institutions are viewed as a neces-
sary restraint on illegitimate State power.5
With the unexpected, overnight, non-violent collapse of the So-
viet Union in August of 1991, the victors in the West’s two-century
debate have been the secular conservatives and secular nineteenth-
century liberals, whose economic theories of decentralized private
ownership have always paralleled Burke’s defense of political and
social decentralization.6 It took over two centuries for the debate be-
tween Burke and Rousseau to be concluded in the West. The mani-
fest failure of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s central
economic planning at long last persuaded the West’s intellectuals of
the worthlessness of Communism, both as an economic system and

4. Robert A. Nisbet, “Rousseau and the Political Community,” in Nisbet, Tradition and
Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays (New York: Random House, 1968), ch. 1.
5. Robert A. Nisbet, Conservatism: Dream and Reality (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 34–46.
6. Adam Smith and Edmund Burke respected each other’s opinions. Burke had read and
adopted Smith’s economics, while Smith is said to have commented: “Burke is the only man I
ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do without any previous
communication having passed between us.” Cited in Isaac Kramnick (ed.), Edmund Burke
(Englewood-Clifs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 100. The same quotation appears in
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Santayana (rev. ed.; Chicago: Regnery,
1954), p. 19.
 Communal Meals and National Incorporation 355

a political system. Nevertheless, seven decades of Communist ter-

rorism had not persuaded most of them of the utter illegitimacy of
Communism as an ideology. As long as Western intellectuals be-
lieved that Communism was making suficient economic progress
to maintain its machinery of terrorism, most of them refused to
voice more than occasional token objections to Soviet Commu-
nism’s barbarism.7 Many of them respected the power that such bar-
barism conferred on Communism’s rulers. Western intellectuals
believe in State power as the primary means of transforming soci-
ety. This is why they abandoned respect for Communism without a
blink after 1991. Stripped of their power, the Communists were
stripped of their legitimacy in the humanistic West. The Western in-
tellectuals’ much-beloved Premier Gorbachev disappeared over-
night, only to surface two years later as the head of a heavily
endowed non-profit foundation promoting world government for
the sake of ecology. This Red had turned into a Green.8 He had be-
come a Western intellectual, devoid of personal power. So, nobody
in authority pays much attention to him.9
There was a reason for the intellectuals’ overnight dismissal of
Communism. For two centuries, all but a few of them have wor-
shipped at the altar of pragmatic economic growth. Communism
was “the god that failed” for only a handful of Western intellectu-
als.10 It was never a god for most of them. Economic pragmatism re-
mains their god. This god is now seen as having brought negative
corporate sanctions against the god of Communism. Western intel-
lectuals today blandly dismiss Communism as merely a failed
scientiic experiment that happened to cost well over 100 million

7. Jean-Francois Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information
(New York: Random House, [1988] 1991).
8. He was the political leader who had long ignored warnings from Russian engineers
regarding the unsafe status of Chernobyl-type nuclear reactors, and who was in charge when
the 1986 Chernobyl disaster took place. This has all been politely ignored by the Western
intellectuals.
9. When he ran for president in Russia in 1996, he received so few votes that his
candidacy was not statistically visible. Boris Yeltsin, his old antagonist, was elected over a
Communist who no longer called himself a Communist. The ex-Communists had no further
use for a loser like Gorbachev in 1996, just ive years after his removal from ojce.
10. The phrase comes from a 1949 collection of essays by ex-Communist liberals and
socialists: The God That Failed, edited by Richard H. Crossman. This was the only variety of
anti-Communism that was taught on college campuses until the 1980’s.
356 DEUTERONOMY

lives – a noble experiment, a few of them might say in private, but

now passé.11 Their pragmatic god is still on his throne in their
hearts, dispensing blessings and cursings.
Mosaic law had elements of both Burke and Rousseau. There is
no question that intermediary institutions played a major role in
Mosaic civil law, for the tribal civil governments were the primary
agencies of law enforcement. This was Burkean. So was the Mosaic
law’s devaluation of civil government compared to family and ec-
clesiastical governments. The Mosaic law’s system of national
sacriices and festivals was a unique mixture of familism and central-
ized representation. This representation was ecclesiastical rather
than civil. Intermediary civil institutions (tribes) had no covenantal
role to play in the Mosaic law’s reconciliation of the one and the
many through national incorporation. People participated at the na-
tional festivals either as family members or as priests. The priests
had a lawful claim on the families’ culinary rites of celebration:
meals. Indeed, the common meal was the rite of reconciliation: be-
tween man and God, family and priesthood. The State had no
covenantal role to play here; neither did the tribe.

Conclusion
The reconciliation of the one and the many is the Trinity. This
reconciliation was relected in the communal rites of Mosaic Israel.
The meals were mandated national celebrations that involved eco-
nomic sacriice. Families journeyed to a common location marked
of from the rest of Israel by the presence of the altar and the Ark.
Participation in the rites of celebration was secured by theological
confession, which in turn was marked by circumcision. A common
theological confession uniied the nation under the Mosaic law’s

11. Felix Somary records in his autobiography a discussion he had with the economist
Joseph Schumpeter and the sociologist Max Weber in 1918. Schumpeter expressed
happiness regarding the Russian Revolution. The USSR would be a test case for socialism.
Weber warned that this would cause untold misery. Schumpeter replied: “That may well be,
but it would be a good laboratory.” Weber responded: “A laboratory heaped with human
corpses!” Schumpeter retorted: “Every anatomy classroom is the same thing.” Felix Somary,
The Raven of Zurich (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986), p. 121. I am indebted to Mark Skousen for
this reference.
The USSR became what Schumpeter predicted, an anatomy classroom illed with corpses,
but with this variation: unlike medical classrooms, the USSR killed people to gain its huge
supply of corpses. So did Red China. So did Marxist Cambodia.
 Communal Meals and National Incorporation 357

covenantal sanctions: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one

LORD” (Deut. 6:4). Common meals in a common place also uniied the
nation under the Mosaic law’s covenantal sanctions.
The nation secured its incorporation through confession and
eating. The church does the same. The centrality of confession and
communion in Mosaic Israel should be obvious. It was not only a civil
oath that bound the nation (Ex. 19), but also an ecclesiastical oath. The
Mosaic law mandated national festivals, once Israel inherited the
land of Canaan. The inheritance was secured by means of military
sanctions, but it was to be maintained by non-military sanctions. It
was secured by civil action, but was to be maintained by ecclesiasti-
cal action. Israel fought as tribal units but celebrated nationally as
family units made holy by two things: a journey to the place of the
altar and the presence of Levites at family meals. The national cele-
bration imposed economic losses on families.
Enlightenment political theory has substituted civil confession
for theological confession as the basis of establishing national incor-
poration. It has substituted voting for eating as the basis of maintain-
ing national incorporation. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, from
Locke to Madison, the message was the same: national incorpora-
tion is by civil oath alone. What is astounding is that this Enlighten-
ment confession is regarded by Protestants and most Catholics as a
statement of Christian principles. The enemies of Christianity have
triumphed over Christianity in the civil realm because they have
persuaded Christians of the illegitimacy of Trinitarian confession as
the basis of national incorporation. The result has been the substitu-
tion of massive taxation for the tithe, bread and circuses for bread
and wine. This is the empire’s familiar pattern of development,
from the Roman Empire to all the other evil empires that seek to re-
vive it. They will all perish, to be replaced in history by a common
kingdom that is established by Trinitarian confession and main-
tained by communion meals eaten in the presence of ecclesiastical
authorities. This thought is, of course, distressing news for Enlight-
enment political theorists and their spokesmen inside the churches
and Christian college classrooms.
 31
Disinheriting Canaan’s
DISINHERITING CANAAN’S Gods
GODS

When the LORD thy God shall cut of the nations from before thee,
whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest
in their land; Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following
them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire
not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so
will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every
abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods;
for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the ire to their
gods (Deut. 12:29–31).

The Book of Deuteronomy is illed with passages that warned

the Israelites not to name the names of the gods of Canaan, not to
adopt their rituals, not to have anything to do with them. These
were all land laws. So was this one. The theocentric focus of this law
is God’s determination to destroy all rivals. Just as He was planning
to disinherit the gods of Canaan, so would He disinherit Israel if she
played the harlot with those gods.
This law should be seen as an aspect of the ifth point of the cov-
enant: inheritance-disinheritance. In fact, this law is the very heart
of point ive: God’s disinheritance of all rival gods. This is the model for
point ive. The fundamental theme of the Bible, from Genesis to
Revelation, is this: the transition from wrath to grace. But there is no
such transition for the fallen angels who joined Satan in his rebel-
lion. For them there is no hope of redemption. Though they mas-
querade as gods, they know that they will be cut of at the end of
history. For them, the transition is from wrath to greater wrath.
They receive God’s common grace in history: unearned gifts of life,

358
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 359

1
power, a cause-and-efect universe, and inluence over men. But
their end is sure: destruction. They will be disinherited in eternity.

Disinheritance in History
The question is: Will Satan be representatively disinherited in his-
tory? That is, will his human disciples be disinherited? The Book of
Deuteronomy is surely the testament of inheritance for God and His
people. Is it also a testament of disinheritance for the gods of
Canaan and their people? In principle, yes. The Israelites were told
by God to spare neither the idols nor the inhabitants of Canaan.
“And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God
shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither
shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee” (Deut.
7:16). But God told Moses at the end of the book that they would
not obey God in this genocidal assignment. “And the LORD said
unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this peo-
ple will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of
the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me,
and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my an-
ger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake
them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be de-
voured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they
will say in that day. Are not these evils come upon us, because our
God is not among us? And I will surely hide my face in that day for
all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they are turned
unto other gods” (Deut. 31:16–18).
This rebellion would recapitulate the Fall of Adam: the transition
from grace to wrath. This transition was endemic for Israel until the
time that God removed the kingdom from Israel and transferred it
to the church: deinitively at the resurrection, progressively in New
Testament church history, and inally at the fall of Jerusalem. Jesus
told the rulers of Israel: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of
God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). This is why the church is called the
Israel of God. Paul wrote: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision
availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as

1. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 34–35.
360 DEUTERONOMY

many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy,

and upon the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:15–16).2 So, the transition from
grace to wrath is overcome through greater grace. “Ye are of God,
little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that
is in you, than he that is in the world” (I John 4:4).
There is a war for the inheritance in history: disinherited sons
claim the inheritance. This war is covenantal. It involves all ive
points of the covenant. It is a war over sovereignty, authority, law,
sanctions, and inheritance. As such, it is at bottom ethical. The gods
that men worship are relected in the laws that men obey. “What
thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add
thereto, nor diminish from it” (Deut. 12:32).
This passage begins with a prophecy: “When the LORD thy God
shall cut of the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to pos-
sess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land”
(v. 29). Title to their land will surely be transferred to Israel. The
question facing Israel was the question of maintaining the kingdom
grant. I wrote in Leviticus: An Economic Commentary: “Leviticus pres-
ents the rules governing this kingdom grant from God. This land
grant preceded the giving of these rules. Grace precedes law in God’s
dealings with His subordinates. We are in debt to God even before He
speaks to us. The land grant was based on the original promise
given to Abraham. That promise came prior to the giving of the

2. Traditional dispensationalists are forced to come up with highly creative interpretations

of this passage. John F. Walvoord insists that “the Israel of God” in verse 16 refers to
“Israelites who in the church age trust Jesus Christ.” Israelites? What Israelites? Ever since
A.D. 70, there have been no Israelites. There have been only Jews. Israel is gone. From the
Orthodox Jewish viewpoint, there can be no biblical Israel until the messiah returns.
According to Walvoord, Paul wrote that peace and mercy are upon gentiles and “Israelites”
who are inside the church. This means that God distinguishes two kinds of Christians, Jews
and gentiles. Yet verse 15 insists that there is no such distinction. Walvoord calls his obviously
forced and convoluted exposition “natural and biblical.” He calls it “the simplest
explanation,” despite the fact that no one except dispensationalists have ever argued for this
supposedly simple explanation of this verse. All other Christian expositors have understood
that the church is the New Covenant inheritor of Mosaic Israel’s title, in both senses: name
and covenantal promises. Walvoord devotes one brief paragraph to his refutation of almost
two millennia of Christian interpretation of the passage. Walvoord, “Does the Church Fulill
Israel’s Program?” in Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (eds.), The Bib Sac Reader (Chicago: Moody,
1983), p. 41. (“Bib Sac” refers to Dallas Theological Seminary’s quarterly journal, Bibliotheca
Sacra.) What is really amusing is that he dismisses rival views as “determined by theological
presuppositions rather than proper exegesis.” Ibid., p. 49. Such a lack of self-awareness is
remarkable, even among theologians.
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 361

3
Mosaic law. This is why James Jordan says that the laws of Leviticus
are more than legislation; the focus of the laws is not simply obedi-
ence to God, but rather on maintaining the grant.4 The basis of main-
taining the grant was ethics, not the sacriices. Man cannot maintain
the kingdom in sin.5 The fundamental issue was sin, not sacriice;
ethics, not ritual.”6
God warned them against dallying with the rituals of Canaan’s
gods. God warned them, “enquire not after their gods, saying, How
did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise” (v. 30).
But the primary issue was not liturgy; it was ethics: “Thou shalt not
do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD,
which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons
and their daughters they have burnt in the ire to their gods” (v. 31).
The great evil of Canaan’s rituals was the nations’ willful destruction
of their children in formal sacriice. This was ethics encapsulated in
ritual.
Human sacriice is the greatest ritual evil in history, and it was
widespread prior to the spread of the Christian gospel. Classical
Greece and Rome both practiced human sacriice,7 although the
textbooks do not mention this, and even specialized historical
monographs ignore it or mention it only in passing. This historical
blackout is an aspect of the successful re-writing of history by hu-
manists who rely, generation after generation, on their peers’ glowing
accounts of a supposedly secular classical world, an academically
satisfying world in which formal religion was socially peripheral
and mostly for political show. The fact that a vestal virgin was bur-
ied alive as a sanction against either her unchastity or allowing the
ritual ire to go out8 is an historiographical inconvenience, and so it
is rarely mentioned. Vesta was the sacred fire of Rome, a goddess.

3. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 8.
4. Ibid., p. 9.
5. Ibid., p. 11.
6. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), p. 9.
7. Lord Acton, “Human Sacriice” (1863), in Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality, 3 vols.
(Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyClassics, 1988), III, ch. 19.
8. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book III,
Chapter VI, p. 147.
362 DEUTERONOMY

9
She was the incarnation of moral order, both in Greece and Rome.
Her ritual requirements had the sanction of execution attached to
them. Where we ind the imposition of the death penalty, we do not ind a
socially peripheral issue. Centuries later, the sacriicial bloodshed of
Mexico’s Aztecs in the late ifteenth century reached the limits of
this ritual abomination.10 The remarkable speed of that perverse civ-
ilization’s disinheritance by the Spanish and their Indian allies, from
1519 to 1521, should give pause to the academic world, which does
not take seriously covenantal cause and efect. (Modern legalized
abortion more than matches the ejciency of the Aztecs’ slaughter,
but not as a ritual practice.)

Comparative Religion
God forbade the Israelites from naming the names of the gods
of Canaan. “And in all things that I have said unto you be circum-
spect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it
be heard out of thy mouth” (Ex. 23:13). Was this a ban against his-
torical scholarship? Was this prohibition to be taken literally?
The language here is covenantal. Naming a name of a god was
in this context an act of invocation. It was an act of worship. Calling
upon a god is an act of religious subordination. To invoke the name
of a god is to acknowledge formally that he brings sanctions in his-
tory. The context of Deuteronomy 12:30 was historical study for the
sake of covenantal subordination: “. . . enquire not after their gods,
saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do
likewise.” The prohibition of false worship took the form of a uni-
versal prohibition of mentioning the names of the gods of Canaan,
but to ignore the area of comparative religion is to ignore the possi-
bility that false worship can be introduced in the name of progressive reform
as well as the restoration of ancient practices. To be able to recognize a
proposed progressive innovation as the restoration of an ancient
abomination is an advantage. Without a knowledge of the past, it
becomes more dijcult for guardians of orthodoxy to defend its
boundaries.

9. Ibid., I:III, pp. 30–32.

10. Serge Gruzinski, The Aztecs: Rise and Fall of an Empire (New York: Abrams, [1987] 1992),
pp. 49–56.
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 363

There is no doubt that the rulers of Israel spoke the names of

foreign gods. “Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of
Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters,
into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites” (Num. 21:29). “Wilt
not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to pos-
sess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before
us, them will we possess” (Jud. 11:24). But Chemosh was not a god
of Canaan. Its geographical area of sovereignty was outside the
boundaries of Israel. Foreign gods did not pose the same degree of
covenantal threat to Israel that the gods of Canaan did, for they
were not perceived as exercising sovereignty inside the boundaries
of the Promised Land. To invoke the names of foreign gods was a vi-
olation of the irst commandment (Ex. 20:3), but for false worship to
become socially signiicant, there had to be some basis for people to
believe that cause and efect in history were inluenced by the god
invoked. This god had to be able to impose sanctions on behalf of
those who invoked his name. Because the ancient world outside of
pre-exilic Israel did not invoke the name of any inally sovereign
god, the social threat to Israel came from the pre-conquest local
gods of Canaan.
What about local gods? Could Israelites lawfully speak their
names? I think that they could, although I am not sure that this was
the case. The prophet Jeremiah spoke Baal’s name as part of his cov-
enant lawsuit (Jer. 7:9; 11:13). But Baal was a god of Moab (Num.
22:41). It may be that the word, meaning “master” or “owner,” was
widely applied in Israel to rival gods. But as for the speciic names of
the gods of pre-conquest Canaan, the Bible is silent.
After the exile, there seems to have been no application of this
law. The sovereignty of the pre-conquest gods of Canaan was inally
destroyed by the Assyrians and Babylonians. The new world of em-
pire was openly polytheistic. Many gods resided in the pantheon of
each empire. The cultural threat of exclusively local gods ended for-
ever in Israel. The threat of polytheism and syncretism still existed,
but Israel’s defensive position as a nation under foreign domination
restricted the spread of polytheism. A polytheist in post-exilic Israel
was a traitor to the nation, a collaborator with the enemy. He would
have been ostracized. The threat to orthodoxy in post-exilic Israel
was two-fold: legalism and pagan philosophy. It was the lure of
Greek philosophy and culture, with its common-confession univer-
salism and its aestheticism, that pulled cosmopolitan Jews away
364 DEUTERONOMY

11
from Moses. Meanwhile, legalists planted thickets of ritual hedges
around the Mosaic law. The kernel of orthodoxy was either ground
into lour and leavened with Hellenistic universalism or else smoth-
ered by the legalism of the Pharisees.
In modern times, the study of comparative religion has again
become a threat to theological orthodoxy, not because the advo-
cates of comparative religion invoke the sanctions of rival gods, but
because they deny the supernatural existence of all gods. Compara-
tive religion is a form of cultural relativism – indeed, the supreme
form. It insists that the details of theology and ritual change through
time and across borders. But this academic polytheism is tempered
by its universalism. Here is the supposedly universal aspect of all re-
ligion: faith in beings and forces that do not exist in the way that
religious disciples believe. The universalism of religion is the univer-
salism of error in the face of either as-yet unsolved questions or as-yet
rejected scientiic answers. Religion’s sanctions are said to be exclu-
sively personal and social; all of the gods invoked by their disciples
are equally without power. Men, not gods, impose sanctions in his-
tory, say the advocates of comparative religion. All of the gods have
been disinherited by rational men, we are told, save one: the god of
humanity. To inherit in history – the only inheritance that suppos-
edly matters – men must invoke the god of humanity. It is this god
alone that brings predictable positive sanctions to those who invoke
its name and subordinate themselves to its representative agents:
consumers (economic sanctions) and voters (political sanctions). All
the other natural and social forces in history are understood by hu-
manists as impersonal.
Comparative religion in post-conquest, pre-exilic Israel posed
the threat of the elevation of local gods above the God of the Bible.
Comparative religion in the modern world poses the threat of the
de-throning of the God of the Bible and His banishment to the com-
mon pantheon of all other gods, save one: the god of humanity. This
pantheon of gods no longer occupies the acropolis on the highest hill
of the city. More likely, a local television transmission tower does.
The threat of comparative religion is the threat of idolatry. Idol-
atry invokes gods other than the God of the Bible, gods who are

11. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the
Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, [1974] 1981), I, p. 313.
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 365

believed to be the most powerful sanctions-bringers in history. An-

cient comparative religion invoked local gods; modern compara-
tive religion invokes a universal god: mankind. The issue of
sanctions in history necessarily raises the issue of inheritance in his-
tory. To inherit, men must ally themselves to the god who really
does bring sanctions in history.

Theology and the Visible Kingdom of God

The most important theological issue is theology proper: the doc-
trine of God. He who gets this doctrine wrong will sufer eternal
negative sanctions. The early church fought long and hard to estab-
lish orthodoxy in this area of theology. It is here, and only here, that
the church has come to an agreement: Trinitarianism. On the other
four covenantal issues – hierarchy, law, sacraments, and eschatol-
ogy – there has been no universal agreement.
If theology proper is the most important issue of theology, then
the Book of Genesis is the most important book in the Pentateuch.
Genesis describes the origin of the universe and presents the
Creator-creature distinction. The debate over origins has been the
fundamental debate between Christianity and paganism from the
beginning. Evolutionism has been around a long time. So has the
doctrine of the eternality of matter.12 In our day, the evolution-
creation issue has dwarfed all others as the chief theological bat-
tleield. More intellectual ground has been surrendered faster by
Christianity since the advent of Darwinism than ever before in the
history of the church. Even Islam’s invasion of the West and its
complete conquest of North Africa, 632–732, was a minor afair
compared to the surrender of the modern church to a modiied Dar-
winism: theistic evolution. The medieval church resisted Islam; the
modern church has generally baptized evolutionism rather than
resist it.
Why, then, elevate eschatology to the forefront? Because this is
a commentary on Deuteronomy. The issue raised by Deuteronomy
is the issue of inheritance in history: Who will inherit, and who will
be disinherited? The debate over eschatology has become a major
dividing point since the mid-nineteenth century – again, about the

12. Aristotle, Physics, VIII.

366 DEUTERONOMY

time of Darwinism’s appearance. The triumph of Darwinism in both

the academic and political worlds has been accompanied by the tri-
umph of dispensationalism in the Arminian pietistic Protestant
world.13 The issue of eschatology is the ifth great debate in the his-
tory of the church. The irst was theology proper. It was basically
settled in the fourth century. The second debate was over hierarchy:
church vs. church (the East-West split came in 1054) and church vs.
state (culminating in the conlict between Pope Gregory VII and
Emperor Henry IV in 1076). The debate over law began in the
Western church at that time: canon law vs. a revived secular Roman
law.14 Scholasticism soon appeared: the philosophical attempt to
reconcile the two. It failed. The Reformation was fought mainly
over sanctions: public debate over the role of indulgences (the issue
of purgatory), the number and meaning of the sacraments (realism
vs. nominalism),15 vows of celibacy made by the clergy and nuns, and
the judicially binding character of excommunication. Finally, in the
1800’s, eschatology became a major divisive issue in Protestantism.
Eschatology is part of the covenant: point ive. The church can
get the last four points incorrect and still persevere in history, but it
cannot inherit in history until it gets correct all ive points and their
applications. The progressive disinheritance of the church, which
has accelerated since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in
1859, began long before Darwin. Modern evolutionism ofers the
most coherent theological system in the history of the war between
belief and unbelief: from the doctrine of impersonal creation (the
Big Bang) to the doctrine of the impersonal last judgment (the heat
death of the universe).16 But rival theologies have always confronted
Christianity. These rival theologies have always occupied territory
within the church and its allied academic agencies.

13. The one major exception: the Church of Christ (Campbellite).

14. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983).
15. Covenantalism is implied by Calvin’s rejection of Roman Catholicism’s realism (real
presence) and also Anabaptism’s nominalism (remembrance). But his invocation of
“mystery” did not solve the problem.
16. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), ch. 2.
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 367

Eschatology
The most common eschatologies, premillennialism (fundamen-
talist churches) and amillennialism (European liturgical churches),
have correctly relegated the conquest of Canaan to the Old Cove-
nant. They have also relegated inheritance in history to the Old
Covenant. But these are separate issues. After the exile, the laws of
landed inheritance changed. The gentiles occupying the land were
to be incorporated into the jubilee’s inheritance system (Ezek.
47:22–23). This pointed to the New Covenant’s incorporation of the
gentiles into the covenant. It was not the conquest of Canaan that was
fundamental to Israel; it was the preservation of the messianic seed line that
was fundamental. The crucial eschatological issue was the Promised
Seed, not the Promised Land.
This does not mean that the issue of inheritance in history was
an exclusively Old Covenant issue. On the contrary, the issue of in-
heritance is far more a New Covenant issue. The Old Covenant in-
heritance centered around the Promised Seed (Gen. 3:15). Only
much later did the issue of the Promised Land become intermixed
with the Promised Seed (Abraham’s covenant). This was a tempo-
rary mixing of categories of inheritance that ended with the coming
of the Messiah, i.e., Shiloh (Gen. 49:10), and His rejection by Israel.
The universalism of the Genesis inheritance (Gen. 3:15) has now
been mixed with the universalism of the kingdom of God in history
(Matt. 21:43). This is the meaning of the Great Commission: “And
Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me
in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, bap-
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of
the world. Amen” (Matt. 28:18–20). So, far from being relegated to
the Old Covenant, inheritance has become the fundamental eschatological
issue of the New Covenant. To relegate formal eschatology to the inal
judgment and post-resurrection world, which amillennialism does,
is a fundamental error with culturally debilitating consequences. It
means surrendering civilization to covenant-breakers as a conse-
quence of eschatological, prophetic inevitability. The same criticism
is equally applicable to premillennialism’s view of the church’s
inluence as it must inevitably operate prior to Christ’s eschatologi-
cally discontinuous return with His angels to establish His new
headquarters on earth rather than at the right hand of God in heaven.
368 DEUTERONOMY

The eschatological issue of headquarters should not be ignored.

Eden was to serve Adam as his headquarters in the conquest of the
world: the dominion covenant.17 Adam was forcibly removed from
headquarters after his rebellion. Headquarters for Noah was the
ark, but only for a few months. After that, geography played no role
until Abram was called out of Ur of the Chaldees. Ur could not
serve as headquarters for Abraham; no place else could, either.
Abraham wandered. After him, Israel wandered. Geographical
headquarters was re-established only with Israel’s conquest of
Canaan. But the same threat existed for Israel as had existed for
Adam, as Deuteronomy constantly warns: removal from headquar-
ters. This happened at the time of the irst exile, and then culminated
with the removal of geographical headquarters with the fall of
Jerusalem.
Dispensational premillennialists assume that headquarters will
be reestablished in Jerusalem by Jesus when He returns to set up His
earthly kingdom.18 Historic premillennialists remain silent regard-
ing the place of earthly headquarters during the premillennial king-
dom. Amillennialists and postmillennialists insist that kingdom
headquarters in history has been transferred to heaven.
The main diferences between amillennialism and postmillen-
nialism center around the degree to which history will visibly mani-
fest the judicial inheritance which Jesus Christ obtained through His
death and resurrection, and which He announced to His disciples in
Matthew 28:18. Will this legal title to all things, which was granted
to Jesus by God the Father after the resurrection, progressively
manifest itself culturally in the work of Christians in building up the
kingdom of God on earth and in history?19 Whatever is judicially

17. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 3.
18. While this is almost universally believed by dispensationalists, the movement’s
theologians rarely mention it.
19. Because of confusion on this point, let me clarify: the New Covenant kingdom of God
was established deinitively in history by Jesus prior to His death and resurrection. “But if I cast
out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you” (Matt. 12:28).
Title to the earth was transferred to Him by God after the resurrection. Jesus transferred title
to the church, His bride, no later than Pentecost (Acts 2). Thus, the New Covenant kingdom
of God began before title was transferred. The church lawfully invokes its legal title, but this
title is reclaimed from Satan progressively, through Christian reconstruction, i.e., working out
our faith with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), in every area of life – matching Christ’s
transferred title to everything – through service to others: “But Jesus called them to him, and
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 369

deinitive in history must be extended progressively in history. This process

is analogous to Jesus’ sin-free inal and perfect sanctiication, which
is judicially transferred to believers deinitively at the time of their
redemption,20 but which they must work out in history (Phil. 2:12).
God gave Abraham legal title to the Promised Land, but actual pos-
session had to wait (Gen. 15:16). Is the church operating under an
analogous grant of lawful title? What Abraham received deinitively
by promise was achieved by his covenantal heirs, although they
subsequently surrendered geographically for a time (the exile) and
then covenantally in Christ’s day. Eschatologically, Old Covenant
Israel moved steadily toward apostasy and defeat in history, begin-
ning with the incomplete conquest of Canaan.
Is the church also moving progressively toward inal defeat,
though not apostasy? Why should the church be defeated in his-
tory? Israel was defeated because Israel apostatized completely. No conser-
vative Trinitarian theologian argues that the entire church will
apostatize completely, yet most Christian theologians believe that
the church will be defeated culturally. So, the cultural history of the
church will supposedly be found on the last day to have recapitu-
lated the cultural history of Old Covenant Israel.
This raises a very embarrassing question: Is the post-ascension
church always in the same eschatological condition as pre-ascension
Israel? The amillennialist seeks to evade this question, but when
pressed, his answer is yes. He believes, but refuses to say in public,
that the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ in history and the sending
of the Holy Spirit in history are insujcient to empower the church
in history to break out of its sad pathway to visible cultural defeat.
Amillennialists have an implicit but unstated conclusion with re-
gard to the doctrine of the bodily ascension of Christ: the cultural

saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise
lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be
among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever
of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42–45). The
dominion covenant is progressively achieved by Christians in history on a culture-wide basis
by means of the church’s division of labor (Rom. 12; I Cor. 12).
20. “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justiieth the ungodly, his faith is
counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto
whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities
are forgiven, and whose sins are covered” (Rom. 4:5–7).
370 DEUTERONOMY

power of sin is greater in history than the cultural power of redemption.

They relegate the prophesied victory of the church in history to the
realm of personal victory over sin, while ajrming the church’s inev-
itable visible defeat. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ took
place in history, but for all the good it does the church culturally, it
might as well never have happened. The ascension’s impact is inter-
nal and individual, not external and cultural, insists the amillennialist.
Theological liberals have been far more consistent in their view
of the resurrection and ascension: they have relegated both histori-
cal events to the realm of the spirit. To them, the bodily ascension of
Christ is a phrase testifying to the spiritual optimism of the early
church, not a visible, veriiable historical event. Amillennialists be-
lieve the same thing regarding the promised victory of the church in
history. When the Bible repeatedly predicts that covenant-keepers
will inherit the earth in history, the amillennialist says, “Spiritual,
not literal!”
Postmillennialists believe that Christ’s bodily ascension to
heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost empowered
the church in history to recapture lost territory in every realm of life.
Amillennialists believe that such reconquest cannot take place in
history; the church will surrender territory, should it ever actually
recapture it. The church’s cultural inheritance supposedly will go
the way of the Mosaic land inheritance. Christ’s ascension plays no
role in amillennial social theory. As I wrote in the conclusion of
Chapter 6 in Leviticus:

There is remarkably little discussion of the ascension of Christ in mod-

21
ern orthodox theology. This topic inevitably raises fundamental histori-
cal, cosmological, and cultural implications that modern premillennial and
especially amillennial theologians find dijcult to accept, such as the pro-
gressive manifestation of Christ’s rule in history through His representa-
tives: Christians.22 In a world in which grace is believed to be progressively
devoured by nature, there is little room for historical applications of the doc-
trine of the historical ascension. Covenantal postmillennialism alone can

21. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), pp. 227–29.
22. No theological or eschatological school denies that there can be prolonged set-backs in
this manifestation of Christ’s rule. Conversely, none would totally deny progress. I know of
no one who would argue, for example, that the creeds of the church prior to the fourth
century were more rigorous or more accurate theologically than those which came later.
 Disinheriting Canaan’s Gods 371

confidently discuss the doctrine of Christ’s ascension, for postmillennialism

does not seek to confine the efects of Christ’s ascension to the realms of the
23
internal and the trans-historical. That is to say, postmillennialism does not
assert the existence of supposedly inevitable boundaries around the efects
of grace in history. On the contrary, it asserts that all such boundaries will
be progressively overcome in history, until on judgment day the very
gates (boundaries) of hell will not be able to stand against the church
(Matt. 16:18).”24

Both amillennialism and premillennialism teach the inevitable

disinheritance of the church in history and the illegitimacy of the
ideal of Christendom as applying to civilization prior to the bodily
return of Christ. Eschatology shapes social theory.

Conclusion
God told Moses that He would disinherit the gods of Canaan. He
would do so by enabling the Israelites to disinherit the Canaanites.
But He warned them not to worship the gods of defeated Canaan.
While the ancient world believed that the gods of a city that lost
a war were also defeated, the fact is that the Israelites were sorely
tempted to worship the gods of Canaan. The presence of a remnant
of surviving Canaanites would be interpreted by Israel as though
the gods of Canaan had overcome the God of the Bible, despite the
fact that Israel had overthrown the idols of Canaan. Despite the fact
that the losers had lost, the Israelites were tempted to worship the
losers’ gods. The losers became the winners in Mosaic Israel. For-
eign agents had to destroy the remnants of Canaan’s gods: Assyria
and Babylon.

23. This is why amillennialism drifts so easily into Barthianism: the history of mankind for
the amillennialist has no visible connection with the ascension of Jesus Christ. Progressive
sanctiication in this view is limited to the personal and ecclesiastical; it is never cultural or
civic. The ascension of Christ has no transforming implications for society in amillennial
theology. The ascension was both historical and publicly visible; its implications supposedly
are not. The Barthian is simply more consistent than the amillennialist: he denies the
historicity of both Jesus’ ascension and His subsequent grace to society. Christ’s ascension,
like His grace, is relegated to the trans-historical. See North, Millennialism and Social Theory,
pp. 111–13.
24. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), chaps. 12, 13.
372 DEUTERONOMY

Israel’s military defeat of Canaan should have meant the defeat

of Canaan’s gods. Only because Israel was ethically rebellious did
traces of Canaan’s old culture and old theology survive. These rem-
nants of evil then served as evil leaven, just as Moses had warned.
Only after the second defeat of Canaan’s gods, as a result of the de-
feat of Israel by Assyria and Babylon, were the gods of Canaan
inally disinherited. Israel had to be temporarily disinherited in or-
der for Canaan’s gods to be permanently disinherited.
 32
The LureTHE
of Magic:
LURESomething for Nothing
OF MAGIC:
SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth

thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof
he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not
known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of
that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth
you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and
with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him,
and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him,
and cleave unto him (Deut. 13:1–4).

The theocentric framework of this law is the worship of God.

Proper worship necessitates obedience to God’s revealed law, Mo-
ses said. Worship, like wisdom, begins with the fear of God. Once
again, Moses warned Israel to obey God’s commandments. This is
the continuing ethical theme of the Book of Deuteronomy, which
constituted the second giving of the law. But the point of this obedi-
ence, given the positioning of Deuteronomy as book ive of the Pen-
tateuch, is inheritance. Covenant-keeping is the basis for maintaining the
national inheritance.
This was a land law. It governed the nation’s response to false
prophets. The prophet no longer exists. The ojce ended with the
Old Covenant in A.D. 70.

The Prophet’s Judicial Role

This passage dealt with those people who claimed to be proph-
ets. A prophet had a speciic judicial function in Mosaic Israel: to

373
374 DEUTERONOMY

declare to a God-designated audience God’s direct revelation re-

garding the future, but more to the point, regarding the faith and be-
havior of that audience. The prophet delivered a covenant lawsuit
against someone or against some group. If the listeners did not re-
pent, he warned, God would bring negative sanctions against them.
Sometimes the prophet’s message was repentance.1 Jonah’s cove-
nant lawsuit against Nineveh is a representative example: repent or
else be destroyed within 40 days. Publicly, he prophesied destruc-
tion only, but the possibility of their corporate repentance, and
therefore their avoidance of negative corporate sanctions, had been
implicit from the beginning (Jonah 4:2). Sometimes, however, the
prophet’s role was limited to provoking a confrontation prior to
God’s imposition of negative sanctions. Elijah’s confrontation with
Ahab prior to the drought is representative (I Ki. 17:1–5).
The prophet was usually outside the priestly hierarchy. He was
not a member of the tribe of Levi. Samuel, for example, was an
Ephraimite (I Sam. 1:1). The prophet announced that the law of
God was not being obeyed. He demanded in God’s name that the
existing legal order or the nation’s dominant social practices be
abandoned. He announced his God-given authority as superior to
the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. In the name of God’s law, the
prophet demanded the scrapping of the existing legal and social
order.
The listeners’ obvious response was: “Who are you to say?”
When a man came to the nation in the name of the true God and His
true law, he was inescapably a revolutionary in the eyes of a cove-
nant-breaking Establishment. The question then arose: “In God’s
eyes, who is the authorized representative of the nation’s God-
sanctioned Establishment?” A related question arose: “What evi-
dence does this man present which testiies to his ojce as a prophet?”
This was what the iery competition on Mt. Carmel was all about
(I Ki. 18).
The prophet might perform signs and wonders. He might pre-
dict the future. His possession of supernatural abilities – outside the
normal space-time continuum – testiied to his special legal status.
This was partial evidence of his special relationship with God, but it

1. Not always, however: Moses’ prophetic role was not intended to gain Pharaoh’s
repentance. See below: section on “Something for Nothing.”
 The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing 375

was not sujcient to prove his claim of God-given authority. Far

more important than signs and wonders was theological orthodoxy. A true
prophet had to come in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. It did not matter what signs and wonders he performed if
he came in the name of another god. His signs and wonders might
be deceptions, or they might be authentically supernatural, but his
message was itself a deception. No god other than the true God
could be lawfully worshipped publicly inside the borders of Israel.
The prophet’s ability to perform signs and wonders – below-cost
shortcuts in the normal space-time continuum – had to be accompa-
nied by orthodox theological confession. The diferentiating mark
between magic and prophecy was theological confession.

Boundaries and Prophecy

Men are creatures before God. They are under His authority.
They are also under the constraints of the creation. They are not
originally creative. They are re-creative as subordinates who are
made in God’s image. It is legitimate for men to re-work the cre-
ation by means of their knowledge of the laws governing the cre-
ation. Adam was told by God to dress the garden (Gen. 2:15). This
means that God told Adam to re-work the creation. Adam was told
to improve his environment. The world was originally created
good, but Adam had the power and the lawful authority to make it
better. He also had the responsibility to make it better. But he could
lawfully exercise this authority only as a creature who acknowl-
edged his limitations. He was required by God to acknowledge by
his actions his belief in his own creaturehood and his subordination
to God. He was not allowed to dress, touch, or eat from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. He understood this, and he told
Eve. She represented Adam, who in turn represented God. She
spoke a prophetic word to the serpent: “But of the fruit of the tree
which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of
it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die” (Gen. 3:3). Then she violated
her own prophetic word. So did Adam. God then brought a cove-
nant lawsuit against the serpent, Eve, and Adam, in the order of
their responsibility, from lower to higher, in terms of His original pro-
phetic word to Adam.
Prophecy concerned ethical boundaries: violate them, God
warned, and predictable negative sanctions would come. Some of
these sanctions would come predictably in history; all will come
376 DEUTERONOMY

predictably in eternity. The prophet’s job was to warn his audience

of the adverse consequences of breaking God’s covenant. The
boundaries were enforced by God. Violate His ethical boundaries
and you will experience unpleasant consequences, the prophet
warned. These ethical boundaries were testiied to by the prophet’s
ability to overcome creational boundaries, sometimes called laws of
nature. The Old Covenant prophet was empowered by God to es-
cape these conventional limits because this ability testiied to his au-
thority in announcing both the ethical boundaries and the
predictability of their attached sanctions. Violating the laws of na-
ture was the prophet’s means of calling a halt to the nation’s viola-
tion of the laws of God.

Boundaries and Magic

To acknowledge the lawful boundaries which God has placed
around man is to worship God by obeying Him. We are not to pur-
sue our goals by means of magic. What is magic? It is any attempt to
invoke supernatural powers, asking them to alter man’s environ-
ment by means of causation that are beyond temporal cause and
efect. Magic is a method of calling for supernatural intervention by
personal forces to alter the processes of either nature or history.
Without this supernatural intervention, man’s ritual manipulations
and invocations are powerless. For example, the voodoo doll is a
powerless implement of magical incantation apart from demonic in-
tervention. The element of repeatability is missing because the su-
pernatural cause is absent. The supernatural cause of the sought-for
outcome is not predictably present in the way that the ordinary
means of temporal causation are predictably present. The personal
“catalyst” that makes possible the magical series of events is in-
voked, not employed.
A prophet might seek to ajrm his judicial ojce by altering na-
ture or by forecasting events. If Israelites who were skilled crafts-
men in this particular manipulation of nature or skilled forecasters
of historical trends could not replicate his performance in a statisti-
cally signiicant number of cases, the self-proclaimed prophet did
not thereby validate his ojce. He may have been a prophet, or he
may have been a clever trickster, or he may have been a magician.
The judicially compulsory evidence of his ojce as prophet was his
verbal orthodoxy. The crucial test of his ojce was not his perfor-
mance of signs and wonders; it was his confession of faith.
 The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing 377

Idolatry
Herbert Schlossberg has argued that there are two pagan idols:
nature and history.2 The quest for signs and wonders is a mark of
these two idols. Schlossberg says that all social idols are idols of his-
tory. This would seem to include philosophy.3 Historically, after the
Israelites returned from the captivity, they ceased to worship the
idols of Canaan. Simultaneously, philosophy arose in Greece and
spread across the Mediterranean world. Hellenism became the pre-
ferred idol of choice among socially cultured Israelites until the fall
of Jerusalem. Pharisaic legalism, which also arose in the post-exilic
era, was a domestic theological error. Hellenism was clearly an im-
ported idol. Legalism was defended in the name of Israel’s God;
Hellenism was defended in terms of a universal wisdom that tran-
scended divisive supernatural revelation.
The primary covenantal issue of idolatry is transcendence.
Something or someone is proclaimed as superior to God. In opera-
tion, this issue becomes ethical. An idol is any representative mani-
festation in history (point two) of a law-order that substitutes for
God’s (point three). Moses made it plain in Deuteronomy, over and
over, that obedience to God’s commandments is the visible test of
one’s confessional orthodoxy. A man who would subsequently call
on Israelites to disobey these commandments, Moses said, was to be
regarded as a fool. If he also named the name of another god, he was
to be executed. “And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall
be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the
LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and re-
deemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the
way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt
thou put the evil away from the midst of thee” (Deut. 13:5).

Something for Nothing

For a man to escape the limits of temporal creation means that
he can gain something for what appears to be nothing. By subordi-
nating himself to supernatural powers that are forbidden by God, a

2. Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with
American Society (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, [1983] 1993), p. 11.
3. There is a sense in which autonomous man regards philosophy as the mediating factor
between nature and history.
378 DEUTERONOMY

man can sometimes escape the limits of temporal cause and efect.
This ability to go beyond commonly repeatable causation ofers to
some initiates of occultism the possibility of gaining wealth, power,
and inluence over others. This lure is powerful. Men are impressed
with magic, which seems to ofer them access to a below-cost realm
of human action, a realm that is in some unstated way connected to
the realm of conventional causation.
The text indicates that signs and wonders were possible in the
Old Covenant world. Moses himself had been in a battle of signs
and wonders when he and Aaron challenged the priests of Egypt.
The test was the test of the snakes. Moses’ snakes ate the Egyptians’
snakes. But the test decided nothing, for Pharaoh’s heart was hard-
ened. The visible test of the comparative signs and wonders did not
persuade him (Ex. 7:10–14).
The message of the Bible is that while power is persuasive, con-
fession is even more powerful. Moses’ confession of faith through
Aaron (Ex. 7:2) was more powerful than Pharaoh’s, and this was
demonstrated by the victory of Aaron’s serpents (Ex. 7:12). This did
not change Pharaoh’s mind, because the power of God in hardening
Pharaoh’s heart was more powerful than the persuasive power of
the signs and wonders. God kept Pharaoh from changing his mind
and therefore from changing his confession. Paul wrote: “What
shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So
then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for
this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my
power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all
the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy,
and whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom. 9:14–18).
Moses, in his ojce as a prophet (Deut. 34:10), was not sent by
God in order to change Pharaoh’s mind. He was sent to provide
God with an occasion to demonstrate God’s power in history: pre-
dictable sanctions. The end result inside the boundaries of Egypt
was the transfer of the inheritance of Egypt’s recently deceased
irstborn sons to Israel (Ex. 12:35–36). The Egyptians had long be-
lieved that they could get something for nothing out of Israel: slave
labor and the inheritance. At the time of the exodus, this genera-
tions-long miscalculation was exposed for all to see. The Egyptians
 The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing 379

had believed that the State’s coercion of Israel would remain

proitable: the most ejcient allocation of scarce resources. They
were called to account by God at the time of the exodus. The tyr-
anny of socialism’s commitment to a world of something for noth-
ing led to a national economic disaster, as it always does. The
historical model of socialism is Pharaoh’s Egypt: bureaucratic, ty-
rannical, and ultimately disastrous for those in charge.4 The events
of 1989–91 in Eastern Europe and the Union of Socialist Soviet
Republics were merely recapitulations of the Egyptian model. The
systems broke down economically, politically, and socially in a
massive collapse – remarkably, without much bloodshed.5
The magician seeks to gain his ends by escaping from some of
the limits of his own creaturehood. The creation places limits on
him that he deeply resents, just as Adam resented the boundary
around the forbidden tree. He seeks to escape the requirement that
in order to gain a new set of circumstances, he must give up some-
thing of value. He wishes to increase his wealth – to improve his cir-
cumstances – by holding onto his wealth and augmenting it in ways
that do not threaten his wealth. He wants personal economic
growth – an increase in the options available to him – without a
threat to his net worth. He does not care who provides this for him.
He also does not care if others in the economy sufer losses in order
to provide his gains. He cares only about his own advancement and
the advancement of those working with him. He is convinced that
magic will provide these gains. He may even believe that his
risk-free gains come at no one’s expense. But whatever his belief re-
garding the source of his gains, he believes that he does not have to
ofer something of value equal to or greater than whatever he expects
to receive.
Yet even he suspects that there is never something for nothing.
He is at risk. He knows that if he performs his invocation incor-
rectly, he could lose everything. In the face of supernatural power,

4. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985).
5. Marxist politicians, having re-named their parties, returned to favor politically within a
few years in most of these Eastern European nations. Eastern Europeans had not been
prepared for freedom and responsibility in 1990. The moral erosion and escape from
personal responsibility fostered by socialism had done its work. The lure of something for
nothing is still very strong.
380 DEUTERONOMY

men know that they are at great risk. They know that the supernatu-
ral power invoked has the power to provide beneits from outside of
the space-time continuum. The threat of loss is inescapable: such a
power can also impose costs from outside of the space-time contin-
uum. Thus, the extreme concern of the magician with formulas and
rituals. The details of supernatural rituals become more important
than the details of scientiic procedure. They also become less pre-
dictable, for the outcome of magic is less predictable. The malevo-
lent whims of the supernatural force invoked are more of a threat to
the magician than the outcomes of most of nature’s formulas are to
the scientist or the craftsman.
The magician seeks to obtain something for nothing. It is not
that he seeks personal gain at minimal expenditure. We all do this.
What he seeks is access to wealth or power outside the realm of ethi-
cal law. He substitutes ritual for ethics. Ritual seems cheaper than
ethics. In doing so, he risks something very important for the sake of
something far less important. “For what shall it proit a man, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

The Annulment of the Ojce of Prophet

The two-fold test of the prophetic ojce was this: accurate pre-
dictions of the immediate future and adherence to the God of Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob. The death penalty was mandatory for any
prophet whose predictions failed to come true – signs and wonders
(Deut. 13:1–5) or any other event (Deut. 18:22) – or who announced
the sovereignty of any other god (Deut. 18:20). There was a very
high risk for anyone claiming to be a prophet whose words had not
been put into his mouth by God. Or so it seemed. But there really
wasn’t. A true prophet would come in times of apostasy. But in
times of apostasy, the word of God is not honored. The false
prophet is honored; the true prophet is not. So, negative civil sanc-
tions would be imposed on the true prophet, which was the case in
Israel again and again. Then God’s corporate negative sanctions
would come with a vengeance.
Jesus Christ’s ministry was the fulillment of the prophetic ojce,
which He annulled when He came in judgment in the inal act of
corporate negative sanctions against Old Covenant Israel: the fall of
Jerusalem in A.D. 70. He knew what was in store for Him and what
would then be in store for Israel. He warned the religious rulers that
this would be the case, for it had always been the fate of prophets to
 The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing 381

be put under negative sanctions by the rulers of Israel, leaving the

nation exposed to God’s wrath.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the
tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And
say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been par-
takers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses
unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I
send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye
shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your syna-
gogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all
the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel
unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the
temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come
upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the proph-
ets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate
(Matt. 23:29–38).

The Bible’s Prophetic Monopoly

The completion of the New Testament era of revelation with the
destruction of Jerusalem completed the judicially binding revela-
tion of God. All of the New Testament’s manuscripts were written
before the inal revocation of the Old Covenant in A.D. 70. This in-
cludes the Book of Revelation.6 This means that the Bible has sup-
planted the covenantal authority of any man to announce formally,
on threat of historically unique supernatural sanctions, the annul-
ment of any biblical law that came prior to his ministry. Similarly,
he cannot lawfully announce new universally binding laws in God’s
name. This means that the ojce of prophet no longer exists; the
Bible alone is the inal word of God.
The Old Covenant prophet could lawfully tell kings to change
the nation’s laws on threat of immediate national punishment. A
true prophet’s ability to perform signs and wonders veriied two

6. Kenneth L. Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1989).
382 DEUTERONOMY

things: 1) his ability to invoke supernatural sanctions to enforce his

covenant lawsuit; 2) his ability to see that God would defend the
prophet’s lawsuit by imposing speciic sanctions. Such authority be-
longs to no man today. No man today speaks with the same author-
ity as the completed Bible. No man can lawfully invoke publicly
God’s speciic historical sanctions in a speciic time frame. He can
only invoke the general covenantal sanctions that apply to the kind
of sin under consideration. He can speak prophetically only in the
sense of warning men of the sanctions to come; he cannot lawfully
invoke sanctions in the way that an Old Covenant prophet could:
guaranteed in the immediate future in the name of God. “And Eli-
jah answered and said to the captain of ifty, If I be a man of God,
then let ire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy
ifty. And there came down ire from heaven, and consumed him
and his ifty” (II Ki. 1:10). This power is no longer granted by God to
anyone who speaks in His name. The very possession of power
analogous to this is evidence of false prophecy; it is demonic. Such
power was necessary to validate a prophet’s word, which was given
to him by God only because God’s judicially authoritative revela-
tion had not yet been completed. The prophet was authoritatively
inspired. In the world after the inal replacement of the Old Cove-
nant in A.D. 70, no one is authoritatively inspired. If he were, his
words would possess formal equality with the Bible, and because of
the immediate nature of his inspiration, superior operational
authority.

Civil Law
The question arises: What is the lawful role of civil government
in suppressing false prophecy? Is this law still in force? “And that
prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because
he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which
brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the
house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy
God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away
from the midst of thee” (Deut. 13:5).
If the ojce of true prophet no longer exists, then what is the
covenantal, judicial threat to society of a false prophet? There is
none. The threat of God’s corporate negative sanctions no longer
exists with respect to false prophecy, since the promise of God’s cor-
porate positive sanctions no longer exists with respect to true
 The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing 383

prophecy, having been annulled by the New Covenant. Then on

what basis can a civil government lawfully impose negative sanc-
tions against false prophecy? There seems to be none. The ojce has
been annulled. So have the related sanctions.
A false prophet was judicially analogous to a private citizen to-
day who makes a policeman’s uniform, dons it, and then tells peo-
ple what to do in the name of the law. This is illegal: the assertion of
civil authority not ordained by a lawful government. The false
prophet in Israel made a similar assertion. The sanction against this
illegitimate assertion was execution. If there were no ojce of police-
man today, there would be no need of civil laws against imitating
one. If every police uniform were regarded as merely a funny cos-
tume, there would be no justiication for imposing civil sanctions
against someone who wears such a costume and then announces his
authority in the name of the law. If a costume does not imply sanc-
tions-bearing authority, it is judicially harmless. If it is judicially
harmless, it is beyond civil sanctions.7
The Bible is now complete. It serves as the prophet that tells
people what is required of them. The voice of God is in print. No
other voice can claim equal authority. Thus, there is no judicial role
for a prophet in the post-A.D. 70 New Covenant era. There have
been no false prophets since A.D. 70 because there have been no
true prophets. Today, there are only misguided or corrupt people
who claim to be prophets. Their claim is to be dismissed, not by civil
law, but by ecclesiastical law. Church members who make such
claims, and who demand that Christians do what they say rather
than obey lawfully constituted church authorities, are to be placed
under negative church sanctions. If they persist in their claims, they
may have to be excommunicated. They are not to be executed.

Conclusion
There is no way to gain something for nothing apart from the
grace of God. Even here, the covenantal limits of creation are still in
force. God extends grace to individuals and societies because He re-
voked grace from His Son, Jesus Christ, in the latter’s sacriice on
Calvary. The payment was made by Jesus Christ. By grace, Christ’s

7. A trademarked costume is protected by civil law, but only as a matter of torts: private
party vs. private party. The threatened sanctions are a matter of restitution.
384 DEUTERONOMY

representative victory over sin and death is extended by God to

men. “For Christ also hath once sufered for sins, the just for the un-
just, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the lesh,
but quickened by the Spirit” (I Pet. 3:18). That which is a below-cost
beneit for the recipients of God’s grace has been paid for. Some
men gain something valuable for nothing because Jesus Christ
sufered something terrible for righteousness. Thus, the Bible testiies
to the covenantal illegitimacy of the economic quest for something
for nothing.
The magician can perform signs and wonders. What distin-
guished him from the prophet under the Old Covenant was confes-
sion. The prophet warned men that they should not expect
something for nothing. They should not expect to keep the fruits of
righteousness apart from the continual investment required to sus-
tain it: covenantal faithfulness. The prophet warned men that they
should not expect something (fruits) for nothing (sin). If men per-
sisted in the pursuit of something for nothing, they would reap judg-
ment. The day of reckoning would come. This was the prophet’s
message. It was a covenantal lawsuit based on an orthodox confes-
sion of faith. That a true prophet might perform signs and wonders –
what appeared to be something for nothing – was in fact a con-
irmation of the fact that there is never something for nothing.
When men gain something for nothing, they do so only because
they are recipients of grace, which rests judicially on supernatural
payment by a representative.
The magician also was beyond conventional historical limits,
but his message was diferent. He performed his miracles in terms of
a diferent confession. He promised more of the same – power on
demand – for those who conformed to another god. Such a god
could not bring permanent below-cost beneits, Moses warned. God
would bring negative corporate sanctions on Israel if the nation be-
lieved such a prophet. More than this: God would bring negative
sanctions on Israel if Israel’s civil government failed to execute false
prophets. This covenantal connection between widespread law-
breaking and predictable corporate negative sanctions was the
justiication of civil sanctions: the threat of God’s corporate negative
sanctions if a public evil was not brought under the threat of civil
sanctions. The magistrate acted as a surrogate for God, imposing
Bible-mandated negative sanctions on speciic covenant-breakers as
 The Lure of Magic: Something for Nothing 385

a way to head of God’s corporate negative sanctions. This is equally

true in New Covenant times.
The reason why this Mosaic civil sanction is no longer man-
dated is because the ojce of prophet has ceased. The Bible has re-
placed the prophet under the New Covenant. No man speaks with
authority equal to, and therefore superior to, the Bible. The threat of
false prophecy is no longer civil. No one lawfully commands civil
rulers in the name of God on threat of God’s immediate negative
sanctions. The ojce of prophet has no judicial authority today. Nei-
ther does the ojce of false prophet. The State does not need a pen-
alty in order to defend its authority from false prophets.
 33
CommerceAND
COMMERCE and Covenant
COVENANT

Ye shall not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto
the stranger [geyr] that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest
sell it unto an alien [nokree]: for thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy
God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk (Deut. 14:21).

This was clearly a land law, for it dealt with unclean meat. All
such laws ended with the New Covenant. Peter in a vision was told
by God to eat unclean animals (Acts 10). Paul wrote: “As concern-
ing therefore the eating of those things that are ofered in sacriice
unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that
there is none other God but one” (I Cor. 8:4).
I can see no judicial connection between the second sentence
and the irst sentence. The irst sentence sets forth a law governing
ritually clean animals that died naturally. The second sentence gov-
erns a speciic case: seething a kid in its mother’s milk. The second
has no speciic economic application that I can see. The irst does.
Theologically, these are separate verses.
There is no reason given in the Bible for either of these prohibi-
tions. This makes it dijcult to identify the theocentric focus of ei-
ther prohibition. The irst prohibition cannot have had anything to
do with health, since the law speciied that strangers in the land were
allowed to eat such meat. God would not deliberately have threat-
ened the health of a resident alien. To call biologically contami-
nated meat a gift would have been a terrible misuse of language.
The Hebrew word for “gift” here is found throughout the Old Testa-
ment. God’s gifts to mankind and to Israel were in no way polluted
or threatening; neither was this gift. So, this law was based on some-
thing other than health considerations.

386
 Commerce and Covenant 387

The Mosaic law prohibited the eating of animals that had died
naturally. The sanctions attached to this prohibition were mild.
“And every soul that eateth that which died of itself, or that which
was torn with beasts, whether it be one of your own country, or a
stranger, he shall both wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water,
and be unclean until the even: then shall he be clean” (Lev. 17:15).
Because this law applied to the resident alien, it was not exclusively
ecclesiastical, since the uncircumcised stranger or “protected stranger”1
[geyr] did not belong to the congregation. But there were no civil
penalties mentioned. So, with respect to the stranger, the law against eat-
ing such meat was merely a suggestion. The matter of ritual cleanli-
ness did not afect him. If he ever did approach the tabernacle, which
was the only place where ritual uncleanliness was a threat to him or to
the nation, it would have been to ofer sacriice (Num. 15:29). In this
case, he was under the purity restrictions. Otherwise, he was not holy
to the degree that an Israelite was, so the threat of uncleanliness was
of no importance to him, just so long as he did not attempt to ap-
proach the tabernacle, thereby committing a boundary violation.
He was holy in the sense of being set apart as a resident in Israel,
a person living under Mosaic civil law. He was set apart to this de-
gree: he was a beneiciary of the common grace of God that
overlowed within the land’s boundaries because of the special
grace shown to Israel. He was set apart – holy – by God in a way that
a resident of another land was not. He could eat such meat, but it
was not legal to sell it to him. It had to be a gift. The presumption of
the Mosaic law was that a stranger in economic need was threatened
by poverty more than Israel was threatened by a stranger who ate
such meat. It was lawful for an Israelite to make a gift of prohibited
meat to him. For a the price of a ritual washing, he could relieve
himself of any ritual pollution extending beyond evening. If the
stranger had any qualms about eating such meat, he could sell it to a
non-resident alien [nokree], just as an Israelite could.

Sacred and Profane

I have covered the topics of sacred, profane, and common at some
length in Chapter 6 of my Leviticus commentary, and at greater length

1. Jacob Milgrom, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers (New York: Jewish Publication
Society, 1990), p. 398.
388 DEUTERONOMY

in the electronic version, Boundaries and Dominion. I discussed why

the sacred can be profaned by a boundary violation, but the com-
mon cannot be. It is the sacred character of something that creates
the possibility of a ritual boundary violation. We cannot profane
something that is common.
A holy object is to be protected from violation. The closer a per-
son came to the holy of holies, the more dangerous he became: to
himself and to Israel. God did not tolerate anyone except the high
priest to enter the holy of holies, and then only once a year (Ex. 30:10;
Lev. 16:34). A boundary violation in this case threatened the nation.
God might depart from the holy land of Israel.
What was the holy object in question in this verse? The Israel-
ite? The meat? The land? The covenant? The tabernacle? Another
law points to the status of the Israelite as holy: the law governing the
clean animal slain in the ield by wild beasts. “And ye shall be holy
men unto me: neither shall ye eat any lesh that is torn of beasts in
the ield; ye shall cast it to the dogs” (Ex. 22:31). The meat of an ani-
mal that had died of sickness, old age, or an accident was not holy. It
was not to be set aside to God for His exclusive use. On the con-
trary, it was to be consumed inside the holy land only by two classes
of foreigners: resident aliens [geyr] and foreign visitors [nokree].
The Israelite could not eat it, but he could touch it in order to
transport it. If he touched it, he became unclean (Lev. 11:39), but
this was not much of a burden. To cleanse himself ritually, he
merely had to wash himself and his clothes. “But all other lying
creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto
you. And for these ye shall be unclean: whosoever toucheth the car-
case of them shall be unclean until the even. And whosoever beareth
ought of the carcase of them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean
until the even” (Lev. 11:23–25). “And he that beareth the carcase of
them shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until the even: they are
unclean unto you” (Lev. 11:28). If an Israelite was not planning to ap-
proach the tabernacle, his unclean status did not matter.
The Israelite could pick up the dead animal and transport it to a
commercial center. He could then sell it to a visiting foreigner. He
could give it to a resident alien who was willing to live under God’s
civil laws. This alien was the equivalent of a refugee. He was not a
citizen, nor was he a member of the congregation, but he was a law-
ful member of the community.
 Commerce and Covenant 389

This indicates two degrees of holiness: the Israelite and the resi-
dent alien. It also indicates non-holy status: the non-resident alien.
The resident alien was entitled to special consideration. He could
not lawfully be charged interest when he sought an emergency loan
2
(Lev. 25:35). It was legal to charge interest to a nokree (Deut. 23:20).
In this case, the resident alien could be given an asset that was illegal
for an Israelite to use for himself. The non-resident alien could be
charged.
Why was there a distinction? If an Israelite wanted to proit
from his dead animal, he could sell it to a non-resident alien. He
could not proit from a resident alien. He could not enter into com-
merce in this instance with a resident alien. This would have tended
to direct the prohibited meat into commerce. Most people prefer
proit to charity most of the time. The meat of animals that had died
of natural causes would have tended to wind up on the tables of
travellers and foreign businessmen.
The living animal had been ritually clean, no matter who owned
it, but it was prohibited to Israelites because of the way it had died.
So, the diference in holiness had to be in the judicial status of its origi-
nal owner. The Israelite was a priest to the nations. He was under
God’s national covenant. The resident alien was voluntarily under
the laws of the land on a permanent basis, but he had not sworn a
covenantal oath to God. The visiting stranger was under the law
only temporarily. The relationship between the person and the land
seems to have been the distinguishing issue here. The Israelite was
tied to the land covenantally. The resident alien was tied to the land
residentially. The stranger was tied to the land commercially. The
commercial tie was seen as having no judicially permanent status.
There was no oath-bound bonding in commerce. This is a general
principle of biblical economics: the transitory character of commerce. It
possesses no covenantal aspect; it is contractual, not covenantal.
The holiness of the land of Mosaic Israel was presumed by this
law. The degree of holiness of people was tied to the permanence of
their connection to the land. The land was holy, so the meat could
not be consumed by those who had an oath-bound connection to
the land. In the mouths of the permanent residents of God’s holy

2. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 709–11.
390 DEUTERONOMY

land, the meat became profane. In the mouths of the less permanent
resident aliens, it became profane if it had been purchased. In the
mouths of non-residents, it was not profane at all.
The most pure individual could not eat the meat because of his
permanent connection to the land. The less pure individual could
not buy the meat because of his voluntary connection to the land.
The impure individual could buy the meat because of his commer-
cial connection to the land.
With the coming of the New Covenant, the land of Israel began
to lose its covenantal status. With the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, it
lost it completely. There is no longer any holy land except in a
travel brochure – a distinctly commercial artifact. The non-holy sta-
tus of the land has not been changed by the formation of the State of
Israel in 1948, contrary to Zionists and dispensationalists. God
dwells equally with all of His chosen people today; they approach
Him judicially only in oaths and sacraments.3 Land ownership in
the New Covenant has moved from the legal status of holy to that of
commerce. While land ownership may possess special characteris-
tics because of the commitment that men sometimes have to a fam-
ily residence, their constant movement from place to place has
undermined this traditional commitment. In the United States,
where one-ifth of the population moves each year, land ownership
is no longer widely regarded as fundamentally diferent from the
ownership of other forms of wealth. The mobility of people has un-
dermined any lingering sense of the holiness of land. Men move to-
day in terms of market demand, and this has led to the psychological
de-sacralization of land. This is less true today in Europe and parts of
Asia, but as the free market extends its inluence, mobility replaces
permanence. It also replaces geographical community. Neither the
local geographical community nor the land retains men’s perma-
nent allegiance. Consumer demand extends its sovereignty as men

3. God has a special protecting relationship with the Jews as self-professed covenantal
heirs of Old Covenant Israel insofar as He preserves their separate identity in history. He
does this in order to fulfill Paul’s prophecy regarding Old Covenant Israel, the branch which
God has cut of: “And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafed in: for God is
able to graf them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature,
and wert grafed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which
be the natural branches, be grafed into their own olive tree?” (Rom. 11:23–24). But these
disinherited heirs of Moses can reclaim their share of the inheritance only by becoming
Christians and joining Christ’s church.
 Commerce and Covenant 391

seek to maximize their incomes. Consumer demand is constantly

changing; so are men’s residences.4

Commerce and Purity

The biological purity of meat was not the judicial question here.
Neither was the ritual purity of the meat. The ritual purity of the
eater was.
Because the eater’s degree of holiness was based on his degree
of permanence in the holy land, the meat was available for limited
commerce. The market value of the meat would be determined by
the market demand for it. The Israelite owner could act as the eco-
nomic agent of two kinds of aliens: resident and non-resident. The
seller could not legally accept an economic bid by a resident alien.
The Israelite decided which alien would receive the carcase of the
animal. Charity had to govern the transfer of ownership to the resi-
dent alien; commerce would govern the transfer to the non-resident
alien.
The purity of the land became an economic advantage to the
non-resident alien: subsidized meat. He would be the only legal bid-
der in the auction for this kind of meat. This is another way of saying
that it paid foreigners to do business inside the boundaries of Israel. The
non-resident alien had an advantage over the residents of the land:
monopolistic access to the free market for this form of meat.
The purity of the land therefore served as an economic barrier
to entry into resident alien status. A non-resident alien would forfeit
his legal access to this segment of the meat market if he decided to
take up permanent residence. He might occasionally be given free
meat, but he could no longer bid commercially for this form of
meat. This was a cost of becoming a resident. Yet the imposition of
this cost was unique: the loss of an indirect subsidy. A nation that
ofered an indirect subsidy to non-resident foreigners was unique in
the ancient world.
God did not waste this form of meat, yet He did impose tight ho-
liness restrictions on His people. The animal would not be totally

4. Part of this mobility is a product of government-guaranteed long-term loans in which

part of the risk of default by the debtor is borne by taxpayers rather than lenders. This
coercive arrangement has subsidized mobility and has undermined community. So have
government-funded highway systems.
392 DEUTERONOMY

worthless just because it died of natural causes. There would be a

market for its meat. This saved the Israelite from a total loss. But this
law did impose some loss on the Israelites. There were economic
costs of holiness.
Concerns about holiness did not eliminate the market in this
case. Did they eliminate the market in other cases? What about un-
clean animals? Were they under similar restrictions: total for Israel-
ites, partial for resident aliens, and non-existent for non-residents?
Could an Israelite lawfully sell pork to non-resident aliens?
I think the purity laws were designed for the sake of the land.
The degree of one’s legal connection to the land marked the degree
of restriction in the case of the animal that had died naturally. Such
deaths would occur from time to time. The economic question was:
How to minimize this loss without compromising the purity of the
land? The law allowing sales to non-resident aliens reduced the risk
to Israelites of raising ritually clean animals. There would at least be
some local demand for such dead beasts. But had this speciic limita-
tion on unavoidable losses been applied generally, it would have
led to the commercialization of unclean foods. Had it been legal for
Israelites to sell pork to non-resident aliens, some Israelites would
have begun commercial ventures for this purpose. The land would
have become illed with unclean beasts, thereby increasing the like-
lihood of prohibited contacts by Israelites with such beasts. So, my
assessment of this law is as follows: in order to reduce the economic
loss imposed by the unforeseen death of a clean animal, the Mosaic
law made two exceptions to the rule against eating ritually clean ani-
mals that died naturally. This reduced economic risk in the clean
animal industry. But the Mosaic law did not encourage the produc-
tion of unclean animals by opening up a market for them. Com-
merce was not supposed to increase the number of ritually impure
animals; it was merely to decrease the economic risk of an unfore-
seen loss of a clean animal.
This law must have increased the slaughter of sick but ritually
clean animals. The owner’s risk of losing access to the broader com-
mercial market increased as a clean animal aged or grew sick. He
knew that if it died, the market for its remains would shrink dramati-
cally. To avoid the requirement of providing non-resident aliens
with an economic subsidy – reduced competition on the demand
side – the Israelite had to kill the animal before it died of natural
causes. Also, a weak animal would become easy prey of wild beasts.
 Commerce and Covenant 393

If they got to the animal irst, only the dogs would beneit. It should
be clear that the economics of the Mosaic law encouraged the slay-
ing of clean animals. The holiness of the land led to the slaying of ritually
clean animals. Blood would be shed for the beneit of the righteous. The blood
of animals would be poured into the land. “Only ye shall not eat the
blood; ye shall pour it upon the earth as water” (Deut. 12:16).5

The Annulment of the Mosaic Land Laws

The fact that meat which was prohibited to an Israelite could
lawfully be sold to a non-resident alien indicates that this law was a
land law. He who had no legal attachment to the land had legal
access to a commercial market for such meat. The purity of the land
was not threatened by the consumption of such meat by aliens. The
holiness of the land was not threatened in this case by the eating
habits of those with no covenantal connection to the land.
This is another piece of evidence that the Mosaic food laws were
land laws, not health laws or laws of moral purity. I have developed
this thesis in my commentary on Leviticus.6 The food laws pro-
tected the land’s holy status as God’s place of residence. These laws
tended to keep foreigners out of the nation who might otherwise set-
tle there. Food laws were barriers to entry. People had to change
their diets when they entered Israel. People do not like to change
their diets. It takes a strong-willed person to make a break with his
nation’s culinary tradition. If this break must become permanent, it
takes considerable will. The cost of maintaining an imported diet
was high. It was legal, but the availability of prohibited meat7 would
have been reduced below what it would have been, had there been
no dietary laws. Those who were not covenanted with the God of Is-
rael would have had either an emotionally dijcult time adjusting
their diets or a costly time for not adjusting.
The holy status of the land of Israel ended with the advent of the
church. Jesus had predicted this to the Jews: “Therefore say I unto
you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a
nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). This prophecy

5. See also Leviticus 7:26–27; 17:10–14; 19:26; Deuteronomy 12:23; 15:23.

6. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), pp. 340–47.
7. It would have been salted or smoked; there was no refrigeration.
394 DEUTERONOMY

was deinitively fulilled with His death and resurrection: the giving
of the Great Commission to the church (Matt. 28:18–20). It was ex-
tended progressively after the sending of the Holy Spirit to the
church (Acts 2). It was inally fulilled with the fall of Jerusalem,
when the temple sacriices ended forever.

The Annulment of the Mosaic Food Laws

The Mosaic food laws had no connection with health consider-
ations. God had not subjected Noah and Abraham to increased
health risks by allowing them to eat whatever they wanted. God’s
covenant with Abraham looked forward to the conquest of the land,
but it did not impose either land laws or food laws. The food laws
were holiness laws established to reinforce the holiness of the land.
This is why they were announced by Moses, not by Abraham or
Noah. After the fall of Jerusalem, these laws were inally annulled.
But Jesus had already announced their deinitive demise. “Not that
which goeth into the mouth deileth a man; but that which cometh
out of the mouth, this deileth a man” (Matt. 15:11). Peter had re-
ceived a revelation from God regarding the deinitive annulment of
the food laws.

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the
city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: And he
became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready,
he fell into a trance, And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descend-
ing unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let
down to the earth: Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the
earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there
came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord;
for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice
spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call
not thou common. This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up
again into heaven (Acts 10:9–16).

Peter understood completely what this revelation meant. As he

announced to Cornelius, the Roman centurion: “Ye know how that
it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or
come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I
should not call any man common or unclean” (Acts 10:28). This was
an announcement by God to the world that the land of Israel had
 Commerce and Covenant 395

deinitively lost its separate judicial status. But Peter forgot, and Paul
later called it to his attention. “But when Peter was come to Antioch,
I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before
that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when
they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them
which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled
likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away
with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not up-
rightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before
them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles,
and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as
do the Jews?” (Gal. 2:11–14).
Calvin was adamant about the abolition of the Mosaic food
laws. In his commentary on Acts 15, he ridiculed those who would
revive any aspect of the food laws. Calvin was a master of invective,
and we see it here:

As touching meats, after the abrogating of the law, God pronounceth

that they are all pure and clean. If, on the other side, there start up a mortal
man, making a new diference, forbidding certain, he taketh unto himself
the authority and power of God by sacrilegious boldness. Of this stamp
were the old heretics, Montanus, Priscillianus, the Donatists, the Tatians,
and all the Encratites. Afterwards the Pope, to the end he might bind all
those sects in a bundle, made a law concerning meats. And there is no
cause why the patrons of this impiety should babble that they do not imag-
ine any uncleanness in meats, but that men are forbidden to eat lesh upon
certain days, to tame the lesh. For seeing they eat such meats as are most
it, both for delicacy and also for riot, why do they abstain from eating
bacon, as from some great ofence, save only because they imagine that
that is unclean and polluted which is forbidden by the law of their idol?
With like pride doth the tyranny of the Pope rage in all parts of life; for
there is nothing wherein he layeth not snares to entangle the miserable
consciences of men. But let us trust to the heavenly oracle, and freely
despise all his inhibitions. We must always ask the mouth of the Lord, that
we may thereby be assured what we may lawfully do; forasmuch as it was
not lawful even for Peter to make that profane which was lawful by the
Word of God.8

Anti-bacon babblers: Calvin had no toleration for such as these!

Since Vatican II (1963–65), Roman Catholics have been allowed to

8. John Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Baker, [1560] 1979), I, pp. 422–23.
396 DEUTERONOMY

eat meat on Fridays. The last traces of “taste not, touch not” (Col. 2:21)
were removed. Any attempt to revive the Mosaic food laws for any
reason is a move leading out of the church. The only food laws to-
day apply to the Lord’s Supper, a mandatory meal for Christians
that is legally barred to non-Christians.

Conclusion
The law allowing the sale of certain meats to non-resident aliens
reduced the burden of an unforeseen loss due to the unexpected
death of a clean animal. This preserved the holiness of the land by
placing restrictions on Israelites and resident aliens. The non-resident
alien received an indirect economic subsidy because of this law. He
could buy what Israelites and resident aliens could not.
The resident alien who bought such meat from an Israelite com-
mitted no crime. The Israelite did commit an ecclesiastical infrac-
tion. With respect to the locus of law enforcement, the food laws
were to be enforced by priests and family members; they were not
civil laws. They had civil implications – citizenship through church
membership – but not civil sanctions. If a non-resident alien sold
such meat to a resident alien, neither of them committed an infrac-
tion, for neither was under the ecclesiastical covenant. This law was
ecclesiastical, not civil. No civil penalties were speciied. If an alien
ate pork, the holiness of the land was not threatened. But ecclesiasti-
cal law did restrict what covenant-keeping Israelites could do with
meat. This in turn afected market prices, which would have made
unclean meat more expensive by reducing its production in Israel.
Prices were afected in Israel by the dietary laws, but there is no
indication that these laws applied to resident aliens, other than the
general prohibition of eating blood (Lev. 17:13), which was a
Noachic law (Gen. 9:4) that is still in force (Acts 15:20, 29). This
would explain why there were herds of pigs in Jesus’ time (Matt.
8:30–32). Israelites could not produce unclean meat commercially,
but resident aliens could. Resident aliens had faced a major prob-
lem when the jubilee law was enforced (which may have been
never) in pre-exilic times: they could not buy permanent ownership
of rural land. When enforced, this law would have tended to elimi-
nate the permanent commercialization of unclean animals. The ju-
bilee law surely would have made the development of permanent
herds of such beasts unlikely, for the resident alien could not have
counted on access to rural land after the jubilee. Only in the post-
 Commerce and Covenant 397

exilic era, when resident aliens at the time of Israel’s return gained
lawful permanent access to the land (Ezek. 47:22–23), would such
herds have become more likely.9

9. In the modern State of Israel, pork is produced by Kibbutz “X,” but it is not marketed as
pork. It is marketed either as penguin or duck. Christian Arabs also produce pork, which is
sold through non-kosher butcher shops; Jewish meatpackers act as intermediaries. Felix
Kessler, “And on This Farm, He Had a Penguin, With an Oink, Oink. . .”, Wall Street Journal
(Aug. 2, 1979), p. 1.
 34
Tithes
TITHES OFofCELEBRATION
Celebration
Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the ield
bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before the LORD thy God, in
the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn,
of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the irstlings of thy herds and of thy
locks; that thou mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always. And if the
way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place
be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose to set his name
there, when the LORD thy God hath blessed thee: Then shalt thou turn it
into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the
place which the LORD thy God shall choose: And thou shalt bestow that
money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for
wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou
shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and
thine household, And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not
forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee. At the end of
three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same
year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates: And the Levite, (because he hath
no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless,
and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and
be satisied; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine
hand which thou doest (Deut. 14:22–29).

The theocentric focus of this law is stated in the text: “that thou
mayest learn to fear the LORD thy God always” (v. 23). Men fear na-
ture, especially in agricultural societies. They seek ways to reduce
this fear. “Save for a rainy day,” we are told. We trust in our own de-
vices. God told Israel that under His covenant, there would be plenty
of sunny days ahead for covenant-keepers. He would provide the

398
 Tithes of Celebration 399

capital necessary to fund their celebrations. The discipline of tithing

was designed to acknowledge their fear of God and reduce their fear
of nature and history. The tithes of celebration were especially use-
ful in this regard. They were a form of holy wastefulness. This waste-
fulness included the consumption of intoxicating liquors.1 It was
“eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we live.”
I have quoted the entire passage because there may be confu-
sion if it is not seen as a unit. There is already sujcient confusion
when it is seen as a unit. Sorting out the implications of Israel’s sys-
tem of tithes is a dijcult process, as we shall see.

National and Local Festivals

The initial tithe mentioned in this text was to be consumed by
families and Levites at a central location. The central feasts were not
tribal afairs. They were familistic, ecclesiastical, and national. Was
this feast to be funded by a second tithe in addition to what was
owed yearly to the Levites? The text indicates that it was. This tithe
was used to fund the family’s expenses at one of the three annual fes-
tivals, presumably Booths (“Tabernacles”), the post-harvest feast.
There was a second tithe of celebration: a third-year tithe. This
festival took place locally. It substituted for the festival in Jerusalem.
Levites were invited, but so were strangers, widows, and orphans.
The presence of strangers indicates that it was not an ecclesiastical
festival. Was it civil? Or was it something else entirely? Until we
know what agency enforced it – which the text does not say – we
cannot be sure.
These tithes were imposed by God. If the nation obeyed Him
and paid them, He promised to bless them (v. 29). The question is:
Were these civil taxes? God did not threaten to impose negative
corporate sanctions on Israel if the State refused to impose penalties
for anyone’s failure to tithe and participate in the festivals. Who,
then, was the victim? For this to have been a matter of civil govern-
ment, the invited attendees would have had to possess a lawful civil
claim on other people’s wealth. Not to have brought one’s tithe to the
festival would have been a matter of theft. There would have been
some system of State-imposed restitution available to the victims. But

1. Strong drink was an intoxicant.

400 DEUTERONOMY

the primary victims were the families that owed God the money.
The lion’s share of these expenditures was to be consumed by the
actual wealth producers. The judicial problem here is to identify the
earthly victims who could lawfully bring a lawsuit against the
non-tithers. If these were widows, strangers, and orphans in general,
how could they prove damages in particular? If this was impossible,
on what judicial basis could the State have acted on their behalf to
collect from non-tithers in general to allocate to speciic claimants?

Celebration in Jerusalem
This law stated that a tithe on the land was to be eaten in a cen-
tral city (v. 24). All land-owning and land-leasing Israelites were re-
quired to journey to Jerusalem, presumably at the post-harvest feast
of Booths, in order to celebrate together. They had to bring a tithe of
their crops, which they would consume at the feast. To avoid carry-
ing heavy crops to a distant city, and also to allow them to eat other
crops brought in from other regions, they were allowed to sell their
crops in their home city and buy whatever they wanted in Jerusa-
lem. Presumably, part of the tithe inanced the journey. If not, then
this was a truly heavy inancial burden.
This celebration was to serve as a reminder that their wealth did
not depend on their eforts alone. This additional tithe might other-
wise have been invested, but it had to be consumed. Men were
asked to place their faith in God more than in thrift. The celebration
declared: “There’s a lot more where that came from!”
This was a rural land-based tithe in addition to the normal tithe
on all forms of net income. The tithe that applied to all income had
to go to the Levites as their inheritance (Num. 18:21). It was not left
in the hands of the people who had produced it. This Levitical tithe
I refer to as the irst tithe, following rabbinic tradition. It was Levi’s
inheritance. In contrast was the second tithe: the tithe of national
celebration. While the Levite had to be invited by land-owning fam-
ilies to celebrate (v. 27), he was not entitled to all of it or even the
bulk of it. This was not the case in the irst tithe. Rabbis have con-
cluded that this was a second tithe.2

2. Herbert Danby, note to Maaser Sheni (“Second Tithe”), which is a section of the First
Division, Zeraim (“Seeds”), The Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, [1933] 1987),
p. 73n.
 Tithes of Celebration 401

The First Tithe

This was the tithe owed to the Levites as the tribe without an in-
heritance in land. “But the tithes of the children of Israel, which they
ofer as an heave ofering unto the LORD, I have given to the Levites
to inherit: therefore I have said unto them, Among the children of
Israel they shall have no inheritance” (Num. 18:24). It was owed to
them because they had no landed inheritance in rural areas. Their
legal claim on the income of others was based on their lack of any
original claim on the land. All net income in the land, except for the
income of priests and Levites when they were serving the Lord in
ecclesiastical callings, was subjected to the irst tithe.3
The seventh year was a year of simultaneous debt release
throughout the land (Deut. 15). In that year, the land was to lie fal-
low (Lev. 25:4–5). A tithe was owed on whatever grew of its own ac-
cord and was harvested. It was owed on new animals born during
the year. It was owed by those who derived income from sources
other than agriculture.
Any attempt to explain the tithes of celebration as substitutes for
the irst tithe is an argument in favor of the expropriation of the Le-
vites’ lawful inheritance. They had no inheritance in land, but they
had a substitute inheritance: the tithe. To argue that these other
tithes were substitutes is to argue that the Levites were disinherited
by this law. They would have had to forfeit their income in order to
make celebrations possible for land owners. Clearly, a tithe of cele-
bration was an additional tithe. The questions are: Who had to pay
it? Who enforced it?

The Second Tithe

The second tithe was a tithe solely on agricultural output. The
text is clear on this. “Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy
seed, that the ield bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat
before the LORD thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place
his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil,
and the irstlings of thy herds and of thy locks. . . .” Those who lived
in cities did not pay it. All income not derived from agriculture was

3. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1997), ch. 10.
402 DEUTERONOMY

exempt. Agricultural land owners paid the second tithe in ive out of
seven years.
The second tithe had to be consumed in the central city of wor-
ship. This is why the prohibition in Deuteronomy 12:17–18 against
eating the tithe in one’s own gates has to refer to the national tithe of
celebration: “Thou mayest not eat within thy gates the tithe of thy
corn, or of thy wine, or of thy oil, or the irstlings of thy herds or of
thy lock, nor any of thy vows which thou vowest, nor thy freewill
oferings, or heave ofering of thine hand: But thou must eat them
before the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD thy God shall
choose, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant,
and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates: and
thou shalt rejoice before the LORD thy God in all that thou puttest
thine hands unto.”
If the central city was too far away for a family to carry the tithed
goods, the family could sell the goods for money. This money had
to be spent on food and drink at the celebration (v. 25). The rabbis
concluded that these agricultural goods could be redeemed lawfully
only by an added payment of one-ifth to the Levites.4 This rule is
not found in this text. The rabbis appealed to what appear to be sim-
ilar texts, such as this one: “And all the tithe of the land, whether of
the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD’S: it is holy
unto the LORD. And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he
shall add thereto the ifth part thereof” (Lev. 27:30–31). The rabbis
were incorrect. The law in Leviticus governed an item owed to God,
such as an animal, that the family wanted to keep. For the privilege
of buying back what was God’s, the family paid a 20 percent pre-
mium to the Levite. This was money paid in lieu of his receiving the
designated commodity. This was not the situation with the sec-
ond-year tithe. There was no element of redemption in this tithe.
This tithe was under the authority of the family, not the Levite. The
family was not redeeming something that belonged to God. It was
merely changing the form in which the tithe would be carried to
Jerusalem.
The Levites had a claim to part of the second tithe: participation
in meals. Strangers, widows, and orphans did not.

4. Danby, op. cit., p. 73.

 Tithes of Celebration 403

The Demand for Money

When widely obeyed, this law would have led to an increase in
the demand for money locally in national festival years. The de-
mand for money would have increased at a higher rate in regions
farther away from the central city because of the higher transporta-
tion costs. The price of agricultural goods would have been lower
than in Jerusalem in these distant areas, which is another way of say-
ing that there was an increased demand for money locally. At the
same time, demand for agricultural goods would have increased in
the central city because travellers brought their money into the city
to buy the food consumed during the celebration: “More money
chasing fewer goods.”
The fall in the price of agricultural goods in the outlying regions
and the parallel rise in the money price of such goods in the central
city would have produced proit opportunities for specialists in
transportation. They would have been able to buy goods in the dis-
tant regions in order to move them to the central city and sell them
to the attendees. They would have “bought low and sold high.”
Moving goods from places where they are in low demand to a place
where they are in high demand is an important market service.
Families would have estimated which was more proitable to them:
carrying the bulky goods to Jerusalem vs. paying money for them
there.

The Third Tithe

This tithe was long ago called the third tithe (Tobit 1:8). Never-
theless, Jewish commentators have regarded the second and third
5
tithes as one. This interpretation is incorrect. There was a third
tithe. It was diferent in at least two ways from the second tithe. First,
the celebration was held locally. Second, non-citizens in the com-
munity were invited in to celebrate, not just the Levites. “At the end
of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the
same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates: And the Levite, (be-
cause he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger,

5. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, 4 vols. (London: Collingridge, [1763] 1852),
I, p. 745. Gill had greater knowledge of the primary sources of early Judaism than any other
Christian commentator, before or since. Alfred Edersheim, a convert from Judaism, knew the
sources, but he did not write a Bible commentary.
404 DEUTERONOMY

and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall
come, and shall eat and be satisied; that the LORD thy God may bless
thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest” (vv. 28–29).
This was a tithe of celebration, but it was communal rather than na-
tional. It was a tithe for the sake of the judicially dispossessed.
There may have been a third distinction having to do with the
tax base: a tithe on any increase, not just agricultural. This depends
on the meaning of this verse: “At the end of three years thou shalt
bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay
it up within thy gates” (v. 28). If we interpret these words as gov-
erned by the context of the second tithe, then this was a substitute
for the second tithe. But the substitution clearly was not strict. The
festival was held locally. Local residents other than Levites were in-
vited in. Town residents were more likely than not to be members
of the same tribe as the rural land owners who lived in the surround-
ing area. I regard this celebration as tribal. It was not national.
The question arises: Did the tithe requirement apply to all in-
come? If we see this tithe as primarily tribal, and if we also see the
cities as part of the tribes’ inheritance, then the tithe may have been
required on all forms of net income. On the other hand, if this is in-
terpreted within the context of the introductory verses, it applied
only to agriculture.
This may seem like a small matter, but it is central to under-
standing welfare economics from the biblical perspective. If the
tithes of celebration were tithes exclusively on the land, imposed
because the land was not part of the Levites’ original inheritance
and from which they were excluded by the jubilee law, then the
State may have had a legitimate role in enforcing these tithes. It was
a matter of defending the original agreed-upon terms of the alloca-
tion of private property at the time of the conquest. But the celebra-
tion tithes were consumed mainly by the producers. The Levites
had a claim only on a small portion of this wealth. Also, the third
tithe went in part to subsidize attendance by non-Levites. On what
legal basis did they possess a claim on the income of anyone else?
What legal principle undergirded this law, assuming that this law
mandated State wealth-redistribution? If the State was authorized to
enforce the third tithe on land owners, then the Mosaic law did au-
thorize coercive wealth-redistribution, although extremely small, in
this instance.
 Tithes of Celebration 405

The Judicially Defenseless

In the third year, the tithe of celebration was shared with those
residents who were not eligible to be citizens in the local tribe. This
tithe is generally referred to as the poor tithe, but a prosperous
stranger or widow was also to be invited. The rabbinic assumption
was that these four categories – widows, orphans, strangers, and Le-
vites – would have been poor, but there is no reason to assume that
Levites were poor.
The correct classiication of these attendees is judicial, not eco-
nomic. The stranger and the orphan (a minor) were not eligible to
serve in the Lord’s army. They could therefore not be citizens. The
Levite had no inheritance in the land. He could not be a citizen in
the tribe in which his city was located unless it was a Levitical city.
He served in a separate military unit, one which defended the Ark
of the Covenant.6 The widow, though the head of a household, was
not eligible to serve in the army. She was an heir only through her
husband and her children when they reached adulthood. She could
not hold civil ojce because she was not under the family authority
of a man who was himself eligible to serve in the army and therefore
as a judge.7 While any of these guests at the festival may have been
poor, the criterion for being invited to the festival was not their pov-
erty. Rather, it was their lack of judicial standing as citizens eligible
to hold civil ojce in the local tribe. Thus, to call this third-year tithe
a poor tithe is incorrect, although Jewish tradition so labels it.

The Levites’ Lawful Inheritance

The Levites had no landed inheritance in Israel. The other
tribes did. The tithe on the land was the Levites’ inheritance.
This leads me to a conclusion: anything that undermined the tithe
on the land undermined Levi’s inheritance. If the interpretation of any
Mosaic law led to the legalization of an exemption from any of the
tithes, this interpretation had the economic efect of disinheriting
Levi.
If those who enjoyed the fruit of the land could gain a competi-
tive advantage over other land owners by legally refusing to pay

6. North, Sanctions and Dominion, pp. 32–38.

7. I conclude that Deborah served as a judge because she was married and not a widow.
406 DEUTERONOMY

their tithes, then the Levites would be steadily disinherited. If a

leaseholder or land owner could legally have retained an extra 20
percent per year, six years out of seven, and use this money to invest
in tools, seed, or whatever, stewardship over the land would have
been exercised increasingly by non-tithers. This would have been
true in the case of covenant-breaking Israelites as well as cove-
nant-breaking resident aliens.
This leads to a very important conclusion, one which I had not
seen before I began interpreting the laws governing the tithes of cel-
ebration. There was an implicit clause built into God’s original grant
of land: the primary tithe of the land belonged to Levi. This was Levi’s in-
heritance. This clause guaranteed that Levi could not be disinher-
ited by covenant-breakers who refused to pay their tithes on the
land’s produce. Because the other tribes inherited rural land, Levi
inherited the irst tithe on this land. Also, Levites lawfully partici-
pated in the tithes of celebration. This was a matter of civil law be-
cause it was a matter of tribal inheritance. It was not a matter of
church-State relations.
The State enforces contracts. Under the Mosaic covenant prior
to the exile, the appropriate civil sanction for refusing to pay tithes
on the land must have been the disinheritance of the tithe-protester.
This sanction was applied on the basis of Levi’s lawful inheritance.
It was not a civil enforcement of an ecclesiastical obligation. It was a
civil enforcement of Levi’s tribal inheritance. The judicial issue was
Levi’s inheritance, not the theological commitment of the land’s
steward. My conclusion is that the resident alien could lease rural
land, but he had to pay the irst tithe to the Levites. The original
owner could not alienate – literally – Levi’s inheritance by leasing
his land to an alien. Levi had an enforceable legal claim on a portion
of the output of the land.
This solves the problem of the irst tithe. It does not solve the
many problems of the second and third tithes.
Were the tithes of celebration part of Levi’s inheritance? Part of
these tithes was. The Levites had to be invited to the festivals. The
legal question is this: Could the economic portion of this obligation
have been met without the participation of the land’s steward in the
festival? That is, could he have paid the Levites a portion of these
tithes, thereby fulilling his obligation? The law does not say. We
must guess. It is not an easy guess.
 Tithes of Celebration 407

The Levites had a right to attend the celebrations, i.e., participa-

tion in the life of the nation, which included celebrations. Did this
mean that the Levites had a right to celebrate in the presence of
those who served as the land’s stewards? Was there more to their
claims beyond money for food? If we answer yes, then the
non-Israelite lease holder or excommunicated Israelite had to at-
tend the celebrations on threat of civil sanctions. What sanctions?
The law does not say. Perhaps it was the forcible removal of the
leaseholder from the property. If so, this would have been a very
costly penalty, at least during Israel’s agricultural phase.
Who was authorized to enforce the claims of the Levites? If this
law was strictly ecclesiastical, then the Levites had this right: excom-
munication. This certainly would have been a self-interested en-
forcement system. The judges would have been the stated
beneiciaries of the law. Did they possess this authority to judge in
irst-tithe cases? They shared this authority. The tithe was owed to
them because they were the priestly tribe, and also because they
had a legal claim based on their lack of landed inheritance. Both
church and State were authorized by God to enforce the irst tithe.
Then why not also the second and third tithes, at least with re-
spect to participation by the Levites? There seems to be no good
reason not to assume that this was the case. The problem comes
with respect to institutionally enforceable claims by the other partic-
ipants: widows, orphans and strangers. This raises the issue of Israel
as a welfare State. Did the Mosaic civil law force one group of resi-
dents to inance annual festivals for others? It is not easy to make
such a case based on the textual evidence here.
These were feasts to honor God: “that thou mayest learn to fear
the LORD thy God always.” They were feasts to which Levites had to
be invited. Were they somehow exclusively civil and therefore
compulsory? Only to the extent that the Levites possessed a civil le-
gal claim on being invited to attend. At most, the civil character of
these festivals, if any, would have authorized the State to enforce a
claim on some food and drink – hardly a major expense. The sug-
gestion that the State had the authority to compel attendance at a re-
ligious festival is foreign to everything else we know of the Mosaic
law. But if this was the case, we have problems: the resident alien
and the excommunicated Israelite.
408 DEUTERONOMY

Alien Leaseholders
It is clear from the text that the second tithe was a tithe on the
produce of the land. This raises the question of the leaseholder. It
was legal for an owner to lease his land to another person for up to
49 years – until the jubilee (Lev. 25:10). The question arises: Could
this leaseholder have been a resident alien? The Bible does not say.
It was legal to lease out the land to another person (Lev. 25:25–28).
It was also legal to sell oneself to a resident alien (Lev. 25:47–54).
We must discover the answer by means of other principles of bibli-
cal law, as well as by their implications. What is said here of a resi-
dent alien is also true of an excommunicated Israelite.
Next, was a resident alien or an excommunicant required to pay
any tithe of celebration? The text does not say. It would make the
expositor’s task much easier if it did.
The tithe of celebration was a tithe on the land’s produce, year
by year. Did the alien or excommunicant have to attend these festi-
vals and spend his tithe? That is, did the State have the right to com-
pel anyone to attend a festival? Clearly, the Levites did not possess
such authority when dealing with an alien or an excommunicant. I
can see nothing in the Mosaic law to indicate that the State pos-
sessed such authority.
Did the State or the church lawfully enforce these tithes? If it
was only the church, then the church’s threat of excommunication
and, as a result, loss of citizenship held no terrors for a cove-
nant-breaking resident alien. He was not a citizen. Then what was
the meaningful sanction against him if he refused to pay this tithe?
Could the State have forced the resident alien to leave the leased
land? If so, was he entitled to a refund from the Israelite land owner
whom he had paid? That would have placed a heavy burden on the
land owner, who had put his money to other uses. If the owner was
not liable, then removal from the land was a heavy economic bur-
den on a family that refused to attend a festival. It would have
amounted to coniscation of property on a huge scale. On whose be-
half? To what victim had the alien owed the tithe? To God by way of
himself, mainly. It does not seem biblical to argue that the State had
any jurisdiction over the resident alien in this matter, with the possi-
ble exception of paying for a Levite’s food and drink, who was owed
support based on the original land distribution.
 Tithes of Celebration 409

My conclusion is that no covenantal agency possessed the au-

thority to enforce attendance or support by a resident alien or
excommunicant, except for a small portion owed to Levites based
on their right of inheritance. This conclusion, however, leads to an
unexpected conclusion. If it was lawful for a resident alien or an
excommunicant to avoid paying all tithes of celebration, he could
operate with a much lower overhead than a covenant-keeping Isra-
elite could. He could spend the money locally or else reinvest it. He
would have been able to save up capital by avoiding the celebra-
tion. Over time, this would have given him a major advantage, as
his extra returns compounded. The non-participating resident alien
would have had an advantage over Israelites in bidding for control
over the land. This would have tended to transfer stewardship over
land to those who were not heirs of the conquest. They could have
leased the land from Israelites, paid a token amount to inance food
once a year for a local Levite, and invested the diference. Other
things being equal, they would eventually have displaced the Israel-
ites from agriculture. The Israelite land owners would have done
well by leasing their land to aliens and excommunicants, but they
would not have remained on the land.
So, if the tithe law was not enforced by the State, the celebration
tithes would have tended to push tithe-paying Israelites of the land
and into the cities, leaving non-tithing resident aliens and excom-
municated Israelites in control of the land. Such people did take
control of the land during Israel’s exile, but this was understood to
be a curse on Israel. Did the Mosaic law subsidize a result which was
similar to the result of the captivity? Was land stewardship distrib-
uted in favor of covenant-breakers? This, surely, is an unexpected
application of the Mosaic law – the disinheritance of Israel!
Under such an interpretation, this tithing law was self-defeating.
It was a tithe on agriculture only. Urban Israelites escaped it, and so
could resident aliens who leased rural land for farming. Who, then,
would pay it? A strange law, indeed!

Legal Discrimination?
An alternative to this interpretation is to deny that the resident
alien or excommunicant had the right to lease land in Mosaic Israel,
precisely because he could not be efectively pressured ecclesiasti-
cally to celebrate in Jerusalem. If any such prohibition on land own-
ership had been enforced, there would have been costs imposed on
410 DEUTERONOMY

Israel’s economy. Owners would have received lower bids for leas-
ing their land, since aliens and excommunicated Israelites would
not have been allowed to bid. The land would not have been used
by the most ejcient producers. Of course, the tithes of celebration
were not imposed for short-term ejciency’s sake. They were im-
posed for God’s sake.
The problem here is that a covenant-keeping resident alien
would have been discriminated against by such a prohibition. Why
shouldn’t he have been allowed to act as a steward of the land? On
what legal grounds could he have been excluded? Wasn’t one law in
Israel to govern all men (Ex. 12:49)? What was the covenantal basis
of such an exception? Where was the justice of such an exclusion?
The fact that some resident aliens might not pay the tithes of cele-
bration was not much of a reason to exclude aliens in general from
leasing agricultural land.

Who Enforced the Third-Year Tithe?

This third tithe confuses things even more. Others besides Le-
vites were to be invited in. Did the land owner owe them a place at
his table, on threat of civil sanctions? Was the civil government the
enforcing agent? If it was, then we have here an example of the wel-
fare State in action. Unlike the Levites, these guests had no legal
claim based on the original inheritance. If the State lawfully forced a
recalcitrant land owner to invite them in, then they were not guests.
They were welfare State clients. They were beneiciaries of State co-
ercion. Did God mandate such a system in His law?
Then there is the question of who was required to pay? Was it
every local Israelite or just local land users? On what legal basis
would landless people in a town have owed the guests anything?
Not by a distinction between original landed inheritance and the
absence thereof. Urban land had not been part of the original inher-
itance that was excluded from the Levites. Levites lived in towns
and could buy property. Were landless urban dwellers required to
subsidize other landless urbanites, who had no civil claim on the
output of non-rural property? Was this an incipient form of statist
bread and circuses in the Mosaic law?
 Tithes of Celebration 411

Dijcult Choices
Well, which is it? How was this law enforced? Here are the
choices. First, the State compelled land owners and leaseholders to
attend religious festivals on threat of losing their land or some other
civil sanction. Second, the State compelled land owners and lease
holders to provide free meals for an indeterminate number of
strangers during third-year festivals, with double restitution to these
unidentiied victims if they refused to pay. Third, because the State
could not legally compel payment of celebration tithes, it prohibited
non-tithing resident aliens and excommunicants from leasing rural
land, in order to avoid indirectly subsidizing non-tithers. Fourth, the
State had no authority in this area; instead, the Levites lawfully
enforced the celebration tithe laws. But because the Levites had ex-
clusively ecclesiastical authority, they had no way of enforcing these
laws on resident aliens and excommunicants, i.e., they had no
meaningful sanctions to impose. Therefore, because no covenantal
institution possessed efective negative sanctions in this area, non-
paying resident aliens and excommunicants would have gained a
competitive advantage in agriculture and would have steadily dis-
placed paying Israelites from the land. Because non-tithers would
progressively dominate the land, and urban Israelites were not re-
quired to pay, this law had to become a dead letter. It was inherently
unenforceable. If so, then why did God announce it?
Let us review the options in greater detail. Did the State impose
attendance? If so, this law violated the biblical legal principle of vic-
tim’s rights.8 Who was the victim of a refusal to attend? To whom did
the criminal owe restitution? To himself? This makes no sense. I pre-
fer to stick with victim’s rights. The State did not impose attendance.
Did the State compel wealth-redistribution? The feasts were by
invitation only. In this sense, this law was like the gleaning law
(Deut. 24:19–22). Those with assets – land owners – were required
by God to invite others to share their wealth. But this was not a civil
law. No bureaucrats provided the land owners with lists of those
who had to be invited. Then who were the identiiable victims?
Which uninvited strangers had a legal claim on which land owner’s
hospitality? Which widows? Which orphans? How did the judges

8. Gary North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
412 DEUTERONOMY

allocate the percentage owed by land users to speciic uninvited vic-

tims? How would such assessments have been determined without
creating an arbitrary judicial system? This view of State power is so
far removed from the Mosaic law that it, too, makes no sense.
Did the State prohibit resident aliens and excommunicants
from leasing land – not just nonpaying ones, but all of them? To al-
low only paying ones to lease land would have meant that the State
had the power to compel attendance by removing nonpaying ones
from the land. We are back to the irst choice: State compulsion. So,
did biblical law discriminate, on the basis of ecclesiastical member-
ship, against would-be farmers? If so, Israel was not merely a theoc-
racy; it was an ecclesiocracy. But the Mosaic law indicates that
Israel was not an ecclesiocracy. Is this law an exception? This is pos-
sible, but I am unwilling to take this huge exegetical step. Surely
such a view of this law’s implications violates the principle of the
rule of law.
This leaves one inal choice: this law was institutionally unen-
forceable. We must therefore accept its economic implication,
namely, that non-tithers would have had a competitive advantage in
farming. This would have moved non-tithers onto the land and tith-
ers into the cities, where they would no longer have been required
to pay celebration tithes.

Old Wineskins
Built into the Mosaic land laws were at least two self-destruct
clauses. This law was one of them. The other one was the jubilee
land law. The jubilee law mandated that rural land be returned to
the heirs of the conquest every half century. A growing population –
one of God’s promises to Israel for obeying His law – meant
ever-smaller parcels of land. This in turn meant a declining share of
family income derived from agricultural output.
This tithe law was a parallel law. Over time, the covenantal
faithfulness of Israel would have reduced the value of any tithe on
income from land. As time went by, no family could count on much
help from its landed inheritance. Meanwhile, the costs of celebrat-
ing would have gone up. The larger the population, the more ex-
pensive festival rent rates in Jerusalem would have become:
competitive bidding.
What this law did was to point ahead to a day when the old
wineskins of the Mosaic land laws would be broken by the new wine
 Tithes of Celebration 413

of population growth. The Mosaic land laws were inherently anti-

rural. They subsidized urbanization. This is not surprising. Biblical
eschatology points to a city: Zion, the city of God (Zech. 8;
Rev. 21; 22). Israel’s land laws were designed to push Israelites of
the land and into the cities. Eventually, these laws would have
pushed them out of the nation. As I wrote in my commentary on Le-
viticus, “The jubilee inheritance law was designed to promote emi-
gration out of Israel and urban occupations inside the land that
relied on foreign trade. The rural land inheritance law promoted
contact with foreigners. This was an aspect of the dominion cove-
nant. It was to serve as a means of evangelism. The story of Israel,
her laws, and her God was to spread abroad (Deut. 4:5–8).”9
The landed inheritance of Canaan was temporary. Men who
paid careful attention to the Mosaic law would have seen that Israel
was like Eden: a temporary training camp for worldwide dominion.
The land of Israel was both a boot camp and headquarters. The di-
aspora was an inescapable concept for Israel. Either the nation
would rebel against God, avoid population growth, and be carried
into captivity, or else it would obey God, grow, and extend God’s
kingdom across the face of the earth. In either case, they could not
remain bottled up inside Israel’s geographical boundaries.
Israel chose the irst approach, twice: pre-exilic and post-
cruciixion. For that, she lost the inheritance (Matt. 21:43).
In between the conquest and the dispersion, what about the im-
plicit subsidy to nonpaying resident aliens and excommunicants?
Other things being equal, they would have inherited rural land –
not as owners but as actual users. But the per capita value of this
landed inheritance would have fallen steadily in times of national
obedience. Besides, other things are not equal. This law was given
“that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand
which thou doest.” Obedience to God would have brought national
blessings. Even with growing festival nonparticipation in the coun-
tryside, the urban faithful would have continued to celebrate volun-
tarily with their growing nonagricultural incomes, leaving the
nonparticipants to fall behind economically in the countryside.

9. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), p. 422.
414 DEUTERONOMY

New Testament Annulment

The three temple-related annual festivals were aspects of Israel’s
land laws and seed laws. The national festivals maintained geo-
graphical and ritual unity among the geographically dispersed
tribes. These mandated journeys to a central location reminded the
tribes of the centrality of the temple-altar, the Ark of the Covenant,
the tablets of the law, and the geographically dispersed tribe of Le-
vites. These celebrations were times of common confession. There
is no New Testament indication that any comparable national cere-
mony is to bind New Testament churches or residents of any cove-
nanted Christian nation. The national feasts were tied explicitly to
Jerusalem and the tabernacle; nothing like this geographical cen-
trality exists under the New Covenant. The New Covenant substi-
tutes the sacraments and decentralized worship for the temple
festivals.
The third-year tithe of local celebration was not associated with
the temple. It was a tribal afair. It involved a voluntary tax on the
land and, if the inclusive language is taken literally, also on town res-
idents. Those who were the contractual stewards of the land were
required by God to pay both of these tithes, but no agency enforced
this. One cost of leasing the land was participation in the festivals.
But no one was forced by threat of formal sanctions to bear this cost.
Judicially, the second and third tithes were Mosaic land laws.
The third tithe was also a seed law, having to do with the tribes.
These laws were tied to the conquest of Canaan. They were an-
nulled when Israel’s unique status as owner of the Promised Land
ceased. Israel’s kingdom inheritance was transferred to the church
(Matt. 21:43). These two tithes did not extend into the New Cove-
nant. But as examples, they serve us well. Christmas is a common
time of celebration in the West. The American tradition of feeding
the homeless a turkey at Christmas bears a faint trace of the old Mo-
saic practice. But these common meals, while funded by the higher
classes, have rarely been attended by them. There is no social mix-
ing today of property owners, widows, orphans, and strangers.
Something socially healing has been lost with the annulment of the
older festival pattern.
 Tithes of Celebration 415

Medieval Catholicism celebrated over one hundred holy days

(holidays).10 Spain had 150 saints days and festival days as late as
1620.11 Beginning with Luther’s recommendation, Protestants dras-
tically reduced the number of such holidays.12 This led to an in-
creased number of work days in Protestant nations. It also led to a
sabbatarian rest pattern of one day in seven. This development, when
pursued consistently, very nearly destroyed the idea of a church cal-
endar. Liturgical churches that are closer to the medieval pattern are
more likely to pay attention to the church calendar; the Presbyte-
rian and Anabaptist traditions do not. In Puritan Massachusetts in
the mid-seventeenth century, it was illegal to celebrate Christmas.
The government assessed a ine for any violation.13 Religious cele-
brations are suspect in the Puritan tradition. In some instances today,
Christmas and Easter are not celebrated by strict Presbyterians, al-
14
though this is rare.
With the rise of the trade union movement, the number of paid
holidays increased. The number of religious holidays in Protestant
nations is still small, usually consisting of Christmas eve and day,
and Easter weekend. Christian celebrations today are generally
conined to families and local churches. There is no equivalent of
Mosaic Israel’s compulsory national feast of celebration.

Conclusion
Land owners were told by God to set aside voluntarily an extra
ten percent of their net agricultural income in six years out of seven
in order to fund the tithes of celebration. Five feasts were celebrated
nationally and one locally. In the sabbatical year, land owners still
had to attend feasts in Jerusalem, but they did not have to invite in
strangers, widows, and Levites. Participation in these national
feasts was to be inanced by a special tithe on all rural land. Given

10. Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (2nd ed.; New York:
Schocken, 1967), p. 146.
11. Ibid., p. 148.
12. Ibid., pp. 149–51.
13. May 11, 1659: Nathaniel B. Shurtlef (ed.), Records of the Governor and Company of the
Massachusetts Bay in New England, 5 vols. (Boston: William White, Commonwealth Printer,
1853), V, p. 366.
14. In large congregations, such concern is absent. Preaching against Christmas is a sure
way to shrink a congregation.
416 DEUTERONOMY

the expenses and burdens of travel, it is likely that the feast of

Booths served as the national tithe-feast. In the third year, however,
rural land-owning families were required to allocate a tithe for a lo-
cal celebration, inviting widows, orphans, strangers, and Levites to
attend.
At these feasts, the head of a rural family was not to conserve
funds. The family and its guests were required to consume the entire
tithe. Nothing was to be held back. This was God’s celebration. This
freedom from economic restraints was manifested by the authoriza-
tion of intoxicating drink as part of the national celebrations. This
law countered excessive future-orientation. The future is in God’s
hands, just as the present is. The present has its lawful rewards. To
“save for a rainy day” was legitimate in Mosaic Israel; on the other
hand, never to acknowledge God’s sunny days was illegitimate. As
an ethical model, the Mosaic tithes of celebration are valid in the
New Covenant.15 They are not ecclesiastically mandatory, however.
The irst tithe was Levi’s inheritance in lieu of land. It was im-
posed on all income in Israel. This inheritance was enforceable in a
civil court. It was a tribal inheritance, not an ecclesiastical inheri-
tance as such.16 The civil sanction was not speciied. Loss of citizen-
ship was one possibility. Actual coniscation is another. The tithe
today is not connected to the conquest generation’s distribution of
land. It is therefore no longer a civil matter.
What of the second and third tithes on the land? They, too, were
part of God’s requirements. But they were neither civil nor ecclesi-
astically enforced, with the possible exception of payment for Le-
vites’ meals.
Because of the economic burden of these laws, nonpaying resi-
dent aliens and excommunicants would have gained control over
rural agricultural land, other things being equal. God’s grace, how-
ever, does not make things equal. He promised to bless the nation if
they obeyed. If rural renters had refused to pay but urban dwellers

15. Perhaps the greatest piece of literature in the English language in defense of this ethical
model is Charles Dickens’ masterpiece, A Christmas Carol. It is surely the most popular,
especially through a series of movies. I know of no other story that has been made more often
into movies and television specials.
16. The New Covenant tithe is a Melchizedekan tithe, not a Levitical tithe (Heb. 7). Gary
North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), p. 133.
This is why the State cannot legitimately enforce it. It is the church’s moral claim on God’s
covenant people, not a legal claim enforceable in a civil court.
 Tithes of Celebration 417

did pay, God would have honored the urban faithful. This is why
there are limits to humanistic economic analysis. The economists
do not see the covenantal structure of economics, including growth
theory.
The value of the land’s output in a family’s budget would have
fallen over time in a growing population. This meant that there
would come a day when these festival laws would be annulled by
God in order to meet the new environment: urban life, emigration,
and falling income from small-scale agriculture. The celebration
tithe laws were old wineskins: designed by God to be broken, either
by apostate rural non-tithers or by successful covenant-keepers who
went abroad and did not return to the annual festivals except on
rare occasions.
 35
THEThe Charitable Loan
CHARITABLE LOAN

At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. And this is
the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his
neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his
brother; because it is called the LORD’S release. Of a foreigner thou mayest
exact it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall
release; Save when there shall be no poor among you; for the LORD shall
greatly bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an
inheritance to possess it. Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the
LORD thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command
thee this day (Deut. 15:1–5).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s sabbath. There had to

be a scheduled resting in the Promised Land: of the land, of agricul-
tural workers, of domesticated farm animals, and of at least one
form of debt. God had rested on the seventh day; Israel was to rest
in the seventh year. The law of the sabbath was announced in the
fourth commandment. This placed it under point four of the biblical
covenant model: oath/sanctions.1 The release from work was a posi-
tive sanction. So was the release from debt. “Forgive us our debts”
(Matt. 6:12) remains a valid prayer.
This release from debt was called the Lord’s release. The Hebrew
word here translated “release,” shawmat, means “rest” or “throw
down.” The mandatory resting of the land in the seventh year is related
grammatically to the release from debt: “But the seventh year thou shalt

1. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), pp. xvi–xvii; ch. 4: “Sabbath and Dominion.”

418
 The Charitable Loan 419

let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what
they leave the beasts of the ield shall eat. In like manner thou shalt
deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard” (Ex. 23:11).
The blessings of God were once again said to be tied to national
obedience. Israel’s inheritance of the land was ethically conditional.
Law, positive sanctions, and inheritance were a covenantal unit.
This means that law, negative sanctions, and disinheritance were
equally a covenantal unit. The positive sanction of rest was explic-
itly tied to the maintenance of the national inheritance. This rest in-
cluded rest from debt.
This was a land law: “for the LORD shall greatly bless thee in the
land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to pos-
sess it.” It was tied to Israel’s system of covenantal release. The sab-
batical year is no longer required, for this law applied only to
Canaan, when the date of Israel’s entry into the land could be accu-
rately determined. The sabbatical was tied to the calendar of the
feasts.

Loans to the Poor

There was an annulment provision in this law of debt release. It
would not apply when there were no longer poor people in the land
(v. 4). This should be regarded as hyperbolic language. “For the
poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee,
saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy
poor, and to thy needy, in thy land” (v. 11). But the fact remains that
in some unique way, this law was connected judicially to the pres-
ence of poor people in the land. This exclusionary clause should
alert us to the possibility that this law was not universal in scope or ap-
plication. It was tied in some way to both the poor and the land.
Moses explained the application of this law. It was explicitly re-
lated to poor people. “If there be among you a poor man of one of
thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy
God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine
hand from thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide
unto him, and shalt surely lend him sujcient for his need, in that
which he wanteth” (Deut. 15:7–8). There was a strong element of
moral obligation here.
What did the word mean, “wanteth”? The same Hebrew word,
khawsare, is used to describe God’s care for them in the wilderness.
They lacked nothing. “Yea, forty years didst thou sustain them in
420 DEUTERONOMY

the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed

not old, and their feet swelled not” (Neh. 9:21; emphasis added).
Yet the exodus generation had complained continually that they
lacked everything good which they had possessed in Egypt. In re-
sponse, God kept them wandering in the wilderness. He disinher-
ited that generation. So, the idea of “want” in this context is serious
poverty, where one’s work or life are in danger. Such a lack of basic
necessities is not common to covenant-keepers: “The LORD is my
shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1).
There were sanctions attached to this law because it was a subset
of a larger category of biblical laws: charity. “He that giveth unto the
poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a
curse” (Prov. 28:27). These promised negative sanctions were
neither civil nor ecclesiastical. There is no suggestion that any
covenantal institution had the right or obligation of threatening for-
mal negative sanctions against individuals who disobeyed this law.
These promised sanctions were historical and individual. The Bible is
clear about the presence of these sanctions in history. God imposed
them directly, apart from any intermediary covenantal authorities.
The mandated discipline here was self-discipline. The man with
money to lend was to consider the plight of the poor man. He was to
evaluate the causes of the poor man’s poverty. Having determined
that the person was not poor because of bad habits, the man with
money was to lend generously. If he did, he would be rewarded: a
positive sanction. “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked
heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and
thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him
nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto
thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be
grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the
LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou
puttest thine hand unto” (vv. 9–10). Again, it was God, not the State,
who would reward the generous lender. This is why this law had
nothing to do with civil sanctions. Biblical civil sanctions are exclu-
sively negative. The Bible does not authorize compulsory wealth re-
distribution.2

2. David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators: A Biblical Response to

Ronald J. Sider (3rd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, [1985] 1996).
 The Charitable Loan 421

Lending and Dominion

In the middle of this passage, there is a requirement that has
nothing to do with lending to the poor. This passage is extremely
important in establishing the legitimacy of money-lending as a pro-
fession: “For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee:
and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow;
and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over
thee” (v. 6).
Here is a legitimate reason to seek wealth: to become an inter-
national money-lender. There is a reason to become a money-
lender: to increase the inluence of your covenant-keeping society.
The lender is the master over the borrower. To seek such mastery
over other nations is legitimate. To be in a inancial position to lend
to covenant-breaking nations is a blessing of God. His kingdom is
advanced by such lending. Conversely, it is a curse to be in debt to
other nations.
The text here is not talking about what is today called foreign
aid, which is in fact State-to-State aid: using tax money extracted
from the residents of one nation to fund State-funded projects in an-
other nation.3 It is talking about the aggregate debt or credit posi-
tions of a covenant-keeping society: the net efects of voluntary,
individual decisions to lend to or borrow from foreigners. When
men are future-oriented, they are willing to lend at low rates of inter-
est. They have what Mises calls low time-preference. When men are
present-oriented, they are willing to pay high rates of interest.4 Ed-
ward Banield calls these two groups upper class (future-oriented)
and lower class.5 There is a proitable voluntary transaction possible
between members of both groups: a future-oriented person can
proitably lend to present-oriented person. This transaction is pro-
itable on both sides. Both actors get what they want. But there is a
superior and inferior here. “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the
borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7). While a present-

3. P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development: Studies and debates in development economics

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 95–135.
4. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles
(Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1962), pp. 323–33. Reprinted by the Mises Institute,
Auburn, Alabama, in 1993.
5. Edward C. Banield, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 48–54.
422 DEUTERONOMY

oriented person gains access to the money or goods he wants imme-

diately in exchange for a promise to repay the lender in the future,
he does not gain this advantage at zero cost. He becomes a servant.
But this is his choice. It is not a matter of compulsion.
The Bible makes it very clear that there are legitimate hierar-
chies in this life. Point two of the biblical covenant model is hierar-
chy.6 One of these hierarchies is economic: lender over debtor.
Another is social: master over servant. These hierarchies are indi-
vidual. They are also social. They are also international.
This verse clearly recommends becoming an international
lender. It very clearly discourages becoming an international debtor.
This is another way of saying that it is an advantage to be fu-
ture-oriented and a disadvantage to be present-oriented. The cove-
nant-keeper is supposed to be future-oriented. He is supposed to be
thrifty. Accumulating capital for the purpose of becoming a lender
is a good thing for covenant-keepers.
How does a person accumulate capital? By spending less than he
receives. That is, he accumulates capital by becoming a net exporter of
goods and services. He takes in more money than he spends. What is
true of an individual is equally true of a nation. I do not necessarily
mean merely a nation-State; I mean a nation: a covenantally oath-
bound society. To become an international money-lending society, a
nation must be illed with future-oriented people who are net export-
ers of goods and services. They can lend abroad only because they
sell abroad. They have money to lend abroad because they earned
money from abroad which they lend to people in those societies
that ran trade deicits with them. The trade surplus in the broadest
sense creates a balance (equality) of payments surplus (inequality).
But how can there be a surplus if there is balance? Because there is a
balance of assets: goods and services (assets) exported = goods and
services (assets) imported + money loaned out (future income: as-
set). This equation applies also to an individual who is accumulating
capital.
This verse makes it clear that the nation of Israel was to become
a money-lending nation by means of international trade. It was to
become a trade surplus nation, i.e., a net exporter of goods, services,

6. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 2.
 The Charitable Loan 423

and money. The money exported (lent) out had to come from the
surplus of exports over imports. Goods lowed out; money and
goods lowed in. The lower the percentage of goods that lowed
back in, the larger the percentage of money that lowed back in.
Then this money was lent back out. This is the model followed in
the post-World War II era by the Asian “tigers”: irst Japan; then
Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. Their domestic
economies have been export-driven. Their businesses have learned
how to compete in international markets. Their citizens in the ag-
gregate have run net trade surpluses by becoming international
lenders. This process is a unit: two sides of the same coin. Then the
coin is lent at interest.

The Israelite Bondservant

After the discussion of morally obligatory lending, the text in-
troduces what appears to be a wholly unrelated topic: the Israelite
bondservant. This bondservant was to be released in the seventh
year.

And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold

unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let
him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou
shalt not let him go away empty: Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy
lock, and out of thy loor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the
LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt
remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy
God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day (vv. 12–15).

There is something missing here: an explanation of the difer-

ence between this kind of Israelite bondservant and the Israelite
bondservant described in Leviticus 25:

And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold
unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: But as an
hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve
thee unto the year of jubile: And then shall he depart from thee, both he
and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto
the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are my servants,
which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as
bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.
(Lev. 25: 39–43).
424 DEUTERONOMY

Here is an Israelite bondservant who was purchased by another

Israelite. He remained a bondservant until the jubilee. This could
be as long as 49 years. Yet the text in Deuteronomy 15 insists that
the Israelite bondservant be released in the seventh year. How can
these two laws be reconciled?

A Question of Collateral
The person described in Leviticus 25 was a person with no land
to return to. What redeemed him from bondage was the return of
his land at the jubilee (Lev. 25:13). Because he had no land in the in-
terim, he could ind himself without the means to repay a commer-
cial loan. He defaulted on his loan, and he was then sold into
bondage to repay it. The presumption of the passage is that he no
longer held title to any land. He was landless until the jubilee. He
had no collateral for the loan other than his own labor. So, when he
defaulted, he lost his freedom.
The collateral for a loan could be either goods or services.
Goods could easily be pledged and transferred at the time of de-
fault. Labor services could be transferred, too, but they involved the
loss of freedom for a speciied period of time. If goods were pledged,
their transfer redeemed the loan. But what was the value of a per-
son’s labor services? To assess this, there had to be a labor market.
There was a market for long-term labor services. We would call it a
slave market. An Israelite’s enslavement was legally limited; it
could not exceed 49 years. This limitation did not apply to foreign-
ers (Lev. 25:44–46). Why not? Because an Israelite’s redemption
out of bondage was by rural land ownership: part of the original in-
heritance attained by the conquest generation. When the Israelite
bondservant’s land was returned to him, he could return to his land.
He thereby gained redemption from bondage.

An Interest-Free Loan
There was another distinguishing factor: the circumstances of a
loan. The Israelite who had no land to pledge for a loan was consid-
ered a poor risk. He had lost control over it for some reason. Per-
haps he had lost it by having to repay a previous loan. So, the lender
wanted security for his loan. He wanted long-term labor services
that would command a market price high enough to guarantee his
repayment.
 The Charitable Loan 425

But what of the poor man in Deuteronomy 15:12? He was mor-

ally entitled to a loan. More than this: he was entitled to an interest-
free loan. “If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by
thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay
upon him usury” (Ex. 22:25). “And if thy brother be waxen poor,
and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea,
though he be a stranger [geyr], or a sojourner [toshawb]; that he may
live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy
God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him
thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase”
(Lev. 25:35–37). A poor man had a superior claim on a righteous
man’s loanable funds. This was not a commercial loan. Commer-
cial loans were legitimate. The non-resident alien [nokree] had no
claim to an interest-free loan. “Unto a stranger [nokree] thou mayest
lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon
usury” (Deut. 23:20a). But an interest-free loan was morally com-
pulsory in Mosaic Israel in a way that a commercial loan was not.
The poor man who sought an interest-free loan could be asked
to pledge his cloak, but it had to be returned to him by evening
(Ex. 22:26). This kept him from pledging an asset that was already
pledged, but it meant that only a nearby neighbor would lend to
him – a person who would know his character and the reasons for
his present poverty.
The interest-free loan proved that the borrower was at risk of
bondage only until the sabbatical year of release. He was not at risk
until the jubilee. The presence of interest proved that he was at risk
for a longer period: until the jubilee. The zero-interest loan was
morally obligatory on the lender. The interest-bearing loan was not.
The person seeking an interest-bearing commercial loan had no
moral claim on the prospective lender. He was at greater risk in case
he defaulted.
In the year of release, the lender was to provide the borrower
with capital: “Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy lock, and
out of thy loor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD
thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him” (Deut. 15:14). “It
shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free
from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant to thee, in
serving thee six years: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all
that thou doest” (v. 18). There was no such obligation on the lender
when a long-term Israelite bondservant departed in the jubilee year.
426 DEUTERONOMY

He would return to his land empty-handed. But the poor man who
defaulted on a charitable loan apparently had no land to return to.
Perhaps he had pledged his land earlier, and had lost control over it.
He was to be given animals, food, and wine at his release.
What if the man released in the sabbatical year did not want to
face the trials of life without his landed inheritance? What if the ju-
bilee was years away at the time of the irst sabbatical year after his
bondage began? In that case, he might choose to remain with the
lender. The subsequent passage sets forth the ritual terms of
permanent bondservice: the pierced ear (Deut. 15:16–17). This
covenantal mark of bondage obligated only him, not his adult heirs.
If he came into bondage as a poor man by way of a default on an in-
terest-free charity loan, his adult heirs could not be obligated to stay
with him. He took the oath of allegiance in his own name only.

New Testament Applications

The New Testament Christian faces an even more rigorous re-
quirement: “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hop-
ing for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall
be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful
and to the evil” (Luke 6:35). Even a poor non-resident alien is now
to become the beneiciary. The man with assets is to lend to this per-
son without hope of repayment. A charity loan is still governed by
the Old Covenant rule: no interest.
Does this mean that every potential borrower’s request must be
granted? No; the charity loan is still limited by the rule that evil is
not to be subsidized. The moral character and habits of the bor-
rower must be known to the lender. The lender must make an eval-
uation: Is this a truly poor man whose economic troubles are not of
his own making? There is no obligation on anyone’s part to subsi-
dize incompetence born of immoral or present-oriented behavior.
The person with assets to lend may choose to have a representa-
tive agency make this evaluation for him. He may decide to loan
money to the agent or organization, allowing someone else to de-
cide who deserves an interest-free loan. Such loans are to be made
on the same basis as the Mosaic charitable loan: no interest. We are
not to loan money at interest to charitable organizations. The idea of
 The Charitable Loan 427

7
interest-paying church bonds is abominable. If churches or non-
proit Christian organizations choose to raise money, let the mem-
bers and supporters borrow the money in the commercial loan mar-
ket and give it to the church (best), or lend this money at zero interest
(second-best). If Christian organizations must borrow money at inter-
est, let them borrow from unbelievers or commercial banks. But this
is a third-best decision, for it places the church in a subordinate posi-
tion to covenant-breakers: the servanthood of the debtor. It is a dark
day when God’s church is in hock to unbelievers through commer-
cial banks. It may have to be done, but it is a dark day when it is done.
In modern times, there is no provision for collateralized labor,
i.e., a period of legally enforceable debt servitude. For charitable
loans, this is a good rule; for commercial loans, it is not. Today,
there is also no national year of release. This is legitimate; Israel’s
national sabbatical year was an aspect of the Mosaic land laws: the
inheritance. Furthermore, the jubilee was an aspect of the original
conquest. It no longer has any judicial or covenantal purpose.

The Limits on Debt

The New Testament rule governing charity loans has broad-
ened the Mosaic limits. Christians are to lend at zero interest to the
righteous poor without hope of any repayment. The absence today
of an enforceable period of debt servitude does not afect this obliga-
tion. If anything, it reinforces it. The very absence of such a period
of servitude points to the New Testament rule: lend without hope of
repayment.
Would it be illegitimate for a society to legislate such a require-
ment, though not a period longer than the six-year limit of Deuter-
onomy 15? We must ask: On what basis? If the sabbatical year was a
land law, which it appears to have been, then the annulment of Mo-
saic Israel’s special covenantal position removes that as a justiication.
What covenantal legal principle might legitimately be substituted? Not
the sabbath law. Paul was clear: “One man esteemeth one day above
another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind” (Rom. 14:5). The enforcement of the

7. Gary North, “Stewardship, Investment, and Usury: Financing the Kingdom of God,” in
R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
Appendix 3.
428 DEUTERONOMY

sabbath is not to become an aspect of judicial sanctions. The locus of

enforcement has shifted to the individual.8
There was never any moral obligation to make commercial
loans under the Mosaic covenant. This is still the case. There re-
mains a moral obligation to loan at zero interest to the brother in the
faith or a righteous resident alien. This law had nothing to do with
seed or land. This is why the uncircumcised resident alien was mor-
ally entitled to a zero-interest emergency charity loan. It was a law
governing personal relations among people who agreed to live under
the legal terms of God’s civil covenant. It was a land law, but not a
Promised Land law. It was a covenantal land law: a cross-boundary
law that would apply to any nation formally covenanted under God.
Today, Western nations are only rarely formally covenanted
under God, and none acknowledges the Bible to be the supreme
law of the land. There is therefore no equal moral obligation to lend
to resident aliens. This biblical obligation depends on the society’s
view of debt and the moral outlook of the poor neighbor. If the poor
man is an honest man who is in a crisis through no fault of his own,
then he is morally entitled to a zero-interest charity loan from a true
believer in the God of the Bible. But, like the poor man in Exodus
22:26, he can legitimately be asked to surrender his cloak as collat-
eral. This is a means of seeing to it that he does not indebt himself to
many lenders simultaneously. This is an institutional restraint on
debt servitude which should be honored today. To lend, hoping for
nothing in return is one thing; to devise a system which encourages
poor people to run up large debts on the basis of no collateral or
multiple loans on the same piece of collateral is something else.
Honest, hard-working, otherwise future-oriented people should not
be encouraged to become servants to debt. Extending credit to pres-
ent-oriented people who are willing to pay high rates of interest on
commercial or consumer loans is legitimate (Deut. 15:6). It is not le-
gitimate to encourage future-oriented people who are trapped by
circumstances beyond their control to go ever-deeper into charita-
ble debt. They should also be encouraged to repay all debts to avoid
a life of servitude. A sign of spiritual maturity is debt-free living. A
sign of even greater spiritual maturity is debt-free lending.

8. North, Sinai Strategy, pp. 85, 255.

 The Charitable Loan 429

There is no longer a six-year debt limit on this moral obligation

to repay. The New Testament extends greater mercy, but it imposes
greater moral maturity in paying of debts and avoiding them in the
irst place. “For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we
behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; Neither did we eat
any man’s bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail
night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: Not
because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample
unto you to follow us. For even when we were with you, this we
commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat”
(II Thess. 3:7–10).

Conclusion
The interest-free loan was a charitable loan. It was morally
obligatory, though not legally obligatory, for an Israelite with sur-
plus assets to loan to a poor Israelite brother or a poor resident alien
on an interest-free basis. Such a loan involved the threat of a
six-year maximum period of bondservice in case of a default. Liber-
ation day was the national sabbatical year, which was also the year
of release for all charitable loans. This was a very diferent kind of
loan from an interest-bearing commercial loan that was collateral-
ized by an Israelite’s land or labor until the next jubilee. In the case
of a non-Israelite, a default on a large commercial loan could lead to
inter-generational slavery (Lev. 25:44–46).9
The early church and the medieval church misinterpreted the
Mosaic laws governing charitable debt. A series of church councils
and decrees placed extensive prohibitions on interest-bearing
loans.10 This hampered the growth of industry for over a thousand
years. It also placed Christians into debt to Jews, who had no restric-
tions on lending at interest to gentiles. This created great hostility on
the part of gentiles and led to repeated violence and defaults on
loans, especially by gentile governments.

9. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 31.
10. J. Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Development Activity in the Middle Ages (New York: St.
Martins, 1969), Documents. Gilchrist provides translations of numerous texts, from Nicea
(325) on, that dealt with usury. The premier study of the late medieval church’s position is
John T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1957). For a summary, see Noonan, “The Amendment of Papal Teaching
by Theologians,” in Charles E. Curran (ed.), Contraception: Authority and Dissent (New York:
Herder & Herder, 1965), pp. 41–75.
 36
Consuming Capital CAPITAL
CONSUMING in Good Faith
IN GOOD FAITH

All the irstling males that come of thy herd and of thy lock thou shalt
sanctify unto the LORD thy God: thou shalt do no work with the irstling of
thy bullock, nor shear the irstling of thy sheep. Thou shalt eat it before the
LORD thy God year by year in the place which the LORD shall choose, thou
and thy household. And if there be any blemish therein, as if it be lame, or
blind, or have any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacriice it unto the LORD thy
God. Thou shalt eat it within thy gates: the unclean and the clean person
shall eat it alike, as the roebuck, and as the hart (Deut. 15:19–22).

The theocentric principle here is simple: God got paid irst. He

was entitled to the unblemished irstborn males. A secondary theo-
logical principle, which governed the blemished irstborn, was this:
the covenant’s positive sanctions were predictable for covenant-
keepers. Covenant-keeping Israelites had to consume their capital
publicly as a way to testify to their conidence in the truth of this
covenantal principle.
This law was a land law. It was part of the Passover’s require-
ments:

And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the
Canaanites, as he sware unto thee and to thy fathers, and shall give it thee,
That thou shalt set apart unto the LORD all that openeth the matrix, and ev-
ery irstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast; the males shall be the
LORD’S. And every irstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if
thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the irstborn
of man among thy children shalt thou redeem. And it shall be when thy
son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say
unto him, By strength of hand the LORD brought us out from Egypt, from

430
 Consuming Capital in Good Faith 431

the house of bondage: And it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let
us go, that the LORD slew all the irstborn in the land of Egypt, both the
irstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacriice to the LORD
all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the irstborn of my chil-
dren I redeem (Ex. 13:11–15).

The negative sanction of the slain animal was to testify against

covenant-breakers. Pharaoh was the archetype of every covenant-
breaker. Those under his covenantal authority saw their irstborn
sons die: the ultimate negative sanction in Old Covenant history,
and in most other cultures as well. The slaying of the irstborn ani-
mal represented God’s negative sanction against sinners: death. It
represented Adam: the irstborn son who rebelled against God and
who brought forth God’s negative sanctions.
These laws of sacriice were ecclesiastical. Biblical civil law does
not threaten negative sanctions for men’s refusal to extend positive
sanctions to others. Biblical civil law threatens negative sanctions
against those who impose negative sanctions on others.
This does not mean that these laws had no civil implications.
They did. The violator could be excommunicated, and an excom-
municated man lost his citizenship. He moved from the legal status
of Israelite to the legal status of stranger. He therefore could not
serve as a judge. No longer being under the negative sanctions of
the church, he could no longer remain eligible to impose negative
civil sanctions on others. Israel was a theocracy. Dual confessions,
ecclesiastical and civil, were required from those who possessed
lawful civil authority.

Sacriices Mandated an Immediate Loss

God owned the irstborn. When the irstborn males of clean ani-
mals arrived, they had to be consumed before the Lord in Jerusa-
lem. The irstborn were the sign of God’s blessing. This law required
men to consume the tokens of their economic future. These animals
could not be trained to do any work. They were purely consump-
tion items. They were not to become capital assets. The people of
Israel were required to squander a portion of their assets to the glory
of God.
432 DEUTERONOMY

Clean, unblemished irstborn animals were set apart as holy

sacriices. Clean, blemished firstborn animals were set apart for a
meal of celebration locally. As with the tithes of celebration,1 this
was an aspect of holy wastefulness. Israelites were to rejoice in com-
plete conidence: “There’s lots more where that came from!”
The donkey was set apart for execution, although it could be re-
deemed with a lamb (Ex. 13:13; 34:20). Presumably, this could be a
blemished lamb that was not itself a irstborn male, since it was not
replacing an animal that could lawfully be sacriiced. The donkey
was not a sacrificial animal, nor could it be lawfully eaten, since it
was unclean. It was a work animal, a beast of burden. It could be rid-
den or hooked up to a cart. It was symbolic of the covenant-breaker,
most notably the Gibeonites (Josh. 9). Thus, its substitute could be a
less valuable animal: a lamb that was it neither for sacriice nor
breeding.
What of unclean animals other than donkeys? They had to be
redeemed by a money payment, just as a irstborn son was. “Every
thing that openeth the matrix in all lesh, which they bring unto the
LORD, whether it be of men or beasts, shall be thine: nevertheless the
irstborn of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the irstling of un-
clean beasts shalt thou redeem. And those that are to be redeemed
from a month old shalt thou redeem, according to thine estimation,
for the money of ive shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary,
which is twenty gerahs. But the irstling of a cow, or the irstling of a
sheep, or the irstling of a goat, thou shalt not redeem; they are holy:
thou shalt sprinkle their blood upon the altar, and shalt burn their
fat for an ofering made by ire, for a sweet savour unto the LORD”
(Num. 18:15–17). The point was, there had to be either death or
redemption.
Regarding an unblemished clean animal: “Thou shalt eat it be-
fore the LORD thy God year by year in the place which the LORD
shall choose, thou and thy household.” This applied to the unblem-
ished irstborn. These belonged to God. They were an economic lia-
bility: they had to be transported to the central city of sacriice. It
was likely that this would be done during one of the three annual
festivals. In the meantime, these irstborn animals had to be cared
for. They would absorb capital.

1. Chapter 34.
 Consuming Capital in Good Faith 433

An unclean beast could not be lawfully consumed or ofered.

For these, the Israelite had to pay the market price plus 20 percent
to the priest. “And if it be any unclean beast, of which they do not
ofer a sacriice unto the LORD, then he shall present the beast before
the priest: And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad: as
thou valuest it, who art the priest, so shall it be. But if he will at all re-
deem it, then he shall add a ifth part thereof unto thy estimation”
(Lev. 27:11–13).
The clean beast without a blemish was eaten by its owner, but
only after it had been taken to the central city. The clean beast that
had a blemish was eaten by its owner in the gates of the nearby city.
A donkey either had to be redeemed by a money payment or a
lamb had to be sacriiced in its place. These were consumption
goods, not visible testimonies of the future. They could not become
capital goods except in the case of the donkey, for which the owner
sacriiced a lamb.
Such acts of consumption acknowledged publicly that God is in
control of history. He deserves a sacriice. He will also bring addi-
tional wealth into the households of faithful Israelites. The eco-
nomic loss involved in the sacriice testified to a man’s faith in this
system of covenantal cause and efect, a system of covenantal causa-
tion that operates predictably in history.
With respect to blemished animals, the law was less burden-
some: “Thou shalt eat it within thy gates.” This saved transportation
costs. These animals were not sacriices in the sense of burnt
oferings. They were communal meals: “the unclean and the clean
person shall eat it alike” (v. 22). The word “unclean” applied to
those who ate the meal. It could not have applied to the food eaten.
Israelites could not lawfully eat unclean foods. But they could law-
fully eat with strangers in certain ritually required meals. More than
this: they were required to eat with strangers. They even had to pay for
the meal. The foreigner was more likely to dwell in a walled city,
where he could buy, sell, and inherit real estate. He was to be invited
to share in the festivities. He was to be made welcome. He was to be
made aware of the fact that Israelites regarded themselves as under
the protective covenant of God. The positive sanctions associated
with the productivity of the irstborn could be safely squandered in
a festival meal. Here was a nation that had such conidence in the re-
liability of God’s covenant sanctions that people were willing to
434 DEUTERONOMY

consume their irstborn animals at a party in which covenant-

breakers were invited. This was clearly a form of evangelism.

A Statement of Faith
When God required the Israelites to eat the irstborn male ani-
mals, He was requiring them to make a statement of faith: they had
conidence in the future. God would enable the female animal to bring
additional ofspring into the world. Even miscarriages could be
overcome through national covenantal faithfulness. “There shall
nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of
thy days I will fulil” (Ex. 23:26).
God was with Israel. Israelites were required to acknowledge this
ritually and economically. A way to acknowledge their conidence of
the future was to consume capital in partying.
A shared meal was extremely important in several ways. First, it
pointed to the gentile as a co-laborer under the dominion covenant.
He, too, had a legitimate role in the subduing of the earth
(Gen. 1:26–28). His work is acceptable to God.2 Although the
uncircumcised stranger was not a recipient of special grace, he was a
recipient of common grace.3 The shared meal of the blemished ani-
mal was a means of common grace. The animal could not be used
on God’s altar, but it had to be used to beneit the uncircumcised
resident. His judicial status as a covenant-breaker was his lawful
claim to access to the meal. As to which covenant-breakers would
be invited, this was up to the Israelite, but someone from among the
class of unclean men had to be invited.
Second, it pointed to the need of the Israelite to maintain con-
tacts with uncircumcised residents within the gates of the city. If a
man eats a meal with another man, there is a degree of fellowship
present. Those who eat together normally talk together. The obvi-
ous question from the covenant-breaker would have been: “Why
did you invite me? I’m not an Israelite.” This would have served as a
means of testimony regarding God’s deliverance of Israel in history,
just as the young son’s question did at the family’s Passover meal.

2. This means that his work is acceptable to covenant-keepers. The wealth supplied by his
productivity can lawfully be purchased by covenant-keepers, thereby increasing their wealth.
3. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
 Consuming Capital in Good Faith 435

Clearly, the blessings of God were to pass down to cove-

nant-breakers who lived in Israel. The blessings in this case were
paid for by the sacriice of a capital asset. This was another example
of Israel’s uniqueness in the ancient world. The stranger was to par-
ticipate ritually in the life of the nation. This did not entitle him to
citizenship; only circumcision and inter-generational covenantal
faithfulness could do that (Deut. 23:2–8). He could not participate in
the Passover meal apart from circumcision. But people of his judi-
cial status were entitled to participate in ritually required meals. I
am aware of no other nation in the ancient world whose code of law
ofered the foreigner equal access to the civil courts (Ex. 12:49), real
estate ownership (Lev. 25:29–30), ecclesiastical membership (Ex.
12:48), and fellowship. The law of God served as a means of evange-
lism (Deut. 4:5–8).4

The Future-Orientation of Biblical Covenantalism

The sacriice of the firstborn was an act governed by a world-
view that was future-oriented. The Israelite was told to sufer a pres-
ent loss for the sake of the covenant. The covenant imposed
economic costs in the present, but it promised positive sanctions in
the future. Participation in ritual sacriices and meals was an exter-
nal requirement that was to encourage covenant-keepers to think in
terms of costs and beneits over time. This particular sacriice – the
firstborn male – was uniquely geared to imparting this message. The
primary Old Covenant sign of God’s blessing in history – the
irstborn son5 – had to be redeemed, and the irstborn animal had to
be sacriiced, paid for, or, in the case of the donkey, redeemed by
the slaying of a lamb.
The sacriicial system, like the tithe, was a means of manifesting
God’s future-orientation. He is sovereign over history. He brings
His decree to pass. Israel was supposed to look to the future for the
culmination of the inheritance. “For evildoers shall be cut of: but
those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a
little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently

4. See Chapter 8.
5. “Reuben, thou art my irstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the
excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power” (Gen. 49:3). “He smote also all the
irstborn in their land, the chief of all their strength” (Ps. 105:36).
436 DEUTERONOMY

consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the
earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace”
(Ps. 37:9–11). The here and now is important, for it is the locus of
decision-making and responsibility, but the future is important as
the locus of fulillment. The righteous man will sacriice the wealth
of the present for the sake of fulillment in the future. The sacrificial
system was designed to compel the public honoring of this principle
by individual covenant-keepers. Participation in public rituals was
supposed to reinforce men’s faith in this principle. External obser-
vance was supposed to reinforce internal acceptance; internal acceptance was
supposed to reinforce external observance.
This system of circular reinforcement between external and in-
ternal law-keeping is a fundamental principle of all law-making.
Laws do not make men good. Man is not saved by law in a special
grace sense, but good laws reinforce good ideals. Laws that most
people accept as moral and legitimate create habitual patterns of be-
havior. Habits make certain behavioral patterns less costly to indi-
viduals, more automatic, and therefore more predictable by others.
By increasing men’s predictability, good habits extend the division
of labor. Other men trust their fellows to perform in predictable
ways. This lowers risk. It lowers costs. Economics teaches that when
the price of something valuable is lowered, more of it will be de-
manded. Social cooperation increases when men’s good habits be-
come ingrained. This increases the division of labor and therefore
increases total output per unit of resource inputs. Wealth increases.

Economic Class and Future-Orientation

6
A future-oriented person is an upper-class person. He makes
decisions in terms of a lower rate of interest than a present-oriented
person. He discounts the present value of future goods by a lower
rate.7 A future-oriented person is willing to forfeit present consump-
tion (i.e., save) for the sake of future income at a rate of interest that
does not lead a present-oriented person to save. A society illed with

6. Edward C. Banield, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 48–50.
7. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles
(Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1962), pp. 323–33. Reprinted by the Mises Institute,
Auburn, Alabama, in 1993.
 Consuming Capital in Good Faith 437

future-oriented people will have a faster rate of growth, other things

being equal, than a society of present-oriented people.
Israel was supposed to be future-oriented. Their assignment was
to extend the kingdom of God on earth. This is every person’s as-
signment (Gen. 1:27–28; 9:1–17), but Israel was to honor it. Never-
theless, future-orientation was not sujcient to enable them to
achieve this goal. They had to put God irst. They had to acknowl-
edge ritually that God was the source of their blessings. It was not
their future-orientation alone that provided their blessings; it was
God.

Conclusion
The sacriice of the firstborn animal imposed an economic loss
on every Israelite family. This loss had to be borne without com-
plaint for the sake of the future. The sacriice of the animal was to
serve as a testimony regarding God’s deliverance of Israel from
Egypt. It therefore was a testimony to God’s sovereignty over his-
tory. God would continue to deliver Israel if Israel remained faith-
ful. The covenant’s negative sanctions had to be imposed on the
irstborn so that the covenant’s positive sanctions would continue to
be showered on Israel. For the sake of present testimony to sons and
strangers, as well as for the sake of future blessings, the present loss
of the irstborn or its redemption price had to be borne, preferably
enthusiastically. “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart,
so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a
cheerful giver” (II Cor. 9:7).
 37
Individual Blessing andBLESSING
INDIVIDUAL National Feasting
AND NATIONAL FEASTING

And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter,
and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and
the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt
thou keep a solemn feast unto the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD
shall choose: because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase,
and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three
times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the
place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast
of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the
LORD empty: Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of
the LORD thy God which he hath given thee (Deut. 16:14–17).

This chapter in Deuteronomy recapitulates the laws governing

the three mandatory national feasts. These were clearly ecclesiasti-
cal laws, meaning land laws. All three feasts had to be celebrated by
the males of the nation at a central location. The theocentric princi-
ple governing these three festival laws is the national covenant,
which was grounded in an ecclesiastical oath, whose visible mark
was circumcision. The negative sanction attached to the law of the
feasts was excommunication. The text does not state this explicitly,
but the requirement of the festival laws was a journey to the central
city where the priestly sacriices were to be performed.
This does not mean that there was complete separation between
the civil and ecclesiastical covenants. At the feast of Booths (Taber-
nacles), one year in seven, the entire law had to be read publicly to
the assembled nation (Deut. 31:10–13). This included civil law. This
event took place in the sabbatical year, the year of debt release (v. 10).
Strangers had to attend (v. 12). While strangers were not citizens in

438
 Individual Blessing and National Feasting 439

the sense of judges, they were beneiciaries of the Mosaic civil law.
The implication is that attendance at the reading of the law, which
included civil law, was required. Then what would have been the
appropriate civil sanction against strangers who failed to attend?
The law is silent. It was not loss of citizenship; they were not citizens.
It was not expulsion from the land; they could have been property
owners in the cities. Property rights were defended in Israel; this is
basic to the rule of law. There does not appear to have been a civil
sanction for non-attendance. Presumably, the sanction was ecclesi-
astical: exclusion from the right to participate at the national feasts,
where the poor and strangers were to be welcomed into the family
feasts. The civil covenant was not the focus of concern in the festival
laws, except one year in seven. The ecclesiastical covenant, which ex-
tended to strangers who wanted to participate, was the concern.
Nevertheless, there was one civil implication of the stranger’s
refusal to participate in the feasts. A circumcised stranger was on the
road to full citizenship. Israel allowed outsiders to apply for citizen-
ship, i.e., membership in the congregation. Depending on which
nation he came from, this took either three generations or ten (Deut.
23:3–8). Any refusal on his part to participate in the national feasts
would have led to his excommunication. He would no longer have
had lawful access to the Passover, which circumcised strangers pos-
sessed (Ex. 12:48). His excommunication would have revoked the
covenantal validity of his circumcision. This would have delayed
his heirs’ inheritance of citizenship for an extra generation. Once
again, we see the unbreakable relationship governing biblical law,
oath-sanctions, and lawful inheritance.

Covenantal Participation
The ive representatives listed in this law were identiied repeat-
edly in the Mosaic law as representatives of the oppressed. The
manservant and maidservant were under the jurisdiction of the fam-
ily. The fatherless and the widow were not part of the family, but
they were to be invited by other families to participate in the pros-
perity of the community. Finally the stranger or resident alien (geyr)
who had placed himself under God’s law was to be invited.
Verse 12 provides the reason: “And thou shalt remember that
thou wast a bondman in Egypt: and thou shalt observe and do these
statutes.” Israel’s experience in Egypt was representative of injustice
and oppression. What had happened to them in Egypt should not
440 DEUTERONOMY

happen to the politically and economically weak in Israel. Those

who were under the law were to be treated well. The issue was the
covenant. Those who were under the civil covenant were bound by
oath to obey the law. The rule of law was mandatory in Israel. Is-
rael’s righteousness before God, like every judge’s righteousness,
was manifested in the courts.

One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that
sojourneth among you” (Ex. 12:49).

One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that
sojourneth with you (Num. 15:16).

Ye shall have one law for him that sinneth through ignorance, both for
him that is born among the children of Israel, and for the stranger that
sojourneth among them (Num. 15:29).

Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless,

and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen (Deut. 27:19).

These were civil commandments. They had to do with civil

courts: the place where negative sanctions were imposed. But the
requirement went beyond mere negative sanctions; they involved
positive sanctions: “He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless
and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.
Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of
Egypt” (Deut. 10:18–19). The laws governing the three annual ec-
clesiastical feasts were part of this general obligation to love the
stranger. The positive sanctions of participation were ecclesiastical.
Mosaic civil law did not invoke positive sanctions, since positive
civil sanctions can only be funded by the imposition of negative
sanctions on others.1

1. Double restitution could be considered as a positive sanction. It is the restoration of the

thing stolen plus a penalty. But this negative economic sanction is imposed on a convicted
malefactor, not the general public. The law considers the economic burden associated with
the loss imposed by theft. These burdens are more than the mere loss of the object. The
property owner’s legitimate sphere of authority was violated by the thief. The victim
perceives the injustice of the theft, which adds to his estimated value of the stolen item. So, in
this sense, multiple restitution is not a positive sanction; it is the restoration of the status quo
ante. The victim is not given something for nothing by the civil government. He is being
compensated for his lost time, his lost property, his sense of injustice, and the risk factor
 Individual Blessing and National Feasting 441

Expensive Celebrations
In my commentary on Leviticus, I devoted space to a consider-
ation of the economics of the three centralized feasts. I concluded
that the economic burden must have been in the range of at least 15
percent of gross income, not counting travel and lodging costs, and
not counting forfeited income. Adding these costs, the total burden
may have been closer to 25 percent, the estimate of Rabbinic tradi-
tion.2 This was a very heavy burden. It had to be borne in faith. But
the increased wealth of the nation would have pointed to the reli-
ability of God’s covenantal promises. The law speciically stated
that the testimony of personal economic prosperity was to be con-
sidered by each celebrant in estimating what he could aford to
spend at the festivals. In faith, men were to open their wallets in a
common celebration three times a year.
The Israelites were told that God would reward them, and that
they had to celebrate this bounty. The blessings of God were guar-
anteed: “Because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine in-
crease, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt
surely rejoice” (v. 15b). This promise was corporate. Yet there was
also the assumption of individual blessings: “Every man shall give
as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD thy God which he
hath given thee” (v. 17). The individual blessings would vary;
hence, the individual was required to give of his increase in celebra-
tion. He was not to hold back in his rejoicing, for God had not held
back His blessings.
Moses was telling them that God’s deliverance of the nation out
of Egyptian bondage and wilderness wandering was the down pay-
ment on the promised inheritance. Their actual blessings in the land
would verify the continuing presence of God among His people.
This means that economic growth was basic to the covenant’s system of
sanctions. The people would be able to aford the three national cele-
brations. While these celebrations would be very expensive, they
would nonetheless be afordable to the poorest man in Israel. Every

imposed on him by the thief that the civil authorities might not have discovered the identity of
the thief and the jury might not have convicted him.
2. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), p. 18.
442 DEUTERONOMY

man could in conidence walk away from his labors for up to seven
weeks a year, depending on how far his home was from Jerusalem.
The blessings would fund the celebrations. This was God’s
promise of great economic blessings because the costs of celebra-
tion would be high. He was promising His covenantal blessings.
These blessings would conirm His covenant. They would verify His pres-
ence among them, not just in a spiritual sense but in an economic
sense. The covenant’s blessings would be visible in history. He
would be visible in these blessings. Their mandatory response was
to take a large portion of their blessings and reinvest this in national
celebrations. They would come together in the presence of God be-
cause God had blessed them nationally and individually, as prom-
ised in the Mosaic law itself. God was with them individually in their
local communities, as seen in their economic prosperity. Their man-
datory response was to take a substantial portion of their wealth and
squander it in celebration. In this sense, the celebrations were to
serve as exercises in faith. God called on them to pour their proits
back into the nation. The nation was not to be regarded as a political
entity. On the contrary, the lion’s share went into celebrations. The
State could not lay claim to a large portion of the nation’s wealth be-
cause that otherwise discretionary income was not legally discre-
tionary. One important efect of this law was the binding of both the
State and the priesthood.

Keeping Trim
Not only were church and State to be kept trim by this law, so
were the people. The mandated festivals can be considered as a na-
tional military itness program. God’s holy army would be in train-
ing. Every man had to walk to the nation’s central place of worship
three times a year. Only those who were on a journey could skip
two of the three feasts: Firstfruits and Booths.3
Had the celebrations been legal in their home towns, they
would have been tempted to consume their capital in calories. This
would have been a form of gluttony. This was prohibited by the Mo-
saic law. Gluttony was a mark of rebellion. Parents were required to
act as prosecuting agents in a covenant lawsuit against gluttonous

3. I presume this because of the law governing Passover, which allowed a late celebration
because of journeys (Num. 9:10).
 Individual Blessing and National Feasting 443

sons: “And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is
stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton,
and a drunkard” (Deut. 21:20). “For the drunkard and the glutton
shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags”
(Prov. 23:21). Thus, Solomon warned: “When thou sittest to eat
with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: And put a knife
to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of
his dainties: for they are deceitful meat” (Prov. 23:1–3).
There was no prohibition against eating meat. In fact, the oppo-
site was true. The people were to enjoy the fat of the meat they
brought to be sacriiced. In Moses’ parting account of God’s deal-
ings with Israel, past and future, he focused on fat. Israelites were al-
lowed to eat the fat of the land, including animals. But the people
were not to become bloated. A nation of obese people would testify
to the nation’s subordination to false gods. Moses adopted the imag-
ery of obesity to describe the nation’s rebellious spiritual condition.

For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led
him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an ea-
gle stirreth up her nest, luttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her
wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead
him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high
places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the ields; and he made
him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the linty rock; Butter of
kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan,
and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure
blood of the grape. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat,
thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God
which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They pro-
voked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked
they him to anger. They sacriiced unto devils, not to God; to gods whom
they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared
not (Deut. 32:9–17).

The Mosaic law encouraged the consumption of fat, but it also

mandated exercise. God’s gifts were not to be misused. Men were
not to shovel their net income into their mouths. They were not to
eat their own futures. In an agricultural society, wealth is under-
stood as having to do with excess food. Being fat in such a society
would have been an aspect of what today is called “conspicuous
444 DEUTERONOMY

consumption.” Fat was allowed by the Mosaic law. The language of

fatness was invoked by Moses to symbolize God’s blessings. But fat
was not to compromise anyone’s physical mobility. A man’s extra
weight had to be paid for on journeys to Jerusalem three times a
year. There was a strong incentive for the obese person to reduce his
intake of food. The kind of obesity that is the result of lust for food
was equated with the lust to distort one’s senses with alcohol to the
point of irresponsibility.4 Fat was allowed – indeed, it was mandated
at the feasts. Alcohol was also allowed (Deut. 14:26). But gluttony
and drunkenness were prohibited.

Conclusion
God promised covenantal blessings for Israel’s covenantal faith-
fulness. The national festivals were part of this system. They were
expensive events that required the men of Israel to gather in one
place at the same time. These festivals were God’s way of establish-
ing a sense of national community under His law. Israel would be
more than tribes and cities. Israel was a holy nation.

4. The judicial issue of drunkenness is responsibility before God. Any substance or

practice (e.g., a discipline that produces a demonic trance) that distorts one’s senses so that
one becomes unable to judge his surroundings responsibly must be avoided. An exception is
where the individual places himself legally and physically under the authority of others, as is
the case in the administration of anesthetics.
 38
CasuistryAND
CASUISTRY and Inheritance
INHERITANCE

Judges and ojcers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the
LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the
people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not
respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise,
and pervert the words of the righteous. That which is altogether just shalt
thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee (Deut. 16:18–20).

The theocentric focus of this law is the impartial judgment of

God. “Wherefore now let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take
heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor
respect of persons, nor taking of gifts” (II Chron. 19:7). This was not
a land law. It was universal. Men are to render honest judgments in
history because God does. Their covenantal judgments in history
are to conform judicially to God’s covenantal judgments in history
and eternity. In rendering covenantal judgment, men are to think
God’s thoughts after Him as creatures. They can do this because
they are made in God’s image. The essence of man’s status as God’s im-
age-bearer is his ability to render judgment.1 This is why Satan tempted
mankind through the serpent by telling Eve to eat from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were supposed to
render judgment against the serpent in terms of God’s revealed
word. The covenantal hierarchy2 of God > man > creation was to be
preserved by man’s representative act of rendering God’s judgment

1. You might want to commit this sentence to memory. It is important.

2. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 2.

445
446 DEUTERONOMY

against Satan’s representative agent, the serpent. Adam and Eve

were to render judgment against Satan by refusing to follow the ser-
pent’s advice, i.e., his false rendering of judgment against God’s re-
vealed word. The essence of the temptation in the garden was the
rendering of judgment for or against God’s revealed word, for or
against the serpent’s word. Adam and Eve were to render a joint
verdict of “guilty” against the serpent. His crime was having testiied
falsely against God’s word. They were to impose the appropriate
sanction by crushing his head. Because they refused to do this, God
prophesied a son of Adam who would do this (Gen. 3:15).

Stoning and Hierarchy

This raises the issue of stoning. Here are two reasons why ston-
ing was required by the Mosaic law as the proper means of public
execution. First, stoning conforms to the imagery of the crushed
head. A stone is most likely to be fatal when it crushes the head. Sec-
ond, stoning allows joint participation in the judicial act. Both Adam
and Eve would have participated in the execution of the serpent,
not just Adam. Men imposed this sanction before God revealed His
law to Moses. The practice of stoning was understood by both the
Egyptians and the Israelites: “And Pharaoh called for Moses and for
Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacriice to your God in the land. And Mo-
ses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacriice the abomination
of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we sacriice the abomi-
nation of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?
We will go three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacriice to the
LORD our God, as he shall command us” (Ex. 8:25–27). Again, in the
wilderness, Moses despaired: “And Moses cried unto the LORD, say-
ing, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone
me” (Ex. 17:4). The penalty against coming close to Mt. Sinai when
God revealed His presence to the nation was stoning, both of man
and beast (Ex. 19:13). For an animal to gore a man calls forth ston-
ing (Ex. 21:28–29, 32). This is a breach of the covenant’s hierarchi-
cal order: man over animal. Only after these events and case laws
did the Mosaic law mandate stoning against those who testiied
falsely about God. False prophets were to be stoned (Deut. 13:5–11).
So were members of an Israelite household who tempted other
members to worship a false god (Deut. 17:2–6). Finally, an unmar-
ried woman who had sex with another man before marriage, and
who did not tell her betrothed husband about this in advance, could
 Casuistry and Inheritance 447

be accused of this crime by her newly wedded husband. The pen-

alty was stoning (Deut. 22:21).
What did these crimes have in common? A violation of the
covenantal hierarchy: a goring beast over a human being, a false
prophet over the community, a rebellious family member over the
others, a false wife over her husband. Whenever a major violation
of point two of the biblical covenant took place, the appropriate
sanction was stoning: crushing the head.3

Local Civil Courts

To this law were attached positive sanctions: life and property.
“That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest
live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee”
(v. 20). The State was in no position to provide the sanction of life.
That was God’s prerogative. These sanctions were not civil sanc-
tions, for they were positive sanctions. They would come in response
to honest judgment. God would give Israel life and inheritance if
Israel’s judges rendered honest judgment.
This law governed the establishment of local civil courts. These
courts could not have been ecclesiastical, for this law made no refer-
ence to priests or Levites. The ecclesiastical covenant was not here
invoked by Moses. This means that the civil covenant was the focus
of this law. Ojcers and judges were civil magistrates.

Hierarchy, Casuistry, and Economic Growth

The Mosaic legal system, like all legal systems, was hierarchical:
point two of the biblical covenant model. The issue here was author-
ity, namely, the voice of authority. Someone must speak God’s
word authoritatively and representatively in history. Rendering
covenantal judgment is a representative act. This is why point two of
the covenant – hierarchy, representation, authority – is always con-
nected with point four: rendering judgment, imposing sanctions. In
declaring God’s word in history, God was above Moses, Moses was

3. That such a suggestion appalls modern Christians indicates the extent to which
pluralism has undermined Christian social thought. The crime of treason against God no
longer is regarded as a crime by modern man; hence, the appropriate Mosaic sanction is
considered barbaric. In a society in which blasphemy is a trile, stoning is an ofense.
448 DEUTERONOMY

above the civil judges, and the civil judges were above the people.
God revealed His law to Moses, who taught God’s law to civil mag-
istrates, who then served as judges.
The judges were required by God to render judgment in speciic
cases. This meant that they were required by God to apply the Mo-
saic law to disputes that would arise between men. The judges were
therefore required by God to become experts in the art of casuistry:
the application of general legal principles and speciic case law pre-
cedents to new situations. The general legal principles were the Ten
Commandments. The case laws were those speciic biblical laws
that extended the Ten Commandments to recognizable historical
situations.4 By means of casuistry, the judges were supposed to bring
justice to Israel. Over time, a body of judicial opinion and prece-
dents would be accumulated which would serve as judicial wisdom.
Judicial precedents would then extend the rule of law. Men would
begin to think covenantally, judging their own actions in advance.
This would not be judge-made law; it would be judge-declared law.
God makes the law; His judges are to apply it in history and even in
eternity. Jesus announced to His disciples at the Passover meal:
“And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed
unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and
sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29–30).
Paul announced to the church at Corinth: “Know ye not that we
shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?”
(I Cor. 6:3).
The original revelation of the law was top-down: from God to
Moses to the judges. This top-down hierarchical element was to be
re-conirmed in Israel once every seven years, when the entire na-
tion was to be assembled at a common location, and the entire law
was to be read to them publicly (Deut. 31:10–13). But this event was
comparatively rare. The teaching of God’s revealed law would nor-
mally have been local: by the Levites, who were judicial specialists,
and by the civil judges in actual cases. The Levites were agents of
God who declared God’s revelation and who served as judges in ec-
clesiastical disputes. The civil magistrates were ojcers ordained
through the civil covenant who possessed the power of the sword: the

4. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
 Casuistry and Inheritance 449

monopoly of physical coercion. They declared the civil law publicly

and applied it to men’s bodies (whipping5 and capital punishment6)
and their property (ines7 and restitution8).

Legal Predictability
The predictability of a legal order will increase over time if
judges govern in terms of God’s revealed law. Men will better be
able to predict what the outcome of a legal dispute will be. When
both parties are fairly certain that the law’s sanctions will be im-
posed on the disputant who loses the case, the person with the
weaker case has an incentive to settle out of court. This reduces the
number of cases that are brought to trial. A successful legal system is
one in which the high predictability of the law leads to increased
self-government and a reduction in the number of cases brought to
trial.9 A vast increase in the number of court cases is evidence of the
breakdown in the rule of law: the clogging of the courts.10
The greater the predictability of the courts, the greater the in-
centive for men to cooperate with each other. Why? Because the
higher predictability of the judge’s application of the law’s sanctions
reduces the cost of predicting the results of human action. As with
any other scarce resource, as the price is lowered, more is de-
manded. The price of the division of labor is reduced by predictable
law. The division of labor is increased by an increase in the rule of
law: more and more people take advantage of the opportunities
ofered by increased social cooperation. This increased division of
labor raises the output of cooperating individuals, and therefore in-
creases their wealth. The decentralized decisions of individuals be-
come more predictable. This reduces the cost of obtaining that most
precious of all scarce economic resources, accurate knowledge of the
future. We can predict more accurately what other people will do

5. “Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him
above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee” (Deut. 25:3). See
ibid., p. 443.
6. For a list of cases, see ibid., pp. 318–20.
7. Fines must be used to compensate victims of unsolved crimes, not as revenue sources
for the State. Ibid., pp. 395–96, 423, 490–91.
8. Exodus 22:1–13.
9. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 208.
10. This is the situation of the United States today. Macklin Fleming, The Price of Perfect
Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
450 DEUTERONOMY

when we and they abide by the rules. F. A. Hayek, the free market
economist and legal theorist, puts it this way: “The maximal cer-
tainty of expectations which can be achieved in a society in which
individuals are allowed to use their knowledge of constantly chang-
ing circumstances for their own equally changing purposes is se-
cured by rules which tell everyone which of these circumstances
must not be altered by others and which he himself must not alter.”11
The capitalist West is wealthy because it has been the beneiciary
of the rule of law. As I wrote in Moses and Pharaoh,

Hayek has made a point which must be taken seriously by those who
seek to explain the relationship between Christianity and the advent of
free enterprise capitalism in the West. “There is probably no single factor
which has contributed more to the prosperity of the West than the relative
certainty of the law which has prevailed here.”12 Sowell’s comments are es-
pecially graphic: “Someone who is going to work for many years to have
his own home wants some fairly rigid assurance that the house will in fact
belong to him – that he cannot be dispossessed by someone who is physi-
cally stronger, better armed, or more ruthless, or who is deemed more
‘worthy’ by political authorities. Rigid assurances are needed that chang-
ing fashions, mores, and power relationships will not suddenly deprive
him of his property, his children, or his life.”13 Hayek quite properly denies
the validity of the quest for perfect certainty, since “complete certainty of
the law is an ideal which we must try to approach but which we can never
perfectly attain.”14 His anti-perfectionism regarding the rule of the law is
also in accord with the anti-perfectionism of Christian social thought in the
15
West. Christianity brought with it a conception of social order which
16
made possible the economic development of the West.

What always threatens the rule of God’s law in history is the

judge who departs from the revealed law of God. The judge who
substitutes his own wisdom for the law of God or the body of legal

11. F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1, Rules and Order (University of Chicago
Press, 1973), pp. 108–109.
12. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, p. 208.
13. Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 32.
14. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, p. 208.
15. Benjamin B. Warield, Perfectionism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1958).
This is an abridged version of his two-volume study, published posthumously by Oxford
University Press in 1931 and reprinted by Baker Book House in 1981.
16. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), p. 212.
 Casuistry and Inheritance 451

opinion is a threat to biblical civil justice. So is the judge who seeks

bribes for rendering judgment that deviates from God’s fundamen-
tal law and constitutional laws. Bribes pervert justice. It is the court’s
task to extend justice. Civil justice in turn makes possible capital-
ism’s increase of a society’s wealth. The positive sanction of wealth
is the outcome of civil justice.
In the period immediately preceding the conquest, Moses re-
vealed this case law, which recapitulates Leviticus 19:15: “Ye
shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect
the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but
in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.” It recapitulates
Deuteronomy 1:17: “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but
ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of
the face of man; for the judgment is God’s: and the cause that is too
hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.” Its theocentric fo-
cus was God’s judgment. God is not a respecter of persons when He
judges any man. God does not look at the person’s class position,
money, good looks, or any other distinguishing feature. He does not
accept bribes to corrupt His judgment. He looks at His law and the
person’s thoughts, words, and actions, and He judges the degree to
which the person before Him has conformed to or deviated from
His law. In other words, God applies His law to historical circum-
stances. He interprets it and makes assessments in terms of it. God
practices the judicial art of casuistry. He does not wait until the end
of time to render judgment. He renders preliminary judgments in
history. As creatures made in His image, men are required by God
to do the same: thinking God’s thoughts after Him, declaring His
law, and applying sanctions in terms of His law. Men are to render
righteous judgment. They do this through biblical casuistry.
In our day, biblical casuistry is a lost skill. Worse; it is a skill
widely derided as theocratic and therefore illegitimate. This is not
merely the opinion of covenant-breakers; it is announced with
equal fervor and conidence by Christians: social theorists (few in
number since 1700 precisely because of this hostility to biblical ca-
suistry), church leaders, civil leaders, and people in the pews. But
there is no escape from the requirements of casuistry. If men do not
render judgment in terms of God’s fundamental law – the Ten
Commandments – and God’s biblically revealed constitutional
laws, which have extended the Ten Commandments to real-world
cases, then they must render judgment in terms of some other
452 DEUTERONOMY

law-order. Judges dare not remain silent if social order is to be main-

tained. Disputes will be settled: in covenantal courts or by clan
feuds or on battleields. Sanctions must be imposed in order to settle
disputes. The judicial question is this one: By what standard?

Sanctions and Inheritance

Verse 20 reads: “That which is altogether just shalt thou follow,
that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God
giveth thee.” There can be no question about the unbreakable
covenantal connection between the law’s sanctions and inheritance.
The art of rendering biblical judgment is the art of deciding guilt or
innocence in terms of biblical law. But this must involve judicial
sanctions. To the law are attached sanctions. The imposed sanctions
must it the violation. This is the biblical principle of the lex talionis: an
eye for an eye.17
The context of this principle of justice was abortion: “If men
strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from
her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished,
according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall
pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou
shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,
foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for
stripe” (Ex. 21:22–25). It is indicative of the contemporary crisis in
Protestant thought that legalized abortion did not become the target
of widespread Protestant political opposition until several years af-
ter the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade in 1973. But
after 1980, a growing minority of evangelicals began to organize
against legalized abortion. It was this public issue which dragged
Francis Schaefer into political activism.18
Because there can be no neutral zone in the abortionist’s
ojce between a dead baby and a live one, the myth of neutrality is
deinitively denied in matters of abortion. This inescapable fact of
abortion persuaded Schaefer’s son to write A Time for Anger: The Myth
of Neutrality.19 Whenever the myth of neutrality fades, the conflict

17. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 12.

18. Francis A. Schaefer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race (1976); reprinted in The
Complete Works of Francis A. Schaefer: A Christian Worldview, 5 vols. (Westchester, Illinois:
Crossway, 1982), V, A Christian View of the West, pp. 281–410.
19. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, 1982.
 Casuistry and Inheritance 453

between rival religious worldviews escalates. The always mythical

zones of neutrality between Christianity and humanism are recog-
nized increasingly as being mythical. This pressures Christians and
humanists to go their respective ways to develop their respective
views of what constitutes a legitimate earthly kingdom. This in turn
pressures both sides to impose their vision of the kingdom on both
the political order and the social order.
Theocracy is therefore an inescapable concept. It is never a ques-
tion of theocracy vs. no theocracy. It is a question of which theocracy.
The issue of legalized abortion has dragged evangelical Protestants
into the political arena, forcing them to abandon their previous piet-
ism-quietism, forcing them to come up with theologically precise
answers to the crucial judicial and ethical question: By what stan-
dard? The moment a Christian raises this question, he must confront
the issue of theocracy vs. pluralism, not just in the church and family
but in civil government. This is why the issue of legalized abortion
has led Christians to issue manifestoes that sound theocratic. They
are theocratic. They undermine Enlightenment pluralism, which
has served as the judicial basis of modern Western society since the
late eighteenth century. But because modern Christians have em-
braced Enlightenment pluralism in the name of Christ, there is an
inevitable schizophrenia in their manifestoes.20
By what standard? Anglo-American Protestants have resisted
dealing with this crucial question from an explicitly biblical point of
view ever since the end of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate with his
death in 1658, but legalized abortion is now forcing their hand. Pe-
ter’s injunction is before them: “But sanctify the Lord God in your
hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that
asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and
fear” (I Pet. 3:15). This hope is more than faith in the world beyond
the grave. It is hope that someday, infants will not be deliberately sent
to their graves, which include trash bin “dumpsters” located behind
the ojces of abortionists.21

20. On the unresolved schizophrenia of Francis Schaefer’s A Christian Manifesto (1981), see
Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1989), pp. 180–85.
21. George Grant rummaged through one such dumpster in the late 1980’s, searching for
the remains of executed children. He was chased away by a gun-bearing security guard. The
guard threatened to shoot him if he did not stop. When Grant led in a car, the guard pursued
him in a pickup truck in a high-speed chase. George Grant, Grand Illusions: The Legacy of
Planned Parenthood (rev. ed.; Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit, 1992), pp. 11–13.
454 DEUTERONOMY

The covenantal issue of sanctions cannot legitimately be sepa-

rated from the covenantal issue of inheritance. This is obvious in the
case of abortion. “Who will inherit?” is the fundamental issue of the
death penalty: the earthly one as well as the eternal one. Abortion
imposes the death penalty on those who have done neither good
nor evil (Rom. 9:11). When abortion is legalized by the civil govern-
ment, abortionists become agents of the State, for only the State has
the right to impose the death penalty. In the name of personal pri-
vacy for women, the U.S. Supreme Court necessarily swore in an
army of executioners: mothers, physicians, nurses, and their sup-
port stafs. A civil oath – a swearing in – is unojcial and implicit in
the authorization of abortion, but it is nonetheless binding. This is
why an entire social order is at risk before the judgment of God
when it allows its civil representatives to delegate such powers of ex-
ecution to private citizens. Biblically, these executioners are no lon-
ger private citizens; they are agents of the State, which is in turn an
agent of the corporate society. As with a citizens’ posse that is sworn
in by a sherif, so are the executioners sworn in by the State. Mem-
bers of a sworn-in posse have a delegated though circumscribed
right to kill those who resist their authority. So do abortionists and
their assistants in a nation that has legalized abortion. In today’s le-
gal order, abortionists possess much greater judicial immunity from
post-execution civil action than a posse does.

Justice and Positive Sanctions

We return to the issue of positive sanctions: “That which is alto-
gether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the
land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (v. 20). The positive sanc-
tions of extended life and land were extensions of the Mosaic seed
laws and land laws. These laws were the result of Jacob’s messianic
prophecy regarding Judah: “The sceptre shall not depart from
Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and
unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Gen. 49:10). Seed
laws and land laws were laws conined to Israel. They were not
cross-boundary laws.22 The question arises: Were the promises of
verse 20 more than extensions of the seed laws and land laws? This

22. North, Leviticus, ch. 17.

 Casuistry and Inheritance 455

raises a subsidiary question: Does this connection between civil jus-

tice and personal possessions extend into the New Covenant? That
is, was this law a cross-boundary law that applied beyond the bor-
23
ders of Mosaic Israel? Or was it conined historically and geo-
graphically to Mosaic Israel?
This hermeneutical question raises the issue of covenantal conti-
nuity. Meredith G. Kline’s dictum regarding the mystery of God’s
New Covenant historical sanctions comes into play: “And mean-
while it [the common grace order] must run its course within the un-
certainties of the mutually conditioning principles of common grace
and common curse, prosperity and adversity being experienced in
a manner largely unpredictable because of the inscrutable sover-
eignty of the divine will that dispenses them in mysterious ways.”24
If correct, this would negate the possibility of an explicitly biblical
social theory. Christians would have to look either to autonomous
nature or autonomous man to provide the predictable sanctions that
make possible both social cohesion and social theory. The existence
of cross-boundary laws that were binding outside of Mosaic Israel,
and are still binding today, is what makes possible an explicitly
Christian social theory.
Is there a principle of continuity between this Mosaic principle
and New Covenant law? There is no doubt that the general judicial
principle of not respecting persons in judgment is a cross-boundary
law. Peter cited this principle in his confession to Cornelius after Pe-
ter’s vision of the clean and unclean beasts: “Then Peter opened his
mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righ-
teousness, is accepted with him” (Acts. 10:34–35). This is a funda-
mental New Covenant principle:

For there is no respect of persons with God (Rom. 2:11).

But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath
done: and there is no respect of persons (Col. 3:25).

23. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), pp. 642–45.
24. Meredith G. Kline, “Comments on an Old-New Error,” Westminster Theological Journal,
XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
456 DEUTERONOMY

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of
glory, with respect of persons (James 2:1).

And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth

according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in
fear (I Peter 1:17).

The question, then, relates to the covenantal connection be-

tween rendering civil justice and God’s external blessings. Did life
and land serve as representative blessings for a broader class of
blessings? Or were they narrowly circumscribed extensions of Mo-
saic Israel’s seed laws and land laws?

The Issue Is Inheritance

The exegetical problem facing us here is to identify the
covenantal basis of the extension of both long life and property
ownership into the New Testament economy. I argue that the
non-theonomist has the burden of proof to prove discontinuity. But
the non-theonomist insists that it is the theonomist’s burden to
prove continuity. So, for the sake of argument (since I know I can
win it in this instance), I shall willingly bear this burden.
The solution is found in Paul’s citation of the ifth commandment.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon
the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 20:12). Paul
wrote: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.
Honour thy father and mother; (which is the irst commandment
with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live
long on the earth” (Eph. 6:1–3). The Greek word for earth applies to
speciic geographical locations: “And thou Bethlehem, in the land
of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee
shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel” (Matt. 2:6).
“Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the
land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life”
(Matt. 2:20). The Greek word for land can also refer to the whole
earth: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5).
“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulilled” (Matt.
5:18). Paul’s epistle to the gentile church at Ephesus obviously was
not intended to persuade them that in order for them to receive the
blessing of long life, all of the members would have to move to Israel.
 Casuistry and Inheritance 457

Yet this would have to be the argument of anyone who denies the
covenantal continuity between the promise of long life on the land in
the ifth commandment and Paul’s citation of this law to strengthen
his case regarding the child’s obligation to obey his parents.
The most general law governing the case law application of
Deuteronomy 16:18–20 was not Jacob’s promise that Judah would
bear the sword in Israel until Shiloh came (Gen. 49:10). Rather, it
was the ifth commandment. Because the ifth commandment and
its sanctions extend into the New Covenant era,25 Deuteronomy
16:18–20 is a cross-boundary law. Rendering civil justice in terms of
God’s revealed law without respect to persons will produce the
blessing of long life. Biblical civil justice will also protect private
property. The word land in this passage represents inherited prop-
erty in general. In fact, it asserts the right of inheritance.

Health and Wealth

This passage informs us that there is an economic correlation
between honest judgment and life. First, civil judges who refuse to
take bribes or pervert justice thereby secure men’s inheritances. Se-
cure inheritances represent a defense of private property, including
contracts. Second, judicial respect for private property is the legal
basis of free market capitalism. Third, free market capitalism consis-
tently increases per capita wealth. Fourth, increased per capita
wealth increases average life expectancy. Long life is a visible bless-
ing which is positively correlated with increased per capita wealth.
As a nation’s per capita wealth increases, so does the average life ex-
pectancy of its residents. So does their general health.26
The measurable blessing of increased life expectancy is re-
vealed statistically in decreasing rates for life insurance premiums.27

25. The non-theonomist hastens to assure us that the sanctions of the ifth commandment
do not apply in New Covenant times. But he is cut of at the knees by Paul’s citation of the
entire commandment, including the positive sanctions for obedience. Paul singled out this
law as the first law with a promise. He did not call into question the promise, i.e., this law’s
sanctions. On the contrary, he afirmed the promise.
26. Aaron Wildavsky, Searching for Safety (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 1988),
pp. 58–75; John D. Graham, Bei-Hung Chang, and John S. Evans, “Poorer Is Riskier,” Risk
Analysis, XII, No. 3 (1992). John C. Shanahan and Adam D. Thierer, “How to Talk About
Risk: How Well-Intentioned Regulations Can Kill,” Heritage Talking Points, No. 13
(Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1966), p. 14.
27. I refer here to term insurance: payment only to insure against death.
458 DEUTERONOMY

Those theologians, such as Kline, who deny any measurable corre-

lation between corporate obedience to God’s covenantal law and
corporate blessings must demonstrate that decreasing term insur-
ance rates are not correlated to corporate covenantal faithfulness,
i.e., external obedience to God’s law. They must irst deny that the
West’s increased life expectancy came as a result of widespread ad-
herence to the stipulations in God’s law, most notably laws protect-
ing private property (Ex. 20:15), including contract law. Then,
second, they must prove it.
The Mosaic law informs us, and the history of the West
conirms, that the civil government’s enforcement of God’s Bible-
revealed civil law increases national wealth in the long term. The
continuing trustworthiness of verse 20’s covenantally linked promises
– private property, honest judgment, and life – has been veriied by
the history of the West, especially since the late eighteenth century,
when the rule of law, Protestantism’s concept of personal responsi-
bility and self-government, limited civil government, and eschato-
logical future-orientation28 produced the Industrial Revolution in
late eighteenth-century England, which spread within one genera-
tion to the European Continent and the United States.

Conclusion
The same covenantal connections linking life, property owner-
ship, and faithful civil judgment are found in the sanction attached
to honoring one’s parents. Long life (measurable blessing) in the
land (secure inheritance) for honoring parents (legal stipulation) is
ajrmed in Exodus 20:12. He who would in any way deny the
covenantal link between the stipulations of biblical law and visible,
positive, corporate sanctions must deny the continuing validity of
the ifth commandment. He must also explain why Paul’s citation of
the ifth commandment and its sanctions in Ephesians 6:3 does not
re-conirm Exodus 20:14. In short, he must apply an antinomian
hermeneutics to the New Testament. He must argue for a radical ju-
dicial discontinuity between the two covenants, despite the fact that

28. Postmillennialism irst appeared in a comprehensive, developed form in the Protestant

West in early seventeenth-century Scotland and England. The belief in the possibility of
long-term compound economic growth for society did not exist prior to seventeenth-century
Puritanism. This positive eschatology was secularized by the Enlightenment in the next
century. Robert A. Nisbet, “The Year 2000 And All That,” Commentary (June 1968).
 Casuistry and Inheritance 459

the author of Hebrews twice cites Jeremiah’s prophecy that the law
will be written in the hearts of men as being fulilled in the New
Covenant (Heb. 8:10–11; 10:16).
Antinomianism is the denial of biblical law and its sanctions in
New Testament times. It threatens the judicial inheritance of the
West. This, in turn, threatens the economic inheritance of the West:
the increasing per capita wealth made possible by free market capi-
talism. Whether this antinomianism is the scholastic variety, the Lu-
theran variety, the Reformed variety, or the dispensational variety,
the result is the same: the undermining of covenant-keeping men’s
faith in the positive corporate results of corporate covenantal faith-
fulness. This loss of faith then undermines the development of an
explicitly biblical social theory, including economics.
 39
Israel’sSUPREME
ISRAEL’S Supreme Court
COURT

If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood
and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being
matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee
up into the place which the LORD thy God shall choose; And thou shalt
come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those
days, and enquire; and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment: And
thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the
LORD shall choose shall shew thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to
all that they inform thee: According to the sentence of the law which they
shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee,
thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall
shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. And the man that will do
presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to
minister there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man
shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people
shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously (Deut. 17:8–13).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s ojce as a judge. God

is the inal Judge.1 The settlement of disputes between men is to
relect the inal settlement of disputes between God and man. In
God’s court, there will be a inal settlement. Every case will be
brought to a conclusion. There will be either reconciliation or per-
manent separation between the Judge and the judged. This aspect of
this law was universal. The ojce of priest – he who ofers sacriices

1. The inal negative sanction is eternal death (Rev. 20:14–15).

460
 Israel’s Supreme Court 461

2
as man’s representative – ended in A.D. 70. The question is: Has
the ecclesiastical minister replaced the priest? Does the church still
possess authority in supplying representatives who hand down civil
judgments? This is the crucial covenantal question that this chapter
must answer. If the answer is yes, then the absolute judicial separa-
tion of church and State is a false Enlightenment myth.
God’s authority on the throne of judgment is unitary in the
sense of His uniied being (Deut. 6:4). Yet this authority is also plu-
ral: “let us” (Gen. 1:26; 11:7). God’s court relects God’s being: both
one and many. A human court is not God’s heavenly court, yet it
must relect the one and the many of God’s heavenly court. The
unity of the one and the many cannot be achieved through ontology:
uniied being. It must therefore be achieved subordinately, i.e., repre-
sentatively. This is why, in Israel’s supreme court, both church and
State were represented. Israel’s voice of civil authority at the highest
level was not legitimate if it was restricted to civil magistrates.

A Question of Jurisdiction
No social order can survive without civil sanctions. Under the
biblical civil covenant, these sanctions are exclusively negative. The
State is not a supplier of positive sanctions except in its capacity as
the judge of those who have committed crimes whose proper sanc-
tion is restitution. The state then transfers wealth from the criminal
to the victim. But the State is not the source of the positive sanctions
showered on the victim; it is only the arbitrator. It compels the cove-
nant-breaker to return to the victim that which lawfully belongs to
the victim, including compensation for his sufering and the statisti-
cal risk he bore of not discovering who had committed the crime.3
Normally, this requires double restitution (Ex. 22:4). In short, the
State is the lawful enforcer. It possesses a God-given, covenantal
monopoly of violence in order to enforce justice (Rom. 13:1–7).
In Deuteronomy 17:8–13, Moses presented a case law applica-
tion of the general principle of the hierarchy of covenantal judg-
ment. In Exodus 18, he set up a system of appeals courts. Here he
made an application of the general law of appeals. Two men have

2. This, of course, is a Protestant interpretation of the ojce.

3. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 511–19.
462 DEUTERONOMY

come into a local court. They are equals in inluence. This makes
the case too dijcult for a local court to judge. “If there arise a matter
too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between
plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of con-
troversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into
the place which the LORD thy God shall choose” (v. 8). The case was
to be transferred to a higher court in which the judges were not part
of the local community. In modern law, this is called a change of
venue. The Mosaic law acknowledged that in dijcult cases between
prominent persons, each with his own supporters, each with a
strong case, local judges may not be qualiied to render judgment.
The cases are too hard. This is the language of Exodus 18: “And
they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought
unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves” (v. 26).
The mandated solution was to assemble a group of judges, civil
and ecclesiastical, to consider the case. There is no question that
Moses was here describing a civil dispute. The mandatory sanction
for disobedience to the supreme court was execution. The church in
Israel did not possess the power of the sword except in defending
against trespassers of the boundaries around the tabernacle
(Num. 18:3, 22). All of Deuteronomy 17 deals with civil law, but ec-
clesiastical judges played a role in the legal process.
This court’s decision was inal. It had to be obeyed. Neverthe-
less, there is no indication that the case in question had been a mat-
ter of capital sanctions prior to the court’s inal judgment. But once
this court had declared inal judgment, both participants had to
obey. The person who was declared guilty had to follow the direc-
tive of the court. He was not executed, which means that this was
not a capital infraction. But contumacy – presumptive resistance to
the supreme court – was a capital ofense.
This indicates that the supreme court’s word was judicially rep-
resentative of God’s word. Its word was inal in history. But this
word was not exclusively civil or ecclesiastical. It was both. The
judge, as a representative of the civil covenant, declared his judg-
ment only in association with the priests. There had to be a united
declaration. This kept the State from becoming judicially autono-
mous. Similarly with the church: the priests had no lawful way to
enforce their judgment physically without the cooperation of the
civil magistrate. Autonomy was not a legitimate option at the high-
est judicial level.
 Israel’s Supreme Court 463

This joint declaration of judgment was analogous to a joint dec-

laration of war. The two silver trumpets had to be blown by the
Aaronic priests before the princes could lead the nation into battle.
One trumpet was blown initially to assemble the princes. The text
does not say that the priests blew this trumpet. But not until both
were blown by the priests was the princes’ decision to go into battle
ratiied (Num. 10:1–9).4 The sanction of inal judgment against
Israel’s enemies had to be consented to by both church and State.
Any party in the civil dispute who rebelled against the terms of
the joint declaration faced death. What had been a matter to be
solved by economic restitution now moved to a new level of crimi-
nality. It moved from restitution through money to restitution through ex-
ecution. The resisting party was to be delivered into God’s heavenly
court for inal sentencing. Certain acts demand that the convicted
criminal be transferred to God’s court. One of these acts was resis-
tance to a inal determination by Israel’s supreme court.
The cost of law enforcement in this case was borne by the civil
government. The civil government had a cost-efective means of re-
ducing resistance to its ojcial decisions: the threat of execution.
The resisting party had considerable incentive to count the cost of
his non-compliance. This cost was very high: his permanent re-
moval from the jurisdiction of any man’s court.
The formal declaration by the supreme court moved the dispute
from man’s word to God’s word. The person who resisted coming to
terms with his opponent prior to the supreme court’s declaration
could say to himself: “I’m not going to comply. I don’t have to com-
ply.” But the word to which he had not had to comply was the word
of another individual. There had not yet been a covenantal declara-
tion. But after the court made its inal judgment, the threat of the most
permanent civil sanction was inserted into the actor’s cost-beneit
analysis. He was no longer facing man’s word; he was facing God’s.
He was therefore no longer facing an individual’s sanctions, such as
the other party’s refusal to trade with him in the future. The negative
sanction had moved from economics to life itself.

4. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), p. 29.
464 DEUTERONOMY

An Increase in Predictability
Whenever this sanction was consistently imposed within the
boundaries of Israel, the Israelites would have found that their lives
had become more predictable. The law would have been taken seri-
ously by everyone. An execution or two every few years would
have sent a very clear message to all Israel regarding the costs of re-
sistance to the law. This was the intent of this law: “And all the peo-
ple shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously” (v. 13).
When large numbers of people fear the civil law, their actions
become more predictable whenever the courts are predictable. The
law becomes more predictable when the courts become more pre-
dictable. An increase in the predictability of the law reduces the
costs of decision-making. People know generally what the law re-
quires. They also know that the judges will impose the speciied
sanctions attached to the law. The last remaining element of uncer-
tainty is the reaction of the guilty party. Will he comply with the
court’s declaration? This case law made it clear: God expected the
guilty party to comply. God expected the State to see to it that the
guilty party complied. The person who refused to comply with the
court’s declaration would not get another opportunity to break any
law.
Israel’s solution to the settlement of private disputes was very
diferent from Athens’ solution. In private disputes, the Athenian
court did not enforce its judgments unless there was a matter of State
concern involved. The matter was turned over to the victorious
party for enforcement.5 Justice was available only to families strong
enough to enforce the court’s decision.

Costs of Production
With greater legal predictability, society reduces its costs of pro-
duction. When men know what the law requires, and when they
know that convicted law-breakers in the society have great incen-
tive to comply, they can more easily predict the actions of others.
This increases the predictability of other decision-makers in society.
This in turn decreases the cost of cooperation. One of the most

5. G. Glotz, The Greek City and its Institutions (New York: Barnes & Noble, [1929] 1969),
p. 249.
 Israel’s Supreme Court 465

familiar laws of economics is this: when the cost of production of

something is reduced, more of it will be supplied. Producers see an
opportunity to make a proit: by increasing production, they can
take advantage of the newly discovered diference between produc-
tion costs and consumer prices. Therefore, by reducing the cost of
predicting other people’s actions, this Mosaic law, including its
speciied capital sanction, would have tended to increase the divi-
sion of labor in Israelite society. This would have increased the
wealth of those living under its jurisdiction. By reducing the likeli-
hood that others would refuse to comply with the law, this law in-
creased the likelihood that men would honor their promises. This
would also have increased the value of contracts. A contract is an
agreement that increases the predictability of other people’s actions
in the future. The greater the expected value of a contract, the more
people who would seek out others to deal with.
This leads to a very important principle of Christian economics:
predictable covenantal law and covenantal sanctions undergird the
humanly unplanned development of a contractual society. The
covenantal basis of contract law is manifested in this case law. The
threat of execution for non-compliance with the State’s interpreta-
tion of what a contract requires increases the likelihood that men
will take care in drafting their contracts and complying with their
terms.
There is nothing in the New Covenant that annuls this principle
of civil court authority. There is no New Covenant principle that au-
thorizes reduced civil sanctions for non-compliance with the su-
preme court’s decision. There is nothing that changes the speciied
sanction. In fact, the severity of the speciied sanction – the change
in venue – is what demonstrates the supreme authority of the court.
To reduce the sanction is to undermine the authority of the supreme court.
Any argument on the part of non-theonomists that the New Cove-
nant has nothing to say about such matters is implicitly an under-
mining of civil authority and a subsidy to criminals. In any case, if
the New Covenant really has nothing to say about such judicial mat-
ters, then the consistent New Covenant theologian should excuse
himself from the discussion. He has nothing to say, for the New
Covenant supposedly has nothing to say. On the whole, Christians
in the West have willingly excused themselves from such discus-
sions since about 1700, which is why social theory, criminal law,
466 DEUTERONOMY

and politics have become battlegrounds between left-wing Enlight-

enment humanists and right-wing Enlightenment humanists.
Why this silence by Christians? Perhaps because they have rec-
ognized the underlying theocratic nature of this law, and all civil
law. This Mosaic law had an important qualiication: Israel’s su-
preme civil court was neither wholly civil nor wholly ecclesiastical.
The supreme court’s authority to enforce its word was legitimate
only because this decision of the civil judge came only after consul-
tation with, and the support of, the priests.

The Priests the Levites

The phrase in verse 9, “the priests the Levites,” irst appears in
the Bible in this verse. If we are to understand the scope of this law,
we must understand the meaning of this phrase. In Deuteronomy
18, we are given a clearer picture of who these priests-Levites were.
They were those Levites who served as tabernacle-temple priests.
They had to reside in the city where the tabernacle was located.
They were not Levites who lived in local communities. The priests
ojciated at the sacriices (Deut. 18:1–8). This meant that these
priests held sacramental ojces. They were ordained to special min-
isterial ojce, which required them to be present at the altar. In
some cases, they actually sold their real estate in their home cities:
“They shall have like portions to eat, beside that which cometh of
the sale of his patrimony” (Deut. 18:8).
The presence of priests on the nation’s supreme civil court gave
veto power to the church. The supreme representative function of
the supreme court could not lawfully be exclusively civil. The civil
oath did not authorize exclusive judicial authority at the highest
level, i.e., the inal court of appeal. This balance of authority served
as a check on the State. The State’s agents could not unilaterally de-
clare God’s law in the most dijcult cases that divided men.

Separation and Inheritance

The permanent separation of covenant-breakers and God at the
inal judgment leads to a transfer of inheritance: from the guilty par-
ties to the innocent victims. The New Heaven and New Earth in its
post-inal judgment, consummated form will be inhabited solely by
covenant-keepers (Rev. 21:1–4; 7–8). This model of inal inheri-
tance/disinheritance is the judicial basis of the prophecy that the
 Israel’s Supreme Court 467

righteous will inherit the earth in history. “For evildoers shall be cut
of: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt dili-
gently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall in-
herit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of
peace” (Ps. 37:9–11). That which will surely take place in history
will relect the inal outcome in eternity.
The postmillennial implications of these passages is obvious.
Amillennialism’s theory of history as a permanent stalemate be-
tween covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers, with the church in
permanent remnant status, or the church as progressively under op-
pression,6 is contradicted by Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the his-
torical manifestation of the New Heaven and New Earth, in which,
unlike the scene in Revelation 21:4, death will still exist. Isaiah
65:17–23 presents a promise of permanent inheritance, in which
righteousness is the basis of inheritance, and therefore disinheri-
tance by covenant-breakers is no longer a threat.
The progressive transfer of inheritance in history will resemble
Egypt’s transfer of wealth to the Israelites at the exodus. The inheri-
tance of the Egyptians’ irstborn sons was transferred to God’s
irstborn son, Israel. This is normative for history. So far, it has not
been normal because of the repeated apostasy of the church, but
that which has been normal in the past is not that which is norma-
tive. It is also not a permanent condition.
There were a few cases under the Old Covenant in which there
was no inheritance by Israel, where disinheritance was absolute.
God imposed total destruction on a few cities. Sodom and Gomor-
rah are the archetypes. Lot did not inherit the wealth of Sodom.
Arad’s cities were totally destroyed by Israel (Num. 21:3). Jericho
was totally destroyed (Josh. 6:24). Saul lost his kingship because he
refused to destroy Amalek totally (I Sam. 15:35; 16:1). But in the
vast majority of cases in the conquest of Canaan, Israel inherited the
capital assets of the defeated nations. This was part of God’s original
plan of inheritance: it was to be achieved through the disinheritance
of covenant-breakers. “And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall
have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to

6. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), pp. 76–94.
468 DEUTERONOMY

Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cit-
ies, which thou buildedst not, And houses full of all good things,
which thou illedst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not,
vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt
have eaten and be full. . .” (Deut. 6:10–11). Solomon later summa-
rized this process: “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his chil-
dren’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just”
(Prov. 13:22).

New Testament Applications

The New Testament equivalent of the priest-Levite is the or-
dained church ojcer who has the right to administer the sacraments
and to restrict unauthorized people’s access to the sacraments. This
ojcer holds the keys to the kingdom (Matt. 16:19). He has the au-
thority to declare people excommunicate. That is, he lawfully can
exercise judgment with respect to a man’s eternal inheritance. To
the extent that inheritance in history is correlative to inheritance in
eternity, he possesses the right indirectly to determine inheritance
in history.
The biblical covenant makes it clear that the righteous will in-
herit in history. This historical outcome is denied by pessi-
millennialists. This is another reason why point ive – eschatology –
inluences point four: sanctions. It also inluences point two: hierar-
chy. This is why the modern Christian is not really neutral regard-
ing the continuing authority of Mosaic law. He does not really
believe that the New Testament has nothing to say about this, de-
spite his initial assurances to the contrary. He insists that the New
Testament has abolished all traces of the Mosaic civil law, or at least
all those traces that call into question the Enlightenment’s theory of
religiously neutral civil law and political pluralism, which he de-
voutly accepts. He rejects point ive of the biblical covenant, and
therefore he rejects points two and four: the suggestion that a minis-
ter of the sacraments has any lawful advisory and veto function in a
civil court. He sides with the humanists in a joint efort to deny that
the church has any legitimate ojcial authority in civil judgments.
Prior to 1650, such a joint declaration would have been considered
unthinkable in the West outside of the tiny New England common-
wealth of Rhode Island.
 Israel’s Supreme Court 469

Creeds and Confessions

The most important church council in history was the Council
of Nicea, held in 325. It settled for all time the question of the divin-
ity of Jesus Christ. To deny Christ’s equality with God is to deny the
Christian faith. The church has accepted this declaration ever since.
Yet this international ecclesiastical assembly was called to serve by
the Emperor Constantine, who wanted this issue settled. It got set-
tled theologically at the Council of Nicea, although it was not settled
militarily and socially for several centuries.7
The Westminster Assembly irst met on July 1, 1643. The Brit-
ish Parliament had called for its creation the previous November.
Parliament, not the Anglican Church, chose the Assembly’s repre-
sentatives. The Westminster “divines” were in fact political appoint-
ees. The Assembly was advisory to the Parliament. The members
were paid by Parliament to attend.8 The Westminster Assembly
ratiied this political decision by putting the following declaration
into the Confession: the civil magistrate “hath power to call synods,
to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted
in them be according to the mind of God.”9 This passage was re-
moved by the American Presbyterian Church in the revision of
1787–88, at the same time that the U.S. Constitution was being
ratiied. The Whig view of the separation of church and State was
ratiied in both constitutional documents: by the removal of a sec-
tion in the ecclesiastical covenant, and by the inclusion in the civil
covenant of a prohibition against religious test oaths for Federal
ojce-holding.10

The Protestant Solution: Abdication

The modern Protestant is a child of the Enlightenment in his po-
litical outlook. The political religious pluralism which was regarded
as heretical by the church, East and West, for 1700 years is today
universally accepted by Protestants as somehow innately Christian

7. The invading Ostrogoths were Arians.

8. Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), Appendix C.
9. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), XXII:3.
10. Article VI, Section III. See Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 385–91.
470 DEUTERONOMY

and, in the words of unitarian skeptic Thomas Jeferson, “self-

evident.” The modern secular State has issued its declaration of
independence from God, and American Protestants have not only
agreed, they have hailed this as the very work of God in history,
their source of liberation. No one has put it any more starkly than
the former Presidential aide11 and convicted felon (pre-conversion)
Charles Colson: “Thus two typically mortal enemies, the Enlighten-
ment and the Christian faith, found a patch of common ground on
12
American soil.” He regards this as a great breakthrough in civic
freedom. As one of modern American evangelicalism’s most re-
spected igures, Colson’s opinion is representative.
In the best-selling popular history of colonial America, The Light
and the Glory, the two Protestant authors speak of “the divine origin
of its [the Constitution’s] inspiration. . . .”13 Furthermore, “it is noth-
ing less than the institutional guardian of the Covenant Way of life
for the nation as a whole!”14 Yet they recognize that it is “a seculariz-
ing of the spiritual reality of the covenant. It can thus never be the
substitute for a covenant life totally given to the Lord Jesus Christ.”15
This should be obvious to any Christian. But the statement is also
covenantally incomplete. The crucial question is this: What is the
New Covenant basis of the civil covenant in “a covenant life totally
given to Jesus Christ”? The two authors did not raise this question,
for the question no longer occurs to modern American Christians,
even among those few who have heard the word “covenant.” Yet the
father of one of the authors served as Chaplain of the U.S. Senate for
years, and later became the posthumous subject of a best-selling book
and a Hollywood movie.16 The “covenant life totally given to Jesus
Christ” is arbitrarily conined to three spheres: personal, ecclesiastical,
and familial. Without any supporting exegesis of the Bible, American

11. Under Richard Nixon.

12. Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conlict (1987), p. 119. This book was jointly published by
William Morrow, a secular publishing irm, and Zondervan Publishing House, a
fundamentalist publishing irm.
13. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory (Old Tappan, New Jersey:
Revell, 1977), pp. 343–44.
14. Ibid., p. 348.
15. Idem.
16. Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter: The Story of Peter Marshall (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1951).
 Israel’s Supreme Court 471

Protestants for over two centuries have assumed that the civil cove-
nant has no legal connection to Christ, and should not.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed public
prayer in government-funded schools (1963), as well as the teaching
of creation in these schools (1991). It has legalized abortion on de-
mand in the name of a woman’s right to privacy (1973). Christian
political activists who oppose all three decisions seem to think that
these decisions were in no way connected to the U.S. Constitution’s
declaration of covenantal independence from God and the church
in 1788. The secularization of the Supreme Court, they believe, has
nothing to do with the actual wording of the Constitution. Christian
activists today sufer from near-terminal naiveté.
One price of Protestantism has been the acceptance of the En-
lightenment’s doctrine of pluralism. Roman Catholicism laid the
foundations for this capitulation by its acceptance of Stoic natural
law theory by way of Aristotle. Scholasticism’s acceptance of Aristo-
telian logic set the precedent. The Reformers ofered no substitute,
and by the mid-seventeenth century, late-medieval scholastic cate-
gories of politics were imported into the Presbyterian tradition. The
footnotes in Samuel Rutherford’s Lex, Rex (1644) are illed with ref-
erences to members of the Dominicans’ school of Salamanca. These
men were brilliant jurists, as well as economists who pioneered con-
cepts of free pricing, monetary theory, and interest as a time-based
phenomenon that were in some ways superior to Adam Smith’s the-
ories over two centuries later.17
In the same year that Lex, Rex was published, Roger Williams’
Bloudy Tenant of Persecution appeared. His defense of religiously neu-
tral civil government so appalled Parliament that they ordered all
copies burned. It was based on natural law theory. But before the
book appeared, Williams had secured a Parliamentary charter for
Rhode Island that allowed him to conduct an experiment in his the-
ory of neutral civil government.18 That “lively experiment” in polity
a century and a half later conquered the colonial American mind.
Without a State church, early modern era Protestants saw no
way to secure a voice in civil afairs that Christian political theory

17. Murray N. Rothbard, Economic Thought before Adam Smith: An Austrian Perspective on the
History of Economic Thought (Brookield, Vermont: Elgar, 1985), ch. 4.
18. Edwin Scott Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 85.
472 DEUTERONOMY

had demanded for seventeen centuries. The rise of Oliver Crom-

well in 1644 as the military master led to the extension of liberty of
worship to all Protestant sects. The Independents would not tolerate
an intolerant State church. Scottish Presbyterianism’s attempt to se-
19
cure such a monopoly was anathema to them. Cromwell’s victory
made impossible the Presbyterians’ demand for a State church. The
restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660 did not reverse this
toleration, although the King imposed the Act of Uniformity in
1662 which led to the departure of 2,000 Puritan ministers from
their pulpits.
Who should represent the church in the civil courts? This ques-
tion has had no answer in Protestant nations since the late seven-
teenth century. Which ministers should be eligible? Which groups
calling themselves churches should be eligible? This was no prob-
lem for Mosaic Israel, although it had become a problem by Ahab’s
day. Mosaic Israel had only one priesthood.
This answer – ministers of churches that ajrm an historic Trini-
tarian creed – was too narrow for Enlightenment humanists and
Protestant Independents, and too broad for the Presbyterians. The
Protestants have been deadlocked since the seventeenth century.
The result has been the progressive secularization of the United
States’ civil order: from Scholastic natural law theory to Newtonian
natural law theory to Madison’s grand experiment: a Constitution
stripped of any theory of law. In the opinion of the Framers, the
preservation of liberty is a matter of technique rather than ethics:
designing proper institutional checks and balances in the allocation
of political power. But these checks and balances have steadily
fallen prey to the sovereignty of the Supreme Court, which the Con-
stitution’s authors regarded as the least powerful branch of the Fed-
eral government, but which has become the most powerful. The
Supreme Court renders inal judgment – point four – on the legality
of what the other two branches do. The Court therefore has become
the voice of authority: point two.20
In Mosaic Israel, the supreme court could not represent one
covenant; it had to represent two: church and State. This is the sys-
tem of checks and balance announced by God through Moses, but

19. See Jane Lane, The Reign of King Covenant (London: Robert Hale, 1956).
20. North, Political Polytheism, ch. 10.
 Israel’s Supreme Court 473

modern man, both Christian and non-Christian, regards the Mosaic

judicial settlement as a source of tyranny. Judicial checks and bal-
ances are seen today exclusively as intra-civil government matters –
federal, state, and local – but never as matters of inter-government
relations, i.e., civil and ecclesiastical.

A Royal Priesthood
The New Covenant, like the Old Covenant, rests on an oath of
loyalty: allegiance to God. There are four areas where this covenant
oath seals a legal bond: personal, ecclesiastical, familial, and civil.
The modern Christian generally acknowledges the legitimacy of the
irst three covenantal Trinitarian oaths, but as a loyal son of the En-
lightenment, he denies the fourth.
If the fourth covenant were honored, this principle would be-
come a judicial reality: he who is not sealed by covenant oath (point
four) may not lawfully exercise covenantal authority (point two) by
invoking and applying covenant sanctions (point four). To declare
covenant sanctions is to afect the inheritance (point ive) in God’s
name (point one). Only those who are under the covenant through
an oath possess this authority. The political question becomes:
Whose covenant, whose oath?
To gain the eternal blessings of God, a person must swear a cov-
enant oath to the God of the Bible, whose Son and Messiah is Jesus
Christ. To gain the blessings of the sacraments, a person must come
under the authority of the institutional church. To gain the blessings
of a Christian marriage, a person must have sworn oaths one and
two. So also with biblical citizenship. But this is denied by most
Christians today.
Biblical citizenship, above all, is the authority to become a
judge, either through membership in the military or as a judge. A
judge includes the ojce of voter and the ojce of juror. He who is
not a citizen may not vote or serve on a jury. If he has not sworn a
loyalty oath to the State, he is not a citizen. If he has not also sworn
the irst two oaths – personal and ecclesiastical – he is not to become
a citizen in a biblical commonwealth. The Enlightenment attacked
this doctrine of oath-bound Christian citizenship. Humanists sought
the legal authority to impose civil sanctions on Christians in the
name of another god: autonomous man. They did not wish to live
inside the boundaries of God’s Bible-revealed law. So, they created
a theory of political citizenship which invokes a loyalty oath only to
474 DEUTERONOMY

the State – a State devoid of any Trinitarian demarcation. Their the-

ory of citizenship is today universally accepted by Protestantism
and American Catholicism.
The connection between the Mosaic Covenant’s theory of priestly
participation in the supreme court and the modern Supreme Court is
this: there must be representatives of Trinitarian churches on the na-
tion’s supreme civil court. But what about local courts? There was no
requirement that local civil courts include Levites or priests. The
Mosaic priests were centrally located. The place of sacriice became
their temporary home. This is no longer the case. There is no cen-
tral place of sacriice. But there is a central place where the supreme
civil court meets. This is in part a matter of technology, at least for
now, but it is also a matter of personalism. There is more to courts
than the formal gatherings of courts’ judges. There are personal re-
lationships among the judges.
The New Testament covenant oath is priestly. The promise of
Exodus 19:6 has been fulilled:

And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation

(Ex. 19:6a).

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a

peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath
called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past
were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained
mercy, but now have obtained mercy (I Pet. 2:9–10).

Peter’s language is important for political theory. The New Cov-

enant priestly status is royal, i.e., kingly. The Protestant Reforma-
tion’s doctrine of “every man a priest,” i.e., every redeemed person a
priest, is an extension of part of Peter’s declaration. But the Refor-
mation did not ajrm the parallel doctrine: every redeemed person
a king.21 This was a major theological and social omission. This po-
litical principle implies universal civil sufrage among adult church
members. Tentative beginnings of this doctrine arose only in the

21. Huey P. Long, the corrupt populist governor from the poverty-stricken southern state
of Louisiana during the 1920’s and 1930’s, made “every man a king” his slogan. As a U.S.
Senator, he became a national igure during the Great Depression in the mid-1930’s. He was
considered a potentially signiicant political threat to President Franklin Roosevelt. He was
assassinated in 1935.
 Israel’s Supreme Court 475

next century, particularly during the English Civil War (1642–49).

The sect known as the Levellers wanted to extend the vote to all
male rate-payers in church or State.22
The covenantal basis of both doctrines was announced by Pe-
ter: every redeemed, covenantally bound person is both a priest
and a king. This does not deny the fact that there are still ordained
ojcers in church and State who exercise greater authority than
those whom they represent. Hierarchy is an inescapable aspect of
the covenant. So is ordination. But the concept of the priestly-kingly
believer in Christ leads to the concept of covenant ratiication in both
spheres: church and State. Members of churches and citizens of
states lawfully possess the veto. On regular occasions, a majority of
them must be allowed to extend positive sanctions to one represen-
tative, thereby imposing negative sanctions on his rivals. The bot-
tom-up authority of the covenant matches its top-down authority.
Without the imposition of covenant sanctions, there can be no
covenantal representation. Ordained representatives must truly
represent both parties to the covenant: God and man. Both God
and man must authorize an ojce-holder’s continuing possession of
authority. Ojcers of both church and State must be held responsi-
ble by those whom they represent. God holds the people responsi-
ble for the sins of their representatives (Lev. 4).23 How, then, are the
people to sanction this representation? Democratic politics is a con-
sistent application of Peter’s announcement. The question then be-
comes: Who has lawful access to the exercise of the vote? The New
Covenant’s answer is this: “Those who are under oath-bound
covenantal sanctions to the Trinitarian God of the Bible in both
church and State.”
The priesthood of all believers secures the priestly status of ev-
ery jury and every court whose members are all members in good
standing of Trinitarian churches. Then why doesn’t this principle of
the universal priesthood solve the judicial problem of church-State
relations at the level of the supreme court? Why is there still a

22. William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1955), p. 325. “Levelling” did not refer to property ownership. It referred to
right to vote. The Diggers and the Fifth Monarchy men were the communists of the English
Civil War era.
23. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 4.
476 DEUTERONOMY

necessity of a mixed court containing judges and sacramental ojcers?

Because of the principle of checks and balances. There must be a divi-
sion of authority. In every supreme court that lawfully imposes
physical sanctions, there must be representation of the church.
Someone who has the right to declare a person excommunicate
must have a veto power on every supreme civil court. The civil au-
thority must not assert its own exclusive counsel at the highest level.
The checks and balances necessary to restrict civil government
from becoming tyrannical must include a veto in the possession of
sacramental ojcers. This is the message of Deuteronomy 17:8–12.

Conclusion
Israel’s supreme civil court was to include representatives of two
covenants: civil and ecclesiastical. This law authorized the priests to
veto the decision of a judge. The law speaks of a joint declaration:
“According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee,
and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt
do.” This law brought the power of the civil government in support
of contracts. The threat of execution for one’s refusal to adhere to
the court’s declaration placed the rebel under severe pressure to
conform. This would have increased the predictability of the mar-
ketplace. Disputes over the interpretation of contracts would have
ended with the supreme court’s judgment.
 40
Boundaries on
BOUNDARIES ONKingship
KINGSHIP

When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth
thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a
king over me, like as all the nations that are about me. . . (Deut. 17:14).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s ojce as King of kings.

This was a land law. It governed the ojce of king, an optional ojce
in Old Covenant Israel. This biblically authorized ojce has not ex-
isted since the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. In fact, it has not existed
in history since the exile. Men have called themselves kings, and
they have acted as kings, but they have not been legitimate, in the
sense that neither priest nor prophet has been legitimate. All three
ojces were Old Covenant ojces that have been completed by
Christ.
Moses’ assumption here was that Israel would conquer the land
of Canaan. There was a strong element of prophecy: predictions ac-
companied by ethical commands. The laws governing kingship in
Israel assumed that Israel had already conquered the land. This is
another instance in the Bible where grace precedes law, which is a fun-
damental principle of God’s covenantal dealings with men. God
would give them a military victory comparable to their deliverance
out of Egypt. This victory would then serve as the historical basis of
kingship. Without prior grace, there would be no earthly king over
Israel. The very presence of an earthly king in Israel was supposed
to remind them of the visible grace of God in history. Only because
God is the sovereign master over history and the deliverer of His
people in history could the Israelites ever set a king over them-
selves. The Israelites’ mandatory presupposition of earthly kingship
was supposed to be the absolute sovereignty of God over history.

477
478 DEUTERONOMY

The Mosaic doctrine of kingship rested on this doctrine: Israel’s true

king was God. This was the theocentric focus of the kingship laws.
Israel broke these kingship laws when the people demanded a
king four centuries later. Their motivation was not theocentric; it
was humanistic. Samuel reminded them of the theocentric focus of
Israel’s kingship: God’s gracious deliverance. “And ye have this day
rejected your God, who himself saved you out of all your adversities
and your tribulations; and ye have said unto him, Nay, but set a king
over us. Now therefore present yourselves before the LORD by your
tribes, and by your thousands” (I Sam. 10:19). God had revealed to
Samuel that the Israelites were substituting a new covenant. This
new covenant necessarily involved the rejection of the God of the
Mosaic covenant: “And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto
the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have
not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign
over them” (I Sam. 8:7).
Note that God told Samuel to do what they asked. God gave
them enough rope to hang themselves. He told His prophet to go
along with them, anointing the new king in God’s name. There
would be four kings over Israel’s united kingdom, but early in the
reign of the fourth king, Rehoboam, there was a revolt which di-
vided Israel into two kingdoms (I Ki. 12). This, too, was part of
God’s covenantal order: He visits the iniquity of the fathers unto the
third and fourth generation of those who hate Him (Ex. 20:5). The
glory of the Davidic kingdom and the wealth of Solomon’s kingdom
were aspects of God’s covenantal curse on Israel: magniicent rope
for a national hanging. “And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the
LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and wor-
ship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As
the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye
perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD
your God” (Deut. 8:19–20). When they demanded a king, they be-
gan a journey into covenantal disobedience that led to Babylon.
When they returned from the exile, they never again had an Israel-
ite as a king. Final civil authority was imposed on them from head-
quarters outside the land: Medo-Persia, regional Hellenism, and
Rome.
 Boundaries on Kingship 479

Kingship as Imitation
God’s law provided for the establishment of kings in Israel. This
is not to say that God required kingship in Israel. He did not. When
the Israelites irst proposed a king to Samuel, the prophet warned
them of the dire consequences that would surely follow. The king
would tax them equal to the tithe (I Sam. 8:15, 17). This threat of
looming tax tyranny did not deter them, any more than dire warn-
ings against the establishment of a national income tax deterred vot-
ers in the early twentieth century. The people wanted a king in
Israel; similarly, the people have wanted a savior State in the twenti-
eth century, with the high tax rates necessary to fund such a
would-be savior State. The twentieth century has seen tax rates far
above the tithe. To get back to a mere tithe, which Samuel warned
was tyranny, most of the civil governments of the modern world
would have to cut taxes by three quarters. To get back to the tax
level of tyrannical Egypt under Joseph (Gen. 47:26) – God’s curse
on Pharaoh-worshipping Egypt through Joseph – modern welfare
states would have to cut taxes by at least half.
This fact is evidence that the modern world has adopted politi-
cal tyranny in the name of freedom and economic justice. The mod-
ern secular world has strayed so far from belief in the God of the
Bible that it regards tax tyranny as liberty. Tax reformers who call
for a 20 percent national lat tax – leaving intact all state and local
taxes – are dismissed by the vast majority of intellectuals and
elected politicians as crackpot defenders of a near-libertarian State.
Meanwhile, the modern church refuses to call for massive tax cuts
in the name of the Bible. The operating alliance between secular hu-
manists and the Old Testament-rejecting pietists has led to the es-
tablishment of the would-be Savior State, which promises healing to
all mankind. This is modern man’s version of salvation by law.
Christians ajrm its legitimacy in the name of their rejection of Old
Testament law. They argue that the acceptance of Old Testament
civil law is a form of legalism.
This has led Christians, step by step, into a political alliance with
modernists, whose version of salvation by humanistic civil law has
become a universal faith in the once-Christian West. In the same
way that the Israelites demanded a king because the pagan nations
around them had kings, so have Bible-ajrming Christians voted for
480 DEUTERONOMY

politicians who have imposed tax tyranny in the name of the Savior
State, i.e., the welfare State.

The Origin of the Modern Welfare State

The modern welfare State was the creation of Otto von Bis-
marck, who advocated State-funded pensions and health insurance
in the 1880’s in order to undermine the Social Democrats (socialists)
and the liberals (laissez-faire) who were challenging his authority to
rule over Germany’s government.1 Germany, which had by then
become the center of State-funded education and biblical higher
criticism, became the West’s model for the welfare State after 1890.2
Bismarck called his program “applied Christianity,” but it was actu-
ally applied force for the purpose of increasing State power. He told
his biographer in 1881, “Anybody who has before him the prospect
of a pension, be it ever so small, in old age or inirmity is much hap-
pier and more content with his lot, and much more tractable and
easy to manage, than he whose future is uncertain.”3 He also told
him, “The State must take the matter into its own hands, not as
alms-giving, but as the right that men have to be taken care of when,
with the best will imaginable, they become unit for work. . . . This
thing will make its own way; it has a future. When I die, possibly our
policy will come to grief. But State Socialism will have its day; and
he who shall take it up again will assuredly be the man at the
wheel.”4 In 1889, shortly after his forced retirement, Bismarck’s
tax-funded pension plan was voted into law.
Christians want to be like the pagan nations around them. This
is especially true of Christians in college classrooms who have

1. He could not persuade the parliament in 1881 to vote for government funding of health
insurance, but it did vote for State-mandated health insurance (1883) and accident insurance
(1884), to be co-funded by workers and employers. But, economically speaking, workers
funded the employers’ share, too. The employers would have been willing to pay the workers
the same money in salaries. The payment was simply a cost of doing business. It went to
insurance rather than wages.
2. A. J. P. Taylor, England’s proliic socialistic historian, wrote: “German social insurance
was the irst in the world, and has served as a model for every other civilized country. The
great conservative became the greatest of innovators.” Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and the
Statesman (New York: Knopf, 1955), p. 203.
3. Moritz Busch, Our Chancellor (Bismarck): Sketches for a Historical Picture, trans. William
Beatty-Kingston, 2 vols. (New York: Books for Libraries, [1884] 1970), II, p. 217.
4. Ibid., II, pp. 321–32.
 Boundaries on Kingship 481

earned advanced academic degrees from State-funded universities

and State-accredited private secular universities, which today serve
as the institutional equivalent of Nebuchadnezzar’s school for the
sons of conquered nations (Dan. 1). This lust of covenant-keepers to
conform to the latest manifestations of covenant-breaking society
has undermined the covenants from the day that the nation of Israel
ratiied the national covenant in Exodus 19. The unwillingness of
covenant-keepers to ilter and then restructure imported ideas, insti-
tutions, and practices by means of God’s law places them at the
mercy of the ethical standards of their enemies. As dispensational
author Tommy Ice once admitted, “Premillennialists have always
been involved in the present world. And basically, they have picked
up on the ethical position of their contemporaries.”5 This is equally
true of the common forms of amillennialism.
The Mosaic law mandated restraints on Israel’s kings. It placed
speciic boundaries on the king. One of these was that the king not
multiply wives for himself. David and Solomon self-consciously
deied this law. Yet the reigns of both men brought glory and wealth
to Israel. The pinnacle of Israel’s glory came during the reigns of
kings who deied the Mosaic laws of kingship. David multiplied
wives. Solomon multiplied wives and gold. Visible rebellion
brought visible blessings: rope. The bills eventually came due.
Rehoboam demanded the taxes necessary, he believed, to inance
the kingdom that his father had consolidated. The visible splendor
of earthly power and glory does not come cheaply. Rehoboam’s de-
mand for higher taxes led to a successful tax revolt that divided
kingship in Israel. The centralized kingdom was decentralized by
political revolution. This is the inevitable fate of every kingdom in
history. God the king will not tolerate indeinitely the claims of rival
kings and kingdoms.

Decentralized Civil Government

Kingship in the ancient pagan world was associated with divin-
ity. The king was frequently regarded as a divine-human link. This
was not merely a judicial link; it was an ontological link. The king or

5. Cited in Gary DeMar, The Debate Over Christian Reconstruction (Ft. Worth, Texas:
Dominion Press, 1988), p. 185.
482 DEUTERONOMY

6
emperor was believed to participate in the being of God. Even to-
day, the emperor of Japan is ojcially said to be a descendent of the
7
gods.
This belief has historical roots, according to the Bible. There was
such a divine-human king in Old Covenant history: Melchizedek,
king of Salem. The Epistle to the Hebrews describes him: “Without
father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning
of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a
priest continually” (Heb. 7:3). The language of this epistle indicates
that Melchizedek was a theophany, in the same way that the burn-
ing bush was. He held two ojces: priest and king. This was not per-
mitted to an Israelite king. The two ojces had to be kept separate.
Kings could not lawfully ofer priestly sacriices (I Sam. 13:9–14; II
Chron. 26:19).
The separation of church and State was fundamental in the Mo-
saic law. There were two national judicial chains of command in Is-
rael, civil and ecclesiastical. The high priest’s ojce was separate
from kingship. The priesthood exercised the sword only in a defen-
sive perimeter around the tabernacle. God’s law was divided struc-
turally between ecclesiastical law and civil law. The centralization of
power that was implied by kingship could not lawfully centralize ec-
clesiastical power under the State. There could be no Melchizedekan
king-priest in Israel.
To call for an earthly king was Israel’s public admission of politi-
cal defeat. There is no question of the biblical legitimacy of king-
ship, for the Mosaic law established provisions governing the ojce.
There is also no question that it was a second-best arrangement. The
people of Israel abdicated when they had Samuel ordain a king. For
four centuries, they had possessed the authority to follow or reject
their judges. They also held a veto. Although Deborah’s song retro-
actively ridiculed those tribes that had not heeded her call to do bat-
tle against Sisera (Jud. 5:16–17), there was no question that she had
not possessed lawful authority over them to compel their participa-
tion. Furthermore, without a joint declaration of war by the princes
and the priests (Num. 10), Israel could not lawfully go to war. Israel

6. R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy
(Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1971] 1978), ch. 3.
7. The emperor Jimmu (660 B.C.) is said to be the grandson of Hiro Hohodemi, the son of
the god Ninigi, and Toyotama, daughter of the sea god. “Jimmu,” Grolier’s Encyclopedia (1997).
 Boundaries on Kingship 483

was to be ruled by princes and judges, who were to consult with the
Levites. Political leadership was decentralized in Israel because
their king was God. There had to be a high priest in Israel; there did
not have to be a king. Visible sovereignty was supposed to be eccle-
siastical far more than civil. The inal voice of civil authority was to
be a corporate body: judges and priests who would declare God’s
judgments in speciic cases (Deut. 17:9).8 The presence of priests on
this supreme civil court was designed to keep civil authority from
becoming autonomous.
To maintain such a decentralized civil government, the Israel-
ites would have to retain their conidence that God was truly in their
midst and that He revealed Himself through His ordained represen-
tatives, both ecclesiastical and civil. The inauguration of a king was
a public declaration that the nation no longer wanted its legal status
as a thoroughly decentralized kingdom of priests. God recognized
this, and He instructed Samuel to tell them this. The king would
centralize tax collection and extract a tithe from them (I Sam. 8:15,
17). They did not heed Samuel’s warning. Either they did not be-
lieve Samuel or they did not care. Either they believed that they
could place limits on the king’s taxing power or else they believed
that the trade-of was worth it. They wanted to be like the nations
around them.
In Moses’ day, God knew they would eventually inaugurate a
king. This is why He graciously had Moses announce tight bound-
aries on the king’s legitimate authority. He gave the Israelites guide-
lines – a blueprint – that would enable them to identify when their
king was moving toward apostasy, rebellion, and tyranny. Saul, a
terrible king, did not openly violate them. David and Solomon did.
Rehoboam, surely a third-rate king, imposed new taxes at the be-
ginning of his reign. For this, the Northern Kingdom seceded. God
kept Israel decentralized by authorizing a divided kingdom under
Jeroboam and therefore two kingly lines.

Covenantal Boundaries
Deuteronomy’s irst kingly law established that only an Israelite
could occupy the ojce: “Thou shalt in any wise set him king over

8. See Chapter 39.

484 DEUTERONOMY

thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy
brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger
over thee, which is not thy brother” (Deut. 17:15). This law gov-
erned the nation’s civil and ecclesiastical representatives. In Israel, a
joint ordination was mandatory for establishing kingship: church
and State. Samuel anointed Saul, but he irst went before the civil
representatives of the nation to warn them not to raise up a king: a
political creation of the congregation. Later, when Solomon’s au-
thority to reign as king was challenged by a rebellion by his brother
Adonijah, the priests and the people decided in his favor. “And
Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and
anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people
said, God save king Solomon” (I Ki. 1:39). This joint ordination pro-
cedure was even clearer in the case of the youthful Joash, who re-
placed the murderous Queen Athaliah.

And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people, she
came to the people into the temple of the LORD. And when she looked, be-
hold, the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was, and the princes and the
trumpeters by the king, and all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew
with trumpets: and Athaliah rent her clothes, and cried, Treason, Treason.
But Jehoiada the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds, the
ojcers of the host, and said unto them, Have her forth without the ranges:
and him that followeth her kill with the sword. For the priest had said, Let
her not be slain in the house of the LORD. And they laid hands on her; and
she went by the way by the which the horses came into the king’s house:
and there was she slain. And Jehoiada made a covenant between the LORD
and the king and the people that they should be the LORD’S people; be-
tween the king also and the people. And all the people of the land went
into the house of Baal, and brake it down; his altars and his images brake
they in pieces thoroughly, and slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the al-
tars. And the priest appointed ojcers over the house of the LORD. And he
took the rulers over hundreds, and the captains, and the guard, and all the
people of the land; and they brought down the king from the house of the
LORD, and came by the way of the gate of the guard to the king’s house.
And he sat on the throne of the kings (II Ki. 11:13–19).

Deuteronomy 17:15 told the people what they could not law-
fully do: ordain a stranger as king. The king had to be eligible to be a
judge, i.e., a citizen. Citizenship was covenantal. This citizenship
principle established that only a circumcised male who was a mem-
ber of the congregation, or the daughter or wife of a citizen (e.g.,
 Boundaries on Kingship 485

9
Deborah), could lawfully be ordained to impose civil sanctions. He
had to be under covenantal sanctions, marked in his lesh, in order
to be eligible for kingship in Israel. This meant that in order for a
man lawfully to impose civil covenantal sanctions, he had to be un-
der ecclesiastical covenantal sanctions. A king’s lesh had to reveal
his implicit self-maledictory oath before God, which had been taken
on his behalf by his circumcising parent, who had acted as a house-
hold priest.
Circumcision was a physical manifestation of what was to be an
inward ethical condition. Moses had already warned Israel: “Cir-
cumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stif-
necked” (Deut. 10:16). The stifnecked person was someone who
would not heed God’s word. He was a rebel. The circumcised man
might not be circumcised in heart, which was why Moses here re-
vealed other marks of the circumcised heart in a man possessing su-
preme civil authority: one wife, no horses, and not much money.
After Israel returned from the Assyrian-Babylonian exile, its su-
preme civil rulers would no longer be circumcised. The people had
no further say over who would rule over them. The inal authority in
civil government did not reside in a court in Jerusalem; it resided in
some foreign capital. The history of Israel was a transition from
judgeship to domestic kingship to foreign empire. Under foreign
rulers, both at home and abroad, Israel was to learn the true mean-
ing of kingship. Israel got its wish: to live as the other nations did –
as a subordinate nation in a foreign king’s international empire.

Military Boundaries
The horse was an ofensive weapon. Horses were the basis of
both the cavalry and chariots. There were to be few horses in the
king’s stable: “But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause
the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply
horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth

9. She was a judge. She commanded the army, but only as a U.S. President does: as a
civilian. She could not legally be drafted into the army. Only men were mustered (numbered)
in God’s holy army. I conclude that her civil authority as a judge stemmed either from her
husband or father, although the text in Judges does not say this. The judicial issue is
circumcision: the mark of being under the covenant’s negative sanctions.
486 DEUTERONOMY

return no more that way” (v. 16). The horse was a tool of empire.
Kings could not lawfully multiply them.
The kingdom of God vs. the empire of man: here was the choice
before Israel. Israel’s civil order was to be decentralized. Decentral-
ized societies cannot become empires without abandoning their
political decentralization. Republican Rome is the most famous ex-
ample in history: when Rome became an empire, she ceased being
a republic. Decentralized societies lack what every empire requires:
an ofensive military force. A king or his functional equivalent is the
commander of every empire. There must be a chain of command
with one person serving as the inal voice of authority in an empire.
The military model requires one-man rule.10 One-man rule is re-
quired in wartime, for the same reason that there can be only one
captain on a ship: someone must be held personally accountable for
making life-and-death decisions. When a decentralized society
sufers a defensive war, this one-man rulership is temporary. A de-
centralized nation is dijcult to lure into an ofensive war because
there is no king to promote it for his glory and many powerful local
leaders who oppose it, knowing that their power will be transferred
upward. Thus, when Israel anointed a king, the nation took the irst
step toward empire. The next step after this was a stable of horses.
Egypt had been an empire based on chariots. There were limits
on what chariots could accomplish. Chariots had failed to keep Is-
rael inside Egypt’s boundaries. No Israelite king was to send Israel-
ites down to Egypt to buy horses or to learn the arts of horse-based
warfare. Horses were forbidden to Israel’s kings because empire
was forbidden. Israel would be defended by God, just as she had
been at the Red Sea. Israelites were not to put their trust in horses.

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the
name of the LORD our God (Ps. 20:7).

10. In England’s nineteenth-century naval empire, the Prime Minister served in place of
the king. Today’s largest empire, the United States, does not rule directly over other nations,
but rules as irst among equals in an international world order. As with England a century ago,
the United States’ main international concern is commerce. The largest private U.S. banks
have more long-term authority in the maintenance of this commercial empire than the
politicians do, which was also the case in England’s empire.
 Boundaries on Kingship 487

Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and
trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they
are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek
the LORD! (Isa. 31:1).

An Israelite army without horses was at the mercy of God, not

the mercy of Egypt. To preserve the inheritance of Israel, the king
had to conform to God’s laws, for he was the nation’s supreme civil
representative. A stable full of horses would serve as a symbol of the
king’s trust in military might rather than God’s preserving hand. An
arms race in ofensive weaponry in Israel would testify to a national
loss of faith. Men of valor seated on slow-moving donkeys or on foot
would be sujcient to defend the borders of Israel and preserve the
inheritance. There were other chariots on call: “And Elisha prayed,
and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the
LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold,
the mountain was full of horses and chariots of ire round about
Elisha” (II Ki. 6:17). Chariots of ire, not chariots of horses, were to
constitute Israel’s strategic defense initiative.

Marital Boundaries
“Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn
not away” (17a). Saul had only one wife (I Sam. 14:50). Ahab had
only one wife, probably out of fear of upsetting her. Ahab’s kingship
indicates that monogamy was no guarantee of righteousness. David
had an unknown number of wives and concubines (II Sam. 5:13), in
addition to his eight listed wives.11 Solomon, of course, was the world
record-holder: 700 wives and 300 concubines, i.e., wives without
dowries (I Ki. 11:3). The problem was, as is said of Solomon, “his
wives turned away his heart” (I Ki. 11:3).
The prohibition on polygamy applied in the Old Covenant only
to kings. The most likely reason why the king was singled out in this
regard was his access to foreign wives. These marital alliances were
not merely biological; they were covenantal. They were therefore
political. These wives would likely be part of military alliances with
foreign kings. These marriages could be useful as military alliances.

11. Michal (I Sam. 18:27–28), Abigail (I Sam. 25:39), Ahinoam (II Sam. 2:2), Bathsheba
(II Sam. 11:27), Maacah, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah (II Sam. 3:3–5).
488 DEUTERONOMY

David’s wife Maacah was the daughter of a king (II Sam. 3:3). The
multiplication of foreign wives was a lure into polytheism, for with
foreign wives might come foreign gods. A king’s polygamy could
easily lead to polytheism. Polytheism was the obvious way for a
king to reconcile in his competitive household the imported gods of
his wives and their sons. Foreign wives could accept this solution,
for the gods of the ancient Near East were polytheistic. This is what
happened to Solomon. His wives wore him down theologically.
From the viewpoint of a foreign king seeking to undermine
Israel, an alliance through his daughter’s marriage to an Israelite
king was ideal. This was a low-cost strategy of subversion. The Isra-
elite king’s polytheistic example could undermine Israel in all four
covenants: personal, ecclesiastical, civil and familial. The family
was therefore the weak link in the religion of Israel. So concerned
was God to preserve the monotheism of the Israelite family that He
demanded the death penalty for any family member who tempted
another member to worship a false god (Deut. 13:6–10). The prose-
cuting family members were to cast the irst stones after the errant
member’s conviction (v. 9). This was because witnesses were re-
quired to cast the irst stones under Mosaic law (Deut. 17:7).12

Treasury Boundaries
The text continues: “. . . neither shall he greatly multiply to him-
self silver and gold” (17b). These precious metals could be used to
build monuments to kingly power: public works projects. These
public works projects honor the king or the State. They must then
be permanently maintained through permanent taxation, unless the
State is willing to admit defeat and transfer their ownership to pri-
vate organizations.13 Precious metals could be used to build up an

12. Jesus understood the implications of this civil law: “And the brother shall deliver up the
brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents,
and cause them to be put to death” (Matt. 10:21). “Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against
his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me” (Matt. 10:34–37). He did not deny the validity of this law in His lifetime, which
was a matter of inheritance in Israel.
13. The national highway system built by the U.S. Federal government in the late 1950’s
and 1960’s is now becoming a major inancial drain on state and local inances as these roads
 Boundaries on Kingship 489

14
ofensive army: the way of empire. They could be used in proligate
moral dissipation by the king and his court.15 It was a violation of
God’s law for a king to use his authority to extract so much wealth
from the population that the excess revenue could be horded in the
form of money.

Judicial Boundaries
The king was told to become familiar with the Mosaic law. “And
it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he
shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is be-
fore the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall
read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the
LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to
do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that
he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to

and bridges steadily wear out. Governments did not set aside gasoline tax revenues to pay for
the roads’ replacement. The consumption of capital took place over several decades. Now the
budgets of these governments are constrained by massive debt and by political promises
regarding welfare: the support of the poor. Even worse in this respect is the century-old
underground water systems of older U.S. cities, especially in the Northeast.
14. Such hoards of precious metals do not last long in wartime; the costs of warfare are too
high. But the presence of a hoard of precious metals in reserve might lure a short-sighted king
into starting a war that would outlast his hoard. The problem with a war paid for by the king’s
precious metals is that his army must gain a string of victories over wealthy opponents in
order to replenish his dwindling supply of gold. The ofensive military campaign becomes
self-reinforcing. To maintain the conquests, wealth must be extracted from the conquered
peoples, who resent the imposition. The Roman Republic did not extricate itself from its
military victories. The government used the wealth extracted from the provinces to maintain
local control over them. Little of this wealth lowed back into Rome’s treasury except
immediately after an initial military victory. Private Roman citizens kept most of the booty.
Bribery and extortion became common with local governors and Rome’s senators. A. H. M.
Jones, The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History (Totowa, New
Jersey: Rowman & Littleield, 1974), pp. 115–21. The republic became an empire.
Eventually, the cost of maintaining it led to bankruptcy and mass inlation. Ibid., ch. 9.
15. Isaiah warned: “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs,
they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which
can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their
own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we
will ill ourselves with strong drink; and to morrow shall be as this day, and much more
abundant” (Isa. 56:10–12). The court at Versailles under Louis XIV and Louis XV left a
mountain of royal debt and oligarchical moral debauchery for Louis XVI to deal with. He
and the old order did not survive the ordeal.
490 DEUTERONOMY

the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he,
and his children, in the midst of Israel” (Deut. 17:18–20).
First, at the time of his accession to the throne, he was to copy
the law in his own hand. This meant that he had to be literate. A
king in Israel could not lawfully claim that he had not read the law.
He had not only read it; he had written it down. To maintain this
kingly inheritance, his son would have to be able to read. This writ-
ing down of the law was a joint brain-hand exercise: suitable for
memorization. Also, by writing down the law, he was submitting to
the treaty of the great king. i.e., God Himself, whose laws and sanc-
tions appear in the text.
Second, the priests kept the original copy. This meant that the
priests were the law-keepers in Israel. They were the ones with ex-
clusive access to the original source document of Moses’ judicials.
The king could not tamper with this document. He could not retro-
actively write new copies of the law in order to mislead the judges of
the nation. He was not to become a forger who might later be
identiied as such by some higher critic of the Bible. He was not sov-
ereign over the law. He was under its authority, as preserved in writ-
ten form by the priests. Priestly authority was superior to kingly authority
in the area of law, and this was to be acknowledged by the king by his
act of copying the law from the priests’ version.
Third, he was required to read the law continually. He was to
learn to fear God and to keep God’s law. The sign of his fear of God
would be his obedience to God’s revealed law. This would keep him
in his place: “That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and
that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or
to the left” (v. 20a).
Fourth, there was a positive sanction attached to this law: “. . . to
the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his
children, in the midst of Israel” (v. 20b). This was an extension of
the ifth commandment’s promise: “Honour thy father and thy
mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee” (Ex. 20:12). By honoring God by obeying His
law, the king could bring the blessings of long life and extended au-
thority to himself and his heirs. The law speciically identiied the
land as “his kingdom.” To preserve his family’s kingly line, he had
to master and obey the law.
 Boundaries on Kingship 491

Taxes and Control

Centralization means a transfer of authority away from the indi-
vidual. Taxes imposed by a central government are transmitted to
an agency of government more distant from the taxpayer than local
governments. The taxpayer has less inluence over the spending of
this money. This means that the spending preferences of the indi-
vidual are usually compromised by the collecting agency. His pref-
erences are drowned out by the preferences of other taxpayers and
special-interest political pressure groups. The central collecting
agency can play of one competing group against another. This al-
lows the civil government’s decision-makers to substitute their
spending preferences for those of the taxpayers. Meanwhile, orga-
nized opposition to speciic taxes will be sporadic and difused.16
The king in Israel faced competing demands for the money he
collected. There is always heavy demand for free money. Those de-
siring access to the king’s money might even be located outside the
country. The king, as the ojcial representative of all the people,
had more claims on the use of his funds than any local government
faced. The spending decisions made by a king were therefore more
complex. Meanwhile, the taxpayer found it dijcult to gain the
king’s support for the taxpayer’s preferred project. His preferences
were drowned in the noise of competition.
This noise transferred greater power to the king and his agents.
The more complex the problems facing the king, and the more
noise there was in the competition for access to the funds, the
greater the lexibility of the king in spending the taxpayers’ money.
This means greater arbitrariness and less of a restraining efect by
the law. The more money collected by the king, the more detailed
the law book had to be to govern the allocation of the revenue. One
rule of bureaucracy is this: the thicker the law book, the more arbitrary
the decisions. If the law book is too thick to make it easy for anyone to
coordinate the details of the law, the bureaucrat has fewer restraints
on his decision-making. This is another reason why the Bible’s law
book is comparatively thin – thin enough to be read to the assem-
bled population once every seven years (Deut. 31:10–12).

16. Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), pp. 292–94.
492 DEUTERONOMY

The Mosaic law established a political order in which civil

power was decentralized. There could be a king, but for four centu-
ries, there wasn’t. Civil government’s decision-making was kept at
the local level. So was tax revenue. This decentralization made it
possible for local taxpayers to have a greater voice in the distribu-
tion of their funds. It also allowed them to place pressure on the gov-
ernment when taxes got too high. It was far more dijcult to restrict a
distant king’s power over the purse. It took a political revolution un-
der Jeroboam to reduce the burden of Rehoboam’s taxes (I Ki. 12).
Revolution is an expensive, risky, and infrequent occurrence in the
afairs of nations.

Conclusion
The king, as the voice of civil authority, was not to replace the
supreme court, which had to include priests. Yet because the king
possessed an army and personal authority, he would inevitably be-
come a major source of judicial interpretation. He would threaten
the system of co-judgeship in which the priests served as counsellors
to civil judges. The authority to declare the law in God’s name and
then enforce it is the foundation of covenantal authority. The State
has the power to enforce the law physically. In a covenantally rebel-
lious society, the fear of the State is greater than the fear of excom-
munication. The State becomes the most feared interpreter of the
law.
This is why Absalom used the promise of wise judicial declara-
tion as his primary weapon in his subversion of his father’s throne.
“And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate:
and it was so, that when any man that had a controversy came to the
king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what
city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of one of the tribes of Is-
rael. And Absalom said unto him, See, thy matters are good and
right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee. Absalom
said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every
man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would
do him justice! And it was so, that when any man came nigh to him
to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed
him. And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the
king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel”
(II Sam. 15:2–6). Absalom promised to do what Moses could not
do: render perfect justice to all comers. His ofer would not have
 Boundaries on Kingship 493

been believable had the king not already undermined the supreme
court’s function by arrogating judicial authority to himself, and
through his own person, to the autonomous State.
Foreign kings repeatedly made trouble for the Hebrews, from
the day that Chedorlaomer kidnapped Lot (Gen. 14) to the fall of Je-
rusalem in A.D. 70. The Pharaoh of the oppression was the arche-
type of what a king could become if left unchecked by law and
God’s historical sanctions. There had been only one exception:
Melchizedek. Abram had gone to meet him, bringing tithes to him
and receiving bread and wine from him. But Melchizedek was
diferent from the other kings: he was also the priest of Salem. He
lawfully possessed both ojces: king and priest (Gen. 14:18). He was
a royal priest. He, too, was an archetype – not for individual king-
ship but for corporate kingship. Israel as a nation of priests was to
imitate Melchizedek.
Israel was set apart by God at Sinai. The nation took an oath
there to obey God’s law (Ex. 19). God then gave them His law
(Ex. 20–23). At Sinai, God had prophesied that they would become
a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6). They were not yet such a kingdom,
He implied, but someday they would be. It was the fulillment of
this prophecy by the church that Peter announced: “But ye are a
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar
people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called
you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (I Pet. 2:9).
Implicit in Peter’s doctrine of the institutional church as a holy
nation is the call for a return to the decentralized Israel of the judges
era, though without a high priest. Decentralization is to be both civil
and ecclesiastical, for Jesus Christ is the high priest after the order of
Melchizedek (Heb. 5:10) and therefore a king (Heb. 7:1–2). He
reigns exclusively from heaven, not from an earthly holy of holies.
But it took until 1918 for the Christian West to come to grips with
the civil implications of the doctrine of the bodily ascension of
Christ. By the end of World War I, when the kings at last departed,
Christendom had also departed. It was not Christianity that inally
abolished kings; it was the Enlightenment, both left wing (Commu-
nist) and right wing (democratic).
 41
Levitical Inheritance
LEVITICAL Through Separation
INHERITANCE
THROUGH SEPARATION

The priests the Levites, and all the tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor
inheritance with Israel: they shall eat the oferings of the LORD made by
ire, and his inheritance. Therefore shall they have no inheritance among their
brethren: the LORD is their inheritance, as he hath said unto them
(Deut. 18:1–2).

This was a land law. It had to do with landed inheritance inside

the boundaries of Israel. Inheritance through separation was basic
to the Mosaic covenant.1 God separated Israel from the nations. The
theocentric focus of this priestly law is God’s identiication of Him-
self as the Levites’ inheritance. They would inherit an ojce that al-
lowed them geographic proximity to God’s dwelling place in the
tabernacle. The cost of this inheritance was their forfeiture of any in-
heritance in rural Israel. God separated them for service to Him. He
therefore separated them judicially from their brethren. The eco-
nomic mark of this judicial separation was two-fold: their lack of jubi-
lee-guaranteed landed inheritance and their lawful claim on the tithe.
Levites could not normally inherit rural land, according to the
jubilee laws. Instead, they were entitled to a tithe from their breth-
ren. There was a reason for this: the other tribes did not have lawful
access to tabernacle service. The separation of Levi from rural land
was an aspect of God’s separation of the other tribes from His

1. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 21.

494
 Levitical Inheritance Through Separation 495

presence. God identiied Himself as the Levites’ inheritance. The

Levites’ inheritance of God was accompanied by their legal claim on
the tithe:

And the LORD spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in
their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part and
thine inheritance among the children of Israel. And, behold, I have given
the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their ser-
vice which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congrega-
tion. Neither must the children of Israel henceforth come nigh the
tabernacle of the congregation, lest they bear sin, and die. But the Levites
shall do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they shall
bear their iniquity: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your genera-
tions, that among the children of Israel they have no inheritance. But the
tithes of the children of Israel, which they ofer as an heave ofering unto
the LORD, I have given to the Levites to inherit: therefore I have said unto
them, Among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance
(Num. 18:20–24).

The connection between the tithe and liturgical service is obvi-

ous in this text. The Levites alone had control over the sacriices;
therefore, they alone had a legal claim on the tithe. There was noth-
ing voluntary about this claim on the productivity of others. As
surely as an Israelite had to worship God according to the ritual re-
quirements of the tabernacle, so did he have to pay his tithe to the
Levites. His payment was for services rendered: atoning services
rendered to God in the name of the people. The tithe had nothing to
do with non-liturgical services to the community, such as teaching,
music, or anything else. The Israelite had no independent authority
to send his tithe to agents who met his social needs or anyone else’s.2
The tithe went to God through His church. No other agency had a
legal claim on the tithe. This has not changed in New Testament
times.
What has changed is the tribal aspect of the tithe. The Levites’
inheritance was part of the tribe’s lack of inheritance in rural land.
This made the tithe a matter of civil law, just as the enforcement of
the jubilee year was to be civil. The Levites possessed an enforce-
able claim on the tithe. The church does not.

2. Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1994), ch. 9.
496 DEUTERONOMY

The Geography of Mosaic Inheritance

The Levites could not inherit rural land except in a very special
situation, when a priest inherited land because of an owner’s broken
vow of land pledged to God (Lev. 27:20–21).3 As an heir of God, a
priest could inherit this land under the provisions of the jubilee. Un-
der no other circumstances could a Levite inherit rural land. He
could only lease it until the next jubilee.
By separating Levites from rural land, the Mosaic law prevented
the centralization of landed wealth by the one tribe that had no geo-
graphical boundaries: Levi. The Levites would have to content
themselves with tithe money, oferings, and owning urban real es-
tate, which was not under the jubilee’s provisions in non-Levitical
walled cities. Within their own cities, the jubilee year did apply to
Levites (Lev. 25:33). This kept Levites tied geographically to cities,
which were located inside the boundaries of speciic tribal allot-
ments. Their regional inluence would come through their urban
wealth and their social position as counsellors who were experts in
God’s law. It would not come through their amassing of rural land:
pockets of civil inluence inside other tribal communities. There
was citizenship possible inside cities, for covenant-keeping men had
access to membership in God’s holy army, but their citizenship was
by adoption into a tribe. If this was the tribe of Levi, its inluence
was mainly indirect: not through votes inside another tribe’s council
but rather through non-voting theological and judicial inluence.
The other tribes were required to keep their distance from the
inner courts of the tabernacle. It meant death for them to approach
the holy of holies, where the Ark of the Covenant rested: death by
armed Levites or death by God (Num. 3:5–10). The concentric
boundaries of the holy of holies were protected by the armed repre-
sentatives of the three Levitical families: Merari (outermost ring),
Gershon, and Kohath (innermost ring).4 After Israel’s return from
the Babylonian captivity, there was no further mention of the Ark.
The holy of holies still remained holy in Israel, but there was no lon-
ger a pair of the original covenantal documents inside the Ark.

3. North, Leviticus, ch. 37.

4. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), ch. 3.
 Levitical Inheritance Through Separation 497

The Bible does not say whether the tithes were collected locally,
then sent to a central warehouse, and then redistributed nationally
to every Levite on some pro-rated share. The high expense of trans-
porting goods implies that Levites were paid from local storehouses.
This meant that the prosperity of a local Levite was dependent on
the prosperity of residents in his region. The Levite was economi-
cally dependent on the local community’s success.
A Levite could volunteer for service at the tabernacle (Deut. 18:6).
This service was sacramental (v. 7). Sacramental service mandated
equal income for services rendered, but the Levite could also re-
ceive income from the long-term leasing out of his inheritance (v. 8).
Income from sacramental service was tithe-free; income from the
sale-lease of his property or other investments had to be tithed.5 If
he had owned a house in a Levitical city, he could lease it out to
someone else. He had the right to return and buy back his property
at any time (Lev. 25:32). His house would be returned to him or his
heirs in the jubilee (Lev. 25:33).
The unique geographical presence of God with members of one
tribe established this tribe’s legal claim on a tenth of the net
income of their brethren. The text speaks of God as the Levites’ in-
heritance (v. 2). This inheritance was geographical, occupational,
and revelational.

Geographical Separation
The Levites served God inside the geographical boundaries sur-
rounding the Ark of the Covenant: a radius of 2,000 cubits. Joshua
told the invading tribes: “Yet there shall be a space between you
and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto
it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not
passed this way heretofore” (Josh. 3:4). This was the same distance
of ownership of land surrounding the Levitical cities. “And the sub-
urbs of the cities, which ye shall give unto the Levites, shall reach
from the wall of the city and outward a thousand cubits round
about. And ye shall measure from without the city on the east side
two thousand cubits, and on the south side two thousand cubits, and
on the west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two

5. Ibid., pp. 66–67.

498 DEUTERONOMY

thousand cubits and the city shall be in the midst: this shall be to
them the suburbs of the cities” (Num. 35:4–5).
The Levites had to defend the Ark of the Covenant. This re-
sponsibility was in part liturgical and in part covenantal: an aspect
of the oath. They lawfully possessed the authority of the sword in-
side the boundaries of the tabernacle area (II Chron. 23:7). Because
of the holiness of the Ark, the Levites had a unique geographical
calling before God and men. The Levites’ roots in Israel were tied to
the Ark of the Covenant and the sacriices and defense associated
with it.
Land was basic to the Mosaic law’s system of inheritance. Land
was part of the seed laws, which also dealt with inheritance. The Le-
vites were God’s inheritance in Israel. God set them apart for special
service to Him. He did not let them place their inancial hopes on
rural land, which was the inheritance of the other tribes. This was a
major advantage to the Levites, for there could be no legitimate
hope in rural land if Israel kept God’s covenant law. The multiplica-
tion of the Israelite population – long life (Ex. 20:12) coupled with
no miscarriages (Ex. 23:26) – would have shrunk the size of each in-
heriting generation’s family plot.6 We might even call this God’s
plot against family plots. The Levites would have been owners of ur-
ban real estate, which would rise in value as Israelites moved from
the farms and aliens moved to Israel. God placed them in the geo-
graphical centers of future economic growth, assuming that the na-
tion kept God’s covenant. Teaching the nation to do this was a
major task of the Levites. God attached a positive economic sanc-
tion to the success of the Levites’ calling. They would do well by do-
ing good. The value of their inheritance would grow.
The Levites would speak for God throughout the land. Their
separation from tribal land made them a dispersed tribe. Their sepa-
ration from the other tribes locally was an aspect of their separation
from the other tribes liturgically.

The Levites’ Occupational Separation

No other tribe could ofer formal burnt oferings to God. They
were the designated intermediaries in between God and members

6. North, Leviticus, pp. 416–22.

 Levitical Inheritance Through Separation 499

of the other tribes. In payment for the services associated with

sacriices, the Levites were to receive tithes and oferings. The
priests of the sanctuary – the holy, set-apart area – who were se-
lected from the family of Aaron (Num. 18:1), were to receive a tithe
of this tithe (Num. 18:26).
This specialized and judicially restricted liturgical service had to
be funded. Because liturgical service was mandatory for the renewal
of both the ecclesiastical and civil covenants,7 it was funded by a
mandatory tithe. This was not a voluntary payment, for attendance
was not voluntary. This payment moved upward from individuals
to Levites because of God’s appointment of the Levites as His
covenantal spokesmen in the national hierarchy. There was a
top-down low of ecclesiastical authority from God to the people,
and the Levites were at the top of this earthly hierarchy. They pos-
sessed a monopoly because of their proximity to the Ark of the Cov-
enant, which contained the two stone tablets of the law, the
founding covenantal documents.8 That Levites were the nation’s se-
nior spokesmen is indicated by the fact that they, not the State, had a
speciied claim on the net income of the nation, and that any at-
tempt on the part of a king to collect an equally large percentage of
income was tyrannical (I Sam. 8:15, 17). The church, not the State
or the family, was the central institution in Israel.9
The Levites’ lawful claim on covenant-keeping men’s income
was based on their God-ordained monopoly of liturgical service.
Their occupation was closed to members of other tribes. To become
a Levite, a man had to be adopted into the tribe, and this required

7. Families also participated in the national feasts, but they did so as members of the
ecclesiastical community. The feasts were not means of family covenant renewal, for there
are no means of family covenant renewal. The family covenant of the marriage partners is
broken only by death, either biological or covenantal. Ray R. Sutton, Second Chance: Biblical
Blueprints for Divorce and Remarriage (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), ch. 2. It is
lawfully broken when children leave their parents’ household to marry (Gen. 2:24). A failure
to participate in a mandatory feast did not break the legal requirements of a family, such as
staying married or honoring parents. An individual Israelite was required to attend, whether
or not he was a member of a family. A circumcised stranger could also attend, although to
gain this privilege, any male in his household also had to be circumcised (Ex. 12:48).
8. Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Eerdmans, 1975), Part 2, ch. 1.
9. This is equally true today. The church extends into eternity (Rev. 21, 22). The family
and the State do not.
500 DEUTERONOMY

the payment of an expensive entry fee by the adoptee on behalf of

himself and every member of his family (Lev. 27:2–8).10

The Levites’ Revelational Separation

The high priest had access to God’s word directly. He possessed
the urim and thummim. “And thou shalt put in the breastplate of
judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon
Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the LORD: and Aaron shall
bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the
LORD continually” (Ex. 28:30). “And he shall stand before Eleazar
the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim
before the LORD: at his word shall they go out, and at his word they
shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even
all the congregation” (Num. 27:21).
Furthermore, the priests had access to the written Mosaic law
and the written revelation of the Bible. At some point, probably
early in Israel’s history, these scrolls were copied down for use lo-
cally by the other Levites. The decentralized system of synagogues
in Jesus’ day used scrolls of the Bible (Luke 4:17). Access to written
revelation made the Levites specialists in rendering judgment, both
civil and ecclesiastical. But this occupational specialization was not
uniquely the possession of the Levites. Judges had equal civil au-
thority (Deut. 17:8–13).11

The Prophet’s Separation

The priesthood shared this declarative authority with prophets.
More than this: the prophet had a superior authority. The prophet’s
authority was greater than the king’s (II Sam. 12) and the priest-
hood’s. Moses’ authority as a prophet (Deut. 34:10) was greater than
Aaron’s authority as a priest. But the ojce was a temporary one,
and any misuse of it was a capital crime.

I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto
thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all
that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will

10. North, Leviticus, ch. 36.

11. See Chapter 39.
 Levitical Inheritance Through Separation 501

not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will re-
quire it of him. But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my
name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in
the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine
heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not,
nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the
prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him
(Deut. 18:18–22).

With greater authority comes greater responsibility. False proph-

ecy was a capital crime in Israel because the prophet was the supreme
judicial authority. The proof of his authority was his ability to invoke
successfully God’s direct sanctions. But he was not to rule on a
throne or ofer sacriices in the temple. His was not a permanent
ojce. He was called by God to render supreme judgment in times
of national apostasy when civil judges and Levites were not speak-
ing God’s word, and who were therefore speaking the word of an-
other god. His authority was based on God’s direct revelation to
him and God’s imposition of sanctions invoked by him. He was the
designated agent, called directly by God, who brought a formal cov-
enant lawsuit against the nation, which included the nation’s or-
dained leaders.
Because the prophet did not possess a permanent ojce, he had
no lawful claim on anyone’s income. Such a claim is possessed only
by someone who is ordained by God through a formal process of or-
dination. Ordination is both institutional and covenantal. It is in-
voked by covenantal oath. The prophet’s calling was not necessarily
so invoked.
The prophet was not necessarily a member of a Levitical family
that possessed a lawful covenantal claim on any other family’s
money. This issue has nothing to do with contractual claims, which
are not established by covenantal oath. Here I am speaking of
covenantal claims that can be transferred by oath to a successor. A
king normally transferred to his son his legal claim on a portion of
the income of the people. The son’s right of kingly inheritance had
to be conirmed by ecclesiastical anointing, as Solomon’s was
(I Ki. 1:39).12 A Levite could pass to his sons his legal claim to tithes

12. Jehoiada the priest rallied the Levites to defend the kingship of Joash. The Levites
defended the young king by means of swords (II Chron. 23:1–8).
502 DEUTERONOMY

and oferings. A prophet did not possess any such claim; so, his son
could not inherit it.
The Levites possessed no claim of immediate revelation from
God except through the high priest. Their expertise in the law was
occupational. That is, their claim to knowledge of revelation was
not a monopoly. It was shared by civil judges. The Levites had a
claim on men’s income. So did civil judges. The prophet did not.
God’s direct revelation to and direct calling of the prophet were not
accompanied by a legal claim on someone else’s money. The ojce
of Levite and judge, which did involve such a legal claim, did not
imply access to direct revelation. The prophet’s authority rested
solely on his possession of direct revelation from God, yet he had no
lawful economic claim in his capacity as a prophet. Any assertion by
a prophet of a covenantally authorized claim on someone else’s
money would have constituted prima facie evidence of the illegiti-
macy of his call by God. Court prophets hired by the king or ap-
pointed under his authority were sure to be false prophets. Judah’s
King Jehoshaphat suspected as much when he heard Ahab’s 400
prophets assure the two kings that they would be victorious over the
Syrians. He asked for a second opinion. He wanted to hear from a
prophet who was not on Ahab’s payroll (I Ki. 22:7).
The Levites were separated by God to study His law and pro-
nounce judgments. This separation was an aspect of the division of
labor. Not only was it a generational phenomenon, unlike the
prophet’s ojce, it was not monopolistic. It was shared by civil
judges. Their knowledge was therefore based on specialized study
rather than uniquely supernatural intervention by God. Their in-
heritance was based on liturgical separation, not revelational sepa-
ration. Revelational separation, which the prophet possessed, was
not accompanied by legal claims on other people’s income. This
made the prophetic ojce not only highly risky judgmentally – im-
prisonment or death if you prophesied accurately to unrighteous
leaders, execution if you prophesied falsely to righteous men – but
risky economically. Prophesying was a calling,13 not an occupation.

13. I deine a calling as the most important work a person can do in which he would be
most dijcult to replace. Only rarely is a person’s calling his occupation. My calling is to write
this economic commentary. I do not get paid to do this.
 Levitical Inheritance Through Separation 503

Conclusion
The Levites possessed no guaranteed inheritance in rural land.
They did possess a jubilee-guaranteed inheritance inside Levitical
cities (Lev. 25:33). As a substitute for landed inheritance, God gave
them as their inheritance a claim to a tithe on other men’s net in-
come. This made them dependent on the productivity of other men.
Their ecclesiastical claim on other men’s income was based on
the liturgical monopoly which they possessed. This monopoly had a
geographical aspect. Only Levites could lawfully approach the in-
nermost sanctum of the tabernacle, and only the high priest could
enter it. The Ark of the Covenant was the holiest object in Israel. It
had to be defended. The Levites possessed this occupational assign-
ment. They retained it after their return from Babylon, although the
Ark seems to have disappeared. This assignment ended when the
Romans destroyed the temple in A.D. 70.
Their civil claim on other men’s income was based on their law-
ful inheritance of the tithe in lieu of rural land. This civil claim
ended in A.D. 70.
 42
Landmarks
LANDMARKS AND andSOCIAL
Social Cooperation
COOPERATION

Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old
time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that
the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it (Deut. 19:14).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s ownership. God

owned the land of Canaan. As the original owner, it was His right to
determine who would manage it for Him. He could lawfully ex-
clude anyone from occupying a piece of land, in the same way that
He excluded Adam and Even from the forbidden tree. Ownership,
above all, means the right to exclude.1 So does stewardship, as a form of
delegated ownership. God was about to transfer stewardship over
this land from the Canaanites to the Israelites. That is, He was about
to use Israel to exclude Canaanites from the land they were occupy-
ing. More to the point, for Israel to inherit the land, which God had
promised to Abraham, Canaanites would have to be disinherited.
Inheritance/disinheritance is the fundamental theme of the Book of
Deuteronomy.
Because God planned to take up residence in Israel in a special
way (Num. 35:34), His ownership of the land of Israel was special.
He owned the whole world in general, but He owned the land of
Canaan specially. “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is
mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23).
Also, He owned all nations generally, but He owned Israel spe-
cially. “But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and
he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I

1. The model is God’s exclusion of Adam from the forbidden tree.

504
 Landmarks and Social Cooperation 505

have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (Isa. 43:1). He estab-
lished laws on rural land ownership inside the nation’s boundaries
(Lev. 25) that had not applied before, and which would no longer
apply in the same way after the exile, when gentiles living in the
land would be included under the jubilee laws (Ezek. 47:21–23).
These laws inally ended when God ceased to dwell with Israel as a
nation after A.D. 70. The disinheritance of Israel was marked by the
annulment of the jubilee laws. These laws had never applied outside
of the land of Israel. They had not been cross-boundary laws. They
were land laws.

Permanent External Boundaries

The original allocation of land to the families of the conquest
generation in the days of Joshua was supposed to remain un-
changed. Down through the generations, there would be subdivi-
sions of the original properties within each family, but the external
boundaries were to remain unchanged. These boundaries marked
the inheritances of the original families. Moses told Israel that God
would distribute each family’s inheritance through surveyors,
judges, and lot-casters (Num. 26:53–56).2 God was sovereign over
this casting of lots.
Every Israelite family was required to honor God’s original allo-
cation. Only after Israel’s return from the exile did God allow new
boundaries for those families that had lost track of their original
boundaries, or whose claims had been replaced by foreigners
brought into the land by the conquering Assyrians and Babylo-
nians. Prior to the exile, any tampering with the evidence of this
original allocation was a form of theft of God’s property. God’s
agents had subdivided the land, and in so doing, they had allocated
the responsibilities of stewardship. The jubilee law placed limits on
the permanent transfer of these responsibilities. These responsibili-
ties (liabilities) were inseparable from the land (asset). No family
could lawfully sell these assets-responsibilities or forfeit them to re-
pay a debt.3

2. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), ch. 14.
3. The one exception was the refusal to pay a vow to a priest (Lev. 27:20–21). See Gary
North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1994), pp. 606–609.
506 DEUTERONOMY

The jubilee land law was important for what it silently implied:
in the absence of such a law, it is lawful to transfer such stewardship respon-
sibilities. It means also that it was lawful to delegate these as-
sets-responsibilities until the next jubilee year. Any suggestion that
economic liability cannot legally be delegated or transferred is in-
correct – as incorrect as the suggestion that economic assets cannot
legally be delegated or transferred. The jubilee law, which was a
temporary land and seed law of the Mosaic economy, testiies to the
fact that economic liability and responsibility can be delegated, and
in the absence of such a law, can be permanently transferred. The
whole point of the dominion covenant (Gen. 1:26–28) is that God
delegated a great deal of responsibility to Adam, who in turn dele-
gated some of it to Eve, and would have delegated it to his children. It
was the very legality of this transfer that gave Satan his opportunity to
steal the inheritance by deceiving Eve and corrupting Adam.4
This law was repeated in Deuteronomy 27:17: “Cursed be he
that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall
say, Amen.” There had to be a public ajrmation – an amen – on the
part of the people. The fundamental issue here was inheritance. The
jubilee land laws were supposed to provide continuity between the
original allocation and the future. There could not be any legal
long-term alienation of rural land. There was an eschatological rea-
son for this restriction on the sale of land. The Mosaic land laws were
aspects of the seed laws, and the seed laws were messianic, having to
do with Jacob’s prophecy regarding Shiloh (Gen. 49:10). The tribes
had to be kept separate in order for Jacob’s prophecy to come true.
The land laws were a means of keeping the tribes separate.5
To move a neighbor’s landmark was an act of theft. It was not an
easily achieved deception in open terrain. The more accurate the
measuring devices, the more dijcult the deception. The ancient
world had extraordinarily accurate measuring devices, as the di-
mensions of the Cheops pyramid indicate.6

4. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression”
(I Tim. 2:14).
5. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 17.
6. Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). See
especially the appendix by Livio Stecchini. See also Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von
Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time (Boston: Gambit, 1969).
 Landmarks and Social Cooperation 507

The Civil Sanction

Moving a landmark was an act of theft. The penalty for theft was
double restitution: “If the theft be certainly found in his hand alive,
whether it be ox, or ass, or sheep; he shall restore double” (Ex. 22:4).
This must have been a monetary payment. The civil sanction could
not have been the forfeiture of rural property. This was not any
man’s right to transfer.7 A convicted criminal could not alienate his
family’s land. Double restitution must have been made by the trans-
fer of some other form of property. Judges would have been re-
quired to estimate the lease value of the land over an entire jubilee
period and then apply double restitution. The present cash payment
for the lease value over a 49-year period would have been close to
the cash value of a permanent transfer, given the heavy discounting
efects of the rate of interest on the present value of income several
decades away.
The theft was an attack on inheritance. Theft constituted the dis-
inheritance of one’s neighbor. What was the value of this disinheri-
tance? There was no market for the sale of rural land in Mosaic
Israel. It was illegal to disinherit one’s heirs. There was a long-term
leasehold market. The maximum term of the lease was 49 years: un-
til the next jubilee (Lev. 25:27).
How could judges have estimated the monetary value of the sto-
len land? First, they would have had to ascertain the prevailing
leasehold redemption at the beginning of the most recent
post-jubilee cycle. The attempted theft was to have been perma-
nent, i.e., longer than 49 years. Nevertheless, the market price of a
49-year lease was close to the permanent price. Why? Because of
the efect of the rate of interest. Discounting an expected stream of
income by a ixed rate of interest produces a low present market
price for the income expected in year 49. The higher the prevailing
rate of interest, the lower the present value of future income. The
more distant the income, the lower the present market price. Each
subsequent year gets lower. The present market value of the ex-
pected income in year 98 is not signiicantly lower than the present
market value of the expected income in year 49. The higher the rate

7. The one exception: a transfer to a priest because of a broken vow (Lev. 27:14–24). Gary
North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1994), ch. 37.
508 DEUTERONOMY

of interest, the less signiicant the diference. Second, the judges would
have doubled this lease payment: the restitution factor (Ex. 22:4).
Third, they would have estimated the size of the plot stolen in rela-
tion to the property’s total size. Fourth, they would have multiplied
the double restitution payment for all of the land by this percentage.
If there was either price delation or price inlation in the econ-
omy, then the further back the jubilee cycle began, the more bur-
densome the restitution payment, either to the victim (under
inlation) or the criminal (under delation). But with gold or silver as
the standard, there is not much likelihood of inlation. With the sil-
ver shekel of the sanctuary as the judicial standard, the judges could
have estimated what was owed with greater conidence. With a me-
tallic monetary standard, a slowly falling price level is likely. This
must have placed an extra burden on the criminal; the later his
crime was discovered in the jubilee cycle, the heavier the burden.
Without detailed price statistics, the judges would have found it
dijcult to estimate the extent of the price delation since the begin-
ning of the last jubilee cycle.
In today’s world, there are no temporal restrictions on buying
land. Judges could use the prevailing market price of the stolen
land, denominated in gold, as the price to be doubled.

Graves and Boundaries

There was a major diference between Israel and the other na-
tions, including Greece and Rome: the lack of sacred land. There
was no sacred land in Israel. There was sacred space: the place
where the Ark of the Covenant was housed. The most sacred space
in Israel was inside the Ark. After the return of the Ark from
Philistia on the cart drawn by the oxen, it arrived at Bethshemesh.
God’s judgment came against the residents in the early days of the
Ark’s arrival. “And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because
they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the peo-
ple ifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people la-
mented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a
great slaughter” (I Sam. 6:19). This many deaths indicates that the
whole city was involved. A generation of men died, leaving their
wives without husbands. This would have drastically speeded up
the inheritance process in the region. Not surprisingly, the survivors
invited the people of Kirjath-jearim to take away the Ark. They did,
 Landmarks and Social Cooperation 509

and it remained with them for about a century before David brought
it back to Jerusalem.8
Sacred space had to do with God’s unique judicial place of resi-
dence. The idea of God’s judicially restricted presence diferentiated
Israel from the other nations. Animism was rampant in the ancient
world. Demons were believed to reside in the neighborhood. Their
presence led to the development of a common theological outlook.
Men believed that particular plots of land served as the residences
of local gods and also the spirits of deceased male heads of house-
hold. Land was inalienable in ancient Greece, for the local god of a
family had nothing to do with the god of another family. The do-
mestic god conferred on the family its right to the soil. The family’s
hearth, like the family’s tomb, could not lawfully be moved. Neither
could either be occupied by others. Fustel wrote: “By the stationary
hearth and the permanent burial-place, the family took possession
of the soil; the earth was in some sort imbued and penetrated by the
religion of the hearth and of ancestors.” This, he said, was the origin
of the idea of private property.9 He was incorrect. Private property
originated when God delegated to Adam authority over the earth,
but then retained ownership of the forbidden tree. It was God’s “no
trespassing” declaration that established the principle of private
property. God’s right to exclude man was a boundary that man had
to honor, on threat of death. God delegated no authority over that
tree. Then He departed from the presence of man. His declaration
of man’s exclusion, not His presence, established private property.
Israel’s religion was founded on the public rejection of all other
religions, including animism. Animism is a religion of local gods.
The God of Israel was the God of the whole earth. He could dwell
with Israel outside the land. Thus, He could threaten the Israelites
with temporary exile without threatening their existence as a holy
nation. “And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over
you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice
over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be
plucked from of the land whither thou goest to possess it. And the

8. James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Brentwood,
Tennessee: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988), p. 224.
9. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book I, Chapter
VI, p. 67.
510 DEUTERONOMY

LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the
earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods,
which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and
stone. And among these nations shalt thou ind no ease, neither shall
the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trem-
bling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind” (Deut. 28:63–65).
Because God is the universal God, their exile would in no way
break their covenant with Him. On the contrary, their exile would
conirm the covenant: predictable corporate negative sanctions in
history. The Old Covenant was primarily judicial, not geographical.
It had been renewed through verbal ratiication by the nation at Mt.
Sinai, which was located outside the land (Ex. 19). He would still be
their God in a foreign land. The fact that an invading nation – As-
syria – would remove most of the population and substitute foreign-
ers as permanent residents of the land in no way polluted the land. It
was Israel’s sin that had polluted the land, not these foreigners (later
known as Samaritans). In fact, Ezekiel told Israel that resident aliens
would be under the jubilee land laws after the Israelites returned to
the land (Ezek. 47:21–23).
This geographical sequence of events would have been incon-
ceivable in ancient Greece. The boundaries of each family’s land
were guarded by large stones called Termini. These stones were re-
garded as gods. “The Terminus once established according to the
required rites there was no power on earth that could displace it. It
was to remain in the same place throughout all ages.”10 It was the
same in ancient Rome. “To encroach upon the ield of a family, it
was necessary to overturn or displace a boundary mark, and this
boundary mark was a god. The sacrilege was horrible, and the chas-
tisement severe. According to the old Roman law, the man and the
oxen who touched a Terminus were devoted – that is to say, both
men and oxen were immolated in expiation.”11
That the Old Testament rarely mentions tombs, graves, and
burial points to the fact that such matters were not considered im-
portant ritually, let alone theologically. Burial was a family matter,
as when Jacob buried Rachel (Gen. 35:20). There was no ojciating
priest. Moses’ body was not marked by any pillar, and its location

10. Ibid., II:VI, pp. 68–69.

11. Ibid., p. 69.
 Landmarks and Social Cooperation 511

was immediately forgotten (Deut. 34:6). The only reference to

burial in the Mosaic law governs the death of sinners hanged on a
tree: “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be
to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not
remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him
that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be
not deiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance”
(Deut. 21:22–23). As for touching a grave, the infraction was minor:
“And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open
ields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be un-
clean seven days” (Num. 19:16). All that was required was a ritual
sprinkling (v. 18).
The land of Israel was important as God’s dwelling place. It was
not important as the burial place for Israelites. The crucial
covenantal issue was ethics, not ritual-based piety. If the nation
broke the covenant, God threatened to depart from the land. He
would no longer defend them against invasion. Where a man was
buried had signiicance only if he was outside the land. Joseph asked
that his bones be taken out of Egypt at the exodus. This had to do
with God’s promise of land to Joseph’s forefathers (Gen. 50:24–25).
It was a covenantal issue, not a ritual issue. It had to do with the
fulillment in history of a covenantal promise. The fact that very few
Jews returned to Israel after the exile did not make gentiles of those
who remained behind in Medo-Persia. Their dispersion beyond the
boundaries of Israel was implied from the beginning: the promise of
zero miscarriages (Ex. 23:26) and long life (Ex. 20:12) were prom-
ises guaranteeing a population explosion to covenant-keeping
Israel. Israel’s geographical boundaries were not supposed to incar-
cerate the Israelites.

Social Peace and Cooperation

The law of landmarks upheld private property. As such, it was
an application of the eighth commandment: “Thou shalt not steal”
(Ex. 20:15). Moving a marker was a way to steal the future value of
an asset. But this asset – land – had another function: marking the
boundaries of the original land distribution. A theft of land was a
theft of God’s property. He had allocated the land in Joshua’s gener-
ation. This allocation was designed to separate tribes from each
other, thereby honoring Jacob’s messianic prophecy regarding
Shiloh.
512 DEUTERONOMY

This law governed neighbors and close relatives. It acknowl-

edged that theft is a great temptation for those who are one’s closest
covenantal associates. The threat to landed property in Mosaic
Israel was either one’s neighbors or an invading foreigner. This law
implied that God would be the enforcer, since slight adjustments of
markers are not easily detectable. But this also implied that men
were willing to risk the wrath of God for the sake of relatively minor
shifts in ownership. A major alteration of a boundary would have
been obvious. Either the boundary-mover was a thief for the sake of
theft, since not much property was involved, or else he planned a
long-run coniscation, a little bit at a time. In either case, this was se-
rious criminal behavior.
The nature of this crime would have led to family conspiracies.
There can be little doubt that families on both sides of a landmark
would have been well aware of its location. Generations of inherited
property were at stake. Members of families would have known
what would eventually be their inheritance. This is why family
members would have had to conspire together to get away with
such a theft. Anyone who attempted such a theft on his own who did
not conspire with his family would have risked facing a family mem-
ber in court serving as a witness for the victim. The sanctions against
the false witness appear in the next section (vv. 15–21).
For one family to tamper with the boundary markers of its
neighbor meant that intra-tribal conlicts would increase. This was
obviously a crime that threatened social cooperation in the commu-
nity. When neighbors cannot trust neighbors not to steal, it is
dijcult for a community to enjoy the division of labor. There is too
much hostility and distrust.
But the threat was more than inter-family conlicts; it was
equally intra-family conlicts. Within the boundaries of the original
land grant there would have been new landmarks, generation by
generation. If the jubilee was actually enforced, then there would
have been additional markers, generation by generation. Each male
heir of each original conquering family was entitled to a portion of
the original land. The parcels of land would have grown smaller
over time in the face of a growing population. As the plots grew
smaller, as testiied to by the boundary markers, the nation would
have been reminded that they could place no faith in rural land as a
long-term source of income. They would have to move of the land
eventually. The dominion covenant could not be fulilled inside the
 Landmarks and Social Cooperation 513

boundaries of Israel. Neither could it be fulilled inside the bound-

aries of a family’s rural inheritance. The heirs would have to be sepa-
rated from their original inheritance in the land if they were to
prosper economically. The markers were to testify to this covenantal
reality, generation by generation.

Conclusion
The defense of private property is necessary for the mainte-
nance of social cooperation. This law, because it deals with contigu-
ous property that is marked of by visible boundaries, deals with
neighbors. The preservation of social peace in a community is a
high priority. It was an even higher priority in Mosaic Israel, where
the jubilee made it highly unlikely new neighbors could become
permanent residents. Disputes over property could result in
long-term conlicts or even feuds. Because family conspiracies
would have had to underlie any plan to move a marker, this crime
threatened social cooperation even more than other kinds of theft.
“Good fences make good neighbours,” wrote the American
poet Robert Frost. He had a good point. Moving a fence is a lot
more dijcult than moving a single boundary marker. But building
a fence is more expensive than sticking a marker in the ground. Un-
less the fence lies entirely on one person’s property, thereby reduc-
ing his available land by a greater percentage than his neighbor’s
land, they must come to an agreement regarding the width of the
fence, the construction materials, etc. A good fence that separates
property equally along the line of the fence implies prior good rela-
tions between neighbors. The fence helps to maintain this coopera-
tion. A fence is a manifestation of the private property order. By
allowing men to exclude others, it encourages cooperation. When
the fruits of this cooperation can readily be distributed in terms of
the value which each party has put into the joint efort, there is an in-
centive for joint eforts. Boundaries around property acknowledge
the owner’s right to exclude. When these boundaries are enforced
by law and social custom, the individual can more safely open the
gate to others. When you have the legal right to remove visitors, you
can more safely invite them for a visit. Good fences, in the broadest
sense, make good neighbors, in the broadest sense.
 43
THE The Penalty FOR
PENALTY for Perjury
PERJURY

If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that
which is wrong; Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall
stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in
those days; And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if
the witness be a false witness, and hath testiied falsely against his brother;
Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother:
so shalt thou put the evil away from among you (Deut. 19:16–19).

The theocentric principle here is that God is a true witness. He

does not lie. God, as the supreme Judge, does not respect persons.
This is a constant theme in both testaments.1 The law of God is to be
applied impartially, meaning without respect to persons. The civil
magistrate’s evaluation also must not be in terms of the class
(money) or status (social position) of either the victim or the ac-
cused.2 Showing respect of persons in the exercise of judgment is
one of the major sins of mankind, in both church3 and State. This
was not a land law.

1. Deuteronomy 1:17; 16:19; II Chronicles 19:7; Proverbs 24:23; 28:21; Acts 10:34;
Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25; James 2:1, 9; I Peter 1:17.
2. On the modern sociological distinction between class and status, see Robert A. Nisbet,
The Sociological Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1966), ch. 5.
3. “For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and
there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; And ye have respect to him that weareth the
gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou
there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become
judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this
world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the
judgment seats?” (James 2:2–6).

514
 The Penalty for Perjury 515

Deuteronomy 19:16–19 presents the civil standard governing

false witnesses. The standard is lex talionis: an eye for an eye. “And
thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Deut. 19:21). That which the
false witness had hoped to achieve – having the court impose a
speciic negative civil sanction against his intended victim – he him-
self would bear. The cost of ofering false testimony was commensu-
rate with the cost of being a victim of false testimony. The economic
procedure of counting the cost was to lead to a conclusion: it was
risky to become a false witness in Mosaic Israel. The more lagrant
the false testimony, the riskier it became.

Witness for the Prosecution

Let us begin with the witness for the prosecution in a criminal
trial. The court is God’s court: the State is acting as the prosecutor
on God’s behalf. The witness for the prosecution becomes an agent
of this court. God delegates to the State the authority and require-
ment to execute people convicted of capital crimes. God identiies
the witnesses as the primary agents of execution. The historically
permanent civil sanction of death removes the convicted person
from the local jurisdiction of the earthly court into God’s heavenly
court. The witness is therefore acting as God’s designated judicial
agent through the court.
The biblical texts do not identify the witness speciically as a wit-
ness for the prosecution. This does not necessarily mean that the de-
fense’s witnesses had to participate in the stoning. If a witness had
conirmed the testimony of the accused, it would seem to be exces-
sively stringent for the law to require him to participate in the execu-
tion. On the other hand, the witness serves as a defender of the
court’s authority. The court has declared the accused guilty. Why
shouldn’t the witness participate in the execution? On this basis: his
unwillingness to participate actively in what he regards as an unjust
decision. Participation would violate his conscience. He is not to re-
bel against the court, but he need not become an active participant.

Witness for the Defense

What about witness for the defense? What if he had refused to
swear? What if he was not a circumcised Israelite or a circumcised
stranger? Was he permitted to testify? Here I must make deductions
516 DEUTERONOMY

based on what is required of witnesses for the prosecution, and why.

I conclude that witnesses for the defense were allowed to testify to
the court, whether or not they were citizens. They were required to
take an oath to the court because they were the State’s sanctions-
bringers.
Witnesses for the defense were also under court sanctions. They
were not allowed to lie under oath. What if they did? Were they un-
der the threat of the court’s sanctions? Yes. False witnessing was not
allowed. Then what was the appropriate sanction? We return to the
lex talionis: eye for eye. If they deliberately testiied falsely, thereby
persuading the court to release a guilty person back into society,
they came under the sanctions that should have been applied to
him. The court cannot prosecute the defendant a second time if he
has been declared innocent by a jury,4 but it can prosecute the per-
jurer. This is not double jeopardy. The perjurer judicially represents the
criminal whose testimony the perjurer has set free. The criminal has been
set free; the perjurer takes his place. Judgment is upheld. The appro-
priate civil sanction is applied. The victim is not left with a sense of
injustice. The person who inlicted the damage has not paid for his
crime, but his substitute has. This is an application of the biblical
principle of substitutionary atonement. If someone who is in a law-
ful position to pay the victim does so on behalf of the criminal, the
victim is not to pursue the matter any further. The false witness is in
a legal position to make this substitutionary payment, and the court
is supposed to insist that he make it. The text does not say this
speciically with respect to a witness for the defense, but the princi-
ple of the substitionary atonement makes it clear that such a substi-
tute is legitimate. When the sanction is imposed on the false witness,
the judicial matter is settled. Peace may then be restored to society.
This is a major goal of biblical law. The accused should be placated
when the court imposes on the conspirators the penalty that would
have been imposed on him.

4. This assumes that the common law’s prohibition against double jeopardy is enforced. I
regard this principle as biblical. When God declares a man not guilty, he is forever not guilty.
The State in this sense is to imitate God. When double jeopardy is not honored by civil law,
this restrains the State from becoming tyrannical, bankrupting innocent people by endless
trials. The principle does not apply to the enforcement of ecclesiastical law. Gary North,
Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1996), pp. 831–32.
 The Penalty for Perjury 517

Eye for Eye

The Mosaic civil sanction against perjury by a witness is clear:
the perjurer must sufer the same penalty that would have been ap-
plied to his potential victim. He has sought to impose civil sanc-
tions; now those sanctions are imposed on him.
There is a major practical problem here for any covenant-
keeping society that would restrict the ojce of witness to citizens.
The citizen in a biblical commonwealth is bound by two oaths. One
of these is taken in a Trinitarian church. What about the nonbe-
liever? He has taken no such oath. Is he therefore prohibited from
serving as a witness? If a nation’s borders (or state’s borders, or
county’s borders) are open to immigrants, as they were in Mosaic
Israel, then a community could become predominantly occupied
by non-citizens. A non-citizen would be more likely to see a crime
than a citizen would be. If the non-citizen may not testify in a court
regarding what he has seen, then law enforcement becomes prob-
lematical. Criminals in the wider community of non-citizens would
impose their will on the rest of society. This would place law-
abiding people at the mercy of criminals. Is this the goal of biblical
law?
Here is a solution to this dilemma. We know that the stranger
who dwelt in Israel was allowed to ofer a sacriice to God if he
abided by the laws governing sacriices. This was the biblical princi-
ple of equality under the law. “And if a stranger sojourn with you, or
whosoever be among you in your generations, and will ofer an
ofering made by ire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD; as ye do, so
he shall do. One ordinance shall be both for you of the congrega-
tion, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you , an ordi-
nance for ever in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be
before the LORD. One law and one manner shall be for you, and for
the stranger that sojourneth with you” (Num. 15:14–16). This
stranger was a geyr or resident alien. He did not have to be circum-
cised in order to ofer his sacriice to God. He merely had to live in-
side the borders of Israel and under the Mosaic law.
If the stranger had the right to ofer a sacriice without being a
citizen, then why not also the right to testify in a court? If he was
willing to come under the civil sanction – eye for eye – why not al-
low his testimony? If he believed that he was protected by the God
518 DEUTERONOMY

of Moses, as manifested by his willingness to live under the Mosaic

law, then why not accept his testimony?
The biblical principle of an eye for an eye – the lex talionis – is
imposed on the false witness. If he testiies falsely against the ac-
cused, and this is discovered by the judges, then he becomes subject
to the penalty that would have been imposed on the victim. This
threat brings civil sanctions into the picture. The witness comes un-
der civil sanctions, which means that he comes under the laws of the
civil covenant. But must he confess faith in the God of the civil cove-
nant in order to come under its sanctions?
He was required by law to cast the irst stone. Did this make him
a judge? Wasn’t he imposing judgment in the name of God? Yes,
but only at the instruction of the court. He did not declare judg-
ment; he merely contributed information to those who would de-
clare judgment. As an agent of the court, he cast the irst stone. He
did not do this on his own authority. Because he was not a citizen, he
did not evaluate the evidence, i.e., he did not serve as a judge. He
did act on behalf of the court in casting the irst stone. This sanction
would have been imposed on him had he been convicted of perjury.
He was under oath-bound negative civil sanctions. He was there-
fore bound by an oath of obedience, irrespective of the absence of
his personal confession of faith in the God of the covenant. A civil
oath invoked covenant sanctions: the stones of justice. If the court
convicted the accused, the prosecution’s witness would participate
in the execution as one who was formally under the court’s civil
sanctions. But he was already under these civil sanctions as a resi-
dent of Israel.
The citizen was eligible to declare God’s judgment as a judge.5
The non-citizen did not possess this authority. A person did not
have to be a citizen in order to testify. The casting of stones was not a
mark of citizenship; it was a mark of subordination to the Mosaic
civil covenant, including its sanctions. What was invoked by the
non-citizen witness was not God’s direct sanctions, either on Israel
or on him; rather, it was God’s indirect sanctions through the court.
He who would be required by law to cast the irst stone would also
have the irst stone cast at him if he was convicted of perjury in a

5. In modern times, a member of a jury serves as a judge: one who evaluates the law’s
application to the evidence.
 The Penalty for Perjury 519

capital trial. The sanction was valid for all those who came under
the Mosaic civil covenant and who then committed capital crimes.
This included strangers in the land. But if they subordinated them-
selves to these sanctions, they also had the authority to impose them,
as agents of the court, though not as citizens. They served as agents of
the court when they served as witnesses for the prosecution.

The Cost of Obtaining Accurate Information

The punishment should it the crime. This is the biblical princi-
ple of justice that undergirds the lex talionis. Similarly, the court’s
cost of obtaining accurate information should be proportional to the
crime. A society that spends as much money in court to convict a bi-
cycle thief as it does to convict a murderer is indirectly subsidizing
murderers. Resources are not unlimited. Court costs are positive. If
the court is spending as much to prosecute bicycle thieves as mur-
derers, the society will experience fewer stolen bicycles and more
murders. The court should not require the same thoroughness of in-
vestigation in a minor case as it does where a person’s life is on the
line. A society that cannot allocate court expenses in terms of the se-
verity of the criminal acts under examination will ind itself bur-
dened with injustice.6
The biblical law of perjury helps to balance the court’s cost of ob-
taining information and the severity of the infractions. The court does
not threaten a witness with the risk of subsequently being brought to
trial and convicted of a capital crime for having lied regarding a mi-
nor crime. If the threat is too great, witnesses will not readily volun-
teer. On the other hand, witnesses in a capital crime will be hesitant
to participate in a conspiracy to bring false information before the
court. The court’s beneit (i.e., reduced cost) of screening out false in-
formation by means of a threat of perjury sanctions is partially ofset
by its cost of not obtaining accurate information because of wit-
nesses who are fearful of volunteering to testify under oath.

6. In November, 1996, a libel trial became the longest trial in English history: over 292
days. The lawsuit was brought by the McDonald’s Corporation against a pair of unemployed
people who had accused the company of having promoted poor nutrition, exploited children,
encouraged litter, mistreated animals, and destroyed rain forests. Sarah Lyall, “Britain’s Big
‘McLibel Trial’ (It’s McEndless, Too),” New York Times (Nov. 29, 1996). The couple
eventually lost the case, but they had no money to pay the plaintif’s huge legal fees, as English
law requires.
520 DEUTERONOMY

The Economics of Conspiracy

Because false testimony is easier for one person to commit than
many, this law mandates multiple witnesses for the prosecution.
“One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for
any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or
at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established”
(v. 15). The testimony of one false witness is insujcient to convict
the accused unless supporting impersonal evidence is very strong.
But false witnesses involved in a conspiracy face a problem: they
know that they are lying. They know that for their lie to be success-
ful, the defense must not be able to prove collusion among the wit-
nesses. But more than one person is involved in the deception. If
one participant’s conscience gets the better of him, he may reveal
the existence of a conspiracy.
One way for the defense to encourage one of the participants in
the conspiracy to admit the truth is to ofer him future immunity for
his true testimony and an accusation against the others. The princi-
ple of victim’s rights allows the victim to ofer forgiveness to anyone
who has victimized him. He can be selective in this judgment. If the
criminal has ofered to confess his sin, the victim is in a legal position
to forego the application of the biblically mandated sanctions.7 The
State must honor the victim’s assessment.8 In modern law, the crimi-
nal who testiies for the State is said to ofer State’s evidence. In a
case of false witness, the confessing perjurer ofers either victim’s ev-
idence or plaintif’s evidence.
Because of this possibility, the larger the conspiracy, the greater
the likelihood that the conspiracy will be revealed by one of the par-
ticipants. Betrayal does not require either a stricken conscience or
an ofer of immunity from the victim. The very nature of the motiva-
tion of secrecy can lead to a betrayal. The sense of power that know-
ing a secret conveys to the participants can itself lead to betrayal.
Georg Simmel wrote in 1908: “The secret contains a tension that is
dissolved in the moment of revelation. This moment constitutes the
acme in the development of the secret; all of its charms are once
more gathered in it and brought to a climax. . . . The secret, too, is

7. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 294–95.
8. Ibid., p. 296.
 The Penalty for Perjury 521

full of the consciousness that it can be betrayed; that one holds the
power of surprises, turns of fate, joy, destruction – if only, perhaps,
of self-destruction. For this reason, the secret is surrounded by the
possibility and temptation of betrayal. . . .”9 The betrayer becomes a
big shot – even bigger, perhaps, than what he would have been had
he remained a cooperating participant in the conspiracy.
A prosecuting attorney is not allowed knowingly to bring in a
false witness. Neither is a defense attorney. They are agents of the
court, bound by the court’s rules of procedure. A conspiracy to mis-
lead the court brings the court’s penalty on any attorney who know-
ingly uses a false witness to testify. The goal of the court is to obtain
accurate information. A conspiracy to mislead the court is a serious
infraction. It is an assault on the court and an assault on the accused.
By requiring multiple witnesses for the prosecution (accusation),
the State makes possible cross examination of more than one per-
son. Their stories can be compared and evaluated for consistency.
Lies can be detected more easily. The prosecution has to prove its
case. The defense has an easier time of it. The Bible does not teach
explicitly that the accused must be assumed to be innocent, but the
person making the accusation has a greater burden of proof. In this
sense, the accused is presumed to be innocent. The two stories are
not assumed to be of equal weight judicially. This would lead to a
stalemate. In the case of a stalemate, the accused is not convicted.
So, again, the implication is that the accused is presumed innocent.

Perjury Sanctions Threaten Both Parties

If a man brings an accusation against another, and the accused
says that the other man is not telling the truth, this is not necessarily
the same as saying that the accuser is lying. The accuser may be mis-
informed. But if the accused says that the accuser is a false witness
who is deliberately telling a lie, then the accused is putting the ac-
cuser at risk. The accused must not commit perjury. He must not ac-
cuse the other person of telling a lie if the accuser is telling the truth.
What if the accused person resorts to perjury? What are the con-
sequences? The lex talionis principle applies. First, if he stole some-
thing, he owes double restitution to his victim (Ex. 22:4). But if in

9. The Sociology of Georg Simmel, translated and edited by Kurt H. Wolf (New York: Free
Press, 1950), pp. 333–34.
522 DEUTERONOMY

addition he has lied about the accuser, saying that the accuser has
committed perjury, he has not merely stolen; he has attempted to
place his accuser under penalties. The lying criminal will then have
to pay double restitution on these penalties, as well as the original
restitution payment. When the criminal compounds the sin, he
compounds his obligation.
Consider the alternative interpretation: the convicted person
does not owe double restitution for his false accusation against the
accuser. If his inefective lie on the witness stand goes unpunished,
he owes double restitution for the original crime, which he would
have owed anyway. Lying to the court would then be a rational de-
cision: the criminal is no worse of by his false accusation against the
victim, and he may reduce the likelihood of being convicted for the
theft. This would subsidize lying on the witness stand. But biblical
law’s goal is to reduce criminal behavior and to protect the victim.
Thus, the implication of this law is that lying to the court increases
risk. Double restitution on the original infraction is insujcient. It re-
pays the victim for the original infraction; it does not repay him for
the second.

Priests and Judges

The conlicting parties “shall stand before the LORD, before the
priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; And the judges
shall make diligent inquisition.” First, the joint assembly of priests
and judges constituted a representative assembly. This assembly
represented God. To stand before this assembly was to stand before
the Lord. The priests and judges would hand down judgments in the
name of the Lord: ecclesiastical and civil. They served as spokes-
men for God in history. In civil afairs, a court speaks for God. Un-
der the Mosaic covenant, the priests had to be present in this civil
assembly. Just as the priesthood’s representative agents had to blow
the two trumpets in order for Israel’s holy army to be lawfully as-
sembled and sent into battle (Num. 10:5–8), so did priests have to be
present at this court. The priests had a civil function in Mosaic Is-
rael: to ofer counsel regarding the written law. They also were in a
position to excommunicate a false witness. They gathered informa-
tion by being present in civil court. This did not restrict them from
conducting a separate trial in a church court, but they were there to
hear the evidence in civil court.
 The Penalty for Perjury 523

The judges conducted the inquiry, according to this text. The

priests were there to provide counsel and legitimacy, but the civil
representatives conducted the investigation. The court might hand
down negative sanctions. The investigatory work of the court was
therefore conducted by civil ojcers.
Today’s courts are strictly civil. In the United States, a witness
for decades was sworn in by having him repeat an oath to tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God,
with his left hand on a Bible, Old and New Testaments, and his right
hand pointed skyward. This was a Christian oath because of the
presence of a Christian Bible. In the late twentieth century, this
practice has been modiied. Atheists may ajrm that they will tell
the truth. They need not invoke God’s name or place a hand on the
Bible. They come under the sanctions of the earthly court. They do
not imply through ajrmation their belief in a heavenly court. Their
testimony must be accepted as equal in authority to any other wit-
ness’s testimony. This is legitimate biblically. The witness is under
the court’s sanctions, just as a stranger was in Mosaic Israel.
The question arises: What about the presence of a priest on the
court? Covenantally, there are no priests today, for the sons of
Aaron are gone, and there is no altar of sacriice. The ojce is as de-
funct as the ojce of prophet.10 Does this fact invalidate the Mosaic
law governing civil courts? Or is there an implied continuity of ojce
from Old Covenant to New Covenant? Is the Trinitarian ecclesiasti-
cal minister the covenantal heir of the Mosaic priest? Should an ec-
clesiastical minister or ministers be present on the court to provide
counsel and legitimacy? A civil magistrate is a minister (Rom. 13:4).
He speaks in God’s name. Must a civil court also include ecclesiasti-
cal ministers? To answer all this, we must irst consider the structure
of Mosaic civil government.

Federalism: Mosaic vs. Enlightenment

The Mosaic law provided a system of federalism between
church and State. The church was part of the federal judicial order.
The civil government could not unilaterally speak in God’s name
when handing down formal decisions in which sanctions were

10. See above, Chapter 32.

524 DEUTERONOMY

involved. It could not unilaterally start a war nor decide between

witnesses. In both cases, a representative of the church had to be
present. This was true of Israel’s supreme court (Deut. 17:8–13).11
Modern federalism seeks a balance of power and authority
within the divisions of civil government: executive, legislative, and
judicial; national, state, and local. But modern federalism is exclu-
sively civil. It assumes that the church has neither a legitimate claim
nor any legitimating function in civil government. The biblical doc-
trine of the separation of church and State has become a doctrine of
exclusively secular authority: the separation of supernatural reli-
gion and State. It proclaims that those ministers known as civil mag-
istrates possess exclusive authority to speak in the name of God in
civil cases. The State is said to have exclusive jurisdiction – law-
speaking – in applying physical and monetary negative sanctions.
The theocracy of modern federalism is an exclusively civil theoc-
racy. The autonomous corporate people rather than God is said to
legitimize civil government. This corporate sovereign, whether
Rousseau’s General Will or Madison’s “We, the People,” must be
represented by a voice of authority which speaks in the name of the
sovereign and him only. This sovereign is seen as exclusively natu-
ral, not supernatural. Therefore, no ecclesiastical representative is
said to possess lawful authority in civil matters except insofar as he
may be a citizen, like any other citizen.12 The church has no repre-
sentation in the State. While there are exceptions to this general
rule, such as bishops who sit in England’s House of Lords, which
does not initiate legislation, the West has moved toward the elimi-
nation of church authority in civil government since the late eigh-
teenth century.
The doctrine of separation is justiied by modern, post-Enlight-
enment Christians in the name of protecting the church from secular
inluence. But this argument cuts two ways. It is used by secularists to
protect the State from Christian inluence. The idea is that there is
some neutral common law that derives its authority from something
broader than the Bible or Christianity. This broader judicial authority

11. See Chapter 39.

12. In the United States Constitution (1788), the outlawing of religious test oaths for U.S.
government ojce-holders was the means of asserting this autonomy (Article VI, Section III).
Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1989), pp. 385–85, 389–92.
 The Penalty for Perjury 525

is considered superior to biblical authority in the realm of politics,

which today encompasses just about everything. The kingdom of
politics is as comprehensive in its claims as is the kingdom of God.
Christians today have accepted the majority of these claims, reserv-
ing only small zones of supposed autonomy from the kingdom of
politics. These claims of immunity are constantly being challenged
by the State. To accommodate the claims of the State, Christians
have all but abandoned the ideal of the kingdom of God in history
as a realm as comprehensive as Adam’s kingdom. The suggestion
that the Great Commission extends as far as Adam’s Fall did is re-
jected by most Christians, for such a suggestion raises the issue of
theocracy: the rule of God’s law. The Great Commission has been
redeined to include the Christian family, the Christian church, the
humanist-accredited college and theological seminary, and the
Christian school – also state-certiied, in most cases – but not the
civil government.13
This passage proves that in the Mosaic civil order, the priest-
hood had a role to play in civil government. To deny that this role
has been transferred to the ecclesiastical ministry under the New
Covenant is to argue for a covenantal discontinuity. The New Cove-
nant’s abolition of the Mosaic priesthood is the obvious way to
make such a claim. But if the abolition of the priesthood becomes
the basis of the discontinuity, then some aspect of the Mosaic priest-
hood that was connected to animal sacriices has to be associated
with civil justice. With the abolition of the sacriices, the ecclesiasti-
cal ministry has supposedly lost its role in civil justice. If, however,
the basis of the priest’s participation in a civil court was the priest’s
expertise in biblical law and the political need to create a federalism
of covenantal authority in civil justice, then there is no civil disconti-
nuity between the Mosaic priesthood and the New Covenant’s ec-
clesiastical eldership. If so, then modern humanistic civil justice is
illegitimate biblically and must be reformed. The monopoly of the
State – the formally secular State – over civil justice then cannot ind
justiication in the Bible. This is my view.
The doctrine of the complete separation of church and State has
been a convenient way for Christians to escape any responsibility

13. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
526 DEUTERONOMY

for dealing with questions of civil government and political theory

from an explicitly biblical viewpoint. They have preferred to defer
to Enlightenment Whigs or to Enlightenment social democrats on
such matters. To justify this deferral, they have adopted some ver-
sion of secular natural law theory,14 long after Darwinism had com-
pletely undermined the philosophical basis of secular natural law
theory.15

Conclusion
The text says that the judges had the responsibility of investigat-
ing and evaluating the conlicting testimonies of rival parties. They
had to decide if one person was deliberately lying. If he was, then he
was to be placed under a civil sanction. The sanction was clear:
whatever penalty the State would have imposed on the victim had
the testimony of the false witness been believed. Equity in this in-
stance was based on lex talionis: eye for eye. The justiication was the
elimination of a public evil: “so shalt thou put the evil away from
among you.”
Then why were the priests there? The text does not say. I think
there were three reasons. First, to provide counsel regarding God’s
written law. Second, to gather information in order to declare a false
witness excommunicate. There would be a double witness against
false witness. Third, to provide legitimacy to the court.
There had to be civil sanctions if there was civil law. The sanc-
tion was to be commensurate with the infraction. Because the sanc-
tion was the same in both cases, the rule of law was ajrmed. There
could be no favoritism on the part of the court. The fear of ofering
false witness was to be comparable to the fear of being convicted by
false witness. The false witness had to consider the consequences of
his testimony. He had to count the cost. He had to consider the
damage that his testimony would cause another person. To assist
him in his process of cost accounting, the Mosaic law speciied that
if he was shown to be a false witness, he would sufer the same pen-
alty that he had sought to inflict on his victim.

14. Cf. Thomas McWhorter, Res Publica (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1966).
15. R. J. Rushdoony, The Biblical Philosophy of History (Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian &
Reformed, 1969), p. 7.
 The Penalty for Perjury 527

There is no indication that this aspect of the Mosaic law has

been annulled by the New Covenant. On the contrary, the New
Covenant ajrms the principle. More than this: the New Covenant
order was sealed forever by God’s inal judgment against Israel’s
false testimony. The false testimony given against Jesus Christ – that
He was not who and what He said He was – led to the destruction of
Jerusalem in A.D. 70, thereby ending forever the Old Covenant or-
der. The Sanhedrin had sentenced Christ to death, knowing that
their procedures were illegal, even in terms of their own law.16 God
sentenced Old Covenant Israel to death, a sentence carried out in
A.D. 70. Jesus had warned His disciples of that day, a day foreshad-
owed by false witnesses: “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo,
here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false
Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders;
insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto
you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the se-
cret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the
east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the
Son of man be” (Matt. 24:23–27).
Is there continuity of the other aspect of this law, i.e., the
presence of priests in a civil court’s procedure? The presence of rep-
resentatives of both church and State made the covenantal implica-
tions clear. The State must not hand down judgments irrespective of
the church’s interpretation of what constitutes righteous judgment.
The priest was a counsellor and a legitimizer. He did not conduct
the actual investigation, but he could respond to questions regard-
ing equity.17 His main assignments in this case were to serve as a
source of legitimacy for the court and to protect the citizenry from a

16. Under the Pharisees’ interpretation of Judaic law, if the court paid a witness, this
invalidated his testimony. Bekhoreth 4:6, in The Mishnah, edited by Herbert Danby (New York:
Oxford University Press, [1933] 1987), p. 534. The court had paid Judas 30 pieces of silver to
identify Jesus, i.e., to provide witness that this was the man they planned to accuse. “Then
Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and
brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in
that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that”
(Matt. 27:3–4). Then the execution of Jesus took place. Judas repented of his act before the
sentence was carried out. The Jews did not. Judas paid with his life (v. 5). So did Old
Covenant Israel.
17. This indicates that God’s examination of Adam and Eve was done in His judicial
capacity as king rather than priest.
528 DEUTERONOMY

monopolistic civil government that would refuse to acknowledge

any authority but its own in rendering civil judgment. There was to
be no absolute separation of church and State in Mosaic Israel.
The would-be false witness was warned to count the cost of his
action. This cost was the same as the cost borne by the victim of his
false testimony. There was an equality of sanctions. This is why
Adam’s rebellion was attempted regicide and parricide. This is why
there was a death penalty attached to the eating of the tree’s fruit.
Adam had in principle agreed to act as the serpent’s agent in bring-
ing a covenant lawsuit against God by publicly challenging God’s
supposedly false claim of absolute authority. By violating the tree’s
boundary, he handed down judgment against God in the name of
the serpent. The proof that his accusation was false was his own
death. He had failed to count the cost accurately.
God, on the day of judgment, will serve as a witness. If He has
granted salvation by grace through faith, He will serve as a witness
for the defense.
 44
A HierarchyOF
A HIERARCHY of Commitments
COMMITMENTS

And the ojcers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is
there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go
and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate
it. And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet
eaten of it? let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the
battle, and another man eat of it. And what man is there that hath
betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his
house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her (Deut. 20:5–7).

What is the theocentric principle which this law exempliies? In

many Mosaic case laws, the answer is immediately clear, but not in
this case. The irst two laws of military exemption had something to
do with the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. Death on the bat-
tleield was not to separate a man from these fruits. Yet the exemp-
tions were not permanent. In the case of a newly married man, the
exemption lasted one year (Deut. 24:5). The fourth exemption, fear,
I cover in the next chapter.
When in doubt, it is safe in an economic commentary to invoke
the general theocentric principle of God the Creator as the cosmic
owner. He is entitled to a return on His assets. But is there more to
this section than mere ownership? To discover a more speciic
theocentric principle, I asked myself: In what way did a man’s right
to enjoy a preliminary return on a long-term capital investment
relect a property right of God? I came up with three plausible an-
swers: the tithe, the irstfruits ofering, or both.
The irst two laws of military non-participation were land laws:
new house, new vineyard. They had to do with sacriices. These

529
530 DEUTERONOMY

sacriices no longer exist. The third exemption was a seed law:

newlywed.

The Economics of the Firstfruits Ofering

The problem with designating the tithe alone as God’s property
right rather than the irstfruits ofering (or both), is that the tithe is
God’s permanent right of return. The two exemptions were not per-
manent. In contrast, the irstfruits ofering was a preliminary
ofering in addition to the tithe. The irstfruits ofering was a kind of
down payment to God for God’s down payment on the harvest.
Firstfruits were ofered three times: on the day after Passover (Lev.
23:1–12), at the feast of Firstfruits (Pentecost) (Ex. 34:22), and at the
feast of Booths (Tabernacles) (Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:39–40). In
the case of Booths, when the harvest was complete, others in the
community were to be invited in to share the wealth.

Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou
hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine: And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast,
thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidser-
vant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that
are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the
LORD thy God in the place which the LORD shall choose: because the LORD
thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine
hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice (Deut. 16:13–15).

To understand what was involved in the law of military exemp-

tion, we must begin with a fundamental biblical economic princi-
ple: the individual serves as the economic agent (steward) of God. God had
delegated to individual Israelites the task of building up the capital
base necessary to increase His irstfruits. This is why a producer’s
right to collect the irstfruits of a newly inished capital asset – house
or vineyard – could not lawfully be challenged by the State in Mo-
saic Israel, even in wartime. The producer’s initial claim on the
fruits of his newly completed stream of income was superior to the
State’s claims on his life. This, in turn, relected God’s prior claim of
irstfruits on agricultural output. The irstfruits ofering of the vine-
yard would be paid to the priesthood, who in turn held a veto on the
war (Num. 10:8; Deut. 20:2).
But why did a newly built home ofer an exemption? There was
no irstfruits ofering required for dedicating a new home. Answer:
 A Hierarchy of Commitments 531

an Israelite’s home was analogous to God’s home, the tabernacle-

temple. Although no law required it, Solomon dedicated the newly
constructed house of God by sacriicing 22,000 oxen and 20,000
sheep (I Ki. 8:63). Thus, a sacriice of dedication, while not legally
required, was appropriate when a man inished building his home.
He could enjoy the fruits of his labor, just as God, in His capacity as
a cosmic house-builder,1 enjoyed the blessings of dwelling in a new
home.
The irstfruits were token payments to God: a kind of down pay-
ment on the future tithe. They were a man’s statement of faith in
God’s long-term future bounty, as well as thanks for God’s prelimi-
nary manifestation of blessing.

Inheritance and Battle

Chapter 20 deals with military afairs. Israel’s inheritance of
Canaan would be the result of military action. The physical disin-
heritance of the Canaanites through their execution on the bat-
tleield was to be the operational means of claiming the inheritance.
Military sanctions were to be the means of this long-prophesied in-
heritance/disinheritance. That is, point four of the biblical covenant
model, sanctions, was the prerequisite of point ive.
The laws in this passage applied to a settled population: settle-
ment in the post-conquest world. This generation as yet had no
houses, no vineyards. They had not become dwellers in the Prom-
ised Land. They were still outsiders. So, this passage presumed a
forthcoming victory. These laws would go into efect in Israel’s his-
tory only after the conquest. In this sense, this passage was pro-
phetic. It assumed the transfer of the inheritance. More than this:
these laws had to do with the maintenance of the individual’s inheri-
tance, i.e., enjoying the irstfruits of house, vineyard, or wife. The fo-
cus of these laws was on preserving an inheritance. One man sows;
another man is not to reap. This was to be the case in Israel for righ-
teous men. He who sows is supposed to reap. Not even the needs of the
military were to supersede this principle. Only unrighteousness is to
break the legal pattern of sowing and reaping. Canaan was soon to
become an example of such unrighteousness.

1. Meredith G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1980),
pp. 17–18, 20–21, 35–42.
532 DEUTERONOMY

And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into
the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Ja-
cob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And
houses full of all good things, which thou illedst not, and wells digged,
which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst
not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; Then beware lest thou forget
the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the
house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and
shalt swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the
people which are round about you (Deut. 6:10–14).

There is a fundamental principle of individualism in the Deuter-

onomy 20 passage. The defense of the individual’s legal right to en-
joy the irstfruits of his labor was superior to the military defense of
the nation.
God had not previously instructed Moses to convey these rules
of post-conquest warfare to the exodus generation. There was no
need. First, they were not the fourth generation that was scheduled
to inherit (Gen. 15:16). Second, He knew that they were an army of
slaves: fearful of everything. They were in no spiritual condition to
conquer Canaan.

No Conscription
The tribes were supposed to respond to a call to military action.
Yet it is clear from Deborah’s song that some tribes had not re-
sponded (Jud. 5:16–17). This indicates that the Mosaic law ofered
no formal negative sanctions to the central government that would
enable it pressure the tribes to assemble. The Levite whose concu-
bine had been raped to death by the Benjaminites cut her corpse into
pieces and sent them to the other tribes (Jud. 19:29). This was a form
of moral suasion. There was no legal compulsion available to him.
Could a tribe compel each adult male to assemble in military
formation? There was no law that mandated this. The exemption
laws of Deuteronomy 20 mandated that the ojcers permit any
member who qualiied under the law to return home. Anyone could
claim fear and thereby be exempted. Perhaps not many men would
have done this, for fear of shaming themselves, but the other three
exemptions were easy ways out. All three involved building toward
the future, i.e., future-oriented activities. There was no shame in-
volved in claiming one of these exemptions. What is important to
 A Hierarchy of Commitments 533

understand here is the principle that a man’s demonstrated but

unfulilled future-orientation – the igurative harvest sown but not
reaped – was more important to Israel than his participation in the
army. The building of familistic capital was more important than
participation in war. The creation of streams of personal income
was more important for the nation than adding numbers to the
army.
If a man could be exempted immediately preceding the battle,
was there compulsion in assembling? That is, with exemptions so
easy, what would have pressured a man to assemble and then
march of to war? If there were no external, civil pressures available
to the State, why would there have been these exemptions? One
reason occurs: ecclesiastical pressure. I have argued elsewhere that
citizenship in Mosaic Israel was based on two things: circumcision
and eligibility for service in God’s holy army. If a man refused to an-
swer the call to muster the troops, would he have lost his citizen-
ship? That is, was mere military eligibility sujcient to maintain
citizenship? Or was actual attendance at the mustering required?
Deborah did not declare that members of the tribes of Reuben,
Asher, and Dan had lost their citizenship (Jud. 5:16–17). They
sufered the negative sanction of being written into her song of vic-
tory in an unfavorable light. They would have had the option of go-
ing home on the basis of fear, but they never even showed up. They
were not willing to admit in public at the time of battle that they
were too afraid to ight. This is why Deborah criticized them: not for
their fear but for their unwillingness to show up and admit in public
as tribes that they were too afraid to ight.
The Mosaic law had no speciied negative sanctions against
non-appearance. Thus, there was no lawful military conscription under
the Old Covenant. There was neither a written law nor speciied sanc-
tions that compelled anyone to answer the trumpets’ call. The State
had to rely on men’s sense of duty to motivate them to answer the
call. Even after responding, there was another opportunity to return
home.

An Army of Holy Warriors

The goal of these exemption laws was two-fold. First, no ighting
man should sufer second thoughts about having completed a long-
term project that he did not have time to enjoy. Second, the army
534 DEUTERONOMY

had to rely on God more than numbers. I discuss the second con-
cern in the next chapter.
The irst concern had to do with a warrior’s sense of commit-
ment. Any warrior who had valid reasons to hold back in the heat of
battle, especially ofensive battle, was told to go home. These rea-
sons had to do with the future. He had created a capital asset that
was to provide him with a stream of income: home or vineyard. He
had not enjoyed any beneits from that capital asset. He had not
paid the priesthood its lawful irstfruits ofering. A similar logic gov-
erned the third exemption: a wife back home. In the case of a new
wife, the exemption was even more speciic: a year’s mandatory ex-
emption. His wife’s interests were also at stake. The presumption
was that the man would have time to impregnate his wife in a year.
The issue of biological heirs was a major one in Mosaic Israel. This
had to do with the seed laws. The levirate’s marriage provisions
were associated with these laws: “If brethren dwell together, and
one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not
marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in
unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an
husband’s brother unto her. And it shall be, that the irstborn which
she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead,
that his name be not put out of Israel” (Deut. 25:5–6).
Any civil leader who began making long-range plans for indulg-
ing himself in a war faced a potential veto by his army: prior capital
formation. A man who expected to be called into battle could start
building a house, planting a vineyard, or courting a woman if he
wanted to avoid serving in the army. If he got the house built, the
vineyard planted, or the girl married him before the silver trumpets
were blown, he could come home after the mustering but before the
battle. Preparations for unpopular wars would have increased capi-
tal formation in Israel, at least in the three areas of housing, wine,
and families. While some men fought, others would be enjoying the
fruits of their labors. This was a military anti-recruiting system designed
to keep rulers from indulging in the sin of empire. Sitting at home by the
ire, a glass of wine in hand, with your new wife on your lap surely
beats slogging through the mud in a foreign war of empire. “Make
love, not war” was a law governing Israelite marriage. Any call to
the holiness of a cause would have to be believed by the holy war-
riors in order for the leaders to recruit an army. Mercenaries would
not guarantee victory.
 A Hierarchy of Commitments 535

A wise king of Israel would have understood this threat to his

plans. “Or what king, going to make war against another king,
sitteth not down irst, and consulteth whether he be able with ten
thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thou-
sand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way of, he sendeth an
ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace” (Luke 14:31–32). The
military service exemption laws, when enforced, would have kept
the kings honest. It would have kept them from high-risk interna-
tional displays of their own power.

Conclusion
First, citizenship in Israel was based on eligibility for service in
God’s holy army.2 Second, the State did not possess inal authority
over priests and citizens. Warfare was made holy by acclamation by
the priesthood. Without their support, the war was illegal. There
could be no numbering and no atonement money, which had to be
paid to the priests (Ex. 30:12). Third, mandatory military conscrip-
tion was illegal. This was a major restriction on the expansion of
State power, which increases dramatically in wartime and is rarely
reversed after the war.3 The hierarchy of military authority in Mo-
saic Israel relected the hierarchy of mandatory payments: priest-
hood, head of household, State.
Israel as a holy army was a judicially restricted army. The army
had to be called into action by priests. There were two opportunities
for the priesthood to veto a war: prior to assembling the army and
immediately prior to the war (Num. 10:2–8). Individuals also had a
right to return home. This placed the civil rulers at a disadvantage in
any schemes for building an empire. Their troops did not have to
participate.
There were superior claims on every warrior’s commitment.
These were in part economic and in part covenantal. He did not
owe a sacriice for a newly dedicated house, but such sacriice was
appropriate for God’s house, so presumably it was appropriate for a
man’s house. He did owe a irstfruits ofering for his newly planted
vineyard. Until that debt was paid at the next national feast, he was

2. North, Sanctions and Dominion, pp. 37–39.

3. Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
536 DEUTERONOMY

to depart from the battleield. He was also to return to his new bride,
for her sake (Deut. 24:5) and for his (Deut. 20:7). These commit-
ments took precedence over the State’s right to call citizens into battle.
These legitimate commitments, as well as the personal beneits
associated with reaping the fruits of one’s labor, did not threaten the
cohesiveness of God’s “leaner, meaner” holy army. The army’s
greater cohesion would have been the result of these exemptions.
The warriors were to be committed to victory. But some commit-
ments could not be relegated to secondary status, either judicially or
psychologically. These commitments became the legal basis of ex-
emption from military duty.
No civil sanctions are ever legitimate against men who refuse to
serve in the military, for whatever reason. The State does not pos-
sess the right to draft anyone into military service, on threat of civil
sanctions, in peacetime or war. Also, no moral sanctions are legiti-
mate against men who ofer any of these reasons for not serving: a
new home, a new vineyard, or a new wife. The fourth reason, fear, I
cover in the next chapter.
The irstfruits ofering was a land law. It is no longer in force. To
the extent that these exemptions were based on the irstfruits
ofering, they are no longer in force. But the underlying principle
was that a man is to enjoy a token payment on his productivity be-
fore his life is placed at risk militarily. This restriction on the State is
still valid. This is God’s way of encouraging men to remain produc-
tive and future-oriented.
 45
AA FewGOOD
FEW Good Men
MEN

And the ojcers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say,
What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return
unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart (Deut. 20:8).

Deuteronomy 20 deals with military afairs. The laws in this sec-

tion governed a holy army. This army was covenanted to God. God
was the commander-in-chief of this army. This is the theocentric fo-
cus of this law. Moses announced this law to the generation of the
conquest, but before this generation had marched into battle. He re-
minded them of the theocentric framework of their assignment.
They were soldiers of a living God who is sovereign over history.
The section begins with a call to courage based on God’s sover-
eignty: “When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and
seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not
afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt” (v. 1).
This law was not a land law or a seed law. It was not grounded in
the Mosaic sacriices or the tribal system. It was therefore a
cross-boundary law: universal. This law governed God’s holy army,
but the general principle upholding it – the removal of fearful men
from the ranks – is a universal principle of covenantal warfare.

God’s Holy Army

This holy army would ight under a dual chain of command:
ojcers and priests. The priests were not merely spiritual cheerlead-
ers whose main task was to supply extra courage to men marching
into battle. They actually held a veto over the war. When the army
approached the battleield, a priest was to approach the assembled

537
538 DEUTERONOMY

warriors and announce: “Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto

battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and
do not tremble, neither be ye terriied because of them; For the
LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to ight for you against
your enemies, to save you” (vv. 3–4). A holy army was to be moti-
vated by the words of a holy priesthood. If the priesthood failed to
support this military action, refusing to encourage the army by in-
voking covenantally the name of God, the army could not lawfully
obey any order to go into battle. This meant that the priesthood
three times had a veto over the entire campaign: before the army
marched of to war (Num. 10:8); when the mustered men were to
pay their atonement money (Ex. 30:12), which the priests could re-
fuse to accept; and again immediately prior to the engagement.
There has been a debate in the West for over a thousand years
about what constitutes righteous warfare. There is no doubt bibli-
cally how to answer this deinitively. A judicially holy war is a war
fought by a nation whose Christian ministers can exercise a lawful
veto on the war and who nonetheless have promoted it. If the State
imprisons Christian ministers for speaking out against a war, as the
U.S. government sometimes did during World War I,1 then it is not
a holy war.2

Thinning the Ranks in Advance

The goal of this law was to thin the ranks of God’s holy army.
This is not the normal goal of any military planner. He always wants
more men and equipment than he has.3 But Israel was told to trust in
God, not in military strength. David, a warrior, wrote: “Some trust
in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of
the LORD our God” (Ps. 20:7). Isaiah wrote: “Woe to them that go
down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots,

1. H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (Seattle: University of

Washington Press, [1957] 1968), ch. 11: “Disciplining the Clergy.”
2. In the American Civil War (1861–65), both sides claimed to be ighting to defend
Christian civilization. But in late 1864, after Atlanta fell to Northern troops, some of the
South’s ministers began to call the moral legitimacy of the war into question. They began to
preach about defeat as a sign of God’s judgment against slavery. Richard E. Berringer, et al.,
Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), ch. 14.
3. This is the fundamental law of scarcity: “At zero price, there will be greater demand
than supply.”
 A Few Good Men 539

because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very
strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek
the LORD!” (Isa. 31:1). This outlook relected Israel’s theory of holy
warfare. God told the nation that He would be with them in righ-
teous military undertakings. Their faith would be tested by their
willingness to thin the ranks by means of exemptions. The very
smallness of the army was to increase the nation’s faith in the com-
ing victory. What would normally be regarded as a negative sanc-
tion was in fact a positive sanction.
This Israelite practice rested on a psychological premise: a fear-
ful man is not much of a warrior. Also, an Israelite who did not trust
God’s promise to be with His people in holy warfare was surely not
very holy. He would not see the army as uniquely protected by God
and set apart for victory. No warrior wants to ight alongside of a
fearful man. He wants to know that his lanks are covered in the line.
A fearful man who holds back thereby exposes those on either side
of him to added risk. Furthermore, a fearful man has not internal-
ized the opening words of this passage: “When thou goest out to bat-
tle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a
people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God
is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (v. 1).
His doubts call into question the army’s corporate commitment to
these words. God made provision for such a fear-burdened man to
excuse himself and return home before the battle began.
There is always fear in battle: fear of the enemy, fear of senior
ojcers, and fear of being labeled a coward. Diferent men respond
diferently to these fears. God told Israel not to fear the enemy. If a
man feared the enemy, he was asked by an ojcer to go home.
The authority of the Israelite warrior to walk away from a war
meant that the rulers had to be very careful in deciding what was
worth ighting for. The priests held a veto on the decision of a civil
ruler to take the nation into war. The individual warrior could not
veto the war, but he could veto his participation in it. He could “vote
with his feet.” This placed a very serious limitation on political rul-
ers. The rulers were to conine their military afairs to defensive wars
and holy wars. The holy status of a war would be determined by the
priesthood, not by the State. Any war begun by the ruler apart from
the priests would not have the Ark of the Covenant present on the
battleield. The senior civil ruler could not demand that any holy
warrior accompany him on his march into battle. It would be his
540 DEUTERONOMY

war, not the army of the Lord’s war. He might persuade others to go
into battle for the sake of spoils, but that would make his army a
mercenary army. The motivation of mercenaries is personal gain.
Mercenary armies are notoriously less successful than citizen ar-
mies defending their homelands. These restrictions on civil rulers
meant that Israel could not become an empire while obeying God’s law. Its
rulers could not easily extend their military power beyond the origi-
nal boundaries of the nation.
Just prior to the battle, there was to be a deliberate thinning of
the ranks. The ojcers were to ofer their men a way of escape.
There were four ways out of the ranks: two were explicitly eco-
nomic; one was marital; one was psychological. If a man had built a
new home, planted a new vineyard, married a new wife, or was
afraid, he could return home (Deut. 20:5–8). The classic biblical case
of deliberately thinning the ranks was Gideon’s series of screening
devices (Jud. 7:3–8). The irst screening device was fear. This was the
most efective device; 22,000 Israelites voluntarily departed (v. 3).
They swallowed their shame and went home. They probably knew
that to ight while afraid was contrary to the Mosaic law. Fearful
men were not allowed to serve. Fear, not small numbers, threatened
the success of the military venture. They chose not to violate His
law. It was better to acknowledge their fear publicly and go home
than to break God’s law and ight in fear.
The commander of Israel’s army was not to rely on numbers.
The army had to be numbered prior to a war because each man
owed blood money – an atonement payment – to the priests
(Ex. 30:12).4 This numbering was not to be used as a way for the
commander to assess the likelihood of success in a military venture.
Success on the battleield, this passage informs us, was entirely de-
pendent on God. This formal procedure of thinning the ranks was
the way of ajrming meaningful faith in God’s presence with the na-
tion in holy warfare.

Rational Calculation and Cowardice

This law made Israel’s army diferent from any army in history.
In all other armies, senior military commanders have had to devise

4. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 32.
 A Few Good Men 541

5
ways to keep their troops in line. They have used the negative sanc-
tions of shame, fear of superior ojcers, harsh discipline, and ulti-
mately the threat of the iring squad or its equivalent to keep the
ranks from breaking and running under ire. These sanctions are de-
signed to ofset the self-interested soldier’s rational desire to run.
Consider the decision-making process of a soldier under ire.
He makes a cost-beneit analysis based on how his decision will
afect him. The question here is the degree to which individual
self-interest either supports or undermines a military formation.
Here is a fundamental fact of infantry tactics: there is greater risk of
being killed from behind while leeing in open terrain than of being
killed while standing and ighting, since the attacking troops are
afraid of dying. Active resistance makes attackers less ofensive-
minded, less committed to destroying all those resisting them.
Fleeing opponents reduce the risk to their attackers, i.e., lowers the
cost of attacking. (This was especially true when infantry faced char-
iots.) With any scarce economic resource, the lower the cost, the
more will be demanded. The lower the cost of attacking your en-
emy, the more you will be willing to do it, other things being equal.
Nevertheless, defensive resistance is not the least dangerous deci-
sion. The least dangerous decision, apart from negative sanctions
imposed by your own forces, is to run away early while your com-
rades are still ighting. They keep the enemy at bay; meanwhile, you
distance yourself from danger.
Here are a soldier’s options. First, if the line breaks and runs, he
will be left standing nearly alone – a standing duck, so to speak. This
is the most dangerous option. We can call this the Uriah option.
“And it came to pass in the morning, that David wrote a letter to
Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter,
saying, Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire
ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die” (II Sam. 11:14–15).
The more courageous the soldier, the more likely that he will die if
his comrades lee. A brave man with cowards on his lanks will soon
be a dead man. Second, if he runs early, he reduces his risk of dying
during this encounter, whether or not his comrades run away later.
The sooner he runs, the better for him: those who stay in the ranks

5. Even the phrase “in line” suggests a military image: a line of troops that will not break
and run under ire.
542 DEUTERONOMY

longer before running are more likely to be cut down by the initial
wave of charging troops. The attackers will be busy slaughtering
those close at hand. Defense takes time; meanwhile, he keeps run-
ning. Third, he stands his ground until he sees his comrades run-
ning; then he tries to run faster than they do.
The least dangerous decision is to run early. The next-safe deci-
sion is to stand and ight, but only if all of your colleagues are stand-
ing and ighting. Your safety depends on the decisions of others in
the line, just as theirs depends on you. Your survival therefore de-
pends on your ability to time your light so that you run away just
slightly ahead of your colleagues. In a line that is about to break,
your survival depends on your speed: deciding when to run and
how fast you can run compared to your comrades. The next most
dangerous decision is to run late and slow. The most dangerous de-
cision is to stand and ight after your comrades have run. The cow-
ardly early runner is least at risk. The brave man who stands his
ground alone is most at risk. The others are in between.
The safety of the soldier therefore depends on the willingness of
his colleagues to stand and ight, or march forward and ight, with
him or without him. Some members of his unit predictably will die,
whether it wins or loses. Immediate self-interest motivates each man
to run away fast and early.6 The more fearful his comrades, the
sooner he had better start running.7 The slower he runs, the earlier
he must begin running.
There is no question about it: in an ofensive war, where your
nation is not being invaded, the safest thing to do is run toward
home. This is why the Mosaic law screened out those who were the
most likely troops to run when attacked. Fear is like a forest ire.
One way to contain forest ires before they begin is to cut down and
remove highly inlammable trees that might catch ire and serve as
conduits for the lames.

6. David Friedman, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (New York:
HarperBusiness, 1996), p. 7.
7. This is why esprit de corps is so important for an army. Men in arms must learn to trust
their colleagues, and their colleagues must be worthy of this trust. The braver your comrades
are, the safer you are. This is why an army must strive to eliminate the presence of cowards
and to reduce the level of cowardice in all the other members. This is why armies award
medals and activate iring squads.
 A Few Good Men 543

Cowardice is a military evil second only to treason – worse even

than disobeying a lawful order. Cowardice threatens every military
tactic. Senior commanders employ tactics that persuade most
troops to stand and ight most of the time. Military training instills
the fear of sufering shame by imposing negative sanctions based on
shame: the irst man to run is branded as an unjustiiable coward.
Military formations have been designed to keep men from running.8
If everyone runs, the collective guilt is spread around. So, it is initial
light which must be stopped, and the means of stopping it is to
threaten negative sanctions. The smaller the number of those who
run, the greater is the individual responsibility and individual pun-
ishment on those who run. “They won’t court martial us all if we run
as a unit,” thinks the soldier, “but they may court martial me if I run
and the others hold the line.” The more fearful the individual, the
more likely he will run. The more fearful he knows his comrades to
be, the sooner he will run. The sight of a man running away can set
of a chain reaction along the line. So, the most efective way to keep
men from running is to increase their courage rather than threaten
them with shame. That was why God required Israel’s commanders
to let fearful men go home early. They “ran” before the war began.

Israel’s Motivation
Israel’s army was to operate in terms of the expectation of the
positive sanction of victory rather than the negative sanction of de-
feat. Negative formal sanctions to overcome fear were less neces-
sary in Israel’s holy army because those who were afraid were asked
to leave before the war began. Tactically, this meant a smaller but a
more determined army. A commander knew the operational size of
his battleield forces before he went into battle. His forces expected
victory, so they were less willing to run. Those who walked into bat-
tle expected to walk home victorious. The familiar negative sanc-
tions to reduce the likelihood of light under ire were less necessary.
An opposing commander was probably unaware of this aspect
of Israel’s tactics. A frontal assault on the line normally reduces
most units’ will to resist. But Israel’s front lines would be diferent.
Any foreign commander launching an assault on Israel’s holy army

8. Ibid., p. 8.
544 DEUTERONOMY

in the expectation that normal defensive fear would work to his ad-
vantage would receive a lesson in defensive resistance. Israel’s
troops would be far less likely to break and run. The ofensive army
would sufer higher casualties than normal.
By ielding a smaller army of more determined troops, God
would gain the glory. This is why he told Gideon to thin the ranks
(Jud. 7:2). A smaller army was a better ighting force, man for man,
than any rival army because of the Mosaic policy of allowing fearful
men to go home before the battle began. The Israelite commander
could better calculate the responses of his troops because the
fear-ridden troops had gone home. This meant that the traditional
problem for military tactics – how to keep non-rugged individual-
ism from undermining the formation – was far less of a problem for
Israel.

Conclusion
The text makes it clear that the goal of sending the fearful man
home was to keep fear from spreading in the ranks: “Let him go and
return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his
heart” (v. 8). By removing the faint-hearted from the ranks before
the battle began, the ojcers were able to minimize the spread of
fear on the battleield. They thereby increased the conidence of
those under their authority. This increased the likelihood of victory
. . . for a few good men and the God they represented.
In a defensive war, it is far easier for the military to gain volun-
teers. Men know that their lives, their families, and their property
are at stake. They are more likely to preserve their circumstances by
joining the military than by ighting alone when the invaders arrive
in force. In defensive wars, conscription is not necessary. In
ofensive wars, it is not legal.
 46
LimitsTO
LIMITS to Empire
EMPIRE

When thou comest nigh unto a city to ight against it, then proclaim
peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open
unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be
tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace
with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And
when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite
every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little
ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof,
shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies,
which the LORD thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the
cities which are very far of from thee, which are not of the cities of these
nations. But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give
thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But
thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the
Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD
thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their
abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin
against the LORD your God (Deut. 20:10–18).

The theocentric framework of these laws of military conquest is

God’s disinheritance of His enemies. We know from the existence
of these laws of warfare that this process of covenantal disinheri-
tance takes place in history. This is not a process conined to the
trans-historical realm of the human spirit, although it does include
this realm.
This was a land law. These rules of warfare no longer apply be-
cause God’s exclusive residence in one holy nation no longer ap-
plies. The temple is no more. Neither are captives to be brought

545
546 DEUTERONOMY

back into the land as permanent slaves. The annulment of the jubi-
lee land laws by the ministry of Jesus (Luke 4:17–21) has annulled
1
the permanent slaves law (Lev. 25:44–46).

Disinheritance
This passage is about disinheritance. First, the disinheritance of
God’s enemies could be by military action. It could involve their an-
nihilation, as it was supposed to in Canaan, but this was a one-time
event, as this passage also indicates. Those cities outside Canaan
which made war against Israel would be dealt with diferently from
those cities inside Canaan which Israel made war against.
Second, disinheritance could be by subordination: a system of
tribute, which can be monetary but can also be cultural. We see this
in the modern West: a culture which once was confessionally Chris-
tian is now becoming increasingly pagan, yet it still sustains itself by
drawing upon the ethical and cultural capital of Christianity. (The
phrase “drawing down” might be more appropriate, as in drawing
down a bank account.) The West pays covenantal tribute to God
through its outward conformity to some of the laws of God. But as
time goes on, it pays less and less tribute as it substitutes man’s word
for God’s word. The problem it faces today is the same problem that
faced a tributary in the ancient Near East: the vassal city that broke
treaty with the regional monarch risked war, captivity, or annihila-
tion. When the king’s negative sanctions were inally imposed, they
could be devastating.
Third, covenantal disinheritance could be by regeneration: bring-
ing assets formerly devoted to other gods under the administration
of a covenant-keeper. Ownership of the property does not change,
but the legal status of the owner before God changes: from a disin-
herited son in Adam to an adopted son in Christ. This is the primary
means of disinheritance in the New Testament era. It is the covenantal
disinheritance of the old Adam and simultaneously the covenantal
inheritance of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. It is the reclaiming of
the world through the covenantal reclamation of the world’s lawful
owners. Whatever is under the legal authority of a regenerated indi-
vidual is thereby brought under the hierarchical administration of

1. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 31.
 Limits to Empire 547

Jesus Christ. This comprehensive reclamation project is what has been

assigned to Christians by the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20).2

The Whole Burnt Ofering and Disinheritance

The Israelites were told to show no mercy to the nations inside
Canaan’s boundaries (Deut. 7:16). These nations had practiced
such great evil that they had become abominations in the sight of
God. “For all that do these things are an abomination unto the
LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth
drive them out from before thee” (Deut. 18:12). The language of
Deuteronomy 20:10–18 indicates that every living thing inside the
boundaries of Canaan was to be killed: “thou shalt save alive noth-
ing that breatheth.” With respect to the irst city to fall, Jericho, this
law applied literally (Josh. 6:15–21). But it did not apply literally to
the other cities of Canaan. After the destruction of Jericho, the irst
city inside Canaan to be defeated, cattle became lawful spoils for the
Israelites. “And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto
Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof,
shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the
city behind it” (Josh. 8:2). The word “breatheth” did not apply to
Canaan’s cattle; it applied only to the human population. “And all
the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for
a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of
the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to
breathe” (Josh. 11:14).
Jericho was the representative example of God’s total wrath
against covenant-breakers who follow their religious presupposi-
tions to their ultimate conclusion: death.3 Jericho came under God’s
total ban: hormah.4 This was the equivalent of a whole burnt ofering:
almost all of it had to be consumed by ire. In the whole burnt
ofering, all of the beast was consumed on the altar (Lev. 1:9, 13), ex-
cept for the skin, which went to the ojciating priest (Lev. 7:8). Simi-
larly, all of Jericho was burnt except for the precious metals, which

2. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
3. “But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death”
(Prov. 8:36).
4. James B. Jordan, Judges: God’s War Against Humanism (Tyler, Texas: Geneva Ministries,
1985), pp. 10–11.
548 DEUTERONOMY

went to the tabernacle as irstfruits (Josh. 6:24). Nevertheless, be-

5

cause God wanted His people to reap the inheritance of the

Canaanites, He allowed them to coniscate the cattle and precious
goods of the other conquered Canaanite cities. This illustrated an-
other important biblical principle of inheritance: “A good man
leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of
the sinner is laid up for the just” (Prov. 13:22). Canaan’s capital, ex-
cept in Jericho, was part of Israel’s lawful inheritance. The
Canaanites had accumulated wealth; the Israelites were to inherit
all of it. This comprehensive inheritance was to become a model of
God’s total victory at the end of history. Their failure to exterminate
the Canaanites, placing some of them under tribute instead (Josh.
16:10; 17:13), eventually led to the apostasy of Israel and the Assyr-
ian and Babylonian captivities, just as Moses prophesied in this pas-
sage (vv. 17–18; cf. 7:1–5; 12:30–31).
The annihilation of every living soul in Canaan was mandatory.
“And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God
shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither
shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee”
(Deut. 7:16). This was a model of God’s inal judgment. But it was a
model in the same way that Jericho was a model: a one-time event.
Jericho was to be totally destroyed, including the animals; this was
not true of the other cities of Canaan. Similarly, the Canaanites were
to be totally annihilated; this was not true of residents of cities out-
side Canaan. In this sense, Jericho was to Canaan what Canaan was
to cities outside the land: a down payment (“earnest”) on God’s inal
judgment – inal disinheritance – at the end of time. This earnest
payment in history on the inal disinheritance is matched by the ear-
nest payment in history on the inal inheritance. This is surely the

5. Achan had secretly appropriated some precious goods in Jericho. For this, he and his
family were executed. This was also the equivalent of a whole burnt ofering. Everything
under his jurisdiction burned at God’s command (Josh. 7:15). This included even the precious
metals that would otherwise have gone to the tabernacle (v. 24). The men were killed by
stoning; then their remains were burned (v. 25). This points to the execution as a whole burnt
ofering: the animal had to be slain before it was placed on the altar. The remains of Jericho
were a whole burnt ofering; Achan had covenanted with Jericho by preserving the remnants
of Jericho’s capital. On the execution of Achan, see Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The
Economics of Leviticus (computer edition; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1994), Appendix A: “Sacrilege and Sanctions.”
 Limits to Empire 549

6
case in spiritual afairs. Debates over eschatology are debates over
the extent to which these earnest payments in history are also cul-
tural and civilizational, and whether they image the inal judgment,
i.e., to what extent history is an earnest on eternity.7

Mosaic Law vs. Theocratic Empire

Those living outside the land were under diferent Mosaic rules
of warfare. Their judgment in history would not have to be inal.
The Israelites had to ofer a peace treaty to any foreign city prior to
laying siege to it (v. 10). The theocentric principle here was that God
ofers a peace treaty to all men who are not yet formally under His
authority. If men refuse to submit while this grace period is in force,
they are doomed. This period of grace is history.
Once Israel began its siege, history had run out for that city. It
would no longer be able to extend the dominion of its gods. The
gods of that city were placed under preliminary judgment by the
siege. After the defeat, the gods of that city were buried. Some of the
women and children would survive, but the city, its gods, and its cul-
ture would not. Once the siege began, God’s handwriting was
iguratively on the city’s walls: it had been weighed in the balance
and found wanting (Dan. 5:27). Only if Israel was forced to call of
the siege was there any short-term hope for that city. If Israel won,
the city died. Once the siege began, it was not to be called of until
the city was defeated. There might be temporary cease-ire agree-
ments because of Israel’s temporary weakness, but once the treaty
of tribute was rejected by a city, that city was doomed, according to
God’s rules of warfare. Once the siege began, there could be no par-
tial surrender, i.e., survival through paying tribute.8

6. “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all
things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: In whom also
we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who
worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his
glory, who irst trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of
truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with
that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of
the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:10–14; emphasis added).
7. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990).
8. Biblically, God began His inal siege of Satan’s city of man at Calvary. The church now
lays siege to the city of man in history, for the latter represents the gates of hell. “And I say also
550 DEUTERONOMY

Conditional mercy was initially ofered to all those inside the

walls if they surrendered before the siege began. The men could
avoid a death sentence by surrendering, but there was a condition:
tribute (v. 11). This is analogous to the restitution penalty owed by a
thief. A lying thief who confesses before the trial begins pays a 20
percent penalty to the victim (Lev. 6:5); if he waits until after it be-
gins, he pays double (Ex. 22:4).9 Prior confession lowers the costs of
civil justice; similarly, prior surrender lowers the cost of conlict on
both sides of the city’s walls, especially for the losing army.
This surrender by the men would bring all those under their au-
thority under the same covenant of surrender. The tributary peace
treaty would henceforth apply to all those inside the gates of the
city. This treaty secured the survival of the foreign city’s culture, for
residents were not required to confess faith in God as a condition of
the treaty. The Old Covenant principle of circumcision was that ev-
ery male under the covenantal, household authority of an Israelite
had to be circumcised (Gen. 17:12–13). Under the tributary treaty,
foreign males did not have to be circumcised; this indicates that
their defeat as a city-state did not place them under Abrahamic
covenantal authority. They would merely pay tribute to Israel’s civil
government,10 as historically defeated sons of Adam, but they would
not pay a tithe to Israel’s priests.
There is no evidence from Scripture that such foreign military
campaigns were recommended by the prophets. They were legal
when governed by Mosaic law, but they were not to become high-

unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). The imagery of hell is that of a city under siege
whose walls cannot indeinitely hold of the attackers. Because of the failure of the church
constantly to maintain this siege, the city of man is occasionally ofered temporary cease-ires.
But once begun, Christianity’s siege against the city of man can never be called of. If it is
incompletely sustained because of the Christians’ sin and weakness, it will later be
strengthened. There is now no tributary peace treaty possible for the city of man, which
refused to surrender while Christ walked the earth. The city of man will never be ofered
another opportunity to surrender and survive through paying tribute. Only one thing can
bring relief: surrender through conversion, which is another way to destroy the city of man.
The city’s inal annihilation takes place after the inal judgment (Rev. 20:14–15). Sin retards
the ability of the church to complete the operation in history. Nevertheless, the city of man
will be visibly subdued in the inal days, only to launch one inal counter-attack (Rev. 20:7–9).
Like Germany’s Battle of the Bulge in late 1944, this counter-attack will fail.
9. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 624–29.
10. Solomon collected tribute as tax money (I Ki. 4:6; 5:13–15).
 Limits to Empire 551

priority activities in the life of Israel. The most famous case of a trib-
utary nation to Israel was Moab, which revolted against Israel after
Ahab died. But Ahab had been more of a foreign king than an Isra-
elite king, with his priests of rival gods. His son Jehoram was evil, al-
though he destroyed his father’s image of Baal (II Ki. 3:2). When
Moab revolted against him, Jehoram called the king of Judah to
help him subdue Moab. When the king of Judah asked Elisha to
bless the campaign, Elisha said it was only for Judah’s sake that he
would do so (v. 14). The campaign was initially successful, but when
the king of Moab sacriiced his oldest son as a burnt ofering on the
wall of the city, this created indignation against Israel within the
ranks of the alliance. The invading army broke up and went home
(v. 27).

Survival Through Circumcision

This raises a major question regarding the siege: Could the men
of a besieged city escape the inal sanction of death by ajrming the
covenant and becoming circumcised? If they could, this raises the
question regarding the creation of a theocratic empire through mili-
tary expansion. I argue that a foreign city, once placed under siege,
could surrender covenantally and thereby escape annihilation. The
Mosaic law does not say this explicitly, but it does not authorize the
destruction of an Israelite city unless that city had begun to worship
foreign gods (Deut. 13:12–15). How could Israel lawfully annihilate
a city of circumcised men who had thereby publicly ajrmed their
covenantal allegiance to God? By mass circumcision, the city would
have been incorporated into God’s covenant. On what legal basis
could the siege be continued? Thus, I see no alternative but to con-
clude that Israel could have increased its borders through military
action, or at least through defensive military action: chasing an in-
vading army all the way home and then laying siege to its cities.
There was a way of escape for a besieged city: surrender to the God
of Israel through circumcision. Tithes and oferings to God’s temple
would then be substituted for the original ofer of peace: tribute to
Israel’s civil government. But the city would not be what it had
been. The old city, like the old Adam, would have been destroyed.
Covenantal absorption into Israel was another way of destroying a
foreign city’s gods and culture.
Yet God did not tell Israel to extend His covenantal reign by
means of war across boundaries, once Canaan had been conquered.
552 DEUTERONOMY

The possibility existed that some cities might surrender through

conversion, but the Mosaic law did not encourage this. In fact, it dis-
couraged this. Israel faced three major barriers to the creation of a
theocratic empire. The irst was judicial: a foreign city could stop the
creation of such an empire merely by surrendering before the siege
began. The second was cultural: if it failed to surrender on these
terms, after its defeat it would no longer survive as a city. The
women and children who survived the siege were then brought un-
der the authority of Israel’s households (v. 14). In both cases, the city
avoided becoming part of a theocratic empire. The third barrier was
economic: to engage in a siege, Israelites had to accept the economic
burden of the future victory: supporting large numbers of captive
women and children. Furthermore, their wives would have to be
willing to go along with this: new wives, new adopted children, new
concubines, all of whom would dilute the inheritance of their own
children. Israel was polygamous; a foreign war bride, conspicuous
for her beauty (Deut. 21:11), would not have been welcomed with
open arms by the wife back home. Built into Israel’s social system
was an unojcial veto of foreign wars. Furthermore, the economies
and social systems of the ancient Near East did not support wide-
spread slavery.11 Without Israel’s permanent occupation of foreign
cities, where the real estate could be used to fund the women and
children taken captive, Israel could not aford to engage in foreign
military conquests. The requirement that adult Israelite males at-
tend all three annual feasts placed geographical limits on the extent
of the conquest. The farther away a conquered city was from Jerusa-
lem, the more expensive the trips to the annual feasts would be for
its Israelite residents.
The issue of geography posed a major problem for the Mosaic
law. The festival laws would have to be reworked if the theocratic
kingdom expanded; otherwise, theocratic expansion would have
been impossible. How could Jews residing in a distant city have at-
tended the festivals every year? They couldn’t. The larger the theo-
cratic empire grew, the more impossible it would have been for all
of the faithful to have walked to Jerusalem, let alone to have lodged
there for a week. It seems likely that sometime after the Babylonian

11. Isaac Mendelsohn, Slavery In the Ancient Near East (New York: Oxford University Press,
1949), p. 119.
 Limits to Empire 553

captivity, from which comparatively few Jews returned to Israel, the

synagogue system replaced annual attendance at Passover. The
Mosaic law’s festival requirements no longer were enforced rigor-
ously on faithful men as a condition of covenantal faithfulness.
There was no longer a holy army in Israel; the nation was under the
administration of foreign pluralistic empires.
I have argued in my commentary on Numbers that missionary
activity always superseded the requirement that every Israelite male
appear at Passover annually, let alone the other two annual feasts.
Righteousness was more important than ritual precision in Mosaic
Israel (II Chron. 30:18–20).12 Consider Paul’s absence from the
feasts. He stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching in the
synagogue (Acts 18:8–11). The author of Acts records that “we
sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and
came unto them to Troas in ive days; where we abode seven days”
(Acts 20:6). They had not been in Jerusalem for the Passover. They
did not make it back to Jerusalem in time for the second Passover
celebration for those who had been on journeys (Num. 9:11). Paul
did try to get back to Jerusalem by Pentecost (Acts 20:16). Neverthe-
less, in front of the Jewish assembly, Paul announced: “Men and
brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this
day” (Acts 23:1). No one called his assertion a lie on the basis of his
failure to attend Passover that year.

Public Theology
Israel’s theology was public as no other ancient religion’s theol-
ogy ever was. Foreign residents living inside Israel were invited to
go to a central city every seventh year and hear the reading of the
law (Deut. 31:10–12). Foreigners would have been in contact with
their home cities, especially if they were involved in trade inside Is-
rael. There would have been widespread international dissemina-
tion of knowledge regarding Israel’s legal order. Any foreign city
that was unwise enough to goad Israel into an attack would have
known in advance about Israel’s rules of siege warfare. Foreign rul-
ers would have known two things: 1) it was suicide not to surrender

12. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1997), p. 122.
554 DEUTERONOMY

before a siege began; 2) it was very expensive for Israel to lay a

siege, both for time lost and the costs of assimilating the captives.
This system of constrained warfare would have created incen-
tives for foreign rulers to ind ways other than military invasion to
get what they wanted out of Israel’s rulers. Israel would be unlikely
to attack a foreign city without extreme provocation, such as an in-
vasion of Israel’s territory. This fact would have tended to place a
protective barrier around Israel’s borders in times of its military
strength, yet at the same time, Israel’s military strength would not
have become a major threat to foreign nations. Israel was under re-
strictions – military, marital, economic, and geographical-ritual –
that would keep it a defensive power only. This meant that Israel’s
military strength would have promoted foreign trade rather than
foreign wars. Israel would have been too dangerous to invade mili-
tarily, yet too restricted by the Mosaic law to invade on its own ini-
tiative. Israel was the original incarnation of President Theodore
Roosevelt’s famous rule of American foreign policy: “Speak softly
and carry a big stick.”13
This meant that in times when Israel was mighty, these laws re-
duced the likelihood that Israel would engage in a systematic pro-
gram of territorial conquest. It was too dijcult for Israel to retain
captured territory. Israelites were required to keep separate from
gentiles. Their food laws and other laws of ritual cleanliness forced
this separation. Foreign cities were not places where Israelites who
kept the Mosaic law would normally want to dwell. They might re-
tain their separate identity as a captive people who were allowed to
live under their own rules and leaders in ghettos, which most of
them did from the Babylonian captivity until the nineteenth cen-
tury, but they could not easily rule in foreign cities without breaking
the Mosaic holiness laws, let alone the far more rigorous rabbinic
holiness laws. Interaction with local gentiles was too restricted. So,
their empire, if any, would have to be based on a system of tribute,
not local law enforcement by resident Israelites. It would have been
an empire of trade and taxes. Such far-lung empires are dijcult to
maintain without a strong military presence, or the threat of military

13. His aggressive foreign policy belied his words: America spoke loudly under his
administration (1901–1909).
 Limits to Empire 555

14
reprisals, in the captive lands. This kind of foreign military pres-
ence was made dijcult by the festival laws. It took their captivity
outside the land to restructure the laws of the festivals. It took life in
a foreign ghetto and submission to the civil laws of other gods. This
restructuring was not the product of an Israelite empire; it was the
product of non-Israelite empires.
A city in the ancient Near East, with its local gods, could be-
come an empire only through the pluralism of idols. Israel alone
could survive as a nation apart from a homeland without succumb-
ing to pluralism, for Israel’s God claimed universality and exclusiv-
ity. Such a claim negated the possibility of a common pantheon of
idols. But Israel could not become an empire because of the Mosaic
laws of ritual separation; it could at most survive as a ghetto subcul-
ture in foreign lands.15

Women and Children

The siege law required that women and children be spared after
the fall of the foreign city. All of the men were to be killed. There
could be no mercy for male heads of household. Their execution
would have automatically placed the surviving women and children
under the Mosaic covenant. There was no way for widows and or-
phans to build a society. The children needed protection. Their
mothers were in no position to provide this.16 The law did not allow
defenseless survivors to be left behind by the Israelite army, to fend
for themselves or die.

14. The British Empire was the greatest exception to this rule in the history of man. But if
every British ojcial had been forced to return to London every year to attend the equivalent
of Passover, it is highly unlikely that the British Empire would have survived long.
15. Only in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States did Jews at last escape life in
the ghetto, entering into a world of Protestant religious pluralism, two centuries after
Protestantism had faded as a theocratic ideal. In this world, few men spoke authoritatively in
civil afairs in the name of a supernatural god, and those few who did, such as Holland’s
Abraham Kuyper, asked only for equal access for confessional Christians to State subsidies
and privileges, such as tuition-free, State-certiied education. The gods of modernism have
reigned nearly supreme in this culture, and Judaism went liberal and humanistic with
unprecedented speed. By the mid-twentieth century, Reform Judaism could accurately be
described as “Unitarianism, but with better business connections.”
16. This is why widows, orphans, and strangers were the three groups repeatedly identiied
in the Mosaic law as deserving of legal protection and special consideration.
556 DEUTERONOMY

The text says that all the males were to be slain. Did this mean
only the adults? Or were male children slain, too? Consider Israel’s
defeat of the Midianites, which took place outside Canaan. “And
Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold,
these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam,
to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there
was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore
kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that
hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children,
that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for your-
selves” (Num. 31:15–18). There is no textual reason to believe that
this Deuteronomic law exempted boys. There would not be a re-
sentful group of adult foreign males a generation later, all seeking
revenge for the deaths of their fathers.
The outcome of the siege had disinherited that society. Without
any surviving male leadership, there could be no transfer of
covenantal civil authority to the next generation. The war had de-
stroyed generational continuity. Thus, all of the captives had to be
integrated into Israel. This meant either adoption, including mar-
riage, or enslavement on a massive scale. Deuteronomy 21:10–14
sets forth the laws of marital adoption for foreign military widows.
Those who became permanent slaves (Lev. 25:44–46) and those
who became wives were brought under the household authority of
their new husbands. In lieu of being circumcised, the prospective
wives irst had to shave their heads (Deut. 21:12). This was a sign of
their enforced transfer of authority from their old households to
new ones. It marked a covenantal transformation. This transforma-
tion was not necessarily confessional; it was geographical and insti-
tutional. The woman was removed from her surroundings and taken
back to Israel (v. 12), where she was to mourn her father (dead) and
mother (dead or taken captive) – but not her late husband – for a
month (v. 13). Her former gods had perished in the total defeat of her
city and the death of her husband and father. These gods had no juris-
diction apart from the city that had been built in their name.
By carrying women and children back to Israel, the warriors ei-
ther enslaved or adopted the survivors. In both instances, the survi-
vors came under the jurisdiction of an Israelite household. The
survivors would henceforth live under a hierarchy that confessed
the God of Moses. There was no religious pluralism allowed in any
Israelite household (Deut. 13:6–11). Thus, warfare was a form of
 Limits to Empire 557

evangelism through household subordination. The victorious war-

riors had no choice in this matter. They were not allowed to kill de-
fenseless women and children. To leave them behind to starve in a
city without husbands would have been a form of impersonal exe-
cution. Such a deserted city would have become a target for inva-
sion, rape, and enslavement to other cities’ gods. This was not
allowed. If women and children were to be enslaved, the God of the
Bible would be the master of their new households. Thus, counting
the costs of warfare meant counting the costs of victory.

Immigration and Assimilation

The gods of the fallen city had been deinitively disinherited,
but traces of their cultural inluence would survive in the captives’
outlook and practices. Foreign war brides and older children would
bring memories and habits formed under the covenantal adminis-
tration of idols. Many aspects of this covenantal legacy would have
to be modiied or completely overcome. This would not be an over-
night transformation.
The primary means of breaking these habits was language. Im-
migrants had to learn a new tongue. Cultures are maintained and
developed through language. The inal death of a culture occurs
only when no one is left who speaks its language and confesses its
doctrines. The immigrant must think in new patterns and catego-
ries. He must learn a new grammar and vocabulary. The subtle
transformation of a person’s thought takes place through language.
The immigrant speaks with an accent; young children raised in a
new society do not. The mark of their assimilation is their lack of an
accent. But accents are more than inlections of the tongue; they are
ways of thinking and acting. The goal of assimilation was to remove
every trace of foreign accents in the cultural-confessional sense. In
this sense, assimilation meant conversion.
Discipline was the second major area or transformation. This
would have manifested itself most continually in work. The immi-
grant’s daily schedules would have changed, although in an agricul-
tural economy with a low division of labor, most of life’s basic tasks
would have been familiar across national borders. There would be
diferent ways of getting things done, but the same sorts of things
would have to get done as had to get done in the old country. By
working diferently, people adapt to new environments. The cause-
and-efect pattern of work – planting and reaping – is a major form
558 DEUTERONOMY

of discipline, to which are added the institutional carrot and stick.

The institutional sanctions of work – “We do it this way!” – would
have been the major area of discipline for most people. The longer
the work day, the more disciplined the environment.
The third area of transformation was dietary. The newcomers
would be forced to change the eating habits of a lifetime – a disconti-
nuity so great that few people can ever achieve it voluntarily, as evi-
denced by myriads of diet plans that produce only handfuls of
permanently thin people in the West. The newcomers’ diets would
remind them daily that they were in a new land and living a new
way of life. The clean-unclean distinctions in Israel would have
forced the newcomers to regard some of their familiar delicacies as
abominations – abominations that testiied to theological and moral
abominations in the world they had left behind. Their former way
of life could not be manifested at mealtime. Most of their former
foods would have been present in Israel, but not the meat-based
specialties. The taste of food is governed by preparation. Men ex-
press their cultures through taste. Things would never taste the same
again. Like the sense of smell, we cannot remember what things
taste like until we actually place them in our mouths. New tastes, es-
pecially for children, would daily block out old memories.
Celebration and liturgy were also important. Play and formal
worship are not full-time endeavors. They are scheduled for certain
special times. They mark a society.17 But in an agricultural society,
the law and its sanctions are more readily assimilated through work
than through play or liturgy.
The subtle nuances of a culture relect mental habits and out-
looks that are identiiable. Work, eating, celebration, and formal
worship are the primary activities of life, especially in an economy
with a low division of labor. The newcomers would have to learn a
new language, learn to enjoy new foods, learn new songs, and learn
new confessions and laws. Language and work – word and deed –
would have encompassed most of the daily life of the immigrant. It
was here that the assimilation process would have been most com-
prehensive and rapid.

17. Modern Western society is so heavily entertainment-oriented and so minimally

liturgical that entertainment has virtually replaced liturgy in the lives of millions of people.
Not without cause is the television set referred to as the one-eyed god.
 Limits to Empire 559

Evangelism After the Captivity

The development of a theocratic empire was virtually impossi-
ble for Israel under the Mosaic law. The annual festivals would have
limited the geographical scope of the empire. The festivals made
impossible the full-time occupation of distant foreign cities. Only af-
ter the return from Babylon, when Israel no longer was an armed
holy army, could dispersion of the Israelite population take place.
Evangelism by word and deed was to replace evangelism by post-
war enslavement.
The fact that attendance at the annual festivals was no longer en-
forced by excommunication after the return from Babylon is prima
facie evidence that the required festivals had something to do with
Israel as a holy army. Annual attendance was no longer enforced
because it was no longer required. This indicates that the mandatory
nature of the festivals was God’s deliberate restraint on the creation of an
empire. When that threat disappeared in history, so did the require-
ment of attendance at each of the festivals. Israel could then evange-
lize by word and deed. Evangelism was clearly more important than
the original Mosaic requirement of annual attendance. Until Israel
sheathed its sword, it could not evangelize the world. This judicial alter-
ation has been formalized by the New Covenant: “And, behold,
one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew
his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote of his
ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place:
for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”
(Matt. 26:51–52).
The laws mandating the annual festivals were suspended during
the Babylonian captivity and then permanently modiied after the
partial return of the remnant of Israel to the land. We do not know
what the new laws of the festivals were, but we know that the rigor-
ous Mosaic festival laws were no longer enforced. This lack of
enforcement made possible evangelism through the Jews’ resettle-
ment. The religious pluralism of the pagan empires made possible
Israel’s evangelization of gentiles, for it opened the gates of every
city to citizens of every other city. To take advantage of this oppor-
tunity, God silently accepted the priesthood’s revocation of manda-
tory attendance at each annual feast. He did not bring negative
sanctions against either the priests or the nation based on individu-
als’ non-attendance at some of the festivals.
560 DEUTERONOMY

After the return from Babylon, Israel’s evangelism – proselytiz-

ing – involved the establishment of local synagogues throughout the
cities of the successive empires. There was no longer any holy army
in Israel; therefore, its troops would no longer march to Jerusalem
three times a year. With no army, there was no way for Jews to
besiege a city. Therefore, the laws of the siege treaty were silently
annulled. Instead, Jews invaded foreign cities through trade, reloca-
tion, and synagogue-building. They penetrated enemy strongholds
by means of the new pluralism of the empires: Babylonian,
Medo-Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman. Cities would henceforth be
penetrated by walking through the gates. The saving message of the
God of Abraham could be preached openly. With economic foot-
holds inside foreign cities, there was no longer any need to threaten
annihilation of a foreign city’s army should the city not surrender in
advance of the siege by agreeing to pay tribute. Israel no longer had
either the military power or the ecclesiastical need to issue such a
threat. Evangelism by trade, preaching, and synagogue-building re-
placed evangelism by siege, enslavement, and war-bride adoption.
The New Testament church inherited these post-Babylonian tech-
niques of evangelism. The Mosaic laws authorizing the siege treaty
had long since been annulled by the Babylonian captivity and its af-
termath. The old laws were not formally annulled because God
ceased to add to His written word under the Old Covenant. But ac-
cepted practices in Jesus’ day indicate the extent of the changes.18

Conclusion
A foreign war was to be a rare occurrence in the life of Mosaic
Israel. The costs of such warfare, which included the costs of vic-
tory, were high. The beneits, apart from tribute, were low. Warfare
could be Israel’s means of evangelizing the survivors of a siege, but
this would not have included males. It was only partial evangelism.
The foreign war was a form of inheritance/disinheritance. The city
itself would have to be destroyed unless left intact for other nations
to inherit, since the festival laws made occupation by Israel unlikely.
The wives and children of the disinherited city would become part
of the inheritance of Israel. But this living inheritance had to be

18. A major one: the absence of family members at the Last Supper.
 Limits to Empire 561

capitalized to make it productive: by providing training, food, shel-

ter, and even adoption through marriage. There were high costs for
warrior families in the assimilation process. Slavery was not a wide-
spread institution in the ancient Near East, unlike classical Greece
and Rome.
The creation of pluralistic pagan empires made possible the
peaceful extension of God’s kingdom in history. Their pluralism
gave equal access to all submissive religions. In these covenantal
conlicts among competing religions, biblical religion triumphed.
The cacophony of competing religious and philosophical claims,
coupled with the breakdown of classical ethics and philosophy,
eventually undermined the moral confession of the Roman empire,
and in so doing, undermined the civil authority of Rome.19 Christian
civilization, with its non-pluralistic confession, replaced Rome’s
pluralism in the West. A new empire came into existence in the
fourth century and lasted for a thousand years until the Renais-
sance’s revival of classical religion’s occultism, art, and philosophy,
followed by the Enlightenment’s revival of religious pluralism.
This revival of paganism’s religious pluralism represents a re-
vival of the civil religion of the Near Eastern and European empires:
“all nations under god” – the god of the centralized bureaucratic
State. Its promised new world order challenges Christ’s new world
order. It cannot succeed: “And in the days of these kings shall the
God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed:
and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break
in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for
ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the
mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the
brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made
known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream
is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure” (Dan. 2:44–45).
If a besieged city visibly converted to God through circumci-
sion, would its inhabitants then have been required to march to the
festivals? Only if its adult males became citizens of Israel, meaning
that they became eligible to join Israel’s holy army. They could not
become eligible to serve as judges if they did not make these annual

19. Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action
from Augustus to Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, [1944] 1957).
562 DEUTERONOMY

marches. If proselytes who lived outside the land were not part of Is-
rael’s holy army, then they were not required to attend the annual
feasts. This was the case of Jews living outside the land during and
after the captivity. This meant that Israel could not create an empire
through military action. Cities outside the land that converted to
faith in the God of Abraham did not thereby become a part of Is-
rael’s army or of Israel’s civil structure. They could not subse-
quently march against other cities and thereby pull national Israel
into a conlict far from its original borders. These proselyte cities
would pay their tithes to the Levites, but they could not legally ex-
tend Israel’s authority beyond the boundaries of the land which
God had promised Abraham. They could extend God’s authority,
but not national Israel’s. The lure of empire had to be resisted, and
the great disincentive was the distance from the ojcial festival city.
 47
Fruit Trees as Covenantal
FRUIT TREES AS Testimonies
COVENANTAL TESTIMONIES

When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it
to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against
them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for
the tree of the ield is man’s life) to employ them in the siege: Only the trees
which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and
cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that
maketh war with thee, until it be subdued (Deut. 20:19–20).

The theocentric principle undergirding this law is the dominion

covenant (Gen. 1:26–28).1 Man has been placed over nature by God
to exercise dominion in God’s name, on God’s behalf, and in terms
of God’s Bible-revealed law. In this hierarchical arrangement, God
is sovereign as the absolute owner of the creation. He is the owner
because He is the creator. Man serves God as a steward. He is a me-
diator: he represents God to the creation; he also represents the cre-
ation to God. Neither man nor the creation is autonomous. Both are
under God’s law. Both are judged in terms of God’s law (Gen. 3).
This law applied to the people of the land when they were oper-
ating outside the land. This creates a problem of interpretation. Was
this law bounded by the Mosaic Covenant? Yes. Does it still apply
today? Not strategically. Armies are not required by God to main-
tain a siege until the enemy surrenders. Under the Mosaic Cove-
nant, they were. “And if it will make no peace with thee, but will

1. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987).

563
564 DEUTERONOMY

make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the
LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite ev-
ery male thereof with the edge of the sword” (Deut. 20:12–13). Also,
not tactically: enemy nations no longer can hide inside walled cities.
There are no more walled cities. Gunpowder technology has re-
moved them.
But there is one aspect of this law that does still hold: the role of
fruit-bearing trees in the dominion covenant.

The Dominion Covenant

There is a hierarchy in the dominion covenant: God > man >
nature. In this hierarchy, man serves God, while nature serves man.
God is not dependent on either man or nature. Man is dependent
on both God and nature. Man relects God as a unique creature who
is made in God’s image. He rules over nature because he is diferent
from nature: made in God’s image. But he is also a creature. He is
part of an interdependent creation. He is required by God to ac-
knowledge his two-way dependence and his two-way responsibil-
ity: upward and downward.
This law of warfare reminded man that fruit-bearing trees sus-
tain man’s life. For this reason, they must not be used to impose
man’s death. Man relies on fruit-bearing trees to sustain his life and
make his life more pleasant; they, in turn, are heavily dependent on
man for their cultivation. They can exist apart from man in some en-
vironments, but man’s care makes them lourish. There is mutual in-
terdependence between man and fruit-bearing trees.
This law makes it clear that holy warfare is not just a means of
inlicting death and destruction. It is a means of extending life. Holy
warfare is not destruction for destruction’s sake. It is destruction for
God’s sake. There is an element of disinheritance in war, but it is al-
ways to be ofset by an element of inheritance. Military sanctions
are not exclusively negative; they must also be positive. If this is not
the case, then the military tactics employed are illegitimate. They
testify to illegitimate goals.

Laying Siege
Once begun, the siege of a foreign city was supposed to be com-
pleted. “Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for
meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build
 Fruit Trees as Covenantal Testimonies 565

bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be sub-
dued.” When a city refused to covenant with God by surrendering
to Israel’s holy army, it was doomed unless it covenanted with God
by surrendering to Israel’s holy priesthood. Unless the men surren-
dered to God through mass circumcision, all of them would be exe-
cuted after their defense ended (Deut. 20:13). Once they had been
placed under the formal negative sanctions of God, the men of a be-
sieged city were not to be allowed to escape this judgment apart
from their complete covenantal surrender. Partial surrender was no
longer an option.
This meant that the Israelite army had no choice: it had to main-
tain the siege until the city fell. This placed a great deal of pressure
on the army’s commander to ind techniques to break through the
city’s defenses. He might be tempted to cut down all of the trees in
the region to use as siege implements. Trees could be used as
irewood. They could also be used as siege implements in four ways:
as battering rams (including siege towers), as scraping implements
to undermine the walls from tunnels dug beneath the walls, as tun-
nel supports, and to build ladders to scale the walls. Military histo-
rian Horst de la Croix writes that “the basic siege methods –
battering, sapping, mining, scaling – . . . will remain the same
throughout the ages.”2 The longer the siege went on, the more de-
pleted the countryside would become, and the more tempting the
surviving fruit-bearing trees would become.
The language of the text is clear: the reason why the fruit-
bearing trees were protected was that man’s life is maintained by
these trees. These trees would provide food for Israel’s troops. This
pointed to the possibility that the siege might last for several sea-
sons. The commander was to acknowledge that he and his men
might be there a long time. They were allowed to eat from these
trees. A commander who was conducting a winter campaign knew
that his army might still be there in spring and summer. Israel’s
army was to acknowledge that the extension of God’s kingdom
sometimes takes longer than covenant-keepers would prefer. The
siege might take years. The fruit trees would provide a blessing in
the time of the harvest. It would be short-sighted to cut them down.

2. Horst de la Croix, Military Considerations in City Planning: Fortiications (New York:

George Braziller, 1972), p. 18.
566 DEUTERONOMY

It would contribute to a short-run mentality: “If we can’t starve these

people out in one season or less, it will be time to go home.” God
was telling the army that they had to stay there and wait until that
city surrendered.
The fruit trees would sometimes have been visible from the
walls of the city. The defenders watching on the walls could report
back to their ojcers that the Israelites still had not cut down the fruit
trees. This information would have undermined conidence in the
leaders of the city. The Israelites were not intending to go home
soon. They were prepared to sit and wait for as long as it took to de-
feat the city. This meant that the Israelites were determined to win.
They were willing to invest whatever amount of time it would take
to starve out the city. Meanwhile, they would feast on the fruit of the
ield.

The Imagery of the Siege

The trees were outside the boundaries of the city’s wall. This
wall kept the residents of the city from feasting on the trees that pro-
vided life. In relation to the trees, the city’s wall was a defensive
boundary for the Israelite army. Israel used swords to keep the
deiant residents of the city away from the fruit trees that had once
sustained them and delighted them. Because the city had not sur-
rendered to Israel when the peace treaty was ofered, the men of
that city would never again taste the fruit of those trees. The symbol-
ism is obvious: this was analogous to the iery sword that kept men
away from the tree of life in the garden.
Yet the tree of life will again grow in the midst of a garden: the
city-garden of the new heaven and new earth. “In the midst of the
street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life,
which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every
month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations”
(Rev. 22:2). The barrier between covenant-keepers and cove-
nant-breakers will have become absolute. “And beside all this, be-
tween us and you there is a great gulf ixed: so that they which
would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us,
that would come from thence” (Luke 16:26). The question facing
covenant-breaking man is this: Can he somehow cross the barrier
to gain access to the tree of life? That was the question facing the
men of the besieged city. The answer was yes, but only through
covenantal conformity to God through circumcision. They could
 Fruit Trees as Covenantal Testimonies 567

bring the city under God’s protection. They could become Israel-
ites: adopted sons. There was no other way that they would ever
again feast on the fruit of the trees that lay outside the walls if Israel
obeyed God’s laws of warfare.
The imagery here was not of a circumscribed garden separated
from the world by a wall. On the contrary, the imagery was a walled
enclosure in which death was sure, surrounded by a world in which
fruit was sweet. The kingdom of God lay outside the walls of the
city; it was defended by the army of God. The kingdom of cove-
nant-breaking man was surrounded. It was under siege. It was
strictly defensive. Life lay beyond the walls of the city. The men en-
closed by those walls could not gain access to life. The walls that
temporarily sustained them from death by the sword also kept them
away from the trees of life. Their enemies would feast on the fruit
while they, determined not to surrender on terms acceptable to
God, would not again taste such fruit. Their enemies would inherit.

Hope in the Future

Trees that were visible from the walls testiied to those inside the
walls that there was hope available, but not on their covenantal
terms. There was one way of surrender. The men could circumcise
themselves and their sons. They would then throw open the gates of
the city to the holy army. They would plead immunity through
self-inlicted covenantal wounds. There was risk, of course. The
Shechemites had done this, and they had been slaughtered by two
sons of Israel (Gen. 34:25). But this had been a great evil for which
Jacob was greatly upset. “And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye
have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the
land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in
number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay
me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house” (v. 30).
Could those inside the boundary provided by the wall trust the
Israelites not to take advantage of them? Would Israel obey God’s
law? There was a visible test of Israel’s commitment to God’s law:
fruit trees. If the trees were still standing, then Israel was still honor-
ing God’s law. This meant two things: 1) the army of God was dug in
for the long haul; 2) there was still hope for the city. Mass circumci-
sion could still gain mercy from the invaders. But the men of the city
would have to undergo pain. They would also have to surrender:
568 DEUTERONOMY

open gates. They could no longer safely put their trust in walls and
gates.
On the other hand, if the fruit trees had been cut down, there
was hope of survival in terms of the city’s old covenant. This Israel-
ite army was visibly a short-term army. It had not honored God’s
law. It was willing to consume the trees that would feed it in due sea-
son. Here was a reason for those inside the walls to continue their re-
sistance. Why surrender to an army that was there only for the short
haul? Resistance ofered hope. Surrendering to such an army would
be foolish. Such an army was ruthless with life-giving trees; it would
probably be ruthless with defenders. Every man inside the city
would die. Better to resist to the last man. Better to threaten unac-
ceptable losses for an army that was not there for the long haul, one
that was not committed to victory in terms of God’s law.
Which would it be: Surrender to God or continued resistance?
Which was the wiser course of action? Circumcision might bring
permanent peace or it might bring a slaughter. Resistance might
bring a military slaughter or it might bring terms of surrender for
tribute’s sake, the way that some of the Canaanites survived Israel’s
program of genocide (Josh. 16:10; 17:13). Fruit-bearing trees pro-
vided evidence. If they were still standing, this army was serious
about God’s law. If they had been cut down, this army was not seri-
ous about obeying God. It would then be too risky to surrender by
mass circumcision. It might be safer to resist longer, hoping for
terms of peace based on tribute.

Inheritance and Foreign Policy

By allowing the fruit-bearing trees to survive, the army was
maintaining the value of the land. For land located close to Israel’s
borders, this decision would have capitalized Israel’s inheritance. It
left intact an agricultural inheritance. But for land located far from
Israel, the income stream provided by the trees could not be capital-
ized by Israel. The trees were too far from Jerusalem. The journey to
the festivals would be too long. The army dared not annex the city
to Israel.
The male residents of the besieged city had to be executed,
apart from conversion through circumcision. The women and chil-
dren had to be brought back to Israel. Who would then take care of
the trees? After all, the trees were wealth. If left undefended, such
wealth would serve as a beacon: “Come and get it!” A neighboring
 Fruit Trees as Covenantal Testimonies 569

nation would not leave such wealth to rot. It would invade the empty
region. The trees would provide capital for the invaders. This meant
that another nation with other gods would inherit what Israel had
temporarily conquered. This would bring the invading nation
closer to Israel’s borders. Therefore, a major foreign policy consid-
eration in deciding whether to place a city under siege was who its
neighbors were. If the city bordered a strong nation that could pose
a threat to Israel, it would be unwise for Israel to lay siege to it. Why
waste Israel’s resources in a military operation that might expose
the nation to greater danger later on? A short-term military success
might be followed by a long-term military disaster. Why strengthen
your enemies? Solution: call of the siege before beginning it.
Such a foreign policy would have reduced the risks to short-
term raiders who could raid the fringes of Israel’s borders without
the threat of a siege of their cities, but it would also have reduced the
likelihood of full-scale invasion. Weaker cities would have bordered
Israel. They might constitute an annoyance to those tribes whose
land was on the borders, but these invaders would not have consti-
tuted a major threat to the nation.
The preservation of the besieged city’s fruit-bearing trees forced
foreign policy considerations on Israel. It forced Israel’s leaders to
count the long-term costs of war. The farther away the city, the less
economic incentive there was to conquer it. The more powerful the
city’s neighbors, the less economic incentive for Israel to lay siege to
it. Only if the city submitted to God through circumcision would be-
ginning a siege make sense, and then only in retrospect. This was a
high-risk military decision: once the siege began, the decision-
making authority to determine who would inherit the fruit trees
would move from Israel to the besieged city. Even if Israel won,
knocked down the walls, and burned the city, those trees would still
be standing: a standing testimony to the fruitfulness of a now-empty
land. The land would not stay empty for long.

Ecology and Inheritance

This law had ecological implications. The presence of fruit-
bearing trees had implications for birds and other fruit-eating beasts
of the ield. The ecology of the land was to be honored by the invad-
ing Israelite army; they were not to become destroyers.
As far as the male residents of the besieged city were concerned,
the ecological care shown by the Israelites constituted a guaranteed
570 DEUTERONOMY

death sentence on the city. The Israelites’ care for God’s land meant
annihilation for the men of the city. The Israelites were caring for
God’s land, which meant that they would obey God’s law. God’s
law told them not to pull back from the siege: “Thou shalt build bul-
warks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be sub-
dued.” Thus, by extending life to the fruit-bearing trees, Israel’s
army was extending a death sentence on the city’s males.
The general ecological principle announced by this text,
namely, that “the tree of the ield is man’s life,” becomes narrowly
applied in the context of a siege. The tree of the ield is not cove-
nant-breaking man’s life. Covenant-breaking man is now locked in-
side the walls of his city. He may be able to see life from the walls of
the city, but he cannot gain access to it. The trees of the ield would
become life for the covenant-keeping army that was laying siege.
The trees would henceforth sustain life for the city’s executioners.
The life-sustaining properties of the fruit would increase the likeli-
hood of the death of the trees’ former owners. That which had sus-
tained life would now indirectly threaten life. This was a matter of
inheritance. The Israelite army had inherited the means of life. The forth-
coming disinheritance of the men inside the city’s walls would now
be made even more likely.
A preservationist ecology in the context of God’s covenant law-
suit against evil ofers life to covenant-keepers and death to cove-
nant-breakers. The beneits of a preservationist ecology must
therefore be discussed within the covenantal framework of history.
This raises the issue of eschatology. If history brings progressive de-
feat to covenant-keepers and victory to covenant-breakers, then a
preservationist ecology leaves God’s enemies as the inheritors. By
sustaining the productivity of the earth, the covenant-keeper pro-
vides an inheritance to future generations. But if these future genera-
tions maintain the ethics of the pre-Flood world or pre-conquest
Canaan, then God, through ecological preservation and capitaliza-
tion by covenant-keepers, will someday ofer to His enemies “houses
full of all good things, which thou illedst not, and wells digged, which
thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst
not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full” (Deut. 6:11). The dis-
placement of covenant-keepers can happen, of course, but only as
God’s covenantal curse on His people: “Thou shalt plant vineyards,
and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the
grapes; for the worms shall eat them” (Deut. 28:39). But is such a
 Fruit Trees as Covenantal Testimonies 571

curse permanent in history? Does it characterize covenantal inheri-

tance and disinheritance in history? No.

And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee,
the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call
them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath driven
thee, And shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice ac-
cording to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all
thine heart, and with all thy soul; That then the LORD thy God will turn thy
captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee
from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. If any
of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will
the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: And the
LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed,
and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee
above thy fathers. And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and
the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and
with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And the LORD thy God will put
all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which
persecuted thee. And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the
LORD, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day. And
the LORD thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine
hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit
of thy land, for good: for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for good, as
he rejoiced over thy fathers: If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the
LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are writ-
ten in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all
3
thine heart, and with all thy soul (Deut. 30:1–10; emphasis added).

New Testament Applications

Unlike all other Mosaic laws, this law was applicable only out-
side the boundaries of the land. Inside, there could be no mercy
shown. This law was not a cross-boundary law; it was a law govern-
ing Israel’s relations with gentiles in their land. The general princi-
ple of this law holds true in every era: “The tree of the ield is man’s
life.” Because the general principle is true, this law continues to be
in force. What is no longer in force, however, is siege warfare. New

3. If taken literally, this implies that Islam’s conquest of North Africa in the seventh
century will not be maintained indeinitely. I take it literally.
572 DEUTERONOMY

technologies have replaced it. Men no longer lay siege to walled cit-
ies. The West’s importation of Chinese gunpowder ended that an-
cient military strategy in the fifteenth century: artillery ended the
military beneits of city walls. Walled communities have become
popular inside crime-ridden cities, but no organized enemy lays
continuous siege to them. Also, military units may build defensive
barriers, but these units are not cities.
This law is not a law governing the use of explosives. Fruit trees
may be destroyed by an artillery barrage or a bombing raid, but this
is not the same as using the trees as weapons of war. Also, this is not
a law against using chemical defoliants that open up terrain so that
enemies cannot hide. The context of the Mosaic law of the siege was
an immobile city facing a dug-in army.
In the early medieval era in the West, this law would have ap-
plied to a siege. There were walled cities and castles. Armies did
come and lay siege to them. They did cut down trees to use as weap-
ons of war. These invading armies should have honored the Mosaic
law of the fruit trees.

Conclusion
The invading Israelite army was to honor God’s law of ecology.
This was not for the beneit of the covenant-breakers who were
trapped inside their own defensive walls, nor was it for their heirs,
who would be carried back to Israel. This was for the beneit of the
army itself during the siege and also for those foreign invaders who
would occupy the land after the Israelites returned home. These in-
heritors would be one of three groups, if the Israelite army obeyed
God’s law: 1) the Israelites themselves, but only if the city was close
to Israel’s border; 2) the city’s existing inhabitants, but only if they
submitted to circumcision, becoming Israelites through adoption;
3) the invading army that would march into the unoccupied land af-
ter Israel’s army had departed. Which outcome was best for Israel?
The conversion of the city was best. The residents would henceforth
pay a tithe to the Levites. Better that men worship God than that
they die in their sins. Better that they surrender unconditionally to
God while His siege is still in progress than that they die in the
post-siege mass execution. God told Ezekiel: “But if the wicked will
turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my stat-
utes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he
shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they
 Fruit Trees as Covenantal Testimonies 573

shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath

done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should
die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his
ways, and live?” (Ezek. 18:21–23).
This Mosaic law of the siege is still in force. The invading army
is not to cut down productive trees or, by extension, burn the crops.
Warriors are supposed to battle warriors. The idea that warriors are
deliberately to wage war on undefended civilians as a way to
weaken the opposing army is a perverse strategy. It is also a basic
strategy of modern warfare, beginning with the American Civil
War: Sherman’s march to the sea in 1864–65 and Sheridan’s burn-
ing of crops in the Shenandoah Valley. These were evil precedents
that led to the horrors of World War II’s bombing of civilian
populations.
 48
Double
DOUBLE Portion, Double
PORTION, DOUBLE Burden
BURDEN

If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they
have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the irstborn
son be hers that was hated: Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to
inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved
irstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the irstborn: But he
shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the irstborn, by giving him a
double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength;
the right of the irstborn is his (Deut. 21:15–17).

The theocentric focus of this law is the principle of lawful ser-

vice to God. The degree of service owed by someone to another
person or group is always proportional to the amount of capital pro-
vided for him by the person or group to whom the service is owed.
Jesus warned: “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and
prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be
beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit
things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto
whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to
whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more”
(Luke 12:47–48). The fact that much was given to the irstborn son
meant that much would be required from him. Capital was prom-
ised to him by his father; thus, we conclude that he would owe his fa-
ther and mother services proportional to the promised inheritance.
No biblical text says this speciically, but it can be inferred from the
principle of mutual obligation.
How did this inheritance system work? Rushdoony describes it:
“The general rule of inheritance was limited primogeniture, i.e., the
oldest son, who had the duty of providing for the entire family in

574
 Double Portion, Double Burden 575

case of need, or of governing the clan, receiving a double portion. If

there were two sons, the estate was divided into three portions, the
younger son receiving one-third.”1
The context of this law was the law governing war brides, al-
though the principle of inheritance stated here applied beyond the
war bride. It applied to Israel as a society that allowed polygamy. It
was a land law.
An Israelite warrior was allowed to bring home a woman from a
defeated foreign city. In fact, these women had to be brought home.
They would not be able to defend themselves if they stayed behind.
The question was: Would they become permanent slaves or wives?
That is, would they be adopted through marriage? If the captive
woman consented to marry an Israelite by paring her ingernails,
shaving her head, and mourning for her parents for a month (Deut.
21:12–13), it was legal for him to marry her. Immediately following
these laws is the law of the double portion.

Legitimate Disinheritance: Full or Partial

The eldest son had to receive the double portion under Mosaic
law. This implied that he was to bear a double portion of responsi-
bility in caring for his aged parents. But a father could lawfully
disinherit a rebellious son, if he had the backing of a covenantal au-
thority. This disinheritance could be accomplished through the civil
imposition of physical death, as the very next section of Deuteron-
omy indicates (21:18–23). It could also be accomplished through the
ecclesiastical imposition of covenantal death. Excommunication un-
der the Mosaic law removed a man’s eligibility to serve in God’s holy
army. This, in turn, removed his citizenship and his inheritance in the
land. Strangers were not to inherit rural land, and an excommuni-
cated man was a stranger, i.e., cut of from God’s people.
The eldest son was to inherit a double portion. Nevertheless, the
history of the patriarchs reveals something very diferent in prac-
tice: either full disinheritance or a single-portion inheritance of the
irstborn son. This began with Adam, who rebelled against God, his
father. Adam covenanted with Satan through the serpent by sharing
a forbidden covenantal meal with his wife. He violated the

1. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
p. 180.
576 DEUTERONOMY

boundary of death that God had placed around the forbidden tree.
This covenantal act cost him his life. Through grace, however, God
granted Adam and Eve time on earth to work out the dominion cov-
enant (Gen. 1:26–28).
Adam had two sons, Cain and Abel. Cain was the irstborn
(Gen. 4:1). He was evil. His sacriice was not acceptable to God (v. 5).
He then slew his younger brother. Through grace, God extended
Cain’s life (v. 15), but He removed Cain from the covenant line. A
third son, Seth, youngest of all, replaced Cain as the heir through
which the promised seed (Gen. 3:15) would come (Luke 3:38).
Noah had three sons. The eldest was Shem (Gen. 6:10). Shem’s
line was the covenant line. This indicates that he had been a righ-
teous man who did not warrant disinheritance. But Shem’s irst two
sons did not extend the covenant line; Arphaxad, the third son, did
(Gen. 10:24).
Abraham had two sons. The elder, Ishmael, was disinherited by
Abraham because he mocked Isaac (Gen. 21:9), who was the true
heir of God’s promise (Gen. 17:16). Isaac was the second-born son.
Isaac had two sons. The elder, Esau, sold his inheritance to his
brother, Jacob, for a mess of pottage (Gen. 25:33). God had already
promised Rebekah that the heirs of the elder son would serve the
heirs of the younger (v. 23). That is, the covenant line would be
through Jacob, not Esau.2 Jacob gained his deserved inheritance-
blessing from Isaac (Gen. 27:28–29). Isaac later blessed Esau through
a prophecy of Esau’s greatness, but he had nothing left of substance to
give Esau (vv. 37, 39). He had given Jacob the full inheritance, leav-
ing nothing for Esau. By giving Jacob the full inheritance, believing
that Jacob was Esau, Isaac had necessarily disinherited Esau, thinking
that he was disinheriting Jacob. Esau was the ethically rebellious son.
He had married Canaanite wives, against his parents’ wishes
(Gen. 26:34–35). After he lost his blessing, his father told him not to
marry other Canaanites wives (28:9). His obedience was partial:
he married a daughter of Ishmael (28:9), the disinherited son of
Abraham. Esau’s pattern of rebellion was continual in the key area
of covenantal inheritance: marriage. Isaac had sought to escape his

2. This prophecy extended down to the days of Christ. Herod was an Edomite, an heir of
Esau: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIV:I:3. He sought to destroy the promised seed. He
failed. Joseph and Mary had removed themselves and their son from Herod’s jurisdiction
(Matt. 2:13–15). They returned when Herod had died (v. 19).
 Double Portion, Double Burden 577

responsibility to disinherit his rebellious son by disinheriting Jacob

instead. This tactic backired on Isaac. It led to Esau’s complete
disinheritance.
The inheritance law helps us to answer the ethical and judicial
question: Was it wrong for Rebekah and Jacob to deceive Isaac? The
answer is no, it was not wrong. Isaac’s physical blindness relected his
moral judgment. Jacob and Rebekah took advantage of his physical
weakness in order to overcome his moral weakness. They were fac-
ing a morally blind old man who would not acknowledge the legiti-
macy of God’s prophecy to Rebekah concerning the two sons and
their respective covenant lines, nor would he honor Esau’s sale of his
birthright to Jacob. Isaac was willing to defy God for the sake of his
delight in the taste of venison stew (Gen. 27:3–4). In this, Isaac was as
short-sighted as Esau had been when he sold his birthright for a pot of
stew. Rebekah was morally and legally justiied in undermining her
husband’s evil plan to disinherit Jacob, and through this act of rebel-
lion, disinherit God’s promised covenant seed.3
Jacob’s irst four sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
All were born of Leah, the unloved wife (Gen. 29:32–35). One as-
pect of the double portion was rulership. Jacob gave permanent
civil rulership to Judah (Gen. 49:10). He had legitimate covenantal
reasons for skipping Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. Reuben had deiled
his father’s bed by having sex with Jacob’s concubine, Bilhah
(Gen. 35:22). Simeon and Levi had slain the Shechemites after the
Shechemites had submitted to circumcision (Gen. 34:25). This ruth-
less act of revenge had brought reproach on their father (v. 30).
These sons inherited single portions. This left Judah as the primary
heir, which involved exercising rulership. The promised seed’s cov-
enant line would come through Judah (Luke 3:33).4

3. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 19.
4. It is not clear from the text that Judah received a double portion. It is also not clear from
the allocation of land listed in the Book of Joshua. Rushdoony argues that Jacob awarded a
double portion to Joseph, for he gave a blessing to Joseph’s two sons. The reason for this, he
says, is that Jacob was under Joseph’s care in Egypt. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 180. The
problem with this argument is that Joshua did not recognize this claim to a double portion in
allocating land in Canaan. When the two tribes came to him claiming a right to the double
portion – a right based on their numerical strength, not a promised double portion – Joshua
told them that they would have to prove their claim on the battleield by defeating Canaanites
who were armed with iron chariots (Josh. 17:13–18). That is, they would have to disinherit the
Canaanites, not their brethren, to gain their double portion. Gary North, Sanctions and
578 DEUTERONOMY

The case of Judah’s sons is the most convoluted of all. His irst
son, Er, was wicked. God killed him before he conceived a son of
his own through Tamar (Gen. 38:7). That is, God cut of Er’s cove-
nant line. To restore it biblically, Onan his brother had to marry
her.5 But Onan was also wicked; he married her, but then refused to
bear a child with her in his brother’s name (v. 9). God killed him,
too. The third son was too young to marry. It is clear that Tamar was
the victim of her two husbands’ evil ways. She was being denied le-
gitimate seed. Tamar then tricked Judah into fathering twin sons
with her after the death of Judah’s wife. Her son Zarah was the sec-
ond-born, yet he had very nearly become the irstborn (vv. 28–30).
In this case, the promised seed came through the irstborn son,
Pharez (Luke 3:33). Yet Pharez was not legally the irstborn son.
Shelah, the third son of Judah’s irst wife, should have been the heir.
But the evil of his two older brothers, coupled with his young age, as
well as the evil of his father in lying with Tamar before marriage,
thinking she was a prostitute, transferred the covenant line to the sur-
viving second-born son, Pharez. This was done by God for Tamar’s
sake, who had twice been cheated by evil husbands. Through her the
promised seed would come.
In the case of Joseph, the irstborn son of Jacob’s beloved wife,
Jacob transferred Joseph’s single-unit inheritance to Joseph’s two
sons. He did this prior to his inal accounting with his other sons.
Manasseh was the irstborn, but Jacob gave the blessing to Ephraim.
Joseph tried to correct this, but without success. “And his father re-
fused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a
people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother
shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of
nations” (Gen. 48:19). Jacob ofered no reason for this. The sec-
ond-born son would receive the double portion of Jacob’s blessing:
authority and population. But this did not necessarily imply that
Ephraim would receive a double portion of Joseph’s inheritance. In

Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian

Economics, 1997), pp. 223–25.
5. “If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead
shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take
her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her. And it shall be, that
the irstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his
name be not put out of Israel” (Deut. 25:5–6).
 Double Portion, Double Burden 579

the land distribution under Joshua, the two sons received separate
portions based on their military prowess. There is no indication in the
text that Ephraim’s inheritance was double the size of Manasseh’s.
Mosaic law was not formally in force prior to Moses. The patri-
archs did not go to priests and civil rulers to legitimize their deci-
sions regarding their sons’ inheritance. They made these decisions
on their own authority as household priests and rulers. After Moses,
however, the law mandated a system of conirmation for the father’s
disinheritance of a particular son, which the next section of Deuter-
onomy reveals. The parents had to bring their rebellious son before
the civil magistrate.

The Two Adams

The New Testament provides a reason for the persistence of this
pattern of inheritance among the patriarchs. Paul refers to Jesus as
the last Adam. “And so it is written, The irst man Adam was made a
living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (I Cor.
15:45). The irst Adam had forfeited his lawful claim on the inheri-
tance from his father, God. Adam was disinherited. But God then
showed grace to Adam. On what legal basis? Because of the perfect
righteousness of Jesus Christ. On this basis, God gives common
grace to all mankind and special grace to His chosen people: a com-
mon salvation (healing) and a special salvation. “For therefore we
both labour and sufer reproach, because we trust in the living God,
who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” (I Tim.
4:10).6 Adam and his heirs have received the gift of life on the basis
of the work of the second Adam. Yet even here, the true pattern ex-
ists: the irstborn son inherits. Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the
second person of the Trinity. He is the only begotten son of God.
“But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest
asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the
Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sit-
ting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of
heaven” (Mark 14:61–62).

6. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 1.
580 DEUTERONOMY

Sons and Daughters

Mosaic Covenant fathers had the responsibility of assessing the
moral character of their sons. Their allocation of the inheritance
had to conform to the law of the double portion. They could not, on
their own authority, depart from this law. But the law gave no auton-
omous claim to rebellious sons. God’s law does not subsidize evil.
Either of the other two covenantal authorities could conirm a fa-
ther’s decision to disinherit a rebellious son. The civil government
could enforce such a claim through execution of other, lesser, penal-
ties for lesser infractions; the ecclesiastical government could en-
force it through excommunication.
This law says nothing about daughters. It was assumed that
daughters would not inherit if a son was still alive at their father’s
death. Why? To ind the answer, we must understand the principle
of economic support. Daughters married into another family. Their
ojce as helpers of their husbands meant that their eforts would go
to provide support for their husbands’ parents. Wives were adopted
into their husbands’ families.
A father provided a dowry for his daughter in marriage. If he
failed to do this, she was a concubine, not a free wife. But a
son-in-law provided a bride price to the family of the bride. This
kept the dowry from depleting the inheritance of her brothers. This
payment exempted the bride from any obligation to support her
aged parents. This obligation was her brothers’ obligation. By for-
feiting any claim on an inheritance, the daughter escaped any future
economic burden for supporting her parents.7 There was a balance
to the Mosaic inheritance system.

Modern Times
The traditional description of wives as “barefoot and pregnant”
implicitly justiies a system of inheritance that passes all of the par-
ents’ assets to sons and their wives. Daughters for millennia did not
receive dowries in the form of formal education. But on the day that
a family hired a tutor to teach a daughter to read, that family began
to alter the economics of inheritance. As soon as the ability to read

7. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 253–55.
 Double Portion, Double Burden 581

meant access to income-producing occupations, an investment in a

girl’s education began to undermine the traditional system of inheri-
tance. Those traditionalists who long ago opposed formal education
for daughters may have sensed the revolutionary social and eco-
nomic implications of what it meant to have literate women in a so-
ciety. But that resistance is long gone. From the Reformation until
the late nineteenth century, the ability to read in the West meant the
ability to read the Bible. The Protestant religion’s individualism and
its biblicism, coupled with the mass production of printed materials,
made literacy cost-efective for the masses. This change in the in-
vestment-return ratio for basic education inevitably undermined
the traditional system of sons-only inheritance. The daughters re-
ceived a dowry through education. They were thereby brought un-
der the biblical obligations for supplying a proportional share of
parental support if their husbands failed to supply a bride price
comparable to the cost of their wives’ educations.
Prior to the nineteenth century, women had few options to work
for money outside the home. Labor was more clearly allocated in
terms of physical strength, with the resulting division of labor within
the household and within society. This has changed dramatically
with the extension of the division of labor and the substitution of
mechanical and especially electrical power for human and animal
power.8 When a woman can lip a switch as easily as a man can, the
ability to use electrical tools to perform specialized labor then becomes
more a matter of skill and temperament than physical strength. Also,
there is not much evidence, if any, that indicates that women as a
class cannot perform such highly skilled tasks as eye surgery as
readily as men can.
Women have entered the work force by the hundreds of mil-
lions in the West since World War II. This has been a matter of so-
cial convention. This social transformation has been going on at
least on since the early nineteenth century, when unmarried women
were brought into the textile industry as seamstresses. They had
been involved in this industry as wool spinners from ancient times.
The division of labor provided by mechanized sewing equipment

8. To this should be added the advent of popular contraception techniques. With fewer
children, women have reduced their household management burdens. While they ill up
their days with activities, no doubt, they bear fewer children because they believe they could
not bear the added household burdens.
582 DEUTERONOMY

moved the location of their work. This was part of a social revolu-
tion, no doubt, but it was not a revolution in basic skills. It was a rev-
olution in capital formation.
As women have become a source of family monetary income,
their ability to support aged parents inancially has raised the ques-
tion of inheritance. Should all of their income go into their hus-
band’s family? This raises the question of education. Who paid for
their educations? Mass education has enabled women to enter ields
that had been closed to them. More to the point, mass education has
created new ields that did not exist a century ago. If parents pay for
a daughter’s education, they provide a dowry. If the son-in-law pro-
vides no bride price comparable in value to this investment in the
bride’s education, compounded at a market rate of interest as if it had
been a student loan, then her parents have a moral claim on a portion
of her wealth and time. To argue otherwise is to argue for the disin-
heritance of her brothers. If she gets equal funding in her education,
but they are alone legally and morally responsible for the support of
their aged parents, then the biblical principle of proportional respon-
sibility is violated. Brothers have been decapitalized by sisters.
Since 1973, family income has become stagnant in the United
States. One reason is that wives have entered the work force and are
forced to pay taxes into State retirement systems. The State pays for
the education of daughters. It therefore taxes daughters when they en-
ter the work force. The State collects taxes to support existing retirees.
The system of proportional responsibility is honored to some degree
by this system. But as taxes for retirement systems and State health care
rise, the wives become, in efect, the supporters of the aged parents –
and not so aged parents – of other families. The share of national in-
come going to pay taxes today is close to the share of income earned
by women in the work force. To fund the faceless aged, husbands have
sent their wives out to work. This is not the way that husbands and
wives think of this inancial arrangement, but the numbers reveal that
this is essentially the nature of the bargain. The State has paid for the
education of women – the wife’s dowry – so it collects money from
women for the support of the aged. We can call this process the statist
bureaucratization of the dowry.

New Testament Applications

Is the allocation of a man’s inheritance still governed by Deuter-
onomy 21:15–17? To answer this question, we consider the fact that
 Double Portion, Double Burden 583

there have been judicial alterations. First and foremost, there is no

longer polygamy in New Covenant times. The church has rejected
the idea that polygamy is a valid form of marriage except under
highly unusual circumstances.9 Second, the Mosaic seed laws and
land laws have been annulled by the coming of Jesus Christ. Land no
longer has a covenantal-prophetic role to play in the history of salva-
tion. Third, the State no longer enforces the laws against rebellious
children. Whether it should or not is an issue I deal with in the next
chapter. But the fact that the mandated civil sanction of execution no
longer threatens a rebellious son has had efects on the administration
of this law. Fourth, as we have seen, daughters now inherit.
Daughters have a new legal status under the New Covenant. Fe-
males are baptized in the church. The formal mark of covenant
blessings and covenant cursings is placed on both sexes. This means
that, covenantally speaking, the beneits of inheritance and the
threat of disinheritance are presented formally to both sexes. Cove-
nant sanctions ultimately are sanctions of inheritance and disinheri-
tance: in eternity, but also in history.
Then what remains of Deuteronomy’s inheritance law? Only
the principle of proportionality. Of those assets bequeathed to the
children, there should be a double portion for the heir who accepts
primary responsibility for the care of the aged parents. If all of them
accept equal responsibility, then all should inherit equal portions.
Similarly, the son or daughter who abandons every aspect of this
family obligation thereby abandons any moral claim on a share of
the inheritance. In a biblical commonwealth, this would also mean
abandoning a legal claim.
Parents need to make this principle clear to their children. Be-
fore the parents are inirm, they should know which children have
agreed to accept which burden. This is analogous to an insurance
policy. The death beneits paid to the survivors are proportional to
the premiums paid. The common Western practice of parents who
refuse to talk about the size of the inheritance, the details of the will,
and the obligations of the children is biblically perverse. God has set
forth this rule of inheritance: rewards are determined by performance.

9. When a man is converted to Christ in a polygamous culture, if he renounces his

marriages to all but the irst wife, these abandoned wives would become pariahs in the
society. They would have nowhere to go. I know of no denomination or missionary group
which requires that a new convert do this to his wives.
584 DEUTERONOMY

This rule applies to each man’s eternal inheritance, too. “Now if any
man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood,
hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day
shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by ire; and the ire shall
try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which
he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward” (I Cor. 3:12–14).
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his lesh shall of
the lesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the
Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:7–8).

Disinheritance by the State

In my discussion of the ifth commandment, “Honour thy father
and thy mother” (Ex. 20:12a), I pointed out that the modern messi-
anic State has substituted its claims on men’s inheritance for the
claims of the true sons. The State has become a pseudo-family, edu-
cating children according to its standards and presuppositions,
funding health care, paying for men’s retirement, and so forth. To
do this, the State must decapitalize the family through taxation. The
State, unlike a biblically deined family, does not create wealth. It
consumes wealth as it redistributes it from one group to another.10
The State is an interloper in the lawful system of inheritance. It
has presented a false claim, and in the twentieth century, men have
believed this claim. Through graduated taxation schemes (called
“progressive”), the State places an ever-greater economic burden on
the more productive members of society. The principle of the tithe
is denied. The principle of theft by majority vote is substituted. The
State demands the double portion, and far more than the double
portion in the case of the rich, in the name of its compulsory pro-
grams of healing.
This process of disinheritance rests on the covenantal principle
that the State is the true son. This disinheritance honors fathers and
mothers in the name of the State. It releases children from the bur-
dens of supporting aged and sick parents. But having been persuaded
of the legitimacy of this new hierarchy of responsibility, voters cannot
morally resist the claim of inheritance. Who is the son who deserves

10. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), ch. 5.
 Double Portion, Double Burden 585

the double portion? The one who provides the double portion of sup-
port for the aged parents. This means the State. The greater the per-
centage of support provided by the State, the greater the proportion
of the nation’s inheritance that is demanded by the State. Why should
men expect anything diferent? The principle of the double portion
sets forth the relationship between support and inheritance.
For a son to argue that he is completely responsible for his aged
parents is to assert a legal and moral claim on the parents’ inheri-
tance. The younger brothers who accept the oldest brother’s ofer
have thereby acquiesced to the implication: a forfeited inheritance.
Voters do not recognize the cause-and-efect relationship in the
State’s ofer of support for the aged. They do not recognize the im-
plicit legal claim which the State is making: reducing the ability of
economically successful men to pass on wealth to their heirs. As vot-
ers transfer more and more responsibility to the State for the care of
the aged, the State steadily becomes the substitute heir.

Conclusion
The Mosaic law of inheritance speciied that the allocation of
the inheritance was by legal right, not by parental discretion. The
irstborn son inherited the double portion. This did not mean that a
rebellious irstborn son would inherit a double portion or any por-
tion at all. Both the church and the State had the authority to alter an
inheritance through covenantal sanctions: excommunication and
death, respectively. This law restricted the right of a father, on his
own authority, to alter the inheritance to his sons.
The biblical principle of proportional rewards and the biblical
principle of proportional obligations were combined in this law.
There were reciprocal obligations between fathers and sons. The
promise of a double portion of the inheritance imposed the obliga-
tion of a double burden of responsibility to care for aged parents.
The general principle that the irstborn son should inherit a dou-
ble portion was honored in the breach from Adam to Jacob’s twelve
sons. Firstborn sons did not inherit in many instances. This indicates
that there was covenantal rebellion among the oldest sons, genera-
tion after generation. This pattern of the rebellious older son who
had to be disinherited was continual in Old Covenant history. It cul-
minated with the Jews of Jesus’ day, who resented the heart-felt wel-
come and celebration given by the Father for the rebellious but
repentant younger brother (Luke 15:29–30). The younger brother in
586 DEUTERONOMY

the parable represented the gentiles. The result of this hard-hearted

rebellion was the disinheritance of the eldest son. As God’s cove-
nant-keeping irstborn son, Jesus prophetically announced the coming
disinheritance of the covenant-breaking irstborn son, Old Covenant
Israel: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken
from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof”
(Matt. 21:43). The gentiles would soon inherit the kingdom. The
church as the gathering of the saints would soon replace Old Cove-
nant Israel as the true son of the covenant.
In our day, the State has begun to replace the family as the pro-
vider of welfare, from womb to tomb. The State asserts its right to
educate the children according to its covenant-breaking religious
presuppositions. It has gained this authority by ofering parents free
education, i.e., taxpayer-funded education. The State ofers food for
the poor, medical care for the young and the aged, and pensions for
all. To fund this comprehensive messianic program of social heal-
ing, the State has taxed its subjects vastly beyond the limits of the
tithe (I Sam. 8:15, 17). Men pay the State a quadruple tithe or more,
while Christians pay the church far less than a tithe.
One result of the rise of messianic politics has been the disinher-
itance of covenant-keeping children, as the State has de-capitalized
the covenantal family. Another result since the 1940’s has been the
wife who works outside the home: forced into the labor market in
order to pay these taxes. Without the taxes provided by these work-
ing wives, State-run pension systems would already have collapsed
in bankruptcy. If they do not collapse in the year 2000, these retire-
ment programs will be revised by the politicians, but then they will
collapse later, when the economy itself breaks down, or when work-
ing wives retire and demand to collect their pensions. These work-
ing women have borne few children – below the demographic
replacement rate of 2.1 children per family – so a shrinking work
force will be called upon to support these long-lived pensioners.
The overburdened taxpaying heirs will eventually rebel politically.
Finally, this system of messianic politics has led to the emasculation
of the church, which has turned into a beggar.11 This cannot go on
indeinitely. And, to cite economist Herbert Stein, trends that can-
not continue eventually stop.

11. Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1994), ch. 4.
 49
ExecutingAa REBELLIOUS
EXECUTING Rebellious Son SON
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the
voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have
chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his
mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and
unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This
our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a
glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with
stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all
Israel shall hear, and fear (Deut. 21:18–21).

The theocentric basis of this law is God’s threat of execution

against Adam for rebelling against Him. Adam was an adult. He
was living on his Father’s property. The mark of his Father’s owner-
ship of both Adam and the world in which Adam dwelled was the
forbidden tree. God declared this tree of-limits for Adam. It was not
Adam’s property. Adam was under God’s authority because God
was his Creator, his Father. Adam should have known that this
world belongs to God. As a resident of this world, Adam was re-
quired to acknowledge God’s total ownership and universal author-
ity, but Adam rebelled against this arrangement. He would not
acknowledge God’s sovereign ownership.
Consider the way in which his rebellion took place. He re-
belled by eating the forbidden fruit. Consumption in this case was
a sin for Adam. The modern free market doctrine known as con-
sumers’ sovereignty, irst articulated in the mid-1930’s by W. H. Hutt,1

1. W. H. Hutt, “The Nature of Aggressive Selling” (1935), in Individual Freedom: Selected

Works of William H. Hutt, edited by Svetozar Pejovich and David Klingaman (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood, 1975), p. 185.

587
588 DEUTERONOMY

in this instance applied to God, not Adam. God, as the tree’s owner,
was a consumer: He had separated the tree and its output for Him-
self. This form of consumer demand is sometimes called reservation
demand: demand by the present owner.2 Whatever income the tree
might produce in the future belonged exclusively to God. God was
absolutely sovereign over this tree. He was absolutely sovereign
over all of the trees, of course, but by placing a verbal “no trespass-
ing” sign around one representative tree, God announced His abso-
lute ownership of the earth and its fruits. By authorizing Adam to eat
from all other trees, herbs, and animals (Gen. 1:29–30), He an-
nounced His sovereign ownership: His right to share His property
with others. God’s right to include Adam as a minority shareholder
in the creation was publicly revealed by His exclusion of Adam
from access to the tree. Adam did not accept his position as a minor-
ity shareholder. He wanted exclusive control.3
The tree was forbidden to Adam; so, eating from it was Adam’s
way of expressing his rejection of God’s self-asserted authority over
Adam and the creation. God then tried Adam in a court of civil law,
convicted him, and pronounced the death sentence on him. Never-
theless, God then showed mercy to him by allowing him time to re-
pent, time to bear sons of his own, and time to train them. Time had
not yet run out for Adam. But this was all a matter of grace: gifts of God
that Adam did not deserve. As the injured party, God had the right
to extend mercy to Adam: the biblical judicial principle of victim’s
rights.4
Deuteronomy 21:18–21 reveals many of the same characteris-
tics as the account of Adam’s rebellion. There is a hierarchy of pa-
rental authority, and a son breaks it. His ethical rebellion is visible in
his gluttony: rebellion through undisciplined eating. Adam ate without
self-discipline. God tolerated Adam’s rebellion for a while; so do the
parents in this passage. Judgment inally came on Adam: he died,

2. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles (Auburn,
Alabama: Mises Institute, [1962] 1993), pp. 213–14, 218.
3. He could not gain majority control. Man serves one of two masters, God or Mammon,
i.e., God or Satan. Adam elected as his representative the representative of Satan, i.e., the
serpent. Even when man believes that he is the President of the corporation, he is in fact
operating under a would-be chairman of the board: Satan.
4. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 7; cf. North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
 Executing a Rebellious Son 589

just as God had promised. So does this rebellious son. Most impor-
tant for a clear understanding of this passage, Adam was an adult. So
is the son in this passage.
This law was not a seed law, relating to the preservation of the
tribal system, nor was it a land law. It has to do with universal princi-
ples of civil justice and crime prevention. Yet some aspects of it
were based on its land law status.

A Matter of Disinheritance
This law was a law of disinheritance. Because a father in Mosaic
Israel could not legally disinherit a son on his own authority as the
head of the household (Deut. 21:15–17), the family had no autono-
mous means of disinheritance. This was because of the jubilee land
law regarding inheritance. One or both of the other two covenantal
institutions had to validate the decision of a parent or parents to dis-
inherit a son: church or State. There had to be a joint institutional
declaration against him. No one person or institution possessed the
exclusive voice of authority in God’s name. There was a balance of
authority in Mosaic Israel regarding disinheritance.
First, there was reversible disinheritance: ecclesiastical excommu-
nication. The excommunicated son lost his citizenship in Israel. He
no longer had legal access to service as a warrior in God’s holy
army. He therefore could not be a judge, bringing negative
covenantal sanctions in God’s name. In this sense, the excommuni-
cated man had become a covenantal stranger. A stranger could not in-
herit rural land in Mosaic Israel prior to the return from the
Assyrian-Babylonian captivity. This is why excommunication was a
form of disinheritance. Because excommunication extends into
eternity, this was the most threatening form of disinheritance. Death
would seal the priesthood’s eternal death sentence.
Second, there was irreversible disinheritance: civil execution. This
was the most threatening form of disinheritance in history, but it had
no eternal implications. Parents and the State could not speak author-
itatively regarding a man’s eternal judicial status; only the Levites
could do this. Two-fold disinheritance was eternally permanent: ex-
communication pronounced judicial sentence historically and eter-
nally, but with the possibility of repentance and the restoration of the
590 DEUTERONOMY

forfeited inheritance; execution removed the common grace of time

that could lead to the special grace of repentance.5 The sentence of
execution reduced the time available for repentance: from the
judges’ announcement of the death sentence until its enforcement.
For the rebellious son who was brought before the civil authorities
by his parents, time had just about run out. There would be no further
common grace extended to him by God through his parents.

What Was the Son’s Crime?

A crime is a matter of civil sanctions. Sin may not be. The nega-
tive sanction in this case was death: the supreme civil sanction.
What, then, was the son’s crime? He was a sinner, surely, but were
these sins crimes? If they were crimes, why did the parents have to
ile charges against him? Why hadn’t the civil authorities taken in-
dependent action against him?
To ind the answers, let us go through the steps in this case. The
father and mother took their rebellious son before the civil authori-
ties. They informed the authorities of the nature of his infractions:
gluttony,6 drunkenness, and disobedience to parents. Hearing this
formal covenant lawsuit against the son, the authorities were re-
quired by this law to decide in favor of the parents. While they re-
tained the right of cross-examination to verify the facts, the
presumption of this law was that the parents had not testiied falsely
against their son. Parents may be expected to testify falsely on a
son’s behalf, but they rarely bring false charges against him, espe-
cially when the penalty is death. This law assumed that parental
love was operating as a disincentive to a false accusation. The

5. On common grace, see Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of
Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
6. In the most popular Bible in the English-speaking fundamentalist world, the
trademarked Scoield Reference Bible (Oxford University Press, 1909), there is no reference in its
concordance to gluttony. There are three categories for alcohol abuse: drunk, drunkard, and
drunkenness. This reveals a great deal about fundamentalism’s priorities of evil-doing. A
1997 report on the health of Southern Baptist ministers and leaders reported that of some
1,000 attendees at the 1997 Southern Baptist Convention national meeting, 60 percent of
them were at least 20 percent overweight, compared with 26 percent of the general public.
This was not a random sample, but it was large enough to reveal the presence of a problem.
Meanwhile, none of them admitted drinking heavily. Dallas Morning News (Sept. 6, 1997),
p. 6 G.
 Executing a Rebellious Son 591

accusers therefore had been driven to this extreme remedy by the

behavior of their son.
The son was an adult. We know this because of the nature of his
sins. He was a drunkard and a glutton. Drunkenness is an adult’s sin.
In no society that I am aware of has the State ever legalized contin-
ual drunkenness for minors. It is clear from the text that the State
had no authority to keep him from drinking excessively or eating
excessively apart from this formal complaint by his parents – a com-
plaint that necessarily invokes the death penalty. This means that
the son was an adult. He would not control himself, and his parents
could no longer control him.
His refusal to obey them indicates that their threats no longer
scared him. It also indicates that they had run out of threats. Physi-
cal punishment by his parents was no longer possible because he
was an adult. Disinheritance was not much of a threat, as I shall ar-
gue, because he had already been disinherited. Another meaningful
threat was for them to throw him out of the house, and I shall argue
that they were unwilling to do this for a socially valid reason: their
fear that he was unsafe to be in society as an autonomous agent. This
leaves only the threat of execution. This, too, had failed. Judgment
day had come.
This son was not a criminal. If he had been, the State could act
independently of the parents. He had not behaved violently against
his parents. Had he done so, he would already have been executed.
The case laws of Exodus set forth the laws of battery and verbal as-
sault against parents: “And he that smiteth his father, or his mother,
shall be surely put to death” (Ex. 21:15). “And he that curseth his fa-
ther, or his mother, shall surely be put to death” (Ex 21:17). So, his
rebellion involved a dissolute life style and disobedience to parents.
This behavior had become criminal behavior, but only within the
context of the family. It was the covenant lawsuit brought by his par-
ents that transformed his sins into crimes.
We know that the actions of the son were judicially criminal, for
they called forth the death penalty. Yet drunkenness and gluttony
are “victimless crimes.” They do not inlict physical damage on con-
temporaries. But they do inlict damage on the covenant line: the
dissipation of the family’s inheritance. Gluttony and drunkenness
are assaults on the family’s economic future because they involve
the squandering of present resources. These sins of excess transfer
wealth from the family that has accumulated it to families that sell
592 DEUTERONOMY

food and drink to the wastrel. The son’s addiction to wine and food
threatens the continuity of family capital. His parents seek a way to
put a stop to this.
But is this transfer of capital a criminal matter? This son was an
embarrassment to his parents, but why were his actions matters for
the civil court? Why did the court have to execute him? Disobedi-
ence to parents is a negative response to positive commands. There
had been no parental victim of a verbal assault. He had not stolen
from them, beaten them, or in any way threatened them. He had
merely ignored their instructions. He was an adult. Was he still re-
quired to obey them? On what legal basis could the State execute him?
There is a two-fold general principle of biblical civil law: 1) there must
be a victim; 2) the State is to prohibit public evil, not make men good.
In what way were these parents victims of positive evil? In what way
were the sins of drunkenness and gluttony deserving of public
execution?
The deciding legal issue here was continual disobedience to parents.
There is no indication that drunkenness as such was a capital crime
in the Mosaic covenant, nor is it a capital crime today. In fact, there
is no indication that it is a crime at all. The State has no jurisdiction
over drunks who are not threatening other people with bodily in-
jury.7 The same is true of gluttony. It was not illegal to eat too much,
nor is it today. Yet this son was to be executed by stoning, the sign of
God’s judgment against evil men.
If we eliminate drunkenness and gluttony as the joint basis of his
conviction, we are left with disobedience to parents. They could not
control him. He was a threat to their authority in the household. He
was therefore deserving of death. His gluttony and drunkenness were
evidence of his disobedience, not the judicial basis of his execution.
The issue here was disinheritance: irreversible disinheritance. The
parents were so convinced that he was beyond redemption that they
were willing to bring him before the civil court for execution. While
there is no text that required them irst to seek and gain ecclesiastical
excommunication, it is likely that they had already done so. This
sanction had failed to gain his obedience to them. They were now
bringing him to the inal court of appeal in history in order to trans-
port him into God’s inal court of appeal in eternity. In short, they

7. In today’s world, a drunk driver does threaten others.

 Executing a Rebellious Son 593

were acting on behalf of God as lawful covenantal authorities. They

were bringing a covenant lawsuit against their son.

Covenantal Authorities
A parent is required by God to inlict pain on rebellious young
children. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth
him chasteneth him betimes” (Prov. 13:24). “Chasten thy son while
there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying” (Prov. 19:18).
The parent’s authority to inlict pain on a disobedient child is basic
to the family covenant.8 The parent possesses the legal right to im-
pose physical sanctions. That is, he is not to be threatened with civil
or ecclesiastical sanctions for beating his child, so long as the degree
of punishment its the infraction. This is a fundamental principle of
biblical law: the punishment must it the infraction.
The family covenant does not authorize the imposition of capi-
tal punishment by a parent.9 This is why the Mosaic law required
parents to take their rebellious adult son to the ojcers in the gate,
i.e., the civil judges. Under the Mosaic covenant, the State clearly
had the right to impose the sanction of execution on a son who was
brought before it by the parents. More than this: it had an obligation
to do so. Yet the son had not committed any physical violence
against his parents. If he had, he would have been subject to execu-
tion independent of his parents’ formal accusations (Ex. 21:15, 17).
Cursing a parent or striking a parent is considered an attack on God
and His authority. For the son to escape judgment, his victimized
parent would have had to publicly forgive the son for this action.
But the son would have been marked as a rebel. Repeated violations
would have classiied him as a habitual criminal. As we shall see, this
passage implies that habitual criminals in Israel were executed. So, the
mandatory execution of Deuteronomy 21 was not for a positive as-
sault by the rebellious son. It was for his disobedience to his parents,
as revealed publicly by his drunkenness and his gluttony.

8. This is why modern statist law places legal sanctions on parents who physically beat
their children. The messianic State seeks to reserve this monopoly for itself, as the would-be
parent of all mankind.
9. Early Roman law did authorize a father to kill his children. In this sense, legalized
abortion is more Roman than Christian.
594 DEUTERONOMY

His crime was contumacy: a refusal to obey lawful authority.

The parents had lost control over their son, as they admitted pub-
licly: “he will not obey our voice.” In some fundamental way, this man
threatened the social order. If the primary agents of discipline had
failed, and were willing publicly to acknowledge this, then the State
had to intervene. But was execution mandatory? The text indicates
that it was. There seems to be no room for mercy. I have argued that
this was not a means of disinheriting him. The Levites could have
cut him of from his people. In fact, it seems probable that this would
already have been done prior to bringing him before the civil gov-
ernment. The church would have cut him of from access to service
in God’s holy army. This would have efectively removed his citi-
zenship. He would have had no further rights of inheritance.
Then why bring him before the judges? Wasn’t execution a
form of judicial overkill? No; it was a means of making permanent his
disinheritance in history. It was a means of persuading him to come to
grips with the judicial meaning of his prior excommunication: the
threat of eternal disinheritance. He had run out of time. He could no
longer delay the day of reckoning. By bringing him before the civil
court, his parents were telling him: “Behold, now is the accepted
time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (II Cor. 6:2b).

A Double Witness
Both parents had to bring charges against him. This was a capi-
tal charge. “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall
he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one
witness he shall not be put to death” (Deut. 17:6). In ecclesiastical
proceedings for excommunication, the father had the right to bring
the son to the Levites for judgment. The preceding passage deals
with the eldest son of the irst wife, the unloved wife. Reuben, the
son of Leah, was the model.10 Mosaic law was concerned about in-
heritance. There had to be a valid reason for any disinheritance.
The reason was covenant-breaking. A father did not possess the in-
dependent authority to make this determination with respect to the
family covenant. Excommunication had to be pronounced by an
authorized ecclesiastical ojcer.

10. Jacob made this determination on his own authority as both father and household
priest, since this was before there was a separate tribe of priests (Gen. 49).
 Executing a Rebellious Son 595

Under such circumstances, the mother of the accused son might

have opposed her husband’s judgment. She might not have been
willing to bring formal charges against her son. But the father still
had the right to bring such charges for the sake of preserving the in-
heritance. But it was not for him unilaterally to decide judicially
whether his son would inherit under the Mosaic law.
In contrast to the laws governing excommunication, it took a
double witness to invoke the capital sanction. This was a matter of
the right of inheritance: irreversible disinheritance. The parents had
decided to cut of further mercy.

Preserving the Family Name

This son was still under their household jurisdiction. Presum-
ably, he had already been excommunicated. He was no longer a cit-
izen of Israel. He was judicially a stranger in the land. But his
parents still allowed him to live in their household. In other words,
they were showing mercy to him, just as God had continued to show mercy to
his disinherited son, Adam. The son could no longer inherit, but he
might repent. The parents had not thrown him out of their house-
hold. This was a prodigal son who had not gone into another nation
to spend his inheritance, for he possessed no inheritance. He was
nonetheless a prodigal. Whatever assets he gained through working
he spent on strong drink and food.
This son was not merely a slow learner; he was a non-learner.
He was not merely a son of Adam; he was a son of Cain. This was a
threat to the parents: because their son was a resident in their house-
hold, they would have been liable for his actions outside the home.
Household authority in a patriarchy was very great under the Old
Covenant. The father was considered the head of his household.
Thus, those who lived under his lawful authority placed him at eco-
nomic risk. Their law-breaking might result in legal claims against
him. His son’s drunken behavior might threaten the non-landed in-
heritance of the other children. The parents of an excommunicated
son had two ways of reducing their legal liability: send him out of
their household or have him removed through execution. Presum-
ably, sending him away was the easiest way. This granted him time
for his possible repentance. It would also have severed the legal tie
to him which his continued presence in their household created.
In this instance, however, the parents decided that he was too
rebellious to be sent into society. It was therefore not just a matter of
596 DEUTERONOMY

their legal liability for his actions, which could be removed by send-
ing him away. Something more crucial than economic liability was
involved. He was a potential threat to society. He was a disgrace to the
family name. To preserve the integrity of the family’s name, they
could take him before the judges, present their case against him, and
have him executed.
The parents made a joint decision: this son deserved to die. His
rebellion against them had become a way of life. His rebelliousness
was a pattern of behavior. He was a habitual rebel. His drinking and
eating habits testiied to this. He was in bondage to sin. He was not
it to be sent into society. As his parents, they had the joint authority
to make this determination. The civil magistrates were required to
enforce this decision. The civil magistrates had to accept the testi-
mony of the parents when supported by independent evidence: the
son’s eating and drinking habits. They had to acknowledge the au-
thority of the parents to protect society and the family name by re-
moving their rebellious son from any further mercy. If parents
believed that their son was both incorrigible and a threat to society,
their assessment had to be honored by the State.

Supporting Family Authority

Heads of household in Israel were not allowed to impose the
covenantal sanctions of excommunication or execution. These cov-
enant sanctions were outside of their lawful sphere of authority. Be-
cause the ultimate physical sanction of execution was prohibited to
them, they lacked a powerful negative sanction. They also could not
impose the maximum sanction of excommunication. Presumably,
the Levites had already done this. Nevertheless, their son was still a
rebel. They still could not control him. If the three sanctions of ex-
communication, revocation of citizenship, and reversible disinheri-
tance had not thrown the fear of God into him, what would? The
fear of execution: irreversible disinheritance. Without this, he could
not be controlled.
The parents could not impose this sanction on their own author-
ity. But without this threat, they could not maintain control in their
own household. They had to be backed up by the civil government,
which possessed the authority to impose this sanction. So, in this
case, the State became the supporting agency of parental authority.
The parents were restrained by law from imposing the ultimate re-
maining sanction. Somebody had to.
 Executing a Rebellious Son 597

The parents had decided that this son was not it to be released
into society without being under family jurisdiction, and they were
no longer willing to accept this responsibility. He was too great a lia-
bility. They could no longer control him, and they also could no
longer risk keeping him under their legal authority. The church
could not control him. Who could? The State. The State had to be
called in to support the judgment of his parents: he was not it to stay
alive. If parents were willing to say this in public, their judgment had
to be honored. The State had to execute him. This was a two-fold
matter of preserving family authority and preserving public safety.
What was his crime? Contumacy. He had rebelled so continu-
ally against family authority that this constituted a threat to society.
His family possessed the authority to tell him to quit practicing evils
that fell short of public actions that were subject to civil sanctions.
The State could do nothing on its own authority to stop him from
excessive drinking and eating apart from this formal accusation by
his parents. To keep State authority on a tight chain, the Mosaic law
did not authorize the State to execute people for drunkenness and
gluttony. Therefore, in order to reinforce family authority, the Mo-
saic law granted to parents the right to invoke the permanent civil
sanction against their son. Neither covenantal institution could im-
pose this sanction on its own authority. This kept both forms of au-
thority in check. It took joint action on the part of both covenantal
authorities to remove a rebellious son. Because of the nature of au-
thority in Mosaic Israel, the church presumably had already im-
posed its ultimate sanction: excommunication. The text does not
reveal this, but we can safely presume that the parents would not
have resorted to this inal declaration of their inability to control
their son unless the church had also failed in its attempt to support
family authority.

Another Heir
The heads of a household had an enormous responsibility in
Mosaic Israel. They were asked to subordinate the traditional and
nearly universal bonds of parental afection to the larger purpose of
defending God’s law. One aspect of this defense was the preserva-
tion of family capital. A wastrel son was dissipating family capital
598 DEUTERONOMY

and, by implication, the family line. The parents were called on by

God to put an end to this destruction of the family line.11 They were
to call on the State to destroy the destroyer.
This meant that there had to be another heir through whom
family capital could be extended. This family was in a situation
analogous to Adam and Eve after Cain killed Abel. While God pro-
tected Cain from execution, He also removed him from his parents’
presence. A new son, Seth, became the heir of his parents. Through
Seth came the covenant line. A similar problem faced the parents of
a rebellious son. If they had no other son, then they would either
have to pray for one or else adopt one. The point is, it took faith in
God’s plan to bring a rebellious son before the civil rulers. It took
faith in the appearance of a replacement heir. Parents would have to
place obedience to God’s law over bloodline inheritance in the ex-
tension of the family’s legacy through time.

Family, Society, and State

This degree of religious faith is rarely present in any family.
Families are normally highly protective of their members. They
place members inside a shield of toleration and protection from out-
side criticism. They resist the intrusion of outsiders who would
bring a covenant lawsuit against a member. But God’s law requires
parents not only to avoid such defensive arrangements but actually
to initiate the covenant lawsuit against a wastrel son. This act of
covenantal judgment visibly places the family under God’s law. The
State has no independent authority to initiate this covenant lawsuit.
It must wait on the parents to do their duty. The magistrates must or-
der the execution of the son on the word of the parents. The author-
ity of the two witnesses must be respected. The witnesses act as
agents of the court.
Parents in Israel who refused to do their duty faced a choice:
1) continue to protect the wastrel, thereby placing family capital at
risk, either through his dissipating ways or through lawsuits brought
against them as responsible agents over him when he commits a
crime; or 2) send him out into society on his own, thereby placing
others at risk. Parents may have decided that the former decision

11. The heirs of such a man would likely become covenant-breakers. They would die in
their sins.
 Executing a Rebellious Son 599

was too risky for family capital, but the second choice shifted the
risk to outsiders. The law was clear: parents were not to do this. They
were to protect society by delivering their son up for execution. They were to
subordinate family ties to the glory of God and the needs of law-
abiding society.
Apart from a radical transformation of men’s allegiance and un-
derstanding, it is unlikely that most family heads will ever do their
duty in this regard. Rather, they will subordinate society to family
ties. But when they do this, they transfer power to the State. They
defer to the State the responsibility of bringing a covenant lawsuit
against a known wastrel. But before the State can lawfully bring a
covenant lawsuit against him, there must be a victim. He must harm
someone. Thus, the unwillingness of families to subordinate their interests
to God’s law leads to an increase of crime and social disorder. Those who
knew that a wastrel is dangerous to society have nonetheless sent
him out into society. They have washed their hands of him by send-
ing a potential wolf among sheep. In doing so, they have raised the
risk of harm to others.
Parents are society’s irst line of defense against evil. This law
makes it clear just how important parental responsibility is, and just
how burdensome. Parents must subordinate their love for their son
to the law of God and the needs of society. They must place God’s
interest above family interests. Jesus said: “He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). This law
indicates that Jesus was drawing upon an Old Covenant principle
when he announced His judgment against the cult of the family.12

Rushdoony’s Interpretation: Juvenile Delinquency

Rushdoony discusses this passage in several places in The Insti-
tutes of Biblical Law. He says that this passage refers to “incorrigible
juvenile delinquents.”13 He repeats this in a section dealing with the
Fifth Commandment: “The Economics of the Family.”14 He discusses

12. Cf. Gary North, Baptized Patriarchalism: The Cult of the Family (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1994), pp. 1–3.
13. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
p. 77.
14. Ibid., p. 180.
600 DEUTERONOMY

15
this law at length in the section on “The Family and Delinquency.”
He cites it when discussing family authority and law enforcement.
“The family very clearly has a serious role in law enforcement. The
family is a law-order and disciplines its members. The nature and
extent of the family’s punishing power can be seen by looking again
at a text previously considered, Deuteronomy 21:18–21, the death
penalty for juvenile delinquents. There are certain very important
aspects to this law. First, the parents are to be complaining witnesses
against their criminal son. The loyalty of the parents must thus be to
God’s law-order, not to ties of blood. If the parents do not assist in
the prosecution of a criminal child, they are then accessories to the
crime. Second, contrary to the usual custom, whereby witnesses led
in the execution, in this case, ‘the men of the city’ did. Thus, where
the death penalty was involved, the family was excluded from the
execution of the law.”16 But this law went beyond mere family au-
thority, he says. It extended to society at large: the prevention of the
creation of a criminal class. He writes:

Third, as we have seen, incorrigible juvenile delinquents were

to be executed (Deut. 21:18–21), and also all habitual criminals.
Such persons were thus blotted out of the commonwealth. When
and if this law is observed, ungodly families who are given to law-
lessness are denied a place in the nation. The law thus clearly works
to eliminate all but the godly families.17

Clearly, then, the intent of this law is that all incorrigible and habitual
criminals be executed. If a criminal son is to be executed, how much more
so a neighbor or fellow Hebrew who has become an incorrigible criminal?
If the family must align itself with the execution of an incorrigibly delin-
quent son, will it not demand the death penalty of an habitual criminal in
the community? . . . The purpose of this law is to eliminate entirely a crimi-
nal element from the nation, a professional criminal class. . . . Biblical law
does not recognize a professional criminal element: the potentially habitual
criminal must be executed as soon as he gives plain evidence of this fact.18

In the United States in the inal decade of the twentieth century,

gangs of teenage boys have become the single major source of

15. Ibid., pp. 185–99.

16. Ibid., pp. 359–60.
17. Ibid., p. 380.
18. Ibid., pp. 187–88.
 Executing a Rebellious Son 601

crime. These gangs are masters of the illegal drug trade. They are
spreading across the nation, replacing the Mafia and other tradi-
tional criminal syndicates. They are well organized and dijcult for
law enforcement authorities to penetrate. The breakdown of family
authority in the inner cities has led to a replacement institution: the
gang. The gang provides community, authority, commitment, and
income. It is bound by a self-maledictory covenant oath. The gang
has become the primary agency of physical sanctions in the pre-
dominantly non-white inner cities.
These developments were implied in Rushdoony’s analysis of
this passage, which he ofered a decade prior to the public’s recogni-
tion of the plague of gang life. Yet his actual exposition is ignored by
ignorant or willfully perverse Christian critics of theonomy who
imagine that they are more humane than God, let alone
Rushdoony. “Theonomists would execute little children!” they cry
in horror, never bothering to read Rushdoony’s clear statements re-
garding this law, never considering the threat of juvenile delin-
quency to residents of inner cities. In the white middle-class safety
of the suburbs,19 critics issue smug dismissals of theonomy in the
name of tender little children. (When they are mugged in a parking
lot, however, they call on the State to imprison these teenage thugs
and throw away the key.) They impugn God by impugning
Rushdoony. They ridicule God’s law by ridiculing their version of
what they think Rushdoony says. They do not attempt to exegete
Deuteronomy 21:18–20; they just continue to cry out, “The
theonomists would execute little children.” The ancient heresy of
Marcionism is with us still: the belief that an evil God gave us the
Old Covenant, but a loving God gave us the New Testament. The
critics of theonomy never put things quite this bluntly, but what they
write and say about the capital crimes and sanctions of the Mosaic
law indicates that they believe it.

Adult Contumacy
My interpretation is diferent from Rushdoony’s. I do not think
the son was a juvenile delinquent. He was a delinquent, but he was no
juvenile. In today’s usage, “juvenile delinquent” means “a convicted

19. Possibly a temporary condition of safety.

602 DEUTERONOMY

criminal who is not old enough to be dealt with by civil law as an

adult, and who is therefore under milder civil sanctions.” This was
not the legal status of the son in this passage. He was not yet an
identiiable criminal. He had not broken any civil laws. He had not
been convicted of any crime. Here was his legal status: he was under
his parents’ legal authority; he was a glutton and a drunkard; he
would not obey his parents; and they could not control him by means
of family sanctions. Presumably, he was also an excommunicant. He
was on the road to perdition, and he was a disgrace to the family
name. His parents believed that he was too dangerous to be sent into
society as a disinherited stranger. Before he committed any crime,
his parents brought him to the civil authorities to have him
executed.
This means that merely by his continual refusal to obey them,
coupled with the marks of uncontrollable behavior – gluttony and
drunkenness – he had committed a capital crime. This in turn
means that open, wilful, publicly visible rebellion against joint pa-
rental authority is a crime equal to murder, for the civil sanction is
the same. It was not gluttony and drunkenness that constituted his
crime; it was his long-term rebellion against family authority while
living under that authority. This was Adam’s crime, too: eating what
his Father had prohibited. He died for this sin.
I disagree with Rushdoony’s argument that this son was a juve-
nile delinquent. This was an adult who was still living in his parents’
household. I do agree with his conclusion that this law, when en-
forced, would restrict the formation of a criminal class. This law and
its capital sanction serves as a model of the biblically mandatory
hostility that a godly society must have against habitual criminal be-
havior. If parents are not to tolerate continual rebellion against fam-
ily authority, to the point of demanding that their son be executed
by stoning, how much less toleration should society show toward in-
corrigible breakers of the civil law! If loving parents must be willing
to bring a capital covenant lawsuit against their own lesh and
blood, how much more ready must citizens be to rid society of ha-
bitual criminals! If it is a capital crime for a man to drink too much
and eat too much and disobey his parents in the privacy of their
home, then it surely is a capital crime to be convicted of a third or
fourth felony. The government should not lock up incorrigible fel-
ons and throw away the key. It should execute them. As the Bible
says about the rebellious son, “And all the men of his city shall stone
 Executing a Rebellious Son 603

him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among
you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear” (Deut. 21:21). If all Israel was
to fear becoming a rebellious son, surely every Israelite was to fear
becoming a habitual felon.

Illegal Drugs and the Messianic State

Today, men and women around the world call upon the State to
deal with drug dealers. They do so in the name of their children.
They cry out to the State: “We cannot control our children. They
are addicted. They steal from us. They lie to us. They rebel against
our authority continually. Therefore, we must arrest drug dealers,
convict them, imprison them, and throw away the key!” What they
do not say is this: “This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will
not obey our voice. He is a drug addict. Stone him to death. So shall
other people’s sons learn to fear.”
The State responds to political pressure by passing innumerable
laws against addictive drugs. Nevertheless, the addiction spreads.
The State takes away more and more civil liberties, especially pri-
vacy, in the name of the war on drugs. Nevertheless, this war is visi-
bly being lost. The public believes that the sale of addictive drugs
should be made illegal. What the public does not believe is that their
own sons and daughters are making self-conscious decisions to
spend money on substances that will addict them, knowing full well
that these drugs are dangerously addictive. They see their children
as ill-informed. It is the parents who are ill-informed; their children
know a great deal about drugs. This is not an information problem.
It is a moral problem. It is also an incentive problem: lack of fear of
the legal consequences.
Children in the West have wealth at their disposal greater than
what the rebellious son possessed. Sons and daughters in today’s
world of unprecedented wealth have great purchasing power. They
are nevertheless wilfully destroying themselves, squandering their
inheritance, not in some far country, as the prodigal son did, but in
the bedrooms of their parents’ homes. They are perfect examples of
the rebellious son of Deuteronomy 21.
Here is why the drug trade lourishes: parents have given their
children enormous wealth without guidance or restrictions and have
sent them into the government’s tax-funded schools, which have be-
come the primary marketplace for drugs, especially in the early
stages of addiction. The modern public school is a State-funded drug
604 DEUTERONOMY

emporium. Students have accepted the religion of humanism that

the public schools proclaim: the Darwinian story of man as the heir
of beasts and meaningless cosmic chance. They have learned their
school lessons well. They now celebrate the religion of humanism
with the high ejciency tools of the “cool” drunkard: mind-altering
drugs.
Instead of cutting of their children’s funds, pulling them out of
the public schools, and monitoring their daily activities from morn-
ing to night, parents call for more government spending on drug re-
habilitation programs, more government money for drug education
programs in the public schools, and more government money for
drug enforcement programs. In short, they call for more of the
same: more humanism, more statism, and more prisons. The par-
ents believe in the religious precept of classical Greece, which is
taught in the public schools, namely, that man’s problem is educa-
tional rather than moral, that man can be saved through law and
legislation. The parents worship at the altar of the messianic State
and wonder why their children are tempted by drugs.
The key issue here is not the question of the legalization of
drugs. That question should be dealt with by comparing the degree
of addiction with other addictive drugs, such as tobacco, which have
been legalized for adults. The question here is the primary locus of
enforcement. The biblical locus of law enforcement is the family.
The Bible acknowledges that the institution with the lowest cost of
obtaining accurate information should be the initial law enforcing
agent. This is obviously the family in cases of gluttony, drunken-
ness, and drug addiction. Any attempt by parents to shift the locus
of primary responsibility to either school or State is illegitimate.
Similarly, if we diferentiate between the teenage child and the
adult child, calling for reduced penalties for the child because of the
child’s lack of maturity – as we do with tobacco sales – then the pen-
alty could be less than stoning. It might be public whipping: more
lashes for students who had sold drugs to inance their habits than
for inal users. The point is, there has to be a severe public sanction
against such rebellious behavior as drug addiction. If parents are un-
willing to bring their rebellious children before the magistrates in
the name of God, the family’s name, and the protection of society,
then we can expect the drug plague to continue along with the
steady disappearance of our freedoms.
 Executing a Rebellious Son 605

This passage in Deuteronomy ofers a solution: execution of re-

bellious heirs. But modern man is too humane for this. Too human.
Too humanistic. He prefers living under the messianic State to liv-
ing under biblical law. He prefers statism to family responsibility.
He prefers a growing international criminal class built on drug
proits to bringing a capital covenant lawsuit against his own rebel-
lious child. He is ready to send all drug dealers to prison for decades
until the day he is told that his child supported his or her habit by
luring other men’s children into the heartless addiction; then he
cries out for a tax-inanced drug rehabilitation program rather than
prison for his supposedly victimized child. He prefers a massive and
costly prison system that clearly is not working to low-budget whip-
ping or stoning that would work very well. In the inal analysis, he
would rather see his adult child stoned on drugs than stoned by
magistrates. He ignores the Bible’s warnings: “Be not deceived;
God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap” (Gal. 6:7).

Conclusion
The law governing the rebellious adult son was a law supporting
family authority. The magnitude of the civil sanction against this
son indicates the severity of the crime and the importance of pre-
serving family authority. But this law had social implications as well.
It was a law that ofered protection to society from an organized
criminal class.
This law was a step beyond the negative sanction of excommu-
nication, which governed citizenship and therefore inheritance. In-
heritance in Old Covenant Israel was an aspect of the seed laws and
the land laws. It also had to do with eligibility to serve in God’s holy
army. This law seems to have been a law governing an excommuni-
cated, disinherited son, although no text explicitly says this. The
parents had run out of negative sanctions other than sending him
away from the household, which they regarded as too risky for soci-
ety. They had to appeal to the State to impose the maximum nega-
tive sanction that remained to be imposed on rebels. This law had to
do with three things: family authority, disinheritance, and the pro-
tection of the general public. The parents, who were legally able to
remove him both geographically and legally from the economic
beneits of their household, refused to do this. They must have be-
lieved that it was not safe to remove him from their judicial authority
606 DEUTERONOMY

as a member of their household. They feared that he would become

a threat to society. Thus, to preserve the integrity of the family name
and to protect society from a lawless rebel who had not yet become
a habitual criminal but who probably would if he was out from un-
der their authority, they brought charges against him in a civil court.
The court had to impose the death penalty, given the testimony of
the parents and the evidence of both his gluttony and drunkenness.
There is no indication that this law has been annulled by the
New Covenant. It was neither a seed law (tribal) nor a land law.
There was a need for his execution in order to preserve the family’s
good name and to protect society. Without the willingness of a few
parents to take this extreme measure, rebellious adult sons would
learn not to fear their parents. These dedicated parents, who placed
God’s law, family authority, family reputation, covenantal inheri-
tance, and social safety above their own emotional commitment to
their son’s biological survival, would serve as representatives for the
whole society. The actual execution of a rebellious son would rein-
force parental authority in many families.
These goals have not changed with the coming of the New Cov-
enant. In today’s world, the son might be a drug addict rather than a
drunken glutton. The point is, he must be visibly out of control. But
there must be a two-fold witness against his rebellion. It is not
sujcient that he be out of control, though not a law-breaker, for the
State to execute him. It is also not sujcient for the parents to bring
charges against him. There must be a two-fold witness against him:
1) two parents testifying to his rebellion and 2) publicly veriiable
evidence of either his unwillingness or inability to control his own
actions.
There has been one major alteration in the application of this
law, however. The New Covenant has increased the responsibility
of daughters. Daughters are baptized. They are placed under the
covenant’s dual sanctions: blessing and cursing. Daughters can in-
herit if they agree to bear the responsibility of caring for aged par-
ents.20 To limit the application of this law to sons is illegitimate
today. If daughters are rebellious, inancially able to become drunk-
ards and gluttons or crack-cocaine addicts, and are still living under

20. See Chapter 48: subsection on “Sons and Daughters.”

 Executing a Rebellious Son 607

their parents’ household jurisdiction, then there is no judicial reason

for them not to come under this law.
Ever since the publication of Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical
Law in 1973, critics of biblical law have repeatedly focused on this
law as the sign that theonomy is perverse. In private conversations, I
have heard this biblical passage invoked more often than any other
as evidence that theonomy is heartless and cruel. Yet the critics
never cite Rushdoony’s argument that this was a law against the for-
mation of a criminal class. Instead, they cite – and condemn – only
the law itself. The critics’ theological problem is this: their belief that
the Old Covenant God must have been heartless and cruel. They
hold the Marcionite dogma. Again and again, we hear the refrain:
“Theonomists would execute little children!”21 It is time for this mis-
interpretation to end. But it won’t. It is too convenient a rhetorical
device for modern-day Marcionites to resist.

21. I once received a letter from a Westminster Seminary graduate who had not been
ofered a job. He wanted me to hire him. He also wanted Bahnsen to hire him. He misspelled
Rushdoony’s name in his ajrmation that he was familiar with theonomy, although not yet
willing to subscribe to theonomy. I mentioned the possibility that I might be willing to hire
him and his wife to run a day care facility. He wrote back that his wife found it odd that
anyone who believed in stoning children was ready to start a day care. Needless to say, I did
not hire him. His verbally clever but theologically ill-informed wife cost them an opportunity
to begin a potentially lucrative and satisfying career with my money. His wife was simply
repeating what has become a common misrepresentation of the theonomic interpretation of
this passage.
 50
LostAND
LOST and Found
FOUND

Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide
thyself from them: thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy
brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not,
then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee
until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. In like
manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment;
and with all lost things of thy brother’s, which he hath lost, and thou hast
found, shalt thou do likewise: thou mayest not hide thyself. Thou shalt not
see thy brother’s ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from
them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again (Deut. 22:1–4).

These laws governing lost property were extensions of Exodus

23:4–5: “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou
shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that
hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help
him, thou shalt surely help with him.” These were not seed laws nor
land laws. They were cross-boundary laws. As I wrote in Tools of Do-
minion regarding the Exodus passage, these laws, since they deal with
property, were governed by the theocentric principle of God as the
cosmic Owner. He has delegated ownership of selected portions of
His property to individuals and organizations, so that they might
work out their salvation or damnation with fear and trembling (Phil.
2:12). Because God has delegated responsibility for the care and use
of His property to speciic individuals or organizations, who are held
responsible for its management, non-owners are required by God to

608
 Lost and Found 609

honor this distribution of ownership and its associated responsibili-

ties.1 This includes even the return of lost property to its owner.
What these laws mandate is the public’s recognition that all
ownership is delegated and therefore representative. Ownership
means lawful delegated control over the use of a scarce economic
resource. The stranger who inds a lost item becomes a delegated
owner working on behalf of the property’s two owners: God and the
delegated owner. There is a new hierarchy of ownership: God > le-
gally responsible title holder > discoverer. The discoverer is under
the greatest legal constraints governing the use of the property be-
cause he does not hold title, yet he now possesses physical control
over the property. The fundamental principle of all biblical govern-
ment is this: with power comes responsibility. The discoverer cannot le-
gally escape responsibility before God, for God has transferred to
the discoverer a temporary, though highly restrictive, administra-
tive legal title. This is why the law does not identify the discoverer as
a thief.
Because these laws are so similar to the Exodus laws, I repro-
duce here much of Chapter 25 of Tools of Dominion. Some readers
may not own a copy of my earlier book. It may be inconvenient for
them to locate a copy. It is easy for me to reprint what I wrote there,
but with a few modiications. The Exodus case laws single out ene-
mies. These do not. The Exodus law regarding the lost animal is the
stronger law because it deals with an animal owned by an enemy.
The Deuteronomy version is more general: the inder may not
know who owns the wandering beast. Because of his lack of infor-
mation, he is required to expend resources to care for the animal un-
til the owner claims them. The inder’s lack of information leads to
expenses associated with caretaking. In this regard, this case law is
also an extension of the caretaking law.2
I focus here on the law regarding the lost animal, although the
same principles of responsible administration govern all forms of
lost property. Consider the law of the fallen animal. It is a simple
case: help the animal. It does not matter who its owner is. This assis-
tance is a charitable subsidy to both the animal and its owner. It

1. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), p. 774.
2. Ibid., ch. 20.
610 DEUTERONOMY

creates good feelings. A good deed done on behalf of the fallen ani-
mal should be seen by the owner as a sign of the helper’s righteous-
ness. It testiies to the helper’s commitment to God’s law. Because
the law of the fallen animal is an uncomplicated law, I do not devote
much space to discussing it.
Let us consider more carefully the law governing the lost ani-
mal. There are several beneicial results of this moral law whenever
it is widely obeyed. First, it upholds the sanctity of the legal rights of
property owners. Second, it reasserts man’s legitimate control over the
animal creation. Third, it increases the bonds of friendship among men
with a common confession of faith. Fourth, the passage of time makes
it easier to identify thieves. Fifth, it provides an incentive to develop
marks of private ownership, such as brands on animals.
This law is not a civil law. Biblical civil law invokes only nega-
tive sanctions against public evil. This is because the State is not an
agent of salvation. It cannot lawfully seek to make men good. It is
limited to imposing negative sanctions that will make men’s evil acts
more expensive, thereby reducing the number of evil acts. If the
State mandated charity, civil law would become a source of positive
sanctions. But these laws, like the laws of Exodus 23:4–5, are posi-
tive, charitable injunctions.

Owner’s Rights
There is a rhyme that English-speaking children chant, “Finders,
keepers; losers, weepers.” When one child inds a toy or possession of
another, he torments the owner with this chant. Yet his very chanting
testiies to the fact that the tormenter really does not believe in his
own ethical position. If he really wanted to keep the object, he
would not admit to the victim that he had found it. He would forego
the joys of tormenting the victim for the pleasure of keeping the ob-
ject. The tormented can always appeal to his own parents, who will
then go to the parents of the tormenter. In Western society, most
parents know that the discovered object is owned by the loser.
From time to time, someone discovers a very valuable lost ob-
ject, such as a sack of paper money that dropped out of an armored
car. When he returns it to the owner, the newspapers record the
story. Invariably, the doer of the good deed receives a series of tele-
phone calls and letters from anonymous people who inform him
that he was a fool, that he should have kept the money. Again, this is
 Lost and Found 611

evidence of the West’s dominant ethical position: the critics prefer

to remain anonymous.

The Right of Disposal

From a legal standpoint, the reason why the law requires the
inder to return the lost item to the owner is that the owner owns the
rights of use and disposal of the property. What is owned is the right
to exclude other people from using the property. This “bundle of
rights” is the essence of ownership. The capitalist system is not
based on “property rights”; it is based on some person’s legal right
to control the use and disposal of property. Nothing inheres in the
property that gives these rights.
There is another familiar phrase, “possession is nine-tenths of
the law.” This is incorrectly stated, if by “possession” we mean phys-
ical control over some object. The possession which is nine-tenths
of the law is the possession of the legal right to exclude, not possession
of the physical object itself. The object does not carry this legal right
with it when it wanders of or is lost by the owner.
We can see this easily when we consider the case of a lost child.
The fact that someone discovers a lost child obviously transfers no
legal right to keep the child. The child is to be returned to the par-
ents or to the civil authorities who act as legal agents of the parents.
Possession is clearly not nine-tenths of the law. If anything, posses-
sion of a long-lost child subjects a person to the threat of being
charged with kidnapping. Because God is the ultimate owner of man-
kind, He has delegated the legal right to control children to parents,
except in cases of physical abuse by parents which threatens the life
of the child. In short, parental sovereignty is nine-tenths of the law,
not merely possession of physical control over a particular child.
When someone who discovers another person’s property is re-
quired by God to return it to its owner, there can be no doubt con-
cerning the Bible’s commitment to the private ownership of the
means of production. Biblical moral law, when obeyed, produces a
capitalist economic order. Socialism is anti-biblical. Where biblical
moral law is self-enforced, and biblical civil law is publicly en-
forced, capitalism must develop. One reason why so many modern
Christian college professors in the social sciences are vocal in their
opposition to biblical law is that they are deeply inluenced by so-
cialist economic thought. They recognize clearly that their socialist
612 DEUTERONOMY

conclusions are incompatible with biblical law, so they have aban-

3
doned biblical law.

Dominion Through Judgment

This case law extends man’s dominion over nature: domesti-
cated animals are not to “run wild.” They are under man’s care and
protection. This reasserts man’s place under God but above the ani-
mals: point two of the biblical covenant model, hierarchy.4
A lost animal can damage other people’s property (Ex. 22:5). It
can wander into a pit and get hurt or killed (Ex. 21:33–34). It can in-
jure men or other animals (Ex. 21:35–36). To have a domesticated
lost animal wandering without any form of supervision testiies
against the dominion covenant. It is a sign that God’s required moral
and hierarchical order has broken down. It is an aspect of God’s curse
when beasts inherit the land (Ex. 23:29). In short, animals that are ca-
pable of being domesticated require supervision by man.
No man’s knowledge is perfect. Men can lose control over their
domestic work animals. When they do, it becomes a moral respon-
sibility for other men to intervene and restore hierarchical order.
This is done for the sake of biblical social order: 1) for the individual
who has lost control over his animal and who is legally responsible
for any damage that it might perform, and 2) for the sake of the animal.
A domesticated animal such as an ox is a capital asset, a tool of
production. Mankind’s development of tools of production is the
basis of economic growth. The loss of a trained work animal reduces
its owner’s ability to subdue his portion of the earth. This sets back
the fulillment of God’s dominion covenant with mankind. This loss
of production reduces the per capita economic growth of the whole
community, even though this corporate loss may not be large enough
to be perceived by men. The person who inds a lost animal is re-
quired to restore it to the owner, even though this involves economic
sacriice on his part. In the long run, this implicit sanctioning of pri-
vately owned capital will produce increased wealth for all.

3. A good example of such antinomian socialist reasoning is John Gladwin, “Centralist

Economics,” in Robert Clouse (ed.), Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views of Economics
(Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1984), ch. 4. See also my response, ibid., pp.
198–203.
4. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 2.
 Lost and Found 613

The biblical imagery of the lost sheep of Israel is indicative of

the central concern of the Bible: the restoration of moral and legal
order, the overcoming of sin and its efects. The lost sheep in history
need a shepherd. They are wandering toward destruction. God in-
tervenes and brings them home. The New Testament imagery of
Jesus as the good shepherd points to the theme of restoration.
Even if biblical civil law mandated private charity – negative
sanctions on one person for the sake of positive sanctions to another
– it would be close to impossible to gain a court’s conviction against
anyone who ignores this law and lets the animal continue to wan-
der. There would have to be at least two witnesses. The accused per-
son could claim that he had never noticed the animal or any other
lost object. It is also dijcult to imagine what civil penalties might be
attached to this law. We therefore should conclude that the enforce-
ment of this law is based on self-government under God’s law. The per-
son who returns a lost object to its owner is demonstrating that he
has acted out of concern for God’s law, not out of concern for civil
sanctions. He is a person who exercises self-government under
God’s law. Again, it becomes more dijcult to entertain suspicions
about his overall ulterior motives.
Let us assume that the discoverer found the animal in his garden
or his ields. He wants to get it away from his crops. He is not al-
lowed by law to kill it. It is not responsible for its actions. To get it
away from his crops, he must either take it down to the edge of his
property and shoo it away, or else he must place it in a pen or other
restrictive area. To keep from losing wealth because of its unre-
stricted access to his crops, he must go to the trouble of placing it un-
der restraints. If he wants to be reimbursed for the crops it
consumed or any damage it caused, he must locate its owner. The
economics of a wandering beast in a biblical commonwealth pro-
vides incentives, both positive and negative, for the righteous man
to become a caretaker of the lost animal.
The person who steals an animal and is immediately arrested
could ofer this excuse: “I found this animal wandering in the area,
and I was simply returning it to its owner. I did not know who
owned it, so I was taking it home until I could make further inqui-
ries.” This excuse might work once or twice. It would not be a suit-
able excuse three or four times. A person who lives in a society that
has developed an information reporting system, in order to avoid
suspicion, must report the whereabouts of lost articles to the civil
614 DEUTERONOMY

authorities if he does not know who the owner is. Thus, as time
passes, the “excuse of the wandering animal” fades. The owner who
discovers his animal in another’s possession has a far stronger legal
case than if this case law were not in God’s law-order. A lost animal
is not supposed to remain indeinitely in another person’s posses-
sion, especially after the person who lost it announces its absence
publicly. “Thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be
with thee until thy brother seek after it.”

Marks of Ownership and Reduced Search Costs

This case law makes it far more likely that lost property will be
immediately returned to a known owner. Thus, obeying this law in-
creases the economic return from marking property. This is an eco-
nomic incentive to extend the principle of owner’s rights. A person’s
legal claim to property is secured at a lower cost through a mark of
ownership. When anything can be obtained at a lower price, more of
it will be demanded than before. This is why marks of ownership are
important factors in extending the free market social order. When
more people own property and thereby secure the stream of income
that assets provide, they will ind it in their self-interest to defend the
principle of owner’s rights.
By marking property, the owner reduces future search costs,
both his search for the animal and the inder’s search for the owner.
The mark also reduces search costs for a neighbor whose crops have
been eaten or ruined by a wandering beast. He can then gain restitu-
tion from the owner (Ex. 22:5). Branding also reduces search costs
for the civil authorities if the animal should be stolen. By burning an
identifying mark into an animal’s lesh, or by attaching a tag to its
ear or other lesh, the owner increases risks for the thief. This also in-
creases risks for those who would buy from the thief. The identify-
ing mark makes it possible for the buyer to avoid the possibility that
he will be charged with having received stolen property. Also, the
mark reduces the buyer’s risk of being forced by law to return the
property to the owner, leaving the buyer with neither the stolen
property nor his money.5

5. The victimized buyer would have a legal claim against the thief, but the victimized
property owner has irst claim: double restitution.
 Lost and Found 615

God’s use of circumcision in the Old Testament era is an obvi-

ous parallel to the brand. So was the hole punched in the ear of a
voluntary lifetime servant (Ex. 21:6). These were both marks of
ownership. The New Testament practice of baptism leaves no visi-
ble mark, but it leaves a legal description in the records of a continu-
ing third party institution, the church. Baptism is also a mark of
God’s primary ownership. The same is true of property registration
generally. Titles, deeds, and other marks of legal ownership have
developed over the centuries, thereby extending the dominion of
mankind through the development of the institution of private
property. By identifying legal owners, society increases the level of
personal responsibility. This, too, is a fundamental biblical goal.

Not a Case of State-Enforced Charity

The discoverer must sacriice time and efort to see to it that the
property is returned to its owner. This might be seen as a form of ju-
dicially mandated charity, one of the few examples of compulsory
charity in the Bible. Compulsory charity, however, is a contradic-
tion. Charity must always be legally voluntary. It is governed by the
legal principle that the recipient has no judicially enforceable
earthly entitlement to the gift. This is why the modern welfare State
is careful to label its compulsory wealth-redistribution programs as
entitlements. The creators of these programs want to avoid any sug-
gestion of voluntarism, which implies that the donor has the right to
refuse to make the gift. Thus, this case law is not related to charity.
The owner has a legal claim on the property. He has an entitlement.
The person who inds the lost property is expected to honor this le-
gal claim, even though it costs him money or time to do so.
This law requires a form of wealth-redistribution. The person
who discovers lost property owes it to the owner to return it or care
for it. This is a positive injunction. Yet biblical civil law, as I have ar-
gued repeatedly, does not issue positive injunctions. It does not
compel anyone to do good; it merely prohibits people from doing
public evil. Thus, I conclude that this law is not a civil law, but is
rather a moral injunction. There is no civil sanction attached to it,
nor is there any general judicial principle of restitution that would
enable the judges to determine a proper sanction. The civil govern-
ment therefore has no role to play in the enforcement of this law.
The civil government can become involved if the person who
owns the property discovers it in someone else’s possession. The
616 DEUTERONOMY

suspicion of theft immediately arises. This risk is an incentive for the

discoverer to return it to its owner, in order to avoid future criminal
prosecution for theft. But this is a separate issue. The case law in
question should be seen as a moral responsibility placed on the indi-
vidual directly by God, not as a civil statute.
In all likelihood, however, the individual who inds a wandering
animal owned by no known person will report this to some author-
ity. He does not want to be found in possession of another man’s
beast. To insure himself from a future lawsuit, he tells someone in
authority, or at least local witnesses, that he has found a wandering
animal. This shared information serves as a means of lowering the
costs of inding lost animals. Because of the laws governing theft,
this caretaker law increases the likelihood that the inder will go to
extra efort to inform the authorities of his discovery. The local civil
magistrate or Levite would then serve as a lost-and-found agency.
Someone whose animal had wandered of would go to someone in
authority and enquire regarding any report of a lost animal of a par-
ticular description.
We can presume that the animal would not be too far from
home. Even though this law of mandatory caretaking was not en-
forceable by a civil court, it was enforceable in God’s court. God’s
court involves sanctions, positive and negative, in history. The cov-
enant-keeper who found a lost animal would have felt moral pres-
sure to take it to his home. He would then have had to take care of it.
This was an expense that he might not have wanted. He would
therefore have had another incentive to inform the authorities or in
other ways get word into the community about the stray beast.
What about the output of the animal? The inder was entitled to
shear the sheep if he cared for it. He could sell the wool or use it.
There is no indication in this text or any other that his expense in
caring for a lost animal could not be recovered by the productivity
of the animal. If it ate his grass, if he had to hire extra help in caring
for it, if he put it in a barn to shelter it, and no man claimed it, then
he was entitled to use it. If anything happened to it while he was
working it, he would have been responsible. It was not his property.
It was, in this sense, on loan to him. He could not misuse it, but he
could use it.
Whenever this law was honored in Israel, an animal could not
have strayed far from its owner. Sooner rather than later, an Israel-
ite would have done his duty and taken it home. The more faithful
 Lost and Found 617

to God’s law Israel was as a nation, the sooner that someone would
have taken responsibility for this lost, wandering beast. The more
righteous the society was, the less distance the animal could have
wandered. Widespread personal righteousness in this case meant
lower search costs for the owner. This was another example of the
great respect for private property in the Mosaic law.

Treasure Hidden in a Field

This law seems to be contradictory to Jesus’ parable of the king-
dom of heaven: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure
hid in a ield; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for
joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that ield”
(Matt. 13:44). Why isn’t Jesus’ example a case of lost property? Why
isn’t the inder required to report it to the presumed owner, i.e., the
owner of the ield? Because the treasure had been deliberately
hidden.
Jesus was challenging Old Covenant Israel to cease hiding the
treasure of salvation from the gentiles.6 The kingdom of heaven is
not supposed to be hidden; it is to be shared with all the world. But
someone had taken the treasure and had hidden it, He said. This
was similar to the action taken by the responsibility-aversive wicked
servant who refused to multiply his master’s goods as a faithful stew-
ard – another kingdom parable.

Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I
knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown,
and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and
hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord an-
swered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest
that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou
oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at
my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore
the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto

6. Paul wrote: “For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in
Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have sufered like things of your own countrymen, even
as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have
persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak
to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to ill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come
upon them to the uttermost” (I Thess. 2:14–16; emphasis added).
618 DEUTERONOMY

every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from
him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye
the unproitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25:24–30).

The person who discovers a hidden treasure is not under any

obligation to inform the owner of the ield of its existence. Someone
had taken steps to hide the asset. The original owner had decided to
invest the treasure by hiding it. This is not the best way to increase
wealth except in times of warfare or widespread theft. It is better to
put the asset to work. The hidden asset is not being used produc-
tively. The inder takes a great risk by selling everything he owns to
make a bid on the ield. The ield’s owner, if he knows about the
treasure, may dig it up and then sell the ield – now far overpriced –
to the inder. But if the ield’s owner does not know about the hid-
den treasure, the buyer is not under any moral obligation to tell him
about it. The ield’s buyer is reclaiming the asset from the heirs of
the original treasure-hider, who know nothing about the where-
abouts of the treasure and who did not hide it. They have no legal
claims on this property. They are not like the owner of lost property,
who does have a legal claim. The treasure in the ield is not marked.
It is not the responsibility of the discoverer to seek out the heirs,
who may be scattered across the face of the earth, depending on
how long the treasure has been hidden. The person most likely to
put the hidden treasure to productive use is the treasure-inder who
is willing to sell all that he has to buy the ield.
The Jews had hidden God’s kingdom in Jesus’ era. They were
hoarding it. They were not taking it in its pure form to the gentiles.
They had encrusted it with layers of man-made law, thereby hiding
it. This was hampering the growth of the kingdom. This is why Jesus
also said: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be
taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits
thereof” (Matt. 21:43). Jesus was telling His listeners that they had
found the hidden treasure: the kingdom of heaven. It was time for
them to commit everything they owned to the spread of the good
news of redemption: to gentiles as well as to Jews. The Jews refused
to admit that what they had done by way of legalism and national-
ism had concealed the kingdom from gentiles. Thus, the kingdom
was rightfully the property of the church, which stripped the mes-
sage of redemption of its legalism and then shared it with the world.
 Lost and Found 619

It was not that the kingdom had been lost; it had been deliberately
hidden and kept out of plain sight. Thus, the law of lost property did
not apply in the parable.

Idle Resources and Entrepreneurship

The economic principle governing hidden treasure is what W.
H. Hutt called the theory of idle resources. Hidden treasure is not
idle if it is the object of human decision-making. It is invested in a
particular way. When resources are deliberately not being used to
produce goods and services, this may be because of the owners’ lack
of information about how to maximize the value of the unused asset,
i.e., to make it worth more in production than it is sitting idle. Or it
may be because the owner is highly risk-aversive. Hutt’s economic
analysis also identiies bottlenecks of information created by gov-
ernment policy, such as minimum wage laws or other forms of price
control.7
When an idle resource is idle because no one recognizes it as
valuable, or because the owner has forgotten where it is hidden,
then the way to get it back into production is to allow a inder to buy
it. This is an application of the Austrian school’s theory of entrepre-
neurship: proit as the result of the decision of an entrepreneur who
bears the economic uncertainty associated with production. He be-
lieves that he possesses better knowledge regarding future con-
sumer demand than his competitors do. He buys a productive good
at a price that is lower than it would be if all producers recognized its
highest future use. If his forecast is correct, and if he puts the under-
priced asset to cost-efective use, then he gains his reward: an
above-average rate of return on his investment. If his forecast is in-
correct, or if he misallocates the resource, then he reaps losses.
To maximize the spread of accurate information and the con-
sumer beneits associated with this information, the free market so-
cial order allows entrepreneurs to buy ields containing “hidden
treasure.” These ields are in the form of scarce resources that are
not priced as high as they would be if other entrepreneurs knew the
truth: hidden treasures are buried in them, i.e., there are beneits
that consumers will be willing to pay for. These treasures are not lost

7. W. H. Hutt, The Theory of Idle Resources: A Study in Deinition (2nd ed.; Indianapolis:
LibertyPress, 1977).
620 DEUTERONOMY

resources; rather, they are forgotten or ignored resources that are

not being put to their maximum consumer-satisfying uses. In short,
accurate information regarding the future is not the equivalent of a
lost sheep that has wandered of and will be missed by the owner. It
is the equivalent of a treasure buried and therefore taken out of pro-
duction by a previous owner, and then forgotten. There is no moral
reason why someone who inds a way to serve the public better
through putting that treasure back into production should be re-
quired to broadcast this information to anyone. But he must not
steal it; he must buy the ield in which it is hidden. He must bear the
costs of gaining ownership.

Conclusion
The lost domesticated animal is a valuable asset. To preserve
the principle of private ownership, God’s law assigns responsibility
to the person who inds lost property. He is to care for it until its
owner appears to claim it. Because of the laws against theft, it is
likely that the inder will report his discovery to someone in author-
ity. This increases the spread of knowledge. It also tends to create a
lost-and-found ojce in society. The person who lost his property in
Israel had two likely sources of information regarding his lost prop-
erty: the elders in the gate and the local Levite.
This law was neither a seed law nor a land law. There is no more
reason to assume that it no longer applies in the New Covenant than
it would be to assume that the same principle of caretaking does not
apply to lost children. The person who inds a lost beast is no more
entitled to become its owner than he is entitled to become a parent
of a lost child. In the case of a lost child, the judicial incentive to re-
port the existence of the lost child is greater. Kidnapping is a capital
crime (Ex. 21:16).8 But the same interpretive principle holds true:
the inder is not allowed to become a keeper. The inder has an obli-
gation to care for the lost beast as he would to care for a lost child.
He has an analogous obligation to report his discovery, though not
an equally intense obligation, given the disparity of the civil penal-
ties for theft vs. kidnapping. This is another reason why a wandering
child is unlikely to stray as far as a wandering beast.9

8. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 8.

9. The main reason is a young child’s inability to care for itself, unlike a beast.
 Lost and Found 621

This law created incentives for owners to brand their beasts. By

marking them, the owner made it more likely that the beast would
be returned to him by the inder. The brand made it less likely that a
inder would be able to claim that the animal was his rather than the
owner’s. In other words, the brand reduced the likelihood of either
a permanently lost animal or a stolen animal. With the owner’s
mark on the animal, the owner could claim his right of ownership.
This was why circumcision marked Israel. God’s legal claim was on
the male Israelite. The fact is, the image of God in man is God’s uni-
versal claim of ownership, but the covenant mark in the Mosaic law
made this ownership visible to the person so marked. God’s unique
claim of ownership was on an Israelite. This was the meaning of cir-
cumcision; it is also the meaning of baptism. No matter how far a
“branded” covenant-keeper strays from both the protection and re-
straint of the institutional church, God’s mark of baptism identiies
him as owned by God.
 51
Nature’sROOTS
NATURE’S Roots and
ANDFruits
FRUITS

If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the
ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the
young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: But
thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may
be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days (Deut. 22:6–7).

The theocentric aspect of this law is the creation. God rules over
nature because He created the universe. This law is clearly an aspect
of the dominion covenant which God established with mankind. It
is not a seed law or a land law. God gave to Adam and Eve the
responsibility of ruling over the creation. “And God said, Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have do-
minion over the ish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth” (Gen. 1:26). God recapitulated this cove-
1
nant with Noah and his sons (Gen. 9:1–3).

1. There are extreme pietist Bible commentators who argue that the dominion covenant
made with Adam was pre-Fall and does not apply to history. For example, the then-tiny and
now much smaller premillennial fundamentalist denomination, the Bible Presbyterian
Church, declared in 1970 that the cultural mandate (the Dutch Reformed version of the
dominion covenant) has no authority in history, but is exclusively pre-Fall and post-
resurrection. Genesis 1:26–28 and Genesis 9 have nothing to do with culture, the denomina-
tion insisted; the command applies only to biological reproduction. Genesis 9 does not use
the words “and subdue it,” and therefore the passage has nothing to do with culture in history.
The idea of the cultural mandate “cuts the nerve of true missionary work and of evangelism.”
For the complete document and its refutation, see R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical
Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 723–30. For pietists, true missionary work
and evangelism apply only to individual souls, denominational reform (i.e., separatism’s
church splits), and Christian families. For a refutation of this view, see Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.,
The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).

622
 Nature’s Roots and Fruits 623

Because this is a covenant under God, there is hierarchy. The

hierarchy of the dominion covenant is this: God > man > woman >
minor children > nature. Because it is a covenant, there are sanc-
tions attached. This law announces a personal blessing for obedi-
ence: long life. The blessing itself points to point ive of the biblical
covenant model: continuity, i.e., greater time on earth in order to
extend one’s dominion over nature. The positive sanction, long life,
is an aspect of inheritance: building up the capital base that a man
leaves to his children.
Man’s dominion over nature extends God’s grace to the cre-
ation. This grace is governed by God’s law. The principle under-
girding this Mosaic case law is that the productivity of nature must be
preserved by man. The individual who inds a mother bird is allowed
to claim her ofspring as his lawful possession, but he must set free
the mother. The mother is an instrument of productivity. She has
reached adulthood. She has survived nature’s challenges to youth.
Animals that were farther up the food chain did not catch her. Also,
she did not starve. Because this animal is a skilled survivor, she is
worth more as a productive asset than the newborns are. Man can
do what he wishes with the newborn, but he must let the adult go free
to reproduce again. In this we can see a pattern for man-directed ecol-
ogy in general. That which is a source of wealth for man in unowned
nature is to be allowed to continue to be productive.

Preserving Nature’s Organic Productivity

The setting of this case law is not organized agriculture. A man
comes across a bird’s nest. The bird has built it where it decided, not
where man decided. The Hebrew word translated “by chance” re-
fers to an encounter. It is frequently translated “befall.” A man has
come upon the nest. This discovery was unplanned by the man. The
bird was operating under the laws of unplanned nature. This is not a
chicken farm.
This law secures life for the mother because of the presence of
the ofspring. A man may lawfully claim an isolated female bird for
his own. If it is not immediately caring for its young, it is “fair game.”
But what about mammals? The principle of this law is that a female
with ofspring under her immediate care, and therefore dependent
for survival on her care, must be set free. Modern hunting laws that
protect female deer are extensions of the principle that mothers car-
ing for their young are of-limits to hunters. Because hunters cannot
624 DEUTERONOMY

be sure if a female is caring for her young, they may not shoot any
adult female. But if the hunting laws also protect the young, they are
in violation of this case law. Biblically, the ofspring are fair game.2
This law protects a productive female while she is caring for her
young. Her productivity in bringing ofspring into the world and
caring for them must be honored. This case law protects her life. It
does not do so for the sake of the existing ofspring, which may be
lawfully harvested by the discoverer. My conclusion is that it does
so for the sake of future ofspring. A demonstrably productive asset
in nature must be allowed to continue its productivity. This inter-
pretation is consistent with the law of fruit-bearing trees during a
siege: the invading army may eat the fruit of nearby trees, but not
cut them down (Deut. 20:19). Orchards planted by the enemy were
treated as if they had grown on their own. They had not been planted
by the invading Israelites; they were therefore to be left standing.

The Tragedy of the Commons

This law governs animals found in the wild. There is no compa-
rable law governing domesticated animals. The owner of a farm is
in charge of breeding his animals. He feeds them, shelters them, and
cares for them directly. They are not survivors in the wild; they are
survivors in a sheltered environment. In this setting, the owner is
not under any restriction regarding mothers and ofspring. He may
lawfully kill the mother and eat her eggs. But will he? Probably not.
After all, the mother is his property. She may not lay golden eggs,
but she does lay consumable, marketable eggs. She is a capital asset
that produces a stream of income. She is a proven producer. The
owner probably will not kill her.
Nevertheless, this female may be growing less fertile. The
owner may decide that she is now it for eating. After he collects her
eggs, he is entitled to wring her neck. This is not an animal that sur-
vives in the competitive environment of nature. It is an owned re-
source. The owner has authority over it.
The diferentiating mark is ownership. Animals found in the
wild are unowned. In such cases, these animals may become victims

2. It is considered “unsporting” to shoot immature deer. The problem here is that civil
laws should not be enacted which go beyond the meaning and intent of biblical law. The
boundaries protecting young animals in the wild should not be civil.
 Nature’s Roots and Fruits 625

of annihilation by non-owners who see them as free resources.

When men ind themselves in control of a free resource, they tend
to overconsume it. They do not bear the costs of ownership, yet they
can reap the beneits of ownership. The high beneit-cost ratio en-
courages them to consume the resource. After all, they are not able
to collect an income stream from an animal which they encounter in
a ield. It is a “now or never” situation. They can now gain the
beneits of owning the asset. If they wait, they will be unlikely to ap-
propriate this particular fruit of nature. Thus, there is an economic
incentive to “overharvest” the resource. They will kill the mother
and take the eggs.
This result is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons.3 No
one owns the wild. No one owns this particular family of animals.
The costs of production are almost nonexistent to the harvester; the
beneits of harvesting are high. So, he takes all of the resource. This
leads to overuse of the asset: overgrazing, overpolluting, or over-
whatever. Ownership provides an economic disincentive against im-
mediate consumption. But ownership of a long-term capital asset
does not exist in nature. Thus, unowned, ungoverned nature must
be protected by civil law. Men, in their legal capacity as God’s cor-
porate agents over nature, must place legal restraints on the misuse
of temporarily unowned nature.4 This is for the beneit of nature and
also for the beneit of men in the future, who will be able to harvest
nature’s bounty. Those animals that are under mankind’s covenantal
authority are to be protected against the otherwise rational eco-
nomic decision by a non-owning individual to overconsume na-
ture’s resources.

3. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science (Dec. 13, 1968); reprinted in
Garrett de Bell (ed.), The Environmental Handbook (New York: Ballentine, 1970). For a critique,
see C. R. Batten, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” The Freeman (Oct. 1970). Cf. Gary North,
The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1987), pp. 208–10.
4. This means that nature is not to remain unowned. Also, it does not mean that nature
should be owned by the State. The biblical case for State ownership must be made in terms of
the principle of hierarchical responsibility. The defender of State ownership must show from
the Bible either that the State has been authorized by God to serve as His dominion agent or
that inherent in the arrangement are conditions that mandate bureaucratic administration.
The judicial issue is God’s hierarchy of ownership, not some theory of nature’s rights. Nature
has no rights. The idea that nature has rights independent of man as God’s dominion agent is
pagan to the core. Nature has no rights, in the same sense that property has no rights. It is
ironic that environmentalists who decry property rights also cry for nature’s rights.
626 DEUTERONOMY

Because this law authorizes the discoverer to harvest the ofspring,

it clearly recognizes man’s legal authority over nature. The fruits of
nature – in this case, the ofspring – are fair game for man. Man is
not to be kept completely out of unowned nature for the sake of na-
ture. Unowned nature is a challenge to man’s lawful dominion over nature.
It testiies to the incomplete dominion of man in history.5 Nature un-
der the autonomous dominion of beasts is so repulsive to God that
He allowed Canaanites to remain in the land until the Israelites
could either exterminate them or drive them out. “I will not drive
them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate,
and the beast of the ield multiply against thee” (Ex. 23:29). For in-
stance, the idea that a jungle is to be preserved for the jungle’s sake
is an anti-biblical idea. The man-killing insects of a jungle are to be
treated by man with no more leniency than a plague-carrying mos-
quito is, unless there is some clear ecological beneit to mankind by
sparing the killer.6
This law places restraints on the tragedy of the commons. Na-
ture’s raw productivity is to be preserved by civil law until such time
as man can domesticate nature. Man subdues nature through pri-
vate ownership. When land is privately owned, when animals are
penned in, and when man provides a protective environment for
the animals under his authority, then this law ceases to have any rel-
evance. When the commons – commonly owned land or unowned
land – disappears, so does the related tragedy of overconsumption.
While it is incorrect to argue that “the only good rain forest is a dead
rain forest,”7 it is biblically correct to say that the best rain forest is a
privately owned rain forest. While a privately owned rain forest can
become the victim of inappropriate ecological management, this is
also true of a politically owned rain forest. (By the way, “rain forest”

5. This includes the oceans. The problem with oceans is that they are unowned. They are
part of the commons. The result is an overharvesting of some species.
6. If burning down a forest or a jungle creates an environment in which mosquitoes
multiply, and if society is unwilling or too poor to allow the use of chemicals such as DDT,
then leaving the forest or jungle standing may be the best ecological policy. The mosquito
historically has been man’s greatest enemy in nature. Man’s seeming victory over malaria-
carrying mosquitoes by the mid-1960’s has been rolled back since then. Gordon Harrison,
Mosquitoes, Malaria and Man: A History of the Hostilities Since 1880 (New York: Dutton, 1978).
7. Conservative John Podhoretz claims that this phrase is the only one that gets a strong
negative reaction from liberals at a Washington, D.C. cocktail party these days, so de-
sensitized have liberals become to conservative rhetoric.
 Nature’s Roots and Fruits 627

is a term that usually refers to a jungle, a far less compelling word

rhetorically in public policy debates.) But there is this diference:
private owners have greater personal economic incentives to pre-
serve the productivity of an asset, as determined by consumers’ use
of the asset, than a government’s salaried managers have. Also, by
decentralizing ownership, the free market social order increases the
likelihood that an ecological mistake will not be imposed on all of
nature at the same time, which is not the case when a centralized
civil government exercises direct control over the property.8 In
short, fewer commons mean fewer and less wasteful tragedies.

Conclusion
The fruits of nature belong to man. This biblical principle under-
girds this case law: the ofspring can lawfully be harvested by the
inder. But the roots of presently unowned nature belong to God.
His delegated intermediary is nature itself until men establish direct
ownership over tracts of nature and begin to manage them. Until
then, God exercises His control over the mother hen through the
operations of nature. God demonstrates His ownership by placing
legal restrictions on the use of nature’s capital assets. This is why the
mother hen must be set free, to breed another day. Man is not to
overharvest unowned, unmanaged nature. Because man is not pro-
viding the scarce means of sustaining life for nature’s wild animals,
he is not to be given free reign over both the roots and fruits of

8. An example of such mismanagement is the U.S. Forest Service’s policy, which

accelerated in the 1960’s, of ighting small forest ires on Federally owned land: over 190
million acres. This policy has led to the extensive growth of underbrush and small trees, and
the build-up of dead branches. This is now tinder for huge, uncontrollable forest ires that
sweep through hundreds of thousands of acres at a time. The big trees perish in these huge
ires. Over 6 million acres burned in the irst ten months of 1996, the worst ire season since
1952, when 6.7 million acres burned. James Brooke, “Western Wildires Near Record
Season,” New York Times (Oct. 24, 1996). The government’s policy of ire suppression had
been in operation since the 1920’s. Now the government’s forest managers have decided to
reverse this policy. Forest managers will start deliberate ires to reduce this underbrush,
hoping that these deliberately set ires do not become uncontrollable ires. Federal land
managers estimate that this policy will take two or three decades to become successful. They
say that ire seasons will become worse over the next two decades, until the controlled-burn
program reduces the underbrush. What is interesting is that the Chief of the U.S. Forest
Service, who has inaugurated this controlled-burn policy, is the irst wildlife biologist ever to
be appointed to this top management position. Frank Whitmore, “When Forest Fires Help,”
Parade Magazine (Sept. 22, 1996).
628 DEUTERONOMY

nature. Unless he extends a full-time system of management over

nature, including the care and feeding of mother hens and their spe-
cies equivalents, he is not allowed to take both the mother and her
offspring in the same harvesting operation. God has placed another
“no trespassing” sign around His property.
It is obvious why the State cannot easily enforce this law of the
unplanned encounter: it possesses insujcient information regard-
ing any infractions. The State’s negative sanctions cannot easily be
applied to those who break this law. Thus, God has attached a posi-
tive sanction to this law, one which applies to the individual. He
who honors this law will receive long life. The individual reaps this
reward because he is the primary locus of sovereignty for this law’s
enforcement. He has exclusive information regarding his encoun-
ter; he therefore is the recipient of the blessing of obedience.
This is neither a seed law nor a land law. It is a cross-boundary
law. In fact, it is precisely because nature has no internal ownership
boundaries that this law must be enforced: primarily by the individ-
ual; secondarily by State anti-poaching laws.
 52

THEThe Rooftop Railing

ROOFTOP RAILING LawLAW
When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement
for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall
from thence (Deut. 22:8).

The theocentric reference point of this law is man as God’s im-

age. We know this because the language of blood appears in the
text. Man’s blood must not be deliberately shed, because man is
made in God’s image. When a person does something which sig-
niicantly threatens the lives of others, he is to be held legally liable
(Ex. 21:18–19), except in wartime or crime prevention by an ojcer
of the law. By extension, if he builds a structure which signiicantly
threatens the life of another person in the normal course of afairs,
he is to be held legally liable for any injury sufered as a conse-
quence. In this case, the text is concerned with the death of the vic-
tim. The language of blood points back to the law prohibiting
murder in Genesis 9. “And surely your blood of your lives will I re-
quire; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of
man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of
man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed:
for in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:5–6).
A death caused by the absence of a railing around a roof is not
accidental manslaughter, as it would have been under the law of the
cities of refuge (Num. 35:9–29). It was murder. The civil penalty was
the execution of the head of the household: eye for eye. The mere
absence of a restraining device would automatically have con-
demned the householder judicially. There was no legally valid ex-
cuse. The risk of building a new house without a roof railing was
high.

629
630 DEUTERONOMY

The language of blood places this case law under the general
category of murder. Thus, this law is not strictly a land law, yet it is
also not strictly a cross-boundary law, as we shall see. It is unique.
Because I see this law as valid today, I use the present tense in the
following analysis.

New Homes
The context of the law is new construction. This law does not
apply to existing houses. When the Israelites took Canaan, the
Canaanites left their houses standing. Their houses became part of
Israel’s lawful inheritance. An Israelite who was too poor to aford to
build a railing on his roof was not to be prohibited from claiming
ownership of a house with an unprotected roof. Those who ven-
tured onto the roof of such a house did so at their own risk. The
owner was not to be forced to sell the house just because he could
not aford to build a railing on the roof. The principle of inheritance
was of greater importance than the principle of household safety.
This law balances safety with economics. If a man has the wealth
to pay for building a new home, then he is not a poor man. He has
capital. He is exchanging one form of capital for another. In such
cases, this law announces, the builder must go to the extra expense
of building a railing on his roof. The additional cost – the marginal
cost – of building a railing is small in comparison to the total cost of
building the house. For a little more money, the owner secures an
added measure of safety for his family and guests. As a man of means,
he owes this to them. It is not a great added expense.
What about a buyer of an existing home that has no roof railing?
He can aford to build a new home or buy an existing home. He
chooses to buy an existing home. The text applies to a newly built
house. But why shouldn’t the law apply to him? One reason might
be that the added marginal expense of adding a railing reduces the
proit from selling the house. The law would force the seller to pay
for it, thereby reducing the proit from the sale, or else force the
buyer to pay, thereby reducing the market for homes. In the case of
the conquest of Canaan, the inheriting owner or his heirs would
have faced reduced demand – lower value – for the sale of an asset
which they inherited when the irst owner participated in the con-
quest of Canaan. That is, such a legal requirement would have re-
duced the net worth of the original owner or his heirs. Mosaic law
did not impose such a coniscation of inherited wealth on the owner
 The Rooftop Railing Law 631

or his heirs. This indicates how highly the principle of inheritance

was regarded by the Mosaic law.
This does impose costs on new home construction. A new home
was not part of the original inheritance of Canaan. It was part of the
fruits of life in the land. For the sake of protecting the life of man,
this law mandated that new home builders pay attention to the risk
of a cultural phenomenon: social gatherings on roofs. The law
warned the man paying to have a home built: if you do not go to the
added expense of building a protective railing around the roof, and
someone falls from the roof and dies, this law designates the head of
the household as a murderer. The risk of having such an event take
place in one’s home would have to be borne by the home owner.
This added cost could be avoided by putting up a railing. The new
home owner had to make his decision in terms of costs either way.
What if the home’s builder decides to sell the house immedi-
ately upon its completion? This raises the question of the transfer of
legal liability. If the next buyer can escape the liability because he
did not personally build the house, this would subsidize the con-
struction of homes by professional home builders who have no in-
tention of ever occupying them. This would place a competitive
disadvantage on the individual who builds his own home or who
pays to have it built. The professional contractor who builds a house
before he has a contract from a buyer could build it less expen-
sively. The buyer would be buying a home that he neither had built
himself nor had agreed to have built for him. This would subsidize
the building of less expensive, more risky homes. This would in-
crease the likelihood of accidents. So, the home buyer would be-
come legally liable. He would have to pay to install a railing in order
to remove this liability.
This law governed homes that were built in Israel after the con-
quest. The inheritance associated with the conquest was not under
this law. The original inheritor and his heirs were not burdened by
the costs of constructing a railing on a roof. The person who bought
a home that had been built by a Canaanite was not required to build
a protective railing. The principle of inheritance from Canaan was
more important than the principle of safe housing.

Self-Government Under God’s Law

This law does not mandate the creation of a civil government
bureaucracy that enforces home safety laws. It announces that the
632 DEUTERONOMY

person who builds a new home must go to the expense of building a

protective railing around the roof. Any home owner who fails to do
this faces the ultimate penalty: execution. If someone falls from his
roof and is killed, the owner must die. This law rests on self-
government, not bureaucratic government. It relies on the self-
interested decisions of home builders and new home buyers to de-
fend themselves against the negative civil sanctions associated with
harm. There is no indication from this law that the State is autho-
rized to create a regulatory agency that writes safety codes that ap-
ply to home builders before they can legally ofer their homes for
sale. On the contrary, this law places decision-making authority in
the hands of the home builder or new home buyer. It is his decision
as to how much legal risk he is willing to bear. If he wishes to avoid
legal risk but also avoid the expense of building a railing, he will have
to keep people of his roof. He will lose the square footage that would
otherwise be available for entertaining. He makes this decision.
There is a role for civil government: the enforcement of penal-
ties after the event takes place. There is another role: announcing in
advance that this penalty will be imposed. A court must convict; the
State must apply sanctions after the witnesses have testiied and the
court has reached a decision. The State legitimately declares in ad-
vance safety standards and the penalty for violating them, but it
does not compel anyone to abide by them. We are dealing here with
a discrete event: one roof, one victim of a fall. We are not dealing
with a phenomenon such as pollution, in which each polluter con-
tributes a nearly immeasurable quantity of pollution, but polluters
as a group create an unpleasant or dangerous environment.
The modern world is bureaucratic as no previous society ever
has been, with the possible exception of ancient Egypt.1 The gov-
ernment regulatory agency is a ubiquitous feature of modern politi-
cal and economic life. Administrative law has steadily replaced
legislative law. This constitutes a legal revolution that is undermin-
ing the Western legal tradition.2 If this trend is not reversed, proba-
bly by some disaster that bankrupts most civil governments, it will
put an end to freedom. The top-down bureaucratic social order –

1. “Max Weber on Bureaucratization” (1909), in J. P. Meyer, Max Weber and German

Politics: A Study in Political Sociology (London: Faber & Faber, [1943] 1956), p. 127.
2. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 34–41.
 The Rooftop Railing Law 633

Satan’s model, given his lack of omniscience and his need for tight
control over rebellious subordinates – will replace the bottom-up
appeals court system of biblical law (Ex. 18). The centralization of
economic life will continue.
If God brings negative sanctions in history against rebellious
societies, then we can expect a reversal, either through a religious
transformation or an unexpected breakdown in civil government.
The State will see its regulatory powers removed or drastically
shrunk. The centralizing tendencies of political power will eventually
be thwarted by the market or by the voters, though more probably
the market.

The Spirit of Biblical Law

The lat roof of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean
was a place where people would gather for celebrations. It was not
the tapered roof of Northern Europe, which focuses the weight of
snow in such a way that it slides of the roof rather than breaking
through the roof. The tapered roof has the same efect on people as
it has on snow: it increases the likelihood that people will slide of
the roof. People do not gather together on a tapered roof to hold
parties. Anyone who ventures onto a tapered roof knows that he is
at risk. Climbing up a tapered roof is not part of the average per-
son’s normal daily activities. Anyone who goes onto a tapered roof
does so at his own risk. He may fall of the roof accidentally in the
sense that he does not plan to fall of the roof but knows that there he
may fall if he fails to take normal precautions, such as wearing shoes
with non-slip soles. He may fall even with such precautions. He
knows that he is doing something abnormal. He does not fall of a ta-
pered roof accidentally in the sense of a careless act that takes place
in the normal course of events.
Any designer who puts a safety railing around a tapered roof is
adding to the risk of dwelling inside. Snow would be retained by
such a barrier. Instead of sliding of the roof, snow may crash
through it, endangering those inside the building. Thus, this safety
law governing Near Eastern roofs would be a dangerous law to en-
force in, say, Scandinavia. A literal application of this law in Scandi-
navia would not decrease risk; it would increase risk. The biblical
goal of this law is to increase personal safety. If this law were applied
literally without respect for geography, it would sometimes produce
the opposite result: a decrease in safety.
634 DEUTERONOMY

This leads us to a principle of interpretation: we must search for

the intent of a law. It is not sujcient merely to obey it. To obey a law
unquestioningly is to risk misapplying it. A biblical law must be
obeyed until such time as skilled interpreters ind a biblical reason
to apply it in some other way for the sake of the law’s intent. The
spirit of the law must govern the letter of the law. This case law illustrates
this hermeneutical principle better than most.

The Price of Perfect Safety

A modern application of this law would impose personal liabil-
ity on someone who places an abandoned refrigerator with a
lock-latch in the alley behind his home without irst removing the
door or the latch. A child might play hide and seek by climbing into
the refrigerator and shutting the door. He would sufocate to death.
Such stories were familiar throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s. Courts
did not always impose penalties on the owners, and certainly not
eye-for-eye penalties. By the 1960’s, such products were deemed in-
nately unsafe by the authorities. The sale of lock-latch refrigerators
was banned in the 1960’s in the United States. Doors that can be
pushed open from the inside were made mandatory for producers
of refrigerators.
Such laws are passed primarily because judges have refused to
honor the principle of holding owners personally responsible for
“roofs without railings” or “uncovered pits.”3 In contrast, the Mosaic
law did not require the civil government to impose ines on people
who dug pits and then failed to cover them, nor did it mandate roof
inspectors. It did not create an army of administrative law enforc-
ers. Instead, it assigned individual responsibility to owners of dan-
gerous property. The civil government let men’s fear of their legal
liability serve as their incentive to make their property safer.
There are economic efects of any legislation that assesses eco-
nomic penalties before an accident occurs. These efects are seldom
taken seriously by legislators or by the special-interest groups that
lobby for such legislation. In the case of lock-latch refrigerators, the
original product had deinite advantages. When the door was closed,
it audibly snapped shut. The new no-lock doors sometimes fail to

3. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 12.
 The Rooftop Railing Law 635

close tightly, but users are not always alerted when this happens be-
cause of the absence of the old snap sound. These doors are less
ejcient than older doors in this respect. Unlatched doors are more
easily left open by children, who ind them more dijcult to close
than doors of the older design, which snapped shut easily. As a re-
sult, food rots from time to time, or at least cold air escapes, and
these costs are borne by the owner.
It seems certain that a few lives are saved each year by this legisla-
tion, but there never were hundreds of cases of smothered children in
any year. It was a newspaper-worthy occasional event. Millions of
refrigerator owners are today subjected to the statistical risk of occa-
sionally leaving a door open and rotting a week’s food. Predictably,
this cost is more dijcult to bear for lower-income families, since food
costs account for a higher proportion of their household budgets.
It may seem callous to compare the cost of spoiled food, no mat-
ter how much food gets spoiled, with the lives of children, no matter
how few die of sufocation, but there are always inescapable costs
with every desirable beneit. Legislation creates beneits; therefore, in a
cursed, scarcity-bound world, it necessarily imposes costs. “Who beneits?
How much? Who pays? How much?” These questions should al-
ways be asked before any piece of legislation is voted on. Guido
Calabresi summarizes the range of decisions available to voters, leg-
islators, and judges in deciding who should be made inancially re-
sponsible for accidents: “The question of who should bear the costs
of a particular accident, or of all accidents, is to be decided on the
basis of the goals we wish accident law to accomplish.” In short, the
decision is politically open-ended. “Thus it is a policy question
whether costs should be (1) borne by particular victims; (2) paid on a
one-to-one basis by those who injure a particular victim; (3) borne by
those broad categories of people who are likely to be victims; (4) paid
by those broad categories of people who are likely to be injurers; (5)
paid by those who in some way violate our moral codes (in some
sense are at fault) according to the degree of their wrongdoing,
whether or not they are involved in accidents; (6) paid by those who
are in some actuarial sense most likely to violate our moral codes; (7)
paid from the general cofers of the state by particular industry groups
in accordance with criteria (such as wealth) that may be totally unre-
lated to accident involvement; (8) paid by some combination of
636 DEUTERONOMY

4
these methods.” Humanism ofers no simple moral, legal, or eco-
nomic rule book which governs the State’s decision to impose legal
liability: “. . . in considering the bases of accident law, there are vir-
tually no limits on how we can allocate or divide the costs of acci-
5
dents.”
When society adopts a utopian legal code which proclaims
“better millions of extra dollars spent by consumers on a safer prod-
uct design than just one child dead from an accident,” it thereby
places an impossibly expensive burden on society — the expense of
6
seeking an impossible goal, risk-free existence. Besides, legislators
honor the principle of “better millions of dollars than just one . . .”
only when it is cost-efective for them as politicians, that is, only
when adversely afected voters will not be numerous enough, or not
sujciently well organized, to threaten them at the next election.
For example, far more children are killed yearly in home ires than
ever died in abandoned refrigerators. Many lives could be saved by
legislating and continually enforcing the installation of smoke detec-
tors in every home. Legislators could also require ire escape drills
twice a year, with penalties on parents for violating this law. Voters
today refuse to accept a level of interference in their lives by the
State which the enforcement of such a ire safety law would require.
So, legislators in this case ignore the principle of “better millions of
dollars than just one . . .” They honor it only when comparatively few
lives are threatened (e.g., asphyxiated children in abandoned refrig-
erators), and only a few companies need be monitored (e.g., appli-
ance manufacturers).
A similar analysis can be made of speed limits on highways.
There is no doubt that highway deaths could be reduced drastically
if legislators would pass a maximum speed law of 25 miles (40 kilo-
meters) per hour and then allocate large sums of money each year to
enforce the law. The same could also be said if they would establish
the death penalty for any drunk driver who kills another person in
an auto accident. But the public seems unwilling to tolerate such
legislation.

4. Guido Calabresi, The Costs of Accidents: A Legal and Economic Analysis (New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 22.
5. Ibid., p. 23.
6. Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of
Technological and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
 The Rooftop Railing Law 637

Conclusion
The law of the roof railing applied only to houses constructed af-
ter the conquest. The law of original inheritance was superior in
Mosaic Israel to the safety law of the roof. The inheritor of a home
built by a Canaanite was not under the civil sanctions of this law. He
who went onto a lat roof built by a Canaanite did so at his own risk.
If there was no railing, he had to be extra careful. This transferred
legal liability to the guests. This was a consequence of the Mosaic
law’s defense of original inheritance. The conquest of Canaan was
Israel’s original inheritance, and it was defended by law.
The railing transferred legal liability for owning post-Canaanite
homes to the owners. The owner of such a home had to consider the
risk of hosting a party on his roof. If he failed to build a railing, he
would lose his life in the case of a fatal fall by another person. This
law therefore provided an incentive to owners to have documenta-
tion regarding original ownership. If he could not prove that his
home was built before the conquest, he became legally liable. A de-
tailed record-keeping system was not mandated by this law, but it
was surely encouraged.
This law was not intended to create an administrative bureau-
cracy of building inspectors. It was not a system of government
licensing. It transferred legal liability to owners. In this sense, it rein-
forced the authority of the court system at the expense of the regula-
tory administrative law system. This indicates the presence in Mosaic
legal order of an impulse hostile to administrative law.
This law may make no sense in a diferent environment, such as
tapered roofs or thatched roofs. It applies only to a society that has
lat roofs. This law teaches us that we must consider the judicial and
moral principles undergirding a particular law. In this case, the pri-
mary principle was the inviolability of Israel’s original inheritance;
the secondary principle was cost-efective safety in a high-risk envi-
ronment. The primary principle disappeared with the disappear-
ance of the original housing. The secondary principle remains. This
was a unique law: partially a land law – original inheritance – and
partially a cross-boundary law. Once the original housing wore out,
it remained a cross-boundary law, but of a peculiar kind: one which
could not be applied literally in every weather environment and still
maintain its goal, i.e., home safety.
 53
Laws
LAWS Prohibiting Mixtures
PROHIBITING MIXTURES

Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy
seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be deiled. 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 (Deut. 22:9–11).

These laws do not clearly reveal their theocentric principle. The

irst prohibition was a law governing ritual pollution. What was the
basis of this pollution? The text does not say. The law of the plowing
team and the law of mixed clothing seem to be in some way related
to the irst law. Separation had something to do with ritual pollution,
but what?
The theocentric principle seems to be God’s separation from evil.
The land of Israel was holy, sanctiied. This is a typical explanation
for laws of separation.1 But why were mixed seeds evil? What did
they symbolize? Israel’s separation from Canaan? Israel’s separation
from the nations around her? Or one tribe’s separation from another?

Leviticus and Boundaries

I have already analyzed the parallel verse in Leviticus: “Ye shall
keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse
kind: thou shalt not sow thy ield with mingled seed; neither shall a
garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee (Lev. 19:19). I
have decided to reprint portions of that chapter in this volume, since
some readers will not have a copy of my Leviticus commentary.2

1. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch, 5 vols. (Gateshead, London: Judaica, 1989), V,
p. 438.
2. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 17.

638
 Laws Prohibiting Mixtures 639

The theocentric meaning of this passage is the meaning of the

entire Book of Leviticus: God’s boundaries must be respected. This
case law establishes three boundaries, each referring to a speciic
economic activity: animal husbandry, agriculture, and textiles. Ex-
cept for the products of mining and metalworking, these were the
primary categories of economic goods in the ancient world. Leviti-
cus 19:19 established rules for all three areas. That world is long
gone. Beginning no later than the ifteenth century, A.D., and accel-
erating rapidly in the late eighteenth century, a series of improve-
ments in all three areas transformed the traditional economy of
Europe. The modern capitalist system – with its emphasis on pri-
vate ownership, the specialization of production, and the division of
labor – steadily replaced the older medieval world of the common
ields. This comprehensive economic transformation was accompa-
nied by the violation of at least the irst two, and seemingly all three,
of the statutes of Leviticus 19:19. The question we need to answer is
this: Was this law annulled by the New Covenant, or was the Agri-
cultural/Industrial Revolution illegitimate biblically? I argue that
the law was annulled.3

Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics is the principle of interpretation. My theonomic
hermeneutics enables me to do three things that every system of
biblical hermeneutics should do: 1) identify the primary function of
an Old Covenant law, 2) discover whether it is universal in a re-
demptive (healing) sense, or whether 3) it was conditioned by its re-
demptive-historical context (i.e., annulled by the New Covenant).
In short: What did the law mean, how did it apply inside and out-
side Mosaic Israel, and how should it apply today? This exegetical
task is not always easy, but it is mandatory. It is a task that has been
ignored or denied by the vast majority of Christian theologians for
almost two millennia.
The question here is the hermeneutical problem of identifying
covenantal continuity and covenantal discontinuity. First, in questions
of covenantal continuity, we need to ask: What is the underlying

3. A preliminary version of this chapter appears in Theonomy: An Informed Response, edited

by Gary North (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), ch. 10. See also, Gary
North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 17.
640 DEUTERONOMY

ethical principle? God does not change ethically. The moral law is
still binding, but its application may not be. Second, this raises the
question of covenantal discontinuity. What has changed as a result of
the New Testament era’s fulillment of Old Covenant prophecy and
the inauguration of the New Covenant? A continuity – prophetic-
judicial fulillment – has in some cases produced a judicial disconti-
nuity: the annulment of a case law’s application.
I begin any investigation of any suspected judicial discontinuity
with the following questions. First, is the case law related to the priest-
hood, which has changed (Heb. 7:11–12)? Second, is it related to the
sacraments, which have changed? Third, is it related to the jubilee
land laws (e.g., inheritance), which Christ fulilled (Luke 4:18–21)?
Fourth, is it related to the tribes (e.g., the seed laws), which Christ
fulilled in His ojce as Shiloh, the promised Seed (Gal. 3:16)?
Fifth, is it related to the “middle wall of partition” between Jew and
gentile, which Jesus Christ’s gospel has broken down (Gal. 3:28;
Eph. 2:14–20)?4 These ive principles prove fruitful in analyzing Le-
viticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:9–11.5
Let us ask another question: Is a change in the priesthood also
accompanied by a change in the laws governing the family cove-
nant? Yes. Jesus tightened the laws of divorce by removing the Mo-
saic law’s exception, the bill of divorcement (Matt. 5:31–32).6
Similarly, the church from the beginning has denied the legality of
polygamy even though there is no explicit rejection of polygamy in
the New Testament except for church ojcers: husbands of one wife
(I Tim. 3:2, 12). Polygamy is rejected by the church on the same ba-
sis that Jesus rejected the Mosaic law’s system of easy divorce: “from
the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). Did other changes in the
family accompany the New Covenant’s change in the priesthood?

4. This application is especially important in dealing with Rushdoony’s theory of

“hybridization.” See North, Boundaries and Dominion, Appendix H: “Rushdoony on
‘Hybridization’: From Genetic Separation to Racial Separation.”
5. There are several other hermeneutical questions that we can ask that relate to
covenantal discontinuity. Sixth, is it an aspect of the weakness of the Israelites, which Christ’s
ministry has overcome, thereby intensifying the rigors of an Old Covenant law (Matt. 5:21–48)?
Seventh, is it an aspect of the Old Covenant’s cursed six day-one day work week rather than
the one day-six day pattern of the New Covenant’s now-redeemed week (Heb. 4:1–11)?
Eighth, is it part of the legal order of the once ritually polluted earth, which has now been
cleansed by Christ (Acts 10; I Cor. 8)?
6. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (2nd ed.; Phillipsberg, New Jersey:
Presbyterian and Reformed, [1977] 1984), p. 99.
 Laws Prohibiting Mixtures 641

Speciically, have changes in inheritance taken place? Have these

changes resulted in the annulment of the jubilee land laws of the
Mosaic economy? Finally, has an annulment of the jubilee land
laws annulled the laws of tribal administration?

Case Laws and Underlying Principles

Laws governing agriculture, plowing, and textile production
had to be taken very seriously under the Mosaic Covenant. The
expositor’s initial presumption should be that these three laws con-
stitute a judicial unit. If they are a unit, there has to be some underly-
ing judicial principle common to all three. All three prohibitions
deal with mixing. The irst question we need to ask is the crucial
one: What was the covenantal meaning of these laws? The second
question is: What was their economic efect?
I argue here that the fundamental judicial principle undergird-
ing the passage is the requirement of separation. Two kinds of sepa-
ration were involved: tribal and covenantal. The irst two clauses
were agricultural applications of the mandatory segregation of the
tribes inside Israel until a unique prophesied Seed would appear in
history: the Messiah. We know who the Seed is: Jesus Christ. Paul
wrote: “Now unto Abraham and his seed were the promises made.
He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy
seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). The context of Paul’s discussion is
inheritance. Inheritance is by promise, he said. The Mosaic law ap-
plied “till the seed should come to whom the promise was made”
(Gal. 3:19). Two-thirds of Leviticus 19:19 relates to the inheritance
laws of national Israel, as we shall see. When the Levitical land in-
heritance laws (Lev. 25) ended with the establishment of a new
priesthood, so did the authority of Leviticus 19:19.
The inal clause of both Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy
22:11 deals with prohibited clothing. This prohibition related not to
separation among the tribes of Israel – separation within a covenant
– but rather the separation of national Israel from other nations. The
principle undergirding second form of separation – clothing – is
more familiar to us: covenantal separation.

Boundary of Blood: Seed and Land

The preservation of Israel’s unique covenantal status was required
by the Mosaic law. The physical manifestation of this separation was
642 DEUTERONOMY

circumcision. A boundary of blood was imposed on the male organ

of reproduction. It was a sign that covenantal life is not obtained by
either physical birth or through one’s male heirs. Rushdoony has
written: “Circumcision witnesses to the fact that man’s hope is not in
generation but in regeneration. . . .”7 To escape Adam’s legal status
as a covenant-breaker, a man must re-covenant with God, a human
response made possible by God’s absolutely sovereign act of regen-
eration. The mark of this covenant in ancient Israel was circumci-
sion. Ultimately, this separation was confessional. It involved an
ajrmation of the sovereignty of Israel’s God. This was a diferent
kind of boundary from those that divided the tribes, for the tribes
were united confessionally: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is
one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. 6:4–5).
The nation of Israel was separated from non-covenanted nations by
geographical and covenantal boundaries.
Tribal and family units separated the covenant people within Is-
rael. This separation was always to be geographical, usually famil-
ial,8 but never confessional. Every tribe confessed the same confes-
sion. They were divided tribally because they would have diferent
heirs. Only one tribe would bring forth the promised Seed. Tribal sep-
aration was therefore based on diferences in prophetic inheritance.
Israel’s tribal divisions had political implications. They guaran-
teed localism. This localism of tribal inheritance was the judicial
complement of the unity of national covenantal confession. Tribal
boundaries were part of an overall structure of covenantal unity.
Family membership and rural land ownership in Israel were tied
together by the laws of inheritance. A rural Israelite – and most Israel-
ites were rural9 – was the heir of a speciic plot of ground because of
his family membership. There was no rural landed inheritance apart
from family membership. Unlike the laws of ancient Greece, Mo-
saic law allowed a daughter to inherit the family’s land if there was

7. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
p. 43.
8. There could be inter-tribal marriages. Daughters received dowries rather than landed
inheritance. Dowries could cross tribal boundaries.
9. This is not to say that God intended them to remain rural. On the contrary, the
covenantal blessing of God in the form of population growth was to move most Israelites into
the cities as time went on. See Leviticus, ch. 25, section on “The Demographics of the Jubilee
Inheritance Law,” pp. 416–22.
 Laws Prohibiting Mixtures 643

no son. But there was a condition: she had to marry within the tribal
unit (Num. 36:8). The landed inheritance could not lawfully move
from one tribe to another (Num. 36:9).10 A man’s primary inheri-
tance in Israel was his legal status (freemanship). Land was tied to
name. The land of Israel was God’s; His name was on it. The fam-
ily’s land was tied to the family’s name.11 Jacob had promised Judah
that his blood line would rule until the promised heir (Shiloh)
should come (Gen. 49:10). Thus, the integrity of each of the seed
lines in Israel – family by family, tribe by tribe – was maintained by
the Mosaic law until this promise was fulilled. The mandatory sepa-
ration among the tribes was symbolized by the prohibition against
mixing seeds. The prohibition applied to the mixing of seeds in one
ield (Lev. 19:19). The ield did not represent the whole world under
the Mosaic Covenant; the ield represented the Promised Land. The hus-
bandman or farmer had to create boundaries between his special-
ized breeds and between his crops.
So closely were seed and land connected in the Mosaic law that
the foreign eunuch, having no possibility of seed, was not allowed to
become a citizen in Israel. (The New Testament’s system of adop-
tion has annulled this law: Acts 8:26–38.)12
Leviticus 19:19 is part of the Mosaic Covenant’s laws governing
the preservation of the family’s seed (name) during a particular pe-
riod of history. It was an aspect of inheritance: the necessary preser-
vation of genetic Israel. The preservation of the separate seeds of
Israel’s families was basic to the preservation of the nation’s legal
status as a set-apart, separated, holy covenantal entity. This principle
of separation applied to domesticated animals, crops, and clothing.

Covenantal Separation
Let us now consider the law prohibiting the linking of an ox and
a donkey in plowing (Deut. 22:10). In Leviticus 19:19, the prohibi-
tion was against the mixing of breeds in order to develop specialized
breeds. This was a seed law: there was a possibility of interbreeding.
Such was not the case in the law against joint plowing.

10. The exception was when rural land that had been pledged to a priest went to him in the
jubilee year if the pledge was violated (Lev. 27:20–21). See Leviticus, ch. 37, “The Redemption
Price System.”
11. North, Boundaries and Dominion, ch. 17, subsection on “Family Land and Family
Name.”
12. North, Leviticus, p. 471.
644 DEUTERONOMY

The ox and the donkey work diferently. They are not beasts
with the same strengths and habits. To use them in a joint plowing
efort is to reduce the productivity of both. Neither can achieve its
proper calling before God if they are linked by a yoke in the same
work efort. The yoke makes each of them a poorer servant. This
prohibition was not a seed law; it was a covenantal law. Paul writes:
“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fel-
lowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what com-
munion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ
with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an inidel? And
what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the
temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and
walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daugh-
ters, saith the Lord Almighty” (II Cor. 6:14–18). The law against
joint plowing is a law against putting covenanted people with
noncovenanted people in the same covenantal institution. The issue
here is theological confession. A common theological confession is
the biblical yoke. Those who refuse to take a covenantal oath are
not to be joined in a common covenantal task with those who take it.
This law was symbolic of all three covenantal relationships in
society: church, family, and State. Israel was not to join with other
nations in a covenantal bond; neither were Israelites to marry for-
eigners. The church was to be kept pure. Modern humanistic politi-
cal theory denies that this principle of separation applies to the civil
covenant, but clearly it applied in Mosaic Israel. Where Israelites
exercised lawful civil authority, they were not voluntarily to share
political power with covenant-breakers. Those Christians who in-
voke Paul’s authority to prohibit marriages between Christians and
non-Christians are necessarily invoking Deuteronomy 22:10. No
one should assume that Paul annulled the principle of unequal yok-
ing in the civil covenant while ajrming it in the church and family
covenants. The case for Paul’s supposed annulment must be proven
exegetically. Israel was under civil bondage during the captivity and
after, so this law could not be applied in civil government, but this is
not proof that this law has been partially annulled. Christian political
 Laws Prohibiting Mixtures 645

pluralists assume that the law of unequal yoking has been partially
annulled, but they do not ofer proof.13

Clothing
Mixed clothing made of linen and wool was under a diferent
kind of prohibition. It was illegal to wear clothing produced by mix-
ing these two ibers. There was no law against producing mixed
cloth for export, however. Why was wearing it wrong but exporting
14
it allowed?
No other form of mixed-iber clothing was prohibited by the
Mosaic law. Did this case law by implication or extension prohibit
all mixed ibers? This seems doubtful. It would have been easy to
specify the more general prohibition rather than single out these
two ibers. Deuteronomy’s parallel passage also speciies this type of
mixed fabric (Deut. 22:11). Then what was the nature of the ofense?
Answer: to wear clothing of this mixture was to proclaim symboli-
cally the equality of Israel with all other nations. This could not be
done lawfully inside Israel. It could be done by non-Israelites out-
side Israel.
Linen was the priestly cloth. The priests were required to wear
linen on the day of atonement (Lev. 16:30–34). Linen was to be
worn by the priest in the sacriice of the burnt ofering (Lev. 6:10).
During and after the Babylonian captivity, because of their rebel-
lion in Israel, the Levites and priests were placed under a new re-
quirement that kept them separate from the people: they had to
wear linen whenever they served before the table of the Lord. They
had to put on linen garments when they entered God’s presence in
the inner court, and remove them when they returned to the outer
court. No wool was to come upon them (Ezek. 44:15–19). The text
says, “they shall not sanctify the people with their garments”
(Ezek. 44:19). Priestly holiness was associated with linen.
Inside a priestly nation, such a mixture was a threat to the holi-
ness of the priests when they brought sacriices before God. As be-
tween a priestly nation and a non-priestly nation, this section of
Leviticus 19:19 symbolized the national separation of believers from

13. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989).
14. In biblical law, if something is not prohibited, it is allowed.
646 DEUTERONOMY

unbelievers. Deuteronomy 22:11 is the parallel passage: “Thou shalt

not wear a garment of divers sorts: [as] of wool and linen together.”
Inside the boundaries of Israel, this law symbolized sacriicial
separation: the tribe of Levi was set apart as a legal representative
before God. In this intra-national sense, this law did have a role to
play in the separation of the tribes. This is why it was connected to
the two seed laws in Leviticus 19:19.
It is still prohibited to mix covenantal opposites in a single cove-
nant: in church, State, and family. But is the wearing of this mixture
of these two fabrics still prohibited? No. Why not? Because of the
change in the priesthood (Gal. 3). Our new covering is Jesus Christ.
Paul wrote: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ
have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and
heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:27–29). Here it is again: in-
heritance is by God’s promise to Abraham. The sign of this inheri-
tance is no longer circumcision; it is baptism. This is our new
clothing. The old prohibition against mixing wool and linen in our
clothing is annulled. The new priesthood is under a new covering:
Jesus Christ.

The Question of Jurisdiction

Was this a civil law or an ecclesiastical law? To identify it as a
civil law, we should be able to specify appropriate civil sanctions.
The text mentions none. The civil magistrate might have
coniscated the progeny of the interbreeding activities, but then
what? Sell the animals? Export them? Kill them and sell the meat?
These were possible sanctions, but the text is silent. What about
mingled seed? Was the entire crop to be coniscated by the State?
Could it lawfully be sold? Was it unclean? The text is silent. This si-
lence establishes a prima facie case for the law as ecclesiastical.
The mixed clothing law refers to a fact of covenantal separation:
a nation of priests. The Israelites were not to wear clothing made of
linen and wool. Mixing testiied symbolically to the legitimacy of
mixing a nation of priests and a common nation. This is why wear-
ing such mixed cloth was prohibited. This aspect of the case law’s
meaning was primarily priestly. Again, the prima facie case is that
this was an ecclesiastical law and therefore to be enforced by the
priesthood.
 Laws Prohibiting Mixtures 647

The maximum ecclesiastical sanction was excommunication.

This would have marked the law-breaker as being outside the civil
covenant. He faced the loss of his citizenship as well as the disinheri-
tance of his sons unless they broke with him publicly. Instead of a
mere economic loss, he faced a far greater penalty. This penalty was
consistent with the status of this law as a seed law. The prohibition of
mixed seeds was an ajrmation of tribal separation until Shiloh
came. An attack on tribal separation was an attack on Jacob’s messi-
anic prophecy. The appropriate penalty was ecclesiastical: removal
from both inheritance and citizenship within the tribe.

Conclusion
In this chapter I have attempted to answer three questions:
What did these verses mean? How were they applied? How should
they be applied today? This is the three-part challenge of biblical
hermeneutics.
The prohibition against the mixing of seeds – animals and crops
– was symbolic of the mandatory separation of the tribes. This sepa-
ration was eschatologically based: till Shiloh came. The prohibition
against wearing a mixed cloth of linen and wool was a priestly pro-
hibition: separation of the tribe of Levi within Israel and symbolic of
the separation of the priestly nation of Israel from other nations, i.e.,
a confessional separation.
The law prohibiting mixed seeds was temporary because it was
tribal. It ended with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus
Christ, or, at the latest, at Pentecost. Spiritual adoption has overcome
tribalism as the basis of inheritance in the kingdom of God. The gift of the
Spirit, not physical reproduction, is the basis of Christians’ inheri-
tance. National Israel was disinherited in A.D. 70.15 The kingdom of
God was taken from national Israel and given to a new nation, the
church (Matt. 21:43). The jubilee land laws (Lev. 25) have ended
forever. So have the prohibitions against genetic mixing and mixed
crops. When people are baptized into Christ through the Spirit, this
new priesthood puts on Christ. The older requirements or prohibi-
tions regarding certain types of garments have ended forever. What

15. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth,
Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
648 DEUTERONOMY

remains is the judicial boundary between covenant-breakers and

covenant-keepers. This separation is eternal (Rev. 20:14–15).
The biblical principle of not mixing seeds, whether of animals
or crops, in a single ield applies to us only indirectly. The basic judi-
cial application is that we must be faithful to Jesus Christ, the
promised Seed, who has come in history. In Him alone is true in-
heritance. But there is no application with respect to tribal bound-
aries. The tribes of Israel are gone forever. Thus, there is no applica-
tion of this verse genetically. We are allowed to breed animals and
plant various crops in the same ield at the same time.
The other applications of the principle of separation prohibited
1) plowing with both an ox and a donkey, 2) the wearing of mixed
iber garments: linen and wool. The prohibition against plowing
with diferent species relects the biblical principle of covenantal re-
lationships: the prohibition against unequal yoking. Israel was to
have no covenantal relationships with the nations around her. That
law is still in force.
The prohibition against mixed clothing applies to us today
through baptism, for by baptism we have received our new clothing
in Christ. This principle of separation still holds nationally, for it is
covenantal, not tribal. It refers to the distinctions between priests
and non-priests, between priestly nations (confessionally Christian)
and non-priestly nations. It refers to the distinction between Chris-
tendom and every other world system. But it has nothing to do with
fabrics any longer.
 54

THEThe Fugitive Slave

FUGITIVE SLAVE Law
LAW

Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped
from his master unto thee: He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in
that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him
best: thou shalt not oppress him (Deut. 23:15–16).

The theocentric principle that undergirded this law is the princi-

ple of God’s sanctuary. A sanctuary is a place formally marked by
boundaries for the worship of God. This does not mean that every-
one who enters a sanctuary is there to worship God. It does mean
that everyone inside its boundaries has unique access to God.
This law seems to be contrary to the Mosaic law’s defense of
private property in slaves. Foreign slaves in Israel were the perma-
nent possession of their Israelite owners, generation after genera-
tion (Lev. 25:44–46). Furthermore, Israelite bondservants were
not free to come and go as they pleased. A debtor who had for-
feited payment on a zero-interest charitable loan had to serve his
creditor until the next year of release – up to six years (Ex. 21:2).
If an Israelite had been sold into bondage to another Israelite in
order to repay a non-charitable loan, he had to serve until the next
jubilee – up to 49 years (Lev. 25:39–40). If an Israelite sold himself
into bondservice to a resident alien, he had to serve until the next ju-
bilee or until one of his relatives bought him out of servitude
(Lev. 25:47–52). In short, the Mosaic law upheld the right of a for-
eigner to retain ownership of an Israelite. This was a strong defense of
private property. Contrary to Rushdoony, there was nothing even

649
650 DEUTERONOMY

remotely voluntary about remaining in temporary bondservice, let

alone permanent slavery.1 This is why it took an act of extreme vio-
lence by a master to authorize a civil court to award a slave his free-
dom, e.g., poking out an eye or knocking out a tooth (Ex. 21:26–27).
This was not a land law. If the jubilee land law authorizing for-
eign servitude could not be invoked by a foreign slave owner to get
back his slave, surely a foreigner cannot invoke it today, after Christ
has annulled the jubilee law (Luke 4:17–21), including the law au-
thorizing inter-generational slavery (Lev. 25:44–46).

Slaves from Abroad

The key words that unlock the meaning of this passage are
among and gates. The escaped slave described in this passage had
come to dwell among them. The words “with thee” were added by
the translators. The Hebrew word for among immediately follows
dwell. The Hebrew word could also be translated within, meaning
within a jurisdiction. The escaped slave also had the right to choose
where he would live. He could choose one gate from many gates,
meaning any city.
To understand this law better, we must irst consider the fact that
Mosaic civil law did not compel anyone to ofer positive sanctions.2
Rather, it imposed negative sanctions for evil acts. It should be the
ideal for every system of civil law to remove all positive sanctions by
the State and impose only those negative sanctions authorized by
biblical law. The State is to impose negative sanctions only: punish-
ing public evil. It is not a wealth-creator; it is a wealth-redistributer.
It is not safe to entrust to the State the power of making one man
rich at the expense of another. It is also not moral.
Second, we should recognize that slaves do not “dwell among”
an individual. The language indicates that this law was addressed to a
corporate group, the nation. It was a civil law. It did not compel any
Israelite to grant a positive sanction to the escaped slave. What it did

1. He writes: “Thus, the only kind of slavery permitted is voluntary slavery, as

Deuteronomy 23:15, 16 makes very clear.” R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law
(Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 286.
2. Restitution payments by the convicted criminal are the restoration of what is owed to
the victim. The State coercively redistributes wealth back to the lawful owner. The legal
owner was the victim of a crime. Under biblical law, no one has a legal claim on another
person’s wealth merely because the other person is richer.
 The Fugitive Slave Law 651

was to prohibit Israel’s civil authorities from imposing a speciic

negative sanction on him, namely, returning him to his owner or
forbidding him the right to take up residence in a city. The locus of
jurisdiction was the nation, from which the slave could choose any
city as his place of residence. This indicates that he had not previ-
ously been a resident of Israel. He was an escapee from servitude in
a foreign household in a foreign nation.
The key covenantal issue here is hierarchy. This former slave
had been in bondage to a foreign master, who in turn was in bond-
age to a foreign god. The slave had sought deliverance from his for-
mer master. He had decided to come to Israel because it was the
nation in which former slaves could be free men. Men were free in
Israel because they were not in bondage to idols. This is the heart of
the Bible’s message: deliverance from evil. This deliverance begins
with deliverance from idolatry. In the Old Covenant, idolatry was
almost universal outside of Israel.3 There was little likelihood that
this slave would bring along an idol from the household of his for-
mer master. Such an idol would have been the mark of his former
servitude. In any case, household or civic idols in the ancient Near
East were exclusively local gods. The fugitive slave’s presence in-
side the boundaries of Israel testiied to their limited jurisdiction.
My interpretation of this law as applying to foreign slaves has
ancient precedents. The Talmud declares this fugitive to be a non-
Jewish slave of a Jewish master living outside the land (Gittin 45a).
There is no exegetical evidence for identifying the owner as a He-
brew, but the rabbis did identify the fugitive as having immigrated
into Israel. Nachmanides argued that this slave had been in bond-
age to a foreigner. The key issue was idolatry, he said. “The reason
for this commandment is that with us he will worship God and it is
not proper that we return him to his master to worship idols.”4 This
statement is incorrect with respect to worshipping God, for worship
was not required of any foreigner residing in Israel. He was required
only to obey God’s civil laws, which did not include formal worship.
But it is true that the slave had been delivered from the idolatrous

3. The one major exception was Greek rationalism, a millennium after this law was
declared. But Greek rationalism was the religion of very few classical Greeks, as Socrates’
execution indicates.
4. Nachmanides, Commentary on the Torah, 5 vols. (New York: Shiloh, [1267?] 1976), V,
p. 288.
652 DEUTERONOMY

rituals of his former household, in which a slave would probably

have been compelled to participate.
Nachmanides also argued that the slave probably had led into
the camp of the Israelites during an ofensive miliary campaign by
Israel against a foreign city.5 The previous section of Deuteronomy
sets forth laws governing foreign campaigns (vv. 9–14). This is a
plausible argument. A foreign slave would have had a much greater
opportunity to lee from a foreign master during a defensive war
against Israel. But this law stands on its own, irrespective of war.
Any slave who could get to Israel – the Promised Land – could es-
cape bondage. This fact would have become well known among
slaves in the ancient Near East, as word of this sanctuary spread
from slave to slave. Israel would have attracted other men’s slaves.
Israel honored private property. Property is an extension of the
kingdom of God in history. Private property is an owner’s legal im-
munity from fraud and violence, both private and pubic, which is
granted by God and is supposed to be enforced by the State. God’s
authority to grant such a legal immunity is based on His original
ownership of the creation and His delegation of stewardship tasks to
individuals. Every individual is responsible to God for the manage-
ment of whatever it is that God has put under his authority, as Jesus’
parable of the three stewards indicates (Matt. 25:14–30) – the para-
ble that immediately precedes His description of the inal judgment:
sheep and goats. In short, private property is legally grounded in the doc-
trine of God’s absolute sovereignty.
The foreign slave master did not acknowledge God’s authority.
Therefore, his rights of property were inferior to the fugitive slave’s
right to asylum in Israel. The Promised Land was to be a place of
refuge, a sanctuary – a set-apart place, i.e., a holy place. Immigrant
fugitive slaves were not compelled to worship God, but they did
have to obey God’s civil laws. They had to honor God to this extent.
Foreign gods could no longer claim jurisdiction over these ex-slaves.
The power of foreign gods was broken to this extent.
The former slave master was disinherited by this law. His living
inheritance had led to a sanctuary. The legal defense of his inheri-
tance under the authority of an idol was sacriiced to the principle of
defending Israel’s boundaries and its sanctuary status. The biblical

5. Idem.
 The Fugitive Slave Law 653

covenantal principles of God’s sovereignty, His hierarchical author-

ity, and Israel’s boundaries were superior to pagan covenantal princi-
ples: local god or gods, an alternative hierarchy, and local jurisdiction.
In efect, the Mosaic law acknowledged the right of a foreign
master to proclaim his local god’s local authority. If he chose to live
under such tyranny, he was entitled to do so. But this idolatrous tyr-
anny would not extend its authority across Israel’s borders. This
case law mandated that Israel’s civil government not return immi-
grant slaves to their foreign masters. It announced to foreign mas-
ters: “You want to worship a local god? Very well, have your own
way. Your god’s jurisdiction does not extend across Israel’s bound-
aries. Your property rights in people’s lives do not extend across
these boundaries.”
This means that a foreign slave who had been purchased by an
Israelite in a foreign nation would henceforth live inside a sanctuary
established by God: a covenant-keeping household in a covenant-
keeping nation. He could hear God’s word there. He would be circum-
cised (Gen. 17:12–13). He would attend Passover with the family.
Through lawful purchase, he had been separated from the idolatry
of his nation. Legally, the head of his new household had become
his kinsman redeemer.6 Whether his new household was located in
a foreign nation or in Israel, he was the property of his owner. Prior
to the annulment of the law of permanent slavery by Jesus Christ’s
fulillment of the jubilee law (Luke 4:18–20),7 the principle of the
covenant-keeping household as a foreign slave’s sanctuary superseded
the principle of the Israelite city as the foreign slave’s sanctuary.8

Oppression
The Mosaic law repeatedly mentions three classes of people
who deserved special consideration as deserving of justice: widows,

6. This pointed forward to Jesus Christ’s purchase of the gentiles through His death on
Calvary. Covenanted gentiles now live in His household, not merely as servants but as
adopted sons. Christ has become their kinsman redeemer.
7. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 144–47; North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 31.
8. In the New Covenant, the principle of the covenanted Trinitarian nation as a sanctuary
for oppressed foreign slaves is still in efect. This includes the escaped slaves of messianic
States.
654 DEUTERONOMY

orphans, and strangers. The immigrant fugitive slave was in a vul-

nerable position – indeed, the most vulnerable position in Israel. He
could not return home without becoming enslaved again. Worse;
he was a man who had run away. He would be subject to harsh pen-
alties. Masters would have made him an example to other would-be
fugitive slaves. The fugitive slave in Israel had no local family, no
access to landed inheritance, no citizenship, and no place to return.
He had been at the bottom of the social ladder in his home country.
Except for the foreign slave permanently owned by an Israelite fam-
ily, he was at the bottom of the social scale in Israel. But, economi-
cally speaking, he was potentially in worse shape than the permanent
slave, who was part of an Israelite household. He had no economic
safety net.
What did it mean to oppress a person? Oppression as deined
by the Bible is a judicial act. It involves using civil law to steal from
or otherwise restrict an honest person. Oppression is a misuse of the
civil law. There is no economic deinition available to civil judges to
identify oppression. There is only a judicial standard.9 The biblical
principle of civil justice is expressed in Exodus 12:49: “One law
shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that
sojourneth among you.” The rule of law is at the heart of civil jus-
tice. To use the civil law to shape the outcome of another person’s
eforts is a form of oppression. When the State structures economic
results by applying the law to one group in a way not applied to all
men, someone is being oppressed.
The judicial defenselessness of the immigrant ex-slave was not
supposed to become an opportunity for oppression. He was not to
be targeted as a likely candidate for theft through judicial manipula-
tion. His property rights were to be upheld in Israel, unlike his
former master’s property rights. His former master had gained au-
thority over him by means of another god’s laws. The God of Israel
had become his liberator. Liberation in Israel was a symbol of liber-
ation by God. It meant liberation from corrupt civil laws. The rule
of God’s law gave him his liberty. It also warned him regarding the
inal judgment: all men are under the same law and sanctions. All
men need the mercy of God as the judicial basis of their liberation
from sin and its eternal consequences: negative sanctions.

9. North, Tools of Dominion, pp. 679–80, 785.

 The Fugitive Slave Law 655

Conclusion
Economics is subordinate to biblically revealed religion. So is
everything else. Private property is not an absolute principle. Nei-
ther is anything else. No arrangement or institution is absolute in
history. Only the written word of God possesses unchangeable,
comprehensive authority in history.10 No institution can legitimately
claim total allegiance. Any institution that does so will fail. The
more secular it is, the sooner it will fail. This is why the Communist
Party failed, despite its extraordinary international expansion under
Lenin and Stalin. It claimed total allegiance.11 It could not enforce
this. One by one, the most eloquent of Communism’s disafected
former disciples recognized it as the god that had failed, decades be-
fore it visibly failed.12
Is this case law still in force? Yes. Christian societies should be
sanctuary societies, where liberty is available to all residents: liberty
under biblical law. The sanctuary is bounded; these boundaries
must be defended by the sword. This means that Christian societies
must be defended by confessionally Christian civil governments. In
short, biblical sanctuary means Trinitarian theocracy. There can be no
permanent sanctuary State in history apart from Christian theoc-
racy,13 just as there is no sanctuary in eternity apart from subordina-
tion to the King of kings.
No magistrate in a Christian nation should ever send an immi-
grant fugitive slave back to his master. His master may be the State.
Modern nations do not admit to being slave societies, even when
they are. The reality of slavery, whatever it is called, should be ac-
knowledged by the civil authorities in free societies. Immigration
laws should ofer sanctuary to all those who are sufering from the ju-
dicial equivalent of slavery.
The covenantal problem here is that open borders into a con-
fessionally pluralistic nation ofer ripe fruit to dedicated disciples of

10. “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35).
11. Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives (New York: Scribner’s, 1948).
12. Richard Crossman (ed.), The God That Failed (New York: Bantam, [1950] 1959).
13. The United States was the most open sanctuary society in history. It was also socially
Protestant throughout most of its history. California began to erect immigration barriers
against the Chinese toward the end of the nineteenth century, when the Darwinian Progressive
movement was beginning to gain political strength. The 1924 national immigration law was
passed in the middle of the humanistic Roaring Twenties.
656 DEUTERONOMY

non-pluralistic foreign religions. They bring their gods with them.

These gods are not local gods; they make universal claims, just as
the God of the Bible does. Their disciples want to extend the author-
ity of their non-pluralistic religions. Islam is the obvious example in
the late twentieth century. When citizenship is not grounded in a
public confession of faith in the God of the Bible, immigrants can
work to change the pluralistic confession of the nation after they be-
come naturalized citizens. The religion of pluralism ofers most of
these immigrants equal access to the public square, once they be-
come citizens. The result is the weakening of Christian faith in the
public square and the undermining of the remnants of Christian civ-
ilization. In secular democratic nations, the war for the national con-
fession will be fought in the nation’s bedrooms. Apart from a
massive revival, comparative birth rates will determine the future
national confession. In Germany and France, Islam is winning this
demographic war.
This is not to deny the legitimacy of open borders. Open bor-
ders were basic to Mosaic Israel. If fugitive slaves were welcomed in
Israel, how much more were free men welcomed! If people who
were lowest on the social scale outside the land had legal access to
residency inside the land, how much more did capital-owning im-
migrants have access! This case law ofers additional evidence that
Israel had an open doors immigration policy. People who were will-
ing to submit to the civil laws of Israel’s God were ofered freedom
inside the holy nation’s boundaries. Israel was a true sanctuary.14

14. In 1850, the government of the United States passed a fugitive slave law. This law
mandated that ojcers of the United States government extradite leeing slaves to southern
states. These ojcers were empowered to appoint local commissioners to assist them. These
commissioners in turn were empowered to compel private citizens to join a posse comitatus to
chase down fugitive slaves. No jury trials on the alleged slave’s judicial status were allowed in
the North; none was authorized in the South, either. The accused was not allowed to present
testimony in the North regarding his free status. A ine of $1,000, a huge sum in 1850, was
imposed on anyone who aided a slave in escaping. “The Compromise of 1850,” in The Annals
of America, 18 vols. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968), VIII, pp. 55–57. In short, the
government of the United States compelled residents in the North to cooperate with slave
owners in the South who had purchased kidnapped Africans from slave traders (mainly
Northerners). The fugitive slave law of 1850 forced Northern moralists to break the law and
help those who broke it. The enforcement of this law over the next decade steadily separated
the United States into two nations: a sanctuary nation and a slave nation. The politicians
found no way to reconcile these two nations. This law created the mentality of “two nations in
one,” which in turn led to the Civil War (1861–65).
 The Fugitive Slave Law 657

The deciding civil issue was confession of faith. Citizenship was

open only to circumcised men and their wives who confessed faith
in the God of Israel and who participated in Passover. Israel was not
pluralistic. Long-term residence did not mean the right to vote. It
meant only the right to participate without discrimination in Israel’s
economy. It meant justice; it did not mean judgeship.
 55
UsuryAUTHORIZED
USURY Authorized
Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of
victuals [food], usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger
thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon
usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine
hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it (Deut. 23:19–20).

The theocentric principle here is that God protects His people

as a shepherd protects his lock. The text speciied that the cove-
nant-keeping lender was to imitate God by not lending at interest to
a brother in the faith, i.e., a person who publicly confesses faith in
the God of the Bible and who had subordinated himself to the cove-
nanted ecclesiastical community by means of an oath-sign.1 Those
who were outside of the covenanted ecclesiastical community could
be lawfully treated as a shepherd would treat sheep outside his lock.
These sheep did not recognize his voice. These sheep were not un-
der his authority; therefore, they were not under his protection.
What is judicially crucial here is the biblical concept of becom-
ing a brother’s protector. The shepherd-sheep relationship implies
subordination by the sheep. “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the bor-
rower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7). The Mosaic law recog-
nized that a sheep enters the debt relationship as a subordinate. As
we shall see, the cause of this subordination was to be a factor in the
lender’s decision as to which kind of loan is involved: charitable or

1. Under the Old Covenant, circumcision; under the New Covenant, baptism. See Ray R.
Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1992), pp. 86–89.

658
 Usury Authorized 659

business. The poor brother who had fallen on hard times through
no moral fault of his own was morally entitled to a zero-interest
charitable loan. This subordination aspect of a loan is universal.
This law was therefore not a land law. It had implications for the
Israelites’ maintenance of the kingdom grant, but its legitimacy was
not based on this grant.
This law indicates that God protects covenant-keepers in a way
that He does not protect covenant-breakers. He regards the former
as deserving of special consideration. This is a matter of inheritance:

The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous
sheweth mercy, and giveth. For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the
earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut of. The steps of a good
man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall,
he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his
hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righ-
teous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. He is ever merciful, and
lendeth; and his seed is blessed. Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell
for evermore. For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints;
they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut of. The
righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever (Ps. 37:21–29).

There was a positive sanction attached to this law: “that the

LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in
the land whither thou goest to possess it.” Moses promised that God
would provide visible blessings in the land. The land was not the
positive sanction attached to this law, for it would soon be their in-
heritance. But comprehensive blessings inside the land’s bound-
aries would be the result of honoring this law. There can be no
doubt about this law’s importance. This law was highly speciic, but
the blessings attached to it were so comprehensive that they were
unspeciied.

Two Kinds of Loans

In the other case laws dealing with zero-interest loans, it was the
poor brother who was to be beneited. “If thou lend money to any of
my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer,
neither shalt thou lay upon him usury” (Ex. 22:25). This protection
extended to the resident alien. “And if thy brother be waxen poor,
and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea,
660 DEUTERONOMY

though he be a stranger [geyr], or a sojourner [toshawb]; that he may

live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy
God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him
thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase”
(Lev. 25:35–37). There were two deciding factors in making a zero-
interest loan: the would-be borrower’s poverty and his status as le-
gally protected.
One biblical principle of interpretation is this: the more nar-
rowly speciied text is considered authoritative over the more
broadly speciied text. That which is narrowly deined is clearer. It
provides more data on how the text is to be understood. We should
move from the clear to the less clear, from the speciic to the gen-
eral. In the interpretation of this case law, we conclude that if God
had prohibited covenant-keepers from charging interest to anyone,
He would not have excluded the stranger from the prohibition.
Similarly, if He had prohibited covenant-keepers from charging in-
terest to other covenant-keepers, He would not have speciied poor
brethren as coming under the prohibition. There would have been
no need for God to identify a smaller group among the brethren as
deserving of special treatment if all brethren were equally deserving
of such treatment.
Not only was the economic status of the circumcised brother a
criterion, so was the kind of loan. A charitable loan was morally
compulsory. “If there be among you a poor man of one of thy breth-
ren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giv-
eth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from
thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him,
and shalt surely lend him sujcient for his need, in that which he
wanteth” (Deut. 15:7–8).2 To this type of loan was attached a nega-
tive civil sanction for a debtor’s failure to repay: a period of bondage
that lasted until the next national year of release (Deut. 15:12). This
could be up to six years of bondage. Yet it was also possible for a
debtor to be enslaved for a much longer period for a failure to repay
a debt: until the next jubilee year (Lev. 25:39–41). This could be up

2. Moral compulsion is not legal compulsion. The State was not to impose negative
sanctions on anyone who refused to lend. God would provide positive sanctions on those
with open wallets: “Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when
thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy
works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto” (Deut. 15:10).
 Usury Authorized 661

to 49 years of bondage. This raises a major question: What criteria

distinguished sabbatical-year debt servitude from jubilee-year debt
servitude?
The irst criterion was the presence of an interest rate. If a poor
man sought a morally compulsory zero-interest loan from his
brother in the faith, he placed himself at risk for up to six years. At
the end of that time, either the loan was automatically cancelled by
law or else he, having previously forfeited repayment, was released
from bondage and sent out with food and drink by his creditor
(Deut. 15:13–14). A second criterion was that a charitable loan did
not require a man’s landed inheritance as collateral. His collateral
was either some form of goods or else his willingness to become a
bondservant for defaulting. The text does not indicate that he was
required to pledge his family’s landed inheritance in order to collat-
eralize a charitable loan.
If a man who possessed a rural inheritance that he could use as
collateral decided to seek a non-charitable loan, he had no moral
claim on the lender, nor could he reasonably expect to receive an
interest rate of zero. This loan would have been either a business
loan or a consumer loan. This would-be debtor was not truly poor
unless his land holdings were too small to support him. The presence
of jubilee-bondage loans in addition to sabbatical year-bondage loans
indicates that there were commercial loans in Israel. If the inter-
est-bearing commercial debt contract placed him at risk of bondage,
then by forfeiting payment on the loan, the debtor placed himself in
a much longer term of bondage. This is evidence that commercial
loans were much larger than charitable loans. Such loans could be
made for longer periods of time than six years. The collateral was
the income stream of the land and even the individual for up to 49
years. In short, a commercial loan could place at risk the fruit of a
man’s inheritance until the next jubilee.

Two Kinds of Aliens

The alien or stranger [nokree] was eligible for an interest-bearing
loan at any time. Loans to him were permanent; the year of release
did not beneit him. “And this is the manner of the release: Every
creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbor shall release it; he
shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother; because it is
called the LORD’S release. Of a foreigner [nokree] thou mayest exact it
again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall
662 DEUTERONOMY

release” (Deut. 15:2–3). The foreigner here was an alien who either
was not a property-owning resident in Israel or was not circumcised.
He was not a permanent resident who had settled in a city. i.e., a
sojourner.
The Mosaic law distinguished between the two kinds of aliens in
other ways. In the law governing unclean meat, we read: “Ye shall
not eat of any thing that dieth of itself: thou shalt give it unto the
stranger [geyr] that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest
sell it unto an alien [nokree]: for thou art an holy people unto the
LORD thy God” (Deut. 14:21a). The permanent resident could re-
ceive the unclean meat as a gift, but it could not be sold to him, i.e., it
ofered no proit for the Israelite. In contrast, it was lawful to sell ritu-
3
ally unclean meat to a foreigner [nokree].
The permanent resident [geyr] was to be treated as a brother: he
was not to be charged interest on a charitable loan, as we have seen
(Lev. 25:35–37). He was a kind of honorary Israelite. Not being a
citizen of Israel – a member of the congregation – he could not serve
as a judge. If he was not circumcised, he could not enter the temple
or eat a Passover meal. But as a man voluntarily living permanently
under biblical civil law, he was entitled to the civil law’s protection,
including the prohibition against interest-bearing charitable loans.
Lending at interest was one of God’s means of bringing foreign-
ers under the authority of Israel. “For the LORD thy God blesseth
thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations,
but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations,
but they shall not reign over thee” (Deut. 15:6). This was an aspect
of dominion through hierarchy: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the
borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7). The foreigner was
fair game for a program of proitable money-lending. This included
loans to poor foreigners. When a foreigner was desperate for money,
an Israelite was allowed to take advantage of the situation and lend to
him at interest. In contrast, the resident alien was legally protected;
he was to be treated as a brother. He was already voluntarily under
God’s civil law and some of the ritual laws, such as ritual washing af-
ter eating meat that had died of natural causes (Lev. 17:15). There
was no need to bring him under dominion through debt. He had al-
ready acknowledged his debt to God.

3. Chapter 33.
 Usury Authorized 663

Which Jurisdiction?
The negative sanction for forfeiture was a period of bondage.
This placed the Mosaic debt laws under the civil government. But
there were no stated penalties for a lender’s refusal to lend, despite
the moral compulsion aspect of the charitable loan. God promised
to bring negative sanctions against the individual who refused to
honor this aspect of the law (Deut. 15:9) and positive sanctions for
the man who honored it (v. 10). The State is not a legitimate agency
for bringing positive sanctions. As a matter of contract law, the State
lawfully imposes only negative sanctions. It enforced bondage on
those debtors who defaulted, but it did not compel lenders to make
loans.
This means that the lender was under God’s sanctions directly,
while the debtor was under God’s sanctions indirectly. The lender
might give him the positive sanction of a charitable loan, and the
State would enforce the penalty for non-repayment. The debtor’s
obligations were speciic: pay back so much money by a speciic
date or sufer the consequences. The lender’s obligations were not
speciic: lend a reasonable amount of money and subsequently re-
ceive unspeciied blessings from God. There was no earthly institu-
tion that could lawfully enforce speciic penalties on such unspeciic
transactions.
Civil law deals with speciics. This keeps the State from becom-
ing tyrannical. The State is under law. It enforces contracts, but
these contracts are narrowly speciied in advance. It is therefore not
the State’s responsibility to mandate that potential lenders provide
loans of a speciic size and duration to borrowers.

Not Restricted to Money Loans

“Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money,
usury of victuals [food], usury of any thing that is lent upon usury.”
This clause in the law makes it plain that usury, meaning a positive
interest rate, applies across the board to all items lent. The phenom-
enon of interest is not limited to money loans. It is a universal aspect
of lending, which is why the law speciies that the prohibition ap-
plies to loans in general, not merely money loans.
There is an ancient and widespread error going back at least to
Aristotle that interest on money loans is unproductive because
money, unlike animals, does not reproduce itself. In other words,
664 DEUTERONOMY

money is sterile. Therefore, Aristotle concluded, “of all modes of ac-

4
quisition, usury is the most unnatural.” Yet the critics of usury have
generally viewed rent on land as legitimate.5 If I loan someone 20
ounces of gold and charge him one ounce per year in interest, I am
viewed as a usurer and somehow morally questionable. If, on the
other hand, I let the same person use my farm land, which is worth
20 gold ounces, and I charge him one ounce of gold per year as rent,
I come under no criticism. Why this diference in opinion? In both
cases, I give up something valuable for a period of time. I can either
spend the gold or invest it in a business venture. Similarly, I can ei-
ther sell the farm or plow it, plant it, and reap a crop. In both cases, I
allow someone else to use my asset for a year, with which he can
then pursue his own goals. I charge him for this privilege of gaining
temporary control over a valuable asset. I charge either interest or
rent because I do not choose to give away the income which my as-
set could generate during the period in which the other person
controls it.
To expect me to loan someone my 20 ounces of gold at no inter-
est is the same, economically speaking, as to expect me to loan him
the use of my farm land on a rent-free basis. In fact, the thing which
people conventionally call rental income is analytically an interest
income. Because a payment for the use of land is seen as morally
neutral, men describe the interest income generated by land by
means of a morally neutral term: rent. Because a payment for the
use of money is seen as morally reprehensible, men describe the in-
terest income generated by money loans by means of a morally
loaded term: usury. But the transactions are analytically identical.
Interest income and rental income are the same thing: payment for the use of
an asset over time.
There is a tendency to see interest as something exploitative and
rent as something legitimate. Interest income is not seen as productive;
rental income is seen as productive. Why the diference? Probably be-
cause people think that the creation of value must be associated with
the creation of goods. This outlook is incorrect, and the best

4. Aristotle, Politics, I:x, trans. Ernest Barker (New York: Oxford University Press, [1946]
1958), p. 29.
5. This would be an extension of Aristotle’s argument: “acquisition of fruits and animals.”
Ibid., p. 28.
 Usury Authorized 665

example is the discovery of a new idea. It is not physical. We can see

this analytical error at work in a series of examples.

The Deciding Factor Is Not Material

Example number one. I sell a one-year lease to my abandoned
gold mine, which no longer produces any gold. I charge one ounce
of gold for this opportunity. The lease-holder discovers a new de-
posit, digs out 200 ounces of gold in one year, and gives back my 20
ounces plus one ounce. Nobody thinks this arrangement is exploit-
ative on my part. He gets rich, and I get my agreed-upon ounce of
gold. Even if he fails to ind any gold, most people would regard my
net income of one ounce of gold as legitimate. After all, I let him use
my abandoned gold mine for a year. He made a mistake, but he
might have struck it rich.
Example number two. An inventor comes to me. He thinks that
he has discovered a way to increase the output of gold mines – say, a
chemical method of extracting more gold out of the ore. He does
not have the money to complete his inal experiment and ile for a
patent. I lend him 20 ounces of gold for a year at one ounce of gold
interest. During this year, he completes the testing, iles the patent,
and sells the patent for a fortune. He returns my 20 ounces plus one
ounce of gold. Have I exploited him? No. But what if his inal test
proves that the process does not work? Or what if he iles the patent
incorrectly and someone steals his idea, leaving him without any-
thing to show for his efort? Am I an exploiter because I demand the
return of my 20 ounces plus one? I was not a co-investor in the pro-
cess. I would not have shared in his wealth had everything gone
well. His use of my gold did allow him to follow his dream to its con-
clusion, whether proitable to him or not.
Example number three. What if he borrows the gold to com-
plete tests on another invention that is unrelated to gold mining?
Has the economic analysis changed? No. The borrower seeks his
own ends by means of the 20 ounces of gold. Meanwhile, the lender
seeks his ends: an interest payment. Each party to the transaction
pursues his own individual goals. Each believes that he can beneit
from the transaction.
666 DEUTERONOMY

Conclusion: the physical nature of the asset lent for a ixed pay-
ment over time has nothing to do with the analytical basis of the
transaction, but it has a lot to do with people’s confusion about inter-
6
est. The heart of the matter is not material; it is temporal. The
lender gives up something of value for a period of time, and he will
not do this voluntarily without compensation unless he believes that
his refusal to make a zero-interest loan to a poor brother will result
in negative sanctions from God, which it did in Mosaic Israel. “Be-
ware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The
seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil
against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry
unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee” (Deut. 15:9).
Deuteronomy 23:19–20 acknowledges the identical nature of
these lending transactions irrespective of the physical composition
of the items loaned. An interest payment was not to be charged on
the kind of loan described here: a charitable loan to a brother in the
faith. The charitable aspect of the loan was the interest income fore-
gone by the lender. He could have used the asset to generate in-
come for himself; instead, he lent freely and asks only that what he
has lent be returned to him. He is charitable because he forfeited the
income which his asset would have generated for him in the busi-
ness loan market. He gave away this income to the borrower, who
paid nothing for it.

Compensation for Risk

It is not simply that the lender forfeits income that others would
otherwise pay him to use his asset for a year. The lender also bears
risk. First, he bears the risk that the loan will not be repaid. The text
governing charitable loans makes this clear: “Beware that there be
not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year
of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother,
and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee,
and it be sin unto thee” (Deut. 15:9). Charitable debts became unen-
forceable in Israel in the seventh year. Also, all those who were in
debt bondage for having failed to repay a charitable loan went free
(Deut. 15:12), so the loan’s collateral in the form of the borrower’s

6. We call a mental concept “matter” when we really mean “issue” or “question.” The
language of the material invades the mental.
 Usury Authorized 667

future work would not be available to the lender as compensation

for a default.
Second, the lender bears the risk that if he lends money, the
government or the central bank may inlate the nation’s domestic
money supply, thereby lowering the value of the money which he
receives at the end of the loan period. To compensate him for this
risk, the lender adds an inlation premium to the interest rate. The
threat of price inlation due to monetary inlation is one reason why
self-interested lenders should organize politically to pressure the
government: 1) not to increase the money supply; 2) to prohibit the
central bank from doing so.7
The lender must be compensated for known risk; otherwise, he
will not make the loan. In commercial loans, borrowers compensate
the lender for this risk. The risk of one borrower’s default is paid for
by a risk premium factor in the interest rate which is charged to all
borrowers within the same risk classiication. In the case of the char-
itable loan to the poor brother, God becomes the risk-bearer. He
ofers the lender the same shepherd-like protection in hard times
that the lender ofers the poor brother in hard times. The lender’s
faith in God’s protecting hand is revealed by his willingness to lend
at no interest to a righteous poor brother. Also, he thereby acknowl-
edges that God has given him his wealth: “For the LORD thy God
blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many
nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many
nations, but they shall not reign over thee” (Deut. 15:6).

Uncertainty vs. Risk

8
There is an analytical distinction between uncertainty and risk.
Risk is a statistically calculable function. Certain classes of events

7. If the money is gold or silver, and there is no fractional reserve banking, there will be a
slow decline in prices over time in a productive economy, since increasing economic output
(supply of goods and services) will lower prices in the face of the relatively ixed money
supply. The price of goods approaches zero as a limit: the reversal of God’s curse in Eden. In
such a world, the lender of money reaps a small return: the money returned to him will buy
slightly more than it would have bought when he lent it. In such a monetary environment, the
borrower would be better of to borrow consumer goods rather than money.
8. Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Proit (New York: Harper Torchbooks, [1921]
1965); Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1949), ch. 6.
668 DEUTERONOMY

can be forecasted accurately, i.e., within statistical limits. The dis-

covery of this social fact made possible the modern economic
9
world. In contrast, uncertainty cannot be measured in advance.
Some kinds of events cannot be forecasted by means of statistical
techniques, such as inventions or the discovery of a gem or a gem of
an idea.
While we all are to some degree both risk-bearers and uncer-
tainty-bearers, there are only a few people who are professional
uncertainty-bearers. We call them entrepreneurs. These people
forecast the economic future and then buy and sell goods and ser-
vices in terms of their forecasts in order to proit from their hoped-
for accurate knowledge. When successful, they reap proits. When
unsuccessful, they reap losses. Because the kinds of events they deal
with have not yet been successfully converted into risk events, the
market does not enable investors to deal with these events in a
scientiic, analytical manner. We call such events high-risk events,
but this is incorrect analytically. They are uncertain events.
Lenders who seek a legally predictable rate of return lend
money at interest. In contrast, investors who are willing to put their
money “at risk” – really, at uncertainty – in order to share in any
proits must also share in any losses. The gains and losses of entre-
preneurial ventures are not predictable, or at least not predictable
by most people.10 People who are uncertainty-aversive but not equally
risk-aversive lend to people who are willing to bear uncertainty, but
who prefer to gain the capital necessary to develop a venture by
promising lenders a legally enforceable ixed rate of return. The dis-
tribution of risk and uncertainty to those who are willing to bear
each of these is made possible through the market for loans. Those
entrepreneurs who make statistically unpredictable breakthroughs
that beneit society can be funded in their ventures by others who
are unwilling to bear uncertainty but who are willing to bear some
degree of risk. Without such a social institution, only two kinds of
entrepreneurs could fund their ventures: 1) those with capital of
their own to invest; 2) those who are willing to share their proits

9. Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: Wiley,
1996).
10. An entrepreneur who has discovered a way to deal with formerly uncertain events by
means of proprietary or as yet not widely recognized statistical techniques is in a position to
make a great deal of money until others discover these techniques.
 Usury Authorized 669

with co-owners of any discovery, and who also have the ability to
persuade these investor-owners to put their money into the venture.

Conclusion
The more general language of this case law – brothers in the
faith – has misled commentators for two millennia. This law must be
interpreted in terms of the more narrowly focused reference point
of the other laws governing interest: poor brothers in the faith, as
well as poor resident aliens, who have fallen on hard times through
no moral fault of their own. This case law applied to charitable loans
made to brothers in the faith and resident aliens who lived volun-
tarily under God’s civil laws. It did not prohibit interest-bearing
commercial loans. It also did not apply to charitable loans to for-
eigners [nokree]. The prohibition against interest-bearing loans
applied only to morally compulsory loans made to impoverished
neighbors.
By failing to understand the context of the Mosaic laws against
interest-taking, the medieval church placed prohibitions on all in-
terest-bearing loans.11 This drastically restricted the market for
loans. It restricted the legal ability of people who were aversive to
entrepreneurial uncertainty from making loans at interest. It
thereby restricted the ability of entrepreneurs to obtain capital for
their ventures. The result was lower economic growth for the entire
society.

11. See Chapter 35, footnote 10.

 56
Vows,VOWS,
Contracts, and Productivity
CONTRACTS,
AND PRODUCTIVITY

When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not
slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it
would be sin in thee. But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in
thee. That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform; even a
freewill ofering, according as thou hast vowed unto the LORD thy God,
which thou hast promised with thy mouth (Deut. 23:21–23).

The theocentric principle illustrated here is the predictability of

God’s sworn promises. God announced in Isaiah 45, a passage de-
voted to His sovereignty: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the
ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn
by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and
shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue
shall swear” (Isa. 45:22–23). The New American Standard Version
adds “allegiance” to the inal sentence. There is no escape from
God’s sworn word. The reliability of God’s word is absolute. He
swears by His own authority. There is no higher authority.
Isaiah compared the predictability of God’s word with both the
predictability and productivity of the seasons. “For as the rain com-
eth down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but
watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may
give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be
that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the
thing whereto I sent it” (Isa. 55:10–11). The element of productivity
in God’s reliable word should not be ignored. Nor should the hier-
archical aspect of His word, which can be seen in the words that

670
 Vows, Contracts, and Productivity 671

introduce this section: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts” (v. 9). A sovereign God speaks an authoritative, hierarchi-
cal word, and it accomplishes all that God proposes. God’s spoken
words are productive in history. More than this: they are the basis of
progress in history. Cause and efect in history are grounded in
God’s covenants with men. Historical sanctions are applied by God
in history in terms of men’s responses to His authoritative word. Do-
minion is by covenant.1 Covenants are established by judicial oath.
The binding oath becomes the model for legally binding contracts.
Contracts are tools of dominion.
This was not a land law. It is a universal law. The law of the vow
is still binding.

Productive Words
God speaks, and the world responds. He spoke the universe into
existence (Gen. 1). It is not enough to ajrm that His word is abso-
lutely sovereign from the creation to the inal judgment and be-
yond.2 We must also ajrm that His word is productive. There was
more to this world at the end of the creation week than there had
been at the beginning. There is progress in history because of His
sovereign word, which He speaks prior to the events of history and
above the processes of history. What God says He will do, He
brings to pass. What He brings to pass is progress. History moves
toward the inal judgment, not randomly but according to God’s
sovereign decree. Nothing happens that is outside His decree.
In their public prayer to God, the disciples cited Psalm 2’s de-
scription of the hopeless rebellion of the kings of the earth against
God, and then applied this text to the cruciixion: “For of a truth

1. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992).
2. It is surely not enough to ajrm that His word is relatively sovereign, i.e., sovereign
except for substantial gaps of historical indeterminacy commonly known as man’s free will.
Pharaoh had no free will in opposing Moses: “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for
this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my
name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will
have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom. 9:17–18). Judas had no free will in
betraying Christ: “And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that
man by whom he is betrayed!” (Luke 22:22).
672 DEUTERONOMY

against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod,
and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were
gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel
determined before to be done” (Acts 4:27–28). Even in evil events
there is progress in history. “The LORD hath made all things for him-
self: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4). Progress
in history rests on God’s absolutely sovereign, absolutely compre-
hensive decree. The kingdom of God advances in terms of His prior
spoken word and His present sustaining providence, which corre-
sponds in all details to His original word.

Analogous Words and Deeds

Man is made in God’s image. He speaks as God speaks, but in a
creaturely, representative way. The covenantal question is this: In
the name of which god does he speak? Just as he is required to think
God’s thoughts after Him, so is he required to speak God’s words af-
ter Him. After a man speaks, his subsequent actions are supposed to
conirm his words, for God’s actions invariably conirm His words.
A man’s actions are to testify to the reliability of his words. The
more reliably he speaks, the greater his productivity because of his
greater value to others. Other men can make plans conidently in
terms of his words. Greater predictability makes cooperation less
expensive. Where the price of something drops, more of it will be
demanded. The social division of labor increases as a result of the predict-
ability of men’s words. Individual output per unit of input increases.
Men grow wealthier. Greater wealth makes the tools of dominion
more afordable.
The vow serves as the model of a contract. The words in a vow
have greater authority than the words in a promise. The vow is
made before God by means of an oath which implicitly or explicitly
invokes the sanctions of God in history. The individual takes the
vow on his own authority. There is no intermediary institution in
between God and the vow-taker. It is not like a church vow, a civil
vow, or a marital vow. A covenantal relationship between God and
man is conirmed by the presence of a vow to God. The oath’s sanc-
tions serve as the link between heaven’s throne and history. This is
why the person who vows before God must be sure that he fulills
the stipulations of his vow. God is the direct enforcer of negative
sanctions against the vow-taker who defaults.
 Vows, Contracts, and Productivity 673

The Judicially Binding Authority of the Oath

“For the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee”: this is an
assertion of a threatened negative sanction. This threatening lan-
guage identiies a promise to God as a vow. A vow is taken to God
and enforced by God. The vow has covenantal authority. It is not
the judicial equivalent of a contract made between men. It is a hier-
archical, oath-bound contract between God and a person. He
brings sanctions directly, for the oath invokes God’s sanctions. The
oath is self-maledictory (“bad-speaking”), calling down God’s nega-
tive sanctions on the oath-taker should he fail to abide by the cove-
nant’s stipulations.3 Thus, the vow has greater authority than a
contract does, which invokes the State as the contract’s sanctions-
bringer. A contract is not lawfully sealed with a self-maledictory oath
before God.
This case law is an extension of an earlier case law: “If a man
vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a
bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that
proceedeth out of his mouth” (Num. 30:2). The word for “bind” is
the same one used to describe what the Philistines did to Samson.
The word is also used to describe harnessing a horse to a chariot. It
is as if one’s soul – the breath of life – could be tied down to a physi-
cal implement. Word and deed are bound together judicially. This
bond is two-fold: verbal and historical. What a man says must corre-
spond to the promised external deeds which he is subsequently re-
quired by God to perform. These deeds invoke God’s deeds:
sanctions, either positive and negative. Cause and efect in history
are covenantal. This is why the structure of the covenant is the basis
of biblical social theory. Biblical social theory is inescapably judicial.
Having spent four decades in the wilderness under the negative
sanctions that God had applied to their fathers, the Israelites of
Joshua’s generation should have begun to understand this.4 (Three
thousand ive hundred years later, so should Christian intellectuals,
but they rarely do.)
A promise made to God is more binding legally than a promise
made to man. It is sometimes lawful to break a promise to a man, for

3. Sutton, That You May Prosper, ch. 4.

4. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1997).
674 DEUTERONOMY

there is no absolute authority in a relationship of a man to another

man, unless that promise is a covenantal vow, as in marriage. A
good example of breaking a promise was Solomon’s promise to his
mother: “Bath-sheba therefore went unto king Solomon, to speak
unto him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her, and
bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a
seat to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand.
Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee, say me
not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother: for I will
not say thee nay. And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be
given to Adonijah thy brother to wife. And king Solomon answered
and said unto his mother, And why dost thou ask Abishag the
Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is
mine elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and
for Joab the son of Zeruiah. Then king Solomon sware by the LORD,
saying, God do so to me, and more also, if Adonijah have not spo-
ken this word against his own life” (I Ki. 2:19–23). Solomon realized
that Adonijah was claiming the political inheritance for himself, for
he was seeking marriage with the woman who had slept by King
David to warm him. Adonijah was claiming continuity. He was at-
tempting a political rebellion. Not only did Solomon break his word
to his mother, he executed his older half-brother for this insurrec-
tion against his throne.
Other kings were not equally wise – pagan kings. Darius, king of
Medo-Persia, was tricked into promising to execute any man who
prayed openly to God within a 30-day period. His advisors had de-
vised this tactic in order to trap Daniel, who was immediately ar-
rested and brought before the king. “Then the king, when he heard
these words, was sore displeased with himself, and set his heart on
Daniel to deliver him: and he laboured till the going down of the
sun to deliver him. Then these men assembled unto the king, and
said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Per-
sians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may
be changed” (Dan. 6:14–15). Centuries later, Herod followed in this
pagan tradition with respect to his stepdaughter: “But when Herod’s
birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them,
and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give
her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of
her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger.
And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake, and them
 Vows, Contracts, and Productivity 675

which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her”

(Matt. 14:6–9). Both men should have broken their promises. They
had been misused by those under their jurisdiction. They became
vulnerable to manipulators.
In contrast, Solomon recognized this misuse of his authority by
Adonijah. He humiliated his misused mother by breaking his prom-
ise to her, and then he executed his conniving half-brother.
Adonijah had misused Bathsheba and intended to misuse the
Shunamite girl. He was imitating Satan, who had used the serpent to
deceive the woman in order to undermine her husband’s lawful au-
thority. Solomon recognized this tactic for what it was, and there-
fore had his brother executed.
A king’s word is not God’s word. Only when God was invoked
to conirm a lawful vow did the vow of a king take on the character
of an unbreakable covenantal oath. What was true of a king was true
for a lesser man. After the Israelites had made a covenant with the
Gibeonites, who had tricked them, they upheld their words. First
the vow: “And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league
with them, to let them live: and the princes of the congregation
sware unto them” (Josh. 9:15). Then the fulillment: “And the chil-
dren of Israel smote them not, because the princes of the congrega-
tion had sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel. And all the
congregation murmured against the princes. But all the princes said
unto all the congregation, We have sworn unto them by the LORD
God of Israel: now therefore we may not touch them. This we will
do to them; we will even let them live, lest wrath be upon us, be-
cause of the oath which we sware unto them. And the princes said
unto them, Let them live; but let them be hewers of wood and draw-
ers of water unto all the congregation; as the princes had promised
them” (vv. 9:18–21).
God did not bring sanctions against Israel for having allowed a
Canaanitic tribe to survive. On the contrary, He allowed the
Gibeonites to serve the priests in the work of the temple. “And Joshua
made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the
congregation, and for the altar of the LORD, even unto this day, in
the place which he should choose” (v. 9:27). When an alliance of
Canaanite nations attacked Gibeon, presumably to make them an
example for having surrendered to Israel, Gibeon called on Israel to
defend them. Israel came to Gibeon’s defense and routed the
Canaanites (Josh. 10). God had told the Israelites not to spare any
676 DEUTERONOMY

nation in the land. “And thou shalt consume all the people which
the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity
upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a
snare unto thee” (Deut. 7:16). Yet Israel was oath-bound to spare
Gibeon and even come to Gibeon’s defense. This was the power of
the covenantal oath under the Mosaic law. This was the authority of
God’s name, lawfully invoked.

Invoking God’s Name

A covenantal oath has great authority because God’s name has
great authority. This was what the rulers of Israel told the murmur-
ing congregation. “We have sworn unto them by the LORD God of
Israel.” That was supposed to settle the matter. The matter was sup-
posed to remain settled. Saul broke this oath with Gibeon some four
centuries later. The Israelites living under David paid the conse-
quences.

Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after
year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for
Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. And the
king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were
not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the
children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his
zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.) Wherefore David said unto the
Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atone-
ment, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD? And the Gibeonites
said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house;
neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall
say, that will I do for you. And they answered the king, The man that con-
sumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from re-
maining in any of the coasts of Israel, Let seven men of his sons be
delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of
Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them. But
the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, be-
cause of the LORD’S oath that was between them, between David and Jona-
than the son of Saul. But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter
of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the
ive sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel
the son of Barzillai the Meholathite: And he delivered them into the hands
of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the LORD: and
 Vows, Contracts, and Productivity 677

they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in
the irst days, in the beginning of barley harvest (II Sam. 21:1–9).

God had not forgotten the oath made by Joshua and the rulers
of Israel. Saul either forgot or believed that God would no longer
hold him responsible for honoring it. God did not forget what Saul
did. Negative sanctions came on Israel many years after Saul was
dead. David spared one heir of Saul because of his prior oath to the
man’s father. The Gibeonites counted the matter closed with the ex-
ecution of Saul’s grandsons. The blood of their grandfather was on
their heads, for their grandfather was dead and beyond historical
sanctions. In this case, a Mosaic case law was lawfully violated:
“The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall
the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to
death for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16). In the case of Achan, who com-
mitted sacrilege,5 the sons died for the sin of their father. In this case,
the required sanction applied two generations later. The law gov-
erning the covenantal oath supersedes the law governing the appli-
cation of civil sanctions on sons. This is evidence of the importance
of the vow.
There is no biblical indication that the Mosaic laws of the vow
have been annulled by the New Covenant. The New Testament
strengthens the authority of the vow: the Son of God has conirmed
the vow. “Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before
men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of
God: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the
angels of God” (Luke 12:8–9). To deny Christ is to disavow Him.
Paul warns: “It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we
shall also live with him: If we sufer, we shall also reign with him: if
we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth
faithful: he cannot deny himself” (II Tim. 2:11–13). The promised
eternal sanctions – positive and negative – are grounded judicially
on Christ’s inability to deny Himself, His words, and His authority.

5. Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition;
Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Appendix A.
678 DEUTERONOMY

A Contract
A contract does not have the same degree of authority that a
lawful covenantal oath possesses. A lawful covenantal oath invokes
God as the inal sanctions-bringer. A contract invokes the State as
the inal sanctions-bringer. The State does not possess the same de-
gree of authority that God does. To elevate a contract to the status of
a covenant is to elevate the authority of the State over God. Any as-
sertion of equality is a hidden assertion of superiority.6 There cannot
be equality with God; there is therefore no equality of a contract
with a lawful covenant. Jesus warned about invoking God or the sa-
cred implements of God to sanction a non-covenantal ajrmation:
“But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is
God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by
Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou
swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or
black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for what-
soever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matt. 5:34–37).
The West’s social contract theory since the late seventeenth cen-
tury has placed the State at the pinnacle of power. Some versions in-
voke God; others do not. In none of them does the Bible gain
authority over the terms of the social contract. This places some ver-
sion of neutral civil law in authority, which in turn rests on a theory
of mankind’s rational corporate mind and also on a theory of the ex-
istence of universally acknowledged and binding moral standards,
irrespective of the content of rival religious confessions. It also
makes the State the sovereign interpreter and enforcer of the social
contract’s stipulations.
In Rousseau’s contractual theory, this statism is more pro-
nounced than in Locke’s version.7 In Locke’s contractualism, there
can be a theoretical appeal to God, or to a higher law, or to the sov-
ereign people, but there is a theoretical question here: Who lawfully
represents God or the higher law? The doctrine of contractual repre-
sentation is necessarily a doctrine of historical representation. This is

6. Consider bigamy. The second wife asserts equality with the irst wife. The irst wife
knows better. She is the loser. She has become “used goods.” She is Leah; the new wife is
Rachel.
7. Robert A. Nisbet, Tradition and Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays (New York:
Knopf, 1968), ch. 1.
 Vows, Contracts, and Productivity 679

the question of the voice of authority. If the king does not hear a
grievance from the people, Locke wrote, “the appeal then lies no-
where but to heaven . . . and in that state the injured party must
judge for himself when he will think it to make use of that appeal
and put himself into it.”8 This does not settle the issue of conlicting
voices in history. It merely defers it. Locke’s god in the Second Trea-
tise is not part of a covenantal relationship which is established in
terms of revealed law and predictable corporate sanctions. How,
then, does the aggrieved party know if he is in the right or if God
will defend his cause?
By invoking the State, the parties to a voluntary private contract
reduce the costs of enforcing the stipulations of the contract, but
only in a society in which the civil authorities predictably uphold
private contracts. This reduction in the costs of cooperation in-
creases the likelihood of on-going cooperation among the parties to
the contract. By lowering the parties’ costs of enforcing compliance,
the State encourages cooperation. It increases the predictability of
men’s outcomes. It thereby reduces risk (statistically predictable
loss) in society by lowering the costs for men to pool risk and reduce
risk’s burden on any single participant to the contract. The insur-
ance contract is the obvious example, but the same process of dis-
persing risk applies to contracts in general.
When the costs of gaining predictable law enforcement increase
to such an extent that invoking the State’s sanctions is more expen-
sive than the value of the expected income stream ofered by the
contract, cooperation breaks down. This is why self-government is cru-
cial for sustaining a contractual society. If the participants must resort to
the State continually to gain mutual compliance, the legal costs and
delays will increase so much that their cooperative venture fails. If
any society relies on lawyers alone to interpret the law, the lawyers’
guild will make full use of this monopoly. The society will fail to ob-
tain predictable justice. It will fall.

Conclusion
Covenant-keepers are under the confessional vow of subordina-
tion as members of the church covenant. Beyond this, they are not

8. John Locke, Of Civil Government: Second Treatise (1690), section 242.

680 DEUTERONOMY

asked to take personal vows of service. They may lawfully do this,

but they are not required to. Once a person takes a personal vow to
God, he is bound by it. He must fulill its terms. “If a man vow a vow
unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he
shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth
out of his mouth. If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and
bind herself by a bond, being in her father’s house in her youth”
(Num. 30:2–3). “When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to
pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast
vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou
shouldest vow and not pay” (Eccl. 5:4–5).9 As with a covenantal
oath, the vow is legally binding. God brings negative sanctions to
those who do not comply with its terms.
A contract has less authority than a vow, but it has similar aspects:
a sovereign enforcer (the State), a hierarchy of enforcement (repre-
sentatives), stipulations, sanctions, and continuity. This means that a
contract’s terms are supposed to be honored by the participants.
This theological aspect adds an element of authority to private con-
tracts. A biblical covenantal society will eventually develop into a
contractual society. Late medieval Christianity developed the legal
institutions that established and have maintained the Western legal
tradition.10 This should come as no surprise.
Oath-bound covenantal vows before God make possible social
cooperation by establishing the church, State, and family. A con-
tract is analogous to a covenant. It has analogous efects. A contract
increases the likelihood of social cooperation among men by lower-
ing the costs of cooperating. It increases the precision of the
agreed-upon deeds which men promise to perform. It also makes it
legal for the State to impose negative sanctions against those parties
to the contract who fail to fulill the terms of the contract. Contracts
lower the costs of cooperation, thereby increasing the amount of

9. Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees went to the heart of the matter: “But what think ye? A
certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my
vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he
came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.
Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto
them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God
before you” (Matt. 21:28–31).
10. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983).
 Vows, Contracts, and Productivity 681

cooperation demanded. Increased social cooperation increases the

division of labor and therefore men’s individual productivity and
income.
 57
Free
FREE FORfor THE
the Picking
PICKING

When thou comest into thy neighbour’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat
grapes thy ill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy
vessel. When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou
mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle
unto thy neighbour’s standing corn (Deut. 23:24–25).

The theocentric principle undergirding this law is that God, as

the owner of the creation, had the exclusive right to specify the
terms of the leases which He ofers to his stewards. His rural lease-
hold’s contract announced to the land owner: “You do not possess
absolute sovereignty over this land. Your neighbor has the right to
pick a handful of corn or grapes from this ield. Your right to ex-
clude others by law or force is limited.” In this sense, God delegated
to a farmer’s neighbors the right to enforce God’s claim of exclusive
control over a symbolic portion of every ield. The land owner
could not lawfully exclude God’s delegated representatives from ac-
cess to his crops. The fact that he could not lawfully exclude them
testiied to his lack of absolute sovereignty over his property.
In the garden of Eden, God placed a judicial boundary around
one tree. This boundary was there to remind Adam that he could
not legitimately assert control over the entire garden. Over most of
it, Adam did exercise full authority. But over one small part, he did
not. It was of-limits to him. Adam’s acceptance of this limitation on
his authority was basic to his continued residence in the garden.
More than this: it was basic to his life. God interacted with man on a
face-to-face basis in the garden. He no longer deals with man in this
way. Instead, God has established a system of representative au-
thority that substitutes for a verbal “no trespassing” sign around a

682
 Free for the Picking 683

designated tree. The neighbor is God’s agent who comes into an-
other man’s ield and announces, in efect: “This does not belong ex-
clusively to you. As the original owner, God has a valid legal claim
on it. So do I, as God’s agent.”
In this text, God forbade land owners from excluding visitors
from their ields. A visitor had the right to pick something to eat dur-
ing the harvest season. He lawfully reaped the fruits of another per-
son’s land, labor, and capital. The legal boundaries that delineated
the ownership of a ield did not restrict access by the visitor. The vis-
itor had a legal claim on a small portion of the harvest. He had to ap-
pear in person to collect this portion. Put a diferent way, outsiders
were co-owners of a portion of every ield’s pickable crop.
One question that I deal with later in this chapter is whether this
law was a cross-boundary law rather than a seed law or land law.1 If
it was a cross-boundary law, then God was making this law univer-
sal in its jurisdiction. He was announcing this system of land tenure
in His capacity as the owner of the whole earth, not just as the owner
of the Promised Land.

Exclusion by Conquest
The Israelites were about to inherit the Promised Land through
military conquest. Their forthcoming inheritance would be based
on the disinheritance of the Canaanites. The speciied means of this
transfer of ownership was to be genocide. It was not merely that the
Canaanites were to be excluded from the land; they were to be ex-
cluded from history. More to the point, theologically speaking, their
gods were to be excluded from history (Josh. 23:5–7).
The Israelites would soon enjoy a military victory after a gener-
ation of miraculous wandering in the wilderness (Deut. 8:4). There
could be no legitimate doubt in the future that God had arranged
this transfer of the inheritance. He was therefore the land’s original
owner. They would henceforth hold their land as sharecroppers:
ten percent of the net increase in the crop was to go to God through
the Levitical priesthood. This was Levi’s inheritance (Num. 18:21).
Before the conquest began, God placed certain restrictions on
the use of His holy land: the formal terms of the lease. As the owner

1. On the diference, see Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), pp. 637–45.
684 DEUTERONOMY

of both the land and the people who occupied it, God’s restrictions
were designed to protect the long-term productivity of His assets.
Yet He imposed these laws for their sakes, too. Land-owning Israel-
ites had to rest the land every seventh year (Lev. 25:4). They had to
allow poverty-stricken gleaners to come onto their land and pick up
the leftovers of the crops (Lev. 19:9–10; 23:22; Deut. 24:21). This
passage further erased the legal boundary between the land’s own-
ers and non-owners. Whatever a neighbor could pick and hold in
his hands was his to take prior to the harvest. He had legal title to
this share of his neighbor’s crop. It did not belong to the land owner.
Ownership of land, seeds, and prior labor did not entitle him to that
portion of the crop which a neighbor could pick and hold in his
hands. That is, his prior investment was not the legal basis of his
ownership.
The conquest of Canaan was the legal basis of Israel’s rural land
ownership. Legal title in Israel had nothing to do with some hypo-
thetical original owner who had gained legal title because he had
mixed his labor with unowned land – John Locke’s theory of origi-
nal ownership.2 There had once been Canaanites in the land, whose
legal title was visibly overturned by the conquest. The Canaanites
were to be disinherited, Moses announced. They would not be al-
lowed to inherit because they could not lawfully be neighbors. The
conquest’s dispossession of the gods of Canaan deinitively over-
turned any theory of private ownership that rested on a story of
man’s original ownership based on his own labor. The kingdom
grant preceded any man’s work. The promise preceded the inheri-
tance. In short, grace precedes law.
The neighbor in Mosaic Israel was a legal participant in the
kingdom grant. He lived under the authority of God. His presence
in the land helped to extend the kingdom in history. The land was
being subdued by men who were willing to work under God’s law.
The exclusion of the Canaanites had been followed by the inclusion
of the Israelites and even resident aliens. Canaan was more than
Canaanites. It was also the land. The conquest of Canaan was more
than a military victory; it was a process. The fruits of the land be-
longed to all residents in the land. The bulk of these fruits belonged
to land owners, but not all of the fruits.

2. John Locke, On Civil Government: Second Treatise (1690), section 27.

 Free for the Picking 685

In this sense, the resident who owned no land but who had legal
access to the land was analogous to the beast that was employed to
plow the land. “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out
the corn” (Deut. 25:4). Although the neighbor was not employed by
the land owner, he was part of the overall dominion process inside
Israel. The fact that God had included him inside Canaan made it
more dijcult for those who served other gods to occupy the land. A
man’s access to the courts and to the fruits of the ield gave him a
stake in the land, something worth defending. Israel was no pluralis-
tic democracy. It was a theocracy. No law but God’s could lawfully
be enforced by the State. Only God’s name could be lawfully in-
voked publicly inside Israel’s boundaries. By remaining inside the
land, a resident was publicly acknowledging his allegiance to Is-
rael’s God rather than to another god. He was acknowledging God’s
legal claim on him. God in turn gave him a legal claim on a small
portion of the output of the land.

Jesus and the Corn

Verse 25 is the partial background for one of Jesus’ more per-
plexing confrontations with the Pharisees. “And it came to pass on
the second sabbath after the irst, that he went through the corn
ields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rub-
bing them in their hands. And certain of the Pharisees said unto
them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?
And Jesus answering them said, Have ye not read so much as this,
what David did, when himself was an hungred, and they which
were with him; How he went into the house of God, and did take and
eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it
is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone? And he said unto them,
That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Luke 6:1–5).
The Pharisees did not accuse the disciples of theft; rather, they
accused the disciples of not keeping the sabbath. Had the disciples
been guilty of theft, their critics would have taken advantage of this
opportunity to embarrass Jesus through His disciples’ actions,
which the disciples had done right in front of Him. The reason why
they did not accuse the disciples of theft was that in terms of the Mo-
saic law, the disciples had not committed theft. Their infraction, ac-
cording to the Pharisees, was picking corn on the sabbath. Picking
corn was a form of work.
686 DEUTERONOMY

Jesus’ response was to cite an obscure Old Testament incident:

David’s coniscation of the showbread. The circumstances sur-
rounding that incident are even more perplexing to the commenta-
tors than Jesus’ walk through the cornield. David was leeing from
Saul. To preserve his life and the lives of his men, he lied to a priest
and coniscated the showbread, which was always to be on the table
of the Lord (Ex. 25:30).3

Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest: and Ahimelech was
afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone, and
no man with thee? And David said unto Ahimelech the priest, The king
hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know
any thing of the business whereabout I send thee, and what I have com-
manded thee: and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place.
Now therefore what is under thine hand? give me ive loaves of bread in
mine hand, or what there is present. And the priest answered David, and
said, There is no common bread under mine hand, but there is hallowed
bread; if the young men have kept themselves at least from women. And
David answered the priest, and said unto him, Of a truth women have
been kept from us about these three days, since I came out, and the vessels
of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea,
though it were sanctiied this day in the vessel. So the priest gave him hal-
lowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread, that was
taken from before the LORD, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken
away (I Sam. 21:1–6).

Jesus was implying that David had not done anything wrong in
this incident, either by lying to a priest about his mission or by tak-
ing what belonged to God. David invoked the status of his men as
holy warriors on the king’s ojcial business, which was why the
priest raised the issue of their contact with women. David’s answer –
they had had no contact with women for three days – pointed back
to the three days of abstinence prior to the giving of the law at Sinai
(Ex. 19:15). David, as God’s anointed heir of the throne of Israel
(I Sam. 16), possessed kingly authority. Jonathan, Saul’s formally
lawful heir, had just re-conirmed his inheritance-transferring oath

3. There was not enough bread to save their lives from starvation. These loaves were not,
in and of themselves, crucial for David’s survival. But as one meal among many, the bread
was part of a program of survival. These loaves might not be the last ones coniscated by
David.
 Free for the Picking 687

4
with David (I Sam. 20:42). Because of this oath, David had the au-
thority to lie to a priest and to take the showbread for himself and his
men, even though Saul was still on the throne. To preserve his life,
and therefore his God-designated inheritance, David acted lawfully.
David acted as Jacob had acted when he tricked Isaac into giving
him the blessing which was lawfully his by revelation and voluntary
transfer by Esau (Gen. 27).
The priest said that there was no common bread available. This
indicates that this was a sabbath day: no cooking. There was no
fresh bread or hot bread, which was why the showbread was still
there: it had not been replaced by hot bread. So, David asked for
holy bread on a sabbath. There was no question about it: he was
asking for holy bread on a holy day in the name of the king. The
priest gave it to him. On what legal basis? The text does not say, but
David’s invoking of Saul’s authority indicates that a man on a king’s
mission possessed lawful authority to receive bread set aside for
God if there was no other bread available. God had said, “thou shalt
set upon the table shewbread before me alway” (Ex. 25:30). But this
situation was an exception which the priest acknowledged as valid.
The desire of the king’s men superseded this ritual requirement.
Unlike Christian commentators,5 the Pharisees did not criticize
David’s actions. Jesus cited this incident in defense of His own ac-
tions. He was thereby declaring His own kingly authority. As surely
as David’s anointing by Samuel on God’s behalf had authorized
him to deceive a priest and take the showbread on the sabbath, so

4. The original covenant had been marked by Jonathan’s gift of his robe to David,
symbolizing the robe of authority, as well as his sword (I Sam. 18:3–4).
5. Puritan commentator Matthew Poole called David’s lie to the priest a “plain lie.” A
Commentary on the Holy Bible, 3 vols. (London: Banner of Truth Trust, [1683] 1962), I, p. 565.
John Gill, a Calvinistic Baptist and master of rabbinic literature, referred to David’s lie as a
“downright lie, and was aggravated by its being told only for the sake of getting a little food;
and especially to a high priest, and at the tabernacle of God. . . . This shows the weakness of
the best men, when left to themselves. . . .” John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, 4 vols.
(London: William Hill Collingridge, [1764] 1853), II, pp. 196–97. Neither commentator
criticized David for taking the showbread on the sabbath, which was the judicial heart of the
matter. Christ sanctioned this action retroactively, which puts Christian commentators in a
bind. So, they focus instead on David’s lie, just as commentators focus on Rahab’s lie, while
refusing to raise their voices in protest against the signiicant ethical issue: her treason. This is
a common blindness among pietistic commentators: straining at ethical gnats and swallowing
what appear to be ethical camels. Cf. Gary North, “In Defense of Biblical Bribery,” in R. J.
Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), especially
pp. 838–42.
688 DEUTERONOMY

had the Holy Spirit’s anointing of Jesus authorized Him to have His
disciples pick ears of corn on the sabbath. As surely as the king’s
men were authorized to eat the showbread on the sabbath, so were
Christ’s disciples authorized to eat raw corn on the sabbath. Jesus
then took the matter a step further: He announced that He was Lord
of the Mosaic sabbath. This meant that He was announcing more
than kingly authority. He was declaring His messianic heirship at
this point: the son of man, Lord of the Mosaic sabbath. If David, as
the prophetically anointed but not-yet publicly sanctioned king of
Israel, had possessed temporary authority over a priest for the sake
of his lawful inheritance of the throne, far more did Jesus Christ, as
messianic heir of the kingdom of God, possess authority over the
sabbath in Israel.
One thing is certain: the judicial issue was not corn-stealing.

A Foretaste of Bread and Wine

The visitor eats grapes in the vineyard, but he cannot lawfully
carry them of his neighbor’s property. He cannot make wine with
what he eats. Neither can two hands full of corn make a loaf of
bread. This case law does not open a neighbor’s ield to all those
who seek a inished meal. A free sample of the raw materials of such
a meal is ofered to visitors, but not the feast itself. This is not a har-
vest in preparation for a feast; it is merely a symbol of a feast to
come. To prepare a feast, productive and successful people must
bring to the kitchen sujcient fruits of the ield. The full blessings of
God are displayed at a feast. This case law does not ofer a feast to
the visitor. It ofers a full stomach to a person walking in a ield, but
not a feast in a home or communion hall. It ofers sujcient food to a
hungry man to quiet the rumblings of his stomach, but it does not
provide the means of celebration. It ofers a token of a future feast. It
is symbolic of blessings to come, a down payment or earnest of a fu-
ture feast.
Grapes and grain point to the sacramental nature of the coming
feast: a communion meal. The two crops singled out in this law are
corn (grain) and grapes. The disciples picked corn, not wheat. Corn
can be eaten raw; wheat cannot. The fact that these two crops are
the raw materials for bread and wine is not some random aspect of
this case law. This law pointed forward to the communion feast of
the New Covenant. The Mosaic Covenant was, in efect, the grain
and grapes that pointed forward to the New Covenant’s bread and
 Free for the Picking 689

wine. The New Covenant’s bread and wine in turn point forward to
the marriage supper of the lamb (Rev. 19:9). The communion table
of God brings together people of a common confession and a com-
mon community who look forward to the eschatological consum-
mation of the kingdom of God in history at the end of time. So it was
also in Mosaic Israel. The eschatological aspect of the Book of Deu-
teronomy, as the Pentateuch’s book of the inheritance, provides a
framework for interpreting this case law.
God gives to every man in history a foretaste of a holy meal to
come: common grace. Not every man accepts God’s invitation. Not
every man is given access to God’s table, either in history or eter-
nity. The fellowship of God is closed to outsiders by means of a
common confession that restricts strangers from lawful access to the
table. But a free foretaste of the bounty of God’s table at the consum-
mate marriage supper of the Lamb is given to all those who walk in
the open ield and pick a handful of corn. A handful of this bounty is
the common blessing of all mankind. This is the doctrine of com-
mon grace.6
The visitor is not allowed to bring a vessel to gather up the bounty
of his neighbor’s ield. Neither is the covenant-breaker allowed ac-
cess to the Lord’s Supper. The visitor is allowed access to the mak-
ings of bread and wine. Similarly, the covenant-breaker is allowed
into the church to hear the message of redemption. He may gain
great beneits from his presence in the congregation, or he may
leave spiritually unfed. So it is with the visitor in the ield. “I take no
man’s charity,” says one visitor to a ield. “Religion is a crutch,” says
a visitor to a church.7 Such a willful rejection of either blessing indi-
cates a spirit of autonomy, a lack of community spirit, and a lack of a
shared environment.

Neighborhood and Neighborliness

Grapes and corn remain ripe enough to eat in the ield only for
relatively short periods of time. Either they are not yet ripe or they

6. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
7. A good reason for not passing a collection plate in church is that visitors may believe
that a token payment will pay for “services rendered.” So, for that matter, may non-tithing
members.
690 DEUTERONOMY

have just been harvested. The neighbor in Israel was not allowed to
bring a vessel to carry away the produce. The presumption was that
the neighbor was visiting, became hungry, and ate his ill right there
in the ield. This is what Jesus’ disciples did. The neighbor, unless
very hungry, did not walk over to the neighbor’s house three times a
day to get a quick meal. He had his own crop to harvest. If he was
landless, he might come into a ield and eat. He could even bring his
family. The landless person would have gained access to free food,
but only briely, during the harvest season.
The two crops explicitly eligible for picking were above-ground
crops. This law did not authorize someone to dig a root crop out of
the ground. The eligible food was there, as we say in English, “for
the picking.” Were these two crops symbolic for all picked crops, or
did the law authorize only grapes and corn? I think the two crops
were symbols of every crop that might appear on the table of a feast.
This would have included fruit trees, vine-grown berries, but almost
no bread grains besides corn. This meant that the hungry neighbor
had a limited range of crops at his disposal.
If he was also a local farmer, then his own crop was similarly ex-
posed. His concerted efort to harm a neighbor by a misuse of this
law would have exposed him to a tit-for-tat response. If he used this
law as a weapon, it could be used against him as a weapon.

The Neighbor
Who was the neighbor? The Hebrew word, rayah, is most com-
monly used to describe a close friend or someone in the neighbor-
hood. “Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt
thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his ield, or his manservant, or his
maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour’s”
(Deut. 5:21). It can be translated as friend. “If thy brother, the son of
thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or
thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying,
Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou,
nor thy fathers” (Deut. 13:6). It was a next-door neighbor: “Thou
shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time
have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land
that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it” (Deut. 19:14).
But did it always mean this? In Jesus’ answer to this question by
the clever lawyer, He used the story of the Samaritan on a journey
through Israel who helped a beaten man, in contrast to the priest
 Free for the Picking 691

and the Levite who ignored him (Luke 10). Jesus was arguing that
ethics, not friendship, confession, or place of residence, deines the
true neighbor. The Samaritan was the injured man’s true neighbor
because he helped him in his time of need. The lawyer did not dis-
agree with Jesus’ assessment. He understood that this interpretation
was consistent with the intent of the Mosaic law. This means that a
law-abiding man on the road in Mosaic Israel was a neighbor. The
crop owner had to treat a man on a journey as if he were a local resi-
dent. This included even a foreigner.
The Greek word used to translate rayah in the Septuagint Greek
translation of the Old Testament is pleision, which means “near,
close by.”8 This indicates that the Jewish translators regarded the
neighbor as a local resident. The neighbor was statistically most
likely to be a fellow member of the tribe. Rural land could not be
sold permanently. It could not be alienated: sold to an alien. The ju-
bilee law regulated the inheritance of rural land (Lev. 25). This
means that the neighbor in Mosaic Israel was statistically most likely
a permanent resident of the community.
Nevertheless, this law opened the ields to people on a journey,
just as the Samaritan was on a journey. As surely as the Samaritan
was the injured man’s neighbor, so was the land owner the hungry
traveller’s neighbor. This law was a reminder to the Israelites that
God had been neighborly to them in their time of need. After the
exile, such permanent geographical boundaries were maintained
only if the occupying foreign army so decided. Jesus walked through
the cornield under Rome’s civil authority, not Israel’s.
Why would God have designated these two above-ground
crops as open to neighborly picking? This law made neighbors
co-owners of the fruits of a man’s land, labor, and capital. The land
owner was legally unable to protect his wealth from the grasping
hands of non-owners. He was left without legal recourse. Why? What
judicial principle undergirded this case law? What beneit to the com-
munity did this law bring which ofset the negative efects of a limita-
tion of the protection of private property? To answer this accurately,
we must irst determine whether this case law was a temporary law

8. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian
Literature, trans. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1957), p. 678.
692 DEUTERONOMY

governing only Mosaic Israel or a permanent legal statute for all

Trinitarian covenantal societies.

Seed Laws and Land Laws

Seed laws and land laws were temporary statutes that applied
only to Mosaic Israel. I have argued previously that the seed laws of
the Mosaic covenant were tied to Jacob’s messianic prophecy re-
garding Judah: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-
giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall
the gathering of the people be” (Gen. 49:10). Seed laws and land
laws served as means of separating the tribes, thereby maintaining
the continuity of each tribe until the fulillment of Jacob’s prophecy,
which rested on tribal separation.9 The jubilee inheritance laws
were land laws that were designed by God to accomplish this task.
One aspect of tribal separation was the creation of a sense of
unity and participation in a larger family unit. Members of each
tribe were linked together as descendants of one of the patriarchs.
There was an aspect of brotherliness within a tribe that was not
shared across the tribe’s boundaries. There is a social distinction be-
tween brotherhood and otherhood. Boundaries mark this distinc-
tion. The main boundary for Israel was circumcision, but tribal
boundaries also had their separating and unifying efects.
By allowing the neighbor to pick mature fruit, the Mosaic law
encouraged a sense of mutual solidarity. The local resident was enti-
tled to reap the rewards of land and labor. The land belonged ulti-
mately to God. It was a holy land, set apart by God for his historical
purposes. To dwell in the land involved beneits and costs. One of
the beneits was access to food, however temporary. The staf of life
in efect was free. In harvest season, men in Israel would not die of
starvation. But their source of sustenance was local: their neighbor’s
ield. Would this have created animosity? Sometimes. Everything in
a fallen world is capable of creating animosity. But what about the
owner’s sense of justice? It was his land, his efort, and his seeds that
had made this wealth possible. Why should another man have law-
ful access to the fruits of his labor?

9. North, Leviticus, pp. 207, 283, 556–57, 637–41.

 Free for the Picking 693

One possible answer ties this law to the Promised Land. Israel
was a holy land that had been set aside by God through a program
of partial genocide. (God had speciied total genocide, but the Isra-
elites had failed.) The land was exclusively God’s. It was His dwell-
ing place. He fed His people on His land. God, not their own eforts,
was the source of their wealth (Deut. 8:17). Israel’s holy status was
still true in Jesus’ day because of the temple and its sacriices. But
there is a problem with this explanation: strangers in Jesus’ day
dwelled in the land, and in fact ruled over the land. Furthermore,
Jesus identiied the Good Samaritan as a neighbor. The Samaritan
therefore would have qualiied as a man with lawful access to an
Israelite’s ield. The Promised Land fails as the basis of this case law.
A second possible explanation is this: the tribes existed in order
to complete God’s plan for Israel. Local solidarity was important for
maintaining the continuity of the tribes. Problem: this law was still
in force in Jesus’ day, yet the tribes no longer occupied the land as
separate tribal units. The seed laws in this instance seem to have
nothing to do with this case law.
Third, it could be argued that Israel was a holy army. An army
does not operate in terms of the free market’s principle of “high bid
wins.” In every military conlict in which a city is besieged, martial
law replaces market contracts as the basis of feeding the population.
The free market’s principle of high bid wins is replaced by food ra-
tioning. Solidarity during wartime must not be undermined by a
loss of morale. A nation’s defenders are not all rich. The closer we
get to the priestly function of ensuring life, the less applicable mar-
ket pricing becomes. Problem: Israel was not a holy army after the
exile. It was an occupied nation. Yet this case law was still in force.
There was no discontinuity in this case between the Mosaic cove-
nant and the post-exile covenant.

The Farmer and the Grocer

The Mosaic law authorized a neighbor to pick grapes or corn
from another man’s ield. It did not authorize a man to pick up a free
piece of fruit from a grocer’s table. What is the diference? What un-
derlying moral or organizational principle enables us to distinguish
between the two acts? In both cases, the “picker” wanted to eat a
piece of fruit for free. He was not allowed to do this in the second
case.
694 DEUTERONOMY

Let us consider the economic aspects of this law. Both the farmer
and the grocer sought a positive return on their investments. The
farmer planted seeds in the ground, nurtured the seedlings, and sold
the crop to someone, possibly the grocer or his economic agent.
The grocer made his money by purchasing a crop in bulk from the
farmer or his economic agent, transporting it to a central location,
and displaying it in a way pleasing to buyers. What was the
diferentiating factor? Time? Soil? Location? Money?
The diference seems to have been this: control over rural land.
The farmer in Mosaic Israel worked the land. He cared for it di-
rectly. The grocer did not. The farmer proited directly from the
output of this land. The grocer proited indirectly. The farmer had a
unique stake in the land itself. The grocer did so only indirectly, in-
sofar as food that was imported from abroad was much more expen-
sive for him to buy, except in Mediterranean coastal areas and
regions close to the borders of the nation. The distinction between
grocers and land owners may also have had something to do with
the jubilee land laws.10 Rural land was governed by the jubilee law.
Urban real estate was not. Unlike urban land, prior to the exile, ru-
ral land was the exclusive property of the heirs of the conquest,
though not after the return (Ezek. 47:22–23).
Those who lived on the land and proited from it as farmers
were required to share a portion of the land’s productivity with oth-
ers, as we have seen. To this extent, the fruit of the land was the in-
heritance of those who dwelled close by or who wandered by on a
journey when the crop was ripe.11 In this case, those farmers whose
land was located close to highways would have had lower transpor-
tation costs but higher sharing costs. It is not hard to imagine that
highway properties would have been ideal locations for general
stores. Their produce was not subject to picking. For farmers whose in-
heritance bordered on highways, setting up a general store would have
made good sense. During the feast of Firstfruits, they at least could
have sold other items, such as wine, to accompany a free handful of

10. As I shall argue below, I do not think this was covenantally relevant: “Has This Law
Been Annulled?”
11. Passover was a pre-harvest feast. Booths (Ingathering/Tabernacles) was post-harvest.
So, free produce would rarely have been on the vine or stalk when these two great marches
took place. Pentecost was the time of firstfruits (Ex. 23:16). Any farmer who had not yet
harvested his crop would have had to share it with travellers to the Firstfruits festival.
 Free for the Picking 695

corn. They could also have planted only root crops, which were not
eligible for picking.
This law would have strengthened the sense of community in a
society that was bound by a national covenant that was tied to land.
Travel would have been less costly in harvest time. Also, the local
poor would have had something to eat in the harvest – a sense of
participation in the blessings of God. A brief safety net was in place.
To gain access to a full safety net – a lawful bag in which to put the
picked produce – the poor had to work as gleaners. While the State
was not authorized to send crop collectors into the ields to collect
food to redistribute to the poor, the Mosaic civil law did not enforce
sanctions against those who came into a ield to eat a handful of
food. It was not legal for land owners to enforce physical sanctions
against those who took advantage of this law. The civil law did not
compel wealth redistribution in Mosaic Israel, but it deined the
land owner’s property rights in such a way that the State was prohib-
ited from bringing negative sanctions against those who entered the
ield to pick a handful of the crop.

A Shared Environment
Let us consider a dijcult application of this case law. Did this
law open every man’s ields to wandering hordes during a famine?
Times of famine have been times of great disruption of the social or-
der. Wandering bands of hungry people fan out across the country-
side. Whole populations move from region to region in search of
food.12 This happened repeatedly in Europe from the late medieval
era until the late seventeenth century, and well into the twentieth
century in Russia.13 Similar famines have occurred in China in mod-
ern times.14 Before the advent of modern capitalism, famines were a
regular occurrence. Even within capitalist society, Ireland sufered a
nearly decade-long famine in the 1840’s. The absentee landlords in
England did not foresee the threat to the potato crop posed by the
blight at its irst appearance in 1841. Over the next decade, these
landlords paid for their lack of foresight with huge capital losses; a
million Irish paid with their lives.

12. For historical examples, see Pitirim A. Sorokin, Man and Society in Calamity (New York:
Dutton, 1942), pp. 107–109.
13. For a list of dozens of these famines, see ibid., p. 132.
14. Pearl S. Buck’s novel, The Good Earth (1931), tells this story.
696 DEUTERONOMY

Are wandering strangers in search of food the judicial equiva-

lent of a neighbor? Is a desperate family on the road in search of
food entitled to ill their stomachs with a farmer’s corn or apples? If
enough of these people were to show up at harvest time, their eco-
nomic efect would be comparable to a swarm of locusts. Locusts in
the Bible are seen as the judgment of God (Ex. 10:4–6; Deut. 28:38).
The land owner planted a crop and cared for it in the expectation
that his family would eat for another season. Was he now required
to sit idly by and watch strangers consume his family’s future? Was
the State prohibited by this case law from defending his interests? If
so, then what would be his incentive to go to the expense of planting
and nurturing his next crop? Would he even survive to plant again?
Was Israel’s society beneited by opening the ields to all comers in
every economic situation? Was the nation’s future agricultural out-
put threatened by a deinition of “neighbor” that includes an open-
ended number of strangers in search of free food?
The goal of this law was the preservation of community. Its con-
text was a local neighborhood in which families share the same
environment. A crop failure for one family was probably accompa-
nied by a crop failure for all. They were all in the same boat. Mutual
aid and comfort in times of adversity were likely in a community in
which every person has a symbolic stake in the community’s suc-
cess. These people shared a common destiny. This law was an as-
pect of that common destiny.
As for the Samaritan in the parable, he was not on the road for
the purpose of stripping ields along the way. The Samaritan as-
sisted the beaten man; he did not eat the last grape on the man’s
vine. The Samaritan found another man on the same road. They
were both on a journey. They shared a similar environment. They
were both subject to the risks of travel. The threat of robbery threat-
ened all men walking down that road. What had befallen the victim
might have befallen the Samaritan. It might yet befall him. Perhaps
the same band of robbers was still in the “neighborhood”: the road
to Jericho.
Men who share a common environment share common risks.
When men who share common risks are voluntarily bound by a
shared ethical system to help each other in bad times, a kind of so-
cial insurance policy goes into efect. Risks are pooled. The costs
that would otherwise befall a victim are reduced by men’s willing-
ness to defray part of each other’s burdens. But, unlike an insurance
 Free for the Picking 697

policy, there is no formal agreement, nor does the victim have any
legal claim on the non-victim. The beaten man had no legal claim
on the Samaritan, the Levite, or the priest. Two of the three went
their way. They broke no civil law, but their act of deliberately pass-
ing by on the other side of the road revealed their lack of commit-
ment to the principle of community: shared burdens and blessings.
The ethics of neighborliness is mutual sharing when the re-
sources are available. The ethics of neighborliness did not mandate
that the State remain inactive when hordes of men whose only goal
is obtaining food sweep down on a rural community. The harvest
was shared locally because men have struggled with the same obsta-
cles to produce it. This law assumed a context of mutual obligations,
not the asymmetric conditions in a famine, when the producers face
an invasion from outside the community by those who did not share
in the productive efort.

Community and Economy

One of the favorite contrasts of sociologists is community vs.
economy. The most famous example of this in sociological litera-
ture is Ferdinand Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887),
which he wrote at age 32. In this pioneering work, the author
contrasted the small, medieval-type village with the modern city.
He argued that the demise of the personal relationships of village
life has led to the impersonal rationalism and calculation of the
modern city.15 He used the now-familiar analogies of organic life
and mechanical structure to describe these two forms of human as-
sociation.16 He viewed the family as the model or ideal type of
Gemeinschaft.17 The business irm, which is a voluntary association
established for a limited, rational purpose (proit), would seem to
serve well as a model for Gesellschaft.18

15. He did not argue, as Marx and other sociologists and economists have argued, that it
was the rise of capitalism that undermined the village life. Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociological
Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1966), p. 78.
16. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community & Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft) (New York:
Harper Torchbooks, [1887] 1957), pp. 33–37.
17. Nisbet, Sociological Tradition, p. 75.
18. His theme – the transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, from communalism to
rationalism – became an integrating theme in the works of the great German sociologist, Max
Weber. Ibid., p. 79.
698 DEUTERONOMY

In American history, there have been few defenders of Gemein-

schaft. Thomas Jeferson heralded the independent yeoman farmer,
but Jeferson was no advocate of village life. A group of intellectuals
and poets known as the Nashville agrarians in 1930 wrote a brief de-
fense of southern agrarian life in contrast to modern urbanism, but
they have long been regarded at best as regional utopians, even in
the South.19 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were contemptuous of
“the idiocy of rural life,”20 and most commentators have agreed with
them. Most commentators have been urban.
The movement of vast populations from the farms to cities has
been a continuing phenomenon worldwide, beginning no later than
the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century. The
division of labor (which was made possible by close contact in urban
areas), the transportation revolution, the mechanization of agricul-
ture, the revolution in electrical power, and government-funded
road systems have combined to concentrate populations in vast ur-
ban complexes.
The Bible promotes both cultures. The farms of Israel were held
together as a civilization by the Ark of the Covenant, which was
housed in a city. The New Heaven and New Earth are described as
a city in which the tree of life grows (Rev. 22:2). In the Old Cove-
nant, the city was supported by the farms. In the New Covenant’s
imagery of the inal state, the image is diferent: the city contains the
tree. The tree feeds the inhabitants. The symbolism seems to be from
farm to city. This was also the thrust of the jubilee legislation:
ever-smaller farms for an ever-growing population. Yet covenantally,
an heir of the conquest always had his historical roots in the land. The
land was his inheritance. His name was associated with the land.
This judicial link to the soil ended with the New Covenant. The
land ceased to be a holy place after the fall of Jerusalem. But the
imagery of the tree of life, like the imagery of bread and wine, ties
members of the New Covenant community to the soil. The prefer-
ence of suburban Americans for carefully mowed lawns, of English-
men and Japanese for gardens, of the Swiss and Austrians for lowers

19. I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Baton Rouge: University of
Louisiana Press, [1930] 1977). Cf. Alexander Karanikas, Tillers of a Myth: Southern Agrarians as
Social and Literary Critics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966).
20. Kark Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), in Collected
Works (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 6, p. 488.
 Free for the Picking 699

growing in window gardens and for vegetable gardens all testify to

man’s desire to retain his links to the soil from which he came.
There is a story told about the German free market economist
Wilhelm Röpke. He was living in Geneva at the time. He invited
another free market economist (said by some to be his former
teacher, Ludwig von Mises) to his home near Geneva. He kept a
vegetable garden plot near his home. The visitor remarked that this
was an inejcient way to produce food. He countered that it was an
ejcient way to produce happiness.21
The division of labor is a powerful social arrangement. Special-
ization increases our economic output as individuals. We can earn
more money per hour by specializing than by performing low divi-
sion of labor tasks. But we also increase our dependence on the so-
cial institutions that have promoted the division of labor. Above all,
we increase our reliance on banks, transportation systems, and
other arrangements run by computers. We have delivered our lives
into the hands and minds of computer programmers. This has not
been wise. The payments system is governed by the fractional re-
serve banking. This is risky. There is an economic case for investing
in a lower division of labor lifestyle with a portion of our assets and
our time.22
There is more to community than ejciency. Community is
more than property rights. Community in Mosaic Israel was based
on a series of covenants. The right of private property was defended
by the commandment not to steal, but the deinition of theft did not
include eating from a neighbor’s unharvested crop. This exception
was unique to the land. It applied to a form of property that was not
part of the free market system of buying and selling. God was
uniquely the owner of the land in Mosaic Israel. He set diferent re-
quirements for ownership of rural land. These rules were designed to

21. Russell Kirk says that Röpke said it was Mises. In 1975, I heard the same story from
another economist, Röpke’s translator, Patrick Boarman. I do not recall that Mises was the
target of the remark, but he may have been. See Kirk’s 1992 Foreword to Wilhelm Roepke,
The Social Crisis of Our Time (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, [1942] 1992), p. ix.
22. This is why I moved my family out of a city of 75,000 people in 1997. I fear the efects of
an international computer breakdown on the banking payments system (and everything else)
in the year 2000. The fear of this threat could lead to bank runs in 1999, which would also
threaten the payments system. But I am virtually alone in 1997 in predicting a social,
economic, and political breakdown after 1999. We shall see soon enough if I am correct.
700 DEUTERONOMY

provide a brief safety net in an area of the economy in which it was

illegal to transfer family ownership down through the generations.
In the inal analysis, this law was far more symbolic than eco-
nomic, for the harvest time would not have lasted very long. The
sense of community had to be preserved in a system that restricted
buying and selling. Those who did not own the best land or even
any land at all had a stake in the success of local land owners, de-
spite the law’s restrictions of the permanent sale of inherited prop-
erty. This symbol of participation in the fruits of the land was
important for a society whose members celebrated the fulillment of
God’s prophecy regarding the inheritance of a Promised Land.

Has This Law Been Annulled?

Is there any Mosaic covenantal principle whose annulment also
annulled this law? We know that a similar law is still in force. Paul
cited the law prohibiting the muzzling of the working ox, applying it
to the payment of ministers. “Let the elders that rule well be counted
worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word
and doctrine. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox
that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his re-
ward” (I Tim. 5:17–18). But this case law applied more generally to
the Christian walk. “For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt
not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth
God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For
our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow
in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his
hope” (I Cor. 9:9–10). There is a down payment in history – an ear-
nest – of the covenant-keeper’s kingdom victory in eternity. This
down payment is an aspect of the inheritance.

That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather to-

gether in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are
on earth; even in him: In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, be-
ing predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things
after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his
glory, who irst trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye
heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after
that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is
the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased pos-
session, unto the praise of his glory (Eph. 1:10–14).
 Free for the Picking 701

The tribal system was annulled in A.D. 70. Was this law exclu-
sively tribal? The same kinds of psychological beneits seem to
apply outside the tribal context: commitment to the community, a
sense of participation in the blessings of this community, a willing-
ness to defend it against invaders. What is missing today is Mosaic
Israel’s public exclusion of the names of other gods. A man’s pres-
ence in the land does not, in and of itself, testify publicly to his will-
ingness to serve under the law of God. The mobility of rival gods is
like the mobility of the God of the Bible in the Old Covenant. The
universality of their claims makes them diferent from the gods of
the ancient Near East in Moses’ day. To this extent, the situation has
changed. But religions that claimed allegiance to universal gods ap-
peared in the Near East and Far East at about the time of the Baby-
lonian exile. Nevertheless, people in Israel in Jesus’ day were still
allowed to pick corn in their neighbors’ ields.
This law seems to be a cross-boundary law. The neighbor, deined
biblically, has a legal claim to a handful of any crop that he can pick.
The biblical hermeneutical principle is that any Old Covenant law
not annulled explicitly or implicitly by a New Covenant law is still
valid (Matt. 5:17–19).23 There seems to be no principle of judicial
discontinuity that would annul this law.24

Conclusion
This law applies to rural land during the harvest season but be-
fore the harvest takes place. The goal of this law is to increase the
sense of community. All of its members are supposed to know that
they have a small stake – a symbolic stake – in the prosperity of the
land. There seems to be no discontinuity between the two cove-
nants with regard to this law. It was a theocratic law, but whenever a
nation covenants with the Trinitarian God of the Bible, this law is
still in force.
The modern world is politically polytheistic. It denies legiti-
macy to the principle of civil theocracy. It also passes legislation that

23. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (2nd ed.; Phillipsberg, New Jersey:
Presbyterian and Reformed, [1977] 1984), ch. 2.
24. Because I see no judicial discontinuity between the covenants regarding this law, I
conclude that the distinction between the grocer and the farmer was not based on the jubilee
law, which has been annulled.
702 DEUTERONOMY

excludes neighbors from any man’s ield. It then extends the princi-
ple of exclusion to the nation itself. It creates “no trespassing”
boundaries around the nation. Access to a man’s ield is analogous
to access to the nation; the modern State is consistent in this regard.
Immigration legislation excludes outsiders because they may be-
come a threat to a national covenant that is not confessional. Immi-
grants may gain the vote and use the State to redistribute wealth.
The same kind of exclusivism operates in laws legalizing abortion,
which is another barrier to entry into the land.
This law testiies against geographical exclusivism because it is
part of a system of covenantal order that is confessionally exclusiv-
ist. Open borders are the rule for biblical theocracy: access to the
visible kingdom of God in history. Here is the logic of “open bor-
ders openly arrived at.” You may freely walk into a local church;
therefore, you may also freely walk into the nation in which that
church operates. Any Christian who promotes closed national bor-
ders is saying, in efect, “Until some church sends a missionary to
your nation, or until your entire population has access to the
Internet, you must content yourself with going to hell. Sorry about
that.”
The message of this law is clear: access to God’s promised land
is to be accompanied by access to the ields of the promised land at
harvest time. This gives non-owners and non-citizens a stake in the
maintenance of a biblically theocratic society. This law makes it
clear that private property is not an absolute value in human soci-
ety. Private property is an absolute right for God, as the boundary
placed around the forbidden tree in Eden reveals; it is not, however,
an absolute right for man. Nothing is an absolute right for man, for
man is not absolute. This case law breaches the boundaries of rural
land. Owners are not allowed to use force to exclude a neighbor
from picking a handful of the crop to eat in the ield. The State may
not defend owners’ legal title to this token portion of the crop. This
means that they have no legal title to all of it. This is clearly a viola-
tion of libertarian deinitions of private ownership. The Bible is not a
libertarian document, any more than it is socialistic. It is a covenantal
document. The neighbor has lawful access to what he can pick, but
the State may not lawfully come in with vessels to pick crops in the
name of the people (minus 50 percent for administration).
 58
Collateral,
COLLATERAL,Servitude, and Dignity
SERVITUDE,
AND DIGNITY

No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he
taketh a man’s life to pledge. . . . When thou dost lend thy brother any
thing, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge. Thou shalt stand
abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out the pledge
abroad unto thee. And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his
pledge: In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun
goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it
shall be righteousness unto thee before the LORD thy God. . . . Thou shalt
not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a
widow’s raiment to pledge: But thou shalt remember that thou wast a
bondman in Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I
command thee to do this thing (Deut. 24:6, 10–13, 17–18).

The theocentric focus of this pledge law is the general dominion

covenant, which deines man in terms of his stewardship before
God (Gen. 1:26–28). A pledge is a tool of dominion. It enhances its
owner’s ability to extend his dominion. A tool lowers the cost of
achieving one’s goals. The pledge or collateral may sometimes be so
closely associated with the individual that to remove it from him
completely can undermine his deinition of himself. As a dominion
law, it was not a seed law or a land law. It was a cross-boundary law.

The Dominion Covenant and Social Hierarchy

The doctrine of the covenant itself is point two of the biblical cov-
enant model. We can see this in the very structure of the Pentateuch.

703
704 DEUTERONOMY

1
The Book of Exodus is the book of the covenant. It is also the second
book of the Pentateuch. The second point of the biblical covenant
model is hierarchy.2 A covenant is necessarily hierarchical. God ini-
tiates it, and man responds, either as a covenant-keeper or a cove-
nant-breaker. A covenant is not a contract between or among
equals.3 There is always a superior involved: God.
In the dominion covenant, God is the archetype; man is made
in His image. From this we draw a conclusion: because God is not a
servant of Satan, covenant-keeping man should not become a ser-
vant to covenant-breaking man. On the contrary, the opposite is the
biblical ideal: covenant-breaking man is to become a servant of cov-
enant-keeping man. Covenant-keeping steadily puts covenant-
keepers at the top in history. This process is built into the creation it-
self. It is recapitulated in God’s law.
Sometimes, however, covenant-keepers fall into dire straits
through no fault of their own and must become servants of other
covenant-keepers. There were rules in the Mosaic law governing
such servitude. It was to be mild. The superior in the relationship
was not to oppress the subordinate.
Poverty and debt produce a form of servitude. “The rich ruleth
over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov.
22:7). It is best to be inancially independent and out of debt. It goes
against the biblical model of liberation when a covenant-keeper
seeks to enslave fellow believers.
The widow, the orphan, and the stranger were to be protected.
This passage extended the Exodus passage: “Thou shalt neither vex
a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Ye shall not amict any widow, or fatherless child” (Ex. 22:21–22).
These three models served in the Mosaic law as the chief examples
of vulnerability. Their legitimate interests were to be upheld in civil
courts and in economic transactions. The way that these groups were
treated testiied to the moral condition of society. The reference in

1. “And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and
they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Ex. 24:7).
2. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 2.
3. The great evil of social contract theory, whether Lockean or Rousseauvian, is that it is
seen as a judicial bond among equals. These equals contract together to create a superior
entity, the State. There is a hierarchy, but it is strictly a natural hierarchy. It is said to be
governed by natural law, not supernatural law.
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 705

both passages to Egypt pointed back to the era in which God’s peo-
ple were unfairly oppressed. The exodus generation and the con-
quest generation were reminded: they had deserved liberation, and
God had delivered them by destroying their evil oppressors. The
lesson was plain enough: they could expect similar negative sanc-
tions for similar transgressions.

The Pledge
At the very heart of the debt relationship is the pledge. The
pledge serves as collateral: the debtor’s economic motivation to re-
pay. If he fails to repay, he loses ownership of the pledge. The most
important model of the pledge is God’s promise. By means of a
pledge, He places His reputation on the line. If He fails to fulill His
pledge, He loses His reputation. He loses His judicial status as God.
This, of course, cannot be; this is why God fulills His verbal
pledges. He has too much at stake not to.
The irst pledge recorded in the Bible is God’s promise to Adam
that in the day that Adam ate of the forbidden tree, he would die
(Gen. 2:17). This promise was fulilled: Adam did die that day, judi-
cially speaking. He died deinitively. The curse of death came on
him and his heirs. Adam was a dead man walking. Death and dam-
nation, as with life and salvation, are deinitive, progressive, and
inal. The inal death is the second death of the lake of ire (Rev.
20:14). Had it not been for God’s willingness to sacriice His son on
behalf of Adam and Adam’s heirs (Heb. 2:17), man’s temporal exis-
tence from that time on would have been a working out of this
deinitive judicial status of death. God announced the grace of this
future substitutionary atonement in His pledge to Adam regarding
the coming of an heir who would crush the head of the serpent
(Gen. 3:15). This grace is both common and special. That Adam still
walked was proof of God’s common grace. That his son Abel ofered
an acceptable sacriice to God was proof of God’s special grace.
Man’s word is not God’s word. Man’s promise is not God’s
promise. Man does not lawfully defend his words and his promises
with the same degree of commitment with which God defends His.
“It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live
with him: If we sufer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him,
he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful:
he cannot deny himself” (II Tim. 2:11–13; emphasis added). In
706 DEUTERONOMY

short, man is a greater risk than God. Believing in man’s word is far
more risky than believing in God’s word. Therefore, a wise creditor
requires either collateral or imposes a higher rate of interest on a
loan before he extends it. A man’s promise to repay may be merely
verbal or contractual, such as with a “signature loan” or a credit card
loan. Such uncollateralized loans command higher interest rates
than collateralized loans because they are more risky. Borrowers
are statistically more likely to default on such loans. This is why they
must ofer to pay lenders a higher rate of interest in order to obtain
loans. All borrowers in this statistical classiication of borrowers pay a
higher rate because a higher percentage of borrowers in this class will
default. The lender must be compensated for this additional risk.
A collateralized loan adds security to the loan, i.e., it increases
the statistical likelihood that the borrower will repay the debt. The
pledge is a valuable item – at least to the borrower – that the bor-
rower agrees to transfer to the lender, should he default on the loan.
The pledge could be a tool of production. This case law speciies
that if this tool is basic to the borrower’s life or productivity, it must
remain with him. His means of escaping debt bondage must not be
taken from him by the creditor.
These pledge laws are extensions of the laws governing collat-
eral given in Exodus: “If thou at all take thy neighbour’s raiment to
pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down:
For that is his covering only, it is his raiment for his skin: wherein
shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me,
that I will hear; for I am gracious” (Ex. 22:26–27). A poor brother’s
life is not to be endangered by having to surrender his coat as a
pledge against debt.
This law does not protect the covenant-breaker. It is not a gen-
eral equity law. The covenant-breaker is to be subdued economi-
cally for the glory of God. “The LORD shall open unto thee his good
treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and
to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many
nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And the LORD shall make thee
the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou
shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments
of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe
and to do them” (Deut. 28:12–13).
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 707

Tools of Dominion
The millstone is a miller’s source of livelihood, but it is not his
source of biological life. He can make a living doing something else,
but he believes that cannot make as good a living. A man is versa-
tile. He can do many kinds of work. But a man is also limited. Each
man performs certain tasks with greater skill than he performs oth-
ers. Because some men are more skilled than their fellows in partic-
ular areas of production, they can perform these services less
expensively than their competitors. This set of circumstances makes
possible the social division of labor.

The Social Division of Labor

The range of skills across the human race is stupendous. A man
who has one set of skills can learn diferent skills. A man is not a ma-
chine. A machine can perform one task well. The more complex the
machine, the fewer uses to which it can be put proitably. A ma-
chine that makes one item falls to scrap value if demand for that one
item falls to zero and is expected to stay there by all entrepreneurs.
This condition is not true of a man. He can learn new skills if the de-
mand for his present specialized abilities should fall.
Because of the highly diverse and unspeciic nature of human la-
bor, men can gain income by exchanging their specialized labor
services for other specialized services or goods. Because of the
highly speciic abilities which some men possess, they can gain a
higher price than their competitors for their labor services. But sell-
ing these specialized labor services is risky. If demand for a speciic
labor service declines, the seller will lose income faster than another
man whose more general skills rarely face an equally large decline
in demand. An across-the-boards decline in demand is far less likely
statistically than a decline in demand for a specialized service or
product.
In times of economic growth through capital investment, in-
come rises faster for those who supply specialized labor. Why? Be-
cause their unique abilities have been empowered by specialized
tools of production. This income advantage persuades additional
people to specialize. The social division of labor increases when capital in-
vestment increases. Conversely, in times of economic decline, when the
division of labor shrinks because of a breakdown in the money pay-
ments system, the specialist may ind that his income falls rapidly.
708 DEUTERONOMY

He must then abandon his specialty. The man who uses a special-
ized tool of production to gain his income is therefore more vulnera-
ble to shifts in demand than his less capitalized neighbor. He gains
his income by producing a specialized service or product. He builds
his way of life – his pattern of expenditures – in terms of the income
generated by his tool. If demand falls for his output, or if he loses ac-
cess to this tool, his way of life will be disrupted.

No Tool, Low Output

The miller has invested capital and time in mastering the tools
of his trade, which in this case are a pair of millstones. He then seeks
a loan. The lender demands one of the millstones as a pledge. With-
out his complementary tools of production, his output falls rapidly.
He must revert to selling less specialized forms of labor. These ser-
vices bring a lower return because there are more competitors who
can underbid him in this new ield than there had been in his old
ield. He has lost his competitive advantage. His ability to repay the
loan falls. His self-deinition as a participant in society is under-
mined by the loss of his tool of production. Both his self-image and
his productive role in society are threatened by the loss of his tool.
This case law prohibits the lender from taking a millstone as a
pledge. He is restricted in two ways. First, the lender may not legally
collect this pledge in advance of repayment, which would increase
the likelihood that the loan will not be repaid, thereby forcing the
miller into servitude. Second, the language indicates that he may
not accept the millstone as a default pledge, i.e., a transfer of owner-
ship to the lender should the borrower default. God says: “Hands
of!” To reduce the risk of the debtor’s default in the absence of the
millstone as a pledge, the lender must therefore either ask for a
higher rate of interest (if this is a proit-seeking loan) or else content
himself with some other form of pledge, including the man’s will-
ingness to be sold into indentured servitude.
Wouldn’t the debtor’s self-image be threatened by indentured
servitude? Yes. I conclude that this prohibition against taking a mill-
stone as a pledge must have more to do with his life as a producer
than his life as a free man. Under the Mosaic economy, the lender
was allowed to sell the debtor into servitude or force him or his chil-
dren (II Ki. 4:1–7) to come and work for him until the debt was paid
of. But the lender was not allowed to take away the man’s tools of
production. Without these, the debtor could not readily buy his way
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 709

out of servitude. Furthermore, society would lose his output as a

tool-endowed, specialized producer. To enhance the debtor’s abil-
ity to pay of the loan and, if necessary, buy his way out of debt servi-
tude, this law allowed him to retain ownership of his tools of
production. As a secondary beneit to society, this law kept the pro-
ducer in the work force as a specialist.
To put this law into a modern setting, there is no doubt that tak-
ing an automobile tire as collateral can be a high motivational tech-
nique to get repayment from a man with only one car with only four
tires (no spare). He cannot drive into town without it on Saturday
night. But he also cannot drive to work or do odd jobs that would
earn him extra money. Without the use of his car, he falls under the
threat of permanent debt, meaning permanent bondage. This case
law rejects as illegitimate the use of such collateral. The required
collateral is not to be part of a man’s tool kit of dominion. If a debtor
owns a sports car that is his pride and joy, as well as an old car for
pulling loads of hay, it would be legitimate to take one or more tires
of the sports car. The sports car testiies to his misplaced sense of pri-
orities. Humbling his pride is diferent from breaking his spirit by
bankrupting him.

The Good Life

A specialized producer can shift to a less specialized occupation
and still put food on his family’s table. The man without a pair of
millstones is not facing starvation. Yet the language of this text indi-
cates that the millstone was the man’s life. I conclude that the lan-
guage must be referring to something other than biological life.
What does this text mean? While the Hebrew word here is often
used in the sense of biological life, it has other meanings. It often
means a man’s chief desire. “And Hamor communed with them, say-
ing, The soul of my son Shechem longeth for your daughter: I pray
you give her him to wife” (Gen. 34:8). “The enemy said, I will pur-
sue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisied
upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them”
(Ex. 15:9). “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the
heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt”
(Ex. 23:9). “But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all,
beside this manna, before our eyes” (Num. 11:6). The use of the
word in the preceding passage, which preserves open ields, is close
710 DEUTERONOMY

to the meaning in this text: “When thou comest into thy neighbour’s
vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy ill at thine own plea-
sure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel” (Deut. 23:24; empha-
sis added). A man’s heart and soul deine his life in his own eyes.
“But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt ind
him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul”
(Deut. 4:29). “Chief desire” seems to be the meaning in this text.

Our Daily Bread

A millstone is a tool of bread-making, but owning one is not a
matter of life and death. It is possible to eat grain without grinding it
into bread. Corn can be eaten on the cob. Wheat can be sprouted or
cooked as cereal. A man need not starve because he does not own a
pair of millstones to grind his grain.
Bread is more than nutrition; it is symbolic of the full life. “Give
us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11) refers to a comfortable way
of life, a good life. As such, bread is one of the sacraments.4 Where
there is no millstone, there will be something important lacking:
bread, which provides a sense of personal and social fulillment.
This condition of dearth is a mark of God’s judgment: “Moreover I
will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the
voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the
millstones, and the light of the candle” (Jer. 25:10). A society in
which millstones are not grinding is a society under God’s wrath.
This case law forbade a creditor from taking away one of the
means of the good life. This law was not restricted to millers. It was
more comprehensive than that. A poverty-stricken family enjoys its
daily bread. It should not have this enjoyment cut of by a creditor.
A covenant-keeper is not deliberately to reduce another cove-
nant-keeper to beggary. “I have been young, and now am old; yet
have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread”
(Ps. 37:25).

4. This is why fermented wine is also one of the sacraments. It is part of the full life, the
good life. Being without it is a curse of God for sin. “Forasmuch therefore as your treading is
upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone,
but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine
of them” (Amos 5:11).
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 711

Household Authority
The independent head of the household should not have his au-
thority undermined. The very term “breadwinner” indicates the im-
portance of bread. It is a mark of authority, of productivity, to
provide bread. A breadwinner who is reduced by another man’s de-
liberate actions to eating wheat sprouts and cereal has been stripped
of his authority. The covenant-keeper is not to amict his fellow cove-
nant member of his dignity. This is why the lender does not have
lawful access to the debtor’s house. He must stand outside the bound-
aries of the debtor’s house and wait for the debtor to bring out the
pledge.
Basic to dominion is conidence in oneself and one’s future.
Anything that degrades a man is a threat to his ability to fulill the
terms of the dominion covenant. This applies even to corporal pun-
ishment: “Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he
should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then
thy brother should seem vile unto thee” (Deut. 25:3). A man must
not be deliberately humiliated. The prohibition against taking a
man’s millstone is related to this concern. A man who has been
stripped of the marks of authority in his own household is not in a
strong position to recover his lost productivity. He is less likely to
“bounce back” from adversity. The lender is to refrain from actions
that would needlessly inhibit the recovery of the covenant-keeping
debtor. The extension of God’s kingdom through the corporate
eforts of the covenant-keeping community must not be needlessly
inhibited.
The creditor knows that the debtor will be motivated to repay
the debt if the creditor owns something of value. But there is a
diference between owning something of economic value and some-
thing of psychological value. The debtor wants to have his pledge
returned, so he works to repay the loan. But an item that is vital psy-
chologically for a normal man’s ability to repay, such as a millstone
used to put bread on his own table, is not to be taken as collateral.

Sanctions
What is the State’s role in enforcing this law? First, it must refuse
to enforce the terms of a contract if the contract uses the crucial tools
of a man’s trade as his pledge. But should the State bring negative
sanctions against a lender who actually collects such a pledge? That
712 DEUTERONOMY

is, should the State require the lender to pay double restitution to
the victim of the prohibited contract? In this case, should the lender
be required to return to the debtor his upper millstone, plus an addi-
tional one?
One of the goals of biblical law is to protect people from the rise
of an arbitrary State. If the lender who has collected his collateral
from a defaulting borrower cannot predict with some high degree of
accuracy whether a judge or jury will regard this collateral as an in-
dispensable tool of the borrower’s trade, then the greater the poten-
tial penalty that can be assessed by the court, the less likely the
creditor will make the loan in the irst place. If he may be retroac-
tively required to return the pledge, he will consider this possibility
when counting the cost of making the loan. The threat of double res-
titution increases this cost. The very unpredictability of the court re-
duces the size of the credit market. The court’s decision regarding
the crucial nature of the pledge is inherently dijcult to predict. If
the lender might be compelled to pay double restitution as a crimi-
nal penalty, he may choose not to make the loan.
On the other hand, if the State is not allowed to enforce this law,
this law loses its status as a civil law. Society’s wealth will be threat-
ened by the possibility that millers will lose their upper millstones –
and not merely millers. How can the two goals be reconciled, so that
would-be debtors can obtain loans and society will also retain the
services of skilled craftsmen?
One way is for magistrates to refuse to enforce the terms of a
biblically prohibited debt contract. Surely, a magistrate should not
enforce a murder contract. This situation is analogous. A magistrate
would require the lender to return the tool-based collateral to the
borrower. But no criminal sanctions are imposed because no crimi-
nal intent can be proven. Perhaps the lender did not understand that
this tool was truly crucial to the borrower’s productivity. Besides, the
borrower must not be thought of as without information about his
own occupation. If he failed to inform the lender about this, he must
bear some of the responsibility. This is not a criminal matter.
Society needs protection from an arbitrary State far more than it
needs protection from grasping creditors who drive hard bargains.
An arbitrary State is dangerous to men’s freedom and society’s wealth.
It is not just lenders who must be placed on a tight leash; it is also State
bureaucrats. To allow the State to impose criminal sanctions against a
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 713

creditor who has taken a tool of production as collateral from a bor-

rower is to foster the expansion of State power.
God provides a positive sanction: “it shall be righteousness unto
thee before the LORD thy God” (v. 13). That is, God has made a
pledge. Men can count on this. God has given His word.

The Boundaries of a Man’s Home

The lender must not violate the boundaries of a debtor’s home.
When the debtor brings out his pledge, either before the loan is
made or after he has defaulted, the lender must wait outside the
doors of the household. This makes it clear to all parties that the ob-
ligation has been met by the payment of the pledge. The lender ex-
ercises authority over the pledge. He does not exercise authority
over the debtor. The hierarchy of the contract extends from the
lender to the pledge. It does not extend to the debtor.
This means that the debt relationship, when collateralized by a
marketable asset, is limited in scope. It is, in this restricted legal
sense, an impersonal relationship. The lender must content himself
with collecting the pledge. He is not given authority to transgress
the boundaries of the debtor’s house.
The dignity of the debtor is preserved by this law. He is not to be
humiliated. For a lender to march across the door of the debtor’s
home is to humiliate the debtor. This is not lawful. There is a limit
on the debtor’s obligation. One limit is the door of his household.
This is a judicial boundary.
This does not mean that the State is similarly restricted. If the
debtor refuses to transfer the contract’s pledged item to the lender,
then the lender has the authority to appeal his case to the State. The
boundaries of the home protect the borrower from an invasion by
the lender. They do not protect against the invasion of the State in
defense of a lawful contract. The State, in its capacity as God’s dele-
gated agent, possesses the authority to enforce lawful contracts. The
lender has become the victim. The State must defend the victim’s
rights.5

5. Gary North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
714 DEUTERONOMY

Burdensome Collateral
“And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: In
any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth
down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it
shall be righteousness unto thee before the LORD thy God.” This is a
recapitulation of the earlier law of collateral: “If thou at all take thy
neighbour’s raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that
the sun goeth down: For that is his covering only, it is his raiment for
his skin: wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he
crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious” (Ex. 22:26–27).
The law in Exodus pledges a negative sanction: “I will hear,” mean-
ing He will bring judgment in history.6 This pledge by God must be
acknowledged by men and honored in word and deed.
The lender must return life-preserving collateral every evening.
This form of collateral is not a tool of production. Demanding a tool
of production as a pledge is altogether prohibited. This collateral is
an asset that is necessary to sustain life for part of the day. If it is
freezing outside, day and night, then such collateral is prohibited by
the language of verse 6, “for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.” So,
this asset must be life-preserving in the sense of not humiliating a
man by making him shiver through the night, i.e., removing from
him the good life. Shivering through the night is the functional
equivalent of not eating bread.
The lender must return the collateral every night. This is a ma-
jor burden on him. It is bothersome. The lower the market value of
the loan and its collateral, the less willing a lender will be to demand
this item as collateral. The time wasted is worth more to the lender
than the loan is worth to him. He has the option of not collecting the
collateral daily. But he has the option on any morning of claiming it.
This right of the lender lowers the possibility of a form of fraud on
the part of the borrower which I call multiple indebtedness.

6. “If thou amict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry;
And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be
widows, and your children fatherless” (Ex. 22:23–24).
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 715

The Restriction on Multiple Indebtedness

I have covered this aspect of the laws governing collateral in an-
other place.7 Here I expand on my earlier analysis. If his cloak is his
collateral, then he can lawfully pledge it for only one loan. He can
use the collateral to keep warm at night, but he may not use it to se-
cure another loan. He cannot lawfully ofer a pledge of his cloak to
half a dozen lenders, none of whom is aware that the cloak has been
pledged to ive other lenders. Multiple pledges secured against the
same collateral are fraudulent. Each of the lenders believes that his
loan is secured by an item that is important to the borrower, an item
that the borrower does not want to lose. But if it is being used to se-
cure six loans, the debtor at some point may decide: “I can’t earn
enough money to pay of all of my creditors. I am too far in debt.
Why should I bother to repay any of these people?” The magnitude
of his debt becomes a motivation to stop repaying. The debtor gives
up. This defrauds the lenders, who believed that the pledge was an
incentive for him to repay. Instead, because of multiple pledges, it
became an incentive for him to go so far into debt that the loans
could not be repaid. This is a misuse of the concept of collateral.
Multiple indebtedness is a lure into greater debt and greater risk.
By allowing the creditor to take possession of the pledge during
the day, this law discourages the practice of multiple indebtedness.
The pledge is still useful to the debtor, but it is also useful to the
lender, not as an income-producing asset but as a chain that limits
the debtor’s opportunity to go too deeply into debt.

Fractional Reserve Banking

8
The modern banking system is a fractional reserve system. De-
positors (lenders) are encouraged by bankers (debtors) to deposit
funds in banks. The bank ofers a rate of interest to its depositors.
The banker then lends out all but a small fraction of the money de-
posited. He makes an interest rate return on the money lent out. He
pays a lower rate to depositors. The bank earns income through the
spread between these two rates. The small percentage of the deposits

7. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 738–40.
8. Gary North, Honest Money: The Biblical Blueprint for Money and Banking (Ft. Worth:
Dominion Press, 1986), ch. 8.
716 DEUTERONOMY

kept in reserve can be used to pay to depositors who come in and

withdraw their money. The banker assumes (correctly) that on most
days, the amount of money deposited will be close to the amount of
money withdrawn. The bank keeps a small reserve to make up any
excess of withdrawals over deposits.
The system rests on a lie. The bank ofers all of the depositors a
guarantee: you may withdraw your money on demand. Yet it then
lends the deposits to debtors who by contract need not repay for
months or years. The bank is, in the investment world’s phrase,
“borrowed short and lent long.” The bank cannot make good its
promise of “withdrawal on demand” if too many depositors come in
and demand their money on the same day. If depositors believe that
a bank is in trouble – sufering from excessive withdrawals – fear
spreads. A bank run begins. When this happens, a line of would-be
withdrawers forms in front of a bank. Lines spread to many banks.
Even if one bank can be bailed out by other banks, or the nation’s
central bank, a large number of banks cannot be bailed out at once,
except by printing money to hand out to depositors.
The banks’ guarantee is then exposed for what it was from the
beginning: no better than the banking system’s ability to fool depos-
itors about the inherent risk in a payments system that rests on a sta-
tistical impossibility. The banking system as a whole cannot fulill its
guarantee of sujcient funds for depositors to withdraw at any time.
The banking system can fulill it only when most depositors believe
that the banking system can fulill it. When a large number of depos-
itors simultaneously reach the conclusion that the guarantee is not
only impossible to fulill (logic should have told them this), but is
about to be defaulted on, the bank run begins.
When a large number of banks cannot meet their obligations,
the domino efect begins. The payments system begins to collapse.
An economy rests heavily on promises to buy or sell, to pay and de-
liver. This highly complex system of mutually interrelated obliga-
tions rests on the central promise of the banks regarding money:
“You can get your money out of this institution on demand.” If the
banks default on this promise, all of the other promises in the econ-
omy are at risk. When the banks cease making payments to their de-
positors and to each other, almost every economic promise is called
into question. It is not just the banks that have made promises;
everyone has made promises. Employers have made promises to
employees. Suppliers have made promises to deliver goods and
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 717

services. Producers have invested resources in making available

goods and services that cannot be sold under the new conditions.
They stop making any further investments. They ire employees.
The social division of labor rests on a reliable means of pay-
ment. But the fractional reserve banking system is inherently unreli-
able. It rests on a known lie that is called into question by depositors
periodically. When this happens, the payments system breaks
down. As a result, the social division of labor shrinks rapidly. This
destroys the market for specialized production. The greater the
degree of specialization, the more vulnerable the seller is to falling
demand. Unemployment increases. Fear spreads. The downward
spiral accelerates.
The breakdown in the payments system has an efect very much
like the efect caused by a creditor who takes the debtor’s upper
millstone. In a breakdown in the payments system, the miller still
owns the upper and lower millstone, but he cannot sell the output of
these stones at the previous high price. There is insujcient demand
at the previous price, or perhaps at any price. Yet he has built his
way of life – his pattern of expenditures – on the expectation of a
particular stream of income. The breakdown in the payments sys-
tem dries up his stream of income. He must now seek other forms of
income. This usually means producing less specialized goods or ser-
vices. Yet he enters this less specialized market at a time when large
numbers of other specialized producers are abandoning their occu-
pations in an attempt to replace their dried-up income streams. We
call this event an economic depression. It can come in one of three
forms: a collapse of the banking system and a reduction in the sup-
ply of credit (delation), a vast increase in the money supply through
the printing press (inlation), or inlation with legislated price ceil-
ings (shortages and rationing).
The breakdown in the payments system destroys the accuracy
of the array of prices in the economy that had been established un-
der the older payment conditions. It is as if all the information in a
computer became erroneous.9 The crucial information previously
generated by the price system is undermined by the breakdown in

9. I believe that as the year 2000 approaches, the growing threat of erroneous information
in the world’s computers because of the computer programmers’ Millennium Bug will cause a
breakdown in the world’s payments system. If this takes place, there will be a fearful fall in the
social division of labor all over the industrialized world.
718 DEUTERONOMY

payments. The intricate web of supply and demand is shredded.

Forecasts made in terms of the previous array of prices are exposed
as wasteful. Capital projects are exposed as loss-generating. Prom-
ises made to employees threaten the survival of their companies.
Everyone’s life style is threatened by the breakdown in promises
caused by the breakdown in the payments system. This is the inevi-
table efect of the fractional reserve banking system. The lie is uni-
versally exposed as a lie. Statistically, this time of exposure – this
day of reckoning – has to happen eventually. Yet most men are sur-
prised when it does.
Because the credit money system applies to all participants in
the market, its breakdown endangers everyone. It is not a case of
one debtor’s default. Such a default may temporarily undermine the
payments system of those to whom he previously bought and sold,
but this disruption is temporary and local. But when the banking
system collapses, the efects are widespread. There is no fall-back
position for the vast majority of the producers in the economy, i.e.,
no reserves. The reserves were in the banks. They are long gone.
Only those people who enjoyed a debt-free way of life based on a
low division of labor can go through the payments adjustment pe-
riod without experiencing a potentially devastating psychological
crisis. The Amish and especially the Hutterites may go through the
payments crisis unscathed, assuming that their gun-owning neigh-
bors and well-armed local police force protect them from thieves.
Residents in the deepest bayous of Louisiana may not experience a
large change in their life style. Almost everyone one else will.

Conclusion
The law prohibiting a creditor from taking a man’s tools of pro-
duction as a pledge supports a higher social division of labor.10 By
enabling the producer to stay in his chosen line of business, this law
encourages him to supply the demand of consumers more ej-
ciently. The debtor does not forfeit his way of life, just so long as he
repays his loan on time, as he promised. He retains the ability to re-
pay his debt. A debt incurred on the basis of his previous level of in-
come is more easily repaid when he keeps his tools of production.

10. In the United States, a man who declares bankruptcy must turn over his assets to the
court, which sells them to repay his creditors. But there is an exemption: the tools of his trade.
 Collateral, Servitude, and Dignity 719

The problem comes when everyone has made pledges, i.e., con-
tracts. They have promised to buy or sell at a speciic price. They
have become dependent on the promises of others to buy or sell at
speciic prices. Their way of life is based on the maintenance of an
expected array of prices. The breakdown in the payments system
destroys these expectations. It forces men to break their promises.
The fractional reserve banking system cannot indeinitely fulill its
pledge to allow depositors to withdraw their funds at any time. At
some point, the banking system’s pledge will be broken: depositors
cannot withdraw their money, unless the money is inlated, low-
value paper money. Everyone’s income falls because of the rapid
and widespread shrinking of the division of labor.
When men move from a high level of income based on a high
social division of labor to a low level of income based on a reduced
social division of labor, they experience a loss of dignity. The econ-
omy’s collective economic depression produces individual psycho-
logical depression. This is why fractional reserve banking is a threat
to society. By violating the Mosaic law’s restriction on multiple in-
debtedness, fractional reserve banking places society at great risk.
At some point, the statistical risk of a breakdown in the payments
system produces the event. Very few people are ever prepared for
it. Personal self-esteem sufers a devastating attack. Men’s dreams
are wiped out.
The law prohibiting a lender from entering the home of a
debtor to take possession of the debtor’s pledge preserves the dig-
nity of the debtor. It protects the boundaries of his home, which
means the boundaries of his covenantal authority as the head of his
household. Until he defaults on the loan, he maintains at least some
degree of dignity. This is important for a man’s productivity. It is
therefore important for maintaining society’s wealth. Men who
have lost their self-conidence do not make efective entrepreneurs
and workers.
 59
WagesAND
WAGES and OPPRESSION
Oppression
Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy,
whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land
within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the
sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry
against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee (Deut. 24:14–15).

This was an extension of Leviticus 19:13: “Thou shalt not de-

fraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired
shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.” Here, the sin is
identiied as oppression. The theocentric focus of this passage was
two-fold. First, God pays us what He has agreed to pay us, and He
pays us on time; His people should imitate Him. Second, God is a
protector of those who cannot protect themselves; His people should
imitate Him. This was not a seed law or a land law. It was a cross-
boundary law.
I could refer the reader to Chapter 13 of Leviticus: An Economic
Commentary. This would save a lot of space. But some readers may
not have a copy of the earlier commentary. I have decided to repro-
duce my earlier comments.

Withholding Wages
Withholding a worker’s wages beyond sunset, i.e., the end of the
work day, is a form of oppression. In the Leviticus passage, this was
identiied as theft. Why? If the worker agreed in advance to wait
longer than a working day for his pay, why should the law of God
prohibit the arrangement? Or does it?
The text deals with paying a debt. The employer-employee relation-
ship relects God’s relationship to man in this respect: the employee is

720
 Wages and Oppression 721

dependent on the employer. Unlike God, however, the employer is

dependent on the employee to some extent. So, the employer-
employee relationship is not identical to the God-man relationship,
but with respect to the provision of capital, it is analogous. God pro-
vides us with an arena: life and capital. Similarly, the employer sup-
plies an employee with capital that makes the employee more
productive.
The laborer has worked for a full day; the employer is required
to pay him at the end of the work day. The employee has fulilled his
part of the bargain. The context is clear: rapid payment for services re-
ceived. God employs us as His stewards. He gives us the tools that we
need to serve Him and thereby serve ourselves. He always pays us
on time. So should an employer. The employer who withholds
wages from his employees is making a symbolic statement about
God’s relationship to man: God supposedly delays paying man what
is rightfully owed to him. This symbolism is incorrect. It testiies
falsely about God’s character.

A Position of Weakness
The wage earner is in a position of comparative weakness, just
as we are weak in comparison to God. This employer-employee re-
lationship relects God’s supremacy as the sovereign employer and
man’s subordination as a dependent employee. If the wage earner is
not paid immediately, then he is being asked by the employer to ex-
tend credit to the employer. The employer gains a beneit – the
value of the labor services performed – without having to pay for
this beneit at the end of the work day. The Bible allows this exten-
sion of such credit during daylight hours, but not overnight.1 This
law teaches that the weaker party should not be forced as part of his
terms of employment to extend credit to the stronger party. God ac-
knowledges that there are diferences in bargaining power and bar-
gaining skills, and He intervenes here to protect the weaker party.
This is one of the rare cases in Scripture where God does prohibit a
voluntary economic contract.
What if the worker says that he is willing to wait for his pay if he
is given an extra payment at the end of the period to compensate

1. By implication, the night laborer is under the same protection: he must be paid before
the sun rises. The idea is that he must be paid by the end of his work day.
722 DEUTERONOMY

him for the time value of his money (i.e., interest)? This would be an
unusual transaction. The extra money earned from two weeks of in-
terest would be minimal in comparison to the amount of the wage.
In any case, to abide by the terms of this law, such a voluntary agree-
ment would have to be a legal transaction publicly separate from wage
earning as such. There would have to be a public record of its condi-
tions. It would constitute an investment by the worker. But the
worker would have to pay his tithe and taxes on this money before
he could legally lend it to the employer.
The law here speciies that an employer who hires an individual
to work for a period of time has to have the money available to pay
that individual on a daily basis at the end of each work day. This is
the employer’s standard requirement. There would be no confusion
about this in a Christian covenanted society. There is no doubt that
in the modern world, such an arrangement is not economically
ejcient. Checks must be written, checks must be delivered to indi-
viduals, account books must be kept, and so forth. If this had to be
done daily, it would add to the expense of running a irm.2 The
larger the irm, the more dijcult such an arrangement would be.
Nevertheless, the employer is required by God to abide by this law.
The question is: Can he lawfully substitute a more convenient pay-
ment scheme and still meet the requirements of this law?

Debt and Credit: Inescapable Concepts

If the employer decides that it is too much trouble to pay each
worker at the end of each work day, he must advance the funds for
the period of employment prior to the next payday. Thus, if the av-
erage period of employment between paydays is two weeks, the em-
ployer must bear the risk of paying an individual for work not yet
received. The employer must extend credit to the worker. This is
another way of saying that the worker must assume a debt obligation:
two weeks of agreed-upon labor services.

2. In the inal stages of the German inlation in 1923, workers were sometimes paid cash in
the morning. Wives would accompany them to work, take the cash, and rush to spend it on
anything tangible before it depreciated during the day. This inlation devastated workers and
employers alike. On the daily payment of wages in the second half of 1923, see Adam
Fergusson, When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse (London: William Kimber,
1975), pp. 149, 191.
 Wages and Oppression 723

Payments for a stream of continuous services cannot be simulta-

neous, although this limitation will change when the use of elec-
3
tronic cash becomes widespread. Therefore, one of the two parties
in this transaction must go into debt in this system, while the other
must extend credit. There is no escape from debt and credit apart from the
technology of continuous payments. What this law authorizes is an exten-
sion of credit by the worker to the employer for a maximum of one
work day. At the end of the work day, the account must be settled;
credit is no longer extended by the worker, so he receives his day’s
wage.
What if the worker is paid in advance for a week or two of labor?
He then necessarily becomes a debtor to the employer. He is re-
quired to deliver the work that he has been paid to perform. This
places the worker in a debt position, but it is not a long-term debt. It
is not considered a form of slavery, but there is no doubt that the
worker has voluntarily accepted payment in advance, and this cre-
ates an obligation on his part. This debt position is limited, however.
The law’s presumption is that the employer is not going to pay a per-
son in advance for months of work except in very rare circumstances.
The Bible teaches that we are not to become indebted to others:
“Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth
another hath fulilled the law” (Rom. 13:8). This must not be inter-
preted in an absolutist fashion. We know this because every person
is in debt to God, and also to the perfect man, Jesus Christ, as a
result of Christ’s atoning work at Calvary.4 This rule of debt-free liv-
ing should be interpreted in a non-utopian sense. It means that we
are to avoid debt contracts that threaten our continuing legal status as free
men. It does not mean that we are to become hermits who separate
ourselves from a division-of-labor economy. (It surely does not
mean that we are required to become household slaves.)

3. It is technically possible today to deposit money electronically into a worker’s account

on a moment-by-moment basis, just as it is possible for him to spend it on the same basis, but
the cost of doing so is too high to make it feasible. This cost constraint will probably change in
the future as computer technology and the cost of using computer networks both decrease.
Kevin Kelly, “Cypherpunks, E-money, and the Techniques of Disconnection,” Whole Earth
Review (Summer 1993). Because of the operation of the computer design problem known as
the Millennium Bug or Year 2000 Problem, this development will be postponed.
4. This debt always involves common grace; sometimes it also involves special grace.
Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute
for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 6.
724 DEUTERONOMY

The restraining factor against the extension of too much credit

by the stronger party is the employer’s fear that the worker will ei-
ther quit before his term of service ends or else not produce compe-
tent work. It is too expensive for the employer to sue the average
worker for damages; court expenses plus his own time in court ex-
ceed the money owed.5 The economic judgment of the employer is
the restraining factor. He suspects that he will not be repaid if he ex-
tends too much credit.
What this text speciies is that the worker must not be asked to
work for a week or two in order to receive his wage. There is always
a risk of default on the part of the debtor, whether he is the em-
ployer or the worker. This law speciies that the risk of default for
this form of debt – wages beyond one work day – must be born by
the employer, not by the worker. This law prohibits a form of rob-
bery: by the employer and also by the employer’s accomplice, i.e.,
the worker who can aford to accept a delayed-payment contract,
thereby excluding the poorest workers from the labor market.6
The employer must not become a thief by withholding any-
one’s wages.7 By forcing the employer to make restitution to his
employed workers who had seen their wages withheld, the law re-
duces the amount of such robbery of those unseen by the judges:
future workers who are too weak even to compete for the delayed-
payment job.8

Worker vs. Worker

An ofer by a worker to accept delayed payment gives this capi-
tal-owning worker a competitive advantage over destitute workers
who need payment immediately. This law establishes that competi-
tion among workers must not involve the employer’s acceptance of
such an ofer by any worker. The biblical standard of payment is
speciied: payment at the end of the work day. There may lawfully
be payment in advance by the employer but not delayed payment.

5. God does sue workers who default on His advance payments. Some are sued in history;
all are sued on the day of judgment. Court costs are irrelevant to God.
6. Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition;
Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 13, sections on “A Case of
Economic Oppression” and “Bargainers: Strong, Weak, and Weakest.”
7. Ibid., ch. 13, section on “What Did the Employer Steal?”
8. Ibid., ch. 13, section on “The Limits of Judicial Knowledge.”
 Wages and Oppression 725

When this law is enforced, destitute workers in the community

are not replaced in the labor force by less destitute workers who can
aford to forego immediate payment. All workers are to be allowed
to compete for jobs, irrespective of any worker’s possession of re-
serves sujcient to tide him over until the next payday. So, one idea
behind this law is to make job opportunities available to the desti-
tute workers in the community. Everyone who is physically able to
work is to be allowed to compete for a job on a basis independent of
his asset reserves. The destitute man’s poverty is not to become the basis of
his exclusion from the labor market. His competitors are not allowed to
use their ability to extend credit to an employer as a way to ofset his
only assets: his willingness and ability to work.9

Weaker Parties
The worker needs protection. An employer might hire him for a
period and then dismiss him without pay. Jacob’s complaint against
Laban was that Laban had changed his wages repeatedly, meaning
retroactively (Gen. 31:7). To protect the worker from this sort of
robbery, the Bible requires the employer to bear the risk of lon-
ger-term default on the part of a worker. The employer bears the
risk that the worker may turn out to be inejcient and will have to be
ired before he has fulilled his contract. The worker may even cheat
the employer by walking of the job before his term of employment
is over. That is the employer’s problem. He can minimize this risk
by paying workers at the end of each day. In doing so, he does not
allow them to become indebted to him. If he chooses to have more
infrequent pay periods, then he must bear the risk of paying people
in advance who turn out to be inejcient or corrupt workers.
It is not immediately apparent that this law deals with the rob-
bery of the poor by the somewhat less poor. This law seems to have
only the employer in mind as the agent of theft. But the employer
cannot act alone in this act of theft. He needs accomplices, even if
they are unaware of their economic status as accomplices. An em-
ployer who wants to discriminate against destitute workers by forc-
ing them to extend him credit beyond one working day cannot do
so without the voluntary cooperation of other workers. He cannot

9. An apprentice who knows little or nothing about the job may lawfully work for no
money or very low wages until he becomes competent.
726 DEUTERONOMY

hire people to work without daily wage payments unless some

workers are willing to work on these terms. The text identiies this
practice as a form of robbery, but it is not merely the robbery of
those workers who voluntarily agree to accept the terms of the con-
tract; it is also the indirect oppression of those workers who cannot
aford to ofer their labor services on these terms. It is above all the
oppression of those who are excluded from the employer’s work force,
not those who are included. But it requires some knowledge of basic
economics to discover this fact. This law’s protection of the destitute
worker’s ability to bid for jobs is implicit in the text, but not explicit.
On what legal basis does this law apply to the free market? Why
should a voluntary contract – delayed payment – be prohibited by
civil law? What makes the practice of delaying payment judicially
unique, and therefore legitimately subject to interference by the
civil government? Answer: the principle of priestly pricing. The
closer we get to life-and-death transactions, the less valid is the eco-
nomic pricing principle, “all the trajc will bear,” i.e., “high bid
wins.” God does not sell salvation by means of “high bid wins.” The
law against delaying the payment of wages is an application of the
ethics of priestly pricing. A destitute worker is not to be excluded
from any labor market by an employer’s policy of delaying pay-
ment. Delayed payment is a policy of excluding workers. There are
biblical judicial limits on voluntarism.10 No employment contract con-
trary to this law is legal in God’s eyes. The civil laws of every nation
should prohibit such delays in the payment of wages.
The typical employer is trying to minimize his risk when he
hires competent workers rather than substandard workers. He de-
lays payment because he wants to see each new worker prove him-
self before getting paid. This delay in payment pressures workers
with little capital to quit early or never even apply for the job. The
practice of delaying wages is therefore primarily a screening device. It favors
workers who have capital in reserve. These capital reserves serve
the employer as a substitute for other screening techniques. The
employer’s economic problem is his lack of knowledge about the
competence of the new worker. The employer uses a delayed payment

10. This fact does not constitute a legitimizing of an open-ended socialism, including some
modernized version of medieval guild socialism. Biblical law, not socialist slogans, is the
source of our knowledge of such limits on voluntary exchange.
 Wages and Oppression 727

scheme in order to minimize his search costs in estimating the com-

petence of new workers. Accurate knowledge is not a zero-price re-
source. Employers try to obtain such knowledge as cheaply as
possible. They use the new worker’s willingness to accept delayed
payments as a cost-efective substitute for more detailed information
regarding the worker’s abilities and his willingness to work.

Conclusion
The case law deals with theft from economically weak workers
and also (indirectly) the most impoverished workers in the commu-
nity. The most impoverished workers are those who cannot aford
to extend credit to their employer. They need to be paid at the end
of the work day. The employer is required to do this or else pay
them in advance for a longer term of service.
This law proves that Mosaic Israel was not a debt-free society.
There were creditors and debtors. A legitimate biblical goal is to re-
duce long-term debt, but God’s civil law does not mandate abso-
lutely debt-free living. Debt is basic to society, for society implies a
division of labor. Debt will exist in a division of labor economy until
such time as an economically ejcient means of making mo-
ment-by-moment wage payments becomes universal.
The employer who delays payment to his workers is defrauding
them. But to do this, he is inescapably providing an opportunity for
some workers to oppress their competitors. The worker who can
aford to work without pay for a period is given an opportunity by
the employer to steal a job away from a worker so poverty-stricken
that he cannot survive without payment at the end of the day. This
form of competition is illegitimate, this passage says. It is unfair
competition. This passage calls it oppression. God’s civil law makes
it illegal for an employer to act as the economic agent of any em-
ployee against a destitute competitor. There are very few cases of
unfair competition speciied in the Bible, but this is one of them.
A judge can impose a restitution penalty on the perpetrator.
There is also a hidden element of oppression: the excluded workers.
To become subject to civil law, oppression must be identiiable as a
criminal ofense. There must be deinable criteria that make the act
a crime. The indirectly oppressed, excluded worker is not the victim
of a crime. Ironically, the one who has oppressed him, the em-
ployed worker, is the victim of a crime: delayed payment. Even
more ironically, if the oppressor brings a lawsuit against his
728 DEUTERONOMY

assailant, the employer, he thereby makes it less likely that he and

his employer will be able to oppress the weakest party: the excluded
worker. He therefore may refuse to press charges. This is why I
think an excluded worker or the State acting on his behalf can bring
a lawsuit against the employer to have the practice stopped.
If it is immoral to discriminate against the weakest worker, then
what of trade union practices that exclude these same low-bidding
weak parties, referred to by union members as “scabs”? Can this
case law legitimately be extended to make all exclusionary trade un-
ion screening practices illegal? That is, should we deine indirect
economic oppression in such a way that all exclusionary hiring
practices become crimes? If we do, then we violate a fundamental
biblical principle: the predictability of the civil law. The law
identiied as criminal – robbery – an easily speciied act: delaying
payment overnight. Only when such oppressive acts are easily
speciied and prosecution becomes predictable by all parties should
this case law be extended to create new civil laws. But the oppres-
sive character of the contract should be recognized, and no legisla-
tion should be passed that imitates the “delayed payment” contract,
with its exclusionary side efects. This would surely include laws
mandating that employers negotiate with trade unions or laws pro-
hibiting employers from hiring non-union replacements when the
union’s members walk of the job. The element of State coercion
should not be imposed for the beneit of the oppressors, i.e., workers
who are members of unions that seek monopolistic above-market
wages for their members by excluding others from joining or by
calling on the State to forbid employers from making bargains with
non-union workers.
 60
Gleaning:
GLEANING: Charitable Inejciency
CHARITABLE INEFFICIENCY

When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy ield, and hast forgot a
sheaf in the ield, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the
stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the LORD thy God may
bless thee in all the work of thine hands. When thou beatest thine olive tree,
thou shalt not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the
fatherless, and for the widow. When thou gatherest the grapes of thy
vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward: it shall be for the stranger, for
the fatherless, and for the widow. And thou shalt remember that thou wast
a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing
(Deut. 24:19–22).

The theocentric principle undergirding this law is this: God

shows grace to man in history by allowing mankind access to the
fruit of God’s ield, His creation. Put another way, God allows man-
kind inside the boundaries of His ield. Fallen man is in the position
of the poverty-stricken, landless Israelite or stranger. God does not
exclude externally cursed mankind from access to the means of life
in history. Neither were land owners in post-conquest Mosaic Israel
to exclude the economically poor and judicially excluded residents
of the land. Fallen man is always a gleaner.1
God was the original land owner who sought to make the Prom-
ised Land’s blessings available to every able-bodied worker who
was willing to go into the ields at the time of the harvest. This was
an aspect of the dominion covenant: man as God’s steward who

1. Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition;
Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), ch. 11, section on “We Are All
Gleaners.”

729
730 DEUTERONOMY

participates in the subduing of the earth (Gen. 1:26–28). Those who

were without land or tools in Mosaic Israel nevertheless had an obli-
gation to work. Because the Mosaic law kept rural land permanently
in the possession of families that were heirs of the conquest genera-
tion, this case law opened the closed ields. The gleaners could not
inherit these ields,2 but they had a moral claim on a portion of the
leftovers. This was both a land law and a seed law.
This passage expands on the gleaning laws of Leviticus: “And
when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap
the corners of thy ield, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy
harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou
gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the
poor and stranger: I am the LORD your God” (Lev. 19:9–10). “And
when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean
riddance of the corners of thy ield when thou reapest, neither shalt
thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto
the poor, and to the stranger: I am the LORD your God” (Lev. 23:22).
It identiies the three classes of vulnerable residents: widows, or-
phans, and strangers. It refers to Israel’s years as a slave in Egypt. It
ofers positive sanction: “that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all
the work of thine hands.” The negative sanction of bondage is con-
trasted with the positive sanction of God’s blessings.

Inefficiency: Yes and No

The stated goal of modern economic science is to explain men’s
actions in terms of the principle of income maximization, i.e., sanc-
tions: proit and loss. For a given expenditure of scarce economic
resources, how can a person maximize his personal return, however
he deines “return”? Put another way, how can he avoid wasting valu-
able resources? How can he exchange his present circumstances for
better circumstances in the future without surrendering the owner-
ship of beneits that need not be surrendered?
The farmer was warned by Moses not to seek to maximize his
total return on his agricultural investment. He was not to go back to
pick up the forgotten sheaf, or go through his olive orchard, beating
the trees a second time, or glean the vineyard a second time. The

2. Conceivably, some poor gleaner might be the long-term heir of the property who had
temporarily lost possession of his ield.
 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 731

three examples in the text apply to the raw materials for producing
bread, wine, and oil. These were the vegetable sacriices required
by God (Lev. 2:4; 23:13). They were the best produce of a man’s
ield. They served here as representatives of all agricultural produc-
tion. Moses told owners of these crops that they should leave behind
some small percentage, so that gleaners could harvest them. This
meant that the Mosaic law transferred partial ownership of these un-
harvested crops to those who did not own the land and had not
made the investments necessary to produce them.
By the standards of modern economics, God was commanding
land owners to be wasteful. He commanded them to leave behind
for others a small portion of the fruits of their investment. He was
saying clearly that members of three defenseless groups – strangers,
widows, and orphans – had a moral claim on a small portion of the
output of the land.3 They did not have a legal claim, but they had a
moral claim. Here, the Bible’s supreme example is Ruth, who was
both a stranger and a widow. Boaz let her glean in his ields (Ruth 2).
This was an inejcient way to harvest crops. God was saying
that it was an ejcient way to harvest souls. Poverty-stricken people
who would gain access to the post-harvest ields would recognize in
the land owner a willingness to forfeit a portion of his income for the
sake of God’s law, which recognized the plight of the righteous
poor. Word would get out among the poor: here was a man to be
imitated. Down the ladder of wealth, from the richest to the poorest,
the goal was to provide a boost out of poverty to the people on the
rung below. But in the case of the land owner, he was required by
God to reach down two rungs and provide a poor person with a way
to climb out of poverty. Sometimes poverty is well deserved. Some-
times it isn’t. The goal of this Mosaic law was to pressure the land
owner to identify the righteous poor in his community and provide
both income and work experience for them.
An ejcient man is a man who plans for the future. He counts
the future costs of his present actions. A poor man is rarely an
ejcient man. He is too worried about his next meal to plan ahead
very far into the future. He is present-oriented. This law announced

3. In Chapter 34, on the tithes of celebration, I identiied these three groups as judicially
undefended. This was because a fourth group, the Levites, were included in the list. The
Levites were not necessarily poor. In this law, however, the Levites were not mentioned.
Thus, I regard the classiication here as economic rather than judicial.
732 DEUTERONOMY

to the poor man: “If you are willing to work hard, you will not have
to worry about where your next meal is coming from. You will then
be able to plan ahead more easily.” A man who was present-
oriented because of an ethical failure would probably remain poor.
In contrast, a future-oriented man whose time horizons had been
shortened because of his poverty was given a way to rise in his class
position. Class position is based more on time-perspective than
money. The present-oriented man is lower class.4

Sanctions
The motivation for obedience rested on a cause-and-efect sys-
tem of sanctions. In this case, the motivating sanction was supernat-
urally based, historically manifested, and positive: “that the LORD
thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands” (v. 19). There
was also an implied negative sanction: “And thou shalt remember
that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I com-
mand thee to do this thing” (v. 22). The oppression of Israel in Egypt
was the Mosaic model for oppression. The unstated implication in
this passage was that Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is the model
of God’s corporate judgment in history. As God’s irstborn son
(Ex. 4:22), Israel had gained the inheritance of Egypt’s disinherited
irstborn sons, who had died at Passover. The message: the op-
pressed will eventually inherit in history. To maintain the inheri-
tance, a person or a nation must not become an oppressor.
This is a continuing theme in Deuteronomy: the ethically condi-
tional nature of the inheritance. Without righteousness, Israel’s inheri-
tance could not be permanently maintained. This is one of the
crucial themes of the Bible. It undergirds inheritance by the New
Covenant church: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God
shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the
fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). The church inherited the kingdom be-
cause Israel did not remain obedient to God’s law. The context of
Jesus’ announcement of Israel’s coming disinheritance was His par-
able of the unjust stewards who refused to pay what they owed the
land owner. He even lured the chief priests and the elders into con-
demning themselves in public for disobeying God: “They say unto

4. Edward C. Banield, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 53–59.
 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 733

him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out
his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the
fruits in their seasons” (Matt. 21:41).
Despite Jesus’ conirmation of the Mosaic Covenant’s system of
sanctions, Christians have ignored or downplayed this theme of his-
torical inheritance and disinheritance. This is evidence of wide-
spread antinomianism: hostility to biblical law. Christians have
asserted that the Mosaic law and its sanctions, both civil and histori-
cal, have been completely annulled by the New Covenant. This has
led them to a dismal conclusion: there will be no unique cultural in-
heritance by Christians in church history; there will be no disinheri-
tance of God’s enemies. The meek will not inherit the earth. Jesus
really did not teach Christians to expect such an inheritance, we are
told. He was speaking about the millennial “Jewish church”
(dispensationalism’s view). Or He was speaking allegorically about
eternity (amillennialism’s view). But He could not possibly have
meant that those who are meek before God will exercise dominion
in history. Such a “triumphalist” outlook rests on faith in a system of
predictable, corporate, historical, covenantal cause and efect, which
in turn rests on a revelational moral and legal order. In short, such
an outlook rests on theonomy. This outlook is not acceptable to
modern Christianity.

Gleaning as a Model
Because I have already covered gleaning in Chapter 11 of Levit-
icus: An Economic Commentary, I am reproducing that chapter here.
Deuteronomy 24:19–22 identiies the poor more speciically:
stranger, orphan, and widow. It also adds a reason: Israel’s time of
bondage in Egypt. God had delivered Israel from this bondage. Is-
raelite land owners were to ofer similar deliverance to the poor.
Gleaning was a form of morally compulsory charity. It remains
the primary moral model for biblical charity, but, as I hope to show,
it is not a literal model for modern charity. In a non-agricultural soci-
ety, gleaning cannot become a literal model for charity. Morally, however,
gleaning is to be our guideline for charity: those in the community
who have been called in the West “the deserving poor” are to be
allowed to do hard work in order to support themselves and im-
prove their condition. God expects the more successful members of
a community to provide economic opportunities for such willing la-
borers – opportunities for service.
734 DEUTERONOMY

As with every biblical law, this law was ultimately theocentric.

The beneiciaries of this law were God’s representatives in history,
just as victims of crimes are representatives of God. Crime is pri-
marily an assault on God by means of a crime against man, who is
made in God’s image.5 Crime is man’s attempt to bring unlawful
negative sanctions against God by bringing them against one of His
representatives. Charity is analogous to crime in this respect, but
with this diference: the sanctions are both lawful and positive.
What a person does to the poor is counted as if he did it to Jesus
(Matt. 25:32–40).

A Lawful Claim: Moral or Legal?

God announced that the poor people and resident aliens in
Israel were to be invited in by the land owner so that they could har-
vest the corners of the ield and the fallen grain. This meant that as a
class, they had a moral claim on the “droppings” of production.
This also meant that they had no legal claim on the primary sources
of income of an agricultural community. They were invited in. There
was no State-inanced welfare in Israel.
It would have been dijcult for a judge or a jury to identify
which individuals in the community had a legal right to bring
charges against the land owner as the legal victims of his refusal to
honor the gleaning laws. The text speciies no negative institutional
sanction that had to be imposed on a land owner who refused to
honor the gleaning laws. God is indirectly revealed as the agent who
would bring negative sanctions against an individual land owner
who refused to honor the gleaning laws. The State was therefore not
authorized by the text to bring these sanctions against individuals
on behalf of God. The sanctions were individual rather than corpo-
rate. Without the threat of God’s negative sanctions against the
whole covenanted community, there was no justiication for civil
sanctions. Civil sanctions were imposed in Israel in order to substitute
the State’s subordinate wrath for God’s more direct wrath against the
community. Furthermore, in case of a violation of the gleaning law,
there would have been no easy way to determine legitimate restitu-
tion. Where there are no civil sanctions, there is no crime. To violate this

5. North, Tools of Dominion, p. 279.

 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 735

law was a sin, not a crime. God would curse the owner directly, but
the society was not at risk. Thus, civil sanctions were inappropriate.6
This law applied only to agriculture: ield and vineyard. Field
and vineyard are the sources of bread and wine: Melchizedek’s
meal for Abram (Gen. 14:18) and also the Lord’s Supper.7

The Economics of Gleaning:

Who Paid, Who Beneited?
What was the economics of the gleaning law? In a sense, the re-
quirement that the land owner and professional harvesters leave a
small portion of the crop for the gleaners made this portion analo-
gous to the manna that God had supplied to the Israelites during the
wilderness wandering. This miraculous though predictable food
was a pure gift of God. Similarly, both the produce of the land and
God’s grace in establishing the requirement that the land owners
and harvesters share with the gleaners were signs of God’s continu-
ing grace to the poor. The gleaners were visibly dependent on
God’s grace for their survival. This had also been the case for the
whole nation in the wilderness.
Gleaning laws were exclusively agricultural laws. God com-
manded the harvesters of the ield and the vineyard to be wasteful –
wasteful in terms of their personal goals, but ejcient in terms of
God’s goals. They were to leave part of the produce of both the
vineyard and the grain ield for gathering by the poor.
This law indicates that the leftovers of the Promised Land belonged to
God. God transferred the ownership of these high harvesting cost as-
sets from the land owner and the harvester to the poor and the
stranger. The owner in one sense did beneit, at least those owners
who paid their ield hands wages rather than by the supply har-
vested, i.e., piece-rate payment. The obedient owner did not pay
salaried harvesters to collect marginal pickings. This lowered his la-
bor cost per harvested unit of crop. But the net income loss as a
result of gleaning did lower his return from his land and planting ex-
penses. There is no doubt that this economic loss of net revenue
constituted a form of compulsory charity. It was a mandated positive

6. See my discussion in Boundaries and Dominion, ch. 11, subsection on “Individual

Sanctions Against Disobedience.”
7. Ibid., ch. 11, section on “Bread and Wine.”
736 DEUTERONOMY

sanction. This should alert us to the fact that this law was not a civil
law. It was rather a church-enforced law. The church, not the State,
is to bring positive sanctions in history. The church, not the State,
ofers Holy Communion. This distinction is representative of the
difering functions of the two institutions.
The gleaning law was also to some extent an advantage to the
piece-rate harvester because he was able to achieve greater output
per unit of time invested. He was not expected to spend time gather-
ing the marginal leftovers of the crop. Marginal returns on his labor
invested were higher than they would have been had it not been for
this law. Nevertheless, both the owner of the land and the piece-rate
harvesters did sufer a loss of total income because of this law. The
harvesters saved time but gathered less. They did sufer a loss of in-
come compared to what they would have earned apart from this law.
How did piece-rate harvesters sufer a loss of total income? Be-
cause they could not lawfully gather the total crop of the ield or the
vineyard. Each worker had to leave some produce behind, which
means that his income sufered. This also means that the poor of the
community were in part funded by the slightly less poor: the piece-
rate harvesters. The harvesters were reminded of the burdens of
poverty. This in efect became an unemployment insurance program
for the harvesters. They knew that if they later fell into poverty, they
would probably be allowed to participate as gleaners sometime in
the future. They forfeited some income in the present, but they did
so in the knowledge that in a future crisis, they would be able to gain
income from gleaning. Both the land owner and the piece-rate
worker inanced a portion of this morally compulsory insurance
program.

Beneits for the Land Owner

The law placed a burden on the land owner. Yet this burden
was in fact a form of liberation if he acknowledged the covenantal
nature of the expenditure. It was analogous to the tithe. By honoring
it, he was acknowledging God’s sovereign ownership of his land.
This act of sharing placed him visibly in the service of the great
King. That King was his protector, for he was a vassal. As with rest
on the sabbath, the owner could rest conidently in the knowledge
that the King would defend his interests as a vassal if he abided by
the terms of the King’s treaty.
 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 737

There was another beneit to the faithful owner, according to

Aaron Wildavsky, one of the most informed experts in the world on
the history of taxation.8 He was also a careful student of the Mosaic
law. He wrote of the gleaning law that “Compulsiveness easily con-
verts to fanaticism. The farmer who harvests not 99 percent of his
crop but every last little bit becomes consumed by his compulsion.
Soon enough excess – getting it all – becomes an overwhelming pas-
sion.”9 He quite properly identiies fanaticism as idolatry.10 The
gleaning law restrained the idolatry of greed. It reminded rich men
that they did not need to keep everything they managed as God’s
stewards in order to remain successful. It restrained them from the
passion of autonomous man: deining themselves in terms of their
wealth rather than their obedience to God.

Hard Work
The gleaner had to work harder than the average worker did in
order to harvest the same quantity of crops. The “easy pickings”
were gone by the time the gleaner was allowed into the ields. This
means that he had high marginal labor costs. That is, he had to in-
vest more labor per unit of crop harvested than the piece-rate har-
vester did. Assuming that the harvester’s goal was a high return on
labor invested, it was preferable to be a piece-rate worker than to be
a gleaner. To be a gleaner was to be in a nearly desperate condition.
In the case of both piece-rate work and gleaning, most of the la-
bor costs of harvesting were borne by the poor. The rich man did
not work in the ields. But there were degrees of poverty. By far, the
greater cost per unit harvested was borne by the gleaners. In mod-
ern terminology, this might be called a workfare program instead of
a welfare program. The gleaner was not a passive recipient of some-
one else’s money. He had to work. Furthermore, marketing costs
may actually have been borne by the poor. It would have been legal
for the poor individual to take whatever pickings he gained from the
ield and go to a store owner or other purchaser of the crop. The

8. Carolyn Webber and Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the
Western World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986).
9. Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (University, Alabama:
University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 30.
10. Idem.
738 DEUTERONOMY

owner of the land did not have the right to compel the gleaner to sell
the gleanings to him. This means that the gleaner was enabled to ob-
tain a competitive market price for the output of his labor. Of
course, this would have been extra work and risk for the gleaner,
and it involved specialized knowledge of markets. Nevertheless, it
was a right before God that the gleaner possessed.
There was another great advantage to this form of morally en-
forced charity: it brings hard-working, ejcient poor people to the at-
tention of potential employers. In efect, employers in Mosaic Israel
could “glean” future workers from society’s economic “leftovers.”
This system produced more food for the community than
would have been produced apart from the law, although costs were
higher than otherwise.11

Subsidizing Localism
Is becoming a low-paid ield hand God’s universally required
on-the-job training system? No. God no longer expects poor people
to learn how to become ield laborers. In Old Covenant Israel, how-
ever, it was important that men learn to serve Him locally. God
wanted to preserve localism and tribalism. The tribal system was
important for the preservation of freedom in Israel. Tribalism and
localism broke down attempts to centralize the nation politically.
Thus, the gleaning law was part of the social order associated with
Old Covenant Israel. It reinforced the tribal system. It also rein-
forced rural life at the expense of urban life – one of the few Mosaic
laws to do so. The land owner was required by God to subsidize the
rural way of life. Local poor people were ofered subsidized employ-
ment on the farms. Had it not been for the gleaning system, the only
rural alternatives would have been starvation or beggary in the
country. They would have moved to the cities, as hungry people all
over the world do today.
The jubilee land inheritance laws kept rural land within the Israel-
ite family. If a daughter inherited land because there was no brother,
she could not marry outside her tribe if she wanted to keep the land.
“Neither shall the inheritance remove from one tribe to another
tribe; but every one of the tribes of the children of Israel shall keep

11. North, Boundaries and Dominion, ch. 11, section on “More Food for Everyone.”
 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 739

himself to his own inheritance” (Num. 36:9). While a rich man

might move permanently to a city, the poor person was encouraged
by the gleaning law to stay closer to home.
Cities would inevitably have become the primary dwelling
places for most Israelites if they had obeyed God as a nation. Popu-
lation growth would have forced most people into the cities. The
size of family plots would have shrunk as each generation inherited
its portion of the land. But until Israel’s corporate covenantal faith-
fulness led to population growth and increased per capita wealth,
each tribe’s poor members were to be subsidized by the gleaning
law to remain close to the tribe’s food supplies. This law was a
means of retarding the growth of an unemployed urban proletariat.
The countryside was to be the place where the poor man received
his daily bread. He would have to do simple agricultural labor to
receive his food.
This law also promoted localism rather than distant bureau-
cracy.12

No Subsidy for Evil

Another important reason for localism was the concern of God
that His resources not be used for evil purposes. Either the provider
of this agricultural charity had to reside locally or else his speciied
agent had to. Local residents in rural Mosaic Israel were more likely
to be well known to the land owners. Presumably, the cause of their
poverty was also well known to the land owners, or at least this
could be discovered without much dijculty. The gleaning system
reduced the subsidy of evil. The poor person who was poor as a re-
sult of his own bad habits did not have to be subsidized by the land
owner and the professional harvesters who worked his ields. The
land owner had the right to exclude some poor people from access
to his ields. Gleaning was therefore a highly personal form of char-
ity, since the person who was required to give this charity was also
the person who screened access to the fruit of the land.
This means that the gleaning law was a form of conditional charity
in each individual recipient’s case, although the loss was compulsory
from the point of view of the land owner. Biblical charity is always

12. Ibid., ch. 11, subsection on “Localism and Bureaucracy.”

740 DEUTERONOMY

13
conditional. Charity is not to subsidize evil, for it is an act of grace.
Unconditional charity is antinomian. In a fallen world, uncondi-
tional charity will inevitably subsidize evil.

Strangers
The local member of the land owner’s tribe was the primary re-
cipient of charity, but he was not the only one. The other recipient
of the grace of gleaning was the stranger. These strangers were pre-
sumably resident aliens who had fallen on hard times. They might
have been hired servants who could not ind employment. They
were people who did not want to go back to their home country.
They were therefore people who wanted to live under the civil law
of God in the Promised Land. These people were entitled to the
same consideration that the poor Israelite was entitled to. It is clear
that this arrangement would have increased the emotional commit-
ment of the resident alien to the welfare of the community. He was
treated justly.
The land was God’s covenantal agent. This law was agricultural
only. It did not apply to urban businesses.14

Conditional Charity: Moral Boundaries

The owner of the farm had to acknowledge the sovereignty of
God by obeying the gleaning laws. These laws were a reminder to
him that biblical authority always has costs attached to it. The owner of
the land had been given capital that other people lacked. He there-
fore had an obligation to the local poor as God’s agent, for the land
itself was pictured as God’s agent.15 His obligation was to supply the
land’s leftovers to the poor.
In making this demand, the gleaning law placed decisive limits
(boundaries) on both the poor rural resident and the State. It limited
the moral demands that the poor could make on economically suc-
cessful people in the community. The poor had no comparable

13. Ray R. Sutton, “Whose Conditions for Charity?” in Theonomy: An Informed Response,
edited by Gary North (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), ch. 9.
14. North, Boundaries and Dominion, ch. 11, section on “A Law of the Land, Not the
Workshop.”
15. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), ch. 10.
 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 741

moral claim against the successful non-agricultural businessman.

This law also limited the demands that the State could make on the
community in the name of the poor. Biblical law speciied that the
man with landed wealth should share his wealth with the deserving
poor, but not the poor in general. The deserving poor were those
who were willing to work hard, but who could not ind work in the
normal labor markets. In short, the gleaning law had conditions at-
tached to it. The idea of morally compulsory, non-conditional charity
was foreign to the laws of the Mosaic Covenant.16
The gleaner had to work very hard, for he reaped only the left-
overs. This means that his income was lower than would have been
the case if he had been a professional harvester. Gleaning provides
a lesson to the poor: there are no free lunches in life. Someone always
has to pay. The economic terms of the gleaning system established
that only the destitute members of the community would have be-
come gleaners. If there had been any other source of income be-
sides begging, they would have taken it. The hard work and low pay
of gleaning were incentives for the individual to get out of poverty.
We must always remember that the gleaning laws operated
within the framework of the jubilee land laws. The poorest Israelite
in the community at some point would inherit from his father or
grandfather a portion of the original family inheritance. The size of
that portion of land depended on the number of male heirs. Its
value depended on the economic productivity of local residents
who could legally bid to lease it.17 The more productive the heir, the

16. It is equally foreign to the law of the New Covenant. This assertion appalls Timothy
Keller. See Keller, “Theonomy and the Poor: Some Relections,” in William S. Barker and W.
Robert Godfrey (eds.), Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan,
1990), pp. 273–79. He calls for initially unconditional charity to all poor people. He argues
that anyone in need anywhere on earth is my neighbor, thereby universalizing the moral
claims of all poor people on the wealth of anyone who is slightly less poor. He writes: “Anyone
in need is my neighbor – that is the teaching of the Good Samaritan parable.” Ibid., p. 275. He
rejects the traditional Christian concept of the deserving poor (pp. 276–77). He concludes: “I
am proposing that the reconstructionist approach to biblical charity is too conditional and
restrictive.” Ibid., p. 278. For my response, see North, Westminster’s Confession: The Abandonment
of Van Til’s Legacy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), pp. 271–73. See also
Sutton, “Whose Conditions for Charity?” in North (ed.), Theonomy, ch. 9.
17. The economist looks for a price to establish value. The highest market value is
determined by the highest market bid by a potential buyer or long-term leaser.
742 DEUTERONOMY

18
more likely that he would be able to retain control over it. Gleaning
gave the poor Israelite an opportunity to gain management and
other skills as a land owner prior to the time that he or his children
would be given back the original family land grant through the jubi-
lee land law. The gleaning law provided training that could in the
future be converted into family capital. The gleaning law was de-
signed to keep poor people in the local agricultural community.
The gleaning law did not apply to non-agricultural businesses or
professions. It originated from the fact that God declared Himself as
the owner of the Promised Land. He did not verbally claim an
equally special ownership of businesses. The land, not business, was
identiied as God’s covenant agent that brought God’s covenant
lawsuits in Old Covenant Israel.19 Any attempt to derive a modern
system of charity, public or private, from the gleaning law faces this
crucial limitation. It was not intended to apply outside a farm.
The modern welfare State is a perverse mirror image of the
gleaning law. It disregards the moral criteria for charity and substi-
tutes bureaucratic-numerical criteria. This has greatly expanded
both the political boundaries of charity and the extent of poverty.
People get paid by the State for being poor; the free market re-
sponds: more poor people. The welfare State now faces bank-
ruptcy: the destruction of those dependent on its support.20
There are few modern applications of the gleaning law, which
was a land law. Modern society is not agricultural.21 Nevertheless,
there is a theological principle that undergirds gleaning: fallen man is
always a gleaner. But redeemed men will progressively escape their
dependence on other men’s charity as society advances through
God’s grace.

Conclusion
The gleaning law was part of an overall system of political econ-
omy. Many of the details of this political economy were tied to the
Promised Land and the sacriicial system of that land. Localism and

18. This legal right to inherit the family’s land did not extend to the stranger until after the
exile (Ezek. 47:22–23).
19. North, Leviticus, ch. 10.
20. North, Boundaries and Dominion, ch. 11, section on “Unconditional Charity: Political
Boundaries.”
21. Ibid., ch. 11, section on “Modern Applications of the Gleaning Law Are Few.”
 Gleaning: Charitable Inejciency 743

tribalism were both basic to the application of the gleaning law in

Mosaic Israel. The authority of the local land owner to chose who
would glean and who would not from among various candidates –
the boundary principle of inclusion and exclusion – transferred
great responsibility and authority into his hand. This kind of person-
alized charity is no longer taken seriously by those who legislate po-
litically grounded welfare State policies in the modern world. Such
a view of charity transfers too much authority to property owners, in
the eyes of the politicians, and not enough to the State and its func-
tionaries. But it is not the principle of localism that changes in the New
Testament era; it is only the landed tribalism that changes. When the
kingdom of God was transferred to a new nation (Matt. 21:43), mean-
ing the church, the Levitical land laws were abolished.
Gleaning no longer applies in the New Covenant era. The jubi-
lee land law was annulled by Jesus through: 1) His ministry’s
fulillment of the law (Luke 4:16–27); 2) the transfer of the kingdom
to the church at Pentecost (Matt. 21:43; Acts 2); and 3) the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Can we learn anything from the glean-
ing law? I think we can, but these lessons are essentially negative.
They show us what should not be done, not what must be done, to
avoid God’s negative sanctions.
The lessons from gleaning are these: 1) all charity is based
legally on the fundamental principle that God owns the earth
(Ps. 24:1); 2) a third party has no legal civil claim on any asset that he
does not own; 3) charity should not create a permanent dependence
on the part of the recipient; 4) charity should not subsidize evil; 5) it
should involve hard work except in cases where the recipient is
medically incapacitated; 6) it should not provide living standards
that are higher than the poorest workers in society are able to earn.
The fundamental principle learned from the gleaning laws is
this: charity in a biblical social order must not be based on the idea that the
State is a legitimate institution of salvation. The State is not a biblically
legitimate agency of social healing. It is an agency of public ven-
geance (Rom. 13:1–7). It possesses a lawful monopoly of violence. It
therefore cannot be entrusted with the authority to take the wealth
of successful people in order to reward the poor. If it is allowed to do
this, its agents become the primary beneiciaries of the coniscated
wealth. Its political and bureaucratic agents will gain power over
both the poor and the economically successful. These agents will
become permanent spokesmen for the ojcial beneiciaries of the
744 DEUTERONOMY

wealth, namely, the poor. They will have no incentive to get poor
people as a class permanently out of poverty. A system of legal
entitlements for the poor becomes a system of legal entitlements to
full-time jobs for those who administer the system. This is the antith-
esis of the gleaning system of the Mosaic Covenant. In that system,
participants had an economic incentive to get the poor back to
work: the land owners, the piece-rate harvesters, and the poor
themselves.
It is clear what God expects from property owners: a willingness
to forego maximum personal returns. They are to “leave something
on the table” for the other party in any transaction between righ-
teous people. Non-owners – the righteous poor – have a moral
claim on the output of the owners. The owners are merely stewards
for God, the original owner. God provides the raw materials and the
social order which provide wealth. In this sense, every owner is a
“free rider” in the system: a person who has not paid for all of the
services rendered. Grace precedes law. Man is always in debt to
God. Every creature is a free rider in the creation. The owner who
maximizes output for himself and his family thereby announces his
own autonomy: “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten
me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17b). In a world sustained by God’s grace, this
is a graceless attitude. It is an ejcient way to become disinherited.
 61
UnmuzzlingTHE
UNMUZZLING the Working
WORKING Ox OX
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn (Deut. 25:4).

The theocentric focus of this law is God as man’s employer.

What this verse reveals regarding God’s requirements for employ-
ing an ox, it also reveals about God’s relationship with man in man’s
ojce as an agent of dominion. Man works for God. God allows man
to enjoy the fruits of his labor as he exercises dominion on behalf of
God, whether or not a man acknowledges the existence of, or the as-
signment by, his heavenly employer. What God allows to man, man
should allow to his subordinates. This includes his animal subordi-
nates. This was not a land law or a seed law. It was a cross-boundary
law.
How a man treats his ox relects how he treats workers in gen-
eral. The ox is a symbol of dominion.1 It serves man as a working
agent. It therefore is entitled to special protection. This is why the
penalty for stealing and then either selling or destroying an ox is ive-
fold restitution (Ex. 22:1). For other forms of theft (except sheep), as
well as for an ox or sheep found in the thief’s possession, it is double
restitution (Ex. 22:4).
Man is not a beast. He possesses future-orientation. The ox is
not future-oriented. He eats as he works. The farmer who expects an
ox to work all day without eating is expecting too much. Even in the
case of a hired man, biblical law does not expect him to wait beyond
sunset to receive his wages (Deut. 24:15).

1. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), p. 525.

745
746 DEUTERONOMY

Judicial Hermeneutics
Rushdoony adopts this verse as an explanatory model for bibli-
cal interpretation.2 He does so because Paul cited this passage in two
epistles. In each case, Paul extended the narrow focus of this case
law to a much broader concern: the payment of Christian workers
who were laboring as teachers. In the irst example, Paul reminded
the Corinthians that He was an apostle. He was in authority over
them. He was therefore entitled to inancial support.

Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our
Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others,
yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the
Lord. Mine answer to them that do examine me is this, Have we not power
to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well
as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Or I only
and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? Who goeth a war-
fare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not
of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a lock, and eateth not of the milk of the
lock? Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? For it
is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox
that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it alto-
gether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that
ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be
partaker of his hope (I Cor. 9:1–10).

The ield to be plowed in this case was the world. Paul was har-
vesting men. The Corinthians were part of his work of harvesting.
Why were they resisting paying him? As surely as an ox was entitled
to eat while he worked for another, so was Paul entitled to be paid as
he worked on behalf of the Corinthians.
In the second example, Paul defended the right of church rulers
to a double portion. “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy
of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doc-
trine. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that
treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward”
(I Tim. 5:17–18). Double honor in this context meant double pay-
ment, i.e., payment higher than what a comparably skilled workman

2. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
pp. 11, 506.
 Unmuzzling the Working Ox 747

would receive. The elder who devotes all of his time to serving the
church should be well-compensated by the members.
What was the biblical origin of the concept of double payment?
It has to be the irstborn son’s double inheritance (Deut. 21:15–17).
The church elder is to be treated as a irstborn son. He performs dou-
ble service; he should receive double honor and double payment.

From Minimal to Maximal Application

The law governing oxen is a Mosaic case law. These case laws
are stated in a narrow context, but they are to be applied more
broadly, as Paul’s examples indicate. Rushdoony describes the
case-law hermeneutics: “These speciic cases are often illustrations
of the extent of the application of the law; that is, by citing a minimal
type of case, the necessary jurisdictions are revealed. To prevent us
from having any excuse for failing to understand and utilize this
concept [of case law], the Bible gives us its own interpretation of
such a law, and this illustration, being given by St. Paul, makes clear
the New Testament undergirding of the law.”3 Rushdoony uses
Paul’s application of this case law as a hermeneutical model which
has been validated in the New Covenant.
Rushdoony classiies the ox law as an application of the com-
mandment against theft. This is correct. “If it is a sin to defraud an
ox of his livelihood, then it is also a sin to defraud a man of his
wages; it is theft in both cases. If theft is God’s classiication of an
ofense against an animal, how much more so an ofense against
God’s apostle and minister?”4 Rushdoony in another place has
noted that “Americans want their religion, but they want it cheap.”
He regards such an attitude as a violation of this case law.
The case laws apply the Ten Commandments in real-world situ-
ations. He writes: “Without case law, God’s law would soon be re-
duced to an extremely limited area of meaning. This, of course, is
precisely what has happened. Those who deny the present validity
of the law apart from the Ten Commandments have as a conse-
quence a very limited deinition of theft. Their deinition usually fol-
lows the civil law of their own country, is humanistic, and is not

3. Ibid., p. 11.
4. Ibid., p. 12.
748 DEUTERONOMY

radically diferent from the deinitions given by Moslems, Bud-

5
dhists, and humanists.”

From Minimal to Zero Application

The hermeneutics typically used by Christian Bible commenta-
tors and expositors is this: “If a Mosaic law is not reajrmed in the
New Covenant, it is no longer binding.” In other words, a Mosaic law
is guilty until proven innocent. This judicial presupposition raises the
problem of bestiality, which is prohibited by the Mosaic law but is
not mentioned in the New Covenant. If the person committing the
act is not married, the “New Testament only” Christian faces a very
dijcult problem: On what judicial basis should the act be prohib-
ited by the State? It was prohibited under the Mosaic Covenant.
Why not today? Furthermore, what is the appropriate civil penalty?
It was execution under the Mosaic law (Lev. 20:15–16). Modern
commentators handle this judicial problem by not considering it.6
An example of this hostility toward the Mosaic case laws is Dan
G. McCartney’s essay in the Westminster Theological Seminary
symposium, Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (1990). He is a professor
at the Gordon-Conwell Divinity School. He forthrightly rejects all
of the Mosaic case laws, thereby removing the covenantal status of
civil government. “Therefore, the New Testament’s approach to the
Old Testament is not an attempt to readapt or contemporize case
law, in the way the Rabbis did. The law, or rather the Old Testa-
ment as an entirety, is focused on Christ, and through him it becomes
applicable to believers. Thus case law is not directly applicable, even
to believers; it is applicable only as a working out of God’s moral
principles, an expression of God’s character revealed in Christ.”7
That is to say – and he says it – there is no binding authority of either
the Mosaic case laws or their mandated civil sanctions. “Where le-
gal questions arise, he [Jesus] is concerned with the law’s internal

5. Idem.
6. I have raised this issue before. Gary North, 75 Bible Questions Your Instructors Pray You
Won’t Ask (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, [1984] 1996), Q. 26; Westminster’s
Confession: The Abandonment of Van Til’s Legacy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1991), pp. 211–14. I have yet to see any critic of theonomy deal in print with this problem.
7. McCartney, “The New Testament Use of the Pentateuch: Implications for the
Theonomic Movement,” in Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, edited by William S. Barker and
Robert W. Godfrey (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academie, 1990), p. 146.
 Unmuzzling the Working Ox 749

8
application, not its external enforcement.” “As we have noted, the
New Testament gives no indication of the law’s sanctions as applica-
ble to any except Christ and, through him, his people. . . . There
may indeed be punishment for people within the church (2 Cor. 10:6),
but this does not involve civil authority or those outside the church
(1 Cor. 5:12), and its only form is various degrees of removal from
fellowship (being ‘cut of’ from the people).”9
This is the theology of pietism: removing all biblical sanctions
from the civil law. This in principle leaves Christians at the mercy of
the non-Christians who write the civil laws and enforce them. The
pietist prefers man’s civil law to God’s civil law. So does the cove-
nant-breaker. This agreement has become the basis of an implicit operating
civil alliance between Christian pietists and covenant-breakers.10 Only as
the covenant-breakers extend the civil law’s jurisdiction to encom-
pass, control, and then immobilize the church do the pietists protest.
“That’s not fair! You guys promised to be neutral.” To which the
covenant-breaker responds: “We are completely neutral in the area
of religion. Our interpretation of neutrality says that the God of the
Bible has no public authority in society. You are saying that God is
relevant to some aspects of society, such as the church, or the fam-
ily, or education, and that you have the right to impose economic or
other sanctions in these areas. You discriminate against others who
say that the God of the Bible may not lawfully be invoked as the ba-
sis of public decision-making. Understand, in our view, everything
is public. Nothing is outside the realm of civil law.11 So, you are not
being neutral as we deine it. You are trying to legislate morality when
you create zones of exclusivism in which your economic or member-
ship sanctions apply. We will no longer allow you to be unneutral.”
Step by step, the Christians surrender the doctrine of God’s au-
thority in history. Step by step, their enemies push them into Chris-
tian ghettos. But ghettos are never permanent. Eventually, like the
Jewish ghettos of northern Europe and Soviet Asia, the residents
will be removed from these ghettos and sent into diferent ghettos:
concentration camps. They may not be called concentration camps.

8. Ibid., p. 143.
9. Ibid., p. 147.
10. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), pp. 2–5.
11. Secular humanists do insist on one safety zone: sexual activity.
750 DEUTERONOMY

They may be called government schools. But life in the ghetto is al-
ways at the discretion of those who make the laws and enforce them.
There is no neutrality. There is no immunity. Two kingdoms are at
war. They cannot both be triumphant in history.

Wiser Than God

The vast majority of Christians have always believed that they
can improve on the Mosaic law. On their own authority, they revise
God’s law by coming to conclusions in the name of God that deny
the speciic teachings of God’s revealed law. Then they proclaim
their annulment-through-interpretation as being in conformity with
“the true spirit of God’s law” or “the underlying principles of God’s
law.” As part of this improvement, they reject the binding authority
of God’s law. In doing so, they necessarily become advocates of
some system of law proposed by one or another group of cove-
nant-breakers. They refuse to ask themselves the obvious question:
“If not God’s law, then what?” They refuse to deal with the ethical
question: “By what other standard?”12
As an example, consider the assertion of Rev. John Gladwin, a
defender of central planning, who later became a bishop in the An-
glican Church. In a chapter in a book devoted to Christian econom-
ics, he rejects the concept of the Bible as a source of authoritative
economic guidelines or blueprints. In fact, he assures us, it is
unbiblical to search for biblical guidelines for economics. “It is un-
helpful as well as unbiblical to look to the Bible to give us a blue-
print of economic theory or structure which we then apply to our
contemporary life. We must rather work in a theological way, look-
ing to the Bible to give us experience and insight into the kingdom
of God in Jesus Christ. This then helps us discover values and meth-
ods of interpretation which we can use in understanding our present
social experience.”13 Furthermore, “There is in Scripture no blueprint
of the ideal state or the ideal economy. We cannot turn to chapters of
the Bible and ind in them a model to copy or a plan for building the

12. Greg L. Bahnsen, No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1991).
13. John Gladwin, “A Centralist Response,” in Robert G. Clouse (ed.), Wealth and Poverty:
Four Christian Views of Economics (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1984), p. 124.
 Unmuzzling the Working Ox 751

14
ideal biblical state and national economy.” He contrasts biblical
law unfavorably with theology. He then goes on to praise the wel-
fare State as an application of theological, rather than legal, in-
sights.15 Theology informs us that “there is no escape from the need
for large-scale state activity if our society is to move into a more eq-
uitable future at social and economic levels.”16 Clearly, neither the
Mosaic law nor the New Testament teaches this, but theology sup-
17
posedly does. Whose theology? Reinhold Niebuhr’s.
So, we are assured, there are no authoritative economic guide-
lines or economic blueprints in the Bible. On the other hand, there
are numerous vague and non-speciic ethical principles which just
about any Christian social theorist can invoke when promoting his
recommended reconstruction of society. All it requires to baptize
socialism is a series of nice-sounding pat phrases taken from the
book of theological liberalism, which Gladwin ofers in profusion:
“the bounds of Christian principles of human concern,” “the righ-
teousness revealed to us in God himself,” “the good,” “structural
framework of law and social values,” “gross and deepening dispari-
ties in social experience,” “spontaneity of love,” “the light of the gos-
pel,” and “the most humane principles of social order.”18
Lest you imagine that Gladwin is an aberration, consider the
fact that the two other anti-free market essayists in the book adopted
the same anti-blueprint hermeneutics. William Diehl, a defender of
Keynesianism’s State-guided economy, conidently ajrms: “The
fact that our Scriptures can be used to support or condemn any eco-
nomic philosophy suggests that the Bible is not intended to lay out
an economic plan which will apply for all times and places. If we are
to examine economic structures in the light of Christian teachings,
we will have to do it in another way.”19 Art Gish, a defender of small
communities of Christians who hold property in common, informs

14. Gladwin, “Centralist Economics,” ibid., p. 183.

15. Ibid., pp. 125–26
16. Gladwin, “Centralist Economics,” ibid., p. 193.
17. Ibid., p. 197. He cites Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). It is an odd book to cite. It
was written by the author in reaction against his youthful ling with Marxism, a book in which
he proclaimed that Jesus “did not dwell upon the social consequences of these moral actions,
because he viewed them from an inner and a transcendent perspective.” Reinhold Niebuhr,
Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribner’s, [1932] 1960), p. 264.
18. See my critique in Wealth and Poverty, p. 200.
19. William Diehl, “The Guided-Market System, ibid., p. 87.
752 DEUTERONOMY

us that “Since koinonia includes the participation of everyone in-

volved, there is no blueprint for what this would look like on a
global scale. . . . We are talking about a process, not inal answers.”
20

The fact that these statements appear in a book on Christian

economics should come as no surprise. These comments are typical
of the opinions of humanist-educated Christian intellectuals. Chris-
tians who have spent their lives in humanist educational institutions,
and who then have fed their minds on a high-fat diet of humanist
publications, in most cases have adopted the worldview of one or
another variety of humanism. They have felt emotionally compelled
to baptize their adopted worldview with a few religious-sounding
phrases. But just because someone keeps repeating “koinonia,
koinonia” as a Christian mantra does not in any way prove that his
recommended policies of common ownership will actually produce
koinonia.21 What produces peace, harmony, and increasing per
capita output is widespread faithfulness to God’s law.
It is unwise to attempt to become wiser than God. “Because the
foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is
stronger than men” (I Cor. 1:25). This is why it is our job to become
familiar with God’s Bible-revealed law. It, not the latest academic
fad, is to be our guide, generation after generation.

20. Art Gish, “Decentralist Economics,” ibid., p. 154.

21. If you wonder what “koinonia” means, you are probably not a left-wing advocate of
common ownership. Understand, I am not suggesting that voluntary common ownership is
anti-Christian, any more than I am saying that voluntary celibacy is anti-Christian. Paul
recommended celibacy (I Cor. 7:32–33). He did so, he said, because of “the present distress”
(v. 26). Similarly, the Jerusalem church held property in common (Acts 2:44; 4:32). Shortly
thereafter, a great persecution of the church began. The entire church led the city, except for
the apostles (Acts 8:1). This exodus created the irst foreign missions program in church
history: “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word”
(Acts 8:4). The fact that they had sold their property enabled them to leave the city without
looking back, as Lot’s wife had looked back. So, for temporary purposes in times of great trial,
voluntary celibacy and voluntary common ownership are legitimate, even wise. But to make
either practice a recommended institutional model for all times and places is a misuse of
historical events. The one institution where common ownership has been productive for
longer than one generation is the monastery. However, it takes celibacy to make this system
work for longer than a few years. As soon as there is a wife saying, “He’s earning as much as
you are, but you’re far more productive,” koinonia ends. In the modern State of Israel, the
kibbutz collective farms faded rapidly as important sources of national production.
 Unmuzzling the Working Ox 753

Blessed are the undeiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD
(Ps. 119:1).

Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy
law (Ps. 119:18).

So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever (Ps. 119:44).

Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live: for thy law is my
delight (Ps. 119:77).

O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day (Ps. 119:97).

My soul is continually in my hand: yet do I not forget thy law

(Ps. 119:109).

I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love (Ps. 119:113).

It is time for thee, LORD, to work: for they have made void thy law
(Ps. 119:126).

Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall ofend
them (Ps. 119:165).

I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is my delight
(Ps. 119:174).

Despite generations of Christians who have said that they be-

lieve in the Bible, word for word, they have not believed in the
119th psalm, the longest chapter in the Bible. They have spent their
lives avoiding its plain teaching. The 119th psalm is a witness
against the church. Nowhere is this clearer than in the academic ield
of economics, the original social science, which was self-consciously
structured by its founders in terms of theological agnosticism.22

Still in Force
The law against muzzling an ox is repeated twice in the New
Testament, in the context of paying church ojcers. The person who

22. William Letwin, The Origins of Scientiic Economics (Garden City, New York: Anchor,
[1963] 1965).
754 DEUTERONOMY

defends a view of God’s law that mandates a New Covenant recapit-

ulation in order for a Mosaic law to be valid can hardly dismiss this
case law. What he does dismiss as unproven is Rushdoony’s insis-
tence that this case law is a model for the others, i.e., that the Mosaic
case laws have continuing validity in the New Covenant era unless
annulled by the New Testament.
Paul’s application of this law provides commentators with an
example. The pietist prefers to operate on the assumption that un-
less a New Testament author applies a case law, the case law is no
longer valid in the New Covenant. But Jesus’ language does not val-
idate this assumption: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law,
or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulil. For verily I
say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in
no wise pass from the law, till all be fulilled” (Matt. 5:17–18).23 The
continuity of God’s law is Jesus’ hermeneutical presupposition. It is there-
fore the responsibility of the commentator to provide reasons for
the annulment of a particular case law. He may not legitimately as-
sume away continuity. Yet commentators write as though it is some-
how the burden of the defender of the case laws to prove each case
law’s continuing authority.
Beginning with Tools of Dominion, I have systematically begun
the discussion of each case law with a consideration of its theocentric
focus. If we begin with God and His relationships with mankind, we
are on more solid ground exegetically than if we begin with man, his
desires, and needs. The Bible begins with “In the beginning God. . . .”
not “In the beginning man. . . .” While it is possible to misconceive
the theocentric focus of a law, it is also possible to misconceive the
anthropocentric focus of a law. It is safer to begin with God, in
whose image man is made, than to begin with man, who is continu-
ally tempted to see God as made in man’s image.24
Because of the debate over hermeneutics, the debate over this
case law raises several issues. First, must this law be applied liter-
ally? If the farmer feeds the animal a diet designed by scientists,

23. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (2nd ed.; Phillipsberg, New Jersey:
Presbyterian and Reformed, [1977] 1984), ch. 2.
24. Ludwig Feuerbach is a classic example of this form of theological anthropocentrism.
See his book, The Essence of Christianity (1841). Cf. Gary North, Marx’s Religion of Revolution:
Regeneration Through Chaos (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, [1968] 1989), pp.
28–30.
 Unmuzzling the Working Ox 755

should he still obey this law? Maybe the ox likes to eat corn on the
cob, plus the cob, but isn’t a scientiically designed diet better for
him nutritionally? Second, to what extent is Paul’s invocation of this
law a model for all other Mosaic case laws? Is Paul’s wider applica-
tion of this case law to the afairs of men a model for other case laws?
How can we know when we have extended the application of a law
too broadly?

Literalism
In modern industrial nations, only Amish and Hutterite farmers
use animals to do their plowing. The legal issue of muzzling the ox
never arises in the context of mechanized agriculture. But Christian
missionaries work with farmers who still use oxen. What should
they tell these farmers? Should the farmers muzzle their oxen or
not?
The ox should be paid as he works in the ield as surely as the
pastor should be paid for his labor. If the farmer wants to feed his
animal before taking it into the ield, that is legitimate. Perhaps then
the animal will not eat so much in the ield. What is not legitimate is
forcing it to work while wearing a muzzle.
The animal is used to eating throughout the day. The farmer is
not to force new eating habits on a work animal. If he can train the
animal without using compulsion to eat at scheduled times, this is
not a violation of this law. What is convenient for the farmer may
become convenient for the animal. This is for the animal to decide.
In any case, the animal should not be muzzled while it is working in
the ield.

How Much More!

The case law gives us the rule governing oxen. If it applies to
oxen, how much more does it apply to men! Another case law tells
us that employers should pay their workers at the end of the day
(Deut. 24:15).25 This enables us to begin to apply this law in human
afairs. But this is only the beginning. Paul says that the muzzled ox
law also governs the payments that churches owe to ministers. In

25. Chapter 59.

756 DEUTERONOMY

other words, if it applies to day laborers, how much more to labor-

ers in the word of God!
How do we know when we have extended a case law applica-
tion too far? First, when we ind another case law that places limits
on us. Men are to be paid daily, by the end of the working day. So,
they need not be paid hourly. Also, this law implies a lunch break.
Men work with their hands, unlike an ox. They use their hands to
feed themselves. So, they may not be able to work and eat at the
same time. But if a man has food in his pocket and munches as he
works, this is legitimate unless eating raises risks for others or him-
self. This law implies that he can lawfully eat a handful of uncooked
corn from the stalks of the ield. This is ajrmed by another case law
(Deut. 23:24–25).26 These two laws also imply that he may eat the
fruit of the tree or vine as he works.
The Bible comments on the Bible. The commentator must
search the case laws to see if one modiies another. But searching the
Bible for authoritative insights into the interpretation of any passage
is the commentator’s task in every area of exegesis, not just the case
laws. The a fortiori (how much more) argument is used by New Tes-
tament writers to deal with subjects other than the Mosaic law.27

Conclusion
This case law governs men’s treatment of their working oxen. It
also governs churches’ treatment of their ministers. In between
these two applications of this law lies the general area of employers’
relations with their employees. The governing hermeneutical prin-
ciple here is this: “If this law governs men’s relationships with sub-
ordinate animals, how much more does it govern their relationships
with subordinate men.” There is nothing in this case law to indicate
that it had something to do with either a Mosaic seed law or a land
law. Paul’s extension of this law to the payment of full-time church
workers indicates that it was a cross-boundary law. It applied out-
side the land of Israel in Moses’ day, and it still applies today.

26. Chapter 57.

27. See, for example, Paul’s discussion of the casting of of Israel and the resulting blessings
to the gentiles, which he contrasts with the blessings the gentiles can expect when Israel is
grafted back into the olive tree of faith. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols. (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1965), II, pp. 77–84 (Rom. 11:12–15).
 62
Levirate Marriage MARRIAGE
LEVIRATE and Family Name
AND FAMILY NAME

If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the
wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s
brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the
duty of an husband’s brother unto her. And it shall be, that the irstborn
which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead,
that his name be not put out of Israel (Deut. 25:5–6).

This law was a seed law. The preservation of a man’s name is

clearly stated here to be the reason for this law. So, the theocentric
focus of this law is inheritance. But how? The preservation of God’s
name in history is not dependent on His biological issue. God is be-
yond the creation and history. Yet we know that every Old Cove-
nant law had something to do with God’s relationship to man. What
was it in this case? It could not have anything to do with God’s de-
sire for biological heirs. God is not Zeus. This fact should warn us:
this law had to do with covenantal inheritance, not biological inheri-
tance. The dead brother had not left an heir. This meant that his
name would be put out of Israel unless his brother intervened bio-
logically. Why was this necessary? As we shall see later in this chap-
ter, this law had to do with adoption and the transfer of inheritance. This
was its theocentric focus. This law had a great deal to do with the
family, but the family considered as a covenantal institution rather
than biological.
The Latin legal term, levir, refers to the brother of a husband.
This Latin word has for centuries been applied to the relationship
described in this text. A brother was required to bond sexually with
his sister-in-law under two limiting conditions: the two brothers had

757
758 DEUTERONOMY

lived together, and one brother had died without leaving an heir.
The irst limiting condition has not always been recognized by ex-
positors. If the brothers did not dwell together, this case law was not
applicable.1

Major Problems for Bible Commentators

Commentators have trouble with this law, so diferent is it from
today’s practices. They rarely have disciplined themselves to think
covenantally, so they have trouble identifying the central focus of a
law that seems so diferent culturally. The author of the section on
“Levirate” in the M’Clintock & Strong encyclopedia, a conservative
late-nineteenth-century work, insisted that “A wise and just legislator
could scarcely have been inclined to patronize any such law. . . .”2 In
writing this, the author revealed his own patronizing attitude toward
God’s law – an attitude common to most Christian expositors.
Many things that we would like to know about the application of
this unique Mosaic ojce are not available in the text. We must sur-
mise a great deal. For example, the text does not say that the levir
had to be unmarried in order to marry the widow. Polygamy existed
lawfully under the Old Covenant. On the one hand, this law was a
positive ethical command; no exception based on polygamy ap-
pears in the text. On the other hand, if there was no exception based
on the levir’s status as a married man, then this law mandated polyg-
amy in a unique situation. Is this likely?
We know that this law superseded the law forbidding a man to
marry his deceased brother’s wife (Lev. 18:6, 16). The penalty for
such a union was childlessness (Lev. 20:21), implying God’s personal
intervention, but this law was given speciically so that there might be
a child. There can be no doubt that this law was superior to the law
prohibiting a brother from marrying his dead brother’s wife. It is pos-
sible that this law mandated polygamy in a unique situation. Yet this
seems contrary to our understanding of God’s standards for mar-
riage. Because the text does not mention polygamy, the commenta-
tor must look for hints in the passage that may ofer clues to an
answer – hints that are not apparent on the irst or second reading.3

1. The Book of Ruth makes this clear, as we shall see.

2. John M’Clintock and James Strong (eds.), Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and
Ecclesiastical Literature, 12 vols. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1894), V, p. 389.
3. See below: section on “What About Polygamy?”
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 759

Seed and Name

Let us begin with God. Israel was God’s son (Ex. 4:22). This
meant that Israel bore God’s name. The preservation of a man’s
name in Israel had something to do with the preservation of God’s
name in history. But what? God was not dependent on Israel to pre-
serve His name, yet Israel’s survival was important for God’s repu-
tation. After the exodus generation’s attempt to stone Joshua and
Caleb for having told them that God would give them victory over
the Canaanites, God threatened to destroy Israel and raise up a new
nation for Moses to lead. Moses reminded Him that His reputation
was at stake: His promises to Israel. The issue was disinheritance: “I
will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will
make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they” (Num. 14:12).
Moses appealed to God’s reputation, not Israel’s legal claim: “Now
if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which
have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the LORD
was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto
them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness” (vv. 15–16).
God heeded Moses’ argument. The decisive issue was God’s reputa-
tion, not Israel’s biological survival as a nation or son.
In contrast, Israel, not being God, was dependent on seed. The
future of Israel was tied to God’s promise to Abraham to preserve
Abraham’s seed: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises
made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to
thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). Again, it was God’s promise to
Israel that was crucial to Israel, not God’s dependence on Israel. To
fulill this promise, God had to provide inter-generational continu-
ity, i.e., inheritance. So, to this extent, God’s reputation was reliant
on Israel. This raises the theological problem of conditional vs. un-
conditional promises. If the promise was unconditional, then God
had to see to it that Israel survived. If it was conditional, then He
had the option of cutting of the nation if it rebelled. The resolution
of this seeming antinomy is found in the doctrines of predestination
and imputation. First, predestination: God made a promise to Abra-
ham. To this promise were attached conditions, such as circumci-
sion. God decreed from the beginning of time that these conditions
would be met representatively by Jesus Christ. This brings us to the
doctrine of imputation. God imputed Christ’s future righteousness
760 DEUTERONOMY

to Israel by grace. The future advent of the promised Seed in history

was therefore the basis of Israel’s survival.4
This places the promised Seed at the center of the life of Israel.
This Seed would come through Judah (Gen. 49:10). Thus, the sepa-
ration of the tribes and their continuity through time was basic to
God’s covenant with Israel. It was in this context that the levirate
marriage law operated. It had to do with the preservation of a man’s
name. The deceased brother was part of a family. This family was
part of a tribe. Tribal life in Old Covenant Israel was basic to the
survival of the nation, not because of some inherent beneit of tribal-
ism but because of the promise to Abraham regarding the coming
Seed. This same promise of seed had been made to Adam (Gen. 3:15),
but there was no element of nationalism or tribalism in this promise.
There was a fundamental element of nationalism in God’s promise
to Abraham. There was a fundamental element of tribalism in Ja-
cob’s promise regarding Shiloh – an extension of the Abrahamic
promise. So, the seed laws applied inside the boundaries of Israel,
but not beyond. The Adamic promise of seed applied to the world
outside Israel’s borders. The same Seed – Jesus Christ – was the focus
of all three promises, but their fulillment was achieved diferently.

The Kinsman Redeemer

The Mosaic seed laws were inheritance laws. The levirate mar-
riage law also regulated inheritance. The irstborn son5 would in-
herit the dead man’s name. Why did this inheritance of a name
matter so much in Israelite society? Because the preservation of a
man’s name meant that he had an inheritance in Israel’s future. He
was heir to the promises that God had given to Abraham and Moses.
The preservation of a man’s name was in this sense eschatological. It
had to do with Jacob’s promise to Judah: “The sceptre shall not de-
part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Gen. 49:10).
An Israelite male was supposed to look forward to this messianic day
of the Lord. Through his irstborn, he participated in Israel’s eschatol-
ogy. The Israelites’ family name system was future-oriented. The
irstborn seed was basic to a family’s future, just as the promised

4. See Chapter 13: section on “Ethical Cause and Efect.”

5. Or daughter, if only daughters were born.
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 761

messianic Seed was basic to Israel’s future. Both forms of covenantal

seed were linked eschatologically by Jacob’s prophecy regarding
Shiloh.
The brother who had enjoyed the use of the family’s landed in-
heritance had a legal obligation: to marry his dead brother’s wife
and bring an heir into the world. This law is clear: the two brothers
had to have been living in close proximity. Their lives in this sense
had to be intertwined. This close geographical proximity had made
each brother the kinsman redeemer/blood avenger (go’el) of the
other. If one of them had been killed by another man where there
was no witness, the survivor had the responsibility of pursuing the
perpetrator (Num. 35:19, 27). The nearest of kin judicially was the
nearest of kin geographically. He would have been the person who
had the greatest likelihood of overtaking the suspect on the highway
as the latter raced toward a city of refuge. A brother who resided
elsewhere was not the blood avenger, even if he was closer in age to
the dead brother.
The nearest of kin geographically was the kinsman redeemer.
One of the responsibilities of the kinsman redeemer was to serve as
the levir. He redeemed the name of his childless dead brother. This is
what Onan refused to do for his dead brother, Er (Gen. 38:9). God
then killed him for this sin (v. 10).6 Onan had enjoyed the fruits of
his inheritance, which included citizenship and a name, but he was
unwilling to accept the obligation associated with this inheritance,
which was associated with the seed, i.e., the family’s future. One
branch of the family had been cut of biologically. This threatened
the name of the whole family. No branch was to be cut of in this
way when two brothers lived together.

A Matter of Inheritance
The laws governing inheritance were generally patriarchal,
though not exclusively. “And thou shalt speak unto the children of
Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his

6. The traditional interpretation of this verse by Roman Catholics insists that Onan’s sin
was not his refusal to consummate the marriage as such, but rather his enjoyment of sex
without coitus. Onanism is the Church’s euphemism for either masturbation or coitus
interruptus. This interpretation of the passage is incorrect. God slew him because he had gone
into Tamar and ritually deiled her, her husband’s name, and his levirate obligation.
762 DEUTERONOMY

inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter,

then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. And if he have
no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father’s
brethren. And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his
inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he
shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of
judgment, as the LORD commanded Moses” (Num. 27:8–11). A
man’s land went to his male heirs at his death. If he had no male
heirs, it went to his daughters (Num. 27:8). If he had no son or
daughter, it went to his closest male relatives (Num. 27:9).
This information helps us to identify who the kinsman redeemer/
blood avenger was in Mosaic Israel. There is no law that expressly
says that the geographically closest adult male (though not a father) to
the inheritance was a man’s kinsman redeemer, but the structure of
biblical authority implies that this was the case. Biblically, the link be-
tween judicial responsibility and economic beneits is strong.7 I con-
clude that the geographically adjacent relative who would inherit a
childless man’s legacy was the irst eligible man to marry his child-
less widow. He was the kinsman redeemer.

The Story of Ruth

The Book of Ruth is the story of the levirate marriage in action.
In the case of Ruth, no surviving brother had lived alongside her
late husband. So, she had no levirate claim on her husband’s kins-
man redeemer, who would have been a cousin back in Israel. When
Naomi returned to Israel, she had legal standing as the wife of an Is-
raelite. Boaz voluntarily agreed to marry Ruth if the nearest of kin to
Elimelech refused.
The Bible’s account is important for our understanding of the
Mosaic economics of inheritance. The negotiation between Boaz
and Naomi’s kinsman redeemer began with a discussion of land,
not marriage. Because Naomi had no surviving heirs, her husband’s
nearest kinsman was eligible to inherit her land. But since she was

7. “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did
according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit
things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given,
of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask
the more” (Luke 12:47–48).
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 763

still alive, he would have to pay her for the use of the land until her
death. He would pay a lease until her death, and then it would be
his. He understood this. What he did not know was that there was a
catch: marriage to Ruth, who could yet raise up seed in the name of
Naomi’s dead husband, Elimelech.

Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold,
the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, Ho, such a
one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat down. And he
took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye down here. And they
sat down. And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of
the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother
Elimelech’s: And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the in-
habitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, re-
deem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for
there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I
will redeem it. Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the ield of the hand
of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the
dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance. And the kins-
man said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheri-
tance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it.
Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeem-
ing and concerning changing, for to conirm all things; a man plucked of
his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour: and this was a testimony in Israel.
Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew of his
shoe. And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are wit-
nesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was
Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi. Moreover Ruth the
Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up
the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be
not cut of from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are
witnesses this day. And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders,
said, We are witnesses. The LORD make the woman that is come into thine
house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel:
and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem: And let
thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of
the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman (Ruth 4:1–12;
8
emphasis added).

8. The text mentions Tamar, who had been cheated by Onan of her right to raise up seed
in the name of her husband. This is a clear reference to this land transaction as an aspect of the
levirate marriage law.
764 DEUTERONOMY

The kinsman wanted to buy Naomi’s land; he did not want mar-
riage to her daughter-in-law. He did not have to marry Ruth, how-
ever. He had not lived close to Ruth’s husband on the family’s land.
Neither Ruth nor Naomi had the right to spit in the man’s face. He
had the right not to marry Ruth in order to raise up seed in the name
of his nephew. But if he refused and Boaz did, then Boaz would be-
come the nearest of kin to the dead brother, Naomi’s husband.
Consider the reason ofered by the kinsman for not marrying
Ruth. It had to do with his own inheritance. “I cannot redeem it for
myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to
thyself; for I cannot redeem it.” He had hoped to inherit the land of
his heirless deceased brother.9 His sister-in-law was too old to bear
children. He was therefore willing to buy it from Naomi before she
died. This would have given her money to live on. The land would
have come to him eventually. But Boaz was proposing something
else. If Boaz married Ruth, and Ruth gave birth, then Elimelech’s
land would pass to the child of Ruth, who would become the fam-
ily’s irstborn son. This land would be part of the name of Ruth’s
dead husband.
Because of Boaz’s willingness to become Ruth’s husband, the
existing kinsman could gain control over Naomi’s land only by
marrying Ruth. But if she bore him an heir, he could not pass this
land to his own children. The land would pass to Ruth’s irstborn.
Assuming that he was single, and assuming that he married Ruth,
the land owned by Elimelech could not become his namesake’s land;
it would become Elimelech’s namesake’s land: Ruth’s irstborn. His
own lesh and blood would inherit this land, but this biological heir
would not be his judicial namesake. So powerful was the concept of the
family name in Israel that even for the sake of gaining control over a
farm that he was willing to buy in advance of Naomi’s death, and
then passing this farm to his own biological heir, the ofer did not
persuade the kinsman to marry Ruth. He passed this legal opportu-
nity to Boaz.
For the existing kinsman to lose the inheritance from Elimelech
through Naomi, another kinsman had to marry Ruth. Heirship could
not be through Ruth as a mother; it could only be through another
kinsman who would act representatively on behalf of Ruth’s late

9. The brother had fathered two sons, but both had died.
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 765

husband. Family land in Mosaic Israel went to male heirs unless

there was a surviving biological daughter. Ruth could never possess
an inheritance in Israel to leave to her irstborn except through the
decision of a kinsman of her late husband to adopt her as a wife.
Without Ruth’s marriage to a kinsman of Elimelech, the land would
automatically pass at Naomi’s death to Elimelech’s nearest of kin,
i.e., Elimelech’s kinsman redeemer.
Elimelech’s kinsman redeemer could not build up his own in-
heritance if Ruth married Boaz. Boaz’s marriage would make Boaz
the nearest of kin to Elimelech. If Ruth did not bear a child, the land
would then pass to Boaz, for by marrying Ruth, he would become
Elimelech’s nearest of kin.
The existing kinsman redeemer had to approve of this transfer,
which was why Boaz assembled the elders as witnesses. The existing
kinsman redeemer could retain his claim on the inheritance only by
marrying Ruth and then having Ruth remain barren, as she had
been in Moab. If she bore a child who lived long enough to bear
children to inherit, the existing kinsman redeemer and his heirs
could not inherit this land. He decided that this marriage was not
worth the added economic risk. If he married Ruth, and she bore
him a child, all of the capital that he would invest into the land
would become part of another man’s covenant line. It would be his
biological child’s family line, but not his family name’s line. This is
evidence that blood lines in Israel were regarded as less important
than covenant lines. Family name was more important than biology.

Name Above Biology

This is an extremely important theological point. Rahab and
Ruth were adopted into their husband’s covenant lines. This adop-
tion was by oath: a marriage oath. Through them came David the
king and Jesus, who was a greater king. Through two foreign women,
the covenant line was extended. More to the point, through these
women the covenant line in Israel was extended: Judah’s. Most to
the point, through them the promised Seed was born (Matt. 1:5, 16).
The crucial covenant line was preserved through marriage, and, in
Ruth’s case, levirate marriage to the biological heir of Rahab: Boaz
(Matt. 1:5).
Boaz became the kinsman redeemer of Elimelech’s line. He did
this by marrying Ruth, a gentile. Only through his marriage to Ruth
could he serve as the kinsman redeemer of Elimelech’s line. That is,
766 DEUTERONOMY

Boaz, as an heir in the line of Judah and, as it turned out, progenitor

of Jesus the redeemer, exercised this ojce only by marrying a
Moabite. Moabite males took ten generations to become citizens in
Israel (Deut. 23:3). As heirs of an incestuous relationship between
Lot and his irstborn daughter (Gen. 19:37), Moabites were re-
garded as far more perverse covenantally than Egyptians, who
could become citizens in three generations (Deut. 23:7–8). But be-
cause of Boaz’s judicial role as kinsman redeemer through marriage,
Ruth was adopted into the covenant line in just one generation. This
was the authority of the marriage oath: adoption. Of all legal rela-
tionships biblically, adoption is the most authoritative. Through
adoption, the disinherited children of Adam re-enter the family of
God. Adoption is the basis of inheritance. Adoption is by covenant
oath, not biology.
Ruth, a gentile, was adopted into Israel’s supreme covenant line
by the willingness of a man to become a kinsman redeemer to her
late husband. “Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon,
have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead
upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut of from
among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses
this day” (Ruth 4:10). By lowering himself socially by marrying a
Moabite, and by being willing to raise up seed for his brother
Elimelech by way of Elimelech’s dead son, Boaz was granted an ex-
traordinary blessing. He became the biological forefather of David
and Jesus. Legally, these heirs were not part of his personal cove-
nant line. Only through Elimelech’s name could he participate in
the crucial covenant line. Only by being willing to raise up seed on
behalf of another did he unknowingly place himself as the key
igure in the extension of the key covenant line in Israel and, for that
matter, in all of history. Boaz became the biggest covenantal some-
body in his generation only because he was willing to become a
covenantal nobody in the extension of Elimelech’s line. The land
that he presumably bought from Naomi became the family inheri-
tance in another man’s line. Any improvements that he made in this
land became another family line’s property. By abandoning his own
name covenantally, he thereby became the greatest name of his
generation, a name that is listed in both of the messianic genealogies
in the New Testament (Matt. 1:5; Luke 3:32).
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 767

The Imputation of a Man’s Name

I have argued that this case law was a seed law. The irstborn of
10

a levirate marital union inherited his deceased father’s name. The

text implies that later-born children did not inherit the deceased
man’s name.11 The inheritance was above all covenantal: part of
God’s promise to Abraham. The deceased man’s name was im-
puted to the heir by God and by law, even though he was born of
the levir. The imputation of a man’s name was the essence of his inheri-
tance: from his fathers and to his children. God had revealed this to
Abraham: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless
thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I
will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and
in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:2–3).
What the levirate law tells us is that the imputation of a man’s
name was more fundamental than either genetic inheritance or fam-
ily discipline. In the context of the continuing academic debate be-
tween “nature” (genetics) and “nurture” (social environment),
neither was fundamental in Israel. What was fundamental was judi-
cial imputation. The levir performed a redemptive act on behalf of
his brother’s covenant line. This act was far more judicial than bio-
logical or social. He provided biological seed and family discipline,
but the decisive factor was judicial-covenantal-eschatological, not
biological or social. It was so decisive that the law prohibiting a
brother from marrying his sister-in-law was suspended.
Because of Boaz’s grace to Naomi through Ruth, a unique and
judicially unconventional thing took place: Boaz replaced Elimelech
in Israelite history as part of the covenant line of David (I Chron. 2:
11–12). In terms of the law of the levir, the family line through Ruth
was Elimelech’s, but Elimelech is never mentioned in relation to
David. It was Boaz’s marriage to Ruth in the name of Elimelech that
secured Boaz’s place in history. As the heir of Rahab, his act of
mercy grafted Rahab into the kingly line retroactively. Judicially,
Boaz’s family line is irrelevant to the coming of David. Yet because
of his grace shown to a gentile woman, his family name entered the
most important family line in man’s history. Boaz established his

10. As a law governing inheritance, it was also a land law.

11. If the irstborn son died, then his ojce as name-carrier would have passed to the oldest
later-born son.
768 DEUTERONOMY

name and his family line’s name in history by a merciful covenantal

act which, in terms of the Mosaic law, submerged his name to
Elimelech’s. Boaz, who had not even been the closest of kin to
Elimelech’s son, and who had in no way been required to serve as
levir, replaced Elimelech in Israel’s family lists.
Jesus would imitate Boaz’s judicial precedent, not by marrying
but by refusing to marry. Refusing to marry, He thereby transferred
His inheritance to His kinsmen. He died on their behalf, so that they
could be legally adopted into His covenant line.12 His death and res-
urrection have ofered to the gentiles God’s covenantal inheritance
by means of adoption, just as Boaz’s willingness to marry Ruth
ofered her covenantal inheritance through adoption. As the heir of
Jacob’s promise (Gen. 49:10), Jesus was the true heir in Israel, the
son of David the king. But Jesus was not Joseph’s biological heir.
Here we see another act of mercy: Joseph’s refusal to put Mary
away for fornication with another man. Joseph adopted Jesus as his
irstborn son, and in doing so, gained shame for himself: the birth of
his irstborn son in less than nine months after marriage. As David’s
namesake and heir, Jesus transferred His kingdom to the church
(Matt. 21:43). He extended His kingdom grant, not by holding onto
it in history but by relinquishing it. Like Boaz, by relinquishing His
covenantal claim in Old Covenant Israel – His name – Jesus se-
cured the inheritance for his kinsmen, thereby also securing His
name in history. What Boaz had done on a small scale, Jesus did on
a large scale. The judicial heart of what both of them did involved a
transfer of inheritance by surrendering the family name. In doing
this, Jesus, like Boaz, secured His name in history.

The Mosaic Family as a Tribal Unit

The seed laws and land laws existed because of Jacob’s granting
of blessings in Genesis 49, and speciically, his prophecy regarding

12. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:3–5).
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 769

13
the coming ruler, Shiloh. They were tribal laws, not laws govern-
ing the family unit as such. Had they been laws governing the family
unit as such, they would have been cross-boundary laws, universal
in scope then and now. The law of the levirate marriage would still
be in force. This law is no longer in force because Jacob’s prophecy
was fulilled in Jesus Christ.
Covenantal adoption has completely replaced the law of the
levirate marriage in the New Covenant. Jesus established the model.
His death, which ensured His lack of biological issue, was inherent
in His plan of adoption and the transfer of kingdom inheritance.
Confession of faith has replaced tribal name as the basis of biblical inheri-
tance. Confession of faith involves adopting a new family name.
“And the disciples were called Christians irst in Antioch” (Acts
11:26b). A man’s legal claim to a portion of God’s kingdom inheri-
tance is based on his possession of Christ’s name as an adopted son.
The New Covenant’s preservation of name through adoption by
conversion has replaced the Old Covenant’s preservation of name
through adoption by reproduction.14 What has changed, above all,
is the tribal basis of inheritance. Covenantally mandated tribes no
longer exist. This is why the seed laws and land laws have been re-
placed by the laws governing confession of faith and church mem-
bership. The church is the new nation that has inherited God’s
kingdom (Matt. 21:43). It has no tribes.

What About Polygamy?

I have already said that the text says nothing about the possibil-
ity that the levir was a married man at the time of his brother’s
death. If he was married, was he required by law to obey this law?

13. The practice of levirate marriage existed earlier than Genesis 49. Onan’s rebellion
indicates that the practice did exist, and it was a law, for God’s negative sanction came on
him. Without law, there is no legitimate sanction. This was not, however, a written law. Its
application was tied to the tribal units of Jacob’s family. Lot’s daughters had used a perverse
application of the levirate marriage. They had deceived their father when he was drunk.
Tamar similarly deceived the widower Judah, her father-in-law, but Judah had not been
drunk, and she did this only after Judah had demanded that she wait for the surviving
youngest brother to grow up and fulill his then-unwritten duty as a levir. She should have
been released by Judah from any obligation to serve as the mother of Er’s covenantal heir.
14. The mark of adoption in the Old Covenant was circumcision.
770 DEUTERONOMY

Let us look for hints. Here is one. The law speciied that the
irstborn son would inherit the deceased brother’s name. The lan-
guage implies that the irstborn son inherited all of the deceased
brother’s land. Land and name were linked. Under normal circum-
stances, all of the sons bore their father’s name. All had a claim on
part of the inheritance, with the eldest brother gaining a double por-
tion (Deut. 21:15–17). But in this case, the irstborn alone inherited
the dead man’s name.
That there was a irstborn implies that there could have been
subsequent children. The marital union was an on-going union.
Why were these later children cut out of the dead brother’s inheri-
tance? I conclude that the sons born later would have been part of the cov-
enant line of the biological father. They would have divided up the
inheritance which he had received from his father. They were not
allowed to participate in the inheritance of the irstborn because this
was his inheritance through his mother’s dead husband.
If I am correct, this means that the levir secured his own cove-
nant line through marriage to his sister-in-law. He was not asked by
God to forfeit his own covenant line for the sake of his brother. He
was asked only to forfeit his irstborn son for the sake of his brother.
His biologically irstborn son would not be his covenantally irstborn
son. His biologically irstborn son would bear another man’s name.
His biologically second-born son would become his covenantally
irstborn son. In short, his second-born son would become his true
heir, his namesake.15
If he was already married, the incorporation into his household
of his sons through the brother’s wife would have reduced the size of
the plots inherited by the sons of his irst wife. There is no doubt that
this dilution of her sons’ inheritance would have been resisted by
the irst wife. This dilution would have constituted their economic
disinheritance, though not covenantal disinheritance. The children
of the irst wife would not have lost their family names, only their
portion of their father’s land. This would have constituted a double
disinheritance. If the husband refused to take his sister-in-law, then
at her death or her remarriage to a non-kinsman, her late husband’s

15. The theme of the second-born son who inherits is repeated in the Old Covenant. It
points to the distinction between Adam and Jesus as the true heir of God. In this case,
however, the distinction had nothing to do with sin and rebellion by the irstborn.
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 771

land would have passed to his brethren. Perhaps the levir was the
only brother. From an economic standpoint, performing the duty of
the levir imposed a double economic burden on the children of the
irst wife: irst, the dilution of their legacy, which they would then
share with the new wife’s children later-born; second, the future for-
feiture of the levir’s portion of his deceased brother’s land. If polyg-
amy was mandated by this law, then a wise wife would have
recommended a move away from the jointly operated family farm
until such time as a newly married brother produced his irst child.
Because of the potential disinheritance aspect of the arrange-
ment under polygamy, I conclude that this law did not apply to a
brother who was already married. The biological sons of the levir
would have had to forfeit too much. The irstborn son would have
gained all of the dead man’s legacy, while his older half brothers
and younger brothers would have had to divide up the legacy of
their biological father. Such a division of property would have been
too heavily weighted to the economic advantage of one son.
The irstborn of a non-polygamous levirate marriage received
his legacy from the dead man’s estate – biologically, his uncle;
covenantally, his father. His younger brothers, if any, divided up
the levir’s estate. Under such an arrangement, the second-born son
would inherit the double portion of the biological father’s estate.
That was clearly an advantage for him. This estate would be larger
than it would have been had there been no legacy from the dead
man. That was an advantage for all of the brothers. Their judicial
half brother received a large legacy, but this legacy would not have
been in the family had the irst man not died, so this legacy did not
cost the other brothers anything that they might otherwise have
inherited.
The economics of the levirate marriage points to potential eco-
nomic disinheritance in a polygamous arrangement. This is not
proof that a married levir was not mandated to marry his sis-
ter-in-law, for covenantal concerns in Israel were to be respected
over economic concerns when the two were in conlict. But in the
absence of speciic language dealing with the question of polygamy,
we can legitimately look for potential injustice that would have re-
sulted from polygamy. Economic disinheritance was surely a nega-
tive factor.
Because a wise wife would have had an economic incentive to
recommend departure from the family farm upon the marriage of a
772 DEUTERONOMY

brother, I regard the levirate law as a law governing unmarried

levirs. The economics of the arrangement under polygamy would
have undermined the enforcement of the law. This would have re-
duced the number of levirate marriages. It seems unreasonable to
suppose that God would have mandated polygamy, only to leave an
obvious escape hatch for irst wives to recommend: moving the
family of the family’s land for a year or two until the brother had an
heir. If this law’s covenantal efects were so important that it man-
dated polygamy, there would have been no loophole. I conclude
that it was not intended to apply to married levirs.
We must consider briely the refusal of Elimelech’s relative to
marry Ruth. He could have justiied his refusal by invoking the fact
that his kinsman had died outside the land. Clearly, they had not
been living close to each other. Instead, he invoked the economic
implications of inheritance: “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I
mar mine own inheritance.” If he was not married, then in what way
would marrying Ruth have been a threat to his inheritance? One
answer: he was a widower with sons. Any sons born to Ruth beyond
the irst would have diluted his sons’ inheritance. Another possible
answer: he would have had to spend time and money in building up
the land that his biologically irstborn son would inherit. So, this
passage cannot be used to prove that he was married. Nevertheless,
this passage also cannot be used to disprove the possibility that he
was already married or was a widower with sons. It does not pro-
vide sujcient information.

Conclusion
The levirate marriage law was a Mosaic seed law that increased
the likelihood of the eschatological survival of all family lines within
a tribe. It placed family name above immediate bloodline relation-
ships. The irstborn of a levirate union would inherit both name and
land from the deceased covenantal father, not from the biological
father. The levir, as a kinsman redeemer, acted to establish his dead
brother’s covenant line.
In the post-A.D. 70 era, there are no covenantally relevant tribal
lines, for Jacob’s prophecy was fulilled in Jesus Christ. Furthermore,
in the post-ascension New Covenant era, Jesus Christ serves as the
kinsman redeemer/blood avenger. This ojce exists nowhere else.
There are no longer any cities of refuge. There is no longer an
earthly high priest whose death liberates a man who is seeking
 Levirate Marriage and Family Name 773

refuge from the blood avenger. Both in its capacity as a seed law and
as a law regulating the ojce of kinsman redeemer, this law has been
annulled by the New Covenant.
 63

JUSTJust Weights and

WEIGHTS ANDJustice
JUSTICE

Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.
Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. But
thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt
thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy
God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously,
are an abomination unto the LORD thy God (Deut. 25:13–16).

The theocentric focus of this law was God as the cosmic Judge
who does not favor persons. He executes judgment in terms of His
ixed law. Diverse weights are the equivalent of shifting law and in-
justice. They are a form of theft. This was not a land law or a seed
law. It was a cross-boundary law.
To serve as a weight or measure, a physical object must not be
subject to extensive change. There will be some change, impercep-
tible over short or even fairly long periods, because man and his
world decay. Physical objects are subject to the processes of decline.
They are under the burden of cursed nature: entropy.1 But a weight
or a measure is noted for its comparative permanence in a world of
lux. This permanence is what gives the weight or measure its
unique capability of serving as a means of comparison over time.
Men can compare diferent things over time because these things
can be compared to a third thing, which serves as a reference point.2
Without reference points, history would be nothing but lux. God

1. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1988).
2. For example, modern man is told by scientists that space is curved. The correct answer
is: “Compared to what?”

774
 Just Weights and Justice 775

and His covenant law are man’s reference points. Weights and mea-
sures are analogies to God’s covenant.
By comparing the man who uses unjust weights to an abomina-
tion, this law points to the worst transgressions of the Egyptians and
Canaanites. “And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall
sacriice the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo,
shall we sacriice the abomination of the Egyptians before their
eyes, and will they not stone us?” (Ex. 8:26). “And the land is
deiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land
itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my stat-
utes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abomina-
tions; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that so-
journeth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of
the land done, which were before you, and the land is deiled;)”
(Lev. 18:25–27). “The graven images of their gods shall ye burn
with ire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor
take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination
to the LORD thy God” (Deut. 7:25). But why is this form of theft so re-
pulsive to God? Because it is a representative act: to identify God as
a liar and false gods as truth-tellers. Using a dishonest weight is not
merely theft; it is a major moral crime, comparable to idolatry. It is a de-
ception that was representative of Satan’s deception of mankind:
calling man to worship a false god.
I have commented on the judicial meaning of weights and mea-
sures in Boundaries and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Leviti-
cus. Because it was published only electronically, I have decided to
reprint part of that lengthy analysis.

*******

Just Measures and a Just Society

The familiar Western symbol of justice is the blindfolded woman
holding a balance scale. The blindfold symbolizes the court’s unwill-
ingness to recognize persons. The scale symbolizes ixed standards
of justice: a ixed law applied to the facts of the case. Justice is sym-
bolically linked to weights.
Justice cannot be quantiied,3 yet symbolically it is represented
by the ultimate determinant of quantity: a scale. An honest scale

3. See below: “Intuition and Measurement.”

776 DEUTERONOMY

registers very tiny changes in the weight of the things being weighed.
A scale can be balanced only by adding or removing a quantity of
the thing being measured until the weights on each side are equal,
meaning as close to equal as the scale can register.4 Even here, the
establishment of a precise balance may take several attempts. An
average of the attempts then becomes the acceptable measure.
The ability of men to make comparisons is best exempliied in
the implements of physical measurement. Men adopt the language
of physical measurement when they speak of making historical or
judicial comparisons. For example, the consumer balances his check-
book. This does not mean that he places it on a scale. Or he weighs
the expected advantages and disadvantages of some decision.
The economist constructs what is known as an index number in
order to compare the price level – meaning prices of speciic goods
and services – in one period of time with those in another period.
He assigns weights to certain factors in the mathematical construct
known as an index number. He says, for example, that a change in
the price of automobiles – Hondas rather than Rolls-Royces, of
course – is more important to the average consumer than a change
in the price of tea. This was not true, however, in Boston in 1773. So,
the economist-as-historian has to keep re-examining his “basket of
relevant (representative) goods” from time to time. He must ask
himself: Which goods and services are more important to the aver-
age person’s economic well-being? But there is no literal real-world
basket of goods; there is no literal real-world average consumer;
there is no means of literally weighing the importance of anything.
Yet we can barely think about making economic comparisons with-
out importing the symbolism of weights and measures.
The language of politics also cannot avoid the metaphor of mea-
surement. The political scientist speaks of checks and balances in the
constitutional order of a federalist system. These are supposed to re-
duce the likelihood of the centralization of power into the hands of a
clique or one man. That is, there are checks and balances on the ex-
ercise of power. These are institutional, not literal.

4. There are physical limits on the accuracy of scales. The best balance scales today can
measure changes as small as one-tenth of a microgram. Grolier Encyclopedia (1990): “Weights
and Measures.” God’s civil law calls for equal justice, not perfect justice. Cf. Gary North,
Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1985), ch. 19: “Perfect Justice.”
 Just Weights and Justice 777

The language of measurement is inescapable. This is an implica-

5
tion of point three of the biblical covenant model: standards. As
surely as societies create bureaus that establish standards of mea-
surement, so God has established permanent judicial standards.
Both kinds of standards must be observed by law-abiding people.

The Representative Case

The preservation of just weights and measures in the Mosaic
Covenant was important for symbolic reasons as well as economic
reasons. As case law, it represented a wider class of crimes. It was
important in itself: prohibiting theft through fraud. But there was
something unique about a case law governing weights and mea-
sures: it was representative of injustice in general. “Ye shall do no un-
righteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure”
(Lev. 19:35). The language of unrighteousness and judgment has a
wider application than merely economic transactions. “Ye shall do
no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person
of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteous-
ness shalt thou judge thy neighbour” (Lev. 19:15). This states the
fundamental principle of all biblical justice.
To understand why weights and measures are representative of
civil justice in general, we need to understand what was involved in
the speciic violation. The seller can better aford the specialized
weighing equipment of his trade than the individual buyer could.
He is therefore in a position to cheat the buyer by rigging the equip-
ment. But the narrowly deined crime of using rigged measures is represen-
tative of the whole character of the civil order: a violation of justice at the
most fundamental level. Analogous to the businessman, the judge is
not to use his specialized skills or his authority to rig any case against
one of the disputants. The legal structure is regarded as a specialized
piece of equipment, analogous to a scale. No one in charge of its op-
erations is allowed to tamper with this system in order to beneit any
individual or class of individuals. To do so would constitute theft.
Injustice is seen in the Bible as a form of theft. This was Samuel’s message
to Israel:

5. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 3.
778 DEUTERONOMY

And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto your
voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you. And now,
behold, the king walketh before you: and I am old and grayheaded; and,
behold, my sons are with you: and I have walked before you from my
childhood unto this day. Behold, here I am: witness against me before the
LORD, and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I
taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose
hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? and I will re-
store it you. And they said, Thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us,
neither hast thou taken ought of any man’s hand. And he said unto them,
The LORD is witness against you, and his anointed is witness this day, that
ye have not found ought in my hand. And they answered, He is witness
(I Sam. 12:1–5).

Injustice is also linked to false weights and measures. Isaiah

made all these connections clear in his initial accusation against the
rulers of Israel: “Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with
water: Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every
one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the
fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them”
(Isa. 1:22–23). False measures in silver and wine; princes in rebel-
lion against God but companions of thieves; universal bribe-seeking;
oppression of widows and orphans: all are linked in God’s covenant
lawsuit brought by the prophet. In Isaiah’s day, it was all part of a
great spiritual apostasy – an apostasy that would be reversed by the di-
rect intervention of God: “Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of
hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversar-
ies, and avenge me of mine enemies: And I will turn my hand upon
thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin:
And I will restore thy judges as at the irst, and thy counsellors as at
the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteous-
ness, the faithful city” (Isa. 1:24–26). When the rulers of Israel’s
northern kingdom remained unwilling to enforce God’s law repre-
sentatively, generation after generation, God raised up Assyria to
bring corporate negative sanctions for Him (Isa. 10:5–6).
Because weights and measures are representative of the moral
condition of society in general, the prophets used the metaphor of
weights and measures in bringing their covenant lawsuits against in-
dividuals and nations. The Psalmist had set the example: “Surely
men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be
laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity” (Ps. 62:9).
 Just Weights and Justice 779

Micah castigated the whole society, warning of judgment to come,

for they honored “the statutes of Omri” and did the works of his son
Ahab (Mic. 6:16).

The LORD’S voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see
thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it. Are there yet the
treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure
that is abominable? Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances,
and with the bag of deceitful weights? For the rich men thereof are full of
violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is
deceitful in their mouth (Mic. 6:9–12; emphasis added).

The essence of their rebellion, Micah said, was the injustice of the
civil magistrates: “The good man is perished out of the earth: and
there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they
hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with
both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a
reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so
they wrap it up” (Mic. 7:2–3).
Daniel’s announcement to the rulers of Babylon regarding the
meaning of the message of the handwriting on the wall is perhaps
the most famous use in Scripture of the imagery of the balance.
“And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL,
UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath
numbered thy kingdom, and inished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in
the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided,
and given to the Medes and Persians” (Dan. 5:25–28).
Corrupt measures are a token – representative – of moral corrup-
tion. To be out of balance judicially is to be out of covenantal favor.
The representative civil transgression in society is the adoption of
false weights and measures.

Intuition and Measurement

“Add a pinch of salt.” How many cooks through the centuries
have recommended this unspeciic quantity? There are cooks who
cannot cook with a recipe book, but who are master chefs without
one. Their skills are intuitive, not numerical. This is true in every
ield.
There are limits to measurement because there are limits to our
perception. There are also limits on our ability to verbalize or quantify
780 DEUTERONOMY

the measurements that we perceive well enough to act upon. Oskar

Morgenstern addressed this problem in the early paragraphs of his
classic book, On the Accuracy of Economic Observations.6 Our economic
knowledge is inescapably a mixture of objective and subjective
knowledge.7 That is to say, we think as persons; we are not comput-
ers. We do not think digitally. We think analogically, as persons
made in God’s image. We are required to think God’s thoughts after
Him. To do this, we need standards provided by God that are perceptible
to man. God has given us such standards (point three of the biblical
covenant model). We also need to exercise judgment in understand-
ing and applying them (point four). This judgment is not digital; it is
analogical: thinking God’s thoughts after Him. We are required by
God to assess the performance of others in terms of God’s ixed ethi-
cal and judicial standards.
In order to achieve a “it” between God’s standards and the
behavior of others, we must interpret God’s objective law (a subjective
task), assemble the relevant objective facts (a subjective task), discard
the irrelevant objective facts (a subjective task), and apply this law to
those facts (a subjective task). The result is a judicially objective decision.

6. Oskar Morgenstern, On the Accuracy of Economic Observations (2nd ed.; Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963). Morgenstern wrote a book on game theory with
John von Neumann, one of the most gifted mathematicians of the twentieth century.
Morgenstern was aware of the limits of mathematics as a tool of economic analysis. A more
recent treatment of the problem is Andrew M. Kamarck’s Economics and the Real World
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). See also Thomas Mayer, Truth versus
Precision in Economics (Hampshire, England: Elgar, 1993).
7. Morgenstern writes: “All economic decisions, whether private or business, as well as
those involving economic policy, have the characteristic that quantitative and non-quanti-
tative information must be combined into one act of decision. It would be desirable to
understand how these two classes of information can best be combined. Obviously, there
must exist a point at which it is no longer meaningful to sharpen the numerically available
information when the other, wholly qualitative, part is important, though a notion of its
‘accuracy’ or ‘reliability’ has not been developed. . . . There are many reasons why one should
be deeply concerned with the ‘accuracy’ of quantitative economic data and observations.
Clearly, anyone making use of measurements and data wishes them to be accurate and
signiicant in a sense still to be deined speciically. For that reason a level of accuracy has to
be established. It will depend irst of all on the particular purpose for which the measurement
is made. . . . The very notion of accuracy and the acceptability of a measurement, observation,
description, count – whatever the concrete case might be – is inseparably tied to the use to
which it is to be put. In other words, there is always a theory or model, however roughly
formulated it may be, a purpose or use to which the statistic has to refer, in order to talk
meaningfully about accuracy. In this manner the topic soon stops being primitive; on the
contrary, very deep-lying problems are encountered, some of which have only recently been
recognized.” Morgenstern, Accuracy, pp. 3–4.
 Just Weights and Justice 781

At every stage of the decision-making or judgment-rendering pro-

cess, there is an inescapably personal element, for which we are held
8
personally responsible by God.

Objective Facts Interpreted Subjectively

When we speak of objective facts, we often invoke the language
of physical measurement. This is because we think analogically.
Making subjective judgments is analogous to measuring things ob-
jectively. Yet we never measure things objectively, meaning exclu-
sively objectively. It is men who do the measuring, and men are not
machines – and even machines have limits of perception. We ask:
“Is the balance even?” “Is the bubble in the level equidistant be-
tween two points?” At some point, we say: “It’s a judgment call.”
Analogously, we ask of other men’s ofers: “Is this on the level?”
Discovering the answer is a judgment call: an evaluation based on
one’s observation of something that is beyond the limits of one’s
ability to perceive distinctions.
Consider the task of an umpire or referee in any sport. He is a
person. He makes judgment calls. In modern philosophy, we ind
that the major schools of thought are analogous to the umpire’s stan-
dard explanations of his decision. In baseball, the umpire “calls a
strike.” He announces that the pitched baseball passed within the
strike zone of the batter’s body (a variable in terms of his height) and
above home plate. The batter protests. It was a “ball,” he insists: ei-
ther outside his strike zone or not above home plate. The umpire
ofers one of three answers. These three answers are expressions of
the three dominant views of Western epistemology.

“I call ’em as they are.” (Newton)

“I call ’em as I see ’em.” (Hume)
“They are what I call ’em.” (Kant)9

8. See Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition;
Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Appendix G, “The Covenantal
Structure of Judgment.”
9. There is a fourth possible reply: “Shut up. You’re only a igment of my imagination.”
(Berkeley)
782 DEUTERONOMY

To make a biblically valid judgment regarding the public record

of the event under scrutiny, judges must perceive the limits of the
law and the limits of the records. The public record of the event
must reveal (represent) an act that took place within the “strike
zone” of God’s law. The actor must clearly have violated that zone –
that boundary – of God’s law. In the language of the common law
courts, it must have violated that boundary “beyond reasonable
doubt.” The language of the law is imprecise here because the act of rendering
judgment is imprecise. Yet juries decide, judges hand down punish-
ments, and society goes on.

Intuition and Creation

Intuition cannot be verbalized, catalogued, or quantiied, for by
definition intuition possesses no rational structure, yet it exists nev-
ertheless. Every philosophical system ultimately must appeal to in-
tuition to bridge the chasm between mind and events.10 Without
such a bridge, according to humanists, human choice and therefore
personal responsibility disappear into one of three kinds of uni-
verse: a chaotic cosmos, a deterministic cosmos of mechanical-
mathematical cause and efect, or a dialectical cosmos – mechanism
infused by randomness, and vice versa.11 (All three are said to be
governed by the second law of thermodynamics and are headed for
the heat death of the universe.)12
There is a fourth possibility: a covenantal, providential, created
cosmos. Here is the biblical solution to the problem of human knowl-
edge: the doctrine of creation. The world was created by God so that
men, made in God’s image, may exercise dominion over it. This the-
ory of knowledge also relies on intuition: biblically informed intu-
ition. Intuition is an inescapable concept. It is never a case of
“intuition vs. no intuition.” It is always a case of whose intuition ac-
cording to whose standards.
Spiritual maturity is the ability to make biblically well-informed
judgments. Christians must presume that intuitive judgments that

10. For case studies of this assertion in the ield of economics, see Gary North, “Economics:
From Reason to Intuition,” in North (ed.), Foundations of Christian Scholarship: Essays in the Van
Til Perspective (Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1976), ch. 5.
11. James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987).
12. North, Is the World Running Down?, ch. 2.
 Just Weights and Justice 783

come after years of studying God’s Bible-revealed laws and making

decisions in terms of them will be more reliable – i.e., more pleasing
to God – than intuitive judgments that come from other traditions or
that are the products of unsystematic approaches. There is no way
to test the accuracy of this presumption except by observing God’s
sanctions in history on those groups that are under the authority of
speciically covenanted judges.13

Objective Standards
God decrees everything that happens. History happens exactly
as He has decreed it. He evaluates it, moment by moment, in terms of
His permanent standards. This judgment is objective because God
makes it, and it is also subjective because God makes it. Man is respon-
sible for thinking God’s thoughts after Him. Man must obey God by
conforming his thoughts and actions to God’s law. Men do not have
the ability to read God’s mind (Deut. 29:29), but they do have the
ability to obey. Men do not issue valid autonomous decrees, nor does
history follow such decrees. God proposes, and then God disposes.14
The same is true of weights and measures. There are objective
standards, and these are known perfectly by God. This perfect
knowledge is a mark of His sovereignty. “Who hath measured the
waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the
span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and
weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?”
(Isa. 40:12). Man must seek to conform his actions and judgments to
these objective standards. He does so by discovering and adopting
ixed standards. Physical standards are the most readily enforced. The
archetypical standards are weight and measure. Even the passage of
time is assessed by means of a measure. In earlier centuries, these

13. If God’s sanctions in history are random in the New Covenant era, as Meredith Kline
insists that they are, then there is no way to test this presumption. Intuition-based decisions
would become as random in their efects as God’s historical sanctions supposedly are. See
Meredith G. Kline, “Comments on an Old-New Error,” Westminster Theological Journal, XLI
(Fall 1978), p. 184.
14. The radical humanism of Marx’s partner Frederick Engels can be seen in his statement
that “when therefore man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes – only then will the
last extraneous force which is still relected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the
religious relection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to relect.”
Engels, Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring) (London: Lawrence &
Wishart, [1878] 1934), p. 348.
784 DEUTERONOMY

measures were frequently governed by weight, such as water clocks

or hourglasses illed with sand.15 Measures have be perfected over
time, most notably measurements of time itself.16
Occult man sees ritual as a means of gaining supernatural power
for himself. Christian man sees ritual as a means of worshiping God
and gaining dominion over himself and his environment, to the glory
of God. Similarly, occult man sees measurement as a means of ob-
17
taining supernatural power. Christian man sees measurement as a
tool of dominion, beginning with self-dominion. The West is the
product of such a view of measurement. A man wearing a wrist-
watch is someone under the inluence of the Christian view of time.
In the ancient pagan world, priests were the monopolists of calen-
dars; this control was a major factor in maintaining their power.18 In
the West, very few educated people understand the details of the as-
tronomical basis of calculating time, let alone modern cesium atom
clocks, but virtually everyone has ready access to a calendar and a
clock with an alarm. No longer does an elite priesthood exercise
power through its monopolistic knowledge of the astronomical cal-
endar. The advent of cheap printed calendars transferred enormous
power to the individual.19 Cheap calendars and clocks decentralized
power, but thereby made individuals more responsible for the use
of time, man’s only irreplaceable resource.
The universality of the wristwatch makes it impossible for employ-
ers or sellers to cheat large numbers of people regarding time. Because
access to information is cheap, time-cheating becomes more dijcult.

15. The sun dial was an exception, but it could not be used at night or on cloudy days.
16. It can be persuasively argued that improvements in the measurement of time in the late
medieval and early modern eras were the most important physical advances in the history of
Western Civilization, without which few of the other advances would have been likely. See
David S. Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1983).
17. The design and construction of the Cheops pyramid stands as the most stupendous
surviving manifestation of this faith in weight and measure. See Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the
Great Pyramid (New York: Harper Colophon, [1971] 1978).
18. This was especially true of ancient agricultural dynasties that were dependent on rivers.
Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press, [1957] 1964), pp. 29–30. For an extraordinary
examination of ancient man’s priestly mastery of both astronomy and time, see Giorgio de
Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet’s Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time
(Boston: Gambit, [1969] 1977).
19. Benjamin Franklin made himself famous throughout the American colonies with Poor
Richard’s Almanack.
 Just Weights and Justice 785

20
In fact, the employee is far more able to cheat the employer. The
employee is the seller of services. If he is paid by the hour, he is
tempted to ind ways to collect his pay without delivering the work
expected from him. The salaried employee cheats more easily on
his time account; the commissioned salesman cheats more easily on
his expense account.

Specialized Knowledge
The biblical law of weights and measures teaches that the seller –
the receiver of money – is identiied as legally responsible. This requires an
explanation. The buyer (consumer) has legal control over the distri-
bution of the most marketable commodity: money. He possesses
greater lexibility and therefore greater economic authority in the
overall economy. We speak of consumer’s sovereignty in a free
market.21 Then why is the seller singled out by biblical law as the po-
tential violator? Doesn’t greater responsibility accompany greater
authority (Luke 12:47–48)?
The legal question must be decided in terms of comparative
authority in speciic transactions, not comparative authority in the
economy generally. A seller of goods and services possesses highly
specialized knowledge regarding his market. Cheating by a seller
of goods and services is therefore more likely than cheating by a
buyer because the seller has an advantage in information. This is
why biblical law singles out weights and measures as the repre-
sentative implements of justice. Physical implements of measure-
ment can be created more easily than other kinds of evaluation
devices. The existence of a precise (though never absolute) physical
standard makes it relatively easy to create close approximations for

20. The most graphic recent examples of such cheating in the modern office are computer
games that allow a player to tap a key on the keyboard so that a fake spreadsheet appears on
the screen. When a supervisor approaches the player, he taps the key, and it then appears as
though he has been studying some intricate aspect of the business: above all, a numerical
aspect.
21. See below, “Competition and the Margins of Cheating.” Biblically, calling a consumer
sovereign must be qualified. He possesses lawful authority, but sovereignty derives from an
oath to God. Sovereignty is delegated by God. The oath calls down God’s negative sanctions,
should the oath-taker break its stipulations. The consumer takes no such oath. He does not
make a covenant; he makes a contract. W. H. Hutt’s term, “consumer sovereignty,” is really a
misapplication, but it has become so widespread that it is difficult to abandon it. Consumer
authority is closer to biblical judicial categories.
786 DEUTERONOMY

22
commercial use. The availability of devices and techniques to spe-
cialists employed as agents of the civil government, in the name of
the buyers, allows the operation of checks and balances on the
checks and balances. The State therefore has a greater ability to po-
lice the sellers in this area than in most other areas.
On what biblical basis can magistrates police weights and mea-
sures? This is another way of asking: Where is the victim? The prob-
lem here is analogous to the problem of measuring pollution or
noise. The victims are not easy to identify, for they may not know
that they have been cheated. The extent of the cheating cannot eas-
ily be ascertained by the victims in retrospect. The cost of gathering
this information is too high. As a cost-saving measure (the language
of measurement is inescapable) for past victims and potential vic-
tims, the State imposes public standards, and sellers are required to
conform. As in the case of protecting potential victims of speeding
automobiles, the State establishes boundaries in advance. The po-
lice impose negative sanctions for violations of speed limits, even
though the victims have not publicly complained against this partic-
ular speeder. The driver did increase the statistical risks of having an
accident, so there were victims.23 They are represented by the police
ojcer who catches the speeder.24

22. The U.S. National Bureau of Standards (founded in 1901, but in principle authorized by
the U.S. Constitution of 1787) establishes key lengths by using a platinum-iridium bar stored
at a speciic temperature. This, in turn, is based on a not quite identical bar stored by the
International Bureau of Weights and Measurements in Sèvres, France. These bars do not
match. Also, when cleaned, a few molecules are shaved away. Scientists now prefer to
measure distance in terms of time and the speed of light. A meter is deined today as the
distance a light particle travels in one 299,792,458th of a second. Time is measured in terms of
the number of microwave-excited vibrations of a cesium atom particle when excited by a
hydrogen maser. One second is deined as the time that passes during 9,192,631,770 cesium
atomic vibrations. Malcolm W. Browne, “Yardsticks Almost Vanish As Science Seeks
Precision,” New York Times (Aug. 23, 1993).
23. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 489–91.
24. Fines should be used to set up a restitution fund to pay victims of drivers who are not
subsequently arrested and convicted. Idem. The history of civil law in the West since the
Norman Conquest of England in 1066 has been the substitution of ines for restitution: Bruce
L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco: Paciic Research
Institute for Public Policy, 1990), ch. 3.
 Just Weights and Justice 787

Competition and the Margins of Cheating

The International Bureau of Standards was established by the
General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1875. National
governments covenanted with each other by the Treaty of the
Meter. The nations’ governments are pledged to honor the stan-
dards agreed upon. These standards did not originate in 1875, how-
ever, nor did they originate with civil government. It does not
require a treaty to establish such standards. There can be ojcial
standards, but unojcial standards are far more widespread. The
free market can and does establish such standards. In fact, the more
technologically innovative a society is, the less likely that a civil gov-
ernment will be the primary creator or enforcer of the bulk of the
prevailing standards. When it comes to establishing standards, the
State’s salaried bureaucrats are usually playing catch-up with the
proit-seeking innovators.
All standards have boundary ranges. Market standards are
likely to be less precise technically than civil standards, for partici-
pants in markets understand that the development, selection, and
enforcement of standards are not cost-free activities. The degree of
variance from a precise model or standard depends upon the costs
and beneits of enforcement. It also depends on the locus of sover-
eignty of such enforcement: the consumers. In a free market, it is the
buyer of goods and services (i.e., the seller of money) who is eco-
nomically sovereign, not the seller of goods and not the State. The
consumer has greater economic lexibility to take his money else-
where than the entrepreneur or politician does. That is to say, the
cost to him of seeking and obtaining an alternative ofer for what he
wants to sell (money) is normally far lower than the cost to the seller
of specialized goods or services to seek and obtain an alternative
ofer. The seller of money has maximum liquidity. Money is prop-
erly deined as the most marketable commodity;25 hence, the con-
sumer, as the seller of money, is economically sovereign.
The seller uses implements to make measurements. No seller
can do without such implements, even if he is selling services. At the
very least, he will use a clock. The seller is warned by God to make
sure that he uses these implements consistently as he goes about his

25. Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
University Press, [1912] 1953), pp. 32–33.
788 DEUTERONOMY

business. Yet this is not quite true. The seller is not to supply less
than the standard determines; he may lawfully give more. If he
gives any buyer less than he has said he is giving, he steals from him.
If he gives a buyer more than he says, he is not stealing. He is
ofering charity, or giving a gift, or being extra careful, or building
good will to increase repeat sales. So, the business owner is allowed
to give more than he has indicated to the buyer that the buyer will
receive; he is not allowed to give less. The seller need not tell the
buyer that he is giving an extra amount, but he is required to tell him
if he is giving less.26 The boundary, therefore, is a seller’s loor rather
than a ceiling.
Sellers compete against sellers; buyers compete against buyers.
This is the fundamental principle of free market competition, one
which is not widely understood. The buyer is playing of one seller
against another when he bargains, even if the second seller is a
phantom;27 the seller is playing of buyer against buyer. Buyers com-
pete directly against sellers only when both of them have imperfect
information regarding the alternatives. No one knowingly pays one
ounce of silver for something that is selling next door for half an
ounce. The seller will not sell something to a buyer at a low price if
he knows that another buyer is waiting in line to buy at a higher
price. Neither will a buyer buy at a high price if he knows that an-
other seller waits across the hallway to sell the same item at a lower
price.
This being the case, it should be obvious why sellers who use
false scales ind themselves pressured by market forces to re-set
their scales closer to the prevailing market standard. Their competi-
tors provide a greater quantity of goods and services for the same
price. It may take time for word to spread, but it does spread. Buyers
like to brag about the bargains they have bought. Even though their
tales of bargains increase the number of competing buyers at bar-
gain shops, and therefore could lead to higher prices in the future,

26. A manager or employee must be precise: to give more is to steal from the owner; to give
less is to steal from the buyer.
27. The phantom buyer may walk in this afternoon. The seller is not sure. Neither is the
buyer.
 Just Weights and Justice 789

28
they do like to brag. This bragging gets the word out. A seller who
consistently sets his scales below the prevailing competitive stan-
dard risks losing customers. This pressure does not mean that all or
even most scales will be set identically, but it does lead to a market
standard of cheating: competitive boundaries. The better the infor-
mation available to buyers, the narrower the range of cheating.
None of this assumes the existence of a standard enforced by civil
government.

The Scales of Justice

Much the same is true of the scales of civil justice. Word spreads
about the availability of righteous civil justice. If there is open immi-
gration, as there was to be in Mosaic Israel, it is possible for those
sufering injustice to seek justice elsewhere. (This is a major advan-
tage of federalism: those living in one state can move to another if
they disapprove of the prevailing local situation. This allows the
testing of ideas regarding the proper role of civil government.) The
Bible assumes that word about national justice does spread:

Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD
my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to
possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your
understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes,
and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For
what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD
our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there
so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which
I set before you this day? (Deut. 4:5–8).

The existence of a righteous nation in the midst of a fallen world

of nations can lead to a competitive uplifting of civil justice in those
nations that experience a net migration out. Emigration pressures
unjust nations to revise their judicial standards. This is why totalitarian

28. There are limits to this. If the buyer has found an exceptionally inexpensive seller,
especially a small, local seller who may be ill-informed about market demand, and if he
expects to return to make additional purchases, he may not say anything to potential
competitors. He does not want to let the seller know that there are many buyers available who
are willing to pay more. There is a “bragging range.” That is, there are boundaries on the
spread of accurate information. Accurate information is not a free good.
790 DEUTERONOMY

regimes place barriers at their borders. The threat of the loss of “the
best and the brightest,” also known as the brain drain, is too great.
The barbed wire goes up to place a boundary around the “ideologi-
cal paradises.”
The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 was a symbolic
event that shook Europe. It was the visible beginning of the rapid
end of the legacy of the French Revolution of 1789: left-wing En-
lightenment humanism.29 It was a sign that the economically devas-
tating efects of Marxist socialism were the inevitable product of
injustice.30 People in Marxist paradises wanted to escape. Given the
opportunity, they would “vote with their feet.” With the Berlin Wall
down, there was an immediate exodus from East Germany. Simul-
taneously, Western justice began to be imported by East Germany.
This leavening efect was positive. Within months, East and West
Germany were legally reunited.
For this emigration process to serve as a national leaven of righ-
teousness, there must be sanctuaries of righteousness. There must
be just societies that open their borders to victims of injustice, in-
cluding economic oppression. This is what Mosaic Israel ofered the
whole ancient world: sanctuary. This was God’s means of pressuring

29. We can date the end of that tradition in the West: August 21, 1991, when the Soviet
Communist coup begun on August 19 failed. Boris Yeltsin and his associates sat in the Russian
Parliament building for three days, telephoning leaders in the West, sending and receiving
FAX messages, sending and receiving short wave radio messages, and ordering deliveries of
Pizza Hut pizza. So died the French Revolutionary tradition. Sliced pizza replaced the
guillotine’s sliced necks.
30. This was the message of F. A. Hayek in his 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, which
became an international best-seller. Western intellectuals scofed at its thesis for over four
decades, though in diminished tones after 1974, when he won the Nobel Prize in economics.
The scojng stopped in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet
Union’s economy. A few months before he died in 1992, Hayek was awarded the United
States medal of freedom. He had outlived the Soviet Union. He also had outlived most of the
original scofers. As he told me and Mark Skousen in an interview in 1985, he had never
believed that he would live to see the acclaim that came to him after 1974. Few men who
move against the intellectual currents of their eras live long enough to see such vindication.
He died in March, 1992, at the age of 92, receiving international acclaim: “In praise of
Hayek,” The Economist (March 28, 1992); John Gray, “The Road From Serfdom,” National
Review (April 27, 1992). As The Economist noted, “In the 1960s and 1970s he was a hate-igure
for the left, derided by many as wicked, loony, or both.” By 1992, no one remembered such
scurrilous attacks as Herman Finer’s The Road to Reaction (1948). Milton Friedman, who was
on the same University of Chicago faculty as Hayek, wrote that Hayek “unquestionably
became the most important intellectual leader of the movement that has produced a major
change in the climate of opinion.” National Review, op. cit., p. 35.
 Just Weights and Justice 791

unrighteous nations to become more just. He imposed a cost on evil

empires: the loss of productive people to Israel.
On the other hand, widespread immigration can pressure a just
society to become less just if the newcomers gain political authority.
If they are allowed to vote, they will seek to change some aspects of
the sanctuary nation’s legal structure. For example, they may seek
to legislate compulsory welfare payments: politically coerced subsi-
dies paid to immigrants by the original residents. It is not God’s in-
tention to pay for a rising standard of justice in evil empires by
means of falling standards of justice in covenanted sanctuary na-
tions. His goal is to raise standards of justice everywhere. So, politi-
cal pluralism is prohibited by God’s law. Sufrage (the vote) is by
covenantal ajrmation and church membership, not mere geo-
graphical residence. This is why the biblical concept of sanctuary
requires a biblical judicial boundary: covenantal citizenship.31
If justice produced indeterminate economic efects, and if injus-
tice produced indeterminate economic efects, there would be no
economic pressure on totalitarian regimes to tear down the bound-
ary barriers. But justice does not produce indeterminate economic
efects. Similarly, if the social world were what Meredith G. Kline
insists that it is – a world in which God’s visible sanctions in history
are indeterminate for both covenant-keeping and covenant-
breaking – then there could be no historical resolution of the com-
petition between civil righteousness and civil perversity. This
quasi-Manichean conclusion is the implicit and sometimes explicit
assumption of amillennialism.32 The leaven of justice in such a world
would have no advantage over the leaven of injustice. But there is
no neutrality in life; in a world of totally depraved men, such cul-
tural neutrality could not be maintained for long. The leaven of evil
would triumph. Yet it does not triumph, long term. Pharaonic tyran-
nies have all collapsed or become culturally impotent throughout
history. This fact testiies to mankind that God’s sanctions in history
are not indeterminate. Honesty really is the best policy, as Ben
Franklin long ago insisted. In the competition between good and

31. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 2.
32. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), pp. 76–92; ch. 5.
792 DEUTERONOMY

evil, the leaven of righteousness spreads as time goes on. Its visible
results are so much better (Lev. 26:1–13; Deut. 28:1–14).

The Forces of Competition

The tremendous pressure of international economic competi-
tion cannot be withstood for long. It brought down Soviet Commu-
nism. Marxist tyrannies could not gain the economic fruits of
33
righteousness without the moral roots. They could not permit a
modern economy based on computers, data bases, FAX machines,
and rationally allocated capital in their rigged, corrupt, fantasy
world of central economic planning and iat money.34 The reality of
the Russian workers’ saying under Communism could not be sup-
pressed forever: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
This inescapable reality led to a falling standard of living and the
eventual collapse of European Communism.
The international free market has no universally enforceable
standards of weights and measures, yet it operates more successfully
than any other economic system in history. Private arbitration
sometimes is invoked. Usually, national standards are closely ob-
served by market participants. There are great and continuing de-
bates over which standards should be adopted internationally,
especially as international trade increases. But even without formal
political resolutions to these debates, the international market con-
tinues to lourish. In the medieval world, there was an internation-
ally recognized “law merchant,” and it has been revived in modern
times.35

33. Konstantin Simis, USSR: The Corrupt Society: The Secret World of Soviet Capitalism (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).
34. On the truly fantastic nature of the Soviet economy, see Leopold Tyrmand, The Rosa
Luxemburg Contraceptives Cooperative: A Primer on Communist Civilization (New York: Macmillan,
1972).
35. Benson, Enterprise of Law, pp. 30–35, 62, 224–27. See also Harold J. Berman, Law and
Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1983), ch. 11. The Jews who dominate the international diamond trade
make bargains without public contracts, and they never appeal to the State to settle disputes.
These merchants have their own courts that settle disputes. It seems likely that they do not
pay income taxes on every proitable trade.
 Just Weights and Justice 793

Gresham’s Law
But what about Gresham’s Law? “Bad money drives out
good.”36 This is the pessimillennial view of history as applied to
monetary theory. But Gresham’s Law is misleading. It has an im-
plied condition, but only people who understand economics recog-
nize the unique nature of this condition. The law only applies when
a civil government establishes and enforces a price control between
two kinds of money. Then the artiicially overvalued money re-
mains in circulation, while the artiicially undervalued money goes
into hoards, into the black market, or is exported. Bad money drives
out good money only when governments pass laws that attempt to
override the free market’s assessment of relative monetary values.
This is not to say that there should not be civil laws against counter-
feiting, but it does mean that counterfeiters must be very skilled to
compete in a free market order. Laws against counterfeiting raise
the cost of being a counterfeiter, thereby lowering the supply of
counterfeit money.
Counterfeiting applies to religion. Christians must contend with
cults, but cults are imitations of Christianity. Today, we see no fertil-
ity cults that self-consciously imitate the older Canaanite religions.
Bacchanalia festivals are no longer with us, at least not in a self-
consciously cultic form.37 New Age advocates may seem numerous,
especially in Hollywood and New York City, but there are very few
openly New Age congregations of the faithful. Religious counter-
feits must take on the characteristic features of Christianity in order
to extend their inluence beyond traditional borders. The rites of
Christianity have many imitations around the globe, but the rites of
Santeria do not.38
A wise counterfeiter will not try to pass a bill that has a picture of
Groucho Marx on it. Successful counterfeits in a competitive mar-
ket must resemble the original. This is why there is, over time, a ten-
dency for covenant-breakers to conform themselves to the external
requirements of God’s law until they cannot stand the contradiction

36. “Bad money drives out good money,” the law really states. Yet in a very real sense, the
familiar formulation is correct: bad money does drive out good. It creates black markets,
cheating, and many other evils.
37. Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in the Caribbean are such festivals.
38. Bill Strube, “Possessed with Old Fervor: Santeria in Cuba,” The World & I (Sept. 1993).
This African-Cuban voodoo cult is closely associated with homosexuality. Ibid., p. 254.
794 DEUTERONOMY

39
in their lives any longer. Then they rebel, and God imposes nega-
tive sanctions, either through His ordained covenant representa-
40
tives or through the creation.

A Final Sovereign
The Bible identiies judges as covenantal agents of God. Unlike
the free market, where consumers are sovereign, the State requires a
voice of inal earthly authority. This does not mean that one person
or one institution has inal authority. Biblically, no institution or per-
son possesses such authority in history; only the Bible does. But
there must be someone who announces “guilty” or “not guilty.”
Someone must impose the required sanctions. Civil sanctions are
imposed by the State.
This means that legal standards must not luctuate so widely that
men cannot make reasonable predictions about the outcome of tri-
als. If there is no predictability of the outcome, then there will be
endless trials. Conlicting parties will not settle their disputes before
they enter the courtroom. A society should encourage predictable
outcomes; otherwise, individuals cannot be conident about receiv-
ing what the law says they deserve.41 It is because the outcomes of
trials are reasonably predictable that conlicts are settled before they
come to trial.
Hayek’s comments in this regard are extremely relevant. He an-
nounced a conclusion, one based on decades of study of both eco-
nomic theory and legal history: “There is probably no single factor
which has contributed more to the prosperity of the West than the
relative certainty of the law which has prevailed here. This is not al-
tered by the fact that complete certainty of the law is an ideal which
we must try to approach but which we can never perfectly attain.”
He then went on to make this observation, one which relies on the
concept of the thing not seen: “But the degree of the certainty of the
law must be judged by the disputes which do not lead to litigation be-
cause the outcome is practically certain as soon as the legal position is

39. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 6: “Sustaining Common Grace.”
40. Ibid., ch. 8: “Filled Vessels.”
41. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any
time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the ojcer, and thou
be cast into prison” (Matt. 5:25).
 Just Weights and Justice 795

examined. It is the cases that never come before the courts, not
those that do, that are the measure of the certainty of the law.”42 In
other words, self-government is basic to all government, but pre-
dictable law, predictable enforcement, and predictable sanctions
must reinforce self-government if a society is to remain productive.
The clogged courts of the United States in the inal third of the twen-
tieth century are testimonies to the breakdown of the certainty of
civil law, as well as to the efects of tax-inanced law schools that
have produced about a million practicing lawyers today.43

Justice in Flux
There is little doubt that the proliferation of lawyers in the
United States in the latter years of the twentieth century is a sign of a
major breakdown of its moral and legal order. There are 18 million
civil cases each year in the United States: one case per ten adult
Americans. The United States in 1990 had some 730,000 lawyers,
which grew to almost a million by 1999. In 1990, Japan had 11 law-
yers per 100,000 in population; the United Kingdom, 82; Germany,
111; the United States, 281. Japan had 115 scientists and engineers
per lawyer; United Kingdom, 14.5; Germany, 9.1; United States,
4.8. Economic output per hour, 1973–90: Japan, 4.4 percent;
United Kingdom, 3.3 percent Germany, 2.8 percent; United States,
2.3 percent.44 The idea that the State can provide perfect justice is a
costly myth.45
Civil government today has become what Bastiat predicted in
1850. After 1870, throughout the West, the view of the State as an
agency of compulsory salvation spread. It escalated rapidly after
1900, when Social Darwinism moved from its “dog-eat-dog” phase
to its State-planned evolution phase.46 Wheaton College economics
professor P. J. Hill has described the process: the decline of predictable

42. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 208.
43. In the case of lawyers, Say’s famous law holds true: production creates its own demand.
The old story is illustrative: when only one lawyer lives in town, he has little work. When
another lawyer arrives, they both have lots of work from then on.
44. “Punitive Damages,” National Review (Nov. 4, 1991).
45. Macklin Fleming, The Price of Perfect Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
46. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix A: “From Cosmic Purposelessness to Humanistic
Sovereignty.”
796 DEUTERONOMY

law and the rise of the transfer society. “The idea of the transfer soci-
47
ety is a society where property rights are up for grabs.” The prob-
lem with such a society is that so many people start grabbing rather
than producing. The rule of law is collapsing.

We’ve become a society in which the rules are in lux, thereby prod-
ding people to spend a large amount of their time and resources trying to
48
change the rules to their beneit. Our book argues that in the beginning
the Constitution was a set of rules for a few areas that pretty much encour-
aged the entrepreneurial type of person to go out and make better mouse-
traps, to create wealth. Somewhere around the 1870’s the constitutional
climate started changing dramatically, not by amendment but by interpre-
tation. The Constitution became interpreted in a more casual way. There
was a rise in what we call “reasonable regulations;” the Supreme Court
said the state legislatures could pass any sort of regulations they wanted
about economic afairs so long as they were “reasonable.”
That meant, of course, that people spent a lot of time trying to get regu-
lations written to their advantage or to the disadvantage of their competi-
tors, because there was no clear-cut standard. And today almost nothing in
the economic arena is unconstitutional. . . .
Today, much of the economic game is in the political arena. It is
played by getting rules on your side, or making sure that somebody else
doesn’t get the rules on their side against you. The action is in Washington,
D.C.
It’s interesting to look at the statistics of many large companies and see
how much of their time goes into lobbying, where their business headquar-
ters are, who the big players are, etc. It turns out that it’s just as important to
try to make sure that the rules favor you as it is to produce better products.
Any society in which the rules are not clearly deined, whatever they are, is
at risk. You need a society of stable, legitimate and just rules in order to
have people productively engaged.
I would put it this way: Theft is expensive. In a society where theft is
prevalent people will put a lot of their eforts into protecting themselves –
into locks and police guards, etc.
Government can prevent theft, but can also be an agency of theft. If
this is the case, then people will look to government to use its coercive arm
to take from other citizens. In such a world of “legal theft” people will

47. “The Transfer Society: An Interview with P. J. Hill,” Religion and Liberty, I (Nov./Dec.
1991), p. 1. This is a publication of the Acton Institute.
48. Peter J. Hill and Terry Anderson, The Birth of a Transfer Society (Lanham, Maryland:
University Press of America, 1989).
 Just Weights and Justice 797

devote resources to protecting themselves and to getting government on

49
their side.

Open Entry vs. Open Access

Open entry to economic competitors in a free market is not the
same thing as open access to political competitors in a civil govern-
ment. The free market is not a covenantal institution possessing a
lawful monopoly as an ordained representative of God. Civil gov-
ernment is. Allowing open access for ojce-seekers within a single
governmental structure is not the same as allowing rival govern-
mental structures within the same sphere of political authority.
There has to be a hierarchy of authority, meaning a chain of com-
mand, in all three covenantal governments: church, family, and State.
There is no such hierarchy in a free market. The consumer’s decision
is economically sovereign on a free market: to buy or not to buy. He
is not comparably sovereign in a covenantal institution: to obey or
not to obey apart from the threat of lawful sanctions. He is under ex-
ternal authority.
Civil government must enforce certain physical standards of
measurement, if only for purposes of tax collection. The idea that a
free market can provide proit-seeking courts as a complete substi-
tute for the inal earthly sovereignty of a civil court (assuming its
widespread acceptance by family and church courts) is a myth of
libertarianism. The essence of a free market system is that it does
not and cannot make inal declarations. Why? Because the essence
of the free market is that anyone can step in at any time and an-
nounce a higher bid. The market, if it is truly free, cannot legally
keep out those who ofer higher bids. Therefore, there can be no
inal, covenantally binding bid in a free market, since the market sys-
tem allows no appeal to a superior, covenantally binding institution.
If voluntary agreements are subsequently broken, there must be an
agent economically outside of the market and judicially above the
market who can sovereignly enforce the terms of the agreement.
The free market is open-ended because it ofers open entry; open entry
is the heart of a free market. The resolution of disputes requires the

49. Hill, “The Transfer Society,” pp. 1–2. Cf. Gary North, “The Politics of the Fair Share,”
The Freeman (Nov. 1993).
798 DEUTERONOMY

presence of a representative covenantal agent who can dispense jus-

tice in God’s name. Disputes are usually resolved before they reach
this inal declaration, but only because of the presence of this
agency of inal declaration. And this inal court of appeal must be
able to appeal to a higher court: God’s. This means that it must de-
clare God’s law.

Victim’s Rights and Restitution

The fundamental principle of biblical civil jurisprudence is vic-
tim’s rights. The State is to act as the agent of injured parties. If the
injured party is unwilling to prosecute, the State is not to prosecute.50
Does this mean that the State may not prosecute the seller who is
discovered cheating by means of false weights and measures? If not,
why not?
There are criminal cases in which there is no identiiable victim.
The classic example is the case of a driver who exceeds the speed
limit and does not injure anyone nevertheless imposes risks on
other drivers and pedestrians. The State in this case is allowed to im-
pose ines on the convicted speeder. The money should be used to
provide restitution for those who are injured by a hit-and-run driver
who cannot subsequently be located or convicted.
What about the seller who uses rigged scales? The State cannot
prove when this practice began; it can only prove when the practice
was discovered. It probably cannot identify who was defrauded. This
means that many of the victims cannot sue for damages. Should the
seller not sufer negative sanctions?
One possible way to resolve this dilemma is for the State to
require the seller to provide discounts for a period of time to all of
his past customers. The discount would be determined by the de-
gree of scale-tampering: double restitution. If the scales were 10 per-
cent of, then he must ofer 20 percent discounts. To make sure he
does not simply raise his retail prices before he starts ofering the dis-
counts, the State would ix his retail prices as of the day the infraction
was discovered. Any customer who could show a receipt from the
store would have access to the discounts.

50. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 7.

 Just Weights and Justice 799

Because of modern packaging and mass production, not many

stores would come under this threat. The butcher in the meat sec-
tion of a supermarket would be one seller whose scales would be ba-
sic to the business. But on the whole, modern technology transfers
responsibility back to the companies that sell the packaged products
to retail outlets. How, then, could the law be enforced on them? To
require them to ofer a discount to a retailer does not beneit the con-
sumer; it provides a proit to the retailer. One way would be for
those who have receipts for a product to be able to buy that irm’s
products for a period of time at a discount. The irm would then be
forced to reimburse the retailer for the diference. This is a sales
technique used by manufacturers in gaining market share in super-
markets: discount coupons. It could be imposed by the State as a
penalty.
This would reward those consumers who save their receipts. If
this procedure is too complicated for the victims to be fairly com-
pensated, because of the nature of the product – a “small-ticket
item” – then the irm could be required to ofer discounts across the
board to all future buyers of that speciic product for a period of
time. The irm would also be required to identify on the packaging
of that product an admission of guilt, so that the discounts would not
be regarded as an advertising strategy. Finally, the discount reim-
bursements to retailers would not be tax-deductible as a business
expense to the seller.

Evangelical Antinomianism and

Humanism’s Myth of Neutrality
For a scale to operate, it must have ixed standards. If it is a bal-
ance scale like the one the famous lady of justice holds, it must have
ixed weights in one of its two trays. There is no escape from the
covenantal concept of judicial weights. This is the issue of ethical
and judicial standards: point three of the biblical covenant model.
Mosaic law stated that within the boundaries of Israel, honest (pre-
dictable) weights were mandatory. It did not matter whether the
buyer was rich or poor, circumcised or not circumcised: the same
weights had to be used by the seller. Israel was to become a sanctuary
for strangers seeking justice. The symbol of this justice was the hon-
est scale.
800 DEUTERONOMY

Which judicial standards were mandatory? The Bible is clear:

God’s revealed law. National Israel was not some neutral sanctuary
in which rationally perceived natural law categories were enforced.
That unique sanctuary was where biblical law was enforced. Those
seeking sanctuary in Israel had to conform to biblical civil law. The
metaphorical weights in the tray of civil justice’s scale were the Mo-
saic statutes and case laws.
Because the modern Christian evangelical world is self-consciously
and deiantly antinomian – “We’re under grace, not law!” – Chris-
tians emphatically deny the New Covenant legitimacy of the con-
cept of biblically revealed laws. They assume that men can develop
universal, religiously non-speciic moral standards in the same way
that the world has developed universal physical weights and mea-
surements. They prefer to ignore what the Bible reveals about cove-
nant-breakers: those who hate God love death (Prov. 8:36b). The
closer that covenant-breakers get to the doctrine of God, the more
perverse they are in rejecting the testimony of the Bible. They inter-
pret God, man, law, sanctions, and time diferently from what the Bi-
ble speciies as the standard. They ajrm rival covenantal standards.
A holy commonwealth would establish the law of God as the
civil standard, but modern evangelical Christians hate the revealed
law of God above every other system of law. First, they ajrm as the
binding standard the myth of neutrality: religiously neutral natural
law. Second, they ajrm their willingness to submit themselves to
any system of law except biblical law. They announce: “A Christian
can live peacefully under any legal or political system,” with only
one exception: biblical law. Modern Christians see themselves as
perpetual strangers in the perpetual unholy commonwealths of cov-
enant-breaking man. They deny that liberty can be attained under
God’s revealed law. God’s revealed law, they insist, is the essence of
tyranny. They seek liberty through religious neutrality: the rule of
anti-Christian civil law. They seek, at most, “equal time for Jesus” in
the satanic kingdoms of this world. They forget: the “equal time”
doctrine is the lie that Satan’s servants use while dwelling in holy
commonwealths. When Satan’s disciples gain civil power, they
adopt a new rule: “As little time for Jesus as the State can impose
through force.”
 Just Weights and Justice 801

Geisler’s Norm
Norman Geisler, a fundamentalist philosopher with a Ph.D. is-
sued by a Roman Catholic university, and a devout follower of
Thomas Aquinas,51 has insisted that all civil law must be religiously
neutral. We must legislate morality, he says, but not religion. This
means that civil morality can be religiously neutral. “The cry to re-
turn to our Christian roots is seriously misguided if it means that
government should favor Christian teachings. . . . First, to establish
such a Bible-based civil government would be a violation of the
First Amendment. Even mandating the Ten Commandments
would favor certain religions. . . . Furthermore, the reinstitution of
the Old Testament legal system is contrary to New Testament
teaching. Paul says clearly that Christians ‘are not under the law, but
under grace’ (Rom. 6:14). . . . The Bible may be informative, but it is
not normative for civil law.”52 The suggestion by those whom he
calls “the biblionomists” [biblionomy: Bible law] that God’s law still
applies today is, in Geisler’s words, a “chilling legalism.”53
We need legal reform, he insists. “What kind of laws should be
used to accomplish this: Christian laws or Humanistic laws? Nei-
ther. Rather, they should simply be just laws. Laws should not be ei-
ther Christian or anti-Christian; they should be merely fair ones.”54
There is supposedly a realm of neutral civil law in between God and
humanism: the realm of “fairness.” This means that Mosaic civil law
was never fair. Those who believe that the Mosaic civil law was unfair
refuse to say explicitly that this is what they believe. It sounds ethi-
cally rebellious against the unchanging God of the Bible, which it in
fact is. Nevertheless, this rebellious outlook is universal within Prot-
estantism in the twentieth century; it has been since at least the late
seventeenth century.

51. Aquinas, he said in 1988, “was the most brilliant, most comprehensive, and most
systematic of all Christian thinkers and perhaps all thinkers of all time.” Angela Elwell Hunt,
“Norm Geisler: The World Is His Classroom,” Fundamentalist Journal (Sept. 1988), p. 21. This
magazine was published by Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Geisler was at the time a
professor there. The magazine has ceased publication. Geisler resigned from the school in
1991.
52. Norman L. Geisler, “Should We Legislate Morality?” ibid. (July/Aug. 1988), p. 17.
53. Idem.
54. Ibid., p. 64.
802 DEUTERONOMY

This theory of neutral civil law denies Christ’s words concern-

ing the impossibility of neutrality: “No man can serve two masters:
for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will
hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and
mammon” (Matt. 6:24). “He that is not with me is against me; and
he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad” (Matt. 12:30). The
neutralists insist that Christ’s denial of neutrality does not apply to
the civil covenant. Geisler writes: “God ordained Divine Law for
the church, but He gave Natural Law for civil government.”55 They
insist, as Geisler insists, that true civil justice can be obtained only
by removing all visible traces of Christianity from civil government.
This is not humanism, he insists; this is merely neutral civil justice.
But there is no neutrality. There has never been a neutral king-
dom of civil law, and there never will be. Facing the reality of this
historical fact, this question inevitably arises: Which is worse, secu-
lar humanism or God’s law? When push comes to shove, Geisler
identiies the greater evil: God’s law. “Thoughtful relection reveals
that this ‘cure’ of reconstructionism is worse than the disease of sec-
ularism.”56 Christians supposedly must content themselves with liv-
ing as strangers in a strange land until Jesus personally returns in
power.57
The Christian antinomians’ view of civil law has implications for
their doctrine of eschatology. This is why virtually all amillennialists
and premillennialists defend natural law theory and political plural-
ism, while attacking theonomy. They see God’s people as cultural
losers in history.58 The most they hope for is a cultural stalemate.59
They prefer to live meekly and impotently inside cultural ghettos

55. Ibid., p. 17.

56. Norman L. Geisler, “Human Life,” in William Bentley Ball (ed.), In Search of a National
Morality (Baker Book House [conservative Protestant] and Ignatius Press [conservative
Roman Catholic], 1992), p. 115.
57. A question for premillennialists: Will Jesus enforce the Mosaic law or a system of
neutral natural law during His premillennial kingdom? Premillennial defenders of natural
law theory refuse to address this question in print. If they answer “Mosaic law,” they have
admitted that it is intrinsically morally superior to natural law. If they answer “natural law,”
they sever the God who declared the Mosaic law from that law. They prefer to remain silent.
58. North, Millennialism and Social Theory, chaps. 7–9.
59. Gary North, Backward, Christian Soldiers? An Action Manual for Christian Reconstruction
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, [1984] 1988), ch. 11: “The Stalemate
Mentality.”
 Just Weights and Justice 803

60
rather than fight a cultural war in the name of Christ. They do not
believe they can win; therefore, they deny the basis of fighting in
such a war, namely, a uniquely biblical judicial alternative to hu-
manistic law. They deny the legitimacy of Bible-revealed judicial
standards that would make possible an explicitly Christian social or-
der during the era of the church. Their antinomian social ethics is a
corollary to their pessimistic view of the church’s future. God has
granted them their desire: they live at the mercy of their enemies
who control the various social orders of our day. But the walls of
their ghettos have huge holes in them: public schools, television,
movies, rock music, and all the rest of humanism’s lures.
Unlike the Israelites in Egypt, who cried out to God for deliver-
ance (Ex. 3:7), today’s Christians have generally preferred their life
in Egypt to life in the Promised Land. God cursed the exodus gener-
ation: death in the wilderness. But He did not allow them to return
to Egyptian bondage. Today’s Christians may grumble about cer-
tain peripheral aspects of their bondage, but they do not yet seek de-
liverance from their primary bonds, most notably their enthusiastic
acceptance of religious and political pluralism, natural law theory,
and the irst-stage humanist promise of “equal time for the ethics of
Jesus.” They hate the very thought of their responsibility before
God to establish covenanted national sanctuaries.

*******

Fractional Reserve Banking

Modern banking is based on the use of false weights and mea-
61
sures. Fractional reserve banking rests on fraud. It replaces a vol-
untary currency system that is based on a particular weight and
ineness of a precious metal or some other commodity. The origin
of fractional reserve banking was the issuing of a warehouse receipt
for an asset – a money metal – that was not actually held in reserve.
The banker issued a promise to pay gold or silver when he could not
redeem all of the signed promises. The false warehouse receipt circu-
lated as money as if it had been the actual commodity promised.

60. Gary North, “Ghetto Eschatologies,” Biblical Economics Today, XIV (April/May 1992).
61. Gary North, Honest Money: The Biblical Blueprint for Money and Banking (Ft. Worth:
Dominion Press, 1986).
804 DEUTERONOMY

This enabled the issuer to charge interest on loaned funds: some-

thing (for him) for nothing (in his warehouse). The losers were those
who attempted to redeem their receipts during a bank panic. The
bank went bankrupt (bank + rupture), leaving him with nothing.
Prior to the bank run, there were other losers: people who had to
pay higher prices for goods and services because of the inlationary
efects of unbacked warehouse receipts that circulated as if they were
money. These receipts were used by buyers to bid up prices. Those
people without access to these newly printed false receipts consumed
fewer goods and services because of increased prices.
The modern banking system has fraud at its heart. Because of
this, everyone today is at risk of a collapse of this house of cards –
false receipts. When the system of monetary payments breaks
down, as it will when this fraud becomes widely perceived as a
threat to men’s wealth, and the bank runs begin, all those who have
planned their futures in terms of a predictable, continuous supply of
iat money issued by commercial banks will ind their plans de-
stroyed. The modern world’s unprecedented division of labor,
which has been made possible by a system of payments based on
commercial banks’ promises to pay, will collapse. Unemployment
will soar when workers ind that their labor services are too nar-
rowly focused to be purchased at the prices that prevailed before the
banks went bankrupt. We call this event a depression. It occurs
when there is an unforeseen contraction in the division of labor.
This takes place when the payments system breaks down.
There are negative sanctions in history for breaking God’s law.
An economic depression is the economy’s built-in negative sanction
against banking fraud.62 If the State refuses to enforce God’s law gov-
erning weights and measures as it applies to money and banking, then
the economic system will. The justiication for having the State enforce
63
a law mandating 100 percent reserve banking is God’s threat to bring
corporate negative sanctions against any society that disobeys His
law.

62. Murray N. Rothbard, America’s Great Depression (Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand,
1963).
63. Murray N. Rothbard, “The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar,” in Leland B. Yeager
(ed.), In Search of a Monetary Constitution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1962), ch. 4. This has been reprinted as a book with the same title (Auburn, Alabama:
Mises Institute, 1991).
 Just Weights and Justice 805

In the modern world, central banking lies at the heart of a mas-

sive, centuries-long deception by the politicians and the bankers.
Here is the essence of the arrangement. The nation-State issues a
monopoly of credit creation to a privately owned bank. In ex-
change, the central bank guarantees to buy the State’s debt. This
quid pro quo has operated continually in England ever since the
founding of the Bank of England in 1694.64 It has become the
world’s model for banking in the twentieth century. The world’s
central bankers want to create a single central bank that issues a sin-
gle currency.65 This implies the existence of a common iscal (taxing
and spending) policy for the nations that are inside the international
central banking system, i.e., the abolition of national sovereignty.
The bankers and the politicians want the beneits of a gold standard
without the restraints. They are unwilling to allow a common cur-
rency based on a commodity, most likely gold, for this would re-
strain the issuing of iat money and the issuing of government debt.
They want the pleasant efects of gold – a predictable means of pay-
ment – without the restraints imposed by geology: the high cost of
extracting this metal. They want to be sovereign over money, so that
they can get something for nothing. The politicians want the State to
pay below-market interest rates on its debt, and the bankers want in-
terest payments for credit issued out of nothing, with the State’s debt
certiicates as the central banks’ legal reserves – the privilege of a
State-created monopoly in a nation that does not enforce God’s laws
of weights and measures.

64. In the years immediately following World War II, the government nationalized the
Bank of England, but management has remained the exclusive prerogative of commercial
bankers. Private citizens are not allowed inside the bank, as I found out by accident in 1985,
when Mark Skousen and I walked into it, thinking it was Lloyd’s Bank. A man dressed in the
traditional beefeater uniform politely asked us to leave. Feigning the ignorance common to
American tourists, I asked: “You mean I can’t open an account?” I was assured that I could
not.
65. The scheduled date for the creation of the European Monetary Union, with its EMU
currency, is 1999. This will require the reprogramming of European banks’ computers. At the
same time, the world is facing a monumental disruption of computers by the “millennium
bug” – the rollover from 99 (1999) to 00 (2000), which threatens to bring down the world’s
banking system and the payments system. This threat to the world’s economy has only
become even vaguely recognized since about 1995. It will prove impossible to reprogram the
computers to meet both criteria. The economic results could be catastrophic. I began
planning my personal afairs, as of late 1996, on the assumption that the results will be
catastrophic.
806 DEUTERONOMY

Perhaps someday the corporate negative sanction known as

economic depression will be widely recognized by political leaders
and articulate voters as the inevitable result of monetary inlation,
especially fractional reserve banking.66 If they fail to recognize this,
then the world will continue to sufer from periodic depressions.

Conclusion
“Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know
mine integrity” (Job 31:6). The imagery of the balance scale is basic
to understanding each person’s relation to God, either as a cove-
nant-keeper or a covenant-breaker. Weights and measures are also
representative biblically of the degree of civil justice available in a
society. If those who own the measuring instruments of commerce
tamper with them in order to defraud consumers, either speciic
groups of consumers – especially resident aliens – or consumers in
general, they have sinned against God. They have stolen. If the civil
government does not prosecute such thieves, then the society is cor-
rupt. The continued existence of false weights and measures testiies
against the whole society.
There are limits to our perception; there are limits to the accu-
racy of scales. This applies both to physical measurement and civil
justice. Society cannot attain perfect justice. There must always be
an appeal to the judge’s intuition in judicial conlicts where con-
tested public acts were not clearly inside or outside the law. This
does not mean that there are limits to God’s perception and God’s
justice. Thus, there will be a day of perfect reckoning. Over time,
covenantally faithful individuals and institutions approach as a
limit, but never reach, the perfect justice of that inal judgment. This
brings God’s positive sanctions to covenant-keeping individuals
and institutions, making them more responsible by making them
more powerful. Progressive sanctiication, both personal and corpo-
rate, necessarily involves an increase in God’s blessings and there-
fore also in personal responsibility.
The State is required by God to enforce His standards. The free
market social order – a development that has its origins in the twin
doctrines of personal responsibility and self-government – requires

66. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1949), ch. 20.
 Just Weights and Justice 807

civil government as a legitimate court of appeal. But the bulk of law

enforcement has to be individual: “Every man his own policeman.”
No other concept of law enforcement will sujce if a society is not to
become a society of informants and secret police. Secondarily, law
enforcement must be associative: market competition. Buyers and
sellers determine the degree of acceptable luctuation around
agreed-upon standards. Only in the third stage is law enforcement
to become civil. Here, the standards are to be much more precise,
much more rigid, and much more predictable. Representative cases
– legal precedents – are to become guidelines for self-government
and voluntary associative government.
 64
The THE
Firstfruits Offering: AOFFERING:
FIRSTFRUITS Token Payment
A TOKEN PAYMENT

And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the LORD
thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it, and dwellest
therein; That thou shalt take of the irst of all the fruit of the earth, which
thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt
put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God
shall choose to place his name there. And thou shalt go unto the priest that
shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the LORD
thy God, that I am come unto the country which the LORD sware unto our
fathers for to give us (Deut. 26:1–3).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s deliverance of Israel.

First, He had delivered them out of Egypt (v. 8). Second, He had de-
livered the land of Canaan into their hand (v. 9). So, the Israelite was
to say, “And no796
w, behold, I have brought the irstfruits of the land, which thou,
O LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the LORD thy
God, and worship before the LORD thy God” (v. 10). This was cause
of celebration: “And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which
the LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou,
and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you” (v. 11). God had
sworn that He would deliver Canaan into their hand (v. 3). Because
He had fulilled this promise of inheritance, each Israelite owed
Him a irstfruits ofering.
This ofering had to be brought to Jerusalem once each year
(Ex. 23:16). This was the feast of Weeks or Pentecost (Deut. 16:9–10).
The men of Israel owed God a trip to the central city and a token
payment of the forthcoming harvest. The cost of the trip was far

808
 The Firstfruits Offering: A Token Payment 809

more than the market value of the token payment. Clearly, this law
was a land law. It had to do with the conquest of Canaan.

A Liturgy of Thanksgiving
The Israelites had to sufer economic losses in order to demon-
strate their thankfulness toward God. This passage makes it clear
that this thankfulness looked back to the exodus and the conquest.
In some sense, a token payment looked forward to the full harvest,
but the text indicates that this was thankfulness for God’s positive
corporate sanctions in the past. The Passover had to do with God’s
deliverance. So did Firstfruits (Weeks/Pentecost), but this deliver-
ance was the deliverance of Canaan into their hands. At Passover,
the children were to ask what the ritual meal meant, and the father
was to tell them about God’s overnight deliverance of the nation
(Ex. 12:26–27). At Firstfruits, the male head of household was to
declare before the priest what the meaning of this ritual was. The
man bringing the ofering was required to make this historical
confession:

And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian [Ara-
mean – NASB] ready to perish was my father, and he went down into
Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great,
mighty, and populous: And the Egyptians evil entreated us, and amicted
us, and laid upon us hard bondage: And when we cried unto the LORD God
of our fathers, the LORD heard our voice, and looked on our amiction, and
our labour, and our oppression: And the LORD brought us forth out of
Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great
terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders: And he hath brought us
into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that loweth with
milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the irstfruits of the
land, which thou, O LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before the
LORD thy God, and worship before the LORD thy God (Deut. 26:5–10).

This ofering was used to support the priests, but its economic
value was minimal compared with the cost of making the journey to
Jerusalem. Had this ofering been strictly economic, the priests
would have done far better inancially had men been allowed to pay
them the money equivalent of the journey. This indicates that what
was important was the public confession, not the ofering itself. It was the
cost associated with the journey that demonstrated each man’s com-
mitment to God. This cost was the main burden.
810 DEUTERONOMY

At the same time, there was a beneit: corporate worship. “And

thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath
given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the
stranger that is among you” (v. 11). Here the thanksgiving is said to
be personal. This celebration was more important than the money
value of the ofering. By requiring the men of Israel to come to Jeru-
salem to confess their thanksgiving for God’s prior deliverance of
Israel, both corporately and individually, God created in His people
a sense of corporate membership. The feast of Firstfruits/Weeks/
Pentecost became a celebration of God’s intervention in history to
overcome impossible odds on behalf of His people. Included in this
corporate celebration was the stranger (geyr).
Israel’s inheritance was corporate. It was also familistic. The
feast of Firstfruits celebrated both forms of inheritance. The re-
quired feast was God’s reminder to them that He, not the power of
their own hands (Deut. 8:17), had gained this inheritance for them.
The message was clear: to continue to maintain this inheritance, the
men of Israel had to honor their dependence on God. This honor-
ing involved corporate worship and the expenses thereof.

Token Payments for Blessings Received

The main sacriice at Pentecost was not the handful of grain
which the participant brought; it was the time and expense of travel-
ling. This sacriice testified to the covenantal faithfulness of the par-
ticipant. There were costs associated with this beneit: forfeited
time, energy, and a handful of grain. God was extracting a great deal
of productivity from his people. This was another reminder to them
that their wealth did not depend on a conventional allocation of
time, seed, and labor. It depended on their covenantal faithfulness.
God does not need our gifts in order to extend His kingdom. He
grants to His people the honor of bringing oferings to Him so that
they can demonstrate the seriousness of their commitment to Him
and their dependence on Him. Their public commitment was one
means of securing the continuing blessings of God. It was also a way
to secure each man’s commitment to the stipulations of the cove-
nant. If a man verbally confessed that God had delivered the nation
and had secured their inheritance, and then took days to walk to
and from the place of confession, he had put his money where his
mouth was.
 The Firstfruits Offering: A Token Payment 811

When someone forfeits the ownership of capital for the sake of

another person, we say that he is either buying something or being
charitable. But what do we call such an expenditure when the recip-
ient does not use the asset? There was no suggestion in Old Cove-
nant religion that God ate the sacriices brought to Him. This made
biblical religion diferent from ancient religions generally.1 But if the
Israelite was sacriicing something of value, what did he expect in
return? God’s favor. Then was he buying God’s favor? Was the ar-
rangement a true quid pro quo? Could he expect to receive a stream
of income if he provided a trickle of sacriice?

Job’s Dilemma
This, basically, was the assumption of three of Job’s four ques-
tioners. They assumed that he had done something wrong to war-
rant God’s wrath. They were wrong; it was his righteousness that
had gained him such adversity, by way of Satan. But Job could not
understand why the amictions had come upon him. He had sacriiced
on behalf of his children (Job 1:5), yet they had all been killed at a
feast (Job 1:19). Where was the justice of God? That was Job’s ques-
tion. God’s answer was a series of rhetorical questions that boiled
down to this: “I’m God, and you’re not.”
The sacriices were the Israelite’s public acknowledgment that
whatever he possessed had come from God. Job asked his rebel-
lious wife: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we
not receive evil?” (Job. 2:10b). God is sovereign over all. But in
chapter 3, he abandoned this testimony. The Book of Job is the ac-
count of how he regained his original confession.
The theological problem here is the predictability of God’s his-
torical sanctions. If God’s curses come as unpredictably as His bless-
ings in response to covenantal faithfulness, the world takes on the
appearance of ethical randomness. This is the world of Meredith G.
Kline: “And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must run its
course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning princi-
ples of common grace and common curse, prosperity and adversity
being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable because of the

1. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991),
p. 59.
812 DEUTERONOMY

inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses them in

mysterious ways.”2
The conclusion of the Book of Job indicates that the predictabil-
ity of God’s covenant sanctions is reliable. “So the LORD blessed the
latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thou-
sand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen,
and a thousand she asses” (Job 42:12). This indicates that the sanc-
tions are not always immediate, but they are predictable. They are
not random.

A Token Payment
God required the beneiciaries of His blessings to acknowledge
the source of these blessings. The means of acknowledgment was
their assembling at a formal place of worship. Their sacriice was
their formal admission that God was the source of their blessings.
This implied that there would be further blessings. This was an
aspect of the covenant’s system of sanctions. “But thou shalt remem-
ber the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get
wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy
fathers, as it is this day” (Deut. 8:18). The positive sanction of wealth
ajrmed the covenant. That is, God demonstrated His commitment
to the covenant by creating a predictable stream of blessings for
them. By acknowledging retroactively that God had shown grace to
Israel, the Israelites were securing future blessings. Grace is to be
followed by a token payment. God’s grace to Israel was greater than
the payment required. The token payment nevertheless was ade-
quate to secure another round of grace. Then were they buying
God’s grace? Not in the sense of full payment for services rendered.
It was a token payment to God for services already rendered. This testiied
to their awareness that grace was the basis of their blessings. Grace
is not paid for by its recipients.
Token payments are important in maintaining covenantal faith-
fulness. Paul wrote that man’s token payment involves everything
he owns: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that ye present your bodies a living sacriice, holy, acceptable unto
God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1). Everything

2. Meredith G. Kline, “Comments on an Old-New Error,” Westminster Theological Journal,

XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
 The Firstfruits Offering: A Token Payment 813

that man can bring before God in payment for services rendered is a
token payment. “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those
things which are commanded you, say, We are unproitable ser-
vants: we have done that which was our duty to do” (Luke 17:10).
So, in efect, the irstfruits ofering was a token payment of a token
payment.

Conclusion
The irstfruits ofering was a token payment for blessings al-
ready received: corporate blessings and personal blessings. Israel-
ites sacriiced more wealth to get to Jerusalem than they did in
surrendering ownership of a handful of grain. They acknowledged
that God was the source of their blessings. They acknowledged also
that their token payments were not sujcient to repay God.
Their covenantal faithfulness in participating in a liturgy of
thanksgiving secured for themselves a continuing stream of bless-
ings. The historical predictability of God’s visible corporate sanc-
tions for covenantal faithfulness was at the heart of this ritual feast. It
reminded them that God could be trusted to deliver them in the fu-
ture, just as He had delivered them in the past. Past sanctions testiied
to future sanctions. Two festivals of Israel, Passover and Firstfruits,
looked back in history to God’s deliverance of the nation, but they
also looked forward to the maintenance of the kingdom inheritance.
The past was prologue.
 65
Positive POSITIVE
Confession and Corporate Sanctions
CONFESSION
AND CORPORATE SANCTIONS

When thou hast made an end of tithing all the tithes of thine increase
the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hast given it unto the
Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat
within thy gates, and be illed; Then thou shalt say before the LORD thy
God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also
have given them unto the Levite, and unto the stranger, to the fatherless,
and to the widow, according to all thy commandments which thou hast
commanded me: I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I
forgotten them: I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I
taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for
the dead: but I have hearkened to the voice of the LORD my God, and have
done according to all that thou hast commanded me. Look down from thy
holy habitation, from heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land
which thou hast given us, as thou swarest unto our fathers, a land that
loweth with milk and honey (Deut. 26:12–15).

The theocentric focus of this law is God’s oath-bound status as

the sanctions-bringer in Israel. The supplicant called on God to
enforce His covenant through sanctions: “Look down from thy holy
habitation, from heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land
which thou hast given us, as thou swarest unto our fathers, a land
that loweth with milk and honey.” He called for God to bless His
people today, just as He had blessed their fathers. This law was
revealed before God had given Canaan into Israel’s hands. God
would soon demonstrate the covenantal basis of this law, namely,
Israel’s victory over Canaan. The victory over Canaan would ratify
this law. This was a land law, i.e., having to do with tribal celebrations.

814
 Positive Confession and Corporate Sanctions 815

The laws governing the second and third tithes appear in Deu-
1
teronomy 14:22–23. This law was diferent. It mandated a public
oath after the presentation of the third tithe, meaning the third-year
tithe. This oath went beyond the presentation of the tithe. Basically,
this oath was a means of covenant renewal. It belonged in point four
of the biblical covenant model.

Confession and Sanctions

The person had just brought his tithe into the town. He then was
required to declare this tithe as representative of all the other com-
mandments. As surely as he had not cheated God and the recipients
of this holy (hallowed) tithe, so he had not broken any of God’s
commandments. “Then thou shalt say before the LORD thy God, I
have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also
have given them unto the Levite, and unto the stranger, to the fa-
therless, and to the widow, according to all thy commandments
which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy com-
mandments, neither have I forgotten them: I have not eaten thereof
in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any
unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead: but I have hear-
kened to the voice of the LORD my God, and have done according to
all that thou hast commanded me.” This was comprehensive
self-testimony. It covered everything.
For a man to make such a claim, he would have had to be per-
fect. Such perfection included making atonement and restitution for
his sins. In this sense, he was to be as perfect as Job: “There was a
man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was per-
fect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. . . .
And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that
Job sent and sanctiied them, and rose up early in the morning, and
ofered burnt oferings according to the number of them all: for Job
said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their
hearts. Thus did Job continually” (Job 1:1, 5).
To make an ajrmation as comprehensive as the one mandated
by this passage meant that the individual making it was renewing his
covenant with God. This oath must have been taken in front of a

1. See Chapter 34.

816 DEUTERONOMY

Levite, for the sins in question were not merely civil crimes. He then
called down God’s positive sanctions on the nation based on his
ajrmation of his own atoned-for legal status. He was adding his
public testimony to the nation’s covenantal request for God’s posi-
tive corporate sanctions. This of course assumed that others in Israel
also were making this ajrmation. On the basis of their corporate
confession, they called on God to bring positive sanctions.
Was the excommunicated Israelite required to take this oath?
Was the resident alien? I cannot imagine why. A man outside the
ecclesiastical covenant could hardly have been required to ajrm it.
Although he was required to pay his tithe as the land’s steward, he
was not required to take an oath that would have been inherently
false. As a noncitizen, he was in no position to call formally on God
to impose positive sanctions. He was not under oath-bound ecclesi-
astical sanctions.

Historical Sanctions
This oath was a positive confession personally and a positive
confession corporately. It did not call down God’s blessings on the
individual except insofar as he was under God’s corporate sanc-
tions. The positive personal confession had to do with his obedience
in the past. The positive corporate confession invoked God’s past
sanctions on Israel’s behalf at the conquest as the precedent for His
future sanctions. By testifying to their continuing faith in the story of
God’s covenantal sanctions in the past, they ajrmed their conidence
in His covenantal sanctions in the future.
A loss of faith in God’s past sanctions would have been fatal for
this oath. Such a loss of faith would have undermined the confes-
sion. Their faith in those sanctions also would have persuaded them
to avoid confessing their own individual perfection. If they lied,
they could expect no positive sanctions. They could also expect
negative sanctions. To the degree that they believed in God’s past
sanctions against Canaan, they should have believed in God’s fu-
ture sanctions against them for disobedience. “And it shall be, if
thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods,
and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that
ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroyeth be-
fore your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient
unto the voice of the LORD your God” (Deut. 8:19–20).
 Positive Confession and Corporate Sanctions 817

Once in each seven-year cycle, they were required to get right

publicly with God. The outward evidence of getting right with God
was their presentation of the third tithe. The third tithe was cele-
brated locally (Deut. 14:28). People would have known each other.
This would have kept sinners more humble. Their positive confes-
sion regarding their sin-free judicial condition invoked God’s cor-
porate sanctions: negative if they were lying; positive if they were
telling the truth. The nation could not reasonably expect continued
blessings if most of the confessors were either lying or ignorant of
their own sins.
This act of covenant renewal was preparatory for national bless-
ings. A little over three years prior to the beginning of the sabbatical
year, they called on God to provide national blessings. If their
prayer was answered, they would have excess crops. This would be
a source of the reserves required to store up food for the sabbatical
year. A negative response from God would make these prepara-
tions much more expensive.

God’s Sanctions and Pagan Confession

What God did in the past, He is willing to do in the future. There
is continuity in history. The next passage ajrms that God’s goal for
Israel was international acclaim:

This day the LORD thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes
and judgments: thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine heart,
and with all thy soul. Thou hast avouched [said] the LORD this day to be thy
God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his command-
ments, and his judgments, and to hearken unto his voice: And the LORD
hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised
thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments; And to make
thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name,
and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the LORD thy
God, as he hath spoken (vv. 16–19).

The basis of historical continuity is obedience to God’s revealed

law. Without obedience, there will be a negative discontinuity
(Deut. 8:19–20). The twin sanctions of cursing and blessing deter-
mine discontinuity and continuity. Obedience would gain Israel a
great international reputation. This means that the pagan nations
818 DEUTERONOMY

would honor Israel as a great nation. They would confess the truth
about Israel and its law (Deut. 4:4–8).
There would be consistency among God’s imputed righteousness
to Israel, Israel’s actual performance in history, and pagan nations’
subjective acknowledgment of Israel’s objective righteousness. Two of
God’s blessings in history are corporate righteousness and corpo-
rate confession, even by covenant-breakers. Although members of
covenant-breaking nations had a diferent view of god, man, law,
sanctions, and time, they would nonetheless confess that Israel’s
success, based on the Bible’s view of god, man, law, sanctions, and
time, was superior to their own. Their public confession would con-
form to God’s confession. They would acknowledge God’s bless-
ings as blessings. In this sense, they would publicly abandon their
own standards and declare God’s. This is why covenant law is a
form of evangelism.2 Because biblical law is attached to positive cor-
porate sanctions and continuity – long-term development – its visi-
ble results are so manifest that covenant-breakers are compelled by
the evidence to confess its superiority.
The pagan’s ability to recognize and confess the truth is an as-
pect of common grace. The objectivity of God’s corporate blessings
in history overcomes the hostile confession and false perception of
God and His kingdom by covenant-breakers. Isaiah prophesied this
eschatological condition:

Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in

judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a co-
vert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim,
and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall
understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to
speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl
said to be bountiful. For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart
will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the
LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the drink of
the thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth
wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy
speaketh right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things
shall he stand (Isa. 32:1–8).

2. See Chapter 8, above.

 Positive Confession and Corporate Sanctions 819

This does not mean that covenant-breakers are converted to

soul-saving faith by the testimony of their own eyes. Conversion is
by God’s special grace. Those who are not converted will, in the
inal rebellion, join with Satan in an attack on what is good and suc-
cessful. The objective testimony of God’s blessings on a covenant-
keeping social order will enrage covenant-breakers and goad them
into a inal act of destruction. This will end history. “And they went
up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the
saints about, and the beloved city: and ire came down from God
out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived
them was cast into the lake of ire and brimstone, where the beast
and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for
ever and ever” (Rev. 20:9–10). When they rebel, they will rebel
against a universal, triumphant civilization that is objectively so suc-
cessful that it calls forth the religion of revolution.3

Conclusion
The Israelites had to bring in their third-year tithes. A failure to
do so would have undermined this confession. But this confession
used the tithe as a model of covenantal obedience in general. They
had to declare publicly, one by one, that they had obeyed all of
God’s laws in the previous seven-year period. This was a covenant
renewal ceremony. It called down God’s positive sanctions, but this
necessarily involved the risk of negative sanctions for false oath-
taking.
This corporate event sealed Israel’s legal condition until the sab-
batical year of release, as either a covenant-keeping nation or a cov-
enant-breaking nation. If God withheld His blessings, they would
be tempted to plant crops during the year of release. This would
have brought down even greater negative sanctions.
This corporate oath ceremony ceased to be required when the
third tithe ceased to be required. The third tithe was a land law pri-
marily and a seed law secondarily. This tithe was a communal tithe
that united the members of each tribe in the tribe’s towns. It was a
tribal law. With the cessation of Israel’s tribes in A.D. 70, this law
was annulled.

3. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 8.
Part IV: Oath/Sanctions (27–30)

66
Landmark AND
LANDMARK and Curse
CURSE

Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the

people shall say, Amen (Deut. 27:17).

This chapter begins with a command to set up stones on

Canaan’s side of the Jordan (v. 2). These stones would have the law
of God written on them (v. 3). These stones would be made into an
altar on which burnt oferings (negative) and peace oferings
(positive) would be ofered by the people (vv. 6–7). The Levites would
then pronounce a series of curses on speciic acts (vv. 14–26). This chap-
ter marks a shift from law to sanctions in the Book of Deuteronomy.
The theocentric focus of the landmark law is God’s ojce as
owner of the whole earth. He places boundaries around His prop-
erty, beginning with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This
required public confession was a recapitulation of the law governing
landmarks: “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark,
which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou
shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess
it” (Deut. 19:14).1 The sin of removing a neighbor’s landmark in or-
der to enlarge one’s own inheritance involves disinheriting one’s
neighbor. It is an act of theft. It violates the eighth commandment:
“Thou shalt not steal” (Ex. 20:15). This was not a land law. It is
universal.
Moses told the people the following: after the nation had
crossed the Jordan and entered the land, they were to assemble at
the dual mountains of the dual sanctions, Gerizim (blessing) and

1. Chapter 42.

820
 Landmark and Curse 821

Ebal (cursing) (Deut. 27:12–13). The Levites were then to declare

speciic acts that would bring cursing to the violators. After each
declaration, the assembled nation would respond, “Amen.” That is,
the people would ratify each law and its declared curse. This would
constitute an act of national covenant renewal. The new generation
would renew formally what their parents had ratiied at Mt. Sinai a
generation earlier (Ex. 19). This ratiication was to be corporate; all
the people would participate.
The law of the landmark is the only one in the list (vv. 15–26)
that was explicitly economic. None of them was a land law or seed
law. Two others may have had economic aspects, but they had to do
with the perversion of justice: “Cursed be he that perverteth the
judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people
shall say, Amen” (v. 19). “Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an
innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen” (v. 25). The
presumption in these two instances is that the civil law would be
misused for someone’s beneit. The sought-for benefit would turn
into a curse.
The list of curses ended with the requirement that the entire list
be ratiied: “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this
law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen” (v. 26). That is,
partial ratiication would lead to a curse, and the nation was to in-
voke this curse. He who refused to invoke the whole of the law and its
curses thereby placed himself under the covenant’s curse. This fact was pub-
licly to be declared by all the other participants. The nation would
soon exercise the democratic right of sealing the national covenant
on behalf of every member of this covenant, present and future.
The people could not exercise what might be called a pick-and-
choose veto over God. They could not pick and choose from among
a large list of provisions. They were confronted with a comprehen-
sive list of provisions. God established the covenant. They could rat-
ify all of its stipulations and thereby escape the curses.

Boundaries and Sanctions

The landmark is a physical boundary, but it is also an ethical
boundary. This corporate confession appears in a list of boundaries.
The nation was required to confess that there were curses attached
to violations of these ethical boundaries.
822 DEUTERONOMY

Those Christians who deny that the Mosaic law carries into the
New Covenant should review this list of curses. Which of them is no
longer operable?

Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an

abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and
putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.
Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the peo-
ple shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s land-
mark. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that maketh the
blind to wander out of the way. And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed
be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow.
And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with his father’s
wife; because he uncovereth his father’s skirt. And all the people shall say,
Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the peo-
ple shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of
his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say,
Amen. Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people
shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. And all
the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an in-
nocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen (Deut. 27:15–25).

If all of these seem to be still in force, what about the concluding

confession? “Cursed be he that conirmeth not all the words of this
law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen” (v. 26). In other
words, if these laws carry into the New Covenant, what about God’s
sanctions against their violation? If a man is cursed who violates
them, what about the Mosaic law’s civil sanctions against such acts?
On what judicial basis have these been annulled? Are these sins to-
day less heinous in God’s eyes? Has the coming of the New Cove-
nant made men less responsible before God than before Christ’s
revelation? Is it a biblical principle that less is expected from those to
whom more has been given? Or is it rather the reverse (Luke 12:48)?

Conclusion
This prohibition against moving the landmark appears in a pas-
sage that speciied the judicial content of the corporate act of na-
tional covenant renewal by the conquest generation. It pronounced
a curse against the person who moves his neighbor’s landmark,
thereby disinheriting his neighbor and his heirs.
 Landmark and Curse 823

The invocation of a curse marks each of these boundaries as

covenantal. The commentator who denies that the Mosaic law ap-
plies in the New Covenant has a major problem with this passage:
there is no known covenantal principle of discontinuity that annuls
any of these sins. There is also no known covenantal principle that
revokes their curses. Then on what judicial basis have the civil sanc-
tions attached to these sins been annulled? This raises the issue of
hermeneutics: the biblical principle of biblical interpretation.
 67
ObjectiveOBJECTIVE
Wealth and WEALTH
Historical Progress
AND HISTORICAL PROGRESS

Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the locks of thy sheep.
Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. . . . The LORD shall command the
blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand
unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
. . . And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body,
and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which
the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee (Deut. 28:4–5, 8, 11).

The previous passage cited a long list of curses. We now come to

a passage devoted entirely to God’s sanctions in history. The theo-
centric focus of this passage is God as the sanctions-bringer. In re-
sponse to Israel’s covenantal obedience (Deut. 28:1–2), God promised
to bring blessings on the nation. These blessings would include
wealth. Deuteronomy 28 is a recapitulation of Leviticus 26. It an-
nounces dual sanctions: blessing and cursing. The chapter begins
with blessing; it ends with cursing. The section on cursing is much
longer than the section on blessing.
This was not a land law. The entire passage is not a land law.
Modern commentators who reject theonomy regard this passage as
a land law, although they may use some other term to describe it.
They do not acknowledge that these threatened corporate sanctions
carry into the New Covenant. They are incorrect. These sanctions
are historical. They are predictable. Covenantal rebellion by a soci-
ety will lead to God’s imposition of these sanctions. This is why this
passage and Leviticus 26 are among the most important in the Bible

824
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 825

– I believe the most important – for the creation of an explicitly bib-

lical social theory.
These promises related to measurable quantities – “increase,”
“plenteous” – of speciic goods: cattle, kine, sheep. “Increase” here
referred to storage implements: basket, storehouses. The numerical
objectivity of these reference points is crucial for this passage. These
were not inward blessings. The fulillment of these covenantal
promises, Moses told the nation, will be visible to the Israelites and
their enemies alike. They will serve as evidence of God’s sovereignty
over history through the predictability of His covenant relationships.

Visible Testimony Under the Mosaic Covenant

The blessings and cursings of God under the Mosaic Covenant
were sure. They were not disconnected from God’s law. There was
a bedrock objectivity that united covenant-keepers and cove-
nant-breakers. That which God regarded as a blessing, He told
Israel, all men would regard as a blessing; the same was true of curs-
ing. There was a shared universe of discourse and evaluation. This
objectivity was not undermined by subjective evaluations by indi-
viduals or groups. The lists in Deuteronomy 28 were based on an
agreement among subjective evaluators. The subjectivism of individual
perception would not overcome the objectivity of the corporate sanctions. The
nation would enjoy more.
The idea of national blessings and cursings rests on the exis-
tence of objective measures. For men to make such evaluations, nu-
merical measures must apply to the external world. To own a larger
number of desirable goods is superior to owning fewer of them.
However clever the methodological subjectivist may become, there
is no escape from Deuteronomy 28. The objective superiority of
more is assumed by God. Other things being equal, it is better to be
rich and healthy than it is to be poor and sick.
This passage ratiies the legitimacy of individual comparisons of
national wealth. An individual may lawfully seek out evidence of su-
perior performance of any society. At the same time, this passage
does not ratify the legitimacy of government-funded comparisons of
national wealth. The collection of economic or other performance
data by the government, except for military-related purposes or
other aspects of law enforcement, is illegitimate. To use State coer-
cion to fund data-gathering is a form of illicit numbering. The Mo-
saic law made it clear that numbering was lawful only in preparation
826 DEUTERONOMY

for holy warfare. It was not to be a common activity of the State. De-
fenders of the central planning State can justify its ejciency only on
the basis of its possession of more accurate and more relevant infor-
mation than the private sector possesses. Statistics becomes a neces-
sary justiication for socialism and interventionism. Strip the State of
its access to pretended knowledge, and you thereby strip away its
aura of omniscience.1
The point of Deuteronomy 28 is not that there are objective
measures of economic performance that are available to State eco-
nomic planners. On the contrary, the point of this passage is this:
the way to wealth, both individual and corporate, is through system-
atic adherence to God’s Bible-revealed law. Employees of the State
are not supposed to search the records of historical data for tax poli-
cies or other forms of coercion that lead, statistically speaking, to a
greater likelihood of an increase in per capita wealth. Instead, they
are to content themselves with the enforcement of God’s law in a
quest for civil justice. When they are successful in this venture, per
capita wealth will increase. Justice produces wealth. Any attempt to
discover economic laws of wealth based on a detailed search of de-
tailed economic statistics reverses the Bible’s concept of moral
cause and economic efect. It places economic causation above
moral causation in the advent of the wealth of nations.
Adam Smith understood this; his disciples rarely have. Before
he wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
(1776), he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). His moderate
Deism was a desiccated version of the covenantal Presbyterianism
of his Scottish forbears. His contractualism was a man-centered ver-
sion of their covenantalism. His orderly world of economic causa-
tion rested on moral cause and efect in history. The seeming
autonomy of his economics from morality, and of his morality from
theology, is an illusion. Smith’s epistemology moved in the direc-
tion of autonomy, no doubt, but his economics was not an exercise
in value-free methodology. He recognized that an economy is
grounded in moral causation, for society rests on justice. “Society
may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without

1. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1997), ch. 2.
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 827

2
beneicence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.”
Social order is not the product of immoral behavior, however
proitable vice may be in the short run. “Vice is always capricious –
virtue only is regular and orderly.”3 Self-interest that is devoid of
love of the neighbor cannot build a civilization. “As to love our
neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it
is the great precept of nature that we love ourselves only as we love
our neighbour, or, what amounts to the same thing, as our neigh-
bour is capable of loving us.”4

Capital and Covenant

Evaluating God’s favor to a society by an appeal to numerical
measures is valid. But this evaluation must always be governed by
the economist’s qualiication: “other things being equal.” The
“other things” in this case are ethical. Ethics comes irst. For most peo-
ple, it is better for them to be middle class than wealthy. Why? Be-
cause of the ethical temptations associated with great wealth.
“Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor
riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny
thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take
the name of my God in vain” (Prov. 30:8–9). If a person’s ethical sta-
tus could be ensured irrespective of wealth, then more would al-
ways be better than less. But it is inherent in the covenantal structure
of a fallen world that wealth and ethics are intertwined. Adam Smith
understood this: “The virtue of frugality lies in a middle between av-
arice and profusion, of which the one consists in an excess, the other
in a defect, of the proper attention to the objects of self-interest.”5 He
lauded frugality in the name of capital formation, but not frugality to
the point of greed. He praised spending by the wealthy as a source of
beneit for workers, but not to the point of wasting one’s inheritance.
Here is where biblical covenantalism gets tricky. On the one
hand, wealth is designed to conirm the national covenant. “But
thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee

2. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyClassics,

1976), p. 167.
3. Ibid., p. 368.
4. Ibid., p. 72.
5. Ibid., p. 438.
828 DEUTERONOMY

power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he

sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day” (Deut. 8:18). But it can just as
easily undermine the covenant: “And thou say in thine heart, My
power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth”
(Deut. 8:17). The same numerical sanction – wealth – can become a
means of grace or a means of wrath. One’s covenantal status deter-
mines which efect wealth has. The trouble is, we are not always sure
about what our covenantal status is, nor are we sure what it will be-
come under diferent economic conditions. This is why the author
of the Proverbs prayed for middling wealth. It is safer.

The Tendency Toward the Middle

In genetics, this tendency is called “regression to the mean.” It
was discovered by Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin.6 So far, it has
applied to every system we have discovered.7 Within any system,
there are limits to growth of any component of that system. The sys-
tem imposes these limits. Then what about wealth and poverty?
God is sovereign over the poor. He raises them up – not all of
them, but some of them. “The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich:
he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the
dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among
princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars
of the earth are the LORD’S, and he hath set the world upon them”
(I Sam. 2:7–8). God can intervene in history to break the cycle of
poverty as surely as He breaks the cycle of wealth. The question is:
Is there a cycle of poverty? Is there a cycle of wealth? Do the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer, “other things being equal”?
This is another way of asking: Is God capricious? Does He
raise up some and cast down others for no particular reason?
Deuteronomy 28 denies this. God has established a structure of eco-
nomic order. This structure moves most people toward the middle
of a bell-shaped curve. Wealth, like weight and height, is always com-
parative. First, there are not many poor men in a covenant-keeping

6. Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Odds: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: Wiley,
1996), p. 167.
7. Ibid., ch. 10. George Gilder believes that it does not apply to the computer chip, which
he calls the microcosm. We shall see. It surely applies to the proitability of high-tech
manufacturing facilities that produce computer chips.
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 829

society. “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen
the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Ps. 37:25). Sec-
ond, there are not many rich men. Capital is hard to earn and
harder to retain unless the State intervenes to protect existing hold-
ers of capital from new sources of competition. If a State does this,
then its national economy eventually falls behind free market soci-
eties that refuse to grant such coercive protection to special-interest
groups.
If a society is getting richer than its rivals, the poor inside this so-
ciety may become richer than the middle class in another. Can this
lead be maintained indeinitely? Or must a society, like an individ-
ual within society, regress to the mean? We begin with a statistical
observation: the efects of long-term economic growth are cumula-
tive. A small rate of growth, if compounded, creates huge efects
over centuries. A slightly higher rate of growth, if maintained, cre-
ates huge disparities of wealth between nations over centuries. But
huge disparities of anything within a system are what call forth the
counter-efects: regression to the mean. If a nation has a competitive
lead, other nations will be tempted to imitate it, assuming that the
sources of its advantage become known. There is a great personal
economic incentive for outsiders to discover and appropriate these
secrets.
Can God’s covenantal blessings be maintained indeinitely? To
answer this question, we must not appeal to the Old Covenant’s cat-
egory of original sin. The familiar Genesis pattern of creation, Fall,
and redemption appeared continually in the Old Covenant, but the
New Covenant has broken that pattern through the death, resurrec-
tion, and ascension of Jesus Christ. The possibility of sustained confes-
sion and sustained economic growth does exist as a theoretical ideal.
The history of the West over the last two centuries has demon-
strated this possibility with respect to the economy. Men have found
the secrets of widespread wealth: individual freedom, enforceable
contracts, future-orientation, capital accumulation, and technology.
England discovered these secrets irst. The United States replaced
England as an engine of growth early in the twentieth century. Asia
seems to be replacing the United States at the end.
A nation is subject to the lure of autonomy: “And thou say in
thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me
this wealth.” It can lose its position of leadership. Historically, every
leading nation has. But the New Covenant has overcome original
830 DEUTERONOMY

sin in a fundamental way. It has made possible the Mosaic law’s

ideal of long-term compound growth. It has given man a new escha-
tology, one which is no longer trapped by the cyclicalism of the pa-
gan world. Linear history – creation, Fall, redemption, inal judgment
– can be applied to nations and societies. Society is not organic. It
does not parallel biology: birth, growth, decline, death. Society is
covenantal: confession, obedience/disobedience, sanctions, inheri-
tance/disinheritance.
There is a bell-shaped distribution of wealth within a society be-
cause of the predictable outcomes of increased temptations that oc-
cur on the far ends of capital’s spectrum. At one end, the rich man is
tempted to forget God. If he succumbs, he loses his wealth. Or his
heirs forget to honor the moral basis of wealth-creation. They dissi-
pate their inheritance. The process of inheritance is geared to righ-
teousness. At the other end of the curve, the poor man who steals is
eventually caught and sold into bondage under a successful person.
His victim receives payment; he receives training; his buyer re-
ceives a stream of labor services. If the servant is successful and buys
his way out of bondage, he re-enters society as a disciplined man, and
presumably a self-disciplined man. He begins to accumulate wealth.
Can a family maintain its advantage? No more than a society can.
Then what about society? Must it regress to the economic mean in
the international family of nations? It is possible for a covenantally
faithful society to retain its advanced position until such time as: 1) it
succumbs to the temptation of autonomy; 2) other nations imitate it
and become even more faithful. On the one hand, sin can under-
mine a society. It can pull it back to the middle of the bell-shaped
curve. On the other hand, the gospel can spread, bringing other na-
tions into the growth mode. Both efects have the efect of moving a
society into the middle of the curve. The deciding factor here is
grace, not statistics.
Then we must ask: Is there an inherent tendency built into New
Covenant creation that pulls a nation to the middle of the economic
curve? There was in the Old Covenant: the power of original sin. To
answer this, we must appeal, not to original sin, but to eschatology.
If the gospel spreads to many nations, as the postmillennialist insists
that it must, then the move to the middle will manifest itself. Grace is
not a national monopoly. On the other hand, pessimillennialists in-
voke the Old Covenant’s pattern of redemption and Fall. They are
implicit defenders of a cyclical theory of national development: rise
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 831

and fall. If they are correct, then grace will be removed from any
covenant-keeping nation, and this once-blessed nation will move to
the middle or even to the poverty side of the curve. Both eschatolog-
ical systems declare that there is no permanent national lead possi-
ble in God’s covenantal history. Nations rise and fall, or else they
rise and get overtaken, but none can maintain a permanent lead
apart from its continued lead in the area of ethical sanctiication –
highly unlikely, given men’s proclivity to allow wealth to corrupt
them through pride (Deut. 8:17).

Visible Testimony Under the New Covenant

The visible outcome of covenant-keeping is external blessing.
This theme is basic to the Pentateuch. I argue that it is basic to the
entire Bible. My argument is not taken seriously by Christian com-
mentators and Christian social theorists. They argue that there has
been a great discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New
Covenant. This discontinuity supposedly has broken the predict-
ability of God’s visible responses in history to man’s obedience or
disobedience. But if there has been a great discontinuity, then what
of the evangelism aspect of God’s Bible-revealed law (Deut. 4:5–8)?8
Under the Mosaic Covenant, covenant-breakers could see that
the outcome of covenant-keeping was superior to other outcomes.
This realization was designed by God to call forth the above confes-
sion. But Christians today assume that under the New Covenant,
this older relationship between obedience and wealth is gone. The
covenant-breaker does not make such a confession regarding the
wisdom of covenant-keeping, presumably because no such relation-
ship exists, though possibly because he refuses to face the facts. The
testimony that God gave to covenant-breakers through Israel under
the Old Covenant supposedly no longer exists. The arrival of the
New Covenant has supposedly left modern man with less excuse.
Under the Old Covenant, foreigners could see that Israel’s
law-order was superior. Under the New Covenant, they supposedly
cannot see this because no nation possesses or can possess any such
covenantal law order. Under the Mosaic law, in short, covenant-
breakers supposedly possessed greater clarity regarding the blessings

8. See Chapter 8, above.

832 DEUTERONOMY

of the covenant, and therefore had greater responsibility for rejecting

the covenant than they have today. This strange theory of co-
venantal responsibility is implicitly held by the vast majority of
Christians today. We are asked to believe that the New Covenant
has left covenant-breaking men with more excuse for their rebel-
lion, for the clearer covenantal categories of the Old Covenant have
been superseded by a less clear covenantal order.
I argue that this theory of the regressive covenants is incorrect.
There is progress in covenantal history. Things get clearer over
time, not more muddled. The death, resurrection, and ascension of
Jesus Christ in history have made the Great Commission possible
(Matt. 28:18–20).9 The sending of the Holy Spirit has granted to
God’s people greater understanding than Old Covenant saints pos-
sessed. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide
you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever
he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to
come” (John 16:13). With greater knowledge comes greater respon-
sibility. With the spread of the gospel across national borders has
come a spread of knowledge. There remain diferences between the
national blessings of God and national cursings. Modern Christian
academics assure us that these distinctions no longer exist. This is
Meredith G. Kline’s position. It is the position of every Christian so-
cial theorist who denies the New Covenant applicability of Deuter-
onomy 28. I contend the opposite: it is not covenant-breakers who
are blind to the diferences, but rather modern Christian academic
theorists.

Social Theory
Deuteronomy 28, more than any other passage in the Bible,
serves as the basis for the development of a uniquely Christian
social theory. If this system of predictable covenantal blessings and
cursings was applicable only to the Mosaic era, then there is no pos-
sibility of a uniquely Christian social theory. Christians would have
to pick and choose among various humanistic theories of social cau-
sation. This in fact is what they have been doing since about 1700.
Even before then, most Christian social theorists went to the Greeks

9. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a
Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 833

and Romans before they went to the Mosaic law. After 1700, they
all did. There was no distinctly Christian social theory from the de-
mise of casuistry, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, until the
1960’s.10 It was the simultaneous appearance of the situation ethics
movement and the Christian Reconstruction movement that
brought casuistry back to Protestant thought.
Meredith G. Kline has attacked Christian Reconstruction in the
name of covenantal randomness: “And meanwhile it [the common
grace order] must run its course within the uncertainties of the mu-
tually conditioning principles of common grace and common curse,
prosperity and adversity being experienced in a manner largely un-
predictable because of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will
that dispenses them in mysterious ways.”11 But his criticism goes be-
yond the Christian Reconstruction movement. His broader target is
the New Covenant ideal of Christendom. He denies that such an
ideal has its roots in the New Covenant. He is not alone in this view-
point. It is shared by virtually all of modern Protestant Christianity.
The debate centers on which humanist ideal should be substituted
for Christendom.
In the Protestant West, academically certiied evangelicals tend
to baptize left-wing Enlightenment social theory, while fundamen-
talists baptize right-wing Enlightenment social theory. Both groups
dismiss as theocratic any judicial system that invokes the Mosaic
law as a binding standard for social policy. It is generally considered
legitimate to invoke the Ten Commandments, but even here, there
is deep suspicion. The irst three commandments are considered of
limits for civil law; the fourth is considered problematical for civil
law; and ive through ten are regarded as valid aspects of the civil
order only to the extent that they are enforced only as universal
statements of a common-ground moral law. Both groups prefer to
live under humanism’s theocracy rather than the Bible’s theocracy.
Both groups proclaim, “we’re under grace, not law,” meaning that
both groups baptize the rule of humanistic lawyers. Both proclaim

10. Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity in the Seventeenth Century (London: S.P.C.K.,
1952). On the decline of Roman Catholic casuistry in 1700, see Albert J. Jonsen and Stephen
Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988), p. 269.
11. Meredith G. Kline, “Comments on an Old-New Error,” Westminster Theological Journal,
XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
834 DEUTERONOMY

that God rules in history, but only through the tender mercies of
covenant-breakers.
Because Kline’s theology is opposed to the ideal of Christen-
dom, it is opposed to the ideal of Christian social theory. He ofers
no social theory. The same is true of his disciples. They have no the-
ory of history. Because they regard the Mosaic law and the civil
sanctions that God imposed to defend it as an “intrusion” in the his-
tory of the covenant, Kline and his followers can ofer no theory of
history either before or after the Mosaic era. History is inscrutable
for them, and they insist that this is history’s fault rather than theirs.

The Covenantal Structure of History

The biblical covenant is an integrated system. It cannot be accu-
rately discussed apart from all ive points. Sanctions link law and es-
chatology. God’s sovereignty enforces this link through hierarchy.
He is over the creation, yet He acts through the creation. He is
diferent from the creation, yet He is manifested by the creation. The
judicial basis of His wrath on covenant-breakers and their works is
two-fold: 1) original sin; 2) the fact that the creation relects God’s
moral character to all men. “For the wrath of God is revealed from
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who
hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known
of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the
invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power
and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:18–20).
The system of historical sanctions described in Deuteronomy
28 is the basis of men’s understanding of God’s eternal character.
This system is representational. What happens in history is analo-
gous to what happens in eternity: the extension of God’s kingdom.
This extension is, irst of all, visible in history. Second, it is based on
the predictable outcome of covenantal sanctions. The kingdom of
God rests on the moral authority of God’s law.
To argue that the kingdom’s extension in history is not predict-
ably connected to men’s corporate responses to God’s law is to
argue for the processes of history as either indeterminate (Kline) or
perverse (Van Til). Van Til writes that the future will bring persecution
for Christians at the hands of ever more powerful covenant-breakers.
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 835

But when all the reprobate are epistemologically self-conscious, the

crack of doom has come. The fully self-conscious reprobate will do all he
can in every dimension to destroy the people of God. So while we seek
with all our power to hasten the process of diferentiation in every dimen-
sion we are yet thankful, on the other hand, for “the day of grace,” the day
of undeveloped diferentiation. Such tolerance as we receive on the part of
the world is due to this fact that we live in the earlier, rather than in the
later, stage of history. And such inluence on the public situation as we can
efect, whether in society or in state, presupposes this undiferentiated stage
of development.12

Van Til’s position is clear: as history develops, the persecution

of Christians by the reprobates increases. The good get better, while
the bad get worse. The good become less inluential, while the bad
become increasingly dominant. Everyone becomes more self-
conscious ethically. Spiritual darkness spreads as this self-awareness
spreads. Christians should therefore be thankful that they live today
rather than later. Christians are tolerated today, he says; later, they
will be persecuted. Only the discontinuous end of history brings re-
lief to Christians. This is the traditional amillennial view of the fu-
ture. The good news of the gospel for a Christian theory of history
supposedly is that history will end before things get so bad that the
gospel is completely overcome culturally.
In such a view, the inal state beyond the grave represents a radi-
cal discontinuity from history. It is not simply that corruption does
not inherit incorruption. All Christians agree on this principle.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is

raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is
sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised
a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. . . .
Now this I say, brethren, that lesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mys-
tery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the
dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corrupt-
ible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So
when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall

12. Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace (1947), reprinted in Common Grace and the Gospel
(Nutley, New Jersey: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1972), p. 85.
836 DEUTERONOMY

have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is
written, Death is swallowed up in victory (I Cor. 15:42–44, 50–54).

What is signiicant for social theory in Van Til’s view of the

coming eschatological discontinuity is the radical extent of the
inheritance/disinheritance process in time vs. eternity. History’s
supposed progressive disinheritance of covenant-keepers by cove-
nant-breakers at the end of time becomes inheritance for cove-
nant-keepers. For them, eternal victory is snatched out of the jaws of
historical defeat. For covenant-breakers, the reverse is true. In Van
Til’s version of amillennialism, eternity is not an extension of his-
tory; it is the great reversal of history.
For Van Til, New Covenant history’s system of cultural sanctions
is exactly the opposite of what is described in Deuteronomy 28. This
is why I call his theory of common grace ethically perverse.13 My
standard is Deuteronomy 28.

Epistemological Self-Consciousness
Van Til argued that history will reveal an increase in episte-
mological self-consciousness. I have argued that he really meant
ethical self-consciousness.14 Van Til’s theory of common grace raises
an interesting question. If the covenant-breaker becomes more con-
sistent with his God-denying presuppositions over time, then he
must depart further and further from the truth. As an amillennialist,
Van Til argued that this would increase the covenant-breaker’s
power. As a postmillennialist, I argue that this would decrease his
power. But the more interesting question is this: To what extent is
the truth-denying covenant-breaker ready and willing to abandon
his consistency for the sake of pragmatism? If Deuteronomy 28 is
still in force, as I argue, then the covenant-breaker is headed for
poverty. Look at the history of the Soviet Union if you want an ex-
ample of covenant-breaking consistency run amok. Look at Red
China’s “Great Leap Forward,” 1959–62: as many as 30 million
people may have starved – the records are not clear.15 In the late

13. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 3.
14. Idem.
15. The most detailed account in English is Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret
Famine (New York: Free Press, 1997).
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 837

1980’s, the Soviet Union collapsed in bankruptcy. Red China under

Deng in the 1980’s abandoned socialism for the sake of economic
growth. This experiment worked. Men’s desire for wealth has un-
dermined socialism as an ideal, for they now recognize that social-
ism produces poverty. Socialism as a theory inally crashed and
broke apart on the rocks of economic reality, 1988–1991. The world
is no longer in the grip of the idea of socialism.16 When socialism
faded as an ideal, it faded incredibly fast. Pragmatism overcame it
almost overnight. The world looked at Gorbachev’s Russia and
concluded: “Loser.” Nobody wants to be a loser. The Marxist
promise of world domination loundered: in the inancial markets,
in Afghanistan, and in the Persian Gulf.17 Communism’s eschatol-
ogy of victory has become a joke. Without its eschatology, Commu-
18
nism is doomed. Its total failure was relected almost immediately
in the discount book bins of the West: books on Marxism, now un-
salable at retail prices. Except in university book stores, where ten-
ured radicals are still employed, we no longer ind Marxist books
ofered for sale. That ideological war is over. Marxism died with a
whimper, not a bang.
Left-wing Western humanist intellectuals have replaced their
once-conident defenses of socialism with half-hearted ajrmations
of the concept of private ownership (with extensive qualiications).19
They have grudgingly adopted more of the Bible’s truth in the name
of practical reality. Pragmatism has overcome ideology. The desire
for the good life has overcome the desire for political correctness
among the West’s left-wing intelligentsia. Socialism became politi-
cally incorrect in the late 1980’s, despite all of the opprobrium
heaped by the political and academic establishments on England’s
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and America’s President Ronald
Reagan. Socialism has become a god that has visibly failed. No one

16. Clarence B. Carson, The World in the Grip of an Idea (New Rochelle, New York:
Arlington House, 1979).
17. Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union. Its defeat in early 1991 by the U.S. military
broke the spell of the Soviet Union as a military powerhouse. In 1996, the Russian army was
defeated by the army of the breakaway state of Chechenya. The Russian army has become a
rag-tag force of unpaid beggars in the streets. Michael Specter, “In Triage, a Wasted Russia
Sacriices Veterans,” New York Times (Jan. 19, 1997).
18. F. N. Lee, Communist Eschatology (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1974).
19. So have left-wing Christian intellectuals. See Appendix F: “The Economic
Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider.”
838 DEUTERONOMY

today wants to be known as someone who worships in socialism’s

shrine. Socialism committed the ultimate sin for modern intellectu-
als: it became passé.
At the end of history, there will be a great satanic rebellion.
“And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the
camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and ire came down
from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that de-
ceived them was cast into the lake of ire and brimstone, where the
beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and
night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:9–10). This rebellion will be a re-
bellion against success, not failure. It will be a rebellion against an
established Christian civilization, not against some marginalized
ghetto culture. The whole point of Satan’s rebellion is to rebel. To
describe this rebellion as if it will be a huge majority movement
against a tiny handful of poverty-stricken, politically impotent
Christians makes no sense.
Covenant-breakers become less intellectually consistent over
time, not more consistent. They become more pragmatic, more
willing to subordinate themselves to a culture that delivers the
goods – in the long run, Christian culture. Whenever they become
more consistent, they produce the bad society, one that fails to de-
liver the goods. They want the fruits of covenant-keeping more than they
want the fruits of covenant-breaking. This is why there can be social
progress in history. Covenant-breakers will progressively recognize
in the New Covenant what they recognized in the Old Covenant:
“Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD
my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither
ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wis-
dom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall
hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and
understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath
God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we
call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath stat-
utes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before
you this day?)” (Deut. 4:5–8).
20
At the end, they will rebel. That is why it will be the end. But to
imagine that the good get weaker and the bad get stronger over time
is to imagine a vain thing: the reversal – not merely the annulment –
of Deuteronomy 28.

20. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 8.
 Objective Wealth and Historical Progress 839

Conclusion
Deuteronomy 28 sets forth blessings and cursings. These sanc-
tions are national covenant sanctions. They have not been annulled
by the New Covenant. Deuteronomy 28 sets forth the hope of prog-
ress in history: obedience brings inheritance; disobedience brings
disinheritance. Covenant-keepers will inherit in history if they
obey. The decisive issue here is not power; it is obedience.
The objectivity of the blessings in history points to the power of
common grace in history. Men who do not worship God neverthe-
less perceive the beneits of obeying God’s law. Men see with their
eyes and acknowledge with their tongues that covenant-keeping
brings more of the good things in life than covenant-breaking does.
The objectivity of God’s historical sanctions testiies to the reality of the objec-
tivity of God’s eternal sanctions. This is as it should be. It brings cove-
nant-breakers under greater condemnation in history and eternity
than if there were no predictability and objectivity to God’s cove-
nant sanctions in history.
There are two ways of denying the continuing authority of
God’s system of covenant sanctions in history. First, by denying that
the New Covenant’s corporate sanctions are continuous with the
Old. This denial needs to be proven exegetically, not assumed auto-
matically. Second, by denying that covenant-breaking men will
subjectively see and acknowledge the admittedly objective struc-
ture of covenantal sanctions in history. But this attributes to cove-
nant-breaking men a degree of continuous commitment to holding
down the truth in unrighteousness far greater than their desire for
the good life, which can be obtained by conforming to the external
requirements of God’s law. What we have seen throughout history
is that covenant-breakers are repeatedly willing to conform to God’s
external laws for the sake of gaining the covenant’s objective bless-
ings. Admittedly, they would become steadily more consistent with
their own atheistic presuppositions if they could do so at zero price.
But such consistency has a high price tag: economic stagnation and
other unpleasant cursings. Men refuse to pay this price for too long,
once they have seen that freedom works, elevating their rivals.
When, at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, the Soviet elite saw what
Western tourists owned, as well as what shoddy, pathetic goods the
Soviet elite enjoyed, Communism’s doom was sealed. Eleven years,
840 DEUTERONOMY

an exploded nuclear reactor, a bankrupt economy, and a failed war

in Afghanistan later, the Soviet Union fell.
Deuteronomy 28 provides the basis of a self-consciously biblical
social theory. But Deuteronomy 28 is rejected by modern Christian
social theorists. This is why they refuse to provide anything explic-
itly biblical in the way of social theory. They baptize this or that hu-
manist system. They reject the Pentateuch as a source of either
judicial content or formal structure of social theory. “The Bible does
not ofer economic blueprints,” they insist, which is why they are lit-
tle more than cheerleaders for humanism rather than designers of a
new civilization. “We’re under grace, not law,” they proclaim,
which is why they are under humanist politicians, bureaucrats, and
lawyers.
 68
The Covenant OF
THE COVENANT of Prosperity
PROSPERITY

Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may
prosper in all that ye do. Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your
God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your ojcers, with all
the men of Israel, Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in
thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water: That
thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his
oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this day: That he may
establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee
a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Neither with you only do I make this
covenant and this oath; But with him that standeth here with us this day
before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this
day (Deut. 29:9–15).

The positive sanction of prosperity is assured on the basis of

covenant-keeping. The theocentric focus of this law is God as the
king of the covenant. God called His people to come before Him to
ratify His covenant. There is no doubt that He initiated it. They
were to respond to His call. They did not call Him; He called them.
This was an inter-generational covenant: “Neither with you
only do I make this covenant and this oath; But with him that
standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also
with him that is not here with us this day.” Those who would later
inherit from this generation would be bound by the same covenant
stipulations. That is, the stipulations remained with the inheritance.
The property could not be alienated from the legal terms that had
established the original right of inheritance. This was not a seed law
or a land law. It was the law of the covenant: past, present, and

841
842 DEUTERONOMY

future. This includes the church and every nation in covenant with
God through the church. “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom
of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43).

God’s Call to Prosperity

“Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that
ye may prosper in all that ye do.” These words constituted a call to
prosperity. This was a call to dominion. It was a call to added re-
sponsibility. God expects more from those to whom He has given
more than from those who have received less (Luke 12:48).
Because we live in a culture that attributes enormous impor-
tance to prosperity, we may ind it dijcult to believe that men need
to be called to prosperity. Nevertheless, there are cultures in which
envy is dominant. To own too much is to invite reprisals. The very
idea of seeking prosperity is anathema in such cultures. To set one-
self apart through wealth is regarded as a transgression of funda-
mental cultural values. This is especially true in primitive cultures.1
This is what keeps them primitive.
A similar mentality has been pervasive in American fundamen-
talist circles for over a century. Economic success is considered
this-worldly. To pursue it is to risk being identiied as a person
whose reference points are temporal rather than eternal. The same
kind of hostility to wealth can be found in liberal and neo-
evangelical academic circles. History professor Ronald Sider’s
best-selling book of the 1970’s, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
(1977), was a tract for its time. Two decades later, however, the al-
lure of such tracts has diminished considerably. I can understand
why Sider re-wrote his.2 The lure of a well-funded retirement portfo-
lio is much greater today. A retirement fund of half a million dollars
is considered too small by professors who were cheerleaders for
Sider in 1977.
This passage makes it plain that prosperity is a valid goal. This is
why God has attached positive economic sanctions to His law.
Obey Him, and you will tend to become wealthy. This tendency

1. Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (New York: Harcourt Brace & World,
[1966] 1970), pp. 41, 295, 304, 305, 330.
2. See Appendix F: “The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider.”
 The Covenant of Prosperity 843

may be ofset by uncharacteristic adversity, such as chronic sick-

3
ness, or by a calling that gains little monetary income, such as for-
eign missions. But on the whole, God’s people are supposed to be
abnormally prosperous because they are to be abnormally obedient. God
rewards obedience. This means that covenant-keepers are to exer-
cise dominion in history.
Wealth is a tool of dominion. As such, it is a legitimate goal. As
surely as a tradesman seeks to own the tools that will increase his
productivity, so should Christians seek to obey God’s revealed laws.
God’s positive sanctions will pour down on those societies that obey
Him. Men thus rewarded will ind it easier to extend their inluence
into new areas or deeper into their own areas of service.

Future-Orientation
The text prophesies that there will be other generations that will
come under the covenant of prosperity. God was making a cove-
nant with them, too. They might not ratify it nationally in the same
way that this generation was being asked to ratify it. God would call
them together to renew it every seven years (Deut. 31:10–12). He
might not call them to proclaim verbally their allegiance to Him.
They would not have to. Their possession of the inheritance would
be proof enough that the terms of the covenant were still binding.
The formal ratiication by the conquest generation would represent
the heirs.
If prosperity was to come to the conquest generation, why not
also to each subsequent inheriting generation, as long as each would
continue to uphold the terms of the covenant? The oath was binding
across the generations. The covenant possessed continuity over time.
Its authority would be demonstrated continually by the presence of
visible sanctions. The inheritance itself was one of these sanctions.
It should have been obvious to everyone that over time, Israel’s
population would increase. A ixed supply of land in the face of a
growing population would guarantee smaller plots for each succeed-
ing generation. So, the inheritance was more than rural land. The
economic inheritance was mainly the ability of covenant-keeping
families to generate increased income. What was being guaranteed

3. Calling: the most important thing you can do in which you would be most difficult to
replace.
844 DEUTERONOMY

was not land but prosperity. God had delivered into the hands of Is-
rael the secrets of amassing wealth. Would they keep the law and
extend the kingdom grant? Or would they rebel?
God was setting before them a unique gift: the ability to create
wealth. This process of wealth-creation could extend down through
the ages. God was telling Israel that wealth was supposed to extend
through the generations. This was their inheritance. It was intended
to ratify the covenant: “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God:
for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish
his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day”
(Deut. 8:18).
God was also setting before them a theory of history that was
both linear and progressive. They could extend the covenant over
centuries. This kingdom grant was theirs. It would provide their
heirs with blessings. These blessings would testify to the continuing
presence of God and to the continuity of His covenant. Israel’s fu-
ture would not be cyclical. They would not inevitably lose whatever
God had given them. In fact, they could not permanently lose it, just
so long as they did not break the covenant through lack of faith and
lack of obedience. God was giving them a crucial tool of dominion:
long-term future orientation. He was giving them the psychological ba-
sis of an upper-class mentality: faith in the future. It is this mentality
that provides men with a way out of poverty.4
Neither linear time nor the concept of compound growth was
common in any other ancient society. The concept of cyclical time
was all-pervasive in the ancient world. What God was telling Israel
was that continuity through time is provided by the covenant itself. A man’s
eforts today can lead to ever-greater wealth for his heirs. But these
eforts must not be limited to thrift and technological experimenta-
tion. They must also be ethical. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God
is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words,
which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou
shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way,
and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt

4. Edward C. Banield, The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 48–54.
 The Covenant of Prosperity 845

bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets
between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy
house, and on thy gates” (Deut. 6:4–9).

Conclusion
God called Israel to prosperity. He told them that their cove-
nant ratiication would extend to other people who were not present
on that day. The covenant would carry down through the genera-
tions. The inheritance would constitute proof of the continuing va-
lidity of the covenant.
This was a new mental outlook for the ancient world: linear his-
tory and progressive history. History would be afected by what Is-
rael would do that day. History would be shaped by the covenant.
From Abraham before them to unnamed multitudes after them, the
covenant would bind together the generations of Israel. This cove-
nant would include growing wealth. God was not ofering them per
capita economic stagnation. He was ofering them per capita eco-
nomic growth. Prosperity means expansion: of wealth, of popula-
tion, of dominion, of the kingdom grant.
 69
CaptivityAND
CAPTIVITY and RESTORATION
Restoration
And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee,
the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call
them to mind among all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath
driven thee, And shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his
voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children,
with all thine heart, and with all thy soul; That then the LORD thy God
will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return
and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath
scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of
heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence
will he fetch thee: And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land
which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee
good, and multiply thee above thy fathers (Deut. 30:1–5).

The theocentric focus of this prophecy is God as a universal

God rather than a local god. Moses made it clear to the generation
of the conquest that there would eventually be a time of captivity
and scattering in Israel’s future. This was an aspect of God’s nega-
tive historical sanctions. This would not constitute a break in the
covenant. On the contrary, it would visibly ratify the covenant. The
covenant’s authority, like God’s, extended beyond the geographical
boundaries of Canaan.
Immediately prior to Moses’ death, God reconirmed His proph-
ecy regarding the future defection of Israel: “And the LORD said unto
Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will
rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land,
whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break
my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger shall be

846
 Captivity and Restoration 847

kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will
hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many
evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day.
Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?
And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evils which they
shall have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods” (Deut.
31:16–18). Without the promise of restoration, this passage would
have constituted a prophecy of the cutting of of Israel. Moses
warned them: “For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt
yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded
you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil
in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger through the work
of your hands” (Deut. 31:29). Nevertheless, there remained hope:
“Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood
of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and
will be merciful unto his land, and to his people” (Deut. 32:43).
This was a land law. It applied to Israel as a holy nation where
God dwelled. It was a testimony against the theology of the ancient
world: local gods that dwelt in regions. This was an ajrmation of
the universality of God’s rule. But this universality would be dem-
onstrated by the captivity of an entire nation and its subsequent re-
turn to the Promised Land.

Outside the Land

The inheritance included the land, but it was not limited to the
land. This was why God could threaten Israel with removal from
the land. He would demonstrate His authority over them by remov-
ing them from the geographical conines of Israel.
This was a unique outlook in the ancient world, where local
gods were tied to the soil of the family or city. The land was the
place of residence of the gods. The mark of their defeat was the mili-
tary defeat of the city and its destruction or captivity.1 There could
be no continuity as a people apart from the religious rites, especially
rites of ire, associated with the worship of family and city gods.2

1. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book III,
Chapter XV, p. 207.
2. Ibid., I:III.
848 DEUTERONOMY

Israel, however, was told that at some point, the nation would be
sent into captivity outside the land. The people would nevertheless
retain their unique status as God’s people. They would maintain a
separate existence abroad. They would eventually return to the land.
The restoration of the land would be a mark of their inheritance.
This promise tied them to the land because it acknowledged that
God’s covenant involved more than land. Because it was more extensive
than the land, their removal from land became a proof of the cove-
nant’s authority, just so long as there would be restoration. This is
what God promised.
The mark of a broken covenant would be the dispersion of the
Jews without restoration. If God ever extinguished the ires of the
temple and refused to rekindle them, this would mean the disinheri-
tance of Israel. If captivity was not followed by a return to the land,
then the continuity provided by the covenant no longer was in
force. This promise of restoration implied a means of disinheritance,
should Israel and the temple not be restored to the land. This is why
Jesus’ prophecy of the transfer of the kingdom to a new nation
(Matt. 21:43) constituted an assault on the temple and the nation.
He was saying that the Jews would be forcibly removed from the
land and not allowed to return. This took place on a preliminary ba-
sis in A.D. 70 and inally in A.D. 135, after Bar Kochba’s rebellion.
The 1948 creation of the modern State of Israel has been seen
by dispensationalists as a partial ratiication of the Old Covenant’s
promises in the New Covenant era. “In the twentieth century,”
write the editors of the New Scoield Bible, “initial steps toward a res-
toration of the exiled people to their homeland have been seen.”3
What has not yet been seen is the restoration of temple sacriices.
This makes it dijcult for dispensationalists deinitively to connect
the modern State of Israel with this passage in Deuteronomy. The
hope for restored temple sacriices is an important motivation for
popular dispensational authors to predict – and even inance – the
rebuilding of the temple, despite the fact that the site of the temple is
now occupied by a Muslim mosque. They fully understand that by
promoting this, they are risking war between Muslims and Jews – all
the better to create the conditions for Armageddon, three and a half
years after the not-so-secret Rapture. They also know that they are

3. The New Scoield Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 251n.
 Captivity and Restoration 849

promoting the restoration of the temple’s sacriices. I suppose that

the thought of Christians’ contributing money for the restoration of
temple sacriices is no more appalling – and no less – than the idea
that the future kingdom era of millennial blessings will be Jewish,
with temple sacriices throughout. “. . . [T]his interpretation is in
keeping with God’s prophetic program for the millennium. The
Church is not in view here, but rather it is a prophecy for the con-
summation of Israel’s history on earth.”4 The implication is obvious:
temple sacriices, as “memorials,”5 will replace the cross of Jesus
Christ as the Christian memorial. Then on what basis will Passover
not replace the Lord’s Supper? Christian tradition perhaps, or
maybe the high cost of hotel space in Jerusalem, but surely not the-
ology. The Book of Hebrews is unlikely to play any major role in the
future millennial kingdom, except possibly in memorial services for
the Church Age. “Nice try, but no cigar!”

Cursing and Blessing

The restoration of Israel would not only involve blessings on the
people of Israel; it would also involve cursings on Israel’s enemy.
Both sanctions would still be in operation. Payday would come for
those gentile nations that served as God’s rods of iron by placing Is-
rael under the yoke. “And the LORD thy God will put all these curses
upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted
thee. And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the LORD, and do
all his commandments which I command thee this day. And the
LORD thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand,
in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit
of thy land, for good: for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for
good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers” (Deut. 30:7–9).
Consider the implications of these verses. Because of Israel’s re-
bellion, God would raise up pagan nations that would bring nega-
tive corporate sanctions against Israel. Isaiah announced this in
advance: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staf in their
hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical na-
tion, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to

4. Ibid., p. 884n.
5. C. I. Scoield called these oferings “memorial.” Scoield Reference Bible (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1909), p. 890n.
850 DEUTERONOMY

take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the
mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart
think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut of nations not a few.
For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings?” (Isa. 10:5–8).
God would raise up Assyria, a nation that would boast in its own
power. But in that boast, Assyria would seal its doom.

Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed
his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit
of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For
he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for
I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have
robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant
man: And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as
one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was
none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. Shall the axe
boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify it-
self against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against
them that lift it up, or as if the staf should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.
Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones lean-
ness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a ire
(Isa. 10:12–16).

God’s love of Israel was the basis of His corporate negative

sanctions against Israel. “If his children forsake my law, and walk
not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my
commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod,
and their iniquity with stripes” (Ps. 89:30–32). This was a mark of Is-
rael’s sonship. “Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man
chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee” (Deut. 8:5).
What God would do with Israel, the Israelites were to do to their own
sons. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him
chasteneth him betimes” (Prov. 13:24). But this was not to give com-
fort to the rod. The implement is never greater than the user.
The issue, then, is obedience. The restoration of Israel would
come, but only on condition of their obedience. “If thou shalt hear-
ken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments
and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou
turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy
soul” (Deut. 30:10). If not, then not. Without obedience, Israel
would be transformed into a rod that God would use against His
 Captivity and Restoration 851

newly adopted sons, the gentiles. This reversal of covenantal roles

took place deinitively with the cruciixion of Christ. Then came the
stoning of Stephen. Then came the persecution of the Jerusalem
church. “And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time
there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jeru-
salem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of
Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles” (Acts 8:1). Finally came
the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This marked the inal cutting of of
Old Covenant Israel. With the extinguishing of the temple’s ire, the
Old Covenant ceased forever. The ire was applied to the temple;
Roman soldiers burned it. The covenantal roles were reversed, gen-
tile vs. Jew. The prophecy of Isaiah regarding Israel’s kindling of As-
syria was reversed in A.D. 70; the rod would itself be consumed:
“Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat
ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the
burning of a ire. And the light of Israel shall be for a ire, and his
Holy One for a lame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and
his briers in one day; And shall consume the glory of his forest, and
of his fruitful ield, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a
standardbearer fainteth” (Isa. 10:16–18). The light of the New Israel
has served as a lame. The church is now the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16).
The church inherited Old Covenant Israel’s status as God’s son, both
to sufer early chastisement by the jealous older brother, who was
now disinherited, and to serve as God’s ire in history.

Conclusion
This prophecy continued the theme of sanctions: part four of
Deuteronomy. The negative sanction of dispersal and captivity
would be overcome by Israel’s return to the land. The positive sanc-
tion of re-gathering would ofset the negative sanction of removal
from the land. There would be covenantal continuity for Israel out-
side the land. This continuity would be demonstrated for all to see
by God’s restoration of Israel to her inheritance inside the land. Is-
rael would maintain her national identity by means of the covenant
and through hope of restoration. The discontinuity of dispersion
would be healed by the greater continuity of restoration. The continu-
ity of the covenant would overcome the discontinuity of dispersion. If
it ever failed in this regard, the Old Covenant would come to an end.
 70
LifeAND
LIFE and DOMINION
Dominion
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that
both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God,
and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him:
for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the
land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to
Jacob, to give them (Deut. 30:19–20).

The theocentric focus of this law is God as the cosmic judge of

life and death. God here invoked the language of a covenant lawsuit.
For any capital crime, there must be two witnesses (Deut. 19:15). He
called heaven and earth to testify as His witnesses. In this covenant
lawsuit, God’s witnesses for either the prosecution or the defense
were heaven and earth: the creation. He is the creator of heaven and
earth. God is sovereign in His court. This was not a seed law. The
New Testament’s invocation of the promise of long life on earth as
an application of the promised Mosaic positive sanction of long life
in the land (Eph. 6:3) makes clear that this was not a land law.
These words conclude the fourth section of the Book of Deuter-
onomy. Section ive begins with Deuteronomy 31.1 What is impor-
tant in this regard is the nature of the judicial sanctions: life and
death. Death is the ultimate form of disinheritance. He who is not
alive cannot inherit. Life is the starting point of inheritance. We
have here evidence of the unbreakable link between point four of

1. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 5.

852
 Life and Dominion 853

the biblical covenant model and point ive. Sanctions are inseparably
linked covenantally to inheritance and disinheritance. To separate the dis-
cussion of point four from point ive, and vice versa, inevitably pro-
duces a partial covenant theology.

Long Life in the Promised Land

Verse 20 contains these words regarding God: “he is thy life,
and the length of thy days.” He is the source of long life, which is a
universally honored positive sanction. But for Israel, long life was
not sujcient. The goal was life in the land. The promise of long life
had a goal, “that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD
sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give
them.” The good life was life in the land.
Here again, we see the connection between point four and point
ive. Long life is a positive sanction. It is the basis of the inheritance.
Dead men do not inherit. But is long life sujcient? The text
speciies that the additional years given to God’s covenantally faith-
ful servants were to be used to extend Israel’s dominion over the
land. Dominion was the goal. The land was the arena. Long life was
the means. But what was their tool of dominion? God’s law. God
called them to obedience (v. 20).
In the passage immediately preceding this one, God set forth
the threat of negative sanctions. “But if thine heart turn away, so that
thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other
gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall
surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land,
whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it” (Deut. 30:17–18).
To worship false gods is to commit suicide, both personal and cor-
porate. God threatened Israel with the sanction of removal from the
land. Israel’s arena of dominion would be removed. To escape this
negative sanction, God called on them to choose life.
This was a this-worldly frame of reference. It was also immedi-
ate. This was not pie in the sky bye and bye. “For this command-
ment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee,
neither is it far of. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who
shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear
it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say,
Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may
hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth,
and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (vv. 11–14). Because the
854 DEUTERONOMY

law was close to them – imbedded in their thoughts – the covenant’s

earthly blessings were also close to them. God announced this to a
generation that was about to inherit the land.

Compound Economic Growth

The theme of compound economic growth is basic to the Book
of Deuteronomy. As the ifth book in the Pentateuch, its theme is
succession or inheritance. That is, its theme is the future. God prom-
ised Israel that the nation would persevere if it remained faithful to
God’s law. This perseverance was not merely a matter of linear suc-
cession; it was a matter of dominion. Dominion requires population
growth. It requires personal wealth. It therefore requires compound
economic growth. This is what God promised: “And the LORD thy
God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in the
fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy
land, for good: for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for good, as
he rejoiced over thy fathers” (v. 9). But the basis of this process is
obedience, both internal and external: “If thou shalt hearken unto
the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his
statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn
unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul”
(v. 10). To maintain the kingdom grant, Israel had to obey.
Here God promised Israel expanding wealth. In verse 16, He
promised biological reproduction. God therefore promised to match
population growth with economic growth. Population growth was
not a threat to them. It would not produce increasing misery as the
number of mouths increased without a comparable increase in the
food to feed them. Nowhere in the Bible can we ind a warning of in-
creasing numbers of covenant-keeping people who are sufering
hunger as a result of their increased numbers. Hunger, yes, but al-
ways in the context of an external imposition of the sanctions of
death.
Men are called to choose life. The more who survive, the longer
they can reproduce. The more they reproduce, the faster the growth
of population. By choosing life in the context of God’s covenant,
men thereby choose growth. They choose dominion. They also
choose responsibility, for with blessings and power come responsi-
bility (Luke 12:48–49). The extension of covenant-keeping man’s
dominion is the goal of God’s system of sanctions.
 Life and Dominion 855

The intellectuals’ hatred of both population growth and eco-

nomic growth in the late twentieth century is indicative of a radical
hatred of life, man, and God. That the legalization of abortion has
accompanied the various zero-growth movements is not surprising.
The humanist world is a culture of death because it is a culture built on
a lie: “And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine
hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17). This invocation of
man’s autonomy is suicidal. “But he that sinneth against me
wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36).
Two centuries of unprecedented economic growth and population
growth have disturbed many God-haters who fear hell. They fear
God’s inal judgment, as well they should. They see that compound
growth in a inite universe points to one of two things: the end of
growth or the end of time. Seeking to avoid dealing with the latter,
they deny the legitimacy of the former. The war on growth is a war on
God. It is a war on man’s dominion.
It is the sign of a terrible compromise with evil that we now ind
Christians – generally academics who have spent their lives in hu-
manist institutions – echoing this anti-growth propaganda. Chris-
tians today are bombarded by alien messages from morning to
night if they participate in the world around them. They pick up the
clichés of humanists who dominate culture today. Christians have
not been taught to think biblically, meaning covenantally, meaning
judicially. They cannot sort out the wheat of common grace from
the chaf of ethical rebellion. They pick up slogans from God-haters
who are at war with the dominion covenant. They internalize bits
and pieces of an alien worldview that is at war with the biblical doc-
trines of God, man, law, sanctions, and time. They do not recognize
that they have joined the enemies of God. They have not self-
consciously switched sides. Some have, of course: wolves in sheep’s
clothing.2 But the typical Christian layman is stumbling through life
in a kind of intellectual fog. He does not recognize his immediate
surroundings: the bog of humanism.

2. Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996).
856 DEUTERONOMY

Conclusion
God calls on men to choose life. This passage makes it clear that
at least four things are involved in choosing life: longer life spans,
greater numbers of heirs, greater wealth, and an arena of service to
God. Also implied are greater authority, dominion, and responsibil-
ity. This is the meaning of biblical inheritance.
The positive sanction of life is contrasted with the negative sanc-
tion of death. But death in this context – the conquest of Canaan –
meant removal from the Promised Land. Death meant life outside
the land. It meant life under another nation’s gods and govern-
ments. Death meant the tyranny of pagan idolatry because idolatry
produces death. “But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not
hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve
them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and
that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou
passest over Jordan to go to possess it” (vv. 17–18). Idolatry is the
way of spiritual death. Spiritual death leads to historical disinheritance.
Modern Christians, especially academic theologians, do not be-
lieve this. They insist that this historical cause-and-efect relation-
ship ended with advent of the New Covenant. They are persuaded
that historical cause and efect is either random or perverse. Either
there is no relationship between idolatry and wealth or else the rela-
tionship is perverse: evil prospers and righteousness starves. Both
views are antithetical to the concept of dominion by covenant, or at
least dominion by God’s covenant. Both views proclaim that do-
minion is by man’s covenant. Because covenant-breaking man is
dominant culturally today, the defender of random cause and efect
proclaims the long-term victory of evil-doers by default.3 In partial
contrast is the defender of perverse cause and efect in history. He
insists that covenant-breaking man extends dominion because cov-
enant-breaking man possesses the wealth formula: power religion.4
In stark contrast to both views is dominion religion, which pro-
claims dominion by God’s covenant. It rests on faith in the continu-
ing applicability of God’s law. Speciically, it rests on the Book of

3. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1990), ch. 7.
4. Ibid., ch. 4; cf. North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 3.
 Life and Dominion 857

Deuteronomy, which sets forth God’s law, God’s sanctions, and the
triumph of God’s people in history. Deuteronomy tells men to
choose life. This does not mean life lived in the shadows of history
or life lived in a pietistic ghetto, meaning life lived in fear of the ene-
mies of God, who supposedly hold the keys to the ghetto’s door. It
means a life of progressive dominion over the creation.
Part V: Succession/Inheritance (31–33)

71
Courage AND
COURAGE and Dominion
DOMINION

And the LORD shall do unto them as he did to Sihon and to Og, kings
of the Amorites, and unto the land of them, whom he destroyed. And the
LORD shall give them up before your face, that ye may do unto them
according unto all the commandments which I have commanded you. Be
strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD
thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake
thee. And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all
Israel, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people
unto the land which the LORD hath sworn unto their fathers to give them;
and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. And the LORD, he it is that doth go
before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee:
fear not, neither be dismayed (Deut. 31:4–8).

The theocentric focus of this law is God as the sanctions-bringer

in history. As such, we would expect this passage to be part of the
fourth section of the book. Yet those commentators who have seen a
ive-part pattern in Deuteronomy identify chapter 31 as the begin-
ning of the ifth section.1
Kline treats this part of the book as Moses’ last testament. This is
a reasonable way to look at it. The passage begins with Moses’ an-
nouncement of his great age: “And he said unto them, I am an hun-
dred and twenty years old this day; I can no more go out and come in:
also the LORD hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan”

1. Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy: Studies
and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1963, pp. 135–49; Ray R. Sutton, That
You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1992), ch. 5.

858
 Courage and Dominion 859

(v. 2). In this transition passage, Moses spoke irst to the nation, but
then spoke to Joshua. He was in the process of transferring his man-
tle of leadership to Joshua. The mark of this leadership was courage.
This was a land law. It invoked the immediately concluded wars
against the kings on the wilderness side of the Jordan River. It re-
ferred to the immediate conquest. The assurance of speciic victory
over Canaan was tied to God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 15:16).

“Forward . . . March!”
Deuteronomy is the book of covenantal inheritance. The Book
of Joshua marks a new covenant: the book of the conquest. First,
God gave title to the Promised Land to Israel. Then Joshua leads the
people to impose the transfer. What Moses told Joshua in his last
testament, the representatives of the nation repeated to Joshua after
Moses’ death. I cite the whole passage in order to prove my point.
The language of courage is the language of conquest.

Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass,
that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying,
Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou,
and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the chil-
dren of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that
have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this
Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the
Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be
your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the
days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail
thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this peo-
ple shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their
fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou
mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant
commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou
mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not
depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that
thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then
thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good suc-
cess. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be
not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest (Josh. 1:1–9).
860 DEUTERONOMY

Notice the judicial frame of reference: “Only be thou strong and

very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the
law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to
the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever
thou goest” (v. 7).
The imagery here is based on a battleield formation. The leader
marches at the head of his troops. He is out in front. He is the point
man, fully visible to the enemy and the target of the archers.
Normally, this would be suicidal. The senior military commander
stays at the rear, protected by his troops. But this image is diferent.
The leader is visible as the point man. At his side there is no one. His
ojcers and troops are behind him. This leader has his lanks unpro-
tected. He can be blindsided if his troops fail to rush forward to pro-
tect him. Yet this passage indicates that the warrior who marches at
the head of the army is not to look to the right or the left around him
– at his undefended lanks, in other words. He is not to worry about
his lanks. He is to keep his eyes on the enemy who is in front of him.
He is also not to look to the right or the left as a way to escape. He is
to march forward, into the valley of the shadow of death. He shall
fear no evil.
On what basis was Joshua expected to take this forward posi-
tion? Only because God was serving as his senior commander. If
Joshua and Israel pleased God, they would not have to worry about
their lanks. They could march forward in safety and therefore great
conidence. How could they please God? By obedience. God had
promised to impose the negative sanctions of the law on their ene-
mies. “And the LORD shall give them up before your face, that ye
may do unto them according unto all the commandments which I
have commanded you” (Deut. 31:5). This is why the people re-
peated Moses’ words to Joshua: he was to stay within the narrow
boundaries of God’s law. His lanks and the army’s would be unde-
fended apart from obedience to the law.
The military strategy appropriate to such a formation is called a
frontal assault. It assumes that the army can penetrate the enemy’s
defenses by overpowering them. Such a strategy assumes over-
whelming ofensive superiority. It is not an appropriate tactic for a
smaller army, let alone a guerilla band. Only if a smaller army has
either some remarkable superiority in weaponry or the advantage
of surprise should it attempt a frontal assault. Yet the language of
Joshua 1 points to a frontal assault.
 Courage and Dominion 861

Contrary to higher critics of the Bible, Israel had a very large

army. In addition, God was on their side. A frontal assault was the
appropriate formation. It would strike terror into the hearts of their
enemies. Here was a leader who did not fear the arrow, the stone,
the javelin, or the chariot.

Narrow Is the Way

The covenant’s sanctions are positive and negative. In a war, the
positive sanctions for one army are negative sanctions for its rival.
God had already promised them victory over future enemies that
had temporarily conquered them. “And the LORD thy God will put
all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee,
which persecuted thee” (Deut. 30:7). How much more would He
impose negative sanctions on the Canaanites, whose prophetic time
had come (Gen. 15:16)!
The success of Israel’s military strategy depended on ethics.
Achan’s secret theft of Jericho’s banned goods led to the defeat of
Israel at Ai (Josh. 7). The stoning of Achan, his family, and his ani-
mals led to the victory over Ai (Josh. 8). Yet even in this case, the
strategy was not based on a frontal assault. It was based on decep-
tion, whose success in turn rested on Israel’s previous defeat.
Achan’s sin had altered the army’s strategy.
The path to victory was a path of righteousness. City by city,
Israel was to conquer Canaan. The nation was told to obey the law –
all of the law – in order to achieve military victory. The path that
mattered most was the ethical path. The law hedged them in. They
were not to stray outside the boundaries of the law: neither to the
right or the left.
In a sense, this is also a matter of military strategy: the massed
formation. The ofensive army overpowers its enemy because it ap-
plies massive force to one section of the enemy’s defensive line. The
ofensive army seeks a breakthrough in the enemy’s line, which will
split the enemy force into two uncoordinated and fearful smaller ar-
mies. This is the strategy of divide and conquer. The enemy com-
mander keeps reserves for just this purpose: to send them into the
breach in the line. To keep his army from breaking apart, he risks
the lives of his reserves.
The massed formation of God’s army is also a tightly knit forma-
tion. The wedge of the leader and his troops smashes into the en-
emy’s defensive line, hopefully at its weakest point. The ethical
862 DEUTERONOMY

imagery of the straight and narrow path is tied to the imagery of a

military formation. The ofensive army does not dissipate its force
by spreading across the battleield. It concentrates its force like a
battering ram. This is the imagery of the narrow path. When cove-
nant-keepers wander of this path into sins of all kinds, the army of
the Lord is weakened and scattered across the battleield. It is men’s
adherence to God’s law that keeps them in a tight formation. Jesus
warned: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad
is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go
in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that ind it” (Matt. 7:13–14).

Optimism and Victory

The language of this passage is military language. This was ap-
propriate: Moses was passing leadership to Joshua, who would soon
lead the nation into battle. Joshua was to be above all a military
leader. Almost all of the Book of Joshua deals with the conquest and
the subsequent partitioning of the inheritance. Moses did his best to
impart to the next generation the conidence which his own genera-
tion had lacked. It was their fear of their enemies’ sanctions and
their insujcient fear of God’s sanctions that had kept them wander-
ing for four decades in the wilderness. Moses had spent the inal
third of his life herding fearful sheep who kept wandering of
ethically.
The context of this passage is the coming invasion of Canaan.
Their conidence was to rest on their adherence to God’s command-
ments (v. 5) and His promise to previous generations (v. 7). Man’s
obedience and God’s promises are linked covenantally.2 But if this
is true of the life-and-death matter of warfare, how much more is it
true of the other areas of life!
This passage sets forth a fundamental principle of entrepreneur-
ship: knowledge is not sujcient; there must also be action. A person
who has accurate knowledge of the future must act in terms of this
knowledge if this knowledge is to give him an advantage over those
who do not know. In fact, knowledge without action can place the
person in a worse position. He is paralyzed with fear of the future,

2. See Chapter 10.

 Courage and Dominion 863

which is why he cannot act. The person who is unaware of the future
but who makes decisions that will produce proits in the future is
better of than the person who knew but feared to act. Ignorance is
bliss compared to knowledge accompanied by fear-induced paralysis.
Shakespeare places into Julius Caesar’s mouth the phrase,
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never
taste of death but once.” The man who fears the future is at a disad-
vantage with the man who sees it and does not fear it. He may even
be at a disadvantage with the man who does not see it and does not
fear it. The fear of failure hampers the righteous man. This insight is
part of the West’s folk wisdom. “Nothing ventured, nothing
gained.” “He who hesitates is lost.” But, of course, there are coun-
ter-insights, such as “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Per-
haps it is, but is it worth three? At some expected ratio, a bird in
hand should be let loose so as to make possible a two-hand capture
of a bushel full of birds.
The man who knows the future but fails to act on his knowledge
is like a race track tout who knows which horse will win but neither
bets nor convinces anyone else to bet on that horse. His knowledge
will not afect the pre-race betting odds, nor will it make him any
money. Or he is like a military commander who knows where his
enemy’s forces are, but fails to deploy his forces to take advantage of
this knowledge.
Similarly, a deinition of entrepreneurship that rests on knowl-
edge of the future alone, without capital invested in terms of this
knowledge, is a useless deinition. It is not enough to know the ratio
of present prices to future prices. The entrepreneur must have capi-
tal available to him that will enable him to buy present goods or sell
future goods in order to take advantage between the actual ratio in
the future and today’s ratio, which relects investors’ inaccurate
knowledge of the future. He must also have the courage of his con-
victions. He must put his money where his mind is. (Not where his
mouth is, however. A wise entrepreneur will keep his mouth shut,
since by opening it, he gives away valuable information that may
afect the market’s present/future price ratio, which he plans to take
advantage of.)
The presence of optimism is not sujcient. There must also be ac-
curate knowledge. Paul writes of the Jews’ condemnation by God as
having been the product of zeal without knowledge (Rom. 9:31–10:4).
The zeal engendered by courage can lead to destruction as readily as
864 DEUTERONOMY

knowledge without zeal. In military afairs, there has to be a willing-

ness to engage the enemy. In entrepreneurial afairs, there has to be
a willingness to engage a future diferent from what one’s competi-
tors imagine it will be.

Conclusion
Moses gave to Joshua a command: be courageous. This meant
that Joshua must move forward, not being delected by concerns
about what was going on at his right or his left. The same is true of
our adherence to God’s law. If we stick to God’s revealed pathway,
veering neither to the right nor the left, we shall be victorious. God
will stand with us for His own glory, delivering His enemies into our
hands.
Moses made it plain that action was required. Risks had to be
taken. By whom? By Joshua, above all. His courage under ire
would set the pattern for his men. It was a good sign that the Israel-
ites commanded Joshua to be courageous after Moses’ death. It in-
dicated that they were ready to receive the long-promised
inheritance. Title to the land had been transferred to them by Moses
by the second reading of the law. Now it was time to collect.
 72
LawAND
LAW and LIBERTY
Liberty
And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of
Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all the
elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every
seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of
tabernacles, When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in
the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in
their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children,
and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they
may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of
this law: And that their children, which have not known any thing, may
hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land
whither ye go over Jordan to possess it (Deut. 31:9–13).

The theocentric focus of this law is God as the giver of the king-
dom grant. To maintain the grant, Israel’s priests would have to
read the Mosaic law to the entire nation at the feast of Tabernacles
(Booths). This was the annual week-long feast in Jerusalem that fol-
lowed by ive days the day of local celebration: the day of atone-
ment (Lev. 23:27, 34). The priests were responsible for the reading
of the Mosaic law to the people, presumably Exodus 20–23. They
may also have read the case laws of the other four books. This case
law does not say.
We might have expected that the law would have been read at
Passover. Instead, it was read at Booths. Why? Because Booths was
closely associated with the day of atonement. The day of atonement
was the day of liberation for Israel. This law illustrates a fundamental
principle of theology: grace precedes law. The day of atonement and
day of release preceded the reading of the law. This was a land law.

865
866 DEUTERONOMY

The Year of Release

The year of release was the sabbatical year (Deut. 15). In this
year, sometime during the feast of Booths, all zero-interest charity
loans to fellow Israelites and to resident aliens [geyr] were to be can-
celled (Deut. 15:2). Any Israelite or resident alien who had been re-
quired to serve as a bondservant because he had defaulted on a
charitable loan had to be released. He was to be given capital –
food, wine, and herd animals – when he left (vv. 13–14).1
Consider the timing of the reading of the Mosaic law. Once ev-
ery seven years, the entire nation was to assemble at Jerusalem. Five
days earlier, the poor who still owned rural land had been released
from charitable debts or any related debt bondage. As debt-free
men, they came to Jerusalem to celebrate. There, they heard the law.
For a newly released bondservant, the reading of the law would
have reminded him of the importance of obedience. He had fallen
into debt through no moral fault of his own, at least in the opinion of
his creditor. The way to avoid future debt bondage was to remain
obedient to God’s law, for the law promised external blessings for
obedience. The law was read to a nation of free men. It provided the
guidelines for remaining free.
This year of release was associated with the jubilee year. In the
year following the seventh sabbatical year – the sabbatical year of
sabbatical years – the jubilee year was to take place. All rural land
reverted to the heirs of the conquest generation. This took place on
the day of atonement (Lev. 25:9). Israel’s other class of debtors re-
gained their freedom on that day. Those who had defaulted on com-
mercial loans had those debts cancelled and had their share of the
ancestral land returned to them. Except for criminals sold into slav-
ery to pay of debts to their victims, and except for foreign slaves
(Lev. 25:44–46), the year of jubilee was to be Israel’s universal year
of release. Charitable debts had been cancelled the previous year.
The nation had heard the reading of the law. Then came the jubilee.

One Nation Under God

Israel was truly one nation under God. This law made it clear
that the entire nation was to hear the priests read the law. These laws

1. Chapter 35.
 Law and Liberty 867

were civil laws, yet priests read them. More than any other passage
in the Bible, this one makes it clear: there can be no absolute separation
of church and State. The two institutions can be diferentiated, analo-
gous to the ways in which the three persons of the Trinity are
diferentiated, but there can be no absolute separation. When it
came to God’s law, the priests were to read it publicly. Everybody
residing inside the land, including strangers [geyr], was required to
come to hear the law. God was the source of justice in Israel. The
priests were the agents delegated by God to interpret His law. This
right of interpretation was not a monopoly, but it was a legally pro-
tected service.
This law makes it clear: symbolically, the institutional church was
above both the family and the State in Mosaic Israel. Families were re-
quired to subordinate themselves to the reading of the law. So were
civil magistrates. Fathers and magistrates may have read the law to
those under their authority, but the two consummate manifestations
of the law in Israel were under the jurisdiction of the priests: one
public, the other private. The Ark of the Covenant, in which the two
tablets of the law were kept, was in the holy of holies. This area was
closed to all but the high priest, and he had legal access only once a
year. The public reading of the law to the assembled nation was the
other manifestation of priestly judicial superiority.
The nation was under God. One proof of this was the fact that
all permanent residents were under God’s revealed law. This in-
cluded strangers. They were required to hear the law read in public
once every seven years, and not merely listen, but also pay for a
journey to the central city. They were all to participate in a national cele-
bration of covenant renewal. This was not limited to ecclesiastical cove-
nant renewal, for strangers were required to attend. It was a ritual of
national covenant renewal in which the priests ojciated.
Tribal civil leaders played no mandatory ojcial role in this rit-
ual. A single tribe dominated: Levi. To Levi, Moses handed the care
of the Ark and this assignment. This was the nation’s common tribe,
the representative tribe. The Levites represented all of the tribes be-
fore God in their capacity as priests. They ofered sacriices for the
nation. In this respect, Levi was a mediatorial tribe.
It was at Booths that the 70 bulls were ofered annually as
sacriices (Num. 29:13–32), presumably for the 70 nations that rep-
resented the gentiles, and one additional bull (Num. 29:36), pre-
sumably for Israel. The day of atonement, celebrated locally, was
868 DEUTERONOMY

immediately followed by Booths, which was celebrated nationally.

Localism was followed by nationalism. The Levites were the tribe
that represented the nation. They were a source of unity.

The Rule of Specially Revealed Law

Moses commanded the priests to gather the people together. By
what authority did he tell them this? Not as high priest, but as the na-
tion’s prophet. He was God’s delegated intermediary between God
and Israel. As such, he laid down the law.
Civil law is common to all men who reside in a geographical
area. The Bible teaches this. Those inside the boundaries of Israel
were required to obey God’s law. The Mosaic Covenant mandated
that God’s law must apply to all men equally, thereby upholding the
principle that the rule of law is to be upheld (Ex. 12:49).2 Civil law in
Mosaic Israel was revelational. Civil law in Israel was not the auton-
omous discovery of rational men searching the logic of their minds
and the raw material of the creation. It was not recited publicly to
the people at Booths by the king or any representative of Judah. It
was recited by the sons of Levi.
Was attendance required by civil law? That is, were civil sanc-
tions applied to those who refused to attend? No negative sanction
is listed in the text. There would have been an ecclesiastical sanc-
tion: excommunication. This would have threatened a stranger who
participated in Passover (Ex. 12:48). It would not have threatened a
resident alien who did not attend Passover. It would have threat-
ened an Israelite, for citizenship was based on membership in God’s
holy army. This was a priestly ojce, which is why they paid atone-
ment money to the priests (Ex. 30:12–16).3
Access to the ojce of judge was based on participation in the
priests’ national reading of the Mosaic law. What does this fact re-
veal about the authority of natural law in Israel? This: what was judi-
cially common to residents of Israel was not confession of faith but God’s
specially revealed law. Those who were not eligible to serve as judges
had to obey the law anyway. They were invited to attend Booths

2. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), ch. 14.
3. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 32.
 Law and Liberty 869

once every seven years in order to participate in a priestly ritual that

served as national covenant renewal. Yet the stranger had not nec-
essarily ajrmed the national covenant by consenting to circumci-
sion. He was supposed to attend, although no civil sanction
threatened him for refusing to attend. His voice had no covenantal
authority in renewing the covenant, for he did not possess the legal
authority to impose civil sanctions. Yet he was supposed to attend.
Why should he have attended? First, to learn what the law ex-
pected of him. Second, to learn what the State was authorized to do
to him if he broke the law. This national day of legal education was a
means of placing restrictions on both the church and the State. The
public reading of the Mosaic law gave to the listeners the means of
defending themselves from evil-doers, including ojcers of church
and State. Residents were to be protected from each other by the
law. They were strongly encouraged to attend the festival to hear
the formal reading of the law. In a society in which there was no
printing and literacy was not common, this was an important way to
place the authorities on a chain. Men would understand their rights
– their legal immunities from the State – because they had heard the
law read by priests. The State could not lawfully prohibit the public
reading of the law. It was the church that had been given the author-
ity to read the law. The priests would have a part in making access to
the law easier in Israel.
This limitation on civil power meant that an independent legal
hierarchy was present in Israel that would serve as a check on the
State. Any attempt by the State to restrict the priests from exercising
their God-given authority to read the law before the nation would
incur the resistance of the priests and the wrath of God.

Natural Law vs. Theocracy

Natural law theory rests on the assumption that there is a source
of common ethics and common wisdom irrespective of theological
confession. This common system of ethics is said to serve as the ba-
sis of a common judicial system. This common legal order is suppos-
edly accessible to all rational men, however men deine rational.4 This
presumed commonality is the basis of the civil law’s legitimacy. Natural law

4. Usually, at some point in the argument, the defender of natural law theory invokes
“right reason,” which is the system of reason he recommends.
870 DEUTERONOMY

is said to be grounded in the nature of man as a rational being,

whether or not he was created by God. Because natural law has au-
thority irrespective of theological confession, it is to be the basis of
civil government, for civil government has authority over all men
who reside in a geographical area irrespective of their confession of
faith. So runs the familiar intellectual defense of natural law theory.
The Christian version of natural law theory adds that it is man in
his ojce as God’s image-bearer that establishes the possibility of
natural law. It is God in His ojce as universal Father (Acts 17:26)
rather than as the redemptive, adopting Father, who establishes
civil government. The natural law theorist distinguishes between
God the Creator and God the Redeemer in discussing natural law.
God as Creator is universal; God as Redeemer is particular. It is
God as universal who lays down the civil laws that all men must
obey.
The Christian defender of natural law theory argues that God
placed Israel under the rule of a civil order that was particular. In
God’s redemptive-historical plan, Israel’s narrow parochialism –
grounded in God as redeeming Father – was the particular which tem-
porarily superseded the universal. Why, we are not told. It just did.
The New Covenant, we are told, is the triumph of the universal. The
New Covenant delivers us into the hands of civil rulers whose au-
thority does not rest on their confession of God as Father, either uni-
versal or particular. Their confession of faith need be implicit only:
a confession of self-professed autonomous man as the universal. Man is the
law-giver because humanity is common to man.
The humanism of natural law theory is obvious. Prior to Dar-
win’s implicit destruction of all natural law theory, natural law
theory was Western humanism’s primary judicial alternative to
Christian law. Darwin destroyed men’s faith in a common legal or-
der that is grounded in man’s reason because men are individuals
caught in a purposeless evolutionary process that has no ixed ethi-
cal standards.5 Nevertheless, a few Christian social theorists still
cling to a doctrine of humanistic law that has to be defended today
by an appeal to biblical revelation: the doctrine of special creation.
Only by invoking special creation can they save natural law theory

5. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix A.
 Law and Liberty 871

from Darwinism. But the rationality of unredeemed mankind op-

poses the Bible’s doctrine of special creation. So, they wind up in the
peculiar position of having to ajrm the authority of biblical revela-
tion in order to defend a theory of civil law that denies any inde-
pendent civil authority of biblical revelation. They ajrm that which
common reason rejects as irrational or irrelevant in order to defend
a system of humanistic civil law which rests on the assumption of the
authority of common reason and common ethics. God as redeemer
is replaced by God as creator. God as creator is then said to legiti-
mize the civil order of autonomous man. In this way the city of man
replaces the city of God in the political theory of fundamentalists
who hate biblical theocracy far more than they hate humanist
theocracy.
If men can govern themselves as covenant-keepers by a civil
law order that is in no way grounded on God’s Bible-revealed law,
then why did God require the Israelites to hear the reading of the
Mosaic law? Why was national covenant renewal grounded in a public
reading of the Mosaic law? If covenant-keepers today may not legit-
imately invoke the authority of biblical law as the basis of God-
honoring civil government, why was this insight not given to God’s
covenant people prior to the advent of Roman Stoicism? Why did
God’s people have to wait for Roman Stoics to discover the theory
of natural law, by which they explained why Rome had the author-
ity to create an empire out of the ruins of the Greek city-states? The
Stoics provided a philosophical justiication for empire that could
not be provided by the polytheism of classical religion. Yet Chris-
tians are expected to believe that God waited until the advent of the
tyrannical Roman Empire in order to inform His covenant people
of the sole authority of man’s universal reason in establishing civil
law. He raised up Stoic philosophers rather than prophets to bring
this message to the church. Furthermore, it was not until Roger Wil-
liams in the early 1640’s discovered pluralism’s principle of reli-
giously neutral civil commonwealth that God’s church was
presented with this theory in the name of Christianity.6 This implicit
theory of the origins of civil freedom seems an odd one for Christian

6. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 249–50.
872 DEUTERONOMY

intellectuals to hold, but they do. They refuse to state it this baldly,
but they do believe it. Their theory of natural law demands it.
This text forces us to consider the obvious fact that in order to
preserve liberty in Mosaic Israel, the nation had to hear the law
once every seven years. The basis of judicial liberty was not the inte-
rior speculations of everyman. The basis of judicial liberty was obe-
dience to God’s revealed law. What the modern Christian pluralist
must maintain is that judicial liberty comes from the com-
mon-ground logic and/or experience of covenant-breaking man. It
is not the Bible that presents the basis of liberty; rather, God’s ene-
mies do. There has to be some common-ground moral vision which
unites covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers, and this vision
must serve all mankind as the basis of liberty. Adam’s Fall has there-
fore not seriously blinded men to moral truth. Covenant-keeping
rational man holds back or suppresses the truth in unrighteousness
(Rom. 1:18), yet somehow this process of self-imposed blindness
does not undermine the outcome of his moral reason, a moral rea-
son shared by all rational men. Covenant-breaking man’s moral and
judicial speculations possess greater authority than the Mosaic law
does, or than the Bible as a whole does, or so we are assured by mod-
ern defenders of natural law theory, whether Christian or pagan.

Biblical Economics
Biblical economics must take a stand against the rationalist’s
claim that only what is common to all men’s reason is epistemolo-
gically valid. This is the modern economist’s defense of wertfrei:
value-neutral logic. He defends this nineteenth-century epistemolo-
gical doctrine with greater enthusiasm and conidence than repre-
sentatives of the other social sciences do.
Biblical economics does not have faith in any theory of episte-
mological neutrality. It recognizes that any claim of epistemological
neutrality shatters on the shore line of a key doctrine of modern eco-
nomics: the scientific impossibility of making interpersonal com-
parisons of subjective utility.7 There is no common scale of values;
there is no measuring device. Thus, there can be no such thing as ap-
plied economics. Between the theoretical speculations of the economist

7. This was the discovery of Lionel Robbins in 1932.

 Law and Liberty 873

and the world of economic advice and policy-making there can be

no connection without destroying the doctrine of subjective value.
This, no non-Marxist economist wants to admit.
The solution to this epistemological dilemma is an appeal to the
Bible, especially the Mosaic law. It is in the doctrine of monotheism
that we can discover ways of reconciling subjective value and objec-
tive value. It is in the doctrine of the Trinity that we can discover
ways of reconciling the personal imputation of subjective value with
the corporate imputation of objective value.

Conclusion
The nation was called by God to assemble at a central city once
every seven years, in order to hear the public reading of God’s re-
vealed law. God did not call them into university classrooms to cog-
itate on the wisdom of the common man. He did not call them to
devise systems of law that would be acceptable to covenant-
breaking strangers in the land. Instead, He called them to corporate
covenant renewal through hearing the priests read the Mosaic law.
No passage in the Bible more clearly reveals the illegitimacy of political plu-
ralism and its corollary, natural law theory.
By undermining natural law theory, this passage also under-
mines the biblical case for value-free economics. A correct under-
standing of the law of God rests on a theory of Bible-revealed law.
So does a correct understanding of the laws of economics.
Law and liberty are linked by the revealed law of God. This in-
cludes political liberty and economic liberty. While natural man
can, through common grace, understand a great deal, his presuppo-
sition of the availability of true knowledge apart from the written
revelation of the God of the Bible is incorrect. Liberty begins with
God’s grace, which includes the grace of Bible-revealed law.
 73
A Song
A SONG OF of Near-Disinheritance
NEAR-DISINHERITANCE

And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy
fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the
strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake
me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger
shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I
will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils
and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day. Are not
these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us? And I will
surely hide my face in that day for all the evils which they shall have
wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods (Deut. 31:16–18).

This was not a law. It was a prophecy. God told Moses that Is-
rael would surely rebel against Him after they entered the Promised
Land. The very prosperity of that land would lead them astray. “For
when I shall have brought them into the land which I sware unto
their fathers, that loweth with milk and honey; and they shall have
eaten and illed themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto
other gods, and serve them, and provoke me, and break my cove-
nant” (v. 20).
God instructed Moses to write a song. This song would provide
an account of God’s deliverance of Israel – not out of Egypt but out
of the wilderness. It would begin with the fourth generation’s inheri-
tance of the land. “And it shall come to pass, when many evils and
troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as
a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed:
for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before
I have brought them into the land which I sware” (v. 21).

874
 A Song of Near-Disinheritance 875

Singing God’s Five-Point Covenant Lawsuit

The song begins with a statement of God’s sovereignty: “He is
the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of
truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deut. 32:4). This is
point one.
Point two describes Israel’s rebellion against God’s hierarchy:
“They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his
children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus re-
quite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father
that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established
thee?” (vv. 5–6)
Point three describes God’s establishment of the boundaries of
the nations and of Israel (v. 8). He led them inside the boundaries of
the wilderness (vv. 10–12).
Point four describes God’s positive sanctions: food in abun-
dance (vv. 13–14). This led to Israel’s fatness and her subsequent
loss of faith: sacriicing to false gods (vv. 15–16), i.e., a new oath and
new covenant. This produced negative sanctions (vv. 20–22). “I will
heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them”
(v. 23).
Point ive, disinheritance, would not come, not for Israel’s sake
but for the honor of God’s name. “I said, I would scatter them into
corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from
among men: Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest
their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they
should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this”
(vv. 26–27). But Israel would not see this as God’s motivation during
her rebellion. “For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there
any understanding in them. O that they were wise, that they under-
stood this, that they would consider their latter end!” (vv. 28–29).
The arrogance of the enemy nations would bring them down.
“To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall
slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the
things that shall come upon them make haste. For the LORD shall
judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth
that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left”
(vv. 35–36). This meant that the disinheritance that would rightfully
come upon Israel would instead be replaced by a new inheritance.
This would mean the disinheritance of those nations that would
876 DEUTERONOMY

serve as God’s rods of iron against Israel. “Rejoice, O ye nations,

with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will
render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his
land, and to his people” (v. 43). This ended the song of Moses (v. 44).
Moses then called on the nation to obey the law: “And he said
unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among
you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to
do, all the words of this law” (v. 46). Obedience is the basis of life:
“For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through
this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over
Jordan to possess it” (v. 47). Once again, obedience is here
identiied as the basis of maintaining the kingdom grant.
Moses was then instructed by God to climb Mt. Nebo, so that he
could see the land into which he would not be allowed to march (v.
49). Disobedience had kept him outside the land (vv. 51–52). What
was true of Moses would surely be true for Israel: disobedience
would undermine the inheritance.

Conclusion
The chief inheritance of Israel was the law itself. “Moses com-
manded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”
(Deut. 33:4). The law was their tool of dominion, the standard of
their continuing economic inheritance. Moses then blessed each of
the tribes as his last will and testament, just as Jacob had done with
his twelve sons in Egypt. The expulsion of the Canaanites was
imminent:

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting
arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say,
Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob
shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down
dew. Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by
the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency!
and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon
their high places (vv. 27–29).

Moses then did as he had been told: he went up Mt. Nebo to see
the Promised Land. Then he died. But before he died, he trans-
ferred leadership to Joshua by the laying on of hands (v. 9). This rep-
resented the transfer of inheritance to Israel.
 Conclusion
CONCLUSION

Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation

of Jacob (Deut. 33:4).

The Book of Deuteronomy is the Pentateuch’s book of inheri-

tance. The ifth and inal section of Deuteronomy has to do with in-
heritance in the broadest sense. The primary inheritance of Israel
was the revealed law of God. This was Israel’s tool of dominion.1
Obedience to the law was Israel’s basis of maintaining the inheri-
tance and extending it in history. But it was not sujcient for Israel to
maintain the inheritance; Israel had to extend it. There is a war in
history between God’s kingdom and Satan’s. There is no permanent
peace treaty between these two kingdoms. There is no neutrality.
There can be no stalemate. Israel forgot this, which is why the king-
dom was removed from her (Matt. 21:43). Modern Christians also
tend to forget this.2
Moses consummated his writing of the book of the inheritance
with a series of blessings, tribe by tribe (Deut. 33:6–25), just as Jacob
had, almost two and a half centuries earlier (Gen. 49).3 As for the na-
tion, Moses said, “Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O
people saved by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the

1. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1990).
2. Gary North, Backward, Christian Soldiers? An Action Manual for Christian Reconstruction
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, [1984] 1988), ch. 11: “The Stalemate
Mentality.”
3. Israel’s sojourn inside the boundaries of Egypt was 215 years. Gary North, Moses and
Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics,
1985), pp. 14–17.

877
878 DEUTERONOMY

sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto
thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places” (Deut. 33:29).
Then he went of to Mt. Nebo to die. But before he did, he laid
hands on Joshua. “And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of
wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of
Israel hearkened unto him, and did as the LORD commanded
Moses” (Deut. 34:9). This completed the transfer of authority from
Moses to Joshua. This was Joshua’s long-awaited inheritance.
Deuteronomy presents a recapitulation of the Mosaic law. The
inheriting generation was required to ajrm their commitment to
this law. In this sense, Deuteronomy is a book of covenant renewal.
This would seem to place the book under point four of the cove-
nant: oath. But the book also involves the transfer of the judicial
inheritance to the generation of the conquest. In this sense, Deuter-
onomy is an aspect of point ive: succession. This is another reason
why I believe that points four and ive of the biblical covenant
model are so intimately related. In fact, the full consummation of
Deuteronomy did not take place until the Israelites had crossed
over Canaan’s boundary (point three) and were circumcised (point
four) at Gilgal (Josh. 5:3). Israel had to be circumcised before the
historical transfer of title to Canaan could take place. The covenant
oath that was implied by circumcision was mandatory prior to Is-
rael’s receiving the inheritance of Canaan. We can say that the in-
heritance of the law and the reajrmation of the promise came with
the Book of Deuteronomy. The historical inheritance of Canaan by
Israel is described in the Book of Joshua. Circumcision conirmed con-
fession. More than this: circumcision constituted confession.
Deuteronomy sets forth the legal basis of Israel’s inheritance of
Canaan. It presents God’s law and refers to the sanctions attached to
this law-order. Israel’s acceptance of this covenant document was to
serve as the judicial basis of the oath-sign to be imposed across the
Jordan. The transfer of the law was the covenantal basis of the transfer of
the inheritance. In this sense, the law was Israel’s primary inheritance:
received irst. The Promised Land was the secondary inheritance:
received second.

Promise and Conditions

There could be no legitimate doubt that this generation would
inherit. It was the fourth generation after Jacob’s descent into Egypt.
“But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the
 Conclusion 879

iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16). Nevertheless,

the fulillment of this promise was conditional. First, Israel formally
had to subordinate the nation to God (point two) by ajrming God’s
law (point three) and its historical sanctions (point four). The proof
of their acceptance of the law’s historical sanctions was their willing-
ness to submit to the oath-sign of circumcision. Without such ritual
submission, they could not become true sons of Abraham and
therefore heirs of the promise to Abraham. There can be no doubt
here: the Abrahamic promise was conditional. Had they rejected God
by rejecting His law, as manifested by their refusal to be circum-
cised, they would not have inherited. They could inherit the law
without circumcision, and they did (Deuteronomy), but they could
not inherit the land without circumcision (Joshua).
This conditionality of the Abrahamic covenant creates a minor
theological problem that is easy to solve. Unfortunately, it has long
been dealt with by theologians as if it were a major problem that is
very dijcult to solve. Here is the problem: How can a promise
made by God and then sealed by His oath be conditional? If the
fulillment of an oath-bound covenantal promise is conditional,
then its fulillment in history seems to depend on man rather than
God. Sovereignty is thereby transferred to man. How can this be?
The correct and relatively simple answer is theological: the
fulillment of God’s promises is secured by God’s sovereign decree. God does
not predestinate in a vacuum. He does not predestinate single
events within a contingent historical framework. When He an-
nounces a promise or a prophecy, His sovereign decree secures the
historical conditions necessary for its fulillment. Sovereignty over
history at no point is transferred to man. God retains it absolutely.
The complete fulillment of the conditions is as secure as the com-
plete fulillment of the promise.
It is one of those oddities of ecclesiastical history that Calvinist
theologians who call themselves covenant theologians have de-
bated the ine points of conditional versus unconditional promises. I
do not understand why. Of all theologians who should not bother to
debate this topic in an either/or framework, Calvinists ought to be
irst in line. It is only in Calvinism’s twin doctrines of predestination
and the absolute sovereignty of God that we ind a solution to this
theological problem. It is time to say it loud and clear: there is no such
thing as an unconditional promise. To imagine that there is such a thing
is to imagine that the covenants of God were not secured by the
880 DEUTERONOMY

perfect life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Every-

thing in history after God’s cross-examination of Adam and Eve has been
conditional on the work of Jesus Christ in history. Was there any possibil-
ity that Jesus would not fulill these conditions? Not a chance: “And
truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that
man by whom he is betrayed!” (Luke 22:22). This means, ulti-
mately, that there is no such thing as chance. God promised Adam and
Eve the following: “And I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). Was this promise condi-
tional on Christ’s advent and perfect work in history? Of course.
Was there any chance that the covenant’s conditions would not be
fulilled by Christ? None. This promise was conditional, yet there was no
possibility that these conditions would not be met.
Obviously, some promises are more openly ethical and condi-
tional than others, in the sense that the outcome of the promise can
be diferent from what was predicted. This is the case with some
covenant lawsuits. The best representative example is Jonah’s warn-
ing to Nineveh: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”
(Jonah 3:4b). Nineveh believed this and repented (turned around).
“And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and
God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto
them; and he did it not” (v. 10). They repented; God also repented.
But other covenant lawsuits have been predestined to come out just
as God had promised: badly for the accused. “Then shalt thou say
unto them, Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will ill all the inhabitants
of this land, even the kings that sit upon David’s throne, and the
priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with
drunkenness. And I will dash them one against another, even the fa-
thers and the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor spare,
nor have mercy, but destroy them” (Jer. 13:13–14). And so He did.
Jeremiah was not to pray otherwise. God had predestined His wrath
upon Israel. “And now, because ye have done all these works, saith
the LORD, and I spake unto you, rising up early and speaking, but ye
heard not; and I called you, but ye answered not; Therefore will I do
unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and
unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have
done to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I have cast out
all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim. Therefore pray
 Conclusion 881

not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, nei-
ther make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee” (Jer. 7:13–16).
4
Because the ojce of prophet ceased after A.D. 70, all covenant
lawsuits today are of the Jonah variety: repentance must always be
assumed to be an option for the hearers. No one lawfully brings a
New Covenant lawsuit that does not ofer the option of repentance.
God no longer reveals in advance the speciic outcome of a particu-
lar covenant lawsuit: blessing or cursing. In this sense, all New Cov-
enant lawsuits are specially conditional, i.e., their outcome is
unknown to man because the response of the accused is unknown to
man. We must also ajrm that, judicially speaking, all covenant law-
suits, promises, and prophecies are generally conditional: there is no
escape from God’s sanctions in history. What the future response of
men would be was not always clear to those who heard these law-
suits, promises, and prophecies in the Old Covenant. But some-
times it was clear. For example, God did not ofer Nineveh’s option
of repentance to the Amorites of Canaan. The Amorites’ iniquity
would surely be illed, not emptied by means of their repentance.
Yet even in this case, the Gibeonites cleverly subordinated them-
selves to God through subordination to Israel, and they escaped the
promised destruction (Josh. 9).

Compound Growth and National Covenant Renewal

Deuteronomy presents a covenant theology that allows for com-
pound growth, both of population and economics. More than this:
growth is presented as morally mandatory. Put another way, the
absence of growth is seen as a sign of God’s curse. This growth-
oriented outlook distinguished biblical religion from all other an-
cient religions. The key elements of Deuteronomy’s covenant theol-
ogy are found in Deuteronomy 8.
First, there was a promise of population growth. This promise
was conditional on Israel’s obedience. “All the commandments
which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may
live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD
sware unto your fathers. And thou shalt remember all the way which
the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to

4. See Chapter 32, above.

882 DEUTERONOMY

humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (Deut. 8:1–2).
Second, there was a warning attached to the promised blessing
of economic growth. This is because economic growth leads to a
temptation: the temptation of autonomy. “And when thy herds and
thy locks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all
that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou
forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of
Egypt, from the house of bondage; Who led thee through that great
and terrible wilderness, wherein were iery serpents, and scorpions,
and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth wa-
ter out of the rock of lint; Who fed thee in the wilderness with
manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and
that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; And thou
say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath got-
ten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:13–17).
Third, there was a declaration of the inescapability of blessings.
These blessings were built into the Mosaic law. Here, in one verse, is
the most important single statement in ancient literature regarding the possi-
bility of long-term economic growth. “But thou shalt remember the LORD
thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may
establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this
day” (v. 18). The unique blessing of the power to get wealth serves
as a means of conirming God’s covenant in history. I say serves, not
served. This covenant is still in force. He who denies this also im-
plicitly denies the possibility of Christian economic theory.5
Consider the implications of cause-and-efect relationships among
external covenant-keeping, visible wealth, and covenantal conirmation.
The visible blessings that result from covenant-keeping are designed to
increase men’s faith. Faith in what? In God and His covenant. The

5. Sometimes this rejection of biblical economic theory is explicit. See the comments of
William Diehl, cited in my Preface, under “The Hatred of God’s Law.” He displayed near
contempt for my heavy reliance on Deuteronomy in my biblical defense of the free market.
Then he went on to deny the legitimacy of biblical economic theory: “The fact that our
Scriptures can be used to support or condemn any economic philosophy suggests that the
Bible is not intended to lay out an economic plan which will apply for all times and places. If
we are to examine economic structures in the light of Christian teachings, we will have to do it
in another way.” William E. Diehl, “A Guided-Market Response,” in Robert Clouse (ed.),
Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views of Economics (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity
Press, 1984), p. 87.
 Conclusion 883

covenant’s conirmation by corporate economic growth becomes a

motivation for corporate covenant renewal. Greater corporate faith
is supposed to produce greater spiritual maturity, which in turn is to
produce greater corporate blessings. Economists call such a process
positive feedback. Here we have a vision of that most wonderful of all
social wonders: compound economic growth. It is possible to sus-
tain corporate economic growth through corporate covenantal obe-
dience. This means that the corporate limits to growth can be
overcome progressively. More than this: they must be overcome.
Compound economic growth is an ethical imperative because obedience to
God is an ethical imperative.
The compounding process results in the exponential curve: a
number approaching ininity as a limit. But in a inite world, nothing
grows forever. In a inite world, an exponential curve reaches envi-
ronmental limits very fast. Population growth is the most obvious
example. Yet we are told in Deuteronomy 8 that wealth can com-
pound indeinitely. By this, God means initely. The ultimate envi-
ronmental limit to growth is time. If growth continues over time in a
world of economic scarcity, including living space, time must run
out. It will run out before covenant-keeping men reach society’s
physical limits to growth. This covenantal fact points clearly to the
near-term consummation of history if men remain faithful to God
by obeying His law. Time runs out when God’s people obey Him
and reap their appropriate reward: approaching the objective limits
to growth.
Prior to the end of history, that which will call economic growth
to a halt is not any environmental limit to growth, but rather corpo-
rate sin. “And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God,
and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I tes-
tify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations
which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; be-
cause ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your
God” (vv. 19–20). Or, as John describes it in the Book of Revelation,
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed
out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are
in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them to-
gether to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And
they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp
of the saints about, and the beloved city: and ire came down from
God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived
884 DEUTERONOMY

them was cast into the lake of ire and brimstone, where the beast and
the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever
and ever” (Rev. 20:7–10). In short, bad guys inish last.

Eschatology
Deuteronomy’s covenantal world view is rejected by humanists
and most Christians. Covenant theology is impossible without es-
chatology. Because humanists and Christians reject Deuteronomy’s
eschatology, they reject the Pentateuch’s doctrine of covenantal in-
heritance: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect
persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise,
and pervert the words of the righteous. That which is altogether just
shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which
the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Deut. 16:19–20). They ofer other
eschatologies and therefore other covenants.
Humanists reject biblical covenantalism because they reject the
doctrine of inal judgment. There will be no inal judgment by God,
they insist. There will be either the heat death of the universe6 or a
cyclical recapitulation of the Big Bang of creation: contraction,
bang, expansion, ad ininitum.7 Both of these cosmic possibilities
are impersonal. The humanists’ universe is a universe devoid of cos-
mic personalism, for their universe was not created by God.
The humanists’ rejection of inal judgment has implications for
economic theory. There are two rival views: pro-growth and anti-
growth. First, the typical economist insists that the limits to growth
are always marginal. At the margin, there are no ixed limits to
growth. There are only marginal limits to resources. Any ultimate
objective limit to growth may be ignored for now – in fact, must be
ignored, now and forevermore. At some price, there is always room
for one more, no matter what it is we are talking about: such is the
confession of the economist. The marginalism of modern subjective
economic theory lends itself to a concept of growth that has no ob-
jective limits. Growth cannot go on forever, the economist may ad-
mit if pressured for an answer, but it can surely go on for another

6. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), ch. 2.
7. The Big Bang that follows each cosmic contraction somehow will overcome the second
law of thermodynamics: entropy. The heat death of the universe will be avoided.
 Conclusion 885

year. Maybe two. The mainstream economist trains himself not to

think about ultimate objective limits; he thinks only about marginal
limits. Eschatology – the doctrine of the last things – is anathema to
him. There are no last things, only marginal decisions.
Second, the anti-growth humanist asserts that mankind has be-
come a destroyer, that nature’s limits must be honored by rapacious
man, and therefore the State must impose restrictions on the use of
private property because of capitalism’s insatiable quest for more.
This outlook insists that there are objective limits to growth in na-
ture, and therefore the State must restrict private individuals from
pressing against these limits. Anti-growth legislation is necessary in
order to avoid an inevitable collective catastrophe – there are nu-
merous humanistic doomsday scenarios – that must occur when
mankind reaches the environmental limits to growth. This eschatol-
ogy is an eschatology of historical disaster. Anti-growth humanists
are not concerned with the cosmic end of the world, i.e., the heat
death of the universe. They do not predict the end of the world.
Rather, they predict either the end of autonomous man’s attempts
to subdue nature or else the end of autonomous nature. They prefer
the former.8
Contemporary Christians, in contrast to humanists, are more
deeply concerned about eschatology than history. They assume that
eschatology is discontinuous with culture, i.e., a breaking into time
that will overthrow man’s works rather than heal and extend them.
In efect, they deny to the creation what Christ’s resurrected body
was for history: continuous with history (recognizable) yet transcen-
dent beyond history, as the ascension subsequently revealed to the
disciples. They do not see the end of time as the death and resurrec-
tion of cursed history. Christians oppose biblical covenantalism
because it places the end of history within the context of Christen-
dom’s extension of the limits to growth. They reject any suggestion
that mankind will reach objective limits to growth as a result of the
spread of the gospel, the conversion of billions of people, and men’s
widespread obedience to biblical law, for this scenario suggests a
postmillennial eschatology that modern pessimillennialism rejects.
This is why modern Christians have no explicitly biblical economic
theory. Without the Bible’s doctrine of the covenant, they cannot
reason both biblically and economically.

8. Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).
886 DEUTERONOMY

Postmillennialism and Covenantalism

Once a person accepts the continuing validity and authority of
the covenantal message of Deuteronomy, it is only by arguing that
the triumph of covenant-breaking society is inevitable in history
that he can escape the postmillennial implications of Deuteronomy.
Theologians do this, of course, but in doing so, they must appeal to
the failure of Old Covenant Israel as a binding model for all history.
This leads them to dismiss or at least ignore the doctrine of Christ’s
bodily ascension in history, an event that conirmed the Great Com-
mission (Matt. 28:18–20). Only by denying the possibility of pro-
gressively fulilling the Great Commission in history can anyone
who accepts the covenantal authority of Deuteronomy legitimately
deny postmillennialism. Such a denial inescapably rests on this pre-
supposition: Christ’s bodily ascension plays no signiicant role in
empowering the church to fulill the Great Commission through the
post-ascension advent of the Holy Spirit. Such a view also denies
any signiicance for the doctrine of the ascension in the develop-
ment of either eschatology or Christian social theory. Ultimately,
such a view substitutes the experience of Old Covenant Israel for
the doctrine of empowerment by the Holy Spirit.
If the biblical doctrine of the covenant includes corporate com-
pound economic growth as a conirmation of the covenant (Deut.
8:17), then biblical covenantalism has eschatological implications.
Here is the big one: the meek shall inherit the earth. Covenant-keepers
who are meek before God, as evidenced by their confession of faith
and their way of life – obedience to God’s Bible-revealed law – are
empowered by the Holy Spirit in history to extend the kingdom of
God in history. That is, they are empowered in history by the Holy
Spirit to fulill progressively, though never perfectly, the terms of
the dominion covenant.

9
The Structure of Theonomy
Theonomy is covenantal. The covenant is marked by ive points:
God’s transcendence/presence; man’s representative, hierarchical
authority over creation and under God; God’s revealed law; God’s
historical sanctions, positive and negative; and covenant-keepers’

9. Written prior to the death of Greg Bahnsen.

 Conclusion 887

inheritance or succession, in time and eternity. In Chapter 19, I

wrote that theonomy is not simply a matter of God’s law; rather, it is
a matter of the covenant: God’s absolute sovereignty, man’s subor-
dinate authority, Bible-revealed law’s continuity, historical sanc-
tions’ predictability, and postmillennialism. Put as a slogan, theonomy
is a package deal.
On this point, I break with Greg Bahnsen, who argues in By This
Standard: “What these studies present is a position in Christian (nor-
mative) ethics. They do not logically commit those who agree with
them to any particular school of eschatological interpretation.”10
Logically, perhaps not; I defer here to Bahnsen’s abilities as a logi-
cian. Theologically, God’s biblically revealed law cannot be sepa-
rated covenantally from sanctions and eschatology.
I can appreciate Dr. Bahnsen’s dilemma. First, he believes that
11
the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches theonomy. Second,
the ordination standards of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church,
which ordained him, are explicitly committed to what is known as
“eschatological liberty,” or better put, “eschatological opinions as
Confessional adiaphora,” i.e., things indiferent to the Confession’s
statement of faith. Presbyterianism formally asserts the proposition
that an ordained ojcer can lawfully ajrm, or refuse to ajrm, any
one of at least three totally incompatible theories of eschatology, at
least two of which have to be biblically incorrect and therefore he-
retical. In order to escape the burden of endless heresy trials and
shattered churches, Reformed churches relegate eschatology to the
realm of adiaphora.12
Bahnsen does not want to ight a three-front war: law vs. anti-
nomianism; postmillennialism vs. amillennialism; postmillennial-
ism vs. premillennialism. He formally separates his discussion of
theonomy, which he believes is both the biblically mandated position
and also consistent with the Westminster Confession and its two cate-
chisms, from postmillennialism, which he believes is the biblically
mandated position and therefore inconsistent, if postmillennialism

10. Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), p. 8.
11. Greg L. Bahnsen, “M. G. Kline on Theonomic Politics: An Evaluation of His Reply,”
Journal of Christian Reconstruction, VI (Winter, 1979–80), pp. 200–202.
12. In this sense, Lutherans are correct when they insist that they are not Reformed. They
are creedally committed to amillennialism.
888 DEUTERONOMY

really is biblically mandated, with the formal Presbyterian ideal of

eschatology as a moot point theologically. The ive-point covenant
model, if true, pulls eschatology into ethics and vice versa by way of
historical sanctions. This may be another reason for Bahnsen’s lack
of enthusiasm for Ray Sutton’s and Meredith Kline’s ive-point cov-
enant model, especially Sutton’s, who does not relegate the cove-
nant and its ive points to the legal status of the Mosaic “intrusion,”
to use Kline’s terminology.13 I, on the other hand, am committed not
only to the ive-point structure of the covenant, but also to the
ive-point structure of the Pentateuch, as well as Exodus, Leviticus,
Deuteronomy, and the Book of Revelation.14

Conclusion
I have come to the conclusion of the Conclusion to the book
that concludes the Pentateuch. This project has taken me a few
weeks more than 24 years, not counting this book’s index. (Now,
only 61 books of the Bible to go!)
The Pentateuch is structured in terms of the Bible’s ive-point
covenant model. So is Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is a future-
oriented book. It deals with inheritance. It looks forward to the
events chronicled in Joshua. It lays down the law a second time. The
law was Israel’s tool of dominion. Now that the nation was about to
inherit the long-promised land of Canaan, the law was vital. By obey-
ing the Mosaic law, Israel could maintain the kingdom grant. If Israel re-
belled, God would remove the grant and transfer it to another
nation. Jesus prophesied: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom
of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43). This inally took place in A.D. 70.
Deuteronomy, in Kline’s words, is the treaty of the Great King.15
The question is: Was this treaty abrogated forever by Jesus, or were
its stipulations merely modiied? The answer to this question divides

13. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), Appendix 7: “Meredith G. Kline: Yes and No.”
14. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth,
Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
15. Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy: Studies
and Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1963).
 Conclusion 889

16
theonomists from their critics, whose name is legion. Theonomists
insist that this treaty is still in force. God still brings a covenant
lawsuit against His enemies in terms of the covenant’s laws.
Theonomy’s critics deny this. But the critics have a problem with
Deuteronomy 5: the recapitulation of the Ten Commandments.
The section ends with this warning: “Ye shall observe to do there-
fore as the LORD your God hath commanded you: ye shall not turn
aside to the right hand or to the left. Ye shall walk in all the ways
which the LORD your God hath commanded you, that ye may live,
and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days
in the land which ye shall possess” (Deut. 5:32–33). If this promise
of blessing ended with Jesus’ ministry, why did Paul cite the ifth
commandment and reajrm its life-extending promise? “Children,
obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father
and mother; (which is the irst commandment with promise;) That it
may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth” (Eph.
6:1–3). He extended the scope of the positive sanction’s applicabil-
ity from the geographical conines of Canaan to the whole earth.
This is not what I would call judicial annulment.
When covenant-breakers abandon the treaty of the Great King,
we should not be surprised. The very concept of the Great King of
the covenant ofends them. But we also ind that covenant-keepers
insist, generation after generation, that they agree with covenant-
breakers about the non-binding character of Deuteronomy’s laws
and sanctions. They are allied with covenant-breakers against those
who argue that the treaty is still in force, and that God’s corporate
judgments in history are imposed in terms of its stipulations. Cove-
nant-keepers and covenant-breakers seek a diferent treaty, with
diferent laws and diferent sanctions. While they rarely agree on
what this treaty might be, the terms of discourse are today set by
covenant-breakers. They demand to be included in the debate, and

16. In May, 1997, a committee of the tiny Free Kirk of Scotland declared theonomy
heretical. In doing so, the committee broke with the Westminster Confession. See Martin A.
Foulner (ed.), Theonomy and the Westminster Confession: an annotated sourcebook (Edinburgh:
Marpet Press, 1997). What remains of this once-great ecclesiastical body is an operational
alliance between theological liberals, who hate the law of God, and pietists who fear
institutional squabbling and who are unfamiliar with historical scholarship, especially the
history of seventeenth-century Scottish theology. We have seen all this before, in the
American Presbyterian Church. Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the
Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996).
890 DEUTERONOMY

they insist that the presuppositions regarding what constitutes jus-

tice and how we can both ascertain it and impose its laws must be a
neutral, common-ground endeavor. Lo and behold, the conclusions
reached by the two groups are presented to the public in terms of
17
autonomous man and his moral and intellectual standards.
There is no neutrality. Protestant American Christians today are
willing to say this in public far more often than they were when I be-
gan writing my economic commentary on Genesis in April of 1973.
This confessional reversal constitutes the beginning of a revolution
in religious thought. When Christians at long last decide to follow
this statement regarding neutrality to its logical conclusion – the de-
nial of political pluralism18 – they will have begun a major journey
toward theonomy. To speed up this process of self-awareness, I ask,
one more time: If not God’s law, then whose? If not God’s law, then
what? I suggest three choices. God’s law or chaos. God’s law or tyr-
anny. God’s law or chaos followed by tyranny.
“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt
ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if
Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word”
(I Ki. 18:21). Then came the negative sanction: “Then the ire of the
LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacriice, and the wood, and the
stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they
said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God” (vv. 38–39).
God’s people learn slowly, but they do eventually learn. The trou-
ble is, this learning process generally requires them to sufer exten-
sive negative sanctions.

17. When the Free Kirk’s committee declared theonomy as heretical, Scottish secular
television announced this fact. The committee’s declaration was considered media-worthy.
The secularists know who their real enemies are in this seemingly rariied theological debate.
Secularists are not worried about theological liberals and their pietistic allies.
18. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989).
 Appendix A
Modern EconomicsECONOMICS
MODERN as a Form of Magic
AS A FORM OF MAGIC

Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron
thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give
forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so
thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink (Num. 20:8).

And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock
twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank,
and their beasts also (Num. 20:11).

In a previous situation, God had told Moses to strike a rock with

his rod, and water would low out of it (Ex. 17:6). This procedure had
worked exactly as promised. Now, God’s command was diferent:
speak to a rock. In both cases, the Israelites would get what they
wanted for no efort or payment on their part. Moses would pay the
price – a below-market price by anyone’s standards. His words
would bring them God’s supernatural blessing.
This time, Moses struck the rock twice. He made up a ritual of
his own to substitute for God’s explicit command to him. The water
again lowed, but this act cost Moses entrance into the Promised
Land. “And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye be-
lieved me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel,
therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I
have given them” (Num. 20:12). In what did Moses’ lack of faith
consist? He had substituted ritual magic for covenantal obedience.
He had imagined that a ritual – a formula of some kind – would en-
able Israel to gain supernatural blessings from God. Israel would get

891
892 DEUTERONOMY

something for nothing. This plan worked for Israel, but Moses paid
a heavy price.
God wanted to teach Israel a lesson, namely, that obedience to
God’s revealed word produces blessings in history, no matter how
low the statistical probabilities of success appear to be. Moses substi-
tuted a diferent lesson: adherence to precise formulas is what pro-
duces blessings in history. This is the magician’s worldview.

The Economist’s Worldview

Economics is a highly rationalistic social science, if not the ratio-
nalistic social science. Economists do not recommend invoking su-
pernatural forces as a means of explaining anything or changing
anything. Economics is an entirely man-centered discipline. How,
then, can it be considered magical? Because economists propose a
worldview that insists that wealth-creation can take place, and does
take place, by means of techniques and institutional arrangements
that supposedly have no necessary connection to God’s word. Eco-
nomic theory substitutes formulas for biblical ethics in its explana-
tion of how the world works.
The economist proposes the magician’s quest: discovering the
proper techniques for gaining external blessings apart from external
conformity to the stipulations of God’s specially revealed cross-
boundary laws.1 If wealth-creation is governed by social laws and
techniques that are independent of ethics, then man can gain some-
thing valuable apart from the costs of obedience to God. This is also
the magician’s worldview. The magician seeks an arcane formula or
procedure to invoke, or some other source of power over nature
that he can manipulate to gain his ends, that does not ask him to
change his commitment to his own self-centered ends. Modern
economics is the academic incarnation of this outlook, an entire
worldview that interprets most of society’s operations in terms of
men’s individual solutions to one simple question: “What’s in it for
me?”

1. A cross-boundary law was applicable to Israel and the nations, and it is still binding
today. I do not use the phrase “natural law,” since it contains too much baggage regarding
covenant-breaking man’s supposed ethical neutrality. On cross-boundary laws in Leviticus,
see Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1994), pp. 643–45.
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 893

Post-Scholastic economics has generally asserted that wealth-

creation is not a matter of ethics except insofar as a man’s willing-
ness to conform to certain behavior patterns increases the statistical
probability of his gaining voluntary cooperation from others.
Wealth-creation is seen as a matter of the ejcient application of eth-
ically neutral knowledge to the problems of scarcity. For the econo-
mist, the phrase, “honesty is the best policy,” is epistemologically
meaningful only if honesty can be shown statistically to earn a rate
of return above the rate of interest obtainable by investing in
“risk-free” short-term government debt.

Economics and Agnosticism

Ever since the late seventeenth century, economics has rested
self-consciously on the methodological assumption of agnosticism
regarding God. It has sought to avoid any invocation of the author-
ity of religion. Operationally, this agnosticism is atheism. This con-
fessionally atheistic worldview was irst extended into scholarship
by the economists. William Letwin’s book, The Origins of Scientiic
Economics (1963), remains the most detailed study of this intellectual
development. He writes: “Nevertheless there can be no doubt that
economic theory owes its present development to the fact that some
men, in thinking of economic phenomena, forcefully suspended all
judgments of theology, morality, and justice, were willing to con-
sider the economy as nothing more than an intricate mechanism, re-
fraining for the while from asking whether the mechanism worked
for good or evil. That separation was made during the seventeenth
century. . . . The economist’s view of the world, which the public
cannot yet comfortably stomach, was introduced by a remarkable
tour de force, an intellectual revolution brought of in the seventeenth
century.”2 He goes on to assert that “the making of economics was
the greatest scientiic achievement of the seventeenth century.”3
While the development of Newtonian physics would seem to de-
serve that honor, there should be no question that scientiic eco-
nomics was the greatest atheistic intellectual achievement of the
seventeenth century, retaining this title until Darwin’s Descent of Man
(1871). Newton the physicist at least tipped his academic hat to a

2. William Letwin, The Origins of Scientiic Economics (Garden City, New York: Anchor,
[1963] 1965), pp. 158–59. This book was published irst by M.I.T. Press.
3. Ibid., p. 159.
894 DEUTERONOMY

deistic unitarian god who sustained sujcient order in the cosmos to

make applicable men’s knowledge of mathematics. The econo-
mists, then as now, tipped their academic hats to no god at all.
Adam Smith seems to be an exception. He was a deist of some
sort. This is clear from scattered passages in his book, The Theory of
Moral Sentiments (1759).4 The book is barely known, rarely read, and
never discussed as a contribution to economic thought. Smith made
no analytical use of its vague theology in the Wealth of Nations
(1776). His famous “invisible hand”5 was a mental construct, not a
god. “The hand’s going to get you” was not what he had in mind.
Economists since the late nineteenth century have proclaimed
the ideal of value-free economics: economic science devoid of ethi-
cal content. They have to this extent become magicians. The magi-
cian seeks something for nothing by means of ritual formulas. The
economist seeks ways for society to attain “more for less”6 through
insights generated by means of arcane mathematical formulas.

Equilibrium as Conceptual Magic

Modern economics assures us that a society can create wealth if
it implements production techniques within a framework accurately
described by a series of simultaneous equations. Léon Walras, a
French economist living in Switzerland in the 1870’s, described the
market order in this way. Oskar Lange in the 1930’s argued that
socialist central planning could match the ejciency of the free mar-
ket by adhering to such mathematical equations in a trial-and-error
process.7 These equations presume the economist’s concept of equi-
librium: a condition in which no further economic change is possi-
ble because all of the society’s production opportunities (functions)
have been maximized. It is a world without proit or loss, a world
8
without mistakes.

4. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyClassics,

1976), pp. 275, 483.
5. Smith, Wealth of Nations, Cannan edition, p. 423. Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 304–5.
6. More precisely, he seeks to obtain more value from a given cost of resource inputs, or a
given value from less costly resource inputs.
7. See Oskar Lange and Fred M. Taylor, On the Economic Theory of Socialism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, [1938] 1956), pp. 72–83. This essay irst appeared in the
Review of Economic Studies in 1937.
8. Israel M. Kirzner, Market Theory and the Price System (Princeton, New Jersey: Van
Nostrand, 1963), pp. 246–49.
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 895

For this to take place at any point in history, all of the partici-
pants in a free market, or the central planners in a socialist econ-
omy, would have to possess perfect knowledge, including perfect
knowledge of the future. They must be omniscient. Economists do not
use such decidedly theological terminology when describing equi-
librium. If they were more forthright about the presumptions of
equilibrium theory, they would not be taken seriously by anyone
outside of their profession. Roger Leroy Miller writes: “Equilibrium
in any market is deined as a situation in which the plans of buyers
and the plans of sellers exactly mesh, causing the quantity supplied
to equal the quantity demanded.”9 Gwartney and Stroup agree:
“When a market is in equilibrium, there is a balance of forces such
that the actions of buyers and suppliers are consistent with one an-
other. In addition, when long-run equilibrium is present, the condi-
tions will persist into the future.”10 How can such a meshing of plans
occur? Through perfect forecasting: “In summary, an output rate can
be sustained into the future only when the prior choices of decision-
makers were based on a correct anticipation of the current price
level.”11 The phrase “correct anticipation” has to be interpreted as
“perfect foreknowledge,” but the authors are too scientiic to say
this. Their peers know what they really mean – equilibrium is an im-
possible condition to fulill – and the average student is not too in-
quisitive about the relationship between a theory based on human
omniscience and details in the real world. Edwin Dolan writes: “The
separately formulated plans of all market participants may turn out
to mesh exactly when tested in the marketplace, and no one will
have frustrated expectations or be forced to modify plans. When
this happens, the market is said to be in equilibrium.”12 E. H. Phelps
writes in The New Palgrave (1987), the English-speaking economics
profession’s dominant dictionary: “Economic equilibrium, at least
as the term has traditionally been used, has always implied an out-
come, typically from the application of some inputs, that conforms

9. Roger Leroy Miller, Economics Today (5th ed.; New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 49.
10. James D. Gwartney and Richard L. Stroup, Economics: Public and Private Choice (4th ed.;
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 186.
11. Ibid., p. 187.
12. Edwin G. Dolan, Basic Economics (2nd ed.; Hinsdale, Illinois: Dryden, 1980), pp. 44–45.
896 DEUTERONOMY

13
to the expectations of the participants in the economy.” There
seems to be perfect agreement here: a kind of theoretical equilib-
rium among economists. The deinitions mesh.
So does their blandness. This textbook deinition of equilibrium
seems so subdued and uncontroversial, even plausible. The econo-
mists’ language certainly gives the impression that equilibrium ap-
plies to a real-world phenomenon: “a situation in which the plans of
buyers and the plans of sellers exactly mesh,” “when a market is in
equilibrium,” and “the separately formulated plans of all market par-
ticipants may turn out to mesh exactly when tested in the market-
place.” We can almost visualize a dedicated student writing down the
deinition of equilibrium on an index card, to be iled away in a card
box until the night before the inal exam, when the card will be
retrieved and the deinition filed for 24 hours in a less permanent
location.
Now, for the sake of argument, let me provide a somewhat more
controversial though more complete deinition of equilibrium:

Equilibrium is the condition of the world economy which occurs

whenever all three billion market participants on earth (not counting their
non-participating children) have perfectly forecasted the supply-and-de-
mand efects of all of the economic decisions of all of the other three bil-
lion, so that their plans mesh perfectly without error. This is why there is
no incentive for plan-revision. No one has anything more to sell at the ex-
isting prices, and everyone has purchased all that he wants at the existing
prices, so prices will not change as a result of anyone’s changing his mind.
Equilibrium requires that every market participant forecast perfectly the
economic future, which has therefore ceased to be uncertain. In short,
equilibrium occurs whenever everyone on earth has previously attained
what Christian theologians refer to as one of God’s incommunicable attrib-
utes: omniscience.

This note card might generate a second reading, even the night
before the inal exam. Perhaps an A-level student might think to him-
self, “This economic condition does not seem altogether plausible.” I
would go so far as to suggest that even a few of the B-level students

13. Edmund S. Phelps, “equilibrium: an expectational concept,” in The New Palgrave: A

Dictionary of Economics, edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman, 4 vols.
(New York: Macmillan 1987), II, p. 177.
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 897

might wonder, at least briely, whether this deinition applies to the

real world. (The C-level students will surely do their best to commit
the deinition to memory, though without success; the others do not
bother to use note cards.)
Equilibrium as a concept applies only to a never-never land
where men possess one of the attributes of God. This never-never
land is the realm of simultaneous equations and the calculus, not
people. Yet time and time again, we ind economists seriously dis-
cussing a theoretical problem in economics as if this never-never
land could conceivably occur in the real world.

Lange vs. Mises

Let us consider a real-world example of “applied equilibrium”
thinking by economists, one which had considerable impact on the
history of economic thought for half a century. In his suggested solu-
tion to Ludwig von Mises’ 1920 argument that socialist economic
calculation is inherently irrational,14 Lange wrote in 1937: “Let us
see how economic equilibrium is established by trial-and-error in a
competitive market.”15 He asserted the ability of socialist central
planners, in the absence of private ownership or private capital mar-
kets, to coordinate the economy by means of trial-and-error pricing.
So conident was Lange in the real-world applicability of his solu-
tion that he began his book with a rhetorical dismissal of Mises that
became far more familiar than the details of Lange’s argument. So-
cialists are beholden to Mises because he articulated the irrational
calculation argument better than anyone else. “Both as an expres-
sion of recognition for the great service rendered by him and as a
memento of the prime importance of sound economic accounting, a
statue of Professor Mises might occupy an honorable place in the
great hall of the Ministry of Socialization or of the Central Planning
Board of the socialist state.” Less familiar is his Marxian follow up:
“[E]ven the stanchest of bourgeois economists unwittingly serve the
proletarian cause.”16

14. Ludwig von Mises, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920);
reprinted in F. A. Hayek (ed.), Collectivist Economic Planning (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, [1935] 1963), ch. 3.
15. Lange, Socialism, p. 65.
16. Ibid., pp. 57–58.
898 DEUTERONOMY

Lange was no vague socialist. He was a Communist. He re-

nounced his United States citizenship in 1945 to become the Polish
ambassador to the United States. In 1947, he returned to Poland to
serve as an economist. In 1957, he was appointed chairman of the
Polish Economic Council. He did not suggest the implementation
of his 1937 solution to Mises’ challenge. Instead, he appealed to the
new god – the computer – to solve the problem of coordinating
scarce resources. He died in 1965.17 Nevertheless, his abandonment
in practice of his own suggested solution did not penetrate the think-
ing of the myriad of Mises’ critics in the Western world, who contin-
ued to cite his 1937 essay as if it were gospel truth. In short, “Better
to accept a defunct theory by a Communist planner in a poverty-
stricken backward nation than to accept the legitimacy of a compre-
hensive theoretical criticism of socialism in general.” Ironically, it
was Poland that irst broke loose from Soviet Communism’s tyranny.
The Solidarity labor movement understood that Communism can-
not work before certain best-selling Western economists did. The
Poles began their high-risk protest against the USSR in 1981. Yet as
late as 1989, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson wrote
in his best-selling economics textbook: “The Soviet economy is
proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a
socialist command economy can function and even thrive.”18 That
same year, the Soviet Union went bankrupt in full public view, and
the Berlin Wall came down.

Theory and Reality

The theoretical problem with Lange’s appeal to trial-and-error
as a means leading to equilibrium is that for equilibrium to occur,
there must irst be omniscience by the person or persons in charge
of resource allocation. There is no need for trials because there is no
possibility of errors by those who possess omniscience. Equilibrium
is the negation of trial and error. Now, to be fair to Lange, he must
have had in mind the argument that trial and error by socialist plan-
ners is as ejcient – no, more ejcient – in reaching equilibrium than

17. Dolan, Basic Economics, p. 686.

18. Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus, Economics (13th ed.; New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1989), p. 837, cited in Mark Skousen, Economics on Trial: Lies, Myths, and
Realities (Homewood, Illinois: Business One Irwin, 1991), p. 208.
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 899

the proit-seeking decisions of resource owners. More equitable, too.

Or, to paraphrase Orwell, “All equilibrium conditions are equal, but
some are more equal than others.” All we need to assume, as good so-
cialists, is “freedom of choice in consumption and freedom of choice
in occupation,”19 and the central planners can bring equilibrium into
existence as well as entrepreneurs can. In fact, better. “Once the para-
metric function of prices is adopted as an accounting rule, the price
structure is established by the objective equilibrium conditions.”20 In
short, what Mises and the Austrian school always insisted is impossi-
ble in history – equilibrium conditions – Lange appealed to as the so-
lution to the problem of socialist economic calculation.
For half a century, this argument was accepted by most econo-
mists as a theoretically valid dismissal of Mises, i.e., Mises’ theory of
entrepreneurship in a world of economic uncertainty and subjec-
tively imputed prices. Lange’s argument was also, by implication, a
dismissal of Frank H. Knight’s 1921 classic, Risk, Uncertainty and
Proit, which rested on the same theory of entrepreneurship that
Mises ofered. Lange’s proposed practical solution, which was never
adopted by any socialist planning agency, was regarded by his aca-
demic peers as having solved the real-world problems raised by
Mises. As socialist economist Robert Heilbroner admitted in 1990,
the year after the Berlin Wall came down, and the year before the
Soviet Union collapsed: “Fifty years ago, it was felt that Lange had
decisively won the argument for socialist planning.” It has turned
out, Heilbroner belatedly admitted, that Lange was wrong, and
“Mises was right.”21 Fifty years of criticism from a handful of free
market economists that Lange’s solution, based on equilibrium
conditions, was no solution at all, in no way afected the thinking of
the majority of academic economists.22 The latter were equally com-
mitted to equilibrium as a legitimate model with which to critique
free market capitalism,23 and so they refused to pay any attention to

19. Ibid., p. 72.

20. Ibid., p. 81.
21. Robert Heilbroner, “After Communism,” The New Yorker (Sept. 10, 1990), p. 92.
22. Peter G. Klein, “Introduction,” The Fortunes of Liberalism: Essays on Austrian Economics
and the Ideal of Freedom, edited by Peter G. Klein, vol. IV of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek
(University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 10.
23. For example, the once-popular “perfect competition” model was used to show why
capitalism fails in practice. But in the perfect competition model, there is no competition,
since everyone is omniscient regarding the uses of scarce resources. See Israel Kirzner’s
900 DEUTERONOMY

Lange’s critics. What inally persuaded them was not Mises’ argu-
24

ments but socialism’s visible irrationality: the bankruptcy of the

Soviet-bloc nations in the late 1980’s.
Kirzner has argued that what is lacking in the neoclassical eco-
nomics of Walras, Marshall, and their disciples is some means of ex-
plaining how equilibrium can occur, thereby giving life to the
advanced textbook world of simultaneous equations. “However,
when price is described as being above or below equilibrium, it is
understood that a single price prevails in the market. The uncom-
fortable question, then, is whether we may assume that a single
price emerges before equilibrium is attained. Surely a single price
can be postulated only as the result of the process of equilibrium it-
self. . . . The procedure also assumes too much. It takes for granted
that the market already knows when the demand price of the quan-
tity now available exceeds the supply price. But disequilibrium oc-
curs precisely because market participants do not know what the
market-clearing price is.”25 This applies even more forcefully to
Lange’s socialist planning board. This line of argumentation, which
is Mises’ Austrian argument, undercuts Walras as well as Lange.
The economics profession has not given this idea careful consider-
ation in its journals and textbooks. Walras was the original spinner
of invisible clothing for the emperors of economics. Emperors who
wear invisible clothes prefer to keep clear-eyed critics away from
their parades.
Invoking equilibrium when discussing economic policy-making
is an exercise in conceptual magic. Equilibrium rests on the assump-
tion of the possibility of mankind’s simultaneous omniscience. Yet
neoclassical economics, including Keynesianism, invokes the equi-
librium concept continually.26

criticisms of E. H. Chamberlin in Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship (University of

Chicago Press, 1973), chaps. 3, 4.
24. The most widely known response was by Hayek in Economica (1940); reprinted in F. A.
Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (University of Chicago Press, 1949), ch. 9. The most
detailed criticism was by the little-known economist, T. J. B. Hof, Economic Calculation in the
Socialist Society (London: William Hodge & Co., 1949). This has been reprinted by the Liberty
Fund in Indianapolis.
25. Israel M. Kirzner, Perception, Opportunity, and Proit: Studies in the Theory of
Entrepreneurship (University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 4–5.
26. The Austrians invoke it occasionally, but only as a mental construct. Mises called it the
evenly rotating economy (E.R.E.). He used it only to prove that the interest rate is a universal
phenomenon. One exception to this refusal to invoke equilibrium is Kirzner’s 1963
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 901

Economic Theory vs. Ethical Value

Ethical value is publicly stripped of all authority in modern eco-
nomic theory.27 Those few economists who have argued that
value-free economic analysis is mythical have had almost no
inluence on the profession. If they have had any inluence, this
topic was not the area in which they established their reputations.28
The one well-respected American economist who has argued force-
fully for the reintroduction of values into economic theory, Kenneth
Boulding, is regarded as somewhat eccentric for promoting the idea
that ethics should be incorporated into the tools of analysis.
Meanwhile, the use of high-level mathematics as a tool of theoret-
ical analysis, especially since the days of Walras, reveals just how
committed the economics profession is to arcane formulas. There is
even an element of priestly ritual about this procedure. Liberal econ-
omist John Kenneth Galbraith, who spurned mathematics, formulas,
and graphs throughout his career, once revealed a little-known side
of the profession. The editors of the professional journals, which are
the avenues of career advancement, play a game regarding the use of
mathematics. “The layman may take comfort from the fact that the
most esoteric of this material is not read by other economists or even
by the editors who publish it. In the economics profession the edi-
torship of a learned journal not specialized to econometrics or
mathematical statistics is a position of only moderate prestige. It is
accepted, moreover, that the editor must have a certain measure of
practical judgment. This means that he is usually unable to read the
most prestigious contributions which, nonetheless, he must publish.

discussion of perfect competition, which he said is impossible to attain. This appeared in his
out-of-print upper division economics textbook, Market Theory and the Price System,
pp. 108–109. He never revised this book to relect better his later studies in entrepreneurship.
For a critique of the E.R.E., see Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 352–53; Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws
of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 1120–21.
27. Walter A. Weisskopf, Alienation and Economics (New York: Dutton, 1971), ch. 4.
28. Robert Heilbroner is a good example. His popular book on the history of economic
thought, The Worldly Philosophers, is a standard text in both history and economics
departments. It was assigned by the millions. But his essay on the impossibility of value-free
economics was not published in an economics journal. Robert L. Heilbroner, “Economics as
a ‘Value-free’ Science,” Social Research, XL (1973), pp. 129–43; reprinted in William L. Marr
and Baldev Raj (eds.), How Economists Explain: A Reader in Methodology (Lanham, Maryland:
University Press of America, 1982). The publisher did not bother to typeset this volume. It
was written on a typewriter.
902 DEUTERONOMY

So it is the practice of the editor to associate with himself a mathe-

matical curate who passes on this part of the work and whose word
29
he takes. A certain embarrassed silence covers the arrangement.”

Value Theory at an Epistemological Impasse

The attempt to create an economic science as devoid of value
judgments or ethics as physics has led to a theoretical impasse. This
impasse was irst discussed in detail in the 1930’s, but it is almost
never mentioned today because it cannot be solved, given the pre-
suppositions of modern economics. Economists in the 1870’s30 began
to abandon classical economics’ concept of objective economic value.
They substituted individual value preferences for objective value. All
economic value is imputed by individuals, modern economics insists.
If this is true, then in order to make any kind of policy recom-
mendation, the economist must assume that the value preferences
or value scales of individuals can be compared with each other. To
say that a policy beneits a lot of people assumes that the economist
can compare the value scales of all of these people, or at least a sta-
tistically valid sample of them (but how can we be sure it is valid?),
as well as the value scales of those who are not beneited by the pol-
icy. He must be able to total up beneits and costs. He must be able
to aggregate individual value preferences. But this is impossible to
do. There can be no interpersonal comparison of subjective value.
This was Lionel Robbins’ conclusion in 1932, and while he partially
recanted in 1938, he did not explain why he had been incorrect in
1932.31
There is no common scale of values in human action, economic
or otherwise. There is no value scale. Scales are physical devices
used by physicists and chemists. An idea of a “scale of values” is at
best a useful teaching device. It is not only mythical, it is misleading if
it is associated with actual measurement. It makes economics sound

29. John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics Peace and Laughter (Boston: Houghton Mimin,
1971), p. 41n.
30. William Jevons, Carl Menger, and Léon Walras. Cf. Karl Pribram, A History of Economic
Reasoning (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), Part VI.
31. On his debate with Sir Roy Harrod in 1938, see North, Dominion Covenant, pp. 44–51;
Tools of Dominion, Appendix D: “The Epistemological Problem With Social Cost.” Cf. Mark
A. Lutz and Kenneth Lux, The Challenge of Humanistic Economics (Menlo Park, California:
Benjamin/Cummings, 1979), pp. 83–87. These two authors are as little known as their
publisher.
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 903

like a physical science. Individual value preferences can be ranked;

they cannot be measured.32 As for social value, it has no role to play
in a science that denies that it is possible to make interpersonal com-
parisons of subjective utility. The problem, however, is that it plays
an enormous role in economics. Indeed, economics as a social sci-
ence is inconceivable apart from the concept of social value. Eco-
nomics without a concept of social value would be like physics
without a concept of mass.
The quest for a value-free economic science is ultimately the
quest for man’s autonomy from God and His law. It is a quest for
meaning apart from “thou shalt not.” The socialist economist is less
likely to indulge in this quest than the free market economist is, since
he invokes the beneits and legitimacy of social justice despite all so-
cialist economies’ declining economic output. There are “higher val-
ues” than “mere statistical output,” he insists. The State must
redistribute resources in order to beneit the oppressed or which-
ever the favored group is. Theoretically speaking, a strictly value-
free free market economist cannot respond to the socialist by ap-
pealing to the free market’s measurable ejciency and growth with-
out violating the principle of imputed individual value. There can
be no scientiically valid measure of aggregate economic value, so
there is no way to measure economic ejciency.33
This admission would undermine all discussions by economists
of government economic policy. Neither the socialist economists
nor the free market economists want to see this happen. To have
lots of people understand that economists as scientists must remain
mute in all government policy matters is not in the economists’ per-
sonal self-interest. They might lose their jobs.
The economist pretends to pull a rabbit (a policy recommenda-
tion) out of an empty hat (value-free economics). But he put the
rabbit in the hat before he went on stage. He has deinite value pref-
erences. His economic analysis will relect this fact. He will defend or
attack this or that government policy in terms of his preferences. He

32. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles
(Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1962), p. 222. Reprinted by the Mises Institute,
Auburn, Alabama, 1993.
33. Murray N. Rothbard, “Comment: The Myth of Ejciency,” in Mario Rizzo (ed.), Time,
Uncertainty, and Disequilibrium (Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1979), p. 90. Cf.
North, Tools of Dominion, pp. 1118–19.
904 DEUTERONOMY

cannot do this as a scientist, given the impossibility of making inter-

personal comparisons of subjective utility. He does so as a self-
interested propagandist who pretends to be a neutral scientist for
the sake of being taken seriously by policy makers and voters. This
kind of magic is prestidigitation. It is based on manipulation and illu-
sion. Sometimes I think the primary victims of this illusion are the
economists themselves, most of whom seem blissfully unaware of the
epistemological subterfuge they are promoting.

The Trinity and Imputation of Value

Without the presupposition of an omniscient God who imputes
value subjectively in terms of a scale of values, a God who can mea-
sure value scales and make interpersonal comparisons of men’s sub-
jective utility, there can be no economic science. Modern economic
science rests unojcially on the assumption of collective value scales
and preferences, and also their measurability, even though ojcially
economists deny their existence. They must assume what they
ojcially deny.
There must be socially objective value and a socially objective
value scale if there is a legitimate economic evaluation of social pol-
icy. There must be a value scale undergirding every evaluation; that
is what “evaluate” means. God’s judgments are objective in the
sense of being both eternal and historical. He brings visible judg-
ments in terms of His law. These judgments are both objectively
grounded and subjectively grounded in the ixed moral character of
God: “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob
are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6).34 God knows objectively whatever
He knows subjectively, and vice versa. In Him, both subjective
value and objective value reside. They reside there personally, for
God is personal.
A corollary to the doctrine of God as an imputing agent is this: if
individual men were not made in God’s image, imputing value in a
creaturely fashion, there could be no economic science. Men can
impute value only because God has already done so. An individual
can make useful estimates of social costs and beneits only because
God makes precise calculations of social costs and beneits.

34. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father
of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17).
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 905

Finally, there is this corollary: if men were not able to impute

value corporately, even as the Triune God of the Bible imputes
value corporately, there could be no social theory, including eco-
nomic theory. There could be no epistemological basis for policy
formation. Societies can make judgments corporately because God
does. The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of social theory.
This is all denied by the modern economist. Economics has
adopted the confession of the magician, not in the sense of invoking
the supernatural, but in the sense of attributing wealth-creation to
value-free techniques governed by formulas. The socialist invokes
State planning; the free market economist invokes private property.
Both deny that wealth is the product of obedience to God’s laws.
From economics, the original social science,35 has come the confes-
sional model of all the others: “There is no necessary and sujcient
god but man, either individual or collective.”
The right-wing Enlightenment began with the English Whigs’
political protests against a State-established church, but the concept
of an evolving autonomous social order was irst articulated by the
Scottish common-sense rationalists in the mid-eighteenth century.
They described society as the result of human action but not of hu-
man design.36 This model later served Erasmus Darwin and his
grandson Charles as the model of biological evolution.37 The Scots’
social model was a kind of secularized Presbyterianism, even as the
Continental left-wing Enlightenment social model was a kind of sec-
ularized Jesuitism. Scottish moral philosophy replaced theology
(eighteenth century); then political economy replaced moral philos-
ophy (nineteenth century); inally, economics replaced political
economy (twentieth century). With each step, economics has moved
further away from any concept of a divinely sanctioned moral order.

Conclusion
Man lives in a world of imputed meaning, for he is a creature
under God. It is God who imputes original meaning and value to

35. Political philosophy, as distinguished from political science, began its march into
atheism with Machiavelli. But Machiavelli had no explicitly scientiic pretensions.
36. F. A. Hayek, “The Results of Human Action but not of Human Design” (1967), in
Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (University of Chicago Press, 1967), ch. 6.
37. The inluence here was David Hume. Hayek, “The Legal and Political Philosophy of
David Hume” (1963), ibid., p. 119n.
906 DEUTERONOMY

the creation. Man is God’s subordinate, required by God to think

his own thoughts after Him, in a law-abiding, creaturely manner.
But this is both too much and too little for covenant-breaking man.
He wants to be less than the image of God and more than the agent
of God. If he is either, he becomes responsible to God. He wants au-
tonomy from God; so, he subordinates himself to nature instead.
Rejecting God’s law as a guide to human action, he inds himself
entrapped by impersonal forces, which are in turn governed by (or
are they merely revealed by?) impersonal formulas. Covenant-
breaking man seeks out formulas as the pathways to wealth and
power. Some people prefer astrological formulas; others prefer sta-
tistical averages. Fate or chance or an impersonal mixture of the
two: Which will it be? “Get your bets down, gentlemen. The win-
dow is about to close.”
But why do any of these formulas work? Consider mathematics,
the most popular source of power-granting formulas in our day.
Men master the discipline of mathematics in order to understand
and control their world, rarely pausing to contemplate the utter un-
reasonableness of the fact that a mental construct that is governed
exclusively by its own rules of logic applies in so many powerful
ways to the operations of the external world.38
Economics allows the use of higher mathematics as a tool of the-
oretical analysis only where equilibrium conditions exist, i.e., where
one or more men are presumed to be omniscient. (“Ye shall be as
gods” is the applicable phrase here.) Every other use of mathemat-
ics in economics is either a simpliied hypothetical example of price
ratios for the sake of teaching or else statistics applied to historical
data. Yet modern economics is overwhelmingly mathematical in its
formal presentations, as a survey of any three professional journals
will prove (within a statistically acceptable range of error, of course)
to skeptical readers.
Modern economics, the original strictly humanistic social sci-
ence, cannot avoid these humanist antinomies. For example, in
seeking autonomy from God, modern economists propose a world
in which only individuals impute value to the creation. But then

38. Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Efectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural

Sciences,” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 13 (1960), pp. 1–14. Wigner won
the Nobel Prize in physics.
 Modern Economics as a Form of Magic 907

they ind that these autonomous imputations cannot be aggregated:

no common measure exists. It is impossible to make interpersonal
comparisons of subjective utility. So, policy-making on a scientiic
basis must logically be abandoned. But the economist does not want
to abandon either science or policy-making, especially government
policy-making, where the power is, or seems to be. So, he refuses to
think about the logic of his position.
The economics profession is becoming ever more self-conscious
in its quest for analytical tools that abandon any trace of ethics. Many
economists are even bothered by the traditional concept of choice.
They may adopt indiference curves as a way to avoid the more psy-
chological, and therefore more scientiically suspect, concept of
utility. But if acting man is truly indiferent between two possible
outcomes, how can he choose? Will he stand motionless, like
Buridan’s ass, until the threat of deprivation pressures him to take
action, at which point he abandons his indiference?39
Economists adopt cost curves, supply curves, all kinds of curves.
But a curve is made up of ininitesimal points. Prices and quantities
are described by curves as changing in ininitesimally small moves.
But infinitesimal changes are not aspects of decision-making. On
the other hand, they are subject to the calculus, which for the mod-
ern economist is surely a more important explanatory tool than hu-
man action is.
Economists rest their case for economics as a science on theoret-
ical constructs that assume that man is omniscient. But there is no
human choice in a world in which man knows outcomes; there are
only responses.40 Economists invoke complex mathematical formu-
las in their quest for knowledge and inluence, while abandoning
the idea of rational human choice. Armen Alchian, a free market
economist of the Chicago School, writes: “The essential point is that
individual motivation and foresight, while sujcient, are not neces-
sary” for economic theory to be true.41

39. Murray N. Rothbard, “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in

On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises, edited by Mary Sennholz
(Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1956), p. 238.
40. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1949), p. 249.
41. Armen Alchian, “Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory,” in Alchian, Economic
Forces at Work (Indianapolis: LibertyPress, 1977), p. 27.
908 DEUTERONOMY

Step by step, humanistic economics is abandoning man. Eco-

nomics substitutes a behaviorist concept of man for the deci-
sion-maker who inhabits the real world. Man disappears in the
world of simultaneous equations. God is not mocked . . . not at zero
price, anyway.
 Appendix B
Individualism, Holism, andHOLISM,
INDIVIDUALISM, Covenantalism
AND COVENANTALISM

And when thy herds and thy locks multiply, and thy silver and thy
gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied. . . (Deut. 8:13).

The language of mathematics infuses Moses’ discussion of

Israel’s blessings. This language points to objective wealth: the mul-
tiplication of valuable things. This raises a problem for economic
theory. How is value measured? How is wealth measured? If value
is objective, it can be measured, but modern economic theory
ojcially places the individual’s subjective valuation – economic im-
putation – at the heart of its theory of value. Yet modern economists
have been obsessed with the intellectual challenge of establishing
reliable indexes of wealth, prices, and corporate social utility. They
have persuaded governments around the world to spend billions of
dollars to collect economic data from private citizens and irms. In
fact, this data collection has justiied the establishment of govern-
ment economic planning. Without statistics, government planners
could not claim the ability to plan the economy.1

1. Murray N. Rothbard, “The Politics of Political Economists: Comment,” Quarterly

Journal of Economics, 74 (Nov. 1960). Rothbard, “Fact-finding is a proper function of
government,” Clichés of Politics, edited by Mark Spangler (Irvington, New York: Foundation
for Economic Education, 1994). The essay was first published in The Freeman in June, 1961:
“Statistics: Achilles’ Heel of Government.” Cf. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An
Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), ch.
2, section on “Statistics and Government Planning.”

909
910 DEUTERONOMY

Humanist economic theory has been unable to resolve the di-

2
chotomy between subjective value and objective value. If value is
imputed subjectively by an individual, it is impossible for another
individual to measure objectively this value. In fact, it is impossible
for the first individual to impute cardinal numbers to his own valua-
tion. He can only establish an ordinal ranking of values: first, sec-
ond, third, etc. As Rothbard has written, “there is never any
possibility of measuring increases or decreases in happiness or satis-
faction. Not only is it impossible to measure or compare changes in
the satisfaction of diferent people; it is not possible to measure
changes in the happiness of any given person. In order for any mea-
surement to be possible, there must be an eternally fixed objectively
given unit with which other units may be compared. There is no
such objective unit in the field of human valuation. The individual
must determine subjectively for himself whether he is better or
worse of as a result of any change. His preference can only be ex-
pressed in terms of simple choice, or rank. . . . There is no possible
unit of happiness that can be used for purposes of comparison, and
hence of addition or multiplication. Thus, values cannot be mea-
sured; values or utilities cannot be added, subtracted, or multiplied.
They can only be ranked as better or worse.”3
If this is true, then it is scientiically impossible to make interper-
sonal comparisons of subjective utility. This was Lionel Robbins’ as-
sertion in 1932.4 But if he was correct, then it is impossible for
economists as scientists to make policy recommendations based on
the superiority of one outcome to another. Roy Harrod pointed this
out in a 1938 essay.5 Robbins then capitulated, announcing that he
did accept the legitimacy of the idea of economic policy-making.6 He
never reconciled his two positions.7 So far, neither has anyone else.

2. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 4. Cf. North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 1093–1100.
3. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles
(Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1962), pp. 15–16.
4. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Signiicance of Economic Science (2nd ed.; New
York: St. Martins, 1935), p. 140.
5. R. F. Harrod, “Scope and Method of Economics,” Economic Journal, XVLIII (1938), pp.
396–97.
6. Lionel Robbins, “Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility: A Comment,” ibid. (1938), pp.
637–39.
7. North, Dominion Covenant, pp. 46–50.
 Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism 911

This is the problem of epistemological subjectivism and pol-

icy-making. It applies to every social science, not just economics. It
is more obvious in economics, however. The economics profession
systematically avoids discussing it. Economists dearly love their
role as policy experts. They do not want to admit to their students,
let alone to the general public, that the foundations of modern eco-
nomics make such a role scientiically fraudulent.

Welfare Economics, Ethics, and Subjectivism

Whether we use the language of multiplication or the language
of social utility, we are dealing with collectives. If we use such termi-
nology to assert an increase in social wealth, we are aggregating in-
dividual utilities. But this procedure is illegitimate if economic value
is exclusively subjective. Thus, we cannot move scientiically from
the individual to the group on the basis of economic analysis. Con-
clusion: there is no such thing as welfare economics.
Rothbard attempted to make this move in a 1956 essay. First, he
denied the existence of total utility. “We must conclude then that
there is no such thing as total utility; all utilities are marginal.”8 Second,
he announced: “The problem of ‘welfare economics’ has always
been to ind some way to circumvent this restriction on economics,
and to make ethical, and particularly political, statements directly.”9
Third, he stated that all ethical issues are imported from outside the
discipline of economics.10 Fourth, he asserted that all economic ad-
vising denies the ethical neutrality dictum.11 Then how can an econ-
omist make any statement regarding social welfare? Only on one
basis: if any change increases at least one person’s utility and has not
reduced any other person’s utility. This is Pareto’s unanimity rule.
There is one overwhelming objection to this rule: the existence
of envy. If one person is made richer by some change in the econ-
omy, and another person resents this, the beneit to the first person
may be ofset by the negative feelings of the second. Rothbard in
1956 acknowledged this as a theoretical problem, but then he dismissed

8. Murray N. Rothbard, “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in

Mary Sennholz (ed.), On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises
(Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1956), p. 234.
9. Ibid., p. 244.
10. Ibid., p. 247.
11. Ibid., p. 248.
912 DEUTERONOMY

it. Envy is strictly internal; it does not lead to action, and only action
counts. “How do we know that this hypothetical envious one loses in
utility because of the exchanges of others? Consulting his verbal
opinions does not sujce, for his proclaimed envy might be a joke or
a literary game or a deliberate lie.”12 Conclusion: “We are led inexo-
rably, then, to the conclusion that the processes of the free market
always lead to a gain in social utility. And we can say this with abso-
lute validity as economists, without engaging in ethical judg-
ments.”13 So, there is an aggregate called social utility after all. We
can postulate an increase in social utility whenever we can identify a
voluntary exchange: two people are better of, and no one is worse
of, so long as there is no such thing as envy. Rothbard imported an ag-
gregate into his analysis, as all welfare economists must, and with
welfare economics comes ethics – the end of value-free economics.
Unfortunately for the acceptability of this thesis, Rothbard later
wrote a classic essay in 1971 on the importance of envy in society,
especially as the basis of socialism.14 By moving envy from the realm
of the merely hypothetical into the realm of the politically
signiicant, Rothbard undermined his reconstruction of welfare
economics. Envy does exist after all in the world of demonstrated
preferences; it is a major foundation of socialism. Therefore, the
economist who uses some version of Pareto’s analysis – at least two
market participants are better of, while no one is worse of – in or-
der to prove an increase in social utility yet without invoking ethics
is deluding himself. He has imported ethics into economic analysis
the moment the issue of envy is introduced. He has assumed that
envy is ethically illegitimate and therefore cannot legitimately be
used to criticize that libertarian version of welfare economics which
supposedly enables an economist to assert an increase of social util-
ity based on the existence of voluntary exchanges. Ethics, in short,
becomes determinative in “value-free” economic science. This hos-
tility to envy as a legitimate aspect of economic analysis rests on an
ethical foundation.

12. Ibid., p. 250.

13. Idem.
14. Rothbard, “Freedom, Inequality and the Division of Labor,” Modern Age (Summer
1971); reprinted in Kenneth Templeton (ed.), The Politicalization of Society (Indianapolis,
Indiana: LibertyPress, 1978), pp. 83–126. The essay was also reprinted as a monograph by the
Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.
 Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism 913

Kirzner on Welfare Economics

Three decades later, Israel Kirzner – a disciple of Mises and a
rabbi of Orthodox Judaism15 – profusely praised Rothbard’s 1956
essay for its rejection of aggregates. “To attempt to aggregate utility
is not merely to violate the tenets of methodological individualism
and subjectivism (by treating the sensations of diferent individuals
as being able to be added up); it is also to engage in an entirely
meaningless exercise: economic analysis has nothing to say about
sensations, it deals strictly with choices and their interpersonal im-
plications.”16 Kirzner rejects the idea of “Pareto optimality” because
“a Pareto-optimal move is considered to advance the well-being of
society – considered as a whole.”17 He is correct; this is exactly what
Pareto optimality implies. But Rothbard’s essay rested on Pareto
optimality: two people being better of and no one (except the envi-
ous, who were dismissed by deinition) worse of. Kirzner com-
pletely misses the fundamental point – a highly non-individualistic
point – of Rothbard’s essay: social utility is an aggregate, and this ag-
gregate can be said to increase only because of Pareto optimality. In
the essay following Kirzner’s, I set forth these challenges to Rothbard:

If the economist cannot make interpersonal comparisons of subjective

utility . . . as Rothbard insists, then how can he be certain that “the free
18
market maximizes social utility”? What is “social utility” in an
epistemological world devoid of interpersonal aggregates?
19
If “in human action there are no quantitative constants,” and therefore no
20
index number is legitimate, then how can we say that monetary inlation
produces price inflation? What is price inlation without an index number?
What is an index number without interpersonal aggregation?
If we cannot deine “social utility,” or price inlation, then how can we
know that “money, in contrast to all other useful commodities employed in

15. Economist Aaron Levine refers to Kirzner as “Rabbi Dr. Israel Kirzner, Talmudist
extraordinaire. . . .” Levine, Free Enterprise and Jewish Law: Aspects of Jewish Business Ethics (New
York: KTAV, 1980), p. xi.
16. Israel M. Kirzner, “Welfare Economics: A Modern Austrian Perspective,” in Walter
Block and Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (eds.), Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of
Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn, Alabama: Mises Institute, 1988), p. 79.
17. Idem.
18. Rothbard, Power and Market: Government and the Economy (Menlo Park, California:
Institute for Humane Studies, 1970), p. 13.
19. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, p. 739.
20. Ibid., p. 740.
914 DEUTERONOMY

production or consumption, does not confer a social beneit when its sup-
21
ply increases”? How can we legitimately say anything about the aggre-
22
gate entity, “social beneit”?

Kirzner understands that these aggregates are illegitimate from

the point of view of methodological subjectivism, and he has re-
frained from arguing publicly for any social policy throughout his
career. He has seen that, in terms of pure subjectivism in economics,
to discuss the concept of social choice is “to engage in a metaphor.”23
“To choose, presupposes an integrated framework of ends and means;
without such a presumed framework allocative choice is hardly a
coherent notion at all.”24 Such a statement identiies Kirzner as a
very precise follower of Mises and a less precise follower of Moses.
Without the concept of aggregate, corporate social curses and bless-
ings, there can be no national covenant between God and His peo-
ple. Without the idea of a series of corporate covenants there could
be neither Judaism or Christianity. The covenants of Israel were ju-
dicially objective. To demonstrate this objectivity, God provided ob-
jective economic blessings that were visible to anyone who looked at the
evidence.

And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after
them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt;
To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to
bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.
Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is
God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else
(Deut. 4:37–39).

And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into
the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Ja-
cob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And
houses full of all good things, which thou illedst not, and wells digged,

21. Rothbard, “The Case for a 100% Gold Dollar,” in Leland B. Yeager (ed.), In Search of a
Monetary Constitution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 121.
22. Gary North, “Why Murray Rothbard Will Never Win the Nobel Prize!” in Man,
Economy, and Liberty, p. 105.
23. Kirzner, “Welfare Economics,” p. 80.
24. Ibid., p. 81.
 Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism 915

which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst
not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full (Deut. 6:10–11).

The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath
sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy
God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou
art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee. And
the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and
in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the
LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his
good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and
to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations,
and thou shalt not borrow (Deut. 28:9–12).

But the consistent methodological subjectivist refuses to see

with his own eyes. He will not acknowledge the scientiic relevance
of either corporate blessings or corporate cursings. This was Israel’s
problem in Isaiah’s day. “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying,
Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I;
send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but
understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart
of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest
they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand
with their heart, and convert, and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how
long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabit-
ant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,
And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great for-
saking in the midst of the land” (Isa. 6:8–12). Such blindness is judi-
cial blindness. God blinds men so that they cannot see with their own
eyes. Judicial blindness is a mark of His covenantal curse. Men in-
terpret what they see in terms of what they believe, and what cove-
nant-breakers believe is that God does not bring corporate, objective,
measurable, covenantal sanctions in history.
Kirzner rejects classical economics in the name of subjectiv-
ism. He therefore rejects biblical economics in the name of subjec-
tivism. For methodological subjectivism, there is no such thing as
national wealth, economically speaking, for there is no collective. If
nation A is devastated by a plague, leaving behind only one alco-
holic survivor who now owns the contents of every liquor store in
the nation, while nation B has not sufered such a plague, there is no
way for a subjectivist economist to say which nation is now better of.
916 DEUTERONOMY

The alcoholic is clearly a happy man. Who is to say scientiically that

the collective joy of nation B, which avoided the plague, is greater
than the collective joy of nation A, i.e., the drunk who is feeling no
pain? There is no such thing as collective joy, says the methodologi-
cal subjectivist. In Kirzner’s words, “economic analysis has nothing
to say about sensations.” Contrast this with Moses’ economic analy-
sis: “And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine
hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD
thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may
establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this
day” (Deut. 8:17–18). Moses spoke this to the assembled nation, not
to a private individual.
Moses was raising the question that fascinated Adam Smith: the
origin of the wealth of nations. Kirzner dismisses this whole ques-
tion as epistemologically misguided. “During the period of classical
economics it was, of course, taken for granted that a society was eco-
nomically successful strictly insofar as it succeeded in achieving in-
creased wealth. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations expressed this approach to the economics of wel-
fare simply and typically. It was taken for granted that a given per-
centage increase in a nation’s physical wealth (with wealth often
seen as consisting of bushels of “corn”) meant a similar percentage
increase in the nation’s well-being. From this perspective a physical
measure of a nation’s wealth provides an index of that nation’s eco-
nomic success, regardless of its distribution. A bushel of wheat is a
bushel of wheat. Clearly this notion of welfare ofends the principles
of methodological individualism and subjectivism; it was swept
away by the marginalist (subjectivist) revolution of the late nine-
teenth century.”25 But Smith’s perception of objective national
wealth was closer to the covenantal wisdom of the Bible than radical
subjectivism is.26 By stripping all traces of objective value theory out

25. Kirzner, “Welfare Economics,” p. 78.

26. The phrase “radical subjectivism” is Ludwig Lachmann’s. He claimed in 1982 that
radical subjectivism “inspired the Austrian revival of the 1970s. . . .” Ludwig M. Lachmann,
“Ludwig von Mises and the Extension of Subjectivism,” in Israel M. Kirzner (ed.), Method,
Process, and Austrian Economics: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (Lexington, Massachusetts:
Lexington Books, 1982), p. 37. Lachmann was being simultaneously too modest and too
arrogant. It was his lectures in defense of radical subjectivism at the 1974 South Royalton,
Vermont, conference (which I attended) that split the Austrian movement into the
Rothbardian and Lachmanian camps. Radical subjectivism was surely an aspect of the
 Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism 917

of economics, radical subjectivism produces an intellectual world of

sustained incoherence. A handful of academic economists have
trained themselves to dismiss the visibly obvious as epistemologically
irrelevant.27

Dualism: Objective vs. Subjective Economics

I am not speaking here of Kant’s dualism between the realm of
man’s mind and the realm of physical causation.28 Mises, as a good
Kantian, acknowledged the legitimacy of this dualism.29 I am speak-
ing here of the dualism between aggregative, objective value theory
and individualistic, subjective value theory.
The epistemological problem with all forms of welfare econom-
ics and all forms of economic policy-making is the problem of rec-
onciling aggregative values or preferences, whose existence is denied by
extreme economic individualists, yet also invoked by them at some
point, and subjective values, which are dismissed as morally periph-
eral by methodological holists, but which are also invoked by them
at some point. This topic is avoided like the plague within the eco-
nomics profession, since there has never been a widely shared hu-
manistic solution to this dualism.
The methodological individualist moves epistemologically to-
ward complete indeterminacy. The momentary subjective states of
the individual are said to lose contact with the external world and
even with his own past subjective states.30 This epistemological chaos

revival of Austrian economics, for it split the movement into two irreconcilable factions.
Radical subjectivism was hardly the basis of Austrianism’s revival. Lachmann also invoked
the work of “Shackle, the master subjectivist” (p. 38). But Shackle was never an Austrian
School economist. Lachmann pretended otherwise. See Lachmann, “From Mises to Shackle:
An Essay on Austrian Economics and the Kaleidic Society,” Journal of Economic Literature,
XIV (March 1976). In the history of economic thought, G. L. S. Shackle is the most consistent
defender of Kant’s noumenalism as an economic methodology. I regard Kirzner’s theory of
entrepreneurship as Lachmanian.
27. In short, says the economist, “Your facts cannot be sustained by economic theory.”
28. Richard Kroner, Kant’s Weltanschauung (University of Chicago Press, [1914] 1956).
29. Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution
(New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1957), p. 1.
30. Lachmann writes: “The human mind can, it is true, transcend the present moment in
imagination and memory, but the moment-in-being remains nevertheless always
self-contained and solitary. . . . It follows that it is impossible to compare human actions
undertaken at diferent moments in time.” Ludwig M. Lachmann, Capital, Expectations, and the
Market Process (Kansas City, Kansas: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1977), p. 83.
918 DEUTERONOMY

has been defended by Ludwig Lachmann: kaleidic perceptualism.

He invokes as his image of society the kaleidoscope,31 that delightful
toy which uses mirrors to produce ever-changing, unrepeatable, vi-
sually fascinating, and autonomously meaningless patterns out of
shifting objects. For Lachmann, as for Kirzner, it becomes impossi-
ble to speak of national economic growth or per capita economic
growth.32 Yet Mises argued to the contrary: “Saving, capital accu-
mulation, is the agency that has transformed step by step the awk-
ward search for food on the part of savage cave dwellers into
33
modern ways of industry.” For the radical subjectivist, it is illogical
to argue that an increase of per capita capital leads to greater per ca-
pita wealth. Per capita capital is “a wholly artiicial construct,” writes
Kirzner.34 Yet Mises argued: “There is but one means available to
improve the material conditions of mankind: to accelerate the
growth of capital accumulated as against the growth in population.
The greater the amount of capital invested per head of the worker,
the more and the better goods can be produced and consumed.”35
Mises’ original radical subjectivism has run aground on the shoals of
a far more radical subjectivism. The result of pure subjectivism is
the end of meaning, not just for economics but for human thought in
general.
In contrast, the methodological holist moves toward central
planning. The concept of social goods and social evils implies a sin-
gle planning mind and a single standard of good and evil. This is
what alienates the individualists. They want to preserve human free-
dom; the holist wants to improve the human condition systematically,
meaning through central planning and coercion. The individualist
does not trust the State; the holist does not trust the free market. The
individualist rejects State compulsion; the holist rejects social and

31. Ludwig Lachmann, “An Austrian Stocktaking: Unsettled Questions and Tentative
Answers,” in Louis Spadaro (ed.), New Directions in Austrian Economics (Kansas City, Kansas:
Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1978), p. 7. This book might well have been titled Kaleidic
Developments in Austrian Economics, or perhaps The Epistemological Breakdown of Austrian
Economics.
32. Ludwig Lachmann, Capital and Its Structure (Kansas City, Kansas: Sheed Andrews and
McMeel, 1977), p. 37.
33. Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality (Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand,
1956), p. 39.
34. Israel M. Kirzner, An Essay on Capital (New York: Augustus Kelly, 1966), p. 120.
35. Mises, Anti-Capitalist Mentality, p. 5.
 Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism 919

even personal indeterminacy, which radical subjectivists such as

Lachmann preach with fervor. The individualist wants the con-
sumer to be sovereign; the holist wants the voter or bureaucrat to be
sovereign. The individualist defends the autonomy of individual
plans; the holist defends the sovereignty of the State’s plan.
The individualist proclaims faith in the rationality of the market
and its ability to improve the human condition. He then denies the
epistemological legitimacy of any objective unit of measurement
that would allow an outside observer to assess such improvement.
In contrast, the holist proclaims faith in the rationality of the State
and its ability to improve the human condition. He then denies the
appropriateness of any unit of measurement that points to the fail-
ure of central planning to deliver the goods. Denying the relevance
of socialism’s objective failure, he proclaims his faith in intangible
socialist goods that provide dignity and meaning in socialism’s
world of stagnant or declining economic output. Both the individu-
alist and the holist seek justiication in a hypothetical realm of the
spirit – Kant’s noumenal realm – which lies outside the domain of
objective measurement, i.e., Kant’s phenomenal realm. In search
of meaning, members of both schools of economic thought lee to
the zone of man’s indeterminate subjective freedom: Kant’s
noumenal realm. The holist seeks justiication for his views in terms
of the collective “quality of life,” which cannot be scientiically mea-
sured. The individualist seeks justiication for his views in terms of
the individually perceived productivity of the entrepreneurial lash
of insight, which cannot be measured, taught, or even described
scientiically.36

36. Kirzner’s entrepreneurial “ah, ha,” alertness, or hunch is the premier example of this
light to the noumenal in search of explanations. He calls entrepreneurial alertness “the
instant of an entrepreneurial leap of faith. . . .” Kirzner, Perception, Opportunity, and Proit:
Studies in the Theory of Entrepreneurship (University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 163. This
moment of discovery is beyond the constraints of logical cause and efect. “Once the
entrepreneurial element in human action is perceived, one can no longer interpret the
decision as merely calculative – capable in principle of being yielded by mechanical
manipulation of the ‘data’ or already completely implied in these data.” Kirzner, Competition and
Entrepreneurship (University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 35. He speaks of the entrepreneur’s
“propensity to sense what prices are realistically available to him” (p. 40). The essence of this
sense is that it is beyond calculation, i.e., beyond Kant’s phenomenal realm.
920 DEUTERONOMY

Resolution: Methodological Covenantalism

The methodological covenantalist inds the solution to these in-
herent and permanent dualisms in the concept of a sovereign, omni-
scient God. God has a plan. He matches ends and means. He issues
a decree for history, and this decree will be fulilled. “And all the in-
habitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth accord-
ing to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of
the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest
thou?” (Dan. 4:35). The presupposition of a sovereign God replaces
the presupposition of sovereign man.
To the extent that men think God’s thoughts after Him, they
adopt God’s standards – His hierarchy of legitimate ends – with respect
to their lives. God enables people to coordinate their plans through
human action because His decree and plan are above theirs. “A
man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps”
(Prov. 16:9). “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the
rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Prov. 21:1). In
Joseph’s words to his brothers, who had sold him into slavery, “But
as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good,
to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen.
50:20). God’s Bible-revealed law-order provides the framework of
productive coordination, in economics as in other areas of life. His
sanctions in history provide both the incentives and disincentives
that conirm His covenant law.
The methodological individualist does not begin with the pre-
supposition of an omniscient God. Such a God would thwart the in-
dividualist’s autonomy. Neither does the methodological holist
begin with God; he begins with some substitute source of planning
and accurate information, most commonly the State. The idea of
cosmic personalism is foreign to humanistic economics.37 Econom-
ics since the late seventeenth century has been self-consciously ag-
nostic,38 i.e., militantly atheistic with a thin veneer of humility for
academic propriety’s sake. The result is epistemological chaos,
which is concealed from public view, even from the occasionally in-
quisitive eyes of graduate students, by a kind of embarrassed silence.

37. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 1.
38. William Letwin, The Origins of Scientiic Economics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T.
Press, 1963).
 Individualism, Holism, and Covenantalism 921

Should anyone enquire about this epistemological dualism, he will

be assured that such matters are irrelevant to what economists do.
And what do economists do? Economics. Then what is economics?
Whatever economists do.39

Conclusion
The Bible’s objective language of national wealth undermines
methodological individualism. But rarely do methodological indi-
vidualists pursue their position to its logical conclusion. The lan-
guage of statistical averages and price indexes is common to most
methodological individualists.
Because biblical cosmic personalism is true, there can be a reso-
lution to the philosophical problem of the seeming contradiction
between subjective and objective knowledge. In economics, this
contradiction is seen most clearly in the debates over objective and
subjective value. The Bible’s objective value theory is grounded in
the objective Person of God – His declarations, standards, and eval-
uations. God’s subjective declaration of value to His objective cre-
ation – “it is good” – and His objective declarations of blessings and
cursings in history indicate that subjectivism and objectivism are
correlative. They are grounded in the objective character of God’s
subjective declarations. The mind of man is capable of making ob-
jective evaluations of external conditions because his mind relects
God’s mind. He is made in God’s image. His evaluations become
progressively accurate as they approach God’s evaluations as a
limit. He thinks God’s thoughts after Him.
There is corporate wealth. Men can subjectively perceive objec-
tive diferences between rich and poor nations, rich and poor corpo-
rations, and rich and poor governments. I can remember being
challenged verbally by Mises in 1971 to defend my statement that
we can make objectively meaningful comparisons between subjec-
tively perceived human conditions. I said, “It is better to be rich and
healthy than it is to be poor and sick.” He said, “Yes, that’s so.” This
was not a great philosophical exchange, but it got to the point. That
point was not noumenal.

39. These deinitions were ofered, respectively, by Jacob Viner and Frank Knight. See
James Buchanan, What Should Economists Do? (Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyPress, 1979),
p. 18.
 Appendix C
Syncretism,PLURALISM,
SYNCRETISM, Pluralism, andAND
Empire
EMPIRE

And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron

breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all
these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet
and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be
divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as
thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were
part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and
partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they
shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one
to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of these
kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be
destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall
break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain
without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the
silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall
come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation
thereof sure (Dan. 2:40–45).

Daniel’s prophecy to Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar foretold the

rise of a series of empires. The last worldwide political empire
would be Rome’s. It would break apart. It would be replaced by a
new empire, a new world order: the church, the stone cut from the
mountain made without hands. There is no political empire capable
of replacing the church as the basis of an integrated world order.
Every self-proclaimed new world order will fail.
In our day, we have seen two rival claimants to the throne of empire,
each claiming to be a builder of a New World Order: international

922
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 923

Communism and Western humanism. Communism visibly col-

lapsed in August of 1991 in the failed coup by the ousted leaders of
the old Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Today, in the late
1990’s, Western humanists believe that they are capable of putting
together an international order based on free trade, central banking,
currency manipulation, and international bureaucratic agencies
with the power to control the legal framework of international pro-
duction. This ideal, like the ideal of Communism, will be publicly
smashed. This ideal is built on faith in political controls, which to-
day means faith in central banking, taxation, and computers. As we
approach the year 2000, with the looming breakdown of computers
due to the rollover from 1999 (99) to 2000 (00), we can predict with
some conidence: “The computer giveth and the computer taketh
away.” Blessed be the name of the Lord.

A Common Pantheon
The strategy of the ancient empires was syncretism. It still is, but
today it is called pluralism. The idols of the conquered cities could
be brought into the pantheon of the empire’s gods. This was Rome’s
strategy. Local idols lost their exclusivity when they entered the em-
pire’s pantheon. Rome sought to maintain the regional authority of
the gods of the classical city-state by incorporating them into the
Roman pantheon. By honoring the geographical signiicance of lo-
cal deities, Rome sought to subordinate them all to the pantheon it-
self, i.e., to the empire. The Roman pantheon, manifested politically
by the genius and later the divinity of the emperor, universalized
the implied divinity of the classical city-state.
It was the exclusivity and universalism of the God of the Bible
that identiied Jews and Christians as politically untrustworthy and
even revolutionary subjects. They refused to worship either the ge-
nius or the divinity of the Roman emperor. They would not ac-
knowledge the authority of the Roman empire’s pantheon of gods.
They would not acknowledge the God of the Bible as just one more
regional god among many. The God of the Bible, they insisted, was
above the creation and outside it. This confession was revolutionary
in ancient Rome. Rushdoony explains why: “The essence of the an-
cient city-state, polis, and empire was that it constituted the continu-
ous unity of the gods and men, of the divine and the human, and the
unity of all being. There was thus no possible independence in soci-
ety for any constituent aspect. Every element of society was a part of
924 DEUTERONOMY

the all-absorbing one. Against this, Christianity asserted the abso-

lute division of the human and the divine. Even in the incarnation of
Christ, the human and the divine were in union without confusion,
as Chalcedon [451 A.D.] so powerfully deined it. Thus, divinity was
withdrawn from human society and returned to the heavens and to
God. No human order or institution could claim divinity and
thereby claim to represent total and inal order. By de-divinizing the
world, Christianity placed all created orders, including church and
state, under God.”1
Rome could not coexist with Christianity. The Roman authori-
ties recognized this fact over two centuries before the Christians did.
While Christians were honest, hard-working, peace-loving citizens,
they were necessarily the enemies of pagan Rome. Their God
would not submit; He ordered His people not to submit. The Chris-
tians sought peace through religious pluralism, but Rome sought
dominion through syncretism: the absorption of all religions into
the religion of empire. Syncretism is the enemy of orthodoxy. Politi-
cal pluralism – the equal authority (little or none) in civil law of all
supernatural gods – is a grand illusion. It is syncretism for those
Christian believers who have not yet recognized in political plural-
ism the syncretism that underlies it and the humanistic empire
which is pluralism’s long-term goal.2
Christians of Rome called for religious toleration – the right not
to worship the emperor as a condition of citizenship or even resi-
dent alien status – but Rome’s authorities knew better. They recog-
nized what early Christians refused to acknowledge, namely, that
the God of the Bible recognizes no other gods, rejects syncretism,
and therefore calls for the subordination of culture to Him and His
Bible-revealed law. Rome recognized early that pluralism is a politi-
cally convenient short-term illusion and a long-run impossibility.
There would either be a judicially impotent religious establishment
under the authority of a political priesthood or else covenant reli-
gion would govern the nation’s political oath of allegiance. The re-
sult of this early recognition was Rome’s intermittent persecution of
Christians for almost three centuries, followed by the fall of Rome

1. R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy
(Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1971] 1978), p. 124.
2. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989).
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 925

and the inheritance of Rome’s infrastructure – roads, laws, and cus-

toms – by Christians in the fourth century. Rome’s syncretism failed
as surely as the Christians’ early pluralism failed.

Tertullian’s Apology
In the late second or early third century, Tertullian (145–220),
the intellectual founder of Latin Christianity, wrote his famous Apol-
ogy, a defense of Christianity as a pietistic religion of heart and
hearth which should have been acceptable to Rome’s power reli-
gion. It was addressed to “Rulers of the Roman Empire.”3 It was a
critique of Rome’s demand that Christians must worship the divin-
ity of the emperor for the sake of the prosperity of the empire.
He attributed to ignorance the rulers’ hostility to Christianity.
“So we maintain that they are both ignorant while they hate us, and
hate us unrighteously while they continue in ignorance, the one
thing being the result of the other either way of it.”4 In Chapter 25,
he pointed out that the complex pantheon of Rome in his day had
not been the religion of the early Romans. “But how utterly foolish
it is to attribute the greatness of the Roman name to religious merits,
since it was after Rome became an empire, or call it still a kingdom,
that the religion she professes made its chief progress! Is it the case
now? Has its religion been the source of the prosperity of Rome?”
On the contrary, he argued: “Indeed, how could religion make a
people great who have owed their greatness to their irreligion? For,
if I am not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars,
and are extended by victories. More than that, you cannot have
wars and victories without the taking, and often the destruction, of
cities. That is a thing in which the gods have their share of calamity.
Houses and temples sufer alike; there is indiscriminate slaughter of
priests and citizens; the hand of rapine is laid equally upon sacred
and on common treasure. Thus the sacrileges of the Romans are as
numerous as their trophies.” The sacredness of Rome’s pantheon of
gods is an illusion; the gods of Rome are idols. “But divinities un-
conscious are with impunity dishonored, just as in vain they are
adored.”

3. Tertullian, Apology, ch. I, opening words. Reprinted in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. III
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, [1870] 1978).
4. Idem.
926 DEUTERONOMY

If this was calculated to persuade Rome’s rulers, it was an apolo-

getic failure. Tertullian did not understand, or pretended not to un-
derstand, the inherently political nature of classical religion. The
gods of Rome were thoroughly political in Tertullian’s era. This is
not surprising. In classical religion, the gods of allied cities, as well as
allied families and clans within a city, had always been political.
They had always been creations for the sake of politics.5 Peace trea-
6
ties between warring cities were treaties between their gods. While
the ancients believed that the gods did bring sanctions, positive and
negative, in history, they also believed that these sanctions were ap-
plied to members of oath-bound, custom-bound, and ritual-bound
groups: families, clans, and city-states. The heart of Roman religion
was its public piety.7 Jews and Christians remained aloof from these
public ceremonies, not because the rituals were public but because
they formally invoked idols. On the other hand, they were perse-
cuted, not because they refused to believe in the power of idols, but
because they refused to participate in acts of public piety. The issue
for Rome was the oath – formal invocation – not personal belief.
The public oath ajrmed men’s obedience to representatives of the
gods of the pantheon – representatives who were, above all, politi-
cal agents of the emperor.
In Chapter 28, Tertullian called for religious toleration gener-
ally, ajrming strict voluntarism in worship. Christians cannot in
good conscience “ofer sacriice to the well-being of the emperor.”
Yet for this refusal, he complained, they have been illegitimately
condemned as treasonous. Roman religion was itself sacrilegious,
he said, “for you do homage with a greater dread and an intense rev-
erence to Caesar, than Olympian Jove himself.” Of course they did;
the Olympian Jove was a political construct. Caesar was the earthly
manifestation of Rome’s political power, and classical religion was
power religion. Tertullian sought to condemn Rome’s rulers for
“showing impiety to your gods, inasmuch as you show a greater rev-
erence to a human sovereignty than you do to them.” This was naive;

5. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of
Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book III, ch. VI.
6. Ibid., III:XV.
7. Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1984), p. 64.
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 927

the heart of all power religion, from Pharaoh to the latest political
messiah, is the honoring of human sovereignty.8
In Chapter 29, he argued that the gods of Rome did not protect
Caesar; rather, Caesar protected the gods. “This, then, is the ground
on which we are charged with treason against the imperial majesty,
to wit, that we do not put the emperors under their own possessions;
that we do not ofer a mere mock service on their behalf, as not be-
lieving their safety rests in leaden hands.” This was also a naive argu-
ment, yet one still revered by most Christian defenders of modern
political pluralism. To pray for Caesar in the name of the pantheon
of Rome’s gods was to acknowledge publicly that Caesar was the
common reference point, the common spokesman, for the inher-
ently political gods of classical culture. The syncretism of Rome’s
religion was the theological justiication for the administration of
Rome’s political empire: a hierarchy of sanctiied power from Caesar
to the lowest ojcials in the otherwise autonomous city-states that
made up the empire. This hierarchy of power was sacred, a matter of
formal ritual.
The source of law in society is its god.9 Caesar was the source of
law in the name of the gods of the pantheon. There was no opera-
tional hierarchy above him; there was a political and military hier-
archy below him. This much Tertullian understood. This was the
heart of his argument against the seriousness of Roman religion. But
to maintain widespread faith in the legitimacy of any social order, the
authorities must foster faith in a sacred – though not necessarily su-
pernatural – law-order, i.e., laws to which non-political and cosmic
sanctions are attached. Civil authorities seek to instill the fear of the
society’s gods in the hearts of the subjects of the sacred political or-
der. This is why Tertullian was unquestionably treasonous, for he
was undermining men’s faith in the higher order which the authori-
ties insisted undergirded Rome’s legitimacy. Tertullian was chal-
lenging the civil covenant of Rome, an overwhelmingly political
social order. He challenged Rome’s gods, the authority of Rome’s
rulers to command allegiance to the primary representative of these
gods, Rome’s law, Rome’s sanctions against treasonous Christians,
and ultimately Rome’s succession in history. There was no more

8. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas:
Institute for Christian Economics, 1985).
9. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973),
p. 5.
928 DEUTERONOMY

revolutionary act than this. Taking up weapons was a minor infrac-

tion compared to this.
In vain did Tertullian cry out for toleration, just as modern
Christian defenders of political pluralism cry out vainly. “Why,
then, are we not permitted an equal liberty and impunity for our
doctrines as they have, with whom, in respect of what we teach, we
are compared?”10 The answer should have been obvious: they – the
tolerated religions – publicly acknowledged the legitimacy of the
covenant of Rome’s power religion. Christianity could not acknowl-
edge such legitimacy and remain faithful to God.
Tertullian had mystical tendencies, and he spent the end of his
life as a member of a cult, the Montanists, which had been founded
half a century earlier by a tongues-speaking, self-styled prophet,
Montanus, and two women who were also said to be prophetesses.
They taught the imminent bodily return of Christ.11 After Christ’s
bodily return, they taught, He would set up an earthly kingdom.12
Tertullian’s Apology was governed by an outlook hostile to time, do-
minion, and political involvement. His political pluralism was an
outworking of his theological pietism, a pietism which eventually
led him into a premillennial cult that called for asceticism, sufering,
and martyrdom prior to the imminent Second Coming.13 His politi-
cal pluralism was consistent with his later theology: a call, not for
the victory of Christianity in history, but merely for peace until such
time as Christ returns to set up a millennial kingdom. For Tertullian,
history ofered little hope. Yet even so, his limited critique of Rome
in the name of political pluralism and toleration went too far for
Rome’s hierarchs.

Julian the Apostate

The Roman authorities understood the implications of the rival
religion which Tertullian preached. They were unimpressed with his
arguments that Christians were the best citizens of Rome because
they gave alms freely and paid their taxes.14 The Christians were by

10. Tertullian, Apology, ch. XLVI.

11. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1953), p.
128.
12. W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), p. 254.
13. W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of a Conlict from the
Maccabees to Donatus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, [1965] 1981), p. 292.
14. Apology, ch. XLII.
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 929

far the most dangerous citizens of Rome, as the last pagan emperor
Julian (361–63) fully understood. The victorious Christians desig-
nated him posthumously as “Julian the Apostate.” This name has
stuck, even in textbooks written by his spiritual heirs. A secret con-
vert at age 20 from Christianity to occult mysteries, Julian took steps
to weaken the Christians immediately after he attained the ojce of
Emperor. Julian was the irst Renaissance ruler, a lover of Greek an-
tiquity.15 He concealed his conversion to paganism throughout his
adult life until he gained uncontested political power in 361. This is
understandable, given the fact that his late cousin, the Arian Emperor
Constantius, had ordered the murder of Julian’s father and mother in
the year Constantine died, 337, when Julian was ive years old.16
One of his earliest acts as emperor was to establish pagan review
boards governing the appointment of all teachers. Teachers hence-
forth would have to teach classical religion along with traditional
rhetoric.17 Christians, however, were forbidden by Julian to teach
such texts. He dismissed the Christians in his work, Against the
Galileans: “It seems to me that you yourselves must be aware of the
very diferent efect of your writings on the intellect compared to
ours, and that from studying yours no man could achieve excellence
or even ordinary human goodness, whereas from studying ours ev-
ery man can become better than before.”18 Like today, the posses-
sion of a formal education was basic to social advancement.19
Christians had long understood this, and those seeking social ad-
vancement had capitulated to the requirement of mastering rheto-
ric, but in a watered-down, minimal-paganism form. Wilken writes:
“For two centuries Christian intellectuals had been forging a link be-
tween Christianity and the classical tradition, and with one swift
stroke Julian sought to sever that link. . . . Christian parents, espe-
cially the wealthy, insisted that their sons receive the rhetorical edu-
cation, and it now appeared as though Julian were limiting this to
pagans.”20 The more things change, the more things stay the same.21

15. Wilken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 171.

16. John Holland Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1976), p. 93.
17. Wilken, Christians, pp. 173–74.
18. Cited in Smith, Death, p. 109.
19. Wilken, Christians, p. 175.
20. Idem.
21. Marsden, Soul of the American University, op. cit.
930 DEUTERONOMY

What Julian attempted, the U.S. Department of Education has

achieved.22 So have other similar politically appointed and coercive
review boards throughout the world.
In a very real sense, Julian’s edict launched a dilemma that has
faced the Western church since the eleventh century. If the knowl-
edge of pagan texts is the legitimate basis of a gentleman’s education
– an assumption acknowledged by the Christian West until the Dar-
winian educational reforms of late nineteenth century – then why
should Christians seek to become gentlemen? Why should they not
content themselves with the study of the Scriptures and commentar-
ies on the Scriptures, just as Jewish scholars in the West contented
themselves for eighteen centuries with the study of the Talmud?
One answer: because Christians do not want to live in ghettos, hav-
ing seen what ghetto living did to the Jews prior to about 1850. On
the other hand, won’t exposure to classical learning undermine
Christians’ commitment to the truths of Scripture, just as secular ed-
ucation has undermined modern Judaism? We see this continuing
debate in Christians’ rival commitment to two forms of higher edu-
cation: 1) the Christian liberal arts college, which has unquestion-
ably gone humanistic and liberal in the content of its curriculum;23
and 2) the fundamentalist Bible college, which does not seek aca-
demic accreditation from State-licensed, monopolistic, humanistic
accreditation organizations, nor would receive it if sought. This is
the dilemma of the hypothetical but non-existent Christian law
school that would teach biblical law and which therefore could not
receive academic accreditation from the humanistic American Bar
Association (ABA), which is mandatory for the school’s graduates to
gain access to the State-licensed monopoly of pleading the law for
money.24 Darwinism has replaced classicism in the modern curriculum,

22. Only in the summer of 1995 did the U.S. Department of Education allow a
non-regional accrediting organization begin to ofer accreditation to colleges. The regional
associations are all secular. The new association is equally secular, but its recommended
curriculum is more traditional, rather like late-nineteenth-century pagan college education.
23. James D. Hunter, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (University of Chicago Press,
1987).
24. This is the dilemma of Regent University’s law school, which received provisional
accreditation by the ABA on the basis of its dean’s public commitment to an as-yet
undeveloped, updated version of James Madison’s pre-Darwinian, eighteenth-century
political pluralism, and which in 1993 ired the dean and promised to adopt a more
mainstream curriculum. “Titus Breaks His Silence,” World (Feb. 5, 1994). The dean was
Herbert Titus, who wrote an appendix in R. J. Rushdoony’s book, Law and Society, vol. 2 of
Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1982).
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 931

and college graduates are not so much gentlemen as bureaucrats,

but the dilemma is in principle the same.
The solution is the biblical covenant, which provides Christians
with revelational standards of evaluation that are to govern both the
form and the content of education, but Christians have never be-
lieved this strongly enough to establish biblical guidelines for edu-
cation. The answer, in short, is theocracy – “God rules through
God’s rules” – but this suggestion is as abhorrent to modern pietistic
Christians as it was to Julian.

Modernism’s Gods
Modernism’s gods are the lineal descendants of the gods of the
Hellenistic world: inluence, wealth, and sophistication. They are
gods of a systematically secular civilization: politics, economics, and
education. Their confessional demands are not so clearly stated as
the traditional gods of Canaan were. They ofer so many beneits
and seem to demand very few formal sacriices. They ofer the uni-
versally pursued fruits of the division of labor in every ield. They
invite into their company all those who are willing to endure intel-
lectual separation from the communities in which they were born.
They demand this separation, initially, only in those areas of life
that produce wealth and social advantages. They rigidly segregate
the realm of formal worship from the world of economic productiv-
ity and civil service. They relegate the confessional world of re-
vealed religion to the fringes of culture. They condescendingly allow
the regularly scheduled formal worship of these culturally banished
gods, but these schedules are limited by custom, and sometimes are
banned by law (e.g., tax-funded anything in the United States).
Modernism’s gods are like the gods of classical humanism, for
they are part of the creation. Modernism denies judicial signiicance
to anything outside the space-time continuum. Modernism’s gods
are gods of man’s professed autonomy. Unlike the gods of classical
humanism, they are universal gods that honor no geographical
boundaries. They are idols of the mind and spirit. They ofer power,
wealth, and prestige to those who are willing to submit to their im-
personal laws. They serve as the foundations of empire: man’s em-
pire. They claim the allegiance of all who would be successful.
Because they are impersonal gods, their various priesthoods can
comfort the worshippers of personal gods by assuring them that the
honoring of modernism’s gods in no way dishonors the religion of
932 DEUTERONOMY

any traditional god. In so arguing, the priests of the gods of modern-

ism proclaim the universal reign of humanism’s kingdom, a reign
unafected by the competing claims of the worshippers of traditional
deities. Behind the competing dogmas of the great religions is the
agreed-upon god of numerical relationships. Above the cacophony
of claims by the priests of the gods of revelation is the transiguring
promise of compound economic growth. The traditional priest
takes your money and gives you assurances of eternal peace; the
banker takes your money and gives you three to ive percent, com-
pounded. The many-colored robes of a hundred priestly orders can-
not compete with the dazzling white smocks of the scientiic
priesthood. Or so it seems. It takes a highly sophisticated skeptic to
perceive that the relevance of numerical relationships cannot be ex-
plained logically,25 that compound economic growth cannot con-
tinue indeinitely in a finite world,26 and that science places man on
a meaningless treadmill of discovery in which every truth will be su-
perseded, in which there is no long-term security of belief.27
The reality of the permanent conlict between God and the gods
of modernism can be seen in the outcome of their respective histori-
cal sanctions. Jews, as the original covenant people, regard them-
selves as heirs of the covenant. If any people should be immune to
the lure of false gods, they believe, they are that people. Yet the
worship of the gods of modernism has made great inroads in the
Jewish community. They have trusted the modern State, only to be
repeatedly betrayed by it.28 They have trusted the economy, only to
be blamed as malefactors and conspirators because of their eco-
nomic success.29 They have trusted education, only to have lost their

25. Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Efectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural

Sciences,” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, XIII (1960), pp. 1–14. Wigner won
the Nobel Prize in physics.
26. Gary North, “The Theology of the Exponential Curve,” The Freeman (May 1970).
27. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation” (1919), in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology,
edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946),
p. 138.
28. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University of Chicago Press,
1993).
29. Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The myth of the Jewish world-conspiracy and the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); Albert Lee, Henry Ford and
the Jews (New York: Stein & Day, 1980); Sheldon Marcus, Father Caughlin: The Tumultuous Life
of the Priest of the Little Flower (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 146–79. Primary sources
include Maj.-Gen. Count Cherep-Spiridovich, The Secret World Government or “The Hidden
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 933

confessional identity. The phrase, “I’m a Jew,” today masks an ab-

sence of any agreed-upon theological or judicial content.
Over time, one begins to perceive that Jews are over-represented
in the ranks of mathematicians, bankers, scientists, Hollywood ce-
lebrities, and in other ields. Meanwhile, there do not seem to be
many rabbis who still defend the infallibility of the ive books of
Moses. In fact, the relationship seems to be inverse: the fewer the
number of Torah-ajrming rabbis, the more Jews are visible in lead-
ership positions inside the priesthoods of modernism. Is this inverse
relationship a perverse relationship? So it seems.30

Pietism and Politics

“Fewer Torah-ajrming rabbis, more successful Jews.” Because
of the visible success of the Jewish minority in the West, this obser-
vation is easy to make. But the same inverse relationship seems to
operate in Christian fundamentalist circles, although in the opposite
form: “More Bible-believing ministers, fewer successful Christians.”
There are reasons for this. Many fundamentalist Christians con-
clude that success in this world is a spiritual trap to be avoided, a
goal to be shunned. “Politics is dirty. Riches are a trap. Too much
education is a bad thing.” Premillennial dispensationalism has
called into question the time available to Christians to pursue pro-
jects that rely on long-term compounding for success. As Rev. J.
Vernon McGee put it in the early 1950’s, “You don’t polish brass on
a sinking ship.” In recent years, this success-rejecting presupposi-
tion has been called into question in some charismatic circles.31
Meanwhile, as American fundamentalist Christians have be-
come politically active since 1976, they have steadily abandoned
their commitment to dispensationalism. This is especially true of

Hand” (New York: Anti-Bolshevist Pub. Assn., 1926); John Beaty, The Iron Curtain Over
America (Dallas: Wilkenson 1951); William Guy Carr, Red Fog Over America (2nd ed.; Toronto:
National Federation of Christian Laymen, 1957); Carr, Pawns in the Game (4th ed.; Los
Angeles: St. George Press, 1962); Olivia Marie O’Grady, The Beasts of the Apocalypse (Benicia,
California: O’Grady Publications, 1959); Wilmot Roberston, The Dispossessed Majority (rev.
ed.; Cape Canaveral, Florida: Howard Allen, 1972), ch. 15; Richard Kelly Hoskins, War
Cycles – Peace Cycles (Lynchburg, Virginia: Virginia Pub. Co., 1985). Most of these anti-Semitic
books are out of print. They were always little-known, privately published, and consigned to
the far-right fringe of American conservatism.
30. See Appendix D, “The Demographics of American Judaism.”
31. The “positive confession” movement is the most obvious example.
934 DEUTERONOMY

32
fundamentalism’s national leaders. They rarely speak about escha-
tology any more, and when they do, what they say about the future
is at odds with what their multi-million dollar organizations are do-
33
ing. An eschatology that conidently preaches inevitable failure in
history for Christians is inconsistent with Christian political mobili-
zation. The goal of politics is to win, not lose. Also, the rise of the in-
dependent Christian education movement since 1965 has been
accompanied by the idea that Christian education should be better
than secular education, which places a new degree of responsibility
on Christians to develop superior curriculum materials. While fun-
damentalists have proven incapable of doing this, especially for stu-
dents above the age of 15, they at least have understood that the task
is necessary. But after three centuries of having to choose between
right-wing Enlightenment humanism and left-wing, Protestant
Christians are not in a position to ofer a well-developed alternative.
Fundamentalists have generally chosen right-wing humanism –
Adam Smith, James Madison – but they have at best baptized it in
the name of vague biblical principles. They have not shown
exegetically how the Bible leads to right-wing humanism’s policy
conclusions.
Calvinists and Lutherans never adopted such a comprehensive
world-rejecting outlook, where at least middle-class success has
been assumed to be normative, but they have also been deeply
compromised by humanist education, especially at the collegiate
level. Calvinist and Lutheran leaders and churches have gone theo-
logically liberal and then politically liberal with far greater regular-
ity than fundamentalist leaders and churches have.
The gods of the modern world, being universal in their claims,
imitate the universalism of the kingdom of God. They undergird the
kingdom of man. Their profered blessings are not uniquely tied to
the land as the gods of the ancient world were. These gods are not
placated by sacred oferings of the ield. They are placated only by
confession and conformity: the ajrmation of their autonomous ju-
risdiction within an ever-expanding realm of law – civil, private, or

32. I predicted this in my essay, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian
Right,” Christianity and Civilization, 1 (1982), pp. 1–40
33. The classic example is Beverly LaHaye, who runs a huge political action organization,
Concerned Women for America. Meanwhile, her dispensational husband Tim writes books
about the imminent rapture.
 Syncretism, Pluralism, and Empire 935

both. Their priestly agents ofer positive sanctions to those who con-
form covenantally: the traditional human goals of health, wealth,
power, fame, and security, as well as the great lure of the twentieth
century, low-cost entertainment. The last goal has become neces-
sary to ofset the side efect of the irst ive: boredom.
America’s mainline Protestant denominations have sufered the
same fate confessionally during the same period.34 Catholicism re-
sisted the trend until the mid-1960’s, but this resistance collapsed al-
35 36
most overnight, 1965–66. The evangelicals are also succumbing.
Only fundamentalists, charismatics, and a handful of Calvinists and
Lutherans, especially those committed to Christian education
through high school, are maintaining their resistance by proclaim-
ing late eighteenth-century right-wing Enlightenment humanism as
an ideal. Church growth is taking place in those American churches
that are resisting the liberal humanist tide. This has been true since
the late 1920’s,37 the very period in which liberal Protestant church
growth peaked in the United States.38

Conclusion
The ancient empires adopted syncretism as a way to hold to-
gether the political order. Just as the syncretistic gods of the families
and clans in Greece and Rome entered into the common pantheon
of the city-state, becoming political gods, so did the gods of con-
quered city-states enter into the pantheon of the Roman Empire.
The welcoming of these gods into the Roman pantheon under-
mined the ritual-theological foundations of the Roman Republic.
Empires in the ancient world required the subordination of local
gods to the political order.

34. William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976).
35. Malachi Martin, The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Church (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1987). For a representative primary source, see A New Catechism: Catholic
Faith for Adults (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967). It was released by the bishops of the
Netherlands in 1966.
36. James D. Hunter, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (University of Chicago Press,
1987).
37. Joel A. Carpenter, “Fundamentalist Institutions and the Rise of Evangelical
Protestantism, 1929–1942,” Church History, 49 (1980), p. 65.
38. Robert T. Handy, “The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935,” ibid., 29 (1960),
pp. 3–16.
936 DEUTERONOMY

This is in principle no diferent in modern pluralism. What has

changed is the local character of the participating gods. They have
become universalistic, mimicking the God of the Bible. The mod-
ern pantheon is not illed with idols. Pluralism acknowledges all reli-
gions as equal, just as syncretism acknowledged all idols as equal.
But in both cases, this equality was the equality of subordination to
the god of politics. This god is the supreme god of every empire.
The anti-Christian leaders of the modern world are now cam-
paigning for the creation of a New World Order. This is another
move in the direction of empire. It will not come to pass. God will
bring a cacophony to match this new tower of Babel. This time, the
confusion of computer languages rather than human languages will
probably be the means of thwarting the move to empire.
 Appendix D

THEDemographics
DEMOGRAPHICS of American Judaism: Study
OF AMERICAN in
JUDAISM:
Disinheritance
A STUDY IN DISINHERITANCE

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery,

lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is
happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all
Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the
Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my
covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins (Rom. 11:25–27).

Jews worry a lot about their corporate future. The continuing re-
currence of this fear has been unique to Jews. Members of no other
ethnic group have gone into print so often to proclaim the possibil-
ity that they might disappear as a separate people.1 As Otto Scott, of
Irish descent, once remarked: “Can you imagine an Irishman wor-
rying in public about this possibility?” Yet, eschatologically speak-
ing, this Jewish fear is legitimate. Paul in Romans 11 teaches that the
Jews will eventually disappear as a separate covenantal confessional
group and be welcomed into the church.2 They will, alongside
many other ethnic groups, retain their cultural accents and dialects,

1. See, for example, Alan M. Dershowitz, The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish
Identity for the Next Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997).
2. “And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to
graff them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert
graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the
natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?” (Rom. 11:23–24). Cf. Charles Hodge,
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, [1864] 1950), p.
365; Robert Haldane, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (Mad Dill Air Force Base,
Florida: MacDonald Pub. Co., [1839] 1958), pp. 632-33; John Murray, The Epistle to the
Romans, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1965), II, pp. 65-103.

937
938 DEUTERONOMY

but the grammar of their confession will be Trinitarian. They will

cease to be Jews. Nevertheless, until this happens, Jews will success-
fully maintain their separate covenantal identity as a people. The
question is: Which Jews? The answer is: Jews who both understand
and apply the covenantal principle of inheritance and disinheritance.
Judaism, in the sense of adherence to the teachings of the Tal-
mud, is a minority religion even in the State of Israel. A minority re-
ligion’s greatest threat is not genocide. It is intermarriage. Genocide
is not a comparable threat, as the early church learned in the Ro-
man empire. It is never complete because it is always geographi-
cally and temporally bounded: this group of adherents in this region
persecuted by this State for this period of time. Genocide reinforces
the sense of solidarity among the targeted victims, especially
irst-generation refugees. Genocide creates a reaction: among the
victors, who eventually grow weary of the bloodshed and grow em-
barrassed by the world’s reaction; and among the victims, who
adopt social strategies of survival. Threats strengthen the will to re-
sist. Seduction weakens it.

The Sociology of Seduction

Seduction is the Jews’ problem – seduction in the broadest
sense, but also in the narrowest. The seduction that threatens a con-
fessional religion more than any other is marital seduction: the
confessionally mixed marriage. God warned Israel about this: “For
thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jeal-
ous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabit-
ants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do
sacriice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his
sacriice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their
daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a
whoring after their gods” (Ex. 34:14–16). Note: Moses did not warn
the daughters not to marry Canaanite husbands; he warned the men
not to marry Canaanite wives. Women were seen as the seducers of
covenant religion.
Judaism has always viewed seduction as asymmetrical covenantally:
woman have the upper hand in mixed marriages. Judaism has been
structured to take advantage of this aspect of the mixed marriage: it
deines a Jew as someone born of a Jewish mother. The mother’s
love of her children, which is the most powerful and universal social
force there is, is harnessed to the judicial deinition of what constitutes
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 939

a Jew. A Jewish woman may be seduced away from her parents’

plans, but she is not automatically disinherited. She is held less re-
sponsible than her brothers in this area of life. She does not bear the
mark of the Jewish covenant: circumcision. Her lesh does not tes-
tify against her marriage vow, as it does with a maritally seduced
Jewish male. She surrenders less than he does. Her status as a Jew is
transmitted to her children, if they confess the faith. This gives her a
great incentive to rear her children as Jews, if possible. Her hus-
band, whose faith was sujciently weak to enable him to marry
someone outside his faith, is not in a strong position to oppose her.
This asymmetric condition is relected in the statistics of reli-
gious training among the children of mixed marriages: Jews with
others. In 1971, 86 percent of the children of Jewish mothers and
gentile fathers were reared as Jews, while only 17 percent of the chil-
dren of Jewish fathers and gentile mothers were reared as Jews.3 In
the mutual seduction of a mixed marriage, American Jewish women
have retained the upper hand.
This is why the negative sanction of disinheritance of sons has
always been crucial for the survival of Judaism. Jewish daughters
have seldom inherited, so the threat of disinheritance has not been
equally great. The Mosaic law allowed daughters to inherit only
when there was no son (Num. 36). So, Judaism’s threat of disinheri-
tance has been aimed at keeping sons in line. Jewish daughters have
always had less to lose and more to gain than their brothers when
entering into mixed marriages. Because Jewish women did not in-
herit money, and because their children could inherit their mothers’
judicial status, the gentiles’ seduction of Jewish women has never
been the same degree of threat to the survival of Judaism. It is the se-
duction of sons that has been the primary threat. To defend against
this, Judaism imposed harsh sanctions. When it ceased to impose
them, it began a march into self-annihilation through seduction.
But who is the chief seducer? Not Christianity or any other con-
fessional supernatural religion. Christianity cannot adopt mixed
marriages as tools of evangelism; such marriages are forbidden.
They break the covenant, which is necessarily confessional. For the

3. This was the finding of the National Jewish Population Study of 1970–71, reported by
U. O. Schmelz and Sergio Dellapergola, “Basic Trends in American Jewish Demography,” in
Steven Bayme (ed.), Facing the Future: Essays On Contemporary Jewish Life (n.p.: KTAV
Publishing House and American Jewish Committee, 1989), p. 92.
940 DEUTERONOMY

humanist, however, marriage is not seen as a covenant based on a

mutual oath before God. It is seen as a cultural institution based on a
breakable oath before the State, and the State is seen as religiously
neutral. The humanist therefore sees no confessional problem with
mixed marriages, for marriage is not a covenant based on a shared
confession of faith. He encourages confessionally mixed marriages
as a means of undermining the testimony of both partners to their
children. This is why humanism is the supreme threat to Judaism –
Judaism’s greatest threat in history. Unlike supernatural-confessional
religions that are also threatened by seduction and which oppose
mixed marriages, humanism proclaims the equality of all supernat-
ural religious confessions – an equality of cultural irrelevance. Hu-
manism seeks to seduce the sons and daughters of every supernatural
religion. Thus, humanism is an equal opportunity seducer: men and
women of all faiths are equally its targets.
The ideal of the confessionally mixed marriage has led, step by
step, to the ideal of the sexually mixed college dormitory. The hu-
manist believes in the ejcacy of seduction. He believes that in the
competition between lust and the covenant, lust will win in the
18-24 age population. He believes that the children of Israel, if
given the opportunity, will rise up to play.
This is why humanism constitutes the greatest threat to Judaism
in its history. A majority religion can survive the assaults of mixed
marriage much longer than a minority religion can. There are more
candidates for marriage for the members of a majority religion. A
minority religion cannot aford the temporary luxury of tolerating
mixed marriages. This is especially true of American Jews, who are
experiencing birth rates well below the replacement rate of 2.1 chil-
dren per family. “If Jews, who in most parts of the United States con-
stitute a tiny minority, were to choose their spouses at random,
hardly any endogamous Jewish couples would be formed at all.”4
Humanism calls on all partners to choose their marital partners
on a confessionally random basis, and to encourage this, humanism
has created the most powerful marriage bureau in history: the
tax-funded secular university. No group has responded with greater
enthusiasm to the siren call of the secular university than the Jews, a
topic I shall discuss later in this essay.

4. Ibid., p. 91.
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 941

The Ghetto and Cultural Identity

European Jews prior to the Napoleonic wars (1798–1815) were
isolated inside their own autonomous communities: ghettos. Some
of these ghettos were urban; others were in small towns. When reli-
gious discrimination began to be repealed by law in the irst half of
the nineteenth century, Jews began to venture out of the ghetto,
both intellectually and geographically.5 The Jewish community’s
abandonment of traditional Judaism began at that time. A division
appeared between reforming Jews and defenders of Talmudic
knowledge. Historian Paul Johnson writes: “The pious Jew – and
there could be no other – did not admit the existence of two kinds of
knowledge, sacred and secular. There was only one. Moreover,
there was only one legitimate purpose in acquiring it: to discover
the exact will of God, in order to obey it.”6 Reform Judaism rejected
this outlook; it sought to bring Jews into the world around them. It
appeared in the second decade of the nineteenth century.7 The term
“Orthodox Judaism” did not appear until the second quarter of the
nineteenth century. The term was coined by Reform critics of tradi-
tional Judaism.8
In Germany, legal discrimination against Jews faded steadily af-
ter 1820 and was gone by 1880.9 Legal equality brought legal inte-
gration into the gentile community. Secular law revoked the
long-standing special legal situation of Jews, where rabbis and el-
ders possessed the authority to impose civil sanctions on members
of the Jewish community. This separate legal status went back to the
late Roman Empire. Israel Shahak writes of European Jewry in gen-
eral: “This was the most important social fact of Jewish existence be-
fore the advent of the modern state: observance of the religious laws
of Judaism, as well as their inculcation through education, were

5. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), Part 5.
6. Ibid., p. 327.
7. Ibid., pp. 332–33.
8. I. Grunfeld, “Samson Raphael Hirsch – The Man and His Mission,” in Judaism Eternal:
Selected Essays from the Writings of Samson Raphael Hirsch, 2 vols. (London: Soncino, 1956),
I, p. xxiii. Grunfeld says that Hirsch accepted this term of opprobrium and, through his
leadership, transformed it into an acceptable self-definition.
9. Hasia R. Diner, A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820–1880, vol. 3 of The
Jewish People in America, 5 vols. (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992),
p. 17.
942 DEUTERONOMY

enforced on Jews by physical coercion, from which one could es-

cape by conversion to the religion of the majority, amounting in the
circumstances to a total social break and for that reason very im-
10
practicable, except during a religious crisis.” Paralleling this
change in the Jews’ legal status was an increase in animosity against
them, although they never constituted more than 1.3 percent of the
German population.11 Social discrimination against Jews in Ger-
many remained common, culminating with the systematic Nazi
persecutions, 1933–45.
In contrast, there was almost no social discrimination against
Jews in the United States prior to the Civil War (1861–65). Jews had
lived in North America as a culturally assimilated people from the
mid-seventeenth century. Since the mid-eighteenth century, they
had become part of American urban life: in clothing, hair styles, and
architecture.12 In New York, Jews became eligible for citizenship as
early as 1715, although this was unique in pre-Revolutionary Amer-
ica.13 They had never received a separate grant of authority to im-
pose civil sanctions on deviant members of the synagogue. As a
result, Jews were far more integrated into American life than their
counterparts were in Europe prior to the 1820’s. Sephardic Jews
from Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazic Jews from Germany and
Poland lived together from the beginning in New Amsterdam. This
continued when it became New York City in 1664. They worked
out an agreement on common worship and rule, 1728–1825; else-
where in America, separate synagogues were common.14
American Jews were a tiny percentage of the population. In
1820, there were about 2,700 Jews in America.15 The overall Ameri-
can population in 1820 was 9.6 million.16 Until 1840, there was no or-
dained, functioning rabbi in the United States, i.e., someone who had
graduated from a recognized rabbinical school or who had been

10. Israel Shahak, “The Jewish religion and its attitude to non-Jews,” Khamsin, VIII (1981),
p. 28. See also Diner, Gathering, p. 18.
11. Diner, Gathering, p. 9.
12. Eli Faber, A Time for Planting: The First Migration, 1654–1820, vol. 1 of The Jewish People in
America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), ch. 4.
13. Ibid., pp. 100–1.
14. Ibid., pp. 60–61, 125.
15. Ibid., p. 107.
16. Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1975), I:8, Series A 1–5.
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 943

17
certiied by a talmudic scholar of distinction who had been licensed.
By 1840, the number of Jews in the United States had risen to 6,000.
In 1848, there were 50,000.18 As a means of comparison, consider
that in 1840, there were 17 million Americans; in 1850 there were
23 million.19
20
Then, in the 1850’s, came the steamship. This changed both
the volume and pattern of immigration: from northern Europe to
eastern, central, and southern Europe. The great waves of immigra-
tion hit America from all over Europe, not just Protestant northern
Europe. American demographics changed rapidly. Among the tens
of millions of immigrants were millions of Jews. Total immigration
of Jews to the United States was no more than 150,000 as of 1880.21
From 1860 to 1880, more of these came from eastern Europe than
from Germany.22 There were about 240,000 Jews in America in
1880.23 Of these, 200,000 were from Germany.24 Over the next 45
years, some 2.5 million Jews arrived, with the vast majority from
eastern Europe, especially Russia.25 From 1880 to 1920, one-third of
all the Jews in Eastern Europe emigrated, and over 80 percent of
them came to the United States.26 Diner argues – implausibly, in my
view – that this new immigration was not fundamentally diferent
from the old: same Judaism, same immigration motivation, i.e., eco-
nomic opportunity.27 This is the equivalent of saying that, culturally
speaking, New York City’s Episcopalians were not fundamentally
diferent from the Baptists of the American frontier. Even this com-
parison understates the diference: the Episcopalians were sepa-
rated from the Baptists by the Allegheny mountains; the Sephardic
Jews, assimilated into the German-Polish Jewish community from

17. Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Handsome Young Priest in the Black Gown: The Personal
World of Gershom Seixas,” Hebrew Union College Annual, XL-XLI (1969-70), p. 411.
18. Diner, Gathering, p. 56.
19. Historical Statistics, loc. cit.
20. Diner, Gathering, p. 43.
21. Ibid., p. 233.
22. Ibid., p. 53.
23. Ibid., p. 56.
24. Gerold Sorin, A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880–1920, vol. 3 of The Jewish
People in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 2.
25. Dinar, Gathering, p. 233.
26. Sorin, Building, pp. xv, 1.
27. Diner, Gathering, pp. 232–33.
944 DEUTERONOMY

28
1841 to 1920, were separated from the Russian Jews by a horse car-
29
riage ride and the money to purchase it.
The hostile reactions of the gentile community after 1870
marked a change in its opinion regarding the perceived diferences
of the new immigration, not merely the latter’s increased volume
but its social characteristics. In the 1870’s, Jews began to be kept out
of exclusive resorts and social clubs, and Jewish girls were excluded
from certain eastern women’s colleges, but this was the extent of the
discrimination.30 (In the 1990’s, social club exclusion is all that re-
mains, and just barely.) After 1900, social discrimination against
Jews increased.31 After World War I, it increased dramatically.32
This exclusion relected social opinion within the Jewish commu-
nity. Sorin comments: “The farther west in Europe one’s origins, the
33
higher one’s status.” He calls this “the geographical origins rule.”
The great reversal came in 1945 in reaction to the defeat of the
Nazis. Anti-Semitism became unfashionable within educated cir-
cles, which more and more circles became. It had never been con-
sistent with the religious pluralism of American life, the “live and let

28. Jacob Rader Marcus, “The Periodization of American Jewish History,” Publication of the
American Jewish Historical Society, XLVII (Sept. 1957–June 1958), p. 129.
29. Stephen Birmingham, “Our Crowd”: The Great Jewish Families of New York (New York:
Harper & Row, 1967); Birmingham, The Grandees: America’s Sephardic Elite (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971). Birmingham titles Chapter 16, “The Jewish Episcopalians.” There has
been a reaction to this view among a few Jewish historians. Some of the authors and the
general editor of The Jewish People in America (1992), which was funded by the American
Jewish Historical Society, reject the familiar periodization of Jewish immigration to America:
Sephardic, German-Polish (Ashkenazic), and eastern European. This periodization scheme,
familiar to American Jewish historians by 1900, was defended by Marcus, “Periodization of
American Jewish History,” op. cit., pp. 125–33. With respect to the final wave of immigration,
1880 to 1920, I do not see how its overwhelming eastern European character can be denied.
Marcus dates the beginning of the east European Jewish immigration: 1852 (p. 130). This
correlates with the advent of the steamship. He dates the triumph of the Russian Jewish
tradition: 1920 (p. 130). Simon Kuznets, one of the most respected statisticians in American
history and a Nobel Prize winner in economics, remarks that from 1820 to 1870, fewer than
4,000 Jews immigrated from Russia and 4,000 from Poland. From 1881 to 1914, two million
Jews immigrated, and over 1.5 million were from Russia: 75 percent. Kuznets, “Immigration
of Russian Jews to the United States: Background and Structure,” Perspectives in American
History, IX (1975), p. 39. Only 15,000 Jews arrived from Russia in the decade, 1871–80. Ibid.,
p. 43.
30. John Higham, “Social Discrimination Against Jews in America, 1830–1930,”
Publication of the Jewish Historical Society, XLVII (1958), p. 13.
31. Ibid., pp. 13–19.
32. Ibid., pp. 19–23.
33. Sorin, Building, p. 2.
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 945

live” attitude which has been characteristic of American culture –

an application of nineteenth-century Americans’ laissez faire out-
look. The Nazi ideology had been defeated on the battleield, and
this reduced the appeal of the old inconsistency. Discrimination was
replaced by toleration, and toleration by acceptance, in one genera-
tion: 1945 to 1975. But this acceptance has a confessional premise:
“My religion is as good as yours, and all religions should be limited
to home and congregation.” The day that this confession is widely
believed by members of a minority religion is the day that it moves
toward assimilation. A Baptist can aford to confess this in a Meth-
odist culture, or visa versa, but for a Jew in a humanist culture, such
a confession is suicidal. It undermines the traditional answers to the
question: “What is a Jew?” A new answer now comes back: “A Uni-
tarian with better business connections.”

Jews and the Gods of Modernism

Throughout the nineteenth century, Jews actively began to pur-
sue the gods of the gentiles around them: gods of marketplace. They
got rich in Germany in that century, moving from poverty in 1820
to middle-class amuence by 1880.34 The same upward movement of
Jews took place in America. There was even less discrimination here.
The common goal of Americans was making money. De Tocqueville
wrote in 1835, “I know no other country where love of money has
such a grip on men’s hearts. . . .”35 Access to the free market was
open to all except slaves in the antebellum South. Jews, who had
been small traders in Europe, it in well. They lourished. Like the
members of many other ethnic groups, Jews wrote home to relatives
in Europe about America’s economic opportunities and the lack of
religious discrimination. The waves of immigration grew larger.
In the twentieth century, another group of cosmopolitan gods
became a temptation for Jews: gods of the academy. For about 25
years, 1920 to 1945, the prestigious American private colleges, uni-
versities, and medical schools placed quotas on the number of Jews.

34. Diner, Gathering, pp. 12–13.

35. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, edited by J. P. Meyer (12th ed.; Garden
City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1848] 1969), p. 54.
946 DEUTERONOMY

36
(The University of Chicago was an exception.) Yet even in this
case, discrimination was fairly lax. At Columbia University in New
York City, the Jewish student population had climbed to 40 percent
by 1920.37 The school’s move farther away from the Jewish parts of
the city in 1910 failed to reduce the lood of Jewish students when a
subway line down the West side was constructed shortly thereafter.
Quotas imposed in 1921 reduced this percentage to 22 percent in
1922.38 Harvard’s Jewish population, enhanced by “tram” commu-
ters from Boston, climbed to 20 percent in 1920. The school’s presi-
dent then announced a quota of 10 percent. This decision was
formally repealed by a special committee in 1923, but Harvard’s
new policies of accepting more students from the Midwest pushed
Jewish enrolment back to 10 percent by 1930.39 There were far
fewer Jews living in the Midwest.
Jews had long possessed legal access to tax-supported American
schools and universities that came into existence after the Civil
War. At the City College of New York in 1920, between 80 and 90
percent of the students were Jewish. At the Washington Square
campus of the private New York University, the igure was 93 per-
cent.40 In the 1930’s, Jews constituted 3.5 percent of the American
population – the high point – and 10 percent of its college popula-
tion. The same drive for education had been present in Europe for a
century.41
Jews have lourished in this humanistic academic environment.
Statistically, the biological heirs of Ashkenazic Jews are the most in-
telligent ethnic group in the United States.42 Herrnstein and Murray
comment: “A fair estimate seems to be that Jews in America and
Britain have an overall IQ mean somewhere between a half and a

36. Diner, Gathering, p. 22. This school has been described as a Baptist institution where
atheist students study Thomas Aquinas taught by Jewish professors. My assessment is that
their Jewish professors are also atheists.
37. Henry L. Feingold, A Time for Searching: Entering the Mainstream, 1920–1945, vol. 4 of
Jewish People in America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 15.
38. Idem.
39. Ibid., p. 18.
40. Ibid., p. 15.
41. Ibid., p. 14.
42. M. D. Storfer, Intelligence and Giftedness: The Contributions of Heredity and Early
Environment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), pp. 314–23; cited in Richard J. Herrnstein
and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York:
Free Press, 1994), p. 275.
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 947

full standard deviation above the mean, with the source of the
diference concentrated in the verbal component. . . . But it is at least
worth noting that their mean IQ was .97 standard deviation above
the mean of the rest of the population and .84 standard deviation
above the mean of whites who identiied themselves as Christian.”43
These are statistically signiicant diferences. The result has been the
exceptional success of Jews in higher education and in the profes-
sions, which are screened by means of academic performance. “My
son, the doctor” and “My son, the lawyer” are not just quaint
phrases of proud but formally uneducated Jewish mothers in the
1920’s through the 1940’s. They are representative summaries of
the success of Jews in entering the State-licensed professions, an eth-
nic penetration way out of proportion to their percentage in the
overall population.
But there has been a heavy price to pay: initially, the undermin-
ing of confessional Judaism; secondarily, the undermining of cultural
Judaism. The West’s universities have made the same Faustian bar-
gain to all: come to be certiied, but give up your claims in the class-
room to academically relevant knowledge based on revelation.44
The Jews, as a minority based on religious confession, and as a mi-
nority with a competitive edge based on intelligence, have had the
most to gain economically from this bargain, and the most to lose
confessionally. For any religious group self-consciously to adopt a
dualism that proclaims “two paths of knowledge” is to risk losing its
best and brightest to the world of autonomous humanism. The
seeming universalism of humanism’s ideology ofers to its initiates
the power and productivity of the division of intellectual labor.
To become a participant in this intellectual division of labor, the ini-
tiate need only abandon those aspects of his religious worldview
that are irreconcilable or not readily shared with the segregating
ideals of rival faiths. Jews have responded to this ofer with greater
enthusiasm and success than any other religious group in the West.45

43. Idem.
44. A good example of an Orthodox Jew who accepted the bargain is a Harvard Law
School professor, Alan Dershowitz, whose study of the effects of secularization reveals the
plight of American Jewry: at the present rate of intermarriage, there will be no trace of the
Jews in a century. Alan M. Dershowitz, The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity
for the Next Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1997).
45. See Irving Greenberg, “Jewish Survival and the College Campus,” Judaism, XVII
(Summer 1968).
948 DEUTERONOMY

Edward Shapiro comments on the efect of secular values on Jewish

professors.

Most Jewish professors had only a slight relationship to Jewish culture

and Judaism. Data collected by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Edu-
cation in 1969 revealed that while 32 percent of professors with a
Protestant background and 25 percent with a Catholic background were
either indiferent or opposed to religion, 67 percent of Jewish professors
were indiferent or opposed to religion. And while 16 percent of Protestant
professors and 23 percent of Catholic professors considered themselves
deeply religious, only 5 percent of Jewish professors deined themselves as
such. In comparison to other Jews, Jewish academicians observed fewer
Jewish rituals, were more hostile to religion, ajliated with Jewish commu-
nal institutions less frequently, and intermarried more often. . . .
Just as its investment in formal education was greater, so American
Jewry spent more time, energy, and money than any other American eth-
nic or religious group in cultivating and analyzing its intellectuals. There
must be something seriously wrong with American Jewry, it was argued, if
it could not retain the loyalty of its brightest and best-educated members.
The alienation of the Jewish intellectual from the American Jewish com-
munity occasioned much wringing of hands. There was, however, little
that could have been done to bring Jewish intellectuals back to the fold.
The sermons of rabbis and the proclamations of Jewish organizations
could hardly convince intellectuals and academicians to abandon their
secular and universalist outlook.46

So, by worshipping in the shrines of secular culture, Jews are

disappearing as a separate religious force. They are a political force,
but not a religious force. Their separate legal status, which was an
aspect of the judicial discrimination against them in Christian civili-
zation, had enabled them to preserve their separate religious status
for almost two millennia. With the coming to power of the gods of
secular humanism – politics, money, and education – Jews left the
ghetto and entered the public square to worship with their votes,
their taxes, and their children. The public schools have become the
established churches of Western civilization. Like the gentiles
around them, Jews have tithed their children to the State.

46. Edward S. Shapiro, A Time for Healing: American Jewry since World War II, vol. 5 of The
Jewish People in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 112, 113.
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 949

Since at least the 1930’s, a majority of American Jews has consistently

voted to allow the State to extract an ever-greater percentage of their
income.47 The saying is, “American Jews have the income of Episco-
palians and the voting record of Puerto Ricans.”48 As an Orthodox
and politically conservative rabbi has put it, “many non-observant
Jews desperately pursue liberalism as a way out of their covenant.
This is the true purpose of liberalism and Jews are its chief champi-
ons because it alone ofers an escape from having to accept Jewish
law – the Torah.”49
One Jewish leader in the American inancial community has
said of the Jewish New York elite of the 1820–1920 era: “Our
Crowd is deader than a doornail. Ninety percent have disappeared
and few are Jewish anymore.”50 This problem is not conined to the
United States; European Jews are also disappearing through assimi-
lation.51

The Disappearance of Non-Observant Jews

“If present trends continue,” wrote sociologist Ernest van den
Haag in 1969, “in the year 2000 there will have never been more
handsome, better-endowed synagogues in America, nor so many;
nor so few Jews.”52 He argued that the intermarriage problem threat-
ens the survival of American Judaism.53
This theme was not even mentioned in sociologist Marshall
Sklare’s 1957 anthology, The Jews: Social Patterns of an American
Group. But in April, 1964, Sklare sounded a warning in the Jewish
publication, Commentary, in an article titled, “Intermarriage and the
Jewish Future.” He sounded it even louder in a second Commentary

47. Nathaniel Weyl, The Jew in American Politics (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington
House, 1968), ch. 12.
48. Cf. Peter Steinfels, “American Jews Stand Firmly to the Left,” New York Times (Jan. 8,
1989).
49. Daniel Lapin, “Why Are So Many Jews Liberal?” Crisis: A Journal of Lay Catholic Opinion
(April 1993).
50. Alan Greenberg of Bear, Stearns & Co. Cited in Jean Bear, The Self-Chosen: “Our Crowd”
is Dead (New York: Arbor House, 1982), p. 23.
51. Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945 (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996).
52. Ernest van den Haag, The Jewish Mystique (New York: Dell, [1969] 1971), p. 181.
53. Ibid., ch. 16.
950 DEUTERONOMY

54
article (March 1970): “Intermarriage and Jewish Survival.” A 1971
study showed that the rate of intermarriage was over 30 percent.55 In
1973, Reform Judaism, the largest and most liberal branch of Amer-
ican Judaism, made its last public pronouncement opposing such in-
termarriage. It has subsequently accepted the new reality and has
tried to deal with it.56 In these mixed marriages, only 20 percent of
the spouses convert to Judaism. Three-quarters of the children in
families in which the spouse fails to convert are not reared as Jews.
Very few of these children marry Jews.57 One Jewish historian has
called this “the demographic hemorrhaging of American Jewry.”58
The birth rate for Jews is one quarter to one-third less than for gen-
tiles. It is the lowest ethnic birthrate in America.59 Meanwhile, “Of
the major American religious groups, the Jews consistently placed
last in surveys of religious attendance and belief.”60 As Van Den
Haag predicted, synagogue attendance declined in the 1970’s and
1980’s. This was especially true in Conservative synagogues, the
group positioned between the liberal Reform Jews and the Ortho-
dox Jews.61 Edward Shapiro ended his book, the ifth in a
ive-volume history, The Jewish People in America, with this forlorn
hope: “Jews have survived one crisis after another, and perhaps
they will also survive the freedom and prosperity of America.”62 In
1996, the World Jewish Congress, held in Jerusalem, issued a demo-
graphic report, State of World Jewry. It reported that in the United
States, over half of all Jews who married in the 1980’s married a
non-Jewish partner. About one-quarter of the children of such mixed
marriages are reared as Jews.63
As with all academic matters, this view is controversial and has
critics within the Jewish academic community. The demographic
data are not sujciently comprehensive to be sure. But in a carefully
reasoned, highly qualiied essay, two Jewish scholars conclude that

54. Shapiro, Healing, pp. 234–35.

55. Ibid., p. 235.
56. Ibid., pp. 238–39.
57. Ibid., p. 253.
58. Ibid., p. 239.
59. Ibid., p. 243.
60. Ibid., p. 254.
61. Ibid., p. 255.
62. Ibid., p. 257.
63. Religious News Service, reported in Christian News (Feb. 12, 1996), p. 9.
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 951

the pessimists have the trends on their side. American Jews are not
reproducing at a rate high enough to replace themselves. Whites in
general are in the same situation; Jews, however, reproduce at a rate
lower than whites in general. They have the lowest rates of repro-
duction among whites in the United States. The replacement rate is
2.1 children per family. In the mid-1980’s, Jews had a rate of under
1.5; whites in general, 1.7.64
Mixed marriages by the mid-1980’s were in the range of 30 per-
cent. The authors comment that “the inferred U.S. rate of 30 per-
cent for individuals means that 45 percent of all couples with at least
one Jewish partner are mixed.”65 Few of the non-Jewish spouses
convert to Judaism.66 This leads to the disinheritance of Judaism.
The authors report on a remarkable inding. “A study in Philadel-
phia covering three generations found that mixed marriages in one
generation entailed greater percentages of mixed marriages and in-
creasingly smaller percentages of Jewish children in the following
generations. If both parents of the Jewish respondent whose mar-
riage was mixed had been Jews, 37 percent of the grandchildren
were Jews; if the grandparents had been a mixed couple, none of the
grandchildren were found to be Jewish in this particular study.”67
By the late 1990’s, intermarriage was at the 50% rate. Charles
Krauthammer writes that more Jews marry Christians (he means
gentiles) than marry Jews: about 52%.68 With only one in four of the
children of these mixed marriages being reared Jewish, the future is
grim for the survival of Judaism in America. “A population in which
the biological replacement rate is 70 percent and the cultural re-
placement rate is 70% is headed for extinction. By this calculation,
every 100 Jews are raising 56 Jewish children. In just two genera-
tions, 7 out of 10 Jews will vanish.”69 He concludes that the future of
Judaism is dependent on the survival of the state of Israel. The Jews
have put most of their eggs – in both senses – in one basket.70 But,
given that nation’s dependence on its technological superiority

64. Schmelz and Dellapergola, “Basic Trends,” Facing the Future, p. 75: Table 1.
65. Ibid., p. 91.
66. Ibid., pp. 91–92.
67. Ibid., p. 93.
68. Charles Krauthammer, “At Last, Zion: Israel and the Fate of the Jews,” Weekly Standard
(May 11, 1998), p. 24.
69. Ibid., p. 25.
70. Ibid., p. 29.
952 DEUTERONOMY

militarily, the Year 2000 computer problem points to a monumen-

tal crisis looming in the very near future.
We can begin to understand why Jews prior to the irst World
War excommunicated adult children who converted to another re-
ligion, mainly Christianity. They would hold burial services: sym-
bols of covenantal death. They would cut these defecting children
out of their lives. They would not see their grandchildren grow up.
They sufered the terrible pain of disinheriting their children, espe-
cially their sons, for the sake of the preservation of the religion of Ju-
daism. It was a matter of survival.
Today, the religion of Judaism has been progressively (in both
senses) replaced by the culture of Judaism – a culture without a pub-
lic confession that invokes a supernatural God. Today, most Ameri-
can Jews do not believe that the God of the Bible brings covenantal
sanctions in history for or against Jews on the basis of the commu-
nity’s use of sanctions against covenantal disinheritance. Tolerance
has made mixed marriages acceptable. The defecting children are
not cut of through the equivalent of excommunication. The grand-
children are not cut of. But the grandchildren are unlikely to bear
children who will be reared as Jews. Under the conditions of mixed
marriage, the great grandchildren of Jewish couples will not be
Jews. Refusing to disinherit children who marry outside the faith,
they disinherit Judaism instead. Covenantal tolerance within Jewish
families produces heirs with a diferent confession of faith. This pro-
duces extinction of the original confession. Jews are a minority faith.
Tolerance within the covenantal bond of marriage leads to absorp-
tion. If confession is not seen as more fundamental than sexual at-
traction, and therefore not a matter of corporate sanctions, the
minority faith will disappear. The contest between passion and con-
fession, if left to youth to decide, will lead to the demise of confes-
sion. If the surrounding population is larger than those doing the
confessing, the aging minority confessors will not be replaced.
The rise of a far more self-conscious Orthodox Judaism, which
recruits actively in the secularized Reform Jewish community, has
gained considerable publicity. It is not clear yet that this activism has
produced any statistically signiicant change in the religious commit-
ment of most Jews. The high birth rates among Orthodox Jews may in
time reverse the larger Jewish community’s demographic decline, but in
the late twentieth century, American Judaism is slowly disappearing.
Jews are a rapidly aging group: the oldest of all American ethnic
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 953

71
groups. This demographic fact is masked by the high visibility of
Jewish political involvement and inluence in national politics. The
rise of Jewish national political inluence since the end of World
War II has paralleled the rise of inluence of the farm bloc. The
smaller the number of people actually represented by each bloc, the
greater its highly concentrated and well-funded political inluence.
Both are down to about two percent of the population.72 The rise of
the gay rights movement after 1970 is an even better example. Ho-
mosexuals are a tiny minority – under one percent of the population
– yet they have enormous political inluence in the United States. As
AIDS has reduced the number of homosexual men since the early
1980’s, their political inluence has increased dramatically.
Alan Dershowitz refers to an article in the October 1996 issue of
Moment magazine. The article reports that, given present birth rates,
by the fourth generation, 200 secular Jews will have produced ten
great-grandchildren, while the same number of Orthodox Jews will
have produced more than 5,000.73 It is clear what will happen unless
covenantal attitudes regarding the future are reversed. Non-observant
Jews in the United States will simply disappear.
What we see here is a fulillment of Moses’ warning, three and a
half millennia later. “Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of
the people which are round about you; (For the LORD thy God is a
jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kin-
dled against thee, and destroy thee from of the face of the earth”
(Deut. 6:14–15). The eighteenth century saw the construction of
modernism’s political temple by the Enlightenment, right wing and
left wing. The acceptance of the legitimacy of this temple by the
churches began the erosion of the ideal of Christendom.74 The en-
trance of Jews into this temple in the nineteenth century was the be-
ginning of a great apostasy for Judaism. The leaders of both religions
concluded that there could be a reconciliation of confessions through
the adoption of a neutral, common-ground confession: humanism.

71. Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 95.
72. In 1991, Jews were 2 percent of the population. Statistical Abstract of the United States,
1994 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), Table 85. In 1993, agriculture
employed 2.5 percent of the work force. Ibid., Table 641.
73. Dershowitz, Vanishing American Jew, p. 25.
74. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989), Part 3.
954 DEUTERONOMY

This common confession – politics, money, and education – seemed

to ofer a new era of economic growth, which in fact occurred. But
with Western society’s unprecedented increase in economic output
has come a rise in philosophical despair, war, crime, decadence,
family dissolution, and suicide.

Conclusion
Jews who live outside of the State of Israel sufer from a major
problem: they do not face organized opposition. Dershowitz titles
chapter two of The Vanishing American Jew, “Will the End of
Anti-Semitism Mean the End of the Jews?” Jews do not face an
armed majority that seeks their destruction. In the State of Israel,
they do.
Organized opposition has always been a major factor in the
preservation of the Jews’ identity as a separate people. Western soci-
ety was confessional. Jews did not share this confession. The ghetto
was the solution for both sides. (For the anti-Talmudic Karaites, a
ghetto within the ghetto was the solution.)75 With the demise of the
ghetto and the rise of Reform Judaism, the old barriers began to dis-
appear. So did the Jews’ old opposition to gentile culture. Jews had
built efective cultural defenses against the conversion of individual
Jews to rival religions, especially Christianity. But few Jews in 1850
perceived that secular humanism is a rival religion; even fewer per-
ceived this in 1950. Christianity and Islam had a place for Jews as
Jews, but outside the corridors of power. Humanism has a place for
Jews as humanists inside the corridors of power. “Come one, come
all,” cry the humanists, “but you must leave your revelational civil
laws outside the common Temple of Understanding.” Jews in un-
precedented numbers have succumbed to the siren song of social
participation and leadership on these confessional terms.76
The cost has been high: escalating absorption. This has always
been a threat to Jews. What is unique about humanism’s theology of
absorption is its theology of a common confession based either on

75. This was the case in twelfth-century Constantinople, according to Benjamin of Tudela,
whose Book of Travels is a major primary source document of the era. Some 2,500 Jews lived in
a fenced-off quarter: 2,000 Talmudists and 500 Karaites. A fence separated the two groups.
Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 169.
76. Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University of Chicago Press,
1993).
 Demographics of American Judaism: Study in Disinheritance 955

natural law theory or evolutionary political participation. Judaism

must now ind ways to maintain itself apart from the shawmah Israel.
The words of shawmah Israel – “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is
one LORD” (Deut. 6:4) – are still intact, but they have been revised in
spirit: “Hear, O Israel, we are not gentiles.” But there are two sim-
ple, all-too-familiar phrases that have proven incredibly powerful in
negating the efects of this revised shawmah Israel. First, “Grandma, I
won a scholarship to college.” Grandma is dutifully proud. This is
followed a few years later by, “Grandma, I’d like you to meet my
iancée.” Pride is then accompanied by a sense of loss and a sense of
foreboding. Both the sense of loss and the sense of foreboding
should have accompanied the irst announcement.
Pluralism has a program of assimilation. First, it ofers the ballot.
Then it ofers the full-tuition scholarship. Then it ofers the co-ed
dorm. Then there is the sound of wedding bells – if things go well.77
Then there is the sound of the pitter-patter of little feet. That sound,
delightful as it is, has steadily drowned out the sound of the shawmaw
Israel.
Then how can the Jews be preserved until the time of the great
eschatological conversion? Only by their abandonment of their tol-
eration of mixed marriages and by their abandonment of small fam-
ilies. Jews do not evangelize the general population; hence, there
are no workable survival strategies except population growth and
the disinheritance of those within the community who abandon the
shawmaw Israel. Jews cannot persevere as humanists. The Reform
and Conservative Jews will be replaced by the Orthodox. The de-
mographics of Reform and Conservative Judaism will lead to their
replacement by the Orthodox. Orthodox Jews rely on confessional
prophylaxis, not biological. Liberal religion is having the same
efect on American Protestantism’s mainline denominations as it
had a century ago on Europe’s. Why should Reform and Conserva-
tive Jews think they are immune?

77. The other possibility is the silent scream of the aborted child.
 APPENDIX E
Free
FREE Market Capitalism
MARKET CAPITALISM

[This essay appeared in the 1984 book edited by Robert Clouse,

Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views, published by InterVarsity
Press. It was the irst essay. Within a year, InterVarsity Press pulled the
book. It sold 6,000 copies to my company, Dominion Press, at 25 cents
each. The book’s editor wrote to me saying that he could not understand
this; the book had been selling well. I like to think that it was my essay and
my three rejoinders to the statists who wrote the other three essays. I like to
think that I was a great embarrassment to them. The neo-evangelicals who
ran IVP were politically liberal, as their publication of D. Gareth Jones’
pro-abortion book, Brave New People (1984), indicated. IVP soon
suppressed that book, too, because of a successful public relations campaign
by anti-abortion Christians. The English branch of IVP kept it in print,
which tells you something about the evangelical community in England. I
have retained the format in which my essay was originally submitted,
including IVP’s footnoting style. I include it in this book because it reveals
the extent to which I relied on the Book of Deuteronomy, a fact noted at the
time by one of the other essayists, William Diehl, who dismissed my essay
because of this.]

Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the

person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty; but in
righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour. (Lev 19:15, KJV).1

I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. (Ps 37:25)

1. All of my citations of Scripture in this essay are from the King James Version.

956
 Free Market Capitalism 957

The topic of wealth and poverty should not be discussed apart

from a consideration of the law of God and its relationship to the
covenants, for it is in God’s law that we ind the Bible’s blueprint for
economics. Biblical justice, biblical law, and economic growth are
intimately linked. The crucial section of Scripture which explains
this relationship is Deuteronomy 28. There are external blessings for
those societies that conform externally to the laws of God (vv. 1–14),
and there are external curses for those societies that fail to conform
externally to these laws (vv. 15–68).

And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the
voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments
which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on
high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on
thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD
thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the
ield. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and
the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the locks of thy sheep.
Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. . . . The LORD shall establish thee
an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep
the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. And all
people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD;
and they shall be afraid of thee. And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in
goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit
of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give
thee (Deut 28:1–5, 9–11).

Deuteronomy 28 is an extension and expansion of chapter 8, in

which the relationship between law, blessings, and the covenant is
outlined. God was about to bring his people into the Promised
Land, as the fulilment of the promise given to Abraham. The “iniq-
uity of the Amorites” (Gen 15:16) was at last full. The Canaanites’
era of dominion over the land was about to end. On what terms
would the Hebrews hold title to the land and its productivity? Deu-
teronomy 8 spells it out: covenantal faithfulness. This meant adher-
ence to the laws of God.2

2. On the question of Old Testament law in New Testament times, see Greg L. Bahnsen,
Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1977).
958 DEUTERONOMY

Deuteronomy 8 reveals to us the foundations of economic

growth. First, God grants to his people the gift of life. This is an act of
grace. He sustained them in the years of wandering in the wilder-
ness, humbling them to prove their faith – their obedience to his
commandments (v. 2) – and providing them with manna, so that
they might learn that “man doth not live by bread only, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth men live”
(v. 3b). A 40-year series of miracles sustained them constantly, for
their clothing did not grow old, and their feet did not swell (v. 4). He
also provided them with chastening, so that they might learn to re-
spect his commandments (vv. 5–6) – the way of life. Second, God
provided them with land, namely, the land lowing with milk and
honey (vv. 7–8): “A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without
scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones
are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass” (v. 9). This
also was an act of grace.
Life and land: Here are the two fundamental assets in any eco-
nomic system. Human labor, combined with natural resources over
time, is the foundation of all productivity. The third familiar feature
of economic analysis, capital, is actually the combination of land
plus labor over time. (The time factor is important. From it stems
the economic phenomenon of the rate of interest: the discount of fu-
ture goods against the identical goods held in the present.3 (Warning:
I use footnotes to add explanatory material, to keep from cluttering
up the text too much.) The original sources of production are land
and labor.4 If the Hebrews were willing to dig, the land would pro-
duce its fruits.

3. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1966), chap. 18. Let me
give an example of the “discount for time.” If I were to announce that you have just won a
new Rolls-Royce, and that you have a choice of delivery date, today or one year from today,
which delivery date would you select (other things being equal)? You would want immediate
delivery. Why? Because present goods are worth more to you than the same goods in the
future. You might accept the Rolls-Royce a year from now if I paid you a rate of interest, in
addition to the car. In fact, at some rate of interest you would accept the later date, unless you
have a terminal disease, or an unquenchable lust for a Rolls-Royce.
4. Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State, 2 vols. (1962; reprint ed., New York:
New York Univ. Press, 1979), I, pp. 284–87, 410–24. See esp. chap. 6. This book was
republished in 1993 by the Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.
 Free Market Capitalism 959

So much for the gifts. What about the conditions of tenure?

They were not to forget their God. They were not to “accept the gift
but forget the Giver,” to use a familiar expression.
The very fulness of the external, visible, measurable blessings
would serve as a source of temptation for them:

When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy
God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget
not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judg-
ments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou
hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and
when thy herds and thy locks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is mul-
tiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up,
and thou forget the LORD thy God. . . . (Deut 8:10–14a)

God provides gifts: life and land. He also provides a law-order

which enables his people to expand their holdings of capital assets
(the implements of production) and consumer goods. But these as-
sets are not held by men apart from the ethical terms of God’s cove-
nant. The temptation before man is the same as the temptation before
Adam: to forget God and to substitute himself as God (Gen 3:5). It is
the assumption of all Satanic religion, the assumption of humanism,
the sovereignty of man. God warned the Israelites against this sin –
the sin of presuming their own autonomy:

And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand
hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for
it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his cove-
nant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. (Deut 8:17–18)

These words lay the foundation of all sustained economic

growth – and I stress the word sustained. While it is possible for a so-
ciety to experience economic growth without honoring God’s law,
eventually men’s ethical rebellion leads to external judgment and
the termination of economic growth (Deut 28:15–68). It is this con-
cept of God as the giver which underlay James’s announcement:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, nei-
ther shadow of turning.” (Jas 1:17)
If men whose society has been (and therefore is still) covenanted
with God should fall into this temptation to forget God and to
960 DEUTERONOMY

attribute their wealth to the might of their own hands, then God will
judge them:

And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after
other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day
that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroyeth be-
fore your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto
the voice of the LORD your God. (vv. 19–20).

The Paradox of Deuteronomy 8

God has given us an outline of the covenantal foundations of a
holy commonwealth.5 This is as close as the Bible comes to a univer-
sally valid “stage theory” of human history or economic develop-
6
ment. Long-term economic growth is based on men’s honoring the
explicit terms of God’s law. The stages are as follows:
1. God’s grace in providing life, land, and law
2. Society’s adherence to the external terms of God’s law
3. External blessings in response to this faithfulness
4. Temptation: the lure of autonomy
5. Response:
a. Capitulation that leads to external judgment; or
b. Resistance that leads to further economic growth
The covenant is supposed to be self-reinforcing, or as economists
sometimes say, it ofers a system of positive feedback. Verse 18 is the
key: God gives his people external blessings in order “that he may
establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers. . . .” The
promise would be visibly fulilled by their entry into the Promised
Land, thereby giving them conidence in the reliability of God’s

5. On the holy commonwealth ideal in early American history, see Rousas J. Rushdoony,
This Independent Republic (1964 reprint ed., Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn Press, 1978), esp. chap. 8.
6. Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the great image was
historically speciic: four human empires (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Macedonia, and Rome),
followed by the ifth Empire, God’s (Dan 2:31–45). This was not an “ideal type,” to use Max
Weber’s terminology, nor was it a developmental model. Hesiod’s seemingly similar
construction (Greece, 8th century, B.C.) – from the Age of Gold to the Age of Iron – was, in
contrast, an attempt at constructing a universal model of the process of decay in man’s
history. Hesiod, Works and Days, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan
Press, 1959), lines 109–201. The Bible’s developmental model is based on ethics – conformity
to or rebellion against God’s covenant – not metaphysics, meaning some sort of inescapable
aspect of the creation.
 Free Market Capitalism 961

word. God’s law-order is reliable, which means that men can rely on
biblical law as a tool of dominion, which will enable them to fulill
(though imperfectly, as sinners) the terms of God’s dominion cove-
nant: “And God blessed them [Adam and Eve], and God said unto
them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue
it: and have dominion over the ish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”
(Gen 1:28). This covenant was reajrmed with Noah (Gen 9:1–7). It
is still binding on Noah’s heirs.7
The paradox of Deuteronomy 8 is this: Blessings, while inescap-
able for a godly society, are a great temptation. Blessings are a sign
of God’s favor, yet in the ifth stage – the society’s response to the
temptation of autonomy – blessings can result in comprehensive,
external, social judgment. Thus, there is no way to determine sim-
ply from the existence of great external wealth and success of all
kinds – the successes listed in Deuteronomy 28:1–14 – that a society
is facing either the prospect of continuing positive feedback or im-
minent negative feedback (namely, destruction). The ethical condi-
tion of the people, not their inancial condition, is determinative.
Visible success is a paradox: It can testify to two radically
diferent ethical conditions. Biblical ethical analysis, because it rec-
ognizes the binding nature of revealed biblical law, is therefore a
fundamental aspect of all valid historiography, social commentary,
and economic analysis. An index number of economic wealth is a
necessary but insujcient tool of economic analysis. The numbers
do not tell us all we need to know about the progress of a particular
society or civilization. We also need God’s law as an ethical guide,
our foundation of ethical analysis.

Ethics and Economic Analysis

A great debate has raged for over a century within the camp of
the economists: “Is capitalism morally valid?” Marxists and social-
ists ask this question and then answer it: no. “But capitalism is
ejcient,” respond the defenders of the free market. A few of the de-
fenders also try to muster ethical arguments based on the right of

7. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (Tyler, Tex.: Institute for Christian
Economics, 1982).
962 DEUTERONOMY

individuals to control the sale of their property, including their la-

8
bor services, without interference from the civil government.
This sort of ethical analysis has not convinced many critics of
capitalism. They reject the operating presupposition of free market
economic analysis: methodological individualism. As methodological
collectivists, they deny the right of men to use their property against
the “common good.” Problem: Who deines the common good?
(The Christian answers that the Bible deines the common good,
and sets forth the institutional arrangements that will achieve it. The
Bible teaches neither collectivism nor individualism; it proclaims
methodological covenantalism.)9 Another problem: Even if the com-
mon good can be deined by humanistic social commentators, who
has the right to enforce it? Finally, can the State,10 through its bu-
reaucracy, enforce the common good in a cost-efective manner?
Will the results resemble the ojcial ethical goals of the planners?
What kinds of incentives can be built into a State-planned economy
that will enable it to perform as ejciently as a proit-seeking free
market economy?11
The fundamental issue is ethical. The question of ejciency is a
subordinate one. Few Marxists or socialist scholars seriously argue
any longer that the substitution of socialist ownership of the means
of production will lead to an increase of per capita output beyond
what private ownership would have produced. The debates today
rage over what kinds of economic output are morally valid. Also,
who should determine what “the people” – whoever they are – re-
ally need? The free market, with its system of private ownership and
freely luctuating prices? Or the civil government, with its system of

8. Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press,
1982).
9. Gary North, “Methodological Covenantalism,” Chalcedon Report (Oct., 1977),
published by the Chalcedon Foundation, Box 158, Vallecito, California, 95251.
10. I capitalize the word “State” where I am referring to the new god of twentieth-century
socialism. I distinguish this from “state,” meaning a regional agency of civil government in the
United States.
11. One of the finest books ever written in economics covers these questions in detail:
Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (New York: Basic Books, 1980). Sowell is an
ex-Marxist, so he knows the arguments well. See also Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An
Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922; reprint ed., Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press, 1981).
This was first published in the United States by Yale University Press in 1953.
 Free Market Capitalism 963

12
political competition and lifetime bureaucratic functionaries? The
real debate is a debate over ethical issues, something that econo-
mists have tried to hide or deny since the seventeenth century.13
Economist William Letwin, who is wholeheartedly enthusiastic
about this supposed triumph of value-free economics, does admit
that there are difficulties with this outlook: “It was exceedingly diffi-
cult to treat economics in a scientific fashion, since every economic
act, being the action of a human being, is necessarily also a moral
act. If the magnitude of difficulty rather than the extent of the
achievement be the measure, then the making of economics was the
greatest scientific accomplishment of the seventeenth century.”14
15
Apparently even more important than Newton’s discoveries! This
faith in analytic neutrality has been reaffirmed by the developers of
the two most prominent schools of free market economic analysis,
Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises.16

12. Gary North, An Introduction to Christian Economics (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1973),
chap. 20: “Statist Bureaucracy in the Modern Economy.”
13. “The distinction between moral and technical knowledge is elusive. . . . From the
standpoint of any science the distinction is absolutely essential. A subject is not opened to
scientiic enquiry until its technical aspect has been sundered from its moral aspect. . . .
[T]here can be no doubt that economic theory owes its present development to the fact that
some men, in thinking of economic phenomena, forcefully suspended all judgments of
theology, morality, and justice, were willing to consider the economy as nothing more than
an intricate mechanism, refraining for the while from asking whether the mechanism worked
for good or evil. That separation was made during the seventeenth century. . . . The
economist’s view of the world, which the public cannot yet comfortably stomach, was
introduced by a remarkable tour de force, an intellectual revolution brought of in the
seventeenth century.” William Letwin, The Origins of Scientiic Economics (1963; reprint ed.,
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1965), pp. 158–59.
14. Ibid., p. 159.
15. Letwin does not actually say this. Perhaps he forgot about Newton. Or perhaps he was
referring solely to social science when he named economics as “the greatest scientiic
accomplishment of the seventeenth century.” Or possibly he really meant what he wrote,
which boggles the mind.
16. Mises writes: “In considering changes in the nation’s legal system, in rewriting or
repealing existing laws and writing new laws, the issue is not justice, but social expediency
and social welfare. There is no such thing as an absolute notion of justice not referring to a
deinite system of social organization. It is not justice that determines the decision in favor of a
deinite social system. It is, on the contrary, the social system which determines what should
be deemed right and what wrong. There is neither right nor wrong outside the social nexus. . . .
It is nonsensical to justify or to reject interventionism from the point of view of ictitious and
arbitrary absolute justice. It is vain to ponder over the just delimitation of the tasks of
government from any preconceived standard of perennial values.” Mises, Human Action,
p. 721.
964 DEUTERONOMY

One reason why the critics have been so successful in their at-
tack against the academic economists’ hypothetically neutral de-
fense of the free market is this: Hardly anyone in the secular world really
believes any longer that moral or intellectual neutrality is possible. This is
why Christian economics ofers a true intellectual alternative: it
rests on a concept of objective revelation by a true Person, the Creator
of all knowledge and the Lord of history. The Bible ajrms that neu-
trality is a myth; either we stand with Christ or we scatter abroad
17
(Matt 12:30). The works of the law – not the law, but the works of
the law – are written on every human heart (Rom 2:14–15).18 No
man can escape the testimony of his own being, and nature itself, to
the existence of a Creator (Rom 1:18–23).
Socialists deny the possibility of neutral economic analysis, and
their criticism has become far more efective as humanistic scholar-
ship has drifted from faith in objective knowledge into an ever-
growing awareness that all human knowledge is relative. (Marxists
still believe in objective knowledge for Marxists, but not for any
other ideological group.)19 Since all intellectual analysis is tied to a
man’s operating presuppositions about the nature of reality, and
since these presuppositions, being pre-theoretical, cannot be
disproven by logic, the socialist critic’s logic is also undergirded by
his equally unprovable presuppositions.20 (There is a problem for

Milton Friedman, in a classic essay on epistemology, writes: “Positive economics is in

principle independent of any particular ethical position or normative judgment.” Friedman,
Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 4. For a critique of the
hypothesis of neutrality in economics, see Gary North, “Economics: From Reason to
Intuition,” in North, ed., Foundations of Christian Scholarship (Vallecito, Calif.: Ross House
Books, 1976).
17. On the impossibility of neutrality, see the writings of Cornelius Van Til, especially The
Defense of the Faith (rev. ed.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963).
18. For a discussion of the similarities and diferences between “the law” and “the works of
the law” written on human hearts, see John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols. (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1959), I, pp. 74–76.
19. Marxists believe in objective truth – proletarian truth – but they hold that all other
approaches are intellectual defenses of a particular class perspective. All philosophy is class
philosophy – a weapon used by one class against its rivals. Since history is objectively on the
side of the proletariat, there can be objective truth for Marxists only. See Gary North, Marx’s
Religion of Revolution (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1968), pp. 61–71. Reprinted in 1989 by the
Institute for Christian Economics.
20. Compare Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientiic Revolutions, rev. ed. (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1970). See also Imre Lakatos and Alan E. Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the
Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1970). The works of Herman
Dooyeweerd, the Dutch legal philosopher, deal extensively with the pre-theoretical
 Free Market Capitalism 965

non-Christian subjectivist thought, however: the breakdown of ob-

21
jective science.) Even a few economists are slowly coming to face
the implications of subjectivism with respect to objective, neutral
analysis, but not many, and their books are not yet inluential. These
men tend to be associated with “new left” economics, and the “es-
tablishment” is not impressed.22
As Christians we must always maintain that ethics is basic to all so-
cial analysis. We must make clear what most professional economists
prefer to ignore: It is never a question of analysis apart from ethical
evaluation; it is only a question of which ethical system, meaning
whose law-order: God’s or self-professed autonomous man’s? Be-
cause the Bible provides us with a comprehensive system of ethics,
it thereby provides us with a blueprint for economics.23

Biblical Law and Exploitation

The prophets came before Israel and called the people back to
the law of God. The people did not respond; the result was captiv-
ity. The law of God, when enforced, prevents exploitation. The
case-law applications of the law are therefore to be honored. Even
the supposedly obscure case laws often have implications far be-
yond their immediate setting. For example, “Thou shalt not muzzle
the ox when he treadeth out the corn” (Deut 25:4). Paul tells us that
this law gives us a principle: “The labourer is worthy of his reward”
(1 Tim 5:18b). Christ also said that the laborer is worthy of his hire
(Lk 10:7). In short, if we must allow our beasts of burden to enjoy

presuppositions of all philosophy: In the Twilight of Western Thought (Philipsburg, N.J.:

Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960); A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, 4 vols. (Presbyterian
and Reformed, 1954).
21. Stanley L. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1978), chap. 15.
22. See, for example, Walter A. Weisskopf, Alienation and Economics (New York: E. P.
Dutton, 1971); Mark A. Lutz and Kenneth Lux, The Challenge of Humanistic Economics (Menlo
Park, California: Benjamin/Cummings, 1979). Lux is a clinical psychologist, not an
economist, and Lutz taught at an obscure college. Benjamin/Cummings is not a familiar
name in publishing. I am not berating these men, their publisher, or their employers, though I
do not share their economic views. I am pointing to the dijculty of getting such views
discussed within the normal channels of the economics profession. The economics profession
has not adopted the forthright acceptance by these men of the obvious implications of
subjectivism for the neutrality doctrine.
23. David Chilton, “The Case of the Missing Blueprints,” Journal of Christian Reconstruction,
VIII (Summer, 1981).
966 DEUTERONOMY

the fruits of their labor, how much more should human laborers en-
joy the fruits of their labor!
Problem: Who decides how much to pay laborers? The church?
The State? The free market? The Bible is quite clear on this point:
Laborers and employers should bargain together. The parable of
the laborers in the vineyard is based on the moral validity of the right
of contract. The employer hired men throughout the day, paying
each man an agreed-upon wage, a penny. Those hired early in the
morning complained when others hired late in the day received the
same wage. In other words, they accused their employer of “exploi-
tation.” This was an “unfair labor practice.” His answer:

Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
Take [that which] thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last [la-
borer], even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine
own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? (Matt 20:13–15)

Wasn’t he morally obligated – and shouldn’t he have been le-

gally obligated – to have paid more, retroactively, to those hired
early in the day? No. When they were hired, he ofered them the
best deal they believed they had available to them. He was “meet-
ing the market.” Had a better ofer been available elsewhere, they
would have accepted it. Alternatively, should he have paid less to
the men hired later in the day? No. He owed them the wage he had
agreed to pay. Those hired in the morning had not known that a job
would be available later in the day at the same wage. They faced eco-
nomic uncertainty. (Economic uncertainty about the future is an
inescapable fact of human action in a world in which only God is om-
niscient. Any system of economics that in any way ignores or
de-emphasizes the economic efects of uncertainty is innately, ines-
capably erroneous, for it relies on a false doctrine of man.) They took
the best ofer that any employer made. If they had been omniscient,
they might have waited, lounged around for almost the whole day,
and then accepted an eleventh-hour job ofer. “A full day’s pay for an
hour’s labor: what a deal!” (An analogous approach to salvation: re-
fuse to accept the Gospel in your youth, so that you can “eat, drink,
and be merry,” and then accept Christ on your deathbed. “A full life’s
worth of salvation for a last-minute repentance: what a deal!”) But
 Free Market Capitalism 967

men are not omniscient. So they act to beneit themselves with the
best knowledge at their disposal.24 The employer had done them no
wrong. Their eye was evil.
Christ used this parable to illustrate a theological principle, the
sovereignty of God in choosing men: “So the last shall be irst, and
the irst last; for many be called, but few chosen” (v. 16). The em-
ployer had a job opportunity to ofer men; God ofers salvation in
the same way. The employer paid a full day’s wage to those coming
late in the day. If this action of the employer was wrong, then God’s
analogous action in electing both young and old (“late comers” and
“early comers”) to the same salvation is even more wrong. But this is
the argument of the ethical rebel; Paul dismisses it as totally illegiti-
mate. “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?
God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have com-
passion” (Rom 9:14–15).
One of the most important facts of economics is this: Employers
compete against employers, while workers compete against workers. Em-
ployers do not want rival employers to buy any valuable economic
factor of production at a discount. Those who hire laborers do so in
order to use their services proitably. They have no incentive to pass
along savings to their competitors. If a worker’s labor is worth ive
shekels per hour to two diferent potential employers, and the
worker is about to be hired by one of them for four shekels, the sec-
ond employer has an incentive to ofer him more. He will ofer him
enough to lure him away from the competitor, but not so much that
he expects to lose money on the transaction. The free market’s com-
petitive auction process therefore ofers economic rewards to em-
ployers for doing the morally correct thing, namely, honoring the
biblical principle that the laborer is worthy of his hire.
Similarly, workers compete against workers. They want jobs. If
an employer is ofering a job to one employee for more than an-
other person is willing to work for, the second person has an incen-
tive to step in and utter those magic words: “I’ll work for less!” He
underbids the competition. (When I say “underbid,” I mean underbid

24. Again, consult Sowell’s book, Knowledge and Decisions, for a detailed analysis of this
issue. Also, see the classic study by Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Proit (1921; reprint
ed., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, Pubs., n.d.).
968 DEUTERONOMY

in terms of money; I could also say that he overbids his competitors

in terms of the hours of labor that he ofers the employer for a given
wage payment.) The free market’s auction process ofers an incen-
tive to workers to ofer employers “an honest day’s labor for an hon-
est day’s pay.” In short, the free market ofers economic rewards to
laborers for doing the morally correct thing, just as it ofers
employers.
Very, very rarely do employers and workers in a modern indus-
trialized economy compete head to head. These instances take
place when neither the worker nor the employer has a good idea of
his own competition, or when one of the two is ignorant. Laborers
may not know the going wage rate. Employers may not know if
other workers are available for the money they are willing to pay. So
it becomes a question of negotiation, the same kind of negotiation
that Esau and Jacob transacted for Esau’s birthright (Gen 25:29–34).
There is nothing wrong with competitive bargaining, as I ex-
plain in chapter eighteen of my economic commentary on the Bi-
ble, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. Normally, competing ofers are
well known to all parties; advertising has made information on pric-
ing and services widely available. “Help wanted” signs and
classiied ads do more for the income of the majority of laborers
than all the trade unions in the land – legalized monopolies estab-
lished by one group of workers to deny the legal right of other work-
ers to compete against them.25 Nevertheless, where there are gaps in
men’s information, men must pay to improve their knowledge. In-
formation is not a zero-cost good. Any system of economic analysis
which ignores or de-emphasizes this economic fact of life is in-
nately, inescapably erroneous.
When a society guarantees men that they will be allowed to
keep the fruits of their labor, it promotes the spread of information.
Men can aford to invest in the expensive process of improving their
knowledge. They are able to capitalize their eforts. If they are suc-
cessful in improving their knowledge about competing economic
ofers, either as employers or laborers, they reap the rewards. Mem-
bers of society are the beneiciaries, since better knowledge means
less waste – fewer scarce economic resources expended to achieve

25. Gary North, “A Christian View of Labor Unions,” Biblical Economics Today (April/May
1978), published by the Institute for Christian Economics.
 Free Market Capitalism 969

given economic ends. The ends are set by competing bidders in the
“auction” for consumer goods and services.26 It should be recog-
nized from the beginning that a deeply felt hostility toward the moral
legitimacy of the auction process undergirds the socialist movements of
our era.

Predictable Law
The Bible instructs a nation’s rulers not to respect persons when
administering justice (Deut 1:17). Both the rich man and the poor
man, the homeborn and the stranger, are to be ruled by the same
law (Ex 12:49). Biblical law is a form of God’s grace to mankind; it is
to be dispensed to all without prejudice. This is the implication of
Leviticus 19:15, which introduced this chapter. The predictability
of the judicial system is what God requires of those in positions of
authority.
Predictable (“inlexible”) law compels the State and the church
to declare in advance just exactly what the law requires. This allows
men to plan for the future more ejciently.27 “Flexible” law is an-
other word for arbitrary law. When a man drives his automobile at
55 miles per hour in a 55 m.p.h. zone, he expects to be left alone by
highway patrol ojcers. The predictability of the law makes it possi-
ble for highway rules to be efective. Men can make better judg-
ments about the decisions of other drivers when speed limits are
posted and highway patrol ojcers enforce them. The better we can
plan for the future, the lower the costs of our decision-making. Pre-
dictable law reduces waste.
The Hebrews were required by God to assemble the nation –
rich and poor, children and strangers – every seventh year to listen
to the reading of the law (Deut 31:10–13). Ignorance of the law was
no excuse. At the same time, biblical law was comprehensible. It was
not so complex that only lawyers in specialized areas could grasp its
principles. The case laws, such as the prohibition on muzzling the ox

26. Gary North, “Exploitation and Knowledge,” The Freeman (January 1982), published by
the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, New York, 10533.
27. Perhaps the most eloquent and scholarly work that argues for the connection between
predictable law, human freedom, and economic productivity is the book by the Nobel Prize
winner in economics, F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1960), esp. the irst 15 chapters. See also his trilogy, Law, Legislation and Liberty
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1973–80).
970 DEUTERONOMY

as he treaded out the corn, brought the general principles down into
concrete, familiar terminology. In this sense, biblical faith is essen-
tially a democratic faith, as G. Ernest Wright argues, for it can be
laid hold of with power by the simplest and most humble. We are
surrounded by mystery, and ultimate knowledge is beyond our
grasp. Yet God has brought himself (Deut 4:7) and his word to us.
We can have life by faith and by loyal obedience to his covenant,
even though our knowledge is limited by our initude. One need not
wait to comprehend the universe in order to obtain the promised
salvation. It is freely ofered in the covenant now.28
The law of God gives to men a tool of dominion over an other-
wise essentially mysterious nature, including human nature – not
dominion as exercised by a lawless tyrant, but dominion through
obedience to God and service to man.29
For example, consider the efects of the eighth commandment,
“Thou shalt not steal.” Men are made more secure in the ownership
of property. This commandment gives men security. They can then
make rational (cost-efective) judgments about the best uses of their
property, including their skills. They make fewer mistakes. This
lowers the costs of goods to consumers through competition.
Christian commentators have from earliest times understood
that the prohibition of theft, like the prohibition against covetous-
ness, serves as a defense of private property. Theft is a self-conscious,
willful act of coercive wealth redistribution, and therefore it is a denial of the
legitimacy and reliability of God’s moral and economic law-order.
The immediate economic efect of widespread theft in society is
the creation of insecurity. This lowers the market value of goods,
since people are less willing to bid high prices for items that are
likely to be stolen. Uncertainty is increased, which requires that
people invest a greater proportion of their assets in buying protec-
tion services or devices. Scarce economic resources are shifted from
production and consumption to crime ighting. This clearly lowers
per capita productivity and therefore per capita wealth, at least
among law-abiding people. Theft leads to wasted resources.

28. G. Ernest Wright, “Deuteronomy,” in The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 2, p. 509; cited by R. J.
Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, vol. 2, Law and Liberty (Vallecito, California: Ross House
Books, 1982), p. 413.
29. Rushdoony, Law and Society, pp. 403–6.
 Free Market Capitalism 971

The internal restraints on theft that are provided by godly

preaching and upbringing help to reduce crime, thereby increasing
per capita wealth within the society. Godly preaching against theft is
therefore a form of capital investment for the society as a whole (what
the economists call “social overhead capital”), for it releases scarce
economic resources that would otherwise have been spent on the
protection of private and public property. Such preaching also re-
duces the necessary size of the civil government, which is important
in reducing the growth of unwarranted State power.
What is true about the reduction of theft is equally true concern-
ing the strengthening of men’s commitment to private property in
general. When property rights are carefully deined and enforced, the
value of property increases. Allen and Alchian, in their standard
economics textbook, have commented on this aspect of property
rights:

For market prices to guide allocation of goods, there must be an incen-

tive for people to express and to respond to ofers. If it is costly to reveal
bids and ofers and to negotiate and make exchanges, the gains from ex-
change might be ofset. If each person speaks a diferent language [as they
did at the tower of Babel], if thievery is rampant, or if contracts are likely to
be dishonored, then negotiation, transaction, and policing costs will be so
high that fewer market exchanges will occur. If property rights in goods are
weaker, ill deined, or vague, their reallocation is likely to be guided by lower
ofers and bids. Who would ofer as much for a coat likely to be stolen?30
The authors believe that the higher market value attached to goods
protected by strong ownership rights spurs individuals to seek laws that
will strengthen private-property rights. Furthermore, to the extent that pri-
vate-property rights exist, the power of the civil government to control the
uses of goods is thereby decreased. This, unfortunately, has led politicians
31
and jurists to resist the spread of secured private-property rights.

There is no question that a society which honors the terms of the com-
mandment against theft will enjoy greater per capita wealth than one
which does not, other things being equal. Such a society rewards
honest people with greater possessions. This is as it should be. A
widespread hostility to theft, especially from the point of view of

30. Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen, University Economics: Elements of Inquiry, 3rd
ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1972), p. 141. Italics in the original.
31. Idem.
972 DEUTERONOMY

self-government (self-restraint), allows men to make more accurate

decisions concerning what they want to buy, and therefore what
they need to produce in order to ofer something of value in ex-
change for the items they want. Again, I cite Allen and Alchian:

The more expensive is protection against theft, the more common is

thievery. Suppose that thievery of coats were relatively easy. People would
be willing to pay only a lower price for coats. The lower market price of
coats will understate the value of coats, for it will not include the value to
the thief. If the thief were induced to rent or purchase a used coat, the price
of coats would more correctly represent their value to society. It follows
that the cheaper the policing costs, the greater the ejciency with which
values of various uses or resources are revealed. The more likely some-
thing is to be stolen, the less of it that will be produced.32

When communities set up “neighborhood watches” to keep an

eye on each other’s homes, and to call the police when something
suspicious is going on, the value of property in the community is in-
creased, or at least the value of the property on the streets where the
neighbors are helping each other.
We want sellers to respond to our ofers for goods or services. At
the same time, we as producers want to know what buyers are will-
ing and able to pay for our goods and services. The better every-
one’s knowledge of the markets we deal in, the fewer the resources
necessary for advertising, negotiating, and guessing about the fu-
ture. These resources can then be devoted to producing goods and
services to satisfy wants that would otherwise have gone unsatisied.
The lower our transaction costs, in other words, the more wealth we
can devote to the purchase and sale of the items involved in the
transactions.
One transaction cost is the defense of property against theft. God
graciously steps in and ofers us a “free good”: a heavenly system of punish-
ment. To the extent that criminals and potential criminals believe
that God does punish criminal behavior, both on earth and in
heaven, their costs of operation go up. When the price of something
rises, other things being equal, less of it will be demanded. God raises
the risks (“price”) of theft to thieves. Less criminal behavior is therefore
a predictable result of a widespread belief in God’s judgments, both

32. Ibid., p. 239.

 Free Market Capitalism 973

temporal and inal. When the commandment against theft is

preached, and when both the preachers and the hearers believe in
the God who has announced his warning against theft, then we can
expect less crime and greater per capita wealth in that society. God’s
eternal criminal justice system is lawless, and it is also inescapable,
so it truly is a free good – a gift from God which is a sign of his grace.
This is one aspect of the grace of law.33 It leads to increased wealth for
those who respect God’s laws.

Compulsory Wealth Redistribution

The Bible says, “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not say, “Thou
shalt not steal, except by majority vote.” A society which begins to
adopt taxation policies that exceed the tithe – ten per cent of income
– thereby increases economic uncertainty, as do other types of theft,
both public and private. This increase in uncertainty may be even
more disrupting, statistically, than losses from burglary or robbery,
because private insurance companies can insure against burglary
and robbery. After all, who can trust a civil government which claims the
right to take more of a person’s income than God requires for the support of
his kingdom? What kind of protection from injustice can we expect
from such a civil government? The next wave of politically imposed
wealth redistribution is always dijcult to predict, and therefore
dijcult to prepare for, so the costs of production increase.
When Samuel came before the Hebrews to warn them about
the evils of establishing a king in Israel, he thought he might dis-
suade them by telling them that the king would take a whopping ten
per cent of their production (1 Sam 8:l5). They did not listen. (And,
for the record, neither have Christians listened to warnings against
the forty and ifty per cent taxation levels of the modern welfare
State.) The Pharaoh of Joseph’s day imposed a tax of twenty percent
(Gen 47:24–26). Egypt was one of the great tyrannies of the ancient
world.34 It was probably the most massive bureaucracy in man’s his-
35
tory until the twentieth century. Yet every modern welfare State –

33. Ernest F. Kevan, The Grace of Law: A Study in Puritan Theology (1963; reprint ed., Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983).
34. See the study by Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power
(New Haven: Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1957).
35. Lewis Mumford, “The First Megamachine,” Daedalus (1966); reprinted in Lewis
Mumford, Interpretations and Forecasts: 1922–1972 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
974 DEUTERONOMY

meaning every Western industrial nation in the late twentieth century

– would have to cut its total tax burden by at least half in order to return
to the twenty per cent level of Egypt in Joseph’s day.36

Foreign Aid: State to State

Foreign aid means an increase in taxes in one nation, so that
money can go to other nations. State-to-State aid must go through
ojcial, bureaucratic channels. Only in major emergencies – fam-
ines, loods, earthquakes – do foreign governments allow Western
nations to bring food and clothing directly to their citizens. They un-
derstand the obvious: The increasing dependence of citizens on
goods from a foreign civil government increases their direct de-
pendence on that foreign civil government. He who pays the piper
is in a position to call the tune. Oddly enough, intellectual propo-
nents of increased State welfare fail to recognize what leaders in
Third World nations understand immediately, namely, “there ain’t
no such thing as a free lunch.” With the beneits come controls and
future political or diplomatic obligations.
When the United States sends food under Public Law 480
(passed in 1954), to India, the Indian government, not private busi-
nesses, allocates it – or whatever is left after the rats at the docks and
in the storage facilities consume approximately half of it. (Rats and
sacred cows in India consume half of that nation’s agricultural out-
put.37 It would take a train 3,000 miles long to haul the grain eaten
by Indian rats in a single year.38)
There is a great temptation for government ojcials of underde-
veloped nations to use this food to free up State-controlled capital
which is then used to increase investments in heavy industry – in-
vestments that produce visible results that are politically popular –

1973). See also Max Weber, “Max Weber on Bureaucratization” (1909), in J. P. Meyer, Max
Weber and German Politics: A Study in Political Sociology (London: Faber & Faber, 1956), p. 127.
36. For a discussion of why Joseph’s imposition of a twenty per cent tax in Egypt was not
part of God’s law for Israel, see Gary North, Dominion Covenant: Genesis, chap. 23.
37. Robert M. Bleiberg, “Down a Rathole,” Barron’s (11 August 1975), p. 7. By 1975, the
United States had sent to foreign nations agricultural goods worth about $25 billion.
38. The estimate of Dr. Max Milner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says
that in one recent year, rats in the Philippine Islands consumed over half the sugar and corn,
and ninety per cent of the rice crop. “Over 40% of the World’s Food Is Lost to Pests,”
Washington Post, 6 March 1977.
 Free Market Capitalism 975

projects that cynics refer to as pyramids. These large-scale industrial

projects are in efect paid for by the food subsidies sent by the West.
Without the free food sent by the West, these uneconomical,
large-scale projects would be out of the question politically. Even
worse, foreign aid enables governments to spend heavily on mili-
tary equipment that will be used to suppress political opponents or
other Third World nations – themselves recipients of Western for-
eign aid.39
What would happen if the West were to stop shipping food at
below-market prices? Local farmers in the recipient nations have
been hurt – or in some cases, driven into bankruptcy – by the West’s
below-production-cost food, so they have reduced investments in
the agricultural system. These nations have become increasingly
dependent on the West’s free food. If the subsidies were to cease,
the agricultural base might be insujcient to provide for the domes-
tic population, for agricultural output has been reduced as a result of
taxpayer-inanced cut-throat competition from Western govern-
ments that gave away the food. At the same time, if the subsidies
were to cease, heavy industry projects could also go bankrupt (or,
more accurately, may lose even more tax money than they lose al-
ready, and therefore become political liabilities).
Let us not be naive about the political impetus for shipments of
American farm products under Public Law 480. The farm bloc and
the large multinational grain companies are major supporters of the
compulsory “charity” of foreign food aid, just as farmers favor the
food stamp program. Farmers can sell their crops to the U.S. gov-
ernment at above-market prices, and then the government can give
the food away to people who would not have bought it anyway. Politi-
cians like the program also because the U.S. government uses the
promise of free food as a foreign policy lever.40 Government subsidies
to Agriculture have become a way of life in the United States, as
have government controls on agriculture.41
We know that foreign governments are hostile to what they re-
fer to as “Western control,” when private foreign capital comes into

39. P. T. Bauer, Equality, the Third World and Economic Delusion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1981), p. 94.
40. For background on the political support for Public Law 480 and the program’s use as a
tool of American foreign policy, see Dan Morgan, Merchants of Grain (New York: Viking,
1979), pp. 100–2, 122–28, 258–68.
41. William Peterson, The Great Farm Problem (Chicago: Regnery, 1959).
976 DEUTERONOMY

their nations. Why this hostility? Because pro-socialist political leaders

in underdeveloped nations resent the shift of sovereignty from civil govern-
ment to the private sector, both foreign and domestic. Yet these same
ojcials beg for more State-to-State aid from the West. Why? Be-
cause they control the allocation of this form of economic aid after it
arrives. The question of foreign aid, like all other forms of compul-
sory economic redistribution, raises questions of sovereignty.
Should we recommend increased taxes in Western nations in
order to “feed the starving poor” in foreign nations? Is this what
Christ meant by loving our neighbors? Are Western tax revenues
really feeding the starving poor, or are they inancing the bureau-
cratic institutions of political control that have been created by
pro-socialist, Western-educated political leaders who dominate so
many of the Third World’s one-party “democracies”? Are poor
people in the West being taxed to provide political support to
wealthy politicians in the Third World? Does the Bible teach that
State-to-State wealth transfers are ethically valid? Or does the Bible
require personal charity, or church-to-church charity – charity which
is not administered by foreign politicians?
These are fundamental questions regarding sovereignty, au-
thority, and power. In the construction of the kingdom of God on
earth, should we promote the increased sovereignty of the political
State? Samuel’s warning is clear: no (1 Sam 8). Any discussion of
government “charity” – compulsory wealth redistribution – must
deal with this issue of sovereignty.
Other questions, closely related to the preceding ones, are
these: Is the poverty of the Third World the fault of the West? Is the
Third World hungry because people in Western industrial nations
eat lots of food? Does the West, meaning Western civil govern-
ments, owe some form of reparations (restitution) to Third World
civil governments?

“We Eat; They Starve”

Consider the words of theologian-historian Ronald Sider,
whose best-selling book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, has be-
come one of the most inluential books on seminary and Christian
college campuses all over the United States. His introduction to the
book sets forth the problem:
 Free Market Capitalism 977

The food crisis is only the visible tip of the iceberg. More fundamental
problems lurk just below the surface. Most serious is the unjust division of
the earth’s food and resources. Thirty per cent of the world’s population
lives in the developed countries. But this minority of less than one-third
eats three-quarters of the world’s protein each year. Less than 6 per cent of
the world’s population lives in the United States, but we regularly demand
about 33 per cent of most minerals and energy consumed every year. Amer-
icans use 191 times as much energy per person as the average Nigerian. Air
conditioners alone in the United States use as much energy each year as
does the entire country of China annually with its 830 million people.
One-third of the world’s people have an annual per capita income of $100
or less. In the United States it is now about $5,600 per person. And this
diference increases every year.42

I can remember reading textbooks written in the 1950s that

ajrmed the wonders of American capitalism, and that pointed with
pride to the fact that 6 per cent of the world’s population produced 40
per cent (or 33 per cent, or whatever) of the world’s goods. But that
argument grew embarrassing for those who proclaimed the sup-
posed productivity of socialism. Socialist nations just never caught
up. So capitalism’s critics now complain that 6 per cent of the
world’s population (Americans) annually uses up one-third of the
world’s annual production, as if this consumption were not simulta-
neously a process of production, as if production could take place
apart from the using up of producer goods. This is word magic. It
makes productivity appear evil.
It is true that Westerners eat a large proportion of the protein
that the world produces each year. This has been used by vegetarian
socialists to create a sense of guilt in Western meat-eating readers of
socialist literature. You see, our cattle eat protein-rich grains. “Corn-
fed beef” is legendary – or notorious, in the eyes of the critics. Because of
this, argues Dr. Sider, the “feeding burden” of the United States is not a
mere 210 million (the number of human mouths to feed), but 1.6
billion.43 “No wonder more and more people are beginning to ask
whether the world can aford a United States or a Western Europe.”44

42. Ronald Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity
Press, 1977), p. 18. This book was co-published by the liberal Roman Catholic publishing
house, the Paulist Press. Unquestionably, it represents an ecumenical publishing venture.
Presumably, it relects the thinking of a broad base of Christian scholars.
43. Ibid., p. 152.
44. Ibid., p. 153.
978 DEUTERONOMY

(Outside of college and seminary campuses, not many people seem

to be asking this question, as far I can see. Certainly the Haitian boat
people and Latin American refugees aren’t asking it. Neither are
Jews who are emigrating from the Soviet Union.)
The psalmist proclaimed a poetic truth about God’s ownership
of the world by identifying these words as God’s: “For every beast of
the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills” (Ps 50:10).
But “liberation theologians” are not impressed. Dr. Sider informs
us:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that when the total life of
the animal is considered, each pound of edible beef represents seven
pounds of grain. That means that in addition to all the grass, hay and other
food involved, it also took seven pounds of grain to produce a typical
pound of beef purchased in the supermarket. Fortunately, the conversion
rates for chicken and pork are lower: two or three to one for chicken and
three or four to one for pork. Beef is the cadillac of meat products. Should
we move to compacts?45

Must we rewrite the words of the psalm (with the seven-to-one

ration in operation): “For every chicken of the forest is mine, and
the soybeans upon seven thousand hills”? Perhaps the greatest
irony of all is that a 1982 study by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture indicates that low-income Americans – the people whom
liberation theologians supposedly want to deliver from “oppressive
institutions” – eat more meat per capita than high-income Ameri-
cans. Blacks consume more meat per capita than other racial groups
do.46 Thus, the “less meat” program would reduce one of the prime
pleasures of the poor in America.
Unquestionably, Third World populations sometimes sufer
protein deiciencies. But any program of “social salvation through
protein exports” is going to encounter problems that the wealth-
redistributionists seldom consider. People’s food is fundamental to their
culture. Trying to stay on a diet has confounded millions of Ameri-
cans. Eating habits are very dijcult to alter, even when the eater
knows that he should change. An education program to get Third
World peasants to change their diets is going to be incredibly ex-
pensive, and probably futile. “Rice-eating people would often

45. Ibid., p. 43.

46. Associated Press story, Tyler Morning Telegraph, 18 December 1982.
 Free Market Capitalism 979

rather starve than eat wheat or barley, which are unknown to them,”
writes biologist Richard Wagner.47
This problem goes beyond mere habits. Sometimes we ind that
people’s diets have conditioned their bodies so completely that the
introduction of a new food may produce biological hazards for
them. This is sometimes the case with protein. Wagner comments:

Another even more bizarre instance was seen in Colombia, where a pop-
ulation was found with a 40 percent infestation of Entamoeba histolytica, a pro-
tozoan that generally burrows into the intestinal wall, causing a serious
condition called amoebiasis. However, despite the high level of Entamoeba
infestation, the incidence of amoebiasis was negligible. The answer to this
puzzle was found in the high-starch diet of the people. Because of the low
protein intake, production of starch-digesting enzymes was reduced, al-
lowing a much higher level of starch to persist in the intestine. The proto-
zoans were found to be feeding on this starch rather than attacking the
intestinal wall. If this population had been given protein supplements with-
out concurrent eforts to control Entamoeba infestation, the incidence of
amoebiasis would probably have soared, causing more problems than the
lack of protein.48

Cultures Are “Package Deals”

When a foreign culture introduces a single aspect of its culture
into the life of another, there will be complications. This single
change serves as a sort of cultural wedge. As the historian Arnold
Toynbee puts it, “In a cultural encounter, one thing inexorably goes
on leading to another when once the smallest breach has been made
in the assaulted society’s defenses.”49 Changing people’s eating hab-
its, apart from changing their understanding of medicine, costs of
production, agricultural technology, risks of blight, marketing, and
an indeterminate number of other contingent aspects of the recom-
mended change, is risky when possible, and frequently impossible.
Third World peasants often recognize the implications of a par-
ticular “cultural wedge” perhaps better than the Western “missionary”
does: It may have a far-reaching impact on the culture as a whole –

47. Richard H. Wagner, Environment and Man, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 523.
48. Ibid., pp. 518–19.
49. Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial and The World and the West (New York: World,
1958), pp. 286–87.
980 DEUTERONOMY

an impact which traditional peasants may choose to avoid. Unless

the opportunity ofered by the innovator is seen by the recipient as
being worth the risks of unforeseen “ripple efects,” the attempt to
force a change in the recipient’s buying or eating habits may lead to
a disaster. Or, more likely, it will probably lead to a wall of resis-
tance. Missionaries, whether Christian or secular, whether spon-
sored by a church or the Peace Corps, had better understand one
fundamental principle before they go to the mission ield: You cannot
change only one thing.
One of the classic horror stories that illustrates this principle is
the Sub-Sahara Sahel famine of the 1970s. This arid and semiarid
area is vast. It stretches across the African continent, and it includes
the nations of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Ghana, Niger, Up-
per Volta, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and part of Kenya. For l5
years, from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, the West’s civil
governments poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this re-
gion. Yet between the late 1960s and 1974, hundreds of thousands
of people starved, along with twenty million head of livestock. They
are still starving. Why? As with most agricultural tragedies, there
was no single cause. The area gets little rain: perhaps twenty-ive
inches in its southernmost regions, tapering of to an inch per year
closer to the Sahara. The nomads needed water for their herds, as
they had from time immemorial. The West gave them the water.
Here was a totally new factor in the region’s ecology. It destroyed
them. This was one major cause.
The other cause was the absence of enforceable property rights
in land. The nomads did not assign speciic plots to specific families.
No one was made personally and economically responsible for the
care of the land. “All trees, shrubs, and pasture are common-access
resources, so no individual tribesman has an incentive to conserve
them, or add to their stock. No individual can reap the returns of
planting or sowing grass, which hold the soil together and prevent
‘desertiication.’”50 Beneath the rock and clay and sand, there is water.
A subterranean lake of half a million square miles underlies the east-
ern end of the Sahara. Drilling rigs can hit water at one thousand or
two thousand feet down. These boreholes were drilled with Western

50. John Burton, “Epilogue,” in Steven N. S. Cheung, The Myth of Social Cost (San Francisco:
Cato Institute, 1980), p. 66.
 Free Market Capitalism 981

foreign aid money at $20,000 to $200,000 apiece. About ten thou-

sand head of cattle at a time can drink their ill. Therein lies the
problem. Claire Sterling describes what happened:

The trouble is that wherever the Sahel has suddenly produced more
than enough for the cattle to drink, they have ended up with nothing to eat.
Few sights were more appalling, at the height of the drought last summer
[1973], than the thousands upon thousands of dead and dying cows clus-
tered around Sahelian boreholes. Indescribably emaciated, the dying
would stagger away from the water with bloated bellies to struggle to ight
free of the churned mud at the water’s edge until they keeled over. As far as
the horizon and beyond, the earth was as bare and bleak as a bad dream.
Drought alone didn’t do that: they did.
What 20 million or more cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, and camels
have mostly died of since this grim drought set in is hunger, not thirst. Al-
though many would have died anyway, the tragedy was compounded by a
ierce struggle for too little food among Sahelian herds increased by then to
vast numbers. Carried away by the promise of unlimited water, nomads
forgot about the Sahel’s all too limited forage. Timeless rules, apportioning
just so many cattle to graze for just so many days within a cow’s walking
distance of just so much water in traditional wells, were brushed aside.
Enormous herds, converging upon the new boreholes from hundreds of
miles away, so ravaged the surrounding land by trampling and overgraz-
ing that each borehole quickly became the center of its own little desert
forty or ifty miles square.51

In Senegal, soon after boreholing became popular (around 1960),

the number of cows, sheep, and goats rose in two years from four mil-
lion to ive million. “In Mali, during the ive years before 1960, the
increase had been only 800,000. Over the next ten years the total
shot up another 5 million to l6 million, more than three animals for
every Malian man, woman, and child.”52 It is not just Americans and
West Europeans who raise and eat “protein on the hoof.”
The traditional nomad way of life is dead. Western specialists
know it; the nomads know it. They live in tent camps now, depend-
ent on handouts from their governments, which in turn rely heavily
on the West’s foreign aid programs. The West and the nomads

51. Claire Sterling, “The Making of the Sub-Sahara Wasteland,” Atlantic (May, 1974), p.
102.
52. Ibid., p. 103.
982 DEUTERONOMY

forgot to honor (and deal with) this principle: You cannot change only
one thing.

Cultural Transformation
The goal of charitable organizations that deal in foreign aid
should be to bring the culture of the West to the underdeveloped
nations. By “the culture of the West,” I mean the law-order of the Bi-
ble, not the humanist, secularized remains of what was once a
lourishing Christian civilization. This means that these organiza-
tions cannot be run successfully by cultural and philosophical rela-
tivists. Missionaries should seek to impart a speciically Western
way of looking at the world: future-oriented, thrift-oriented, educa-
tion-oriented, and responsibility-oriented. This world-and-life view
must not be cyclical. It must ofer men hope in the power of human
reason to understand the external world and to grasp the God-given
laws of cause and efect that control it. It must ofer hope for the fu-
ture. It must be future-oriented. To try to bring seed corn to a pres-
ent-oriented culture that will eat it is futile. With the seed corn must
come a world-and-life view that will encourage people to grow corn
for the future.
It does little good to give these cultures Western medicine and
not Western attitudes toward personal hygiene and public health. It
does little good to send them protein-rich foods if their internal
parasites will eat out their intestines. The naive idea that we can
simply send them money and they will “take of into self-sustained
economic growth” cannot be taken seriously any longer.53 To attack
the West because voters are increasingly unwilling to continue to
honor the tenets of a naive faith in State-to-State aid – faith in the
power of political coniscation, faith in the power of using Western
tax revenues to prop up socialist regimes in Third World nations – is

53. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge:

At the University Press, 1960). This was a best-seller on college campuses in the early 1960s.
For a critique, see the essays by several economic historians in Rostow, ed., The Economics of
Take-Of into Sustained Growth (New York: St. Martin’s, 1963).
 Free Market Capitalism 983

54
unfair. P. T. Bauer of the London School of Economics has made
the study of economic development his life’s work. He has empha-
sized what all economists should have known, but what very few ac-
knowledged until quite recently, namely, that in the long run,
people’s attitudes are more important for economic growth than
money. His list of what ideas and attitudes not to subsidize with
Western capital is comprehensive. No program of foreign aid, pub-
lic or private, should be undertaken apart from an educational pro-
gram to reduce men’s faith in the following list of attitudes:

Examples of signiicant attitudes, beliefs and modes of conduct unfa-

vourable to material progress include lack of interest in material advance,
combined with resignation in the face of poverty; lack of initiative,
self-reliance and a sense of personal responsibility for the economic future
of oneself and one’s family; high leisure preference, together with a lassi-
tude found in tropical climates; relatively high prestige of passive or con-
templative life compared to active life; the prestige of mysticism and of
renunciation of the world compared to acquisition and achievement; accep-
tance of the idea of a preordained, unchanging and unchangeable universe;
emphasis on performance of duties and acceptance of obligations, rather than
on achievement of results, or assertion or even a recognition of personal rights;
lack of sustained curiosity, experimentation and interest in change; belief in the
ejcacy of supernatural and occult forces and of their inluence over one’s
destiny; insistence on the unity of the organic universe, and on the need to
live with nature rather than conquer it or harness it to man’s needs, an atti-
tude of which reluctance to take animal life is a corollary; belief in perpetual
reincarnation, which reduces the signiicance of efort in the course of the
present life; recognized status of beggary, together with a lack of stigma in
the acceptance of charity; opposition to women’s work outside the home.55

54. Examples of socialist (centrally planned) economies that have been propped up by U.S.
government aid are Costa Rica, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Ghana. See Melvyn B. Krauss,
Development Without Aid: Growth, Poverty and Government (New York: New Press,
McGraw-Hill, 1983), pp. 24–32. Another example is Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo).
Consider also that government-guaranteed loans, as well as below-market loans through such
agencies as the Export-Import Bank, constitute foreign aid, for banks loan investors’ dollars to
high-risk socialist nations that would otherwise not have been loaned. The Soviet Bloc has
done exceedingly well in this regard for decades. On this point, see Antony Sutton, Western
Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 3 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution,
1968–73).
55. P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), pp.
78–79.
984 DEUTERONOMY

A long sentence, indeed. If the full-time promoters of Western

guilt understood the implications of what Bauer is saying, there
would be greater hope for both the West and the Third World.
What he describes is essentially the very opposite of what has come
to be known as “the Protestant Ethic.”56 What is remarkable is the
extent to which ideologically motivated guilt-manipulators have adopted
so many of the very attitudes that Bauer says are responsible for the economic
backwardness of the Third World.
Yes, the West continues to eat. The Third World inds it dijcult
to grow sujcient food. But Christians in the West are supposedly
complacent. They are well-fed, while their “global neighbors” go
hungry.57 It appears that the ancestors of “rich Christians” and rich
Westerners in general were very smart: They all moved to those re-
gions of the world where food is now abundant. The Plains Indians,
before Europeans came on the scene, experienced frequent fam-
ines. There were under half a million of them at the time.58 Yet,
somehow, European immigrants to the Plains arrived just in time to
see agricultural productivity lourish. They now consume more
than their “fair share” of the food, and their only excuse is that they
produce it. This, it seems, is not a good enough answer – certainly
not a morally valid answer. The West needs to come up with a cure
for the hungry masses of the world, but not the one that worked in
the West, namely, the private ownership of the means of production.
Ronald Sider has a cure – if not for the world’s hungry masses,
then at least for the now-guilty consciences of his readers, not to
mention the not-yet-guilt-burdened consciences of the American
electorate. “We ought to move toward a personal lifestyle that could
be sustained for a long period of time if it were shared by everyone
in the world. In its controversial Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome
suggested the igure of $1,800 per year per person. In spite of the
many weaknesses of that study, the Club of Rome’s estimate may be

56. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958). This book appeared originally as a series of scholarly journal articles
in 1904–05. See also S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (New York:
Basic Books, 1968).
57. Sider, Rich Christians, p. 30.
58. R. J. Rushdoony, The Myth of Over-Population (1969; reprint ed., Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn
Press, 1978), pp. 1–3.
 Free Market Capitalism 985

59
the best available.” And which agencies should be responsible for
collecting the funds and sending them to the poor in foreign lands?
United Nations channels.60 Private charity is acceptable – indeed, it
is better than the United States government, which sends food and
supplies to “repressive dictatorships”61 – but not preferable. We
need State-enforced “institutional change,” not reliance on private
charity, because “institutional change is often morally better. Per-
sonal charity and philanthropy still permit the rich donor to feel su-
perior. And it makes the recipient feel inferior and dependent.
Institutional changes, on the other hand, give the oppressed rights
and power.”62
But if the United States government is not really a reliable State
to impose such institutional change, what compulsory agency is reli-
able? He neglects to say. The one agency he mentions favorably in
this context is the United Nations – the organization which has for-
mally indicted Israel as a “racist” nation, and which welcomed the
Palestine Liberation Organization’s Yassir Arafat, pistol on his hip,
to speak before the membership.63
It is interesting that the Club of Rome drastically revised its no-
growth position in 1976,64 and in 1977, the year Rich Christians was
published, the Club of Rome published a pro-growth, pro-technology
study.65 As William Tucker observes, “When you’re leading the pa-
rade, it’s always fun to make sudden changes in direction just to try
to keep everyone on their toes.”66 Of course, it was favorable to vast
State-to-State foreign aid programs.

59. Ronald J. Sider, “Living More Simply for Evangelism and Justice,” the Keynote
Address to the International Consultation on Simple Lifestyle, England (17–20 March 1980),
mimeographed paper, p. 17.
60. Sider, Rich Christians, p. 216.
61. Idem.
62. Sider, “Ambulance Drivers or Tunnel Builders” (Philadelphia: Evangelicals for Social
Action, n.d.), p. 4.
63. For a critical analysis of Sider’s views, see David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age
of Guilt-Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald Sider, rev. ed. (Tyler, Tex.: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1982). The book is now in the third edition, reprinted in 1996.
64. Time, 26 April 1976.
65. Jan Tinbergen (coordinator), RIO – Reshaping the International Order: A Report to the Club
of Rome (New York: New American Library, Signet Books, 1977).
66. William Tucker, Progress and Privilege: America in the Age of Environmentalism (Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday, 1982), p. 193.
986 DEUTERONOMY

A Zero-Sum Economy?
A zero-sum game is a game in which the winners’ earnings
come exclusively from the losers. But what applies to a game of
chance does not apply to an economy based on voluntary ex-
change. Unfortunately, many critics of the free market society still
cling to this ancient dogma. They assume that if one person proits
from a transaction, the other person loses proportionately. Mises
objects:

. . . the gain of one man is the damage of another; no man proits but by the loss of
others. This dogma was already advanced by some ancient authors. Among
modern writers Montaigne was the irst to restate it; we may fairly call it the
Montaigne dogma. It was the quintessence of the doctrines of Mercantilism, old
and new. It is at the bottom of all modern doctrines teaching that there pre-
vailed, within the frame of the market economy, an irreconcilable conlict
among the interests of various social classes within a nation and furthermore
between the interests of any nation and those of all other nations. . . .
What produces a man’s proit in the course of afairs within an unham-
pered market society is not his fellow citizen’s plight and distress, but the
fact that he alleviates or entirely removes what causes his fellow citizen’s
feeling of uneasiness. What hurts the sick is the plague, not the physician
who treats the disease. The doctor’s gain is not an outcome of the epidem-
ics, but of the aid he gives to those afected. The ultimate source of proits is
always the foresight of future conditions. Those who succeeded better than
others in anticipating future events and in adjusting their activities to the
future state of the market, reap proits because they are in a position to sat-
isfy the most urgent needs of the public. The proits of those who have pro-
duced goods and services for which the buyers scramble are not the source
of losses of those who have brought to the market commodities in the pur-
chase of which the public is not prepared to pay the full amount of produc-
tion costs expended. These losses are caused by the lack of insight
displayed in anticipating the future state of the market and the demand of
the consumers.67

The “Montaigne dogma” is still with us. The economic analysis

presented by Ronald Sider assumes it. He can be regarded as a dog-
matic theologian, but his dogma is Montaigne’s. Consider for a moment
his statistics, such as the Club of Rome’s assertion that $1,800 a year

67. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pp. 664–65. Italics in original.
 Free Market Capitalism 987

would just about equalize the living standards of the world. The
Club of Rome assumes tremendous per capita wealth in the hands
of the rich – so much wealth, that a program of compulsory
wealth-redistribution could make the whole world middle class, or
at least reasonably comfortable. But the capital of the West – roads,
educational institutions, communications networks, legal systems,
banking facilities, monetary systems, manufacturing capital, mana-
gerial skills, and attitudes toward life, wealth, and the future – can-
not be divided up physically. Furthermore, there is little evidence
that it would be sujcient to produce world-wide per capita wealth
of this magnitude, even if it could be physically divided up and re-
distributed.68
If we divided only the shares of ownership held by the rich – stocks,
bonds, annuities, pension rights, cash-value life insurance policies,
and so forth – we would see a market-imposed redistribution process
begin to put the shares back into the hands of the most ejcient pro-
ducers. The inequalities of ownership would rapidly reappear.
The important issue, however, is the Montaigne dogma. It views
the world as a zero-sum game, in which winnings exactly balance
losses. Then how do societies advance? If life is a zero-sum game, how
can we account for economic growth? A free market economy is not a
zero-sum game. We exchange with each other because we expect to
gain an advantage. Both parties expect to be better of after the ex-
change has taken place. Each party ofers an opportunity to the
other person. If each person did not expect to better himself, neither
would make the exchange. There is no ixed quantity of economic beneits.
The free market economy is not a zero-sum game.
We understand this far better in the ield of education. For ex-
ample, if I learn that two plus two equals four, I have not harmed
anyone. In the area of knowledge, we all know that the only people
who lose when someone gains new, accurate knowledge are those
who have invested in terms of older, inaccurate knowledge. Could
anyone seriously argue that the acquisition of knowledge is a
zero-sum game (except, perhaps, in the case of a competitive exami-
nation)? Would anyone argue that we should suppress the spread of
new, accurate knowledge in order to protect those who have made
unfortunate investments in terms of old information?

68. Gary North, “Trickle-Down Economics,” The Freeman (May 1982).

988 DEUTERONOMY

What should we conclude? The Third World needs what all

men need: faith in Jesus Christ and his law-order. The Third World
needs the increased economic output that is the inevitable product
of true conversion to Christ. It needs a new attitude toward the fu-
ture (optimism). It needs a new attitude concerning the power of
biblical law as a tool of dominion. It needs to abandon the bureau-
cratic State agricultural control systems that pay farmers only a frac-
tion of what their agricultural output is worth, with the diference go-
ing into State treasuries. It is not uncommon for West African
governments to pay producers as little as ifty per cent of the market
value of their crops.69
What the Third World needs is what we all need: less guilt, less
civil government, lower taxes, more freedom, and churches that en-
force the tithe through the threat of excommunication – not a “grad-
uated tithe,” but a ixed, predictable ten per cent of income. (A
“graduated tithe” means a graduated ten per cent, which is contra-
dictory. It is a political slogan, not a theological concept. It certainly
is not a standard for State taxation: 1 Sam 8).

Land Reform
We are told endlessly that Latin American nations need land re-
form. The government is supposed to intervene, coniscate the
landed wealth of the aristocracy, and give it to the poor. This is a
variation of Lenin’s old World War I slogan, “peace, land, bread.”
Is such a program legitimate? Is it practical?
The Bible has a standard for land tenure: private ownership.
First, how can we respect this principle and still expand the holdings
of land by the peasants? Second, how can we keep agricultural output
from collapsing when unskilled, poor peasants take over land tenure?
The answer to the irst question is relatively simple in theory:
We need to adopt the biblical principle of inheritance. All sons re-
ceive part of the inheritance, with the eldest son obtaining a double
portion, since he has the primary responsibility for caring for aged
parents. Rushdoony’s comments are important:

The general rule of inheritance was limited primogeniture, i.e., the

oldest son, who had the duty of providing for the entire family in case of

69. P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development, pp. 401–3.

 Free Market Capitalism 989

need, or of governing the clan, receiving a double portion. If there were

two sons, the estate was divided into three portions, the younger son re-
ceiving one third. . . . The father could not alienate a godly irst-born son
because of personal feelings, such as a dislike for the son’s mother and a
preference for a second wife (Deut 21:15–17). Neither could he favor an
ungodly son, an incorrigible delinquent, who deserved to die (Deut
21:18–21). Where there was no son, the inheritance went to the daughter
or daughters (Num 27:1–11). . . . If there were neither sons nor daughters,
the next of kin inherited (Num 27:9–11).70

By instituting the biblical mode of inheritance, the great landed

estates of the Latin American world would be broken up. The civil
government would immediately gain the support of the younger
sons of the aristocracy. Land holdings would get smaller. Those
sons who choose not to farm can sell their land to productive peas-
ants, or if the poor people have no capital initially, hire them as
sharecroppers. (In a capital-poor society, such as the American
South immediately after the Civil War, sharecropping proved to be
an economically sound arrangement.)71 The sons can buy the neces-
sary capital, assuming they do not inherit it.
With each death, the land holdings get smaller. Will this lead to
the destruction of productive, large-scale agriculture? Not if it is re-
ally productive. The size of land holdings could be increased by
purchase by productive farmers. Also, corporations could be set up
that would issue shares of stock to owners. The holders would leave
shares of stock to their heirs, not the actual land. Then heirs could
sell these shares to other people, including members of the rising
middle class. Without single-inheritor primogeniture, there could
be a rising middle class.
One of the preludes to the American Revolution, especially
in southern colonies, was the abolition of the English version of

70. R. J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 180–81.
71. Blacks much preferred sharecropping to working for wages on white-owned farms:
Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of
Emancipation (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 67–70.
990 DEUTERONOMY

72
eldest-son primogeniture. Puritan New England never did adhere
to eldest-son primogeniture. Historian Kenneth Lockridge writes:

The leaders of the [Massachusetts Bay] colony relected a general

awareness of the unique abundance of the New World in the novel inheri-
tance law they created. In England, the lands of a man who left no will
would go to the eldest son under the law of primogeniture, whose aim was
to prevent the fragmentation of holdings which would follow from a divi-
sion among all the sons. The law arose from a mentality of scarcity. It left
the landless younger sons to fend for themselves. In New England the law
provided for the division of the whole estate among all the children of the
deceased. Why turn younger sons out on the society without land or per-
haps daughters without a decent dowry, why invite social disorder, when
there was enough to provide for all?73

There was never a landed aristocracy in the New England be-

cause of this policy. Primogeniture and entail (prohibiting the heir
from selling the land) disappeared in all but two colonies prior to the
American Revolution.
I ofer this example of one possible social and economic reform
to demonstrate how relevant biblical law is for all societies, and how
a deviation from biblical law has led, over centuries, to the creation
of a ticking time bomb in Latin American nations. Instead of
broadly based private property in land, and the development of a
responsible middle class, Latin American nations now face the like-
lihood of Marxist revolution, with the State, not the people, gaining
control over the land. As Rushdoony remarks, “The state, more-
over, is making itself progressively the main, and in some countries,
the only heir. The state in efect is saying that it will receive the bless-
ing above all others. It ofers to educate all children and to support
all needy families as the great father of all. It ofers support to the

72. Robert Nisbet, the conservative American sociologist, concludes that the abolition of
primogeniture and entail (ixing land to the family line) was an important symbol of the
American Revolution. He admits, however, that few of the colonies in 1775 were still
enforcing these laws. Nisbet, “The Social Impact of the Revolution,” in America’s Continuing
Revolution: An Act of Conservation (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public
Policy Research, 1975), p. 80. Nisbet cites Frederick Le Play and Alexis de Tocqueville as
sources for his opinion on the importance of the abolition of primogeniture and entail,
pp. 82–83.
73. Kenneth A. Lockeridge, A New England Town, The First Hundred Years: Dedham,
Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 71–72.
 Free Market Capitalism 991

aged as the true son and heir who is entitled to collect all of the in-
heritance as his own. In both roles, however, it is the great corrupter
74
and is at war with God’s established order, the family.”

Conclusion
God’s law is clear enough: The family is the primary agency of wel-
fare – in education, law enforcement (by teaching biblical law and
self-government), care for the aged. The church, as the agency for
75
collecting the tithe, also has social welfare obligations. The civil
government has almost none. Even in the case of the most pitiable
people in Israel, the lepers, the State had only a negative function,
namely, to quarantine them from other citizens. The State provided
no medical care or other tax-supported aid (Lev 13 and 14).76
The balance of earthly sovereignties between the one (the State
or church) and the many (individuals, voluntary associations) is
mandatory if we are to preserve both freedom and order. The Bible
tells us that God is both one and many, one Being yet three Persons.
His creation relects this unity and diversity. Our social and political
institutions are to relect this. We are to seek neither total unity (stat-
ism) nor total diversity (anarchism).77 Biblical law provides us with
the guidelines by which we may achieve a balanced social order.
We must take biblical law seriously.78
The most efective social movements of the twentieth century’s
masses – Marxism, Darwinian science, and militant Islam – have held
variations of the three doctrines that are crucial for any comprehensive
program of social change: providence, law, and optimism. The Chris-
tian faith ofers all three of these, not in a secular framework, but in a
revelational framework. The failure of Christianity to capture the
minds of the masses, not to mention the world’s leaders, is in part due
to the unwillingness of the representatives of Christian orthodoxy to

74. Ibid., p. 181. See also Gary North, “Familistic Capital,” in the forthcoming book, The
Dominion Covenant: Exodus (Tyler, Tex.: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), forthcoming.
[The book was eventually titled, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion, 1985.]
75. James B. Jordan, “Tithing: Financing Christian Reconstruction,” in Gary North, ed.,
Tactics of Christian Resistance (Tyler, Tex.: Geneva Divinity School Press, 1983).
76. Gary North, “Quarantines and Public Health,” Chalcedon Report (April 1977).
77. R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy
(1971; reprint ed., Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn Press, 1978).
78. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics.
992 DEUTERONOMY

preach all three with uncompromising clarity. The world will stay poor
for as long as men cling to any vision of God, man, and law that is in opposi-
tion to the biblical outline.
We need faith in the meaning of the universe and the sover-
eignty of God. We need conidence that biblical law ofers us a reli-
able tool of dominion. Finally, we need an historical dynamic:
optimism. We need a positive future-orientation for our earthly
eforts, in eternity of course, but also in time and on earth. People
need to surrender unconditionally to God in order to exercise com-
prehensive dominion, under God and in terms of God’s law, over
the creation.79 There is no other long-term solution to long-term
poverty. God will not be mocked.

79. Gary North, Unconditional Surrender: God’s Program for Victory, 2nd ed. (Tyler, Tex.:
Geneva Divinity School Press, 1983). See also Roderick Campbell, Israel and the New Covenant
(1954; reprint ed., Tyler, Tex.: Geneva Divinity School Press, 1982).
 Appendix F
The THE
Economic Re-Education
ECONOMIC of Ronald J. Sider
RE-EDUCATION
OF RONALD J. SIDER

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this
word, it is because there is no light in them (Isa. 8:20).

I began this economic commentary project in the spring of

1973: monthly essays in the Chalcedon Report. I escalated it in August
of 1977, when I moved to Durham, North Carolina. At that time, I
began to devote ten hours a week, 50 weeks a year, to this commen-
tary project. I still do. I am writing these words in late August, 1997.
In that same year, 1977, another historian, Ronald J. Sider, had
his book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study, co-
published by the Paulist Press (liberal Roman Catholic) and
InterVarsity Press (neo-evangelical Protestant). The fate of these ri-
val publishing projects throws light on contemporary Protestant
evangelical theology.
In mid-1997, a 20th anniversary edition of Sider’s book ap-
peared. On the cover, it proclaims: “Over 350,000 copies in print.”
Most of these copies were the irst edition. The original publishers
surrendered control over it in 1990, when Word Books picked it up
and issued the third edition. Publishers do not surrender books that
are still selling well. The second edition was forced on Sider in 1984
by David Chilton’s book, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-
Manipulators (1981), which I hired Chilton to write and which ICE
published. Sider prudently refused to mention Chilton in that sec-
ond edition . . . also in the third edition and the latest edition.
In a Christianity Today interview, published in the same issue as
an obituary for David Chilton (April 28, 1997), Sider made it clear
that he no longer is of the same opinion as he had been in 1977.

993
994 DEUTERONOMY

“The times have changed, and so have I” (p. 68). Furthermore, “I

admit, though, that I didn’t know a great deal of economics when I
wrote the irst edition of Rich Christians” (pp. 68–69). Or, he could
accurately have added, the second and third editions. It is clear who
his nemesis has been since 1981, the unnamed David Chilton: “I
had no interest in trying to psychologically manipulate people into
some kind of false guilt” (p. 68). No, indeed; he wanted to manipu-
late them based on their true guilt. That is what his book was all
about. But then came the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of
the Soviet Union. Times have changed, and so has he. Better put,
the New York Times has changed, and so has he. He read the head-
lines in the Times, and he saw the light. He counted all those who are
still ojcially in favor of socialism, and he saw the light. It was not Da-
vid Chilton’s arguments that persuaded him; it was a shift in liberal-
ism’s climate of opinion, and therefore academic neo-evangelicalism’s
opinions.
The Sider fad began to fade about the time ICE published
Chilton’s book. This is what fads always do: fade. A fad that does
not fade is not a fad. If it lingers on, it becomes either a harmless cu-
riosity or a cult. Chilton’s writing style – he was a master of clarity as
well as rhetoric – his mastery of the Bible,1 and his mastery of free
market economics turned Sider’s book into a retroactive embarrass-
ment. I heard the following on many occasions: “I don’t believe ev-
erything in Sider’s book, but don’t you think Chilton went to
extremes?” Obviously, I didn’t. I loved it. Strong rhetoric catches
people’s attention. This was true of Sider’s irst edition, too. He used
very strong rhetoric – most of which has disappeared from the 1997
edition. If strong rhetoric is backed up by proof, it will accomplish
its task far more efectively than the verbal equivalent of lukewarm
oatmeal. Chilton’s book was designed to teach biblical free market
principles by means of a public dissection of an anti-free market tract.
I can think of no book that has been more successful in this regard.
His book has sold better than any book that ICE has published. I
thought at the time that it was an almost perfect book. I still do.2

1. I used to sit in an ofice next to his. I would yell, “David, where is that passage about. . . ?”
He would yell back, “It’s somewhere in the middle of chapter [ ] of the Book of [ ].” It always
was.
2. The fatter revised edition is longer and a bit harder to read, for it had to respond to
Sider’s second edition, the one that included “a response to my critics,” except Chilton.
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 995

Let me use an analogy. To stop a group of amateur sportsmen

from going over a waterfall in a rented motor boat, you have to yell
really loud and wave your arms at them. They may complain later
about all the undigniied shouting and waving, but they may pull
over to the shore. Even Sider has pulled over, although not because
of Chilton’s shouting or mine. His ideology’s outboard motor just
broke down – a familiar experience with socialist products. He has
publicly tossed this burnt-out motor overboard. He deserves credit
for this. (But no cash.)
He has surely foregone eating beef, as he has always recom-
mended. He has now eaten a large portion of crow. But another full
plate sits there on the side of his desk. He needs to consume that
one, too, by writing: “David Chilton was basically correct in his crit-
icisms of my economic views. I have adopted many of his propos-
als, including the following: . . . .”

Sider Led an Ideological Exodus

We are all familiar with the student who goes of to college and
comes home after the irst year spouting liberal nonsense that he
learned in the classroom. This phenomenon has been around since
the days of classical Greece. Aristophanes wrote a comedy about
such a youth: Clouds. A young man goes of to Socrates’ academy
and comes home a know-it-all jerk. Students usually get over this
phase by age 30 unless they go to graduate school. In grad school,
the damage to both common sense and moral sense can become
permanent.
The Christian version of this tale is the youth who comes home
spouting nonsense and quoting the Bible out of context to defend his
views. Maybe he quotes Israel’s jubilee law (Lev. 25) as a model of
State-directed wealth-redistribution. No one told him that the jubi-
lee’s legal basis was genocide: the destruction of an entire civilization
by the Israelites, i.e., wealth-distribution by military conquest. No
one told him that the same jubilee law authorized the permanent en-
slavement of foreigners and their children (Lev. 25:44–46).
He insists that he is still a Christian, but he declares that a Chris-
tian can be a liberal: an in-your-face, in-your-wallet, tax-collector’s
gun-in-your-belly kind of liberal. He announces, in so many words,
“You’ll have to pay; government gets to spend the money on the
poor (after skimming of 50% for handling); and it’s all in the name
of Jesus. Jesus loves a cheerful taxpayer.”
996 DEUTERONOMY

With the publication of Rich Christians in 1977, Ronald Sider be-

came the Moses of the American Protestant evangelicals’ version of
this kind of home-from-college liberal. (John R. Stott had already
begun serving this role in England.) The trouble was, Sider never
came home from college: he was still there – teaching. He led the
neo-evangelicals in a unique kind of exodus: out of the fundamen-
talist prayer closets of their youth. “Free at last; free at last!” Dressed
in tweed jackets with the obligatory leather patches on the elbows,
an army of Christian college and seminary professors followed him
into the wilderness of a toned-down liberation theology – liberation
theology for people without machine guns or a taste for martyrdom.
They thought they were on the cutting edge of a new, caring
kind of Christianity. They imagined that they were headed into the
Promised Land of social relevance and political inluence. They be-
lieved that their students would follow them. The students did, too,
for about three years. Then they changed their minds, voted for
Ronald Reagan, and went into real estate development or the bro-
kerage business. (This, too, shall pass, but that is another story.)
The original version of Rich Christians was a tract for the times.
They were rotten times, ideologically speaking. The economic de-
bate, as far as Christian intellectuals knew, was between Keynesians
and Marxists. Not today. Everything has changed. Marxism is dead.
Keynesianism is in its terminal stages, taking tiny, halting steps like
an octogenarian with a walker. Sider has recognized this, and he has
turned back toward what he used to call Egypt. “No, no: the Prom-
ised Land lies in this direction!” Most of this army turned back in the
1980’s, and they have bought up all the choice real estate. Only
Sider’s ojcer corps, still dressed in the same tweed jackets, remains
with him. Will they keep following him, or will they continue to
wander in circles? Were it not for the manna of academic tenure,
they would have died of starvation two decades ago.

Revisions
Sider begins his revised edition with this admission: “My think-
ing has changed. I’ve learned more about economics.”3 So have his
former readers. Socialist radicalism has fallen out of favor all over

3. Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Amuence to Generosity
(Dallas: Word, 1997), p. xiii.
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 997

the world. The climate of opinion in the liberal media changed in

1991. Ron Sider has changed right along with it. I think of Joe
Sobran’s warning: he would rather be in a church that has not
changed its beliefs in 5,000 years than in one that spends its days
hujng and pujng to catch up with the latest shift in media opinion.
The 20th edition is barely recognizable. It even has a new subti-
tle: Moving from Amuence to Generosity. The earlier editions had been
subtitled, A Biblical Study. The new subtitle is less pretentious. It also
sounds more private than statist, which relects the book’s perspec-
tive. Here is an example of how much the book has changed. You
may also remember Sider’s call to statist action on behalf of the
poor. That is because God is on the side of the poor: “. . . the God of
the Bible is on the side of the poor just because he is not biased, for
he is a God of impartial justice.”4 What does he say now? “Is God bi-
ased in favor of the poor? Is he on their side in a way that he is not
on the side of the rich? Some theologians say yes. But until we clar-
ify the meaning of the question, we cannot answer it correctly.”5
This is followed by a chapter that backpeddles away from the irst
edition.
In his 1985 edition, Chilton summarized Sider’s policy recom-
mendations, and he ofered footnotes from Rich Christians for every
point: national (state) food policy, (state to state) foreign aid, a
guaranteed national income, international taxation, land reform, bu-
reaucratically determined “just prices,” national health care, popula-
tion control, and the right of developing nations to nationalize foreign
holdings.6 In the 1997 edition, foreign aid is mentioned briely.7 But
even here, Sider cites reports on how recipient governments have
misused this aid in the past. Sider uses the same kind of bureaucratic
examples that Chilton used against his early editions.8 As for the re-
cycled oil money loaned to the Third World, “Too much of what
was loaned was spent on armaments, ill-planned projects, or wasted
because of ojcial corruption.”9 He still mentions land reform, but

4. Ronald L. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study (Downers Grove,
Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1977), p. 84.
5. Sider, Rich Christians (1997), p. 41.
6. David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators: A Biblical Response to
Ronald J. Sider (3rd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, [1985] 1996), p. 35.
7. Sider, Rich Christians, pp. 31–33.
8. Ibid., pp. 258–59.
9. Ibid., p. 154.
998 DEUTERONOMY

10
only briely. He wants lower tarifs against foreign products. He is
adamant about this.11 This was Chilton’s suggestion.12
As he has become more cautious – openly so – he has dropped
almost all traces of his previous toying with socialism and statist co-
ercion. The new edition is not the same book. It is not even a irst
cousin of the irst three editions. His new edition is basically a retrac-
tion of the earlier editions – a kind of belated apology to the 350,000
buyers of his book who bought intellectually damaged goods.
But he still refuses to mention Chilton’s book, even in the bibli-
ography. He reminds me of Winston Smith in Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four, who dutifully dropped inconvenient historical informa-
tion into the “memory hole.” Nevertheless, the new bibliography
contains some very good books by such ine free market scholars as
P. T. Bauer – to whom Chilton dedicated the third edition, since
Bauer was a big fan of Productive Christians13 – George Gilder, Brian
Grijths,14 Julian Simon, and Cal Beisner. Unfortunately, he does
not actually quote from any of these authors in his 37 pages of
endnotes, except to attack Bauer as an extremist.15 He quotes mainly
from UNICEF, other United Nations agencies, and the World
Bank. He still avoids citing economists generally and free market
economists speciically. But at least his bibliography gives the illu-
sion that he has thought through the reasons why his irst three edi-
tions were wrong.
How did this happen? I attribute it to a dramatic shift in the cli-
mate of public opinion. This climate of opinion was beginning to
change in 1981, when Chilton’s book appeared and when I debated
Sider at Gordon-Conwell Divinity School. But it was not yet chang-
ing among Christian academics. They follow the lead of secular hu-
manist opinion leaders, usually by about ive to ten years. I was not
well received by the faculty of Gordon-Conwell (or at any other
seminary, now that I think of it).

10. Ibid., p. 260.

11. Ibid., pp. 147–50, 244–45.
12. Chilton, Productive Christians, pp. 101–103.
13. He called Chilton on the phone at least once to tell him how much he liked the book.
Chilton had initially thought it was someone who was pulling a trick on him.
14. When I visited him in 1985 – the day that Margaret Thatcher’s think tank hired him as
an advisor – Prof. Grijths told me that he had not heard about Christian economics until he
read my Introduction to Christian Economics.
15. Sider, Rich Christians, p. 307.
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 999

Harbinger and Fad

Sider’s book was part harbinger, part fad. It was a harbinger of
things to come because, in 1977, Protestant evangelicals were just
barely coming back into American politics as an identiiable voting
bloc. The 1976 Presidential candidacy of Southern Baptist and Tri-
lateral Commission member Jimmy Carter had made acceptable
the label “evangelical” in the political arena. A majority of white
Southern Protestants actually voted against Carter, but hardly any-
one recognized this in 1977 or even today. The pundits incorrectly
attributed his victory to the unpredicted appearance of the evangeli-
cals.16
From the era of the media-orchestrated humiliation of fundamen-
talist Christianity at the Scopes’ “monkey” trial in 1925 until the elec-
tion of 1976, American evangelicals had been conspicuous by their
absence.17 They generally opposed politics, or at least identiiably
Christian participation in partisan politics. Roman Catholics did
that sort of thing, it was widely believed, “and you know what we
think about Catholicism!” For decades, political liberals who con-
trolled the theologically liberal National Council of Churches had
chided fundamentalists, calling on them to get out of their prayer
closets and get active in politics. They got their wish answered in
1980: the election of Ronald Reagan, whose personal commitment
to salvation through faith in Christ was never proclaimed by him in
public, and by his defeat of Carter, whose public commitment to
Christ was considered media-worthy, but whose personal commit-
ment was to theologians such as Paul Tillich. The National Council
crowd never knew what hit them. Reagan stood firm, at least rhetor-
ically, against the NCC’s version of the eighth commandment:

16. He won mainly because Gerald Ford had been a Vice President who came into ojce
because of Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation under a cloud of scandal. Ford immediately
pardoned Nixon for unnamed crimes that Nixon had not been tried for. Then the 1975
recession hit. Meanwhile, the newly created Trilateral Commission went looking for a
political unknown who could be palmed off on the scandal-weary American voters as an
outsider. It worked, but only for one election.
17. See Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler,
Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996), chaps. 7, 9. Cf. George Marsden, Fundamentalism
and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 184–86; Ralph Reed, After the Revolution: How the
Christian Coalition is Impacting America. (Dallas: Word, 1996), p. 53. Note that Reed’s
publisher is also Sider’s.
1000 DEUTERONOMY

“Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.” He was re-elected in

1984. The NCC has never recovered. Like some emphysemic mid-
dle-aged athlete still dreaming of his glory days, the NCC continues
to issue study guides and newsletters. No one pays any attention.
After my debate with Sider at Gordon-Conwell, a reporter pri-
vately asked me what I thought of Sider. I told him that I appreci-
ated Sider for softening up the market for my work. I told him that
Sider was preparing the way for evangelicals to get involved in so-
cial action and politics, but that my economic opinions, not Sider’s,
were representative of the broad mass of evangelical opinion.18 That
statement had been veriied the previous fall, with Reagan’s defeat
of Carter. Sider had been part of the minority of white evangelicals
who were favorable to Carter’s worldview and hostile to Reagan’s.
Sider’s fame was fame based on the opinion of classroom professors
and liberal arts editors, what I have referred to as the Wheaton Col-
lege–Christianity Today–Calvin College axis. This cloistered non-
proit community of liberal arts graduates is part of the modern
chattering class, but it never has relected the opinions of donors in the
pews. The man in the pew always knew that socialism is simply Com-
munism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.
I have maintained for over two decades that neo-evangelicals
pick up fads that have been discarded by secular liberals. Sider’s
book is proof. The tenured academic community of Christians was
mildly socialistic when the American media were. Now they are
mildly free market, just as the media are. What caused the change?
The failure of the Soviet Union. Mr. Gorbachev admitted in the late
1980’s that his nation was economically bankrupt. This stunned the
West’s academics. They had always insisted that the USSR had a
growing economy. Only a handful of free market economists had
questioned this.19 In 1991, Gorbachev was unceremoniously thrown
out of power. So were the Communists. They had neither money
nor power by August 21, 1991, the day the Communist coup against
Boris Yeltsin failed. With neither money nor power, Communism

18. With respect to political opinions, I say the same thing about Ralph Reed. An
international economic collapse, coupled with the bankruptcy and break-up of every national
government larger than Jamaica’s, would speed things theonomy’s way nicely in the United
States.
19. Marshall Goldman was one of them.
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 1001

fell out of favor in the West overnight. The secular humanist West
worships money and power. Lose these, and you’re instantly passé.
Overnight, discount book bins illed up with Marxist books
written by and for the college market. Marxists in the Western aca-
demic community found that their peers were laughing at them.
Never before had this happened. They had always been taken seri-
ously. Why? Because the Communists had the power to terrorize
people without threat of retaliation, and Western liberals have great
respect for this degree of power. They had raged for decades selec-
tively only against military dictatorships in small nations – dictator-
ships that might be overthrown. Now the “impersonal forces of
history” had turned against the Communists. This was bad news for
tenured professors who had publicly worshipped the forces of his-
tory, as reported by the Times. They rushed in panic to get on board
the last train out of socialism’s world of empty promises and emptier
souls.
They have now become born-again democratic capitalists.
What is a democratic capitalist? Someone who has modiied the
eight commandment as follows: “Thou shalt not steal quite as much
as before, except by majority vote.”

The Echo Efect: Neo-evangelicalism

Sider’s book was partly a fad because it promoted a kind of
warmed-over political liberalism that suited the times. Jimmy
Carter had just been elected President of the United States. He was
a political liberal, and he was a self-proclaimed evangelical, despite
his commitment to neo-orthodox theologians. Two years later,
Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of Great Britain. In
1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States.
Those two politicians restructured political rhetoric in the West.
They made political conservatism acceptable. More important,
they made liberals look both weak and silly. They oversaw major
shifts in public opinion, even among intellectuals. In the year after
Reagan’s retirement,20 the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the East
German troops did nothing to stop it, as if in response to Reagan’s
words to Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that

20. Required by the U.S. Constitution; had he run again, he would almost certainly have
been elected a third time.
1002 DEUTERONOMY

wall.” Gorbachev sat tight. Two years after that, he was thrown out
of ojce, along with Communism.
Overnight, the liberation theology fad died. Marxism became
passé – the ultimate humiliation in the modern intellectual world.
This was the year after the third edition of Sider’s book appeared,
which sank without a trace. Ronald Reagan had destroyed the cli-
mate of opinion that had made Ronald Sider’s book a best-seller
among college-educated Christian evangelicals. Reagan had de-
stroyed Sider’s market as surely as David Chilton had destroyed
Sider’s arguments. Sider admits as much: “Communism has col-
lapsed. Expanding market economies and new technologies have
reduced poverty. ‘Democratic capitalism’ has won the major eco-
nomic/political debate of the twentieth century. Communism’s
state ownership and central planning have proven not to work; they
are inejcient and totalitarian.”21 This was what David Chilton had
argued back in 1981. Sider writes: “One of the last things we needed
was another ghastly Marxist-Leninist experiment in the world.”22
Yet in 1977, he ofered this bold-faced, capitalized question: IS GOD
23
A MARXIST? He never answered this question; instead, he wrote
several pages on how God “wreaks horrendous havoc on the rich.”24
Now, he has answered his own question. This is progress. It took
him only twenty years.

The New, Improved Version

Dr. Sider has admitted that he didn’t understand much about
economics in 1977. That was clear to Chilton and me when we
inally got around to reading his book in 1980. Now he has changed
his tune. In his new book, for example, he continues to call for a
“graduated tithe.” But he says this is strictly personal; he does not
mention the State.25 He assures us: “Certainly it is not a biblical
norm to be prescribed legalistically for others.”26 Throughout the
book, he calls for private Christian charity – exactly what Chilton

21. Sider, Rich Christians, p. xiii.

22. Ibid., pp. 182–83.
23. Sider, Rich Christians (1977), p. 72.
24. Ibid., p. 77. See Chilton, Productive Christians, p. 267.
25. Ibid., pp. 193–96.
26. Ibid., p. 193.
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 1003

had called for. He makes a few gratuitous genulections toward gov-

ernment intervention, but mainly in the most conventional areas,
27
such as public health matters and education – activities that the
typical Southern Baptist layman would agree with. Most revealing,
he has stripped his book of confrontational rhetoric against the free
market or in favor of big government. His rare negative rhetorical
lourishes are now directed against Marxism. This edition is marked
by academic caution. It is an apology rather than an apologetic.
Chilton’s arguments did not change Sider’s mind. By the time
Communism fell, making anti-capitalism passé, he had written two
revisions without even mentioning Chilton or his other free market
critics. Even now, in his third revised edition, he has provided not
one reference to Chilton’s book, and not one to me or this commen-
tary. The climate of opinion has not changed that much! It was not
logic or the Bible that changed Sider’s mind. It was the change in the
climate of secular academic opinion. He was not prepared to swim
upstream. Neo-evangelicals always swim downstream with the lib-
eral current, for liberals can impose academic sanctions.
I have been swimming upstream since I was 14 years old, when
I attended a lecture by the anti-Communist Fred Schwarz in 1956.
Bit by bit, inch by inch, I have seen the intellectual tide of opinion
turn – not 180 degrees, but at least 110. Even Schwarz was surprised
at how fast it turned after 1989.28 He had been swimming upstream
since the mid-1940’s. Swimming upstream is the price of overcoming
evil in an era in which evil is entrenched. It is the price of launching a
paradigm shift.
Sider’s earlier editions were subtitled, A Biblical Study. He has
now moved away from that sort of unacceptable positioning. He
now writes: “When the choice is communism or democratic capital-
ism, I support democratic government and market economics.” Not
quite. When the choice was between Communism and market eco-
nomics, he was not ready to attack Marxism, and he attacked the
free market with a vengeance. It was only after the academic world
was laughing at Marxists that he made his choice.

27. Ibid., p. 237.

28. Frederick Schwarz, M.D., Beating the Unbeatable Foe (Washington, D.C.: Regnery,
1996), ch. 38.
1004 DEUTERONOMY

He goes on to say, “That does not mean, however, that the Bible
prescribes either democracy or markets.”29 To argue, as I have and
Chilton did, that decentralized constitutional democracy and the
free market are exactly what the Bible prescribes, is just too
theonomic for Dr. Sider.30
Today, Ron Sider is closer to the biblical truth, but not on the
basis of the Bible, and not on the basis of economic logic, which is as
absent in his 1997 edition as it was in 1977.31 He dismisses my de-
fense of the free market32 as little more than an extension of Adam
Smith, whom he correctly identiies as an Enlightenment thinker.33
He refuses to tell his readers about this commentary or my public at-
tack on right-wing Enlightenment political theory.34 He does not
mention theonomy’s commitment to searching for judicially bind-
ing social blueprints in the Bible. He does not inform his readers
that free market economics as a discipline began, not with the
Enlightenment, but with the late-medieval scholastic school of
Salamanca, a fact that I have tried to get people to understand ever
since I published Murray Rothbard’s article on the topic in 1975.35
These scholastics used rationalism, not the Bible, to defend their
case; so did the late-seventeenth-century mercantilists;36 so did
Smith; so does the entire economics profession. So what? Does he
think that his favorite economists in 1977 – there were not many

29. Idem.
30. My position on biblical law and economics is stated in Chapter 50, above: “Biblical
moral law, when obeyed, produces a capitalist economic order. Socialism is anti-biblical.
Where biblical moral law is self-enforced, and biblical civil law is publicly enforced, capitalism
must develop. One reason why so many modern Christian college professors in the social
sciences are vocal in their opposition to biblical law is that they are deeply inluenced by
socialist economic thought. They recognize clearly that their socialist conclusions are
incompatible with biblical law, so they have abandoned biblical law.”
31. There is nothing on the price mechanism as a means of coordination, nothing on the
division of labor, nothing on entrepreneurship as the source of proits, etc.
32. See above, Appendix E.
33. Ibid., p. 92, note 5.
34. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for
Christian Economics, 1989).
35. Murray N. Rothbard, “Late Medieval Origins of Free Market Economic Thought,”
Journal of Christian Reconstruction, II (Summer 1975), pp. 62-75; Rothbard, Economic Thought
before Adam Smith: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (Brookield,
Vermont: Elgar, 1985), ch. 4.
36. William Letwin, The Origins of Scientiic Economics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T.
Press, 1963).
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 1005

cited in his footnotes – and non-economists were not also heirs of

the Enlightenment? As with his academic peers, and virtually the
entire Christian world, he hates theonomy, yet he implies that the
Enlightenment left an unreliable legacy. To which I ask, one more
time: If not biblical law, then what?
Sider has ajrmed what all of his academic peers ajrm: the Bi-
ble ofers no judicially binding economic, political, and social blue-
prints. But at least in this edition, we ind no traces of his original
inlammatory, anti-free market rhetoric – the outlook and rhetoric
that made his book a best-seller. There is also no hint at the exis-
tence of some as yet-unpublished plan that might make statism
work. He knows that statism will not work. He cannot tell us theo-
retically why this should be true. He shows no familiarity with
Mises’ 1920 article on the economic irrationality of socialist plan-
ning.37 That article was always the most important theoretical cri-
tique of socialism, which socialist economist Robert Heilbroner
inally admitted in 1990 was correct.38
Anti-Communism is pragmatic if it is not based on economic
theory, or biblical law, or some other moral grounds. Sider now re-
jects Communism as evil. Why did he wait so long? I contend that it
was because the climate of secular liberal opinion had not shifted.
Until secular pragmatists saw that the Communists could no longer
maintain their terrorist apparatus, they rejected all economic criti-
cisms of Communism that were based on its inherent irrationality
and/or its moral evil. Until that point, the West’s liberal media re-
jected all uncompromisingly anti-Communist authors and opinions
as biased and unscholarly.39
How much civil government is appropriate? We just do not
know, Sider says. “We need intensive study of how much and what
kind of government activity promotes both political freedom and
economic justice. Through painstaking analysis and careful experi-
mentation, we must discover how much government can work
within a basic market framework to empower the poor and restrain

37. Ludwig von Mises, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920), in
F. A. Hayek (ed.), Socialist Economic Planning (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1935] 1963),
ch. 3.
38. Robert Heilbroner, “After Communism,” The New Yorker (Sept. 10, 1990), p. 92.
39. Jean-Francois Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information
(New York: Random House, [1988] 1991).
1006 DEUTERONOMY

40
those aspects of today’s markets that are destructive.” Notice what
is the framework: markets, not government.
Guilt for poverty must now be shared internationally, perhaps
like foreign aid. “As we saw in chapter 7, North Americans and Eu-
ropeans are not to blame for all the poverty in the world today. Sin
is not just a White European phenomenon.”41
What of the efects of multinational corporations? “For the pur-
poses of this book, however, we do not have to know the answer to
42
the question of their overall impact.” Some of them do damage; oth-
ers do not. (This is sociology’s only known law: “some do; some
don’t.”) What of colonialism? “It would be simplistic, of course, to
suggest that the impact of colonialism and subsequent economic and
political relations with industrialized nations was entirely negative.
Among other things, literacy rates rose and health care improved.”43
This, from the man who wrote in the second edition, “It is now gener-
ally recognized by historians that the civilizations Europe discovered
were not less developed or underdeveloped in any sense” (pp.
124–25). He goes on: “It would be silly, of course, to depict colonial-
ism as the sole cause of present poverty. Wrong personal choices,
misguided cultural values, disasters and inadequate technology all
play a part.”44 They do, indeed – Chilton’s point in 1981. Well, then,
is there enough food being produced in the Third World today? Is
the Third World facing famine? Here, too, we just do not know. The
World Bank says there is no threat. Lester Brown – whose pessimistic
assessment was prominent in the 1977 edition – says there is a threat.
“The inal verdict? Non-specialists like you and me cannot be sure.”45
Here is what we can be sure of: this is not the Rich Christians that
sold 350,000 copies.
Sider ofers reworked versions of his old “institutionalized evil”
and jubilee year chapters, but his heart just isn’t in it. Reading the
1997 edition of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is like going to your
college class’s 20th reunion and running into the campus radical,
who is there mainly to sing the old songs. He cannot remember half

40. Ibid., p. 236.

41. Ibid., p. 228.
42. Ibid., p. 176.
43. Ibid., p. 135.
44. Ibid., p. 136.
45. Ibid., p. 165.
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 1007

of the words, but he can still hum most of the tunes. A good time will
be had by all – all 350,000.
It is a shame that David Chilton died a few weeks before the
new version of Sider’s book appeared. Because of the efects of his
irst heart attack, he could no longer remember most of what he had
read, even his own books. I can imagine what he would have said
about the 1997 edition. “This is pretty sloppy theology, and its eco-
nomics is really muddled, but it probably won’t hurt anything. At
least he calls for the tithe as morally binding.46 The good thing about
the book is that people will not be able to remember anything
unique about it. That will put them on my level. Still, I wonder who
this guy Sider is.”
Was.

Who Is the Targeted Audience?

Every author should decide who his targeted audience is before
he begins to write. He must also decide the time frame for this par-
ticular book’s inluence. Some books are tracts for the times. Others
are written for the long haul. Some are aimed at large numbers of
buyers. Others are aimed at opinion leaders.
For example, my commentary series has done well for a com-
mentary, i.e., all volumes are still in print,47 but none has sold as many
as 10,000 copies; only two have sold well enough to be reprinted. Yet
this commentary will still be read by some opinion-makers in a hun-
dred years. I say this in complete conidence. Why? Because pastors
are always looking for help in dealing with problem passages, and the
Pentateuch is illed with problem passages. Commentaries survive, in
contrast to best-selling Christian books on contemporary issues. Re-
call that prior to the late 1960’s, there were almost no books on con-
temporary Christian issues written by and for fundamentalists, and
very few for academic evangelicals. This, too, is an aspect of the cli-
mate of opinion.
One idea or slogan in a book may long outlast the sale of the
book, but who can successfully predict this? Not an author, surely.
Not his publisher, either. Think of Malthus’ formulation in his

46. Sider, Rich Christians, p. 204. This was Chilton’s position: Productive Christians,
pp. 52–56.
47. I thank God for donor-subsidized publishing.
1008 DEUTERONOMY

anonymous irst edition of Essay on Population (1798): humans in-

crease geometrically, while food supplies increase arithmetically.
The idea was silly, the evidence was nonexistent, and the author
dropped the phrase in subsequent editions. Nevertheless, it is the one
thing most people who remember Malthus remember about him.
In contrast, another suggestion by Malthus, rarely associated
with his name, was that nature produces huge numbers of ofspring
that perish. This idea was picked up six decades century later by an
unknown naturalist, Alfred Wallace, and applied in a wholly new
way: some of the survivors survive because of unique biological
traits, and these traits are passed on to their ofspring. This insight
became the basis of Wallace’s formulation of the concept of evolu-
tion through natural selection. He suggested this to Charles Darwin
in a letter. Darwin instantly saw that Wallace was about to beat him
to the punch. Darwin had seen the same passage in Malthus and
had reached the same conclusion, but he had hesitated for two de-
cades to publish his researches. Darwin then decided that joint
credit was better than no credit at all. He convinced Wallace to pub-
lish a jointly signed article in 1858. It had no inluence at all. A year
later, Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared. His publisher had not ex-
pected the book to sell well. His publisher was wrong. As it has
turned out, Wallace received none of the credit and is long forgotten
except among specialized historians. And all of this came as a result
of Parson Malthus’ observation about a factor in population dynam-
ics. So it goes in the world of publishing.
How can a book survive the free market’s competition?48 There
is ierce competition today in the oceans of new book titles that get
printed each year. The general rule is that a book that hits the best-seller
list rarely retains inluence. It is too much a product of its time, i.e., tied
too closely to the prevailing climate of opinion. It becomes a best-seller
because it is an expression of the prevailing views of the day. Even if it is
in opposition, it is within the dominant culture’s acceptable bound-
aries of public discourse.49 But any climate of opinion can and will

48. The book market is a free market. While college textbooks are subsidized indirectly by
State-funded tuition, rarely does anyone change a deeply felt opinion because of something
he read in a textbook. Nobody goes back to read his college textbooks (as distinguished from
intelligent monographs or classics assigned in upper division classes).
49. Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and William Bennett’s Book of Virtues are
recent examples of such opposition books: the irst, an eloquent defense of classical education
 The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider 1009

change dramatically from time to time. That is why we call it a cli-

mate. The best-sellers of one era are seldom read in the next, except
by historians who are trying to explain how such mediocre books
could have prospered. The fable about the hare and the tortoise ap-
plies well to books whose authors hope will change people’s opin-
ions and keep them changed. This thought comforts authors whose
books have not sold well.50
The trick here is keeping your book(s) in print. Slow sales kill
books, especially in an age in which inventory taxes place negative
sanctions on marginally proitable titles. The back list that was once
the bread and butter for publishers has been undermined by taxa-
tion policies. The advent of CD-ROMs that can be produced on de-
mand, and Internet Web sites that may some day prove proitable for
downloaded books, should help to keep book titles alive until their
day dawns (if ever). The bankruptcy and then collapse of the modern
welfare State will also help. That day is coming, and coming fast.51

Conclusion
I am writing for future generations of Christians that at long last
become fed up with the results of compromises with humanism,
whether right-wing or left-wing. I say to them: to the law and to the
testimony; trust and obey, for there’s no other way; you can’t beat
something with nothing. I say a lot of things. Given the length of this
book, I have said too much already. But this much I feel morally
compelled to say: over the last two decades, I have learned that it is
far safer to trust in the Bible than in the climate of opinion, espe-
cially tenured Christian academic opinion. Better to write and then
see one’s irst (and last) edition appear on a remaindered book dis-
count list than to become a best-selling author, only to publish a dis-
guised retraction two decades later with the belated admission:
“Well, it sounded good at the time.”

written for conservatives who have never had to trudge through that barren humanist ordeal;
the second, a compilation of rewritten children’s stories for grandmothers to give as
Christmas presents to public school children who would be bored stif by them if they ever
bothered to read the book, which is unlikely.
50. There is always the hope of becoming another Herman Melville, who quit writing
iction at age 38 because of low book sales. “Quit now, while you’re not ahead.”
51. The Year 2000 computer problem.
1010 DEUTERONOMY
 INDEX

INDEX
Aaron, 1, 16, 19, 891 prodigal son, 283
Abel, 100, 209, 576 promise to, xxvi
abortion, 177–78, 297, 362, 452, 453 rebellious son, 587
Abraham rendering judgment, 445–46
circumcision, 181 adiaphora, 252, 340, 887
conditional promise, xix–xx, xxvi, 97, 99, Adonijah, 674
326, 879 adoption
Eliezer, 288 Adam, 766
God’s name, 280 biblical sonship, 297
Promised Land, 184, 367 bondage &, 281
promises (3), 300–1, 304 circumcision, 118
Absalom, 492 citizenship, 496
accreditation, 93 imputation &, xxv
Achan, 548n, 677 inheritance &, 6
acropolis, 364 Israel, 280–81
Adam judicial sonship, xxiii
adoption, 766 most important, 766
authority, 279, 375 New Covenant, 289
common grace, 279 New Testament, 643
covenant, 160, 269-70 Rahab, Ruth, 765–66
covenant lawsuit, 375 replacement, 289
death, xxvii, 269 replaces levirate, 769
Eden (headquarters), 368 tribalism vs., 647
entropy, 193–95 younger brother, 209
excluded property, 509 Africa (famine), 980
family, 298 Agag, 331
genocide, 160 age of gold, 313
God’s pledge, 705 agnosticism, 893
imputation, xxiv agriculture, 307–16, 989
Jesus &, 283 Ahab, 166, 310, 374, 551
judgment by, 446 Ai, 861
legal status, 642 Akiba, 291
mercy to, 588 alchemy, 170
minority shareholder, 588 alcoholic, 915–16
naming, 279 aliens (see strangers)

1011
1012 DEUTERONOMY

alliance, 92 ascension
Amalek, 19, 160 church’s condition (O.T., N.T.), 369
Amalekites, 274, 302, 330–31 civilizational model, 232
American Scientific Affiliation, 92 curse &, 200–1
amillennialism, 314, 524–25, 835 eschatology, 369
Amish, 36–37, 718, 755 Great Commission, 205–6, 232, 338
Ammonites, 263, 267 linear history, 232
Amorites, xviii, 22, 52, 267, 270 social theory &, 200–1, 370–71, 886
Anakim, 257, 262 theological liberalism, 370
analogical knowledge, 780–81 victory in civilization, 232
ancient city, 166 Asia, 423
angels (stars &), 333 assimilation, 557–58, 561
animals Assyria, 105, 290, 850
clean, 392 astrology, 332
domesticated, 612, 624 astronomy, 310–11
lost, 608–10, 612–14 atheism, 340
offspring in wild, 623–24 Athenians, 330
sacrifices, 260–61 atonement, 182–83, 274, 865–66
unowned, 624–25 attitudes, 983, 988
animism, 509 auction, 967–69
animism’s god, 14 auction process, 967–69
annihilation, 332, 346 authority
ant, 104 complexity &, 34–36
antinomianism costs, 740
annulment of Mosaic law, 733 delegated, Chap. 3, 49
anti-sanctions, 459, 733 God’s, 279
evangelicalism, 800 household, 711
Gladwin, John, 750 judicial, 31
hermeneutics, 748–49 locus of, 34–35
intrusion by God, 99–100 naming, 279
anti-poaching laws, 628 transfer of, 65
apprenticeship, 145, 146, 148 autonomy
Arad, 246 God’s attitude, 241
Aristotle, 471, 663–64 idolatry &, 157, 242
Ark of the Covenant, 161, 496, 497–98, maximization, 744
508–9, 539, 867 natural law &, 90
army neutrality &, 341
citizenship &, 496, 561–62 quest for power, 240
cowardice, 543 temptation, 882, 959
cross-boundary law, 537 value free economics, 903
discipline, 541 Aztecs, 363
fearful men, 539
holy warriors, 533–34 Baal, 175, 551
mercenaries, 539–40 Baal’s name, 363
running away, 540–41 Babel, 936
shame, 543 Babylon, 259, 290
small, 539 Bahnsen, Greg, 887–88
thinned ranks, 538–40, 543 balance of trade, 422
 Index 1013

Banfield, Edward, 41 Bob Jones University, 91

Bank of England, 805 bondage (jubilee), 424
banking, iv, 715–19, 803–6 bondservant (liberation), 119, 423–26
baptism Booths (feast of), 399, 416, 438, 530, 865,
clothing, 646, 648 867
inclusion, 292 borders, 655–57, 701
owner’s mark, 615, 621 boredom, 935
Baptists, 129, 590n Boulding, Kenneth, 901
Bar Kochba, 82–83, 291 boundaries
Barthianism, 371n gates, 119
baseball, 781 God’s field, 729
Basques, 81 home, 713
bastardy, 88–89, 134, 210 Israel’s, 58
Bathsheba, 674, 675 judicial (king), 489–90
battle trumpets, 274 Leviticus, 639
battlefield formation, 860 magic, 376
Bauer, P.T., 983, 998 marital (king), 487–89
beasts of the field, 324, 326 military (king), 485–86
Beelzebub, 167 nations’, 60–61
bell-shaped curve (wealth), 828, 830 original distribution, 505
Berlin Wall, 790 private property, 59, 63
Berra, Yogi, 264 standards, 787
bestiality, 748 tree (garden), 682, 820
Bethlehem, 334 violation, 388
Bible & oath, 523 walls, 566–67
Bible & textbooks, iii Boy Scouts, 147
Bible as fragments, 5, 89–90 branding, 614, 621
Bible Presbyterian Church, 622n brass, 214
biblical law, 753–56 bread, 223, 351, 688, 710, 711
bicycle thieves, 519 breadwinner, 711
bidding, 967–68 breakdown, iv
Big Bang, 884 bribes, 40, 292–93, 451, 457
bird, 623–24 bride price, 580
birthright, 25 British Empire, 555n
Bismarck, Otto, 480 building codes, 251
bitter herbs, 118 Bureau of Standards, 787
black power, 134n bureaucracy, 308–10, 491, 632
blemished firstlings, 430 burial, 510–11
blessings Burke, Edmund, 354, 356
compound, 228 burnt offerings, 350
covenant, 227 Bury, J.B., 230
objective, 818 Bush, George, vii
temptation, 961 butterflies, 163, 165
blood, 100, 629 butterfly effect, 163n
blood avenger, 761 buyers (competition), 788
blueprints, 750–52
boarding school, 322 Caesar, 926–27
Boaz, 762–68 Cain, 40, 100, 209, 576
1014 DEUTERONOMY

Calabresi, Guido, 635 confirms the covenant, 104, 846

calculus, 907 land law &, 245, 847
Caleb, xiii, 48, 52 Moses prophesied, 96, 101–2, 846, 848
calendar, 309–10, 415, 784 partial disinheritance, 101, 248, 255
Calvin, John, 395 punishment fits crime, 96
Calvinism, 99, 187, 934 restoration, 848
Calvinists, 126, 129, 879–80, 934 sanction, 106, 846
Canaan carburetor, 193
annihilation, 335 cards, 193
common grace, 170 Carthage, 80
covenantal law, 269 case law, 641
demons, 166 casuistry, 448, 451, 833
disinherited, 548 causation, 169, 826
division of labor, 171, 179 celebration (costly), 442
excluded gods, 683 census, 825–26
gods defeated, 371–72 centralization (taxation), 491
gods of, 358, 362–65, 683, 685 chance, 880
groves, 337, 339 chariots, 103, 265, 486, 538
homes, 630 charitable loan (see loan: charitable)
immoral, 257–58, 335 charity
inheritance/disinheritance, 168–72 conditional, 739–40
local gods, 329, 338 foreign aid, 976
no mercy, 335–36 gleaning, 733
polytheistic, 348–49 Sanger vs., 178
progressive degeneracy, 269 Sider vs., 985
warfare, 335 voluntary, 420, 615, 976
Canaanites chastening, 208–10
covenant law, 269–70 chemistry, 170
destruction, 345–46 Chemosh, 363
disinheritance, 684 children (teaching), 319–21
disinherited sons, 209, 268 Chilton, David, 993, 994, 998
extra time, 22 China, 79, 836–37
forfeited inheritance, 21 choice, 907
losers, 276 Christ (legal title), 368
magic, 169 Christendom
wicked, 266–68 ideal of, 135, 340
Canada, 81 productivity, 173
capital rejected, iii, 344, 371, 833
accumulation, 422 tool of dominion (law), ii
components of, 958 Christian Coalition, x, 253
derivative, 958 Christian Reconstruction, vi–viii
growth, 24, 30 Christian school, 321–23
per capita, 918 church
capital punishment, 42–43, 460, 462–63, attendance, 339
590, 593 bonds, 426–27
capitalism (division of labor), 141, 611 compound growth, 24
captivity defeat?, 369–70
conditional inheritance, 249 disinheritance (Darwinism), 366
 Index 1015

eschatology of victory, 370 class, 41, 436–37

God’s son, 851 classical education, 231, 929–30
heir of promise, 28 classroom, 321
international, 173 climate of opinion, 1003
Israel of God, 851 Clinton, President, vi
lending prohibition, 429 cloak, 425, 428, 715
new information, 173 clocks, 784
superior authority, 867 clothing, 641, 645–46
title &, 495 Club of Rome, 984, 985, 987
tortoise (hare), 28 collateral, 703, 706, 712, 714
victory, 128–29 colleges, 90
war &, 275 Colson, Charles, 341, 344, 470
church & state, 524–26, 867 (see also Columbia University, 946
separation) commandments, 289
churches (debt), 427 commentaries, 5
circumcision commerce, 389–91
adoption, 118 committee, 50, 51, 53, 57
boundary of blood, 642 common confession, 342
conditional promise, 127, 181 common grace
confession &, 878 Adam, 279
covenant renewal (Gilgal), 11, 16 Canaan, 170
curse, 287 denial of, 272–73
ethical, 286, 295 healing, 337
Gilgal, 1, 210, 285–86 inheritance &, 23–24
heart, 286, 319 meal to come, 689
inheritance of land, 181–83, 210, 879 miracles (wilderness), 190
king, 485 natural law &, 271–73
oath-sign, 182, 210, 287 social theory, 272
obedience &, 287 stranger, 434
Passover &, 112 visible blessings, 839
promise, 127 wealth, 23
regeneration sign, 642 wilderness miracles, 190
sanctions, 287–88, 879 commons, 624–27
siege, 551, 565, 567 commentaries (Bible), 1007
cities (Levitical), 496, 497 Communism, 354–55, 792, 923 (see also
citizenship Marxism)
adoption, 496 Communist Party, 655
army eligibility, 533, 535 comparative religion, 364
biblical, 473–74 competition, 788–89, 792, 967
circumcision, 485 complexity, 34–36
covenantal, 484–85 compound growth
holy army, 496 cessation of, 28–29, 236
judgeship, 473–74 covenant renewal, 881–84
oath, 211, 296–97 covenantal continuity, 843–44
stranger, 435, 439 eschatology, 235–36, 830
City College of New York, 946 inheritance, 24
civil law (negative sanctions only), 440, 650 Israel, 136
Civil War, 275 limits, 87–88, 233, 235
1016 DEUTERONOMY

New Testament, 829–30 predictability, 465, 672, 679

sin, 22 reduced costs, 679
slow but sure, 27, 28, 66–67, 236 social, 678–79
victory, 27–29 State &, 678
computer chips, 136–37, 234 vow as model, 672
concubine, 580 contumacy, 597
conditional promises, 879–80 cooperation, 680–81
conditionality, 98–100 copper, 214
confederacy, 275 corn, 688
confession (incorporation), 357 corporation, 54
confidence, 434 cosmic language, 259
conquest cosmic personalism, 165, 920, 921
covenant &, 131 cosmos, 165–67
covenantal, 305 costs
earth, 228 counting, 105–7, 263–65
God’s strategy, 48–49 evil estimates, 274
land law, 18, 65 feasts, 353
language, 859 holiness, 392
legal title, 248–29 production, 464–66
model for history, 327 counsellors, 50–51, 53–54, 55, 57
Old Covenant, 367 counterfeiting, 793
population growth &, 184 courage, 69–71, 126, Chap. 71
preaching, 326 court, 34, 38, 75, 447, 461–63, 516, 519,
representative, 212 522–23, 795
conscience, 75 covenant
conscription, 532–33, 536, 544 Adam’s, 111
conspiracy, 520–51 Adamic, 269–70, 298
consumer, 54–56 blessings, 227, 442
consumer’s sovereignty, 587–88m 785n broken, 848
continuity church history, 366
compound growth, 843–44 churches’ rejection, 158
conquest, 305 civil (see oath: civil)
covenantal, 304, 324, 843–44 conditionality, 98–100, 879
dominion, 305 confessional, 111
eternity, 338 conquest, 305
exodus generation rejects, 303 conquest &, 131
growth, 305 continuity, 88, 94, 111, 118, 314, 324,
inheritance, 304, 338 843–44
messianic prophecy, 248 contract &, 678
negative sanctions, 822 corporate, 914
oath, 677 curses, 821–23
sanctions, 817 denial, 831
contract discipline, 324
cooperation &, 680–81 economic growth, 218, 225, 227–28
covenant &, 28, 678 education, 150–52
morally valid, 966 eschatological, 312, 366, 886
murder, 712 ethical-judicial, 296
parable of vineyard, 966 faithfulness, 812
 Index 1017

growth, 313 cults, 793

Horeb, 84 cultural echo, 134
integrated system, 834 cultural evolution, 76, 78
land and more, 848 cultural wedge, 979
lawsuit, 151, 248, 374 cup of iniquity, 271–72
model, xvii, 3, 150–52, 287–88, 875–76 curriculum, 93
new, 115 curse (invocation), 822–23
oath, 111, 287, 300 curves and points, 907
positive feedback, 960 cycle (Great Reversal), 229
progressive clarity, 831–32 cycle of poverty, 828
prosperity, 841–45 cycle of wealth, 828
ratification, 475, 845 cyclical nature, 227
redemption, 281 cyclical time, 844
renewal (see covenant renewal)
representation, 475–76 Daniel, 674
sanctions, 127 Darius, 674
social theory &, 185–86 Darwin, Charles, 91, 870–71, 905, 1008
stipulations, 821 Darwin, Erasmus, 905
ultimate resource, 215 Darwinism
United States Constitution, 470 academic victory, 199–201
witness, 100 cosmic discontinuity, 196–97
see also contract entropy argument, 195–98
covenant-breaking, 25–28, 30, 187 natural law, 526, 870–71
covenant-keeping, 25, 67, 129–30, 139, 215, social, 795
326–27, 831 triumph, 366
covenant lawsuit (song of Moses), 874–76 Dothan, 247, 301
covenant renewal daughters, 580–83, 606, 738–39
Abraham’s family: entrance into, 118, 130 David, 283, 686, 687
compound growth, 881–84 day of the Lord, 258–59, 262, 267, 276
Deuteronomy, 878 death, 13, 162, 206, 269–70, 856
Gilgal, 1, 11, 16 Deborah, 482, 485
inter-generational, 111 Deborah’s song, 333, 532
mountain oath, 820–21 debt
pre-conquest, 841, 843 avoidance, 723
reading the law, 16, 871 charitable loan (see loan: charitable)
third-year oath, 815, 817 collateral, 706
covenant theology, 129–30, 435–36, 884 covenant-breakers, 25
covenantal forgetfulness, 216–222, 245, 302 credit &, 723
covetousness, 120 economic growth, 88
cowardice, 543 employer to worker, 721–22
creation, xiv, 15 Esau, 25
creativity, 215, 219 free men, 723
Cree Indians, 81 hierarchy, 421
creeds, 469 home’s boundaries, 713
crime, 42–43, 593–94, 601, 734 inescapable, 722–24, 727
criminal class, 600, 602, 605 multiple, 428, 715–18
Cromwell, Oliver, 472 pledge, 705–7, 718–19
crumbs, 272 present-oriented, 25
1018 DEUTERONOMY

repayment, 429 covenant-breakers, 25–26

rest, 415 definitive (Canaan), 211
servitude, 649 dispersion, 848
subordination, 658 dissipation, 67
to God, 185, 744 father’s authority, 589
worker to employer, 722 final, 548
year of release, 866 gods of Canaan, 358, 359
Decalogue, 77–78, 121 imputed, 211
decay, 774 inescapable concept, 48
decentralization, 35, 486 irreversible (execution), 589–90, 592
decreasing returns, 234 Jewish sons, 939
decree, 99, 671, 879 joint sovereignty, 589
defeatism, 340 law &, 153
deism’s god, 14 military action, 546
delegation, 33 New Covenant era, 546
deliverance (Israel’s), 17 progressive, 211
democracy (Christians’ faith in), iii rebellious son, 589
democratic capitalism, 1001 regeneration, 546
demons, 163, 164, 166–67 reversible (excommunication), 589
Deuteronomy Satan, 359
covenant renewal, 878 State, 584–85
eschatological, 689 total (genocide), 467
free market &, xxiii tribute, 546
future-orientation, 2 warfare, 560
lays down the law, i dispensationalism, 8–12, 260–61
name of book, 1 dispersion, 851
postmillennial, 886 disputes, 34
themes, xiii, xviii, xxiii, xxx division of labor
“these words”, 1 apprenticeship &, 146
unknown book, i banking &, iv, 699, 804
Dewey, John, 323 Canaan’s, 171, 179
diaspora, 152, 413 capital investment &, 707–8
Diehl, William, xxviii–xxix, 751 committee, 51
diet, 223, 978–79 computers, 699
dietary laws decentralization, 35
annulled in N.T., 128 genocide vs., 168
captives/slaves, 558 good habits, 436
health?, 386 immigration &, 175
resident aliens, 387 means of payment, 717
Rushdoony, vii pagan gods/men, 239
(see also meat) predictable law, 449
diminishing returns, 234 predictability, 672
discoveries (spread of), 173 wealth, 141
disinheritance women employees, 581–82
annihilation, 546 divorce, 128
captivity, 248, 255, 290 Dolan, Edwin, 895
church (Darwinism), 366 dominion
cosmic language, 259 costs of, 273
 Index 1019

economic growth, 854–55 normative, 315

Israel’s, 72, 853 rate of, 141–42, 829
long life, 853 sanctions, 441
money-lending, 421–23 temptation (autonomy), 882
social theory, 273 economic planning, 54, 56
dominion covenant economic pragmatism, 355
definition of man, xiv, 703 economics
eschatology, 244 agnosticism, 28, 893
hierarchical, 564, 623, 703 autonomy, 28
multiplication, 228, 233 biblical, 872–73
trees, 564 blueprint, 965
donkey, 432, 644 dualism = objective/subjective, 917–19
doorposts, 318, 319 equilibrium, 894, 900, 901
dowry, 580–81, 582 ethics rejected, 901
draft (see conscription) formulas, 892, 901, 905
drug addiction, 252 humanist, xiv, 884–85
drugs, 252, 603 magician’s quest, 892
drunkenness, 252, 590, 591–92, 597 mathematics, 901–2
dualism, 74–75, 90, 92, 186, 917–19, 941 methodological covenantalism, 920–21
Duhem, Pierre, 231–322 methodological holism, 918–19
Durocher, Leo, 273n methodological individualism, 917–18
Dutch, 321 methodological subjectivism, 915
neutrality, 963
ear, 426 perfect knowledge (see omniscience)
earnest, 548–49 reductionism, 176
earthquakes, 251 scarcity, xiv–xvi
East Germany, 339 subjectivism, 902–4
Eastern mysticism, 241 value-free, 901–2, 903, 912
echo effect, 134 welfare, 911
ecology, 569–71 Edelstein, Ludwig, 231
economic growth Eden, 368, 682
attitudes, 135 Edom, 59
biblical, 313–16 education
compounding, 170, 829 accreditation, 93, 929–30
confession, 829 apprenticeship, 145, 146
covenant-keeper, 67 bureaucratic, 148
covenant-keeping, 242, 842 certification, 92, 929
covenantal, 218, 225, 227, 882–83 Christian, 93–94
cumulative, 829 classical, 929
Deuteronomy, 854, 882, 958 compulsory, 322
division of labor, 170 covenant model, 50–52, 324
dominion, 854–55 covenantal continuity, 89
ethical imperative, 243, 315, 883 daughters, 580–82
festivals, 441 dowry, 580–82
finitude, 883 Dutch, 322
ghetto, 135 feminized, 145–50
God’s law, 960 graduate school, 148
hatred of, 854–55, 885 home schooling, 149–50
1020 DEUTERONOMY

humanist indoctrination, 322–23 defined, 191–92

illegal drugs, 603–4 Eden, 193, 195
Julian the Apostate, 929 ethics &, 199
Latin, 145–46 Fall, 194
modern, 145 pessimillennialism &, 200–1
myth of neutrality, 148–49, 322–23 social, 198–204
tax funded, ix envy, 294, 295, 842, 911–12
efficiency, 731–32, 699, 730–31, 903, 961–62 Ephraim, 578
Egypt epistemological self-consciousness, 836
autonomy, 120 equilibrium, 894
bureaucracy, 309, 379 equinoxes, 230
chariots, 486 Esau, 25, 58, 209, 267, 576, 577, 968
hydraulic economy, 308–10 eschatology
Joseph, 293 Christendom, 885
sabbath, 119–20 compound growth, 830–31
slavery, 378–79 covenant, 366
spoils of, 59–60, 467 covenant theology &, 884
Egypt’s sons, 58, 467, 732 dominion covenant, 244
election, 126 down payment in history, 327
electricity, 581 economists vs., 885
Eli, 149 fifth great debate, 366
Eliab, 283 fundamentalism, 933–34
Eliezer, 288 headquarters, 368
Elijah, 175, 374, 382 inheritance &, 301–2, 326, 367, 368
Elisha, 487, 551 natural law theory, 802
emigration, 413, 790 no neutrality, 340
empire politics &, 934
avoided coasts, 63 sanctions, 327
centralization, 486 seed line, 367
evangelism &, 559–60, 561 social theory &, 7–8
festivals vs., 559 theonomy, xxvii, 129
Israel in bondage, 103 three views of, xix
legal barriers, 552 Establishment, xi, 374
military exemption vs., 534–35 eternity, 226
offensive military, 486 ethical dualism, 74–75
plural idols, 555 (see pantheon) ethical self-consciousness, 836
pluralism, 561 ethics
politics as divine, 936 economic analysis &, 961–65
syncretism, 156, 174, 332, 363, entropy &, 199
Appendix C envy &, 912
warfare, 155–56 primacy, 827
employer (delayed wages), 721–22 ritual &, 286
England, 141 social analysis, 965
Enlightenment, 470, 473, 526, 1005 eunuch, 643
entitlements, 615, 744 evangelicals, 90–91
entrepreneurship, 619–20, 668, 862–63, 919n evangelism (see law: evangelism)
entropy evil, 202
cursed, 194–95 evolutionism, 365–66
 Index 1021

excommunication (disinheritance), 589, 594, prelude to, 688

596 sabbatical year, 419
execution, 42–43, 589–90, 594–96 stranger, 439
exercise mandated (festivals), 442–44 temple, 414
Exodus, 15–16, 122, 704 tribal vs. national, 349
experimentation, 85 federalism, 524, 789
exponential curve, 233, 235, 883 Federalist, 51, 177
exports, 422 festivals, 399, 414, 559
eye for eye (see lex talionis) (see also feasts)
field (meaning of), 643
face to face (Moses/God), 109–110 final judgment
facts’ interpretation, 264 Darwinism, 197–98
fads, 90, 994, 1000 genocide, 159
family humanist economic theory, 884
Adamic, 298 inheritance, 327
capital, 597–98 limit to growth, 26
covenant, 297–98, 598 final sovereignty, 794
de-capitalized, 586 finders, keepers, 610
landmarks, 512–13 fines, 786, 798–99
name, 764, 765–68 finitude, 233, 235, 243, 883
State, 584 Finn, Huckleberry, 147
toleration by, 598 fire, 336, 627n
welfare, 991 fire codes, 636
famine, 695–97, 980 firstborn, 574, 760
fat, 443–44 firstborn animals, 430–35
fate, 332 firstborn son, 209, 283, 431, 575–79,
fear 585–86, 770
faithfulness, 285 Firstfruits
inevitable concept, 40–41 deliverance of Israel, 808
military exemption, 532 economics of, 530
nature, 398–99 public confession, 809
warrior, 539–43 retroactive thankfulness, 809–10
feasts flag, 343
blessings of God, 441–42, 688 flanks, 860
by invitation only, 411 flowers, 193
central location, 399, 400, 414 food laws
cost, 441 barrier to entry, 393
costs of attending, 810 ecclesiastical, 396
economic demand, 403 health, 394
eschatological, 311 land laws, 393
exercise, 442–43 land’s holiness, 394
foreign conquest, 552–53 food prices, 140
land laws, 438 foreign aid, 421, 974–76
liturgy of thanksgiving, 813 foreigners, 61–63, 73
marriage supper of the lamb, 689 forest fires, 627n
name, 596 forgeries, 2, 82, 121
national, 35, 53, 438–42 forgetfulness (see covenantal forgetfulness)
peace, land, bread, 351 formulas, 891–92, 901, 906
1022 DEUTERONOMY

fourth generation, xix–xx, xxii, 20, 22, 49, partial, 167

113–14, 130–31, 181–83 gentiles, 283, 286, 289, 296
fractional reserves, 715–18 geometry, 172
Franklin, Benjamin, 154 Germany, 176
free lunches, 741 ghetto, 135, 147, 328, 930
free market ghettos, 749–50
auction, 967–69 giants, 53, 87, 262–63, 267
biblical, xxviii, 956–92 Gibeonites, 338–39, 675, 676, 677, 881
Deuteronomy &, xxviii Gideon, 540
multiple goals, 55 Gilder, George, 233n, 234
open entry, 797–98 Gilgal, 1, 210, 285
Pentateuch, xxix Gill, John, 403n
free society, 296 Gish, Art, 751–52
frontal assault, 860 Gladwin, John, 750–51
frontlets, 317 gleaning
fugitive slave law (U.S.), 656n agriculture only, 735, 742
future-orientation, 106, 435–37, 843–45 conditions, 741
ecclesiastical, 735–36
Gaia, 100 fallen man, 742
Galbraith, J.K., 901 hard work, 737–38
Gamaliel, 291 harvester’s returns, 736
gang, 148, 601 jubilee laws, 741–42
garden of Eden, 193–96 land law, 730
gates, 119, 650 lessons, 743
Gates, Bill, 217 liberation, 736
Gates, Frederick, 93 localism, 738–40
Geisler, Norman, 801–2 morally compulsory, 733–35
General Education Board, 93 manna, 735
General Will, 354 New Covenant, 743
generation-skipping, 133 no subsidy for evil, 739–40
generations, 24, 26 training, 742
Genesis, 365 tribalism, 738
genocide unemployment insurance, 736
Amalek, 160 welfare State vs., 742
disinheritance, xviii, 5, 6, 159–60 workfare, 737
division of labor &, 168 gluttony, 252, 442–43, 590, 591–92, 597
economic inheritance, 345–46 God
final judgment &, 159, 548 adopter, 280–81
geography vs., 938 animism, 14
Hormah, 160 authority (dual), 279
idolatry, 345–46 autonomy, 241
incomplete, 246 capricious?, 828
intermarriage, 938 court, 461
Jericho, 160, 467 creator, 122, 285
jubilee law, 995 decentralization, 35
magic &, 166 decree, 98, 671, 879, 920
moral necessity, xviii, 548 deism, 14
one-time event, xxix, 346–47, 548 deliverer, 226
 Index 1023

disinherit rival gods, 358 Goliath, 262

doctrine of, 365 good life, 709–10
fear of, 39, 40, 84, 143, 165, 285, 300 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 355, 1000
giver, 221 grace
historical declaration, 16 law &, 112, 183, 184–85, 973
honor of, 278 merited, 183
house builder, 531 normal events, 190
imputing value, 904–6 precedes law, 184–85, 205, 360
Israel’s inheritance, 280 sin &, 186
Israel’s owner, 277 theme (3), xxiii
jealous, 96, 247 wrath &, 359–60
judge, 39, 451, 460, 514 grammar, 169
imputing agent (value), 904–5 grandparents, 88, 133–34
king of the covenant, 841 grapes, 688
kingdom grant, 865 grasshopper, 104
lawgiver, 72, 125 graves, 510–11
name, 757 Great Commission
name on Israelites, 279–81, 759 ascension, 201, 205–6, 338, 886
objective/subjective value, 904 civil government, 525
omniscience, 47, 920 conquest, 228
owner, 58, 285, 504–5, 588, 608–9 disciple the nations, 324
owner of Israel, 348 fulfilled in history, 206
paid first, 430 holy land &, 393–94
presence, 844 ninety percent, 315–16
plural, 348–49 pessimillennialism, 200–1
provider, 221 reclamation project, 547
Red Sea &, 122 Great Depression, 133
reputation of, 278 Great Reversal, 229, 836
residence, 509, 511 Great Tribulation, 342
sanctions-bringer, 15, 17, 245, 814, 824, Great Year, 231, 311, 313
858 Greece, 227, 510
sovereign, 300 Greeks (cyclical history), 230
sovereignty, 165, 336, 670, 920 Gregory VII, 366
strategist, 56 Gresham’s Law, 793–94
tree’s owner, 588 grocer, 693–95
universal, 76, 846–47 groves, 337, 339
vetoing, 52 growth, 24–27, 235, 829–30, 855, 881
whose side?, 274–75 Gwartney, James, 895
wiser than, 750
witness, 514, 528 habits, 436
word of (see word of God) Hagar, 99
worship, 373 Harrod, Roy, 910
gods of modernism, 157 Harvard University, 946
gods’ names, 172–73 harvester, 736
gold, 488, 489n hay fever, 195
gold mine, 295–96, 665 Hayek
golden age, 231, 313 career, 790n
golden calf, 268, 280, 283, 284 complexity, 35
1024 DEUTERONOMY

legal predictability, 450, 794–95 holy wastefulness, 399

rule of law, 450 home, 531
victimless crimes, 251 homosexuality, 174
headquarters, 367 honesty, 154
healing, 200, 337 Hong Kong, 215, 217, 219, 220
health, 23, 386, 394 Horeb, 18, 84, 108
hear, 144 Hormah, 160, 246, 274
hearing, 85–87, 158, 264–65 hormah, 547
heat death, 137, 191–92, 884 horses, v, 103, 485–86
heat loss, 191–92 Hughes, Archibald, 314
heaven and earth, 100, 101 human action, 99
Heilbroner, Robert, 899, 901n human sacrifice, 361
heir, 66–68, 182, 764 humanism
hell, 40, 250 god of (3), 948
Hellenism, 155, 174, 364, 377 kingdom, 932
Henry IV, 366 man’s sovereignty, 959
hermeneutics marriage covenant, 940
antinomian, 748–49 seducer, 940
biblical law, 753–56 humanist-pietist alliance, 252–53
continuity, 754 Hur, 19
discontinuity, 639–40 Hutt, W.H., 587, 619
goals, 639–40 Hutterites, 718 (see also Amish)
maximal, 747 Huyghe, Patrick, 79
narrow>broad, 660 hybridization, 640n
Herod, 674–75 hydraulic economics, 309
Hesiod, 960n
Hezekiah, 105 Ice, Tommy, 11, 255, 481
hidden treasure, 617–20 ideas, 76
hierarchy ideological kidnapping, 322
civil, 19 idle resources, 619–20
debt, 421–22 idolatry
dominion covenant, 564 ancient & modern, 365
judgment, 447–48 Canaan, 103, 163
judicial, 31 captivity as judgment, 107
lender over debtor, 422 classical politics, 926
multiple, 35 continuity of being, 238–39
parental, 20 death, 856
revelation, 448 demons, 163
stewardship &, 18 Hellenism, 377
stoning, 447 immigration &, 174
higher critics, 2–5, 121 Jeroboam, 349–50
history, 153, 161, 227, 228, 310–12, 834–35, judicial representation, 155, 163, 166,
844–45 167, 238
holidays, 415 maximization, 737
holiness, 387–89, 392 military defeat, 155–56
holy army, (see army) nature & history, 377
holy of holies, 388, 496 pantheon, 555, 923
Holy Spirit, 832 post-exilic, 103, 105
 Index 1025

slave’s escape, 652–53 Egypt, 467

something for nothing, 240 eschatology, 301–2, 326, 367, 368
thorns in eyes, 168 ethical, 325
transcendence, 377 extension of, 876
wealth &, 856 family kinship, 762
illegal drugs, 252, 603 father’s authority, 585
illegitimacy, 134 final judgment, 327
immigrants, 174, 293, 294n, 301–2 firstborn, 574–86
immigration, 175, 297, 557–58, 656, 702, four factors, 856
789, 791 genocide, 345–46
imputation gentiles, 249
Adam or Christ, 188 God’s sanctions &, 6, 66
grace & good works, xxiv grace &, xxiii–xxiv
judicial name, 867 grandchildren, 468
kingdoms, xxiv Greek world, xxiii
name, 767 Israel as God’s, 277
perfection, 188 Jesus’ heirs, 768
righteousness, 126 land, 102, 248
Seed of Israel, 759–60 law, 95, 248, 876, 877, 878
incorporation, 352–53, 357 law’s sanctions, 314, 452
indexes, 909, 913 legal status, 643
individualism, 532 (see also methodological Levites, 494–503
individualism) linear history, 229
indulgences, 366 literacy, 580–81
inefficiency, 730 loss of, 69
inflation, 508 maintenance, 180, 531
information, 785–86, 968 meek, 886
inheritance money, 58
adoption &, xxiii, 6 name, 767
blood-line, 296 neutrality &, 173
Canaan, 168–72, 337, 631 oath, 182, 296
circumcision &, 181–83 obedience/assigning, 182
common grace &, 23–24 oppressed, 732
compound, 228 outside the land, 847
conditional (Canaan), 249 permanent, 314
confession (Joshua), 68 predestination &, xxiii
confession of faith, 769 predictable, 186
corporate, 228–30 primary, 643, 876
costs of festivals, 810 progressive, 326
covenant renewal &, 111 promise/granting, 182
covenantal, 304, 757 proportionality, 583
daughters, 580, 642–43 rebellious son, 580
definitive, 326 righteousness, 732
delayed, 20 roof law, 637
dissipated, 87 Rushdoony, 574–75, 988–89
double portion, 574–86 Ruth, 762–65
earth, 130 sabbath, 122
ecology, 669–71 sanctions &, 5–7, 66, 325, 454
1026 DEUTERONOMY

secured, 6 forgiveness, 246

separation (geographical), 494 frontal assault, 860–61
slavery &, 281 God’s inheritance, 277–78
strangers, 249 God’s name on, 278–81, 759
theft vs., 507 God’s reputation, 278, 759
tribal, 642 God’s son, 208–210, 225, 279–81, 759,
two methods, 6 850
verbal, 84 grace to wrath, 359–60
war brides, 575 holy nation, 509
younger son, 283 idolatry, 103, 105, 107, 173
injustice as theft, 777–78 immigration, 295–96
intellectuals, 355 judicial status of, 394–95
interest, 389, 421, 507, 664–66 law as common ground, 868
intermarriage, 950–54 localism, 348
International Bureau of Standards, 787 lost sheep, 613
interpersonal comparisons, 907, 917 mediatorial status, 281
intuition, 779–83 military defeat, 335
investment, 28 money-lending, 421–23
Isaac, 99, 687 nation, 118
Isaac’s wells, 294 oath, 118, 357
Ishmael, 576 open borders, 175, 295–96
Islam, 176, 365, 656 owned by God, 277
Israel plurality, 348
Adam’s curse, 225 political dependence, 103
adopted, 225, 280–81 post-exilic, 103, 363
Amalek &, 160 pre-eminence through law, 72
apostasy, 368–69 rebellion prophesied, 874
Ark of Covenant, 353 remnant, 248, 249
authority, 72 sacred fire, 336
barriers to empire, 552 sacred space (Ark), 508
calendar, 309–10 sacrificed meals, 349
captivity, 101–2, 104, 106 sanctuary, 653, 800
centrality of worship, 349 seed, 759 (see also seeds)
chastened by God, 207 segregated tribes, 641–42
common confession, 353, 357 slavery, 117–18, 281
common law, 868 State of (1948), 390, 848
cutting off, 851 Supreme Court, 460–76
death sentence, 527 trade, 422–25
defeat in history, 369 tribute, 102
diaspora, 152 under God, 866–68
disinherited in AD 70, 281, 732 unrighteousness, 266–68
doubted God’s promise, 167 urbanization, 739
Eden, 413 voluntarism, 63
England &, 141 welfare society, 223
evangelism, 560 Israelites
exile, 509–10 bondage, 423–24
false testimony, 527 circumcision, xxvi
first born son, 732 diaspora, 413
 Index 1027

disinheritance, 409 City College of New York, 946

fourth generation (see fourth generation) Columbia University, 946
holy, 388, 389 discrimination against, 942, 944–45
inheritance, xxvi emigration, 943
lack of faith, 20 ghettos, 941, 954
non-confrontation, 48 gods of modernism, 932
priests to nations, 389 Harvard University, 946
strategy, 57 intelligence, 946–47
third generation (see third generation) intermarriage, 950–54
trading nation, 62 liberals, 949
urban, 409, 412–13 minority, 942
wandering, 22 Napoleonic Wars, 941
Italy, 339 price of success, 947
pursuit of wealth, 945
Jacob, 25, 312, 576, 577, 578, 687 rival modern gods, 945–46
Jaki, Stanley, 230 seduction vs. Threat, 938
James, 182 State &, 932
Japan, 423 success, 933
Japanese pottery, 79 Job, 811–12
Jefferson, Thomas, 698 John the Baptist, 674–75
Jericho, 156, 547, 548 Jonah, 374, 880
Jeroboam, 349–50 Jonathan, 686
Jerusalem (siege), 259–60 Jordan, James
Jesus Deuteronomy’s structure, 2
Adam &, 283, 579 grace precedes law, 184–85
ascension (see ascension) maintaining the grant, 361
atonement (see atonement) Moses as sovereign, 14
bigamist?, 261 Jordan River, 2
Boaz &, 768 Joseph, 312, 578
bread, 223 Joshua
deliverance, 124 encouraged by Moses, 21
God’s name, 280 forward position, 860
grace, 383–84 instructions to, 858–60
incarnation, 17n military leader, 862
jubilee law, 653 third generation &, xiii, 30
judicial representative, xxvi transferred authority, 66
lawful heir, 182 Josiah, 121
messiah, 282 jubilee
miracles, 226 bondage, 423–24
parables, 266 dating, 310
prophetic office, 380–81 day of atonement, 866
sabbath, 685–88 delegation of stewardship, 506
second Adam, 579 land laws, 505–6
welfare State, 223 Levite’s cities, 496
Jethro, 31–32, 37 post-exilic, 396–97
Jews slavery, 281
assimilation, 945, 949, 954–55 Judah, 577, 578, 643
branch, 390n Judah the Prince, 292
1028 DEUTERONOMY

Judaism empire vs., 486

culture, 952 eschatology, 327
dualism, 947 grant, 87, 98, 113–14, 183–85, 888
humanism’s threat to, 940 hoarding, 618
liberalism, 933 inheritance/disinheritance, xvi, 288,
minority religion, 938, 940 327
mixed marriage, 939–40 maintaining the grant, 288, 360–61
mother’s religion, 938–39 perpetual, 259
nineteenth century, 555n pessimillennialism, 341
seduced sons, 939 pietists, 341
seduction (confessional), 938–40, 947 political, 525
split, 941 realm/reign distinction, 341
Judas, 527n two stage theory, 341–42
judges, 32, 39, 40, 102, 105, 445–48, 452, warfare, 324–25
794 kingship
judgment, 445–48, 780–81 ancient, 481–82
judicial blindness, 265–66, 915 believers, 474–75
judicial theology, 248 centralization, 483
Julian the Apostate, 928–30 horses, 485–86
jungle, 244n, 626 joint ordination, 484
Jupiter, 332 judicial, 489–90
justice land law, 477
common, 73–74 literacy, 490
daily, 32 Melchizedek, 482, 493
economic effects, 791 rebellion, 478
eye for eye (see lex talionis) second-best, 482
impartial, 445 theocentric, 478
liberty, 43–45 treasury, 488–89
Mises’s view, 963n treaty, 888–89
political theory, 250–53 wives, 487–88
quantification, 775 World War I, 493
sanction, 251–52 kinsman redeemer, 760–61
scale, 775–76 Kirzner, Israel
universal goal, 73 aggregate utility, 913
wealth, 826 “Ah, ha”, 919n
juvenile delinquency, 599–601 anti-classical economics, 915
equilibrium, 900
Kant, Immanuel, 161, 234, 240, 917, 919 Mises and Moses, 914
Karaites, 954 moment of discovery, 919
Keller, Timothy, 741n social choice = metaphor, 914
Keynes, J.M., 224 Kline, Meredith, 13–14, 153–54, 455,
kibbutz, 752n 458, 791, 810–11, 833
kidnapping, 620 knowledge, 55
king, 489–90 Koinonia, 752
kingdom Korah, 247
antinomian, 341 Kristol, Irving, 43
circumcision, 287–88 Laban, 725
emigration, 413 labor contracts, 722–29
 Index 1029

Lachmann, Ludwig, 916n, 917n, 918 evangelism &, 72

land flexible=arbitrary, 969
capital &, 958 foreigners, 61–62, 73, 75–76
commerce, 390 God’s, 73, 144
covenantal status, 390 grace &, 112, 183, 184–85
familial, 351 grace of, 973
holiness of, 389–90 historical sanctions, 269
life &, 958 history, 153
Locke, John, xv impersonal, 241
name, 643 inheritance, 95, 248, 876, 877, 878
purity of, 392 intent, 634
rest, 119 internalize, 318–20
sacred, 508–9 invocation, 821
sacrosanct, 290–92 Israel’s inheritance, 95
seed laws, 498 learning, 144–45
tool of dominion, ii liberty &, 43–45, 872
land laws manipulative nature, 241
annulment, 393–94 natural, 74, 89–90, 241
anti-rural, 413 opposition to East and West, 241
conquest, 18 oral, 291
feasts, 438 pagan & modern, 241
food laws, 393–96 personal, 17
jubilee, 427 predictability, 44, 449–50, 464–65,
military exemptions, 529 969–73
sabbatical year, 419, 427 primary inheritance, 878
seed laws &, 506, 692–93 protects minorities, 75–76
self-destruct clauses, 412 public reading, 861–69
land reform, 988–91 ratification, 821
landmark, 504, 506–7, 511–13, 820 recapitulation, 115
Lange, Oskar, 894, 897–98, 899 rule of, 61–62, 440, 450–51, 796
Latin, 145–46 salvation by, 223
law sanctions, 249–53, 269, 327
Adamic vs. biblical, 272–73 sovereignty, 254
Adam’s heirs, 270 spirit/letter, 634
administrative, 632 tool of dominion, 876, 877
capital asset, 114 trade, 62
case, 641, 747–48 work of, 74, 271
civil, 868 “law of 73,” 136
comprehensive, 317 lawyers, 795, 833
confirms grace, 185 laying on hands, 291
constancy, 111 legalism, 377
conversation, 317 legislation, 635
covenantal continuity, 111 Letwin, William, 893, 963n
deliverance &, 17 Levellers, 474–75
discontinuity, 640–41 Levi, 280–81
disinheritance &, 153, 269–70 levirate marriage
evangelism, Chap. 8, 434–36, 559–60, annulled, 769, 772–73
818, 831 eldest son’s name, 770
1030 DEUTERONOMY

judicial, 767 collateral, 424, 661

kinsman redeemer, 762 commercial, 428
levir, 757 foreign, 421–23, 661–62
name/inheritance, 754, 767 interest-free, 425–26, 661
polygamy &, 769–72 medieval church, 669
redemptive, 767 moral compulsion, 660–61
replaced by adoption, 769 obligatory, 427–28
Ruth, 762–65 risk premium, 667
seed law, 534, 757, 767 stranger, 661–62
Levites lobbying, 796
bread, 351 localism, 738–40, 743
celebration, 351, 358, 398 Locke, John, xv, 678–79, 684
cities of, 497–98 long life, 24, 456–57, 623, Chap. 70
inheritance, 406, 494–503 Lord’s Supper, 261, 396
judges, 448, 474 lost sheep, 612
lawful inheritance, 405–7 Lot, 342
national, 352–53 loyal opposition, xi
national feasts, 349 Luther, Martin, 74, 186
participation, 407 Lutheranism, 186, 934
priests, 465 lying, 686
rural land, 494–96
separation, 494–503 Madison, James, 177, 524
third, 403–4 magic
tithe, 400–5 “as above, so below,” 163, 164, 167
urban, 496, 498 confession, 375
urban wealth, 496 escaping limits, 379
Leviticus, 639 feasts, 164
Lex, Rex, 471 genocide (Canaan), 166
lex talionis, 452, 515–16, 517–19 illusionists, 164
liability, 506, 629, 631, 634 invocation, 163, 164, 376
liberation, 119, 123 priestly, 163, 164
liberation theology, 996, 1002 risk to magician, 379–80
liberty, 43–45, 281 ritual over ethics, 380
licensing, 637 something for nothing, 168, 379
life/land, 853 voodoo, 163, 376
life span, 24, 126–28, 131, 132, 194, 323–34, magician, 379–80, 384, 892
498 Maimonides, Moses, 1n
limits to growth, 24–27, 136–38, 142, 233, Malthus, T.R., 139–40, 1008
243–44, 884 management, 54
linear history, 227, 228–29 managers (scarce), 32
linen, 645, 647 manna, 16, 189, 224, 735
liquor, 399, 415 maps, 78
literacy, 580–81 Marcion, xxviii
loan Marcionite dogma, 601, 607
allocating risk, 668 market research, 57
bondage, 425, 660, 663 marriage (mixed), 939–40
charitable, 418, 425–26, 429, 659–60, Marxism, 56, 217–18, 790, 792, 836–37
666 mathematics, 169, 172, 901–2, 906
 Index 1031

maximization, 730, 737, 744 counsel &, 55

Mayans, 79 defined, 59
McCartney, Dan, 748–49 division of labor, 717
measurement, 779–83, 825 dominion, 421–23
measures, 774 inheritance, 58
meat lending, 421
celebration, 443 sterile, 664
foreigners, 387–91 Montaigne dogma, 986, 987
land law, 386 Montanism, 928
land laws, 393 Moore’s law, 137, 233
price, 393 Morgenstern, Oskar, 780
unclean, 392 Morris, Henry, 193, 195–96
mediator, 16 Moses
Medo-Persia, 259 Adam Smith &, 916
meek, 436, 886 author, 2
Melchizedek, 482, 493 covenant renewal, 118
memory, 26n delegated agent, 14, 868
Mendenhall, George, 2 faith in formula, 892
Menninger, Karl, 43 faith in ritual, 891
mercenaries, 539–40 future-oriented, 105
mercy, 160, 335–36 glory, 110
methodological collectivism, xv, 918–19, 962 God’s friend, 109
methodological covenantalism, 962 health, 121
methodological individualism, xiv–xv, judge, 31–32, 34, 37
917–19, 962 last testament, 858
mezuza, 318 mediator, 15
middle class, 139, 827 memory, 121
Midian, 114 prophecy, 101
military, Chap. 45, 550–51 prophet, 15, 378, 868
military service, 529–36 punishment of, 65–66
military strategy, 50, 55 replacement patriarch, 277–78
milk, 386 rod, 891
milk & honey, 139–40 signs & wonders (snakes), 378
Miller, Roger Leroy, 895 song of, 874–76
millstone, 707–9, 710, 717 tent of, 31
miracle, 189, 190, 192–93, 225, 235 mother’s milk, 386
Miriam, 16 Mt. Nebo, 878
Mises, Ludwig von, 917, 918, 921, 963n, multiplication, 33–34, 233–35
986, 1005 multitude of counsellors, 50–51, 55
Mishnah, 292 murder contract, 712
Mishneh Torah, 1
mixed seeds law, 639 name
Moab, 551 biology &, 765
Moabite, 766 cut off, 761
mobility, 390 gods of Canaan, 362–65
modernism (gods of), 161, 931–33 invocation, 362
Moneta, Wyoming, 80 seed &, 759–61
money Nashville agrarians, 698
1032 DEUTERONOMY

National Council of Churches, 999–1000 Noah, 233

natural law nomads, 980
assumption, 869–70 nostalgia, 133
autonomy, 272 numbering, 825–26
Christian defenders, 525, 870–71
common grace &, 271–73 oath
condemnation, 270 Abram/Abraham, 303–4
Darwinism vs., 525 citizenship, 517
Enlightenment, 253, 525 civil, 178, 294n, 296, 298, 357, 470–71,
Geisler, 801–2 473
history of, 271 civil court, 523
humanism, 253, 254, 870–71 contract &, 672–73
legitimacy through reason, 869–70 corporate blessings, 815–17
Lutheranism, 186–87 covenantal swearing, 300
Madison, 177 inheritance, 686–87
predictability, 250 land &, 389–90
social theory, 253 mathematics (Pythagoras), 172
sonship, 210, 297 national incorporation, 357
spurious, 74 rival, 178
see also dualism rival god: State, 344–45
natural resources, 215–17, 295 sign, 287
nature, 311–13, 626–27 sonship, 210, 297
negotiation, 968 vow, 673
neighbor, 683–84, 690–91 wealth &, 172
Nero, xi–xii witness, 517
neutrality obedience
autonomy &, 341 circumcision &, 287
economics &, 963 God as owner, 285
education, viii God’s promises, 862
Geisler, Norm, 802 hearing, 86–87, 158
humanist version, 749 inheritance, 180–82
inheritance &, 173 sonship &, 286
interpersonal comparisons, 872–73 objectivity, 783–84
myth, x, 148–49, 341–43, 452–53 occult man, 784
pluralism, 341 occultism, 378
political, 800–3 Og, 17, 262
scarcity vs., xiv Old Covenant order, 260, 281
waning faith, 924 older brother, 283
New Bible Commentary, 3 Olmecs, 79
New Heavens, 314 Olympics, 56
New Mexico, 77–78 omniscience, 47, 895, 896, 904, 907,
New World Order, 922–23, 936 966–67
Newton, Isaac, 92, 893–94 Onan, 769
Nicea, 469 Onanism, 761n
Nile, 308, 313 onions, 225
Nineveh, 105 Ontario, Canada, 81
nirvana, 241 opportunity, 36
Nisbet, Robert, 232, 458n, 990n oppression, 75, 653–54, 720–28
 Index 1033

optimism (tool of dominion), 844, 862–64 perjury, 514–28

ordination, 501 perpetual motion machine, 191, 192
ownership pessimillennialism, 7–8, 128–29, 198,
bird, 624 200–4, 802–3
branding, 614, 621–22 Peter, 394–95
bundle of rights, 611 Pharaoh, 117, 119, 120, 378
corporate, 54 Pharisees, 260, 291
covenantal, xiii Phelps, E.H., 895
delegated, 609 Philistia, 161
diffuse, 55 philosophy, 124, 227, 377
fundamental question, xiv photography (authority), 85
inequality, 987 physics, 136–37
legal basis, xv pierced ear, 426
nature, 626 pietism, 91, 749, 831, 928
original, xvi pinch of salt, 779
owner’s rights, 610–12 pledge, 705–7, 718–19
right to exclude, 504, 611, 682 plots, 498
self, xiv–xv plowing (joint), 643–44
shared, 691 pluralism
soil, xv abortion &, 453–54
stewardship, 18, 504 Christian, 340, 344–45, 453, 470–71
transfer of Land, 18 Enlightenment, 453
ox, 644, 685, 700, 745–46, 965–66 grand illusion, 924
illegitimate, 873
Paganism, 238–40 immigration, 175, 655–57
pantheism, 241 loss of faith, 339
pantheons, 174, 330, 364, 355, 923–27, neutrality, 341
935–36 revival, 561
parable of the laborers, 966–67 Rome, 923–27
parables, 266 syncretism, 156, 173, 923
parents theocratic, 175
corporal punishment, 593 point man, 860
education, 149–50 police uniform, 383
proportional inheritance, 583–84 political idolatry, 350
testimony against son, 590–91 political pluralism, 252–53
Pareto optimality, 912–13 political religion, 175, 926
Passover political theory, 250–53, 271, 357
deliverance from Egypt, 85 pollen, 195
foreign missions, 553 polygamy, 487–88, 552, 583, 755, 769–72
liberation, 118 polytheism, 488
rite of passage, 118 poor, 213
wilderness, 112 population, 29, 34, 135–38
peace, 513, 516 population growth
peace offer, 545 conditional on obedience, 881–82
peace treaty, 549 conquest &, 184
Pentateuch, ii, xvii–xviii, 3 dominion, 854
Pentecost, 309, 530, 808 economic growth &, 29, 854
perfection, 806, 815 Egypt, 293
1034 DEUTERONOMY

end of time, 235–36 war &, 535

hated of, 855 priests, 466, 474, 490, 522–26, 527, 645
immigration, 29 primitive cultures, 842
Israel, 136, 140, 843 primogeniture, 990
new covenant, 139 prison, 44–45
urbanization, 413 private property, 509, 652, 655, 702
West, 29 prodigal son, 283, 585–86
pork, 392, 394 progress, 228–31, 671, 672, 839
positional goods, 237 promise
positive confession, 814 Abrahamic, 879
positive feedback, 228, 883 conditional, xix, 126, 267, 759, 879
postmillennialism, xxvii, 129 conditions, 127
potter, 97 Darius, 674
poverty God’s decree, 879
debt release, 419 grounded in law, 187
deserving poor, 741 heirs of, 114
escape by gleaning, 731 judicial basis, 187
escaping, 220 predestination, xxvi, 879–80
representative examples, 733 Solomon/Bathsheba, 674, 675
sabbatical year, 213–15 vow, 675
power, 240, 378, 1001 Promised Land
power from below, 163, 169 death, 856
power religion, 856, 926–27 double portion, 208
pragmatism, 837, 839 lease’s terms, 683–84
prayer breakfasts, 350n leftovers, 735
preamble, 13–14 legal title, 248–49
predestination, xx–xxiv, 99, 279, 879 life, 853
predictability, 44, 449–50, 464–65, 670, 672, Promised Seed &, 367
679, 712, 794 resources, 216
premillennialism, vii–viii, xix secondary inheritance, 878
present-orientation (see time-preference) title to, 684
price inflation, 913–14 transfer of ownership, 18
price system, 35, 55 weather, 307
prices (priestly), 726 Promised Seed, 367
priesthood property, 509, 752n
authority, 490 property rights
calendar, 308–10 disposal, 611
change in, 640 enforced, 971
Egypt, 312, 313 lost child, 611
linen, 645 not absolute, 682
liturgical service, 499 property’s value, 971–72
new (Aaron), 111 trade, 64
political, 156 wilderness, 63–64
reading the civil law, 867 prophecies (messianic), 247, 248
royal, 473–74 prophecy
rural land, 496 conditional, 100, 247
supreme court, 466 circumstances, 879
veto over war, 537–38 conditional/unconditional, xx
 Index 1035

ethical, 257–58 rebellious son

ethical boundaries, 376 Adam, 587
messianic, 247, 249 addictions, 592
predestination &, 99 adult, 591, 602–3
sanctions, 376 civil action, 592–93
three-fold, 326 contumacy, 595, 597, 602,
prophet covenantal disobedience, 592
annulled, 101, 373, 380–83, 881 criminal class, 600, 602
authority, 381–82 day of reckoning, 594
Bible vs., 382, 383 disobedience to parents, 592
court, 502 dissolute, 591
Establishment vs., 374 glutton, 590, 591
false, 380, 382–83, 385, 501 habitual criminal, 593–94, 600
income, 501–2 parental testimony, 590–91
Jesus, 380–81 prodigal, 595
job, 97–98 Rushdoony’s view, 599–601
Moses, 15, 378, 500 son of Cain, 595
murdered, 381 stranger, 595
ordination, 501 threat to society, 596, 597, 606
orthodoxy, 375–76 Red China, 836–37
role, 373–76 Red Cross, 275
sanctions, 382–83 Red Sea, 122, 125, 265
signs & wonders, 374–75 redemption, 281, 326, 370
temporary office, 501 Reed, Ralph, v–xi, 253n
test of, 380 referee, 781
prosperity (called to), 841, 842 Reform Judaism, 555n
prostitution, 176n refrigerators, 634–35
proxy fights, 54 Regent University, 930n
public education, viii, 89, 91, 93, 603–4, 948 regression to the mean, 828–31
Public Law 480, 974 regulation, 632–33
public opinion, 57 rehabilitation, 46
public theology, 553–54 Rehoboam, 481, 492
purity, 390–93 remnant (captivity), 248
pyramids, 975 rendering judgment, 781–83
Pythagoreanism, 172 rent, 664–66
reservation demand, 588
quantum, 139, 233–35 resident aliens, 294
Queen Athalia, 484 respect for persons, 39–40, 42, 455–56
quest for more, 123 responsibility, 53
rest, 119, 123, 124
railing, 629 restitution
railing law, 631–32 execution, 463
rain, 307 landmark, 507
rain forest, 244n, 626–27 perjury, 521–22
randomness, 153–54 redemption, 45
rats, 974 status quo ante, 440n, 461
real estate, 60 victim’s rights, 798–99
Rebekah, 577 restoration, 847–48, 850–51
1036 DEUTERONOMY

resurrection, 193, 338 hermeneutics, 640n

Reuben, 595 inheritance, 122
revenge, 42, 44, 46 Israel’s history, 122
revival, 89, 94 land, 119
Rhode Island, 471 liberation, 119–20
Ricardo, David, 32 New Testament, xxi
rich men, 829 reasons, 116–7
right or left, 125–26 rest, 119, 124
risk subordinates, 120, 123, 886
loan, 666–67 year, 866
man’s word, 706 sabbatical year, 401, 419, 427, 866
pooled, 696–97 sacraments (Reformation), 366
predictability, 679 sacred cows, 974
railing law, 632 sacred/profane (boundary violation), 388
uncertainty &, 667–69 sacred space (Ark), 508
rituals, 163, 784, 891 sacrifice, 330, 361, 431, 437, 812
roaring twenties, 133 sacrifices (animal), 260–61, 431–36, 495
Robbins, Lionel, 902, 910 sacrilege, 677
rock, 19, 65, 109 Sadducees, 260
Rockefeller, John D., Sr., 93 safekeeping property, 608–10
rod, 19 safety laws, 629–37
Roe v. Wade, 452 Sahel, 980–81
Roman Empire, 489n, 924, 926 Salamanca (school of), 471, 1004
roof, 629, 633–34 salvation by law, 223
Röpke, Wilhelm, 699 Samaritan, 690, 696
Rothbard, Murray, 910, 911–14 Samuel, 149, 374, 478, 479, 482
Rousseau, J.J., 354, 356, 524, 678 Samuelson, Paul, 56
rules, 796 sanctification (progressive), 228
Rushdoony, R.J. sanctions
circumcision, 642 annulled, 749, 839
de-divinization of State, 923–24 captivity, 96, 846
dietary laws, vii charity, 420
inheritance, 574–75, 988–89 chastening, 208–9
muzzled ox, 746–48 circumcision, 210, 287–88
rebellious son, 599–601 civil, 734
smorgasbord religion, xxix common grace, 839
society’s god, 254 continuity, 822, 839
State as heir, 980–81 corporate, 249–53, 255
tithe, 352n counselors, 55–56
voluntary slavery, 650n covenantal, 127
Ruth, 762–65 crime &, 734
day of the Lord, 259, 276
Sabbath death, 269
Christ, 124 delay, 105
corn field, 685 denial, 104, 839
Egypt’s violation, 119 disinheritance, 66
enough!, 123 economic growth, 441
God’s authority, 122 eye for eye, 452, 515, 517 (see also
 Index 1037

lex talionis) Saul, 160, 331

foreign nations, 849–50 saving, 229
healing, 200 scale, 775–76, 789–92, 798–99, 902–3
historical, 791 scarcity, xiv–xvi, 213–14
inescapable concept, 250 Schaeffer, Francis, 342
inheritance &, 5–7, 66, 325, 454, 839 Schlossberg, Herbert, 377
inheritance/disinheritance, 5–7, 325 schools, 89, 90, 91, 94
law &, 249–53, 269, 327 Schrödinger, Erwin, 204–205
lawless, 269 Schumpeter, Joseph, 356
long life, 24, 456–57, Chap. 70 Science, 85, 157, 169–170, 230–32
love, 850 Scofield, C.I., 8–9, 91
military, 564 Scopes trial, 92
national, 839 Scott, Otto, 937
Nineveh, 105 Scottish ecclesiocracy, 472
numerical measures, 825 Scottish Enlightenment, 253–54, 905
oath, 814–16 search costs, 614, 616, 726–27
objective, 825, 839 second commandment, 229
outside Israel, 291 secrecy, 520–21
parental, 593 secret society, 172
past, 813, 816 seduction, 930–40
perjury, 515, 518–19 Seed (prophetic), 278–80, 367, 641, 760
political theory, 250–251 seed, xxiii–xxiv, 247–49, 641, 759–61
predictable, 273, 811–12, 825 seed laws, 498, 506, 530, 692–93, 760,
prophet, 781–83 769
ratification, 846 seeds (mixed), 647
representation, 475 “seeing is believing,” 85–86, 264–66, 303
rival, 273 self-government, 795, 807
second commandment, 270 self-ownership, xiv–xv
sins (corporate), 255 seller, 785–86, 788
social theory &, 250 sellers’ competition, 788
society’s god &, 254 semika, 291
State’s, 663 separation
suffering, 210–11 church & State, 482, 524–27, 867
theonomy &, 207–8 clothing, 645–46
victory of church, 128–29 inheritance, 494, 497–98
witness, 518–19 laws of, 638
sanctuary, 649, 652, 653, 655, 791, 800 prophetic, 500–1
Sanger, Margaret, 177–78, 297 revelation, 500
Santeria, 793 tribal, 641
Sarah, 99 Septuagint, 1, 78
Satan Seth, 576, 598
bureaucratic kingdom, 633 shame, 543
crushed head, 447 sharecroppers, 683
disinheritance, xvi shared meal, 433–36
disinherited, 359 shaved head, 556, 575
fallen angels, 359 Shechemites, 577
prince, 163 Shiloh, 247, 248, 311, 315
rebellion, 838 shooting, 33
1038 DEUTERONOMY

showbread, 686, 687 deist, 826, 894

sickness as curse, 23, 27 Deuteronomy 8, 180
Sider, Ronald middle class wealth, 827
climate of opinion, 994, 997, 998, 1003 moral causation, 826–27
coercion is best, 985 Moses &, 916
consumption in America, 977 Presbyterian model, 826
eating crow, 995 smorgasbord religion, xxix
fad, 994 snakes, 378
memory hole, 998 snow (roof), 633
reduced life style, 984–85 social contract theory, 678–79, 704n
revised edition, 993 social disorder, 35
rhetoric, 994, 1003, 1005 social forces, 250
tract for 1970’s, 842 social order, 37, 594, 599, 827
siege social policy, 903–4
annulled, 572 social theory
assumption, 557–58 amillennial, 369–71
barriers to, 552 anti-theocratic, 853
circumcision, 551 ascension &, 370–71, 886
foreign policy, 569 baptized, 833, 840
imagery, 566–67 Christian, 254, 273
irreversible, 565 common grace doctrine, 272
long term, 567–68 covenantal predictability, 185–87
outside the land, 549 creationism, 190–91
strategy, 563 denial of, 834
trees, 565–66 Deuteronomy 28, 825, 832–34, 840
tribute, 550 discontinuity (O.T., N.T.), 831
women & children, 555–57 dispensationalism vs., 11–12
signs & wonders, 374–75, 376, 378 dominion &, 273
Sihon, 2, 6, 13, 17, 106 entropy &, 190–91, 198
silliness, 214 eschatology &, 7–8, 198, 369–71
Simmel, Georg, 520–21 imputation by God, 905
sin judicial, 673
compounding, 22 lack of, 328
comprehensive, ii modern, 252
costs of, 104–5 Mosaic, 29
cultural power, 369–70 natural law, 254
grace &, 186 pessimillennialism, 200–4
father/son, 20–21 political theory, 250
original, 258 Protestant, 254
reign of, ii Rousseau, 354
representative, xxiv–xxv sanctions &, 250
sanctions (corporate), 255 Scottish, 254
slave (foreign), 649, 651, 652 social forces, 250
slavery, 275, 281, 995 (see also bondservant) State/society, xv
slaves, 117–18 Trinity, 905
smallpox, 244n social utility, 914
smell, 193 socialism, 34–35, 56, 379, 751, 837–38
Smith, Adam society/State, xv, 698
 Index 1039

Sodom, 342 stars, 333, 334

soil, xv State
solitaire, 193 arbitrary, 712
Solomon, 487–88, 674, 675 Christians’ view of, iii
Somary, Felix, 356n contract, 678, 679
something for nothing, 168, 240, 377–80, covenant lawsuit, 598
383–84 crime, 42–43
son (see rebellious son) disinheritance, 584–85
sonship double portion, 584–85
adoption, 297 god of, 344–45
biblical inheritance, 208–9, 297 healing, 43, 479, 743
chastening, 850 heir, 990–91
circumcised heart, 286, 299 membership, 298
firstborn, 208–10 monopoly of violence, 461
God’s name, 280 negative sanctions only, 440n, 461,
Mosaic covenant, 282 663
oath, 210, 297 peace, 251
obedience &, 286, 289 pseudo-family, 584
servitude, 280–84 representation, 524
stranger, 289 salvation by law, 223, 479
see also rebellious son shared meal, 433–34
Sorokin, P.A., iv social contract, 678
sovereignty sovereignty, 524
consumer, 54–56, 587–88 substitute heir, 585
counselors, 53 victimless crime, 252
creation, 15 wealth-consumer, 584
final, 794 (see final sovereignty) welfare, 223–24
flag, 343 see also separation: church & State
God’s uniqueness, 14–15 Stein, Herbert, 586
inheritance as proof, 100 Sterling, Claire, 981
man’s (natural law), 254 stewardship, 18, 506, 530, 563
original, xvi–xvii Stoics, 871
parental, 611 stones into bread, 223–24
visible, 483 stones (pillar), 820
Soviet Union, 37, 354–55, 792, 836–37, stoning, 446–47, 518–19
840, 1000 strangers
Sowell, Thomas, 450 adoption, 296
sowing and reaping, 531–32 agricultural costs, 409
soybeans, 978 alien, 661–62
Spain, 295–96 citizenship, 435, 439
specialization (education), 149–50 dietary law, 387
speed limits, 636 Egypt, 293
speeding, 798 feasts, 434–35
spies, 47–48, 52, 53, 67, 87, 110, 113, flourish, 293
263–64, 273 gates, 119
spoils, 60, 114 hearing the law, 867, 869
stages theory, 960 holiness, 387
standards (boundary ranges), 787 joint meals, 433–34
1040 DEUTERONOMY

loans to, 425 tithe &, 479, 973–74

meat, 386–93 teachers, 320
permanent resident, 662 teaching, 319–21
reading the law, 867–69 technology, 169
sacrifice, 517 temple, 291, 848
sonship, 289 Ten Commandments, 77–78, 116, 121,
usury, 659–60 318, 451, 889 (see also Decalogue)
post-exilic, 249 Tertullian, 925–28
rich, 294, 295 textile industry, 581
rural land, 409–10 thankfulness, 221, 809–10
testimony of, 75–76, 517–18 theft
third tithe, 405 case laws, 747
two types, 388, 658–60, 662 costs of, 796
witness, 517–18 God vs., 973–73
strategy, 51, 57, 861–62 injustice, 777–78
Stroup, Richard, 895 internal restraint, 971
subjectivism, 902–3, 910–19 land, 507–8
subordinates, 123 majority vote, 584
success, iii, 126, 157 preaching against, 971, 973
suffering, 210–11 private property, 970
suffrage (vote), 474–75 sanction, 507
suicide, xiv taxation, 973
supreme commander, 50–51 wealth redistribution, 970
Sutton, Ray, xvii theocracy, v, 453, 475, 524, 655, 833, 931
suzerainty treaties, 4, 14 theology, 365–71
Suzuki, D.T. 240–41 theonomy
Switzerland, 61 covenantal, xxvii, 886–87
swollen feet, 189, 192, 206 package deal, 207–8
symbolism, 248 postmillennialism, xxvii, 129
syncretism 156, 173, 923 rebellious son, 607
structure, 886–87
Tabernacle, 530 thermodynamics
Tabernacles (feast), 399, 865 (see also Booths) entropy, 191–92
tablets, 123 finitude, 235
tactics, 47, 52 first law, 191
Talmud, 260, 292, 930, 938 second law, 191
Tamar, 578, 769n third generation, 19–22, 48–49, 67–68,
tares, 261 117, 302–3
taxation thirst, 19
acceptance of, 479 thousands, 26
arbitrary, 491 thrift, 168
centralization, 491 time
control, 491–92 arrow, 191, 235
graduated, 584 astronomical, 235
parental support, 582 cyclical, 310–11
Rehoboam, 481 end of, 138
Samuel on, 479 eschatological, 310–12
theft, 973 finitude, 233
 Index 1041

fixed supply, 143 justice, 73

growth &, 136–37 North America, 77
limit to growth, 142, 235 tragedy of the Commons, 624–27
linear, 310–12 transfer society, 796
measuring, 784 transportation, 403
population growth &, 235–36 treasure (hidden), 617–20
see also history) treasures, 326
time preference, 41–42, 44, 106 treaty, 888–89
timidity, 305 tree of life, 566, 698
tire, 709 trees, 563–73, 588, 682
tithe tribalism, 349, 642, 738, 760, 769
celebration, 398–417 tribute, 102, 546, 550, 562
civil taxes?, 399–400 Trinitarianism, 365
collection, 497 Trinity, 356, 904–5
first (Levites), 400 triumphalism, 340, 733
graduated, 988, 1002 trumpets, 264, 463
Great Commission, 315–16 trust & obey, i
Levites, 352, 353, 400, 405–407, 494–95 Turks (Germany), 176
Levites’ inheritance, 406, 416, 495 tutor, 580
local storehouses, 497 tyranny, 45, 269
mandatory, 495, 499 Tyrmand, Leopold, 217
poor, 405
representative obedience, 815 ultimate resource, 169, 215
rural, 401–402 umpire, 781
second, 399, 401–403, 408 uncertainty, 667–69, 966, 970
third, 403–5, 814, 817, 819 unclean animals, 432–33
third year, 399, 414 unclean meat (see meat)
token payment, 812–13 unclean status, 388
toleration, 924, 926–28, 952 unconditional promise, xx
Tönnies, Ferdinand, 697 uniform, 383
tools, 707–9 uniformitarianism, 143, 197
tortoise and hare, 28 University of Chicago, 946
trade unjust stewards, 732–33
balance of, 422 urbanization, 413, 697–99, 739
empires, 63 USSR, 37, 56, 217, 354–55, 379
foreign, 422 usury
foreigners in Israel, 61–62 gold mine, 665
God’s law, 73 poor brothers, 669
meat, 390 rent &, 664–66
positioning, 63 sheep, 658
routes, 62–63 strangers, 661–62
untainted, 337
wealth, 62 value, 903, 909–10
wilderness, 59–61 value scale, 902–3
world, 76–83 Van Til, Cornelius, 264, 320–21, 834–36
traders Vatican II, 395
Celtic, 81–82 vegetarian socialists, 977
Hebrew, 82 Venus, 332
1042 DEUTERONOMY

Vesta, 336, 361–62 water, 308–11

victimless crimes, 251–52 wealth
victims, 44 call to, 842–43
victim’s rights, 40, 44, 520, 798 common grace, 23
victory, x, 128–29, 543–44, 861 confirming the covenant, 812
virgin birth, 99 creation, 893
voluntarism, 726 distribution, 828–31
voodoo, 163, 376 ethical, 844
voting (politics), 474–75 ethics &, 313
vow idolatry &, 856
continuity (N.T.), 677 measure of, 909
contract &, 672 national, 915–17, 921
legally binding, 679 obedience, 314, 843
predictability, 670 objective, 824–25
sanctions, 673 purpose, 225, 227
Sider, Ronald, 842
wages, 720–28, 966 social, 911
wall, 566–67, 590 temptation, 238
Wallace, A.R., 1008 visible, 825–27
Walras, Léon, 894, 900 wealth formula, 140–42, 215, 218, 829,
Walvoord, John, 360n 831, 844
war (declaration of), 274–75 weather, 307
warfare weights
Canaan, 335 analogical language, 776–79
captives, 556–57 banking, 803–6
costs, 560 covenantal analogies, 774–75
defensive, 554 idolatry &, 775
discipline, 540–41 justice, 777, 799–800
disinheritance, 546, 560 representative of morals, 778–79
empires, 332, 549–55 welfare economy, 223
executing males, 545 welfare (family), 991
extends life, 564 welfare State
inheritance, 360 administration, 744
mercenaries, 540 gleaning vs., 742
one man, 486 healer, 743
outside Canaan, 549 immigration &, 296–97
post-exilic, 560 impersonal, 743
priests, 463, 535, 539, 540 origin, 480–81
rules (Moses), 265 rule of law, 796
siege, 549, 564–66 taxation, 479
spoils, 337 third tithe, 410
supreme commander, 50 voting, 176
trees, 563–73 Wells, David, 91
trumpets, 463 West, 28–29
zero-sum game, 48 Westminster Assembly, 469
warrior, 534–36, 539–40 wheat & tares, 261
washing, 388 white horse (man on), iv–v
waste, 730, 731 whole burnt offering, 547–49
 Index 1043

Wildavsky, Aaron, 737 gleaning, 737

wilderness, 222–23, 324, 326 negative sanction, 117
Williams, Roger, 252–53, 471, 871 thermodynamics, 192
witness World War I, 493, 538
covenantal, 100–2 World War II, 573, 581
defense, 515–16 wrath to grace, 313
execution, 595 wristwatch, 784
false, 515, 518, 526 Wyoming, 80
prosecution, 515
Wittfogel Karl, 309 Year 2000, iv, 805n, 923, 952
wool, 646 yoke, 644
Word of God
analogical language, 317 zero-growth movement, 236–38, 243,
authority, 317 885
deeds &, 317 zero-sum economy, 986–88
Van Til, 321 zero-sum game, xviii, 48, 987
work Zionists, 390
faith &, 325 zoning, 238
imputed, xxv