Chapter Fifty-Six<\/p>\n
The Sabbath Rest
\n(Leviticus 23:1\u20138)<\/p>\n
1. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.
\n3. Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.
\n4. These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.
\n5. In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD\u2019s passover.
\n6. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.
\n7. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
\n8. But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. (Leviticus 23:1\u20138)<\/p>\n
God\u2019s law deals not only with our actions, but also with our use of all things, our bodies, the world around us, one another, and, very emphatically, our use of time. The laws concerning the Sabbath give us the laws of time, even as do also the laws of work, worship, and more. In every area, we live in time and are responsible for its use to God.
\nThe Hebrew word Shabbat is related to shavat, a verb meaning to cease, or rest. In ancient paganism, there were periodic days of observances for the gods or for kings, but these laws had a very different focus: they honored the gods or sacred kings, whereas in God\u2019s law they honor not a tax-collecting king or gods, but rather celebrate the providence of God the Lord. Before the giving of the law in Exodus 20, we have an event which set forth the meaning of God\u2019s Sabbath. In Exodus 16, we have the giving of manna in the wilderness. On every sixth day, God gave enough manna for the Sabbath, in part to teach Israel that \u201cman shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD,\u201d as God declares it:<\/p>\n
1. 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.
\n2. 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.
\n3. And he humbled thee, and suffered 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 does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live. (Deuteronomy 8:1\u20133)<\/p>\n
The purpose of the law is not to inhibit us, but to bless us.<\/p>\n
The rest ordered by the Sabbath includes all men, even slaves, and work animals as well (Ex. 23:12; 34:21). Because man\u2019s life is temporal, lived in time, it is a temptation for men to attempt to command time for their purposes. God, however, orders us to rest in time and to use all time for His purposes. When our Lord declares that the Sabbath was made for man, He has Himself as the last Adam, and the redeemed humanity in Him, in mind (Mark 2:25\u201328; Luke 6:1\u201312). The purpose of the Sabbath is to bless man in God\u2019s service and to restore the world to God and His Kingdom. The Sabbath tells us that it is not our work that saves us but God\u2019s work. The Sabbath is tied to manna: God\u2019s provision is given to His covenant people as they live in faithfulness to Him and His law, His justice.
\nIn these verses, we are told, first, of the weekly Sabbaths, (v. 3), second, of the Passover Sabbath (v. 5), and, third, of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (v. 6). Wenham has pointed out that there are seven festivals in the year: 1) passover, 2) the feast of unleavened bread, 3) the feast of weeks, 4) the day of atonement, 5) the feast of booths, 6) the day after booths, and 7) the feast of weeks. Most occur in the seventh month of the year, and the seventh year is a sabbatical year (Ex. 21:2ff; Lev. 25:2ff; Deut. 15:1ff). After seven sevens of years, or forty-nine years, there is a jubilee (Lev. 25:8ff). These are all forms of the Sabbath and develop the meaning of the weekly Sabbath.
\nIn Leviticus 23:28, all work is forbidden on the day of atonement, and we have the same general statement in v. 3. However, in verse 8, the Authorized Version reads, \u201cno servile work,\u201d which Snaith rendered, \u201cno laborious work,\u201d and Bernard J. Bamberger rendered as, \u201cYou shall not work at your occupation,\u201d a paraphrase with which he was not altogether happy. This limited labor to works of necessity, including the preparation of food within certain limits (Ex. 20:10; 31:14; 35:2\u20133; Lev. 16:29; 23:30\u201332; Num. 29:7; Deut. 5:14).
\nThe Sabbath celebrates the gift, providence, mercy, and redemption of God. In return, we must manifest gratitude: \u201cAnd some shall appear before me empty\u201d (Ex. 34:20). The Sabbath is a celebration of rest, rest from our sin and guilt in the fact of redemption, rest from our work in the fact of His work and victory, and rest from man\u2019s government in the fact of God\u2019s government. The Sabbath is a covenant celebration of God\u2019s provision for us, for the whole earth, and for all our todays and tomorrows. The Passover celebrates the birth of Israel as a covenant people, even as Christ\u2019s Passover, the atonement on the cross and His resurrection, celebrates the birth of the church.
\nThe Passover began on the fourteenth day of Nisan, at sunset, and it was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted seven days. Only unleavened bread was permitted during the Passover. When Israel left Egypt, the bread prepared was unleavened, both because of the haste of its preparation, and because the bread had to last for a time without becoming moldy. It also signified the absence of corruptibility in the offering of atonement.
\nThe first Passover occurred on the night before Israel, believing Egyptians, and others left Egypt. It was thus during the Feast of Unleavened Bread that the waters of the Red Sea parted for Moses and the people. This feast thus celebrated that great victory while it also commemorated the hasty departure and deliverance. The army of Egypt perished in the waters of the Red Sea.
\nThere is a plain and telling incisiveness in God\u2019s law. We are told of Scripture,<\/p>\n
12. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
\n13. Neither is there any creature that is not msanifest in his sight: but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. (Hebrews 4:12\u201313)<\/p>\n
The tendency and temptation of man has been to blunt and to sentimentalize the plain words of Scripture. This goes back to Israel. According to the Midrash, the angels wanted to sing the praise of God when the Egyptians were drowned, but God refused, saying, \u201cThe work of My hands is drowning in the sea, and you want to chant a victory song before Me!\u201d Klein has added, \u201cHow can one be fully happy when others are suffering, even deservedly?\u201d Such a statement is an indictment of Moses and of Israel for celebrating the defeat of Egypt. Moses\u2019 joyful song (Ex. 15:1\u201322) is clouded by such a perspective. Apparently, modern humanism would have us apologetic for victory and contented only with defeat!
\nIt is noteworthy that Klein\u2019s perspective with respect to the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread is plainly not God-centered. For him, \u201cabove all, Passover is a festival of national freedom.\u201d In the modern era, God is put to the service of nationalism or internationalism; both are forms of idolatry. God and His covenant Kingdom are alone the focus of Scripture and of history.
\nThe Sabbath not only means rest, but it means rest as an act of faith. Our era, in the West, has lost contact with reality, as have statists everywhere. Work means survival. In much of history, the relationship has been immediate and hence well known. We have lost that awareness. Nothing revealed this blindness more tellingly than a university student at Berkeley, California, in the 1960s. She was a \u201crevolutionist,\u201d demanding an end to work as oppression because technology has supposedly made work obsolete, so that work existed now as a tool of capitalist oppression. \u201cBut what about food?,\u201d asked a reporter. Her haughty and disdainful answer was this: \u201cFood is.\u201d
\nIn previous eras, men knew that no work means no life. To rest fifty-two days each year on the Sabbath, plus many other holy days, and one year in seven, was on the face of it suicidal. It was an act of faith to rest in the confidence of God\u2019s provision.
\nWe can add that thinking wisely also means survival, in some eras in an immediate sense, now less immediate but no less real. To forget such things is to forsake reality and life.<\/p>\n
Chapter Fifty-Seven<\/p>\n
The Meaning of the Firstfruits
\n(Leviticus 23:9\u201314)<\/p>\n
9. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n10. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest:
\n11. And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.
\n12. And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the LORD.
\n13. And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of the fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the LORD for a sweet savour: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin.
\n14. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, unto the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. (Leviticus 23:9\u201314)<\/p>\n
These verses refer to the waving of the omer or sheaf, held on the sixteenth day of Nisan. The word omer, in Exodus 16:36, is defined as the tenth of an ephah. An omer, a dry measure, was about six and a quarter pints, and an ephah about seven and a half gallons, English measures. The sheaf was usually barley, the first grain to ripen. It was waved before the altar, from side to side and up and down. Then a portion was burned on the altar and the rest given to the priests to eat. In v. 13, the \u201ctwo tenth deals of fine flour\u201d is fourteen pints, and \u201cthe fourth part of an hin\u201d is two and a half pints. The prohibition of v. 14 is with regard to the new grain; old grain or flour could be eaten, as we see in Joshua 5:11.
\nScripture distinguishes between three kinds of offerings: firstfruits, tithes, and gifts. The tithe is God\u2019s tax for the government of His Kingdom. Gifts were offerings beyond the tithe, which cannot be seen as a gift.
\nThe three great annual feasts were Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles. All three were thus harvest festivals in a sense, not merely because they were celebrated at harvest time, but also because they were signs representing God\u2019s ingathering of His people.
\nThis waving of the omer is also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It was a part of the sacred calendar, and an aspect of the Biblical presentation of all time as having a God-centered focus. Time is no more man\u2019s property than is the earth: we are stewards of both, and the purpose of holy days is to remind us of this fact. A harvest makes life possible. While man must not live by bread alone (Matt. 4:4), he cannot live without bread: he is a creature. Hence, the harvest must be consecrated to God to set forth our resolve to live for Him.
\nMoreover, the presentation of the sheaf to God recognized Him as the Creator and sustainer of all things. The earth and the fullness thereof are God\u2019s creation, and man cannot take his life or the earth and its bounty for granted. When we eat and drink, we live off God\u2019s provisions, and we are guilty of trespass if we do not acknowledge His bounty and government. Hence this festival.
\nBeginning with the New Testament, the church has seen these verses as very important in their implications. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:20, tells us that Jesus Christ is the firstfruits of them that slept, that by His resurrection, His victory over sin and death, He sets forth the goal of God\u2019s harvest. We are God\u2019s new humanity in Christ, and His harvest is to culminate in a new creation for His new humanity.
\nBecause Christ is holy, His new humanity shall also be holy (Rom. 11:16). We, as His members, have \u201cthe firstfruits of the Spirit\u201d (Rom. 8:23), so that we are a privileged people.
\nThis is not all. James tells us, \u201cOf his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures\u201d (James 1:18). The reference here to rebirth is an obvious one. God, by His sovereign will, begets us, makes us a new creation, with the \u201cword of truth.\u201d The reference to Genesis 1:26\u201328, the creation of man, is a clear one. But there is also a reference to Genesis 3:5; the tempter offers to man an esoteric knowledge of good and evil, one attainable only by rebellion against God. Satan presents God as a liar (\u201cYea, hath God said?,\u201d Gen. 3:1), and himself as the bearer of suppressed truth. Men can be their own gods, their own source of law and morality, of good and evil, if they declare their independence from God.
\nAs against this, James tells us, God, \u201cOf his own will begat us with the word of truth.\u201d We now have a different definition of truth. Truth is not the construct of the autonomous mind of man, but rather \u201cevery word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God\u201d (Matt. 4:4).
\nThis means that man is now under God\u2019s law. This law which now governs the redeemed man is the expression of the nature and being of the triune God, and of us as we grow in grace and knowledge. It is now for us \u201cthe perfect law of liberty\u201d (James 1:25; 2:12). We are now in harmony with life,<\/p>\n
23. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
\n24. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
\n25. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. (1 Peter 1:23\u201325)<\/p>\n
For both Paul and James, Christians are the firstfruits whom all creation will follow (Rom. 8:18\u201323). God, who created all things, ordained that Christ and His people, the new humanity, should lead the way to the rebirth and renewal of all things.
\nThis is not a mystical vision of the future. It is God\u2019s work of renewing grace and our response of faithfulness to His every word that leads to this great cosmic renewal.
\nWhen James 1:18 tells us that we are to be \u201cthe firstfruits of his creatures,\u201d the word creatures has reference to all of God\u2019s created things apart from man. God\u2019s purpose is cosmic, not man-centered, but, created man in His image is the starting point in Christ of this new creation.
\nIn all these and other references, the New Testament tells us that the offering of the sheaves represents the necessity of seeing God as the Lord and provider. It tells us also that in Christ we ourselves become the firstfruits, the required offering to the triune God. It makes it clear that our redemption is the beginning of the regeneration of all things.
\nIn Revelation 14:4, the redeemed are again called \u201cthe firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.\u201d In Revelation 21:1\u201322, we have the conclusion in the regeneration of the entire cosmos into conformity to God and the word of truth.
\nThe firstfruits festival thus looks ahead. As we have seen previously, modern man has blurred the link between work and survival. Similarly, he has lost the meaning of time. Time means progression, development, and growth. Harvest festivals witness to this meaning. A generation which believes that \u201cFood Is\u201d is ignorant of the meaning of time and work.
\nThe goal of fallen man is a man-created timeless world, a Tower of Babel. Statism seeks to arrest time. Marxism looks towards a beehive or ant-hill state, one in which time is arrested. This was the dream of the Incas, the Mazdakites, and others. All such goals are death-oriented. Man\u2019s life means time and work, and to despise either is to court death.
\nIn v. 11, the waving of the sheaf from side to side and up and down was in effect to make the sign of the cross.<\/p>\n
Chapter Fifty-Eight<\/p>\n
Pentecost and Rest
\n(Leviticus 23:15\u201321)<\/p>\n
15. And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:
\n16. Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the LORD.
\n17. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the LORD.
\n18. And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt offering unto the LORD, with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savor unto the LORD.
\n19. Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering, and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings.
\n20. And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before the LORD, with the two lambs: they shall be holy to the LORD for the priest.
\n21. And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be a holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. (Leviticus 23:15\u201321)<\/p>\n
These verses are about the Festival of Weeks or Pentecost; pentecost means fiftieth, and it gains this name because it falls on the fiftieth day after the Passover. It was a one-day celebration (Deut. 16:9\u201312) and thanksgiving for God\u2019s gracious provision. Coming at the end of the harvest season, pentecost meant thanksgiving for God\u2019s providence, and was marked by an offering to God of sacrificial animals, cereal gifts, and drink offerings.
\nIn v. 22, gleaning is cited as one aspect of giving thanks to God. Our Lord declares, \u201cfreely ye have received, freely give\u201d (Matt. 10:8). In the law, we are warned against forgetting God and believing in our self-sufficiency so that we say in our heart,<\/p>\n
17. \u2026 My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.
\n18. 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. (Deuteronomy 8:17\u201318)<\/p>\n
God ratifies His covenant with us by prospering us so that we can better serve Him and establish His Kingdom. If we use that prosperity for our own purposes and without reference to God\u2019s Kingdom, prosperity is taken from us. God\u2019s blessing is a purposive prosperity, given to us to further His Kingdom.
\nIt was on Pentecost that the disciples received the gifts of the Spirit (Acts 2:1\u20134) in order to prosper and further God\u2019s Kingdom.
\nThe day was to be free of \u201cservile work\u201d (v. 21). G. J. Wenham renders it \u201cheavy work;\u201d N. H. Snaith, \u201claborious work;\u201d James Moffatt, \u201cfield work;\u201d and so on. The meaning is that normal work and activity ceases. The day is for thanksgiving.
\nThis festival, like other holy days, tells us that time must be made holy by God\u2019s covenant people. The harvest represents the results of Godly dominion, and all time must be used in God\u2019s service. Pentecost means a rejoicing in present blessings and the expectation of more in the Lord in future time. Quite logically, Israel made Pentecost a time for the confirmation of children after their public catechism. The rabbis confirmed the children by the laying on of hands. Godly children were seen as a present blessing and a future prosperity.
\nIn v. 17, the offering of the firstfruits includes two loaves \u201cout of your habitations,\u201d out of your daily fare. Thus these were not unleavened loaves. They signified the dedication of the normal life of the family to the Lord. During the era of the Second Temple, this clause was reinterpreted to mean something else. It was seen as elliptical and meaning, \u201cye shall bring out of, or, from, the land of your habitations, that is, from Palestine (Num. 15:2).\u201d This seriously alters the meaning and depersonalizes it. The depersonalization of religion into a national fact leads to the destruction of meaning. No national offering can have any moral character apart from the faith and life of the people. It was this kind of emphasis which led to the Pharisees and Sadducees and their reduction of the covenant to a civil property.
\nAt the conclusion of the sacrifices of Pentecost, the thank offerings of the families were eaten together with their guests, the Levites, the poor, foreigners, and others in need.
\nThe New Testament has much to say about the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, which it declares to be made into a great and triumphant prophecy fulfilled in the life of Christ and the church. Kellogg\u2019s account of this is so telling that it requires citation in full:<\/p>\n
This festival, as one of the sabbatic series, celebrated the rest after the labours of the grain harvest, a symbol of the great sabbatism to follow that harvest which is \u201cthe end of the age\u201d (Matt. 13:39). As a consecration, it dedicated unto God the daily food of the nation for the coming year. As passover reminded them that God was the Creator of Israel, so herein, receiving their daily bread from Him, they were reminded that He was also the Sustainer of Israel; while the full accompaniment of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings expressed their full consecration and happy state of friendship with Jehovah, secured through the expiation of the sin-offering.<\/p>\n
Was this feast also, like passover, prophetic? The New Testament is scarcely less clear than in the former case. For after that Christ, first having been slain as \u201cour Passover,\u201d had then risen from the dead as the \u201cFirstfruits,\u201d fulfilling the type of the wave-sheaf on the morning of the Sabbath, fifty days passed; \u201cand when the day of Pentecost was fully come,\u201d came that great outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the conversion of three thousand out of many lands (Acts 2), and therewith the formation of that Church of the New Testament whose members the Apostle James declares (1:18) to be \u201ca kind of firstfruits of God\u2019s creatures.\u201d Thus, as the sheaf had typified Christ as \u201cthe Firstborn from the dead,\u201d the presentation on the day of Pentecost of the two wave loaves, the product of the sheaf of grain, no less evidently typified the presentation unto God of the Church of the first-born, the firstfruits of Christ\u2019s death and resurrection, as constituted on that sacred day. This then was the complete fulfillment of the feast of weeks regarded as a redemptive type, showing how, not only rest, but also redemption was comprehended in the significance of the sabbatic idea. And yet, that complete redemption was not therewith attained by that Church of the first-born on Pentecost was presignified in that the two wave-loaves were to be baken with leaven. The feast of unleavened bread had exhibited the ideal of the Christian life; that of firstfruits, the imperfection of the earthly attainment. On earth the leaven of sin still abides.<\/p>\n
It should be added that the feast is also a sign of the total victory which is to come. This is celebrated by every Sabbath. We rest from our labors, knowing that the future comes not from our work but from God\u2019s ordination. We rest in His victory over sin and death and in the confidence of His total victory which is to come.
\nAs Kellogg noted, the festival \u201cdedicated unto God the daily food of the nation for the coming year.\u201d It was a confidence in God\u2019s providential care of His covenant people. While the Sabbath means rest, it can be seriously misinterpreted if we view it in terms of modern concepts of rest. The Biblical doctrine of rest involves trust. This is very clearly set forth in Psalm 37:1\u201311:<\/p>\n
1. Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
\n2. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
\n3. Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
\n4. Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
\n5. Commit thy way unto the LORD: trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
\n6. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
\n7. Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
\n8. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
\n9. For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.
\n10. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
\n11. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.<\/p>\n
Chapter Fifty-Nine<\/p>\n
Service as Power
\n(Leviticus 23:22)<\/p>\n
22. And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field 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. (Leviticus 23:22)<\/p>\n
We have, as in Leviticus 19:9\u201310, a reference to gleaning, and the law is restated in Deuteronomy 24:19\u201322. The law is repeated to stress the concern that God requires us to show for the poor, for widows and orphans, and for aliens. In Ruth 2, we have an example of the application of this law. Man\u2019s harvest or pay time must be a time of active help for the needy. In Leviticus, this is associated with Pentecost; in Acts 2:1\u20134, we see God\u2019s gift of the Spirit to the apostles, so that at Pentecost, God gave, so that man might give in turn.
\nThe fact that gleaning is cited together with the Feast of Pentecost tells us that ritual and worship must have results in charity and action. The worship God requires is not a separation from life but unto God, and, in Him, action in the world in obedience to God our King. In a sense, the culmination of the harvest festivals is the joyful fact that we have a harvest which will prosper God\u2019s Kingdom, ourselves, and the needy. Because God has blessed us, we are to bless others.
\nCalvin has wisely noted:<\/p>\n
God here inculcates liberality upon the possessors of the land, when their fruits are gathered: for, when His bounty is exercised before our eyes, it invites us to imitate Him; and it is a sign of ingratitude, unkindly and maliciously, to withhold what we derive from His blessing. God does not indeed require that those who have abundance should so profusely give away their produce, as to despoil themselves by enriching others; and, in fact, Paul prescribes this as the measure of our alms, that their relief should not bring into distress the rich themselves, who kindly distribute. (2 Cor. 8:13). God, therefore, permits every one to reap his corn, to gather his vintage, and to enjoy his abundance; provided the rich, content with their own vintage and harvest, do not grudge the poor the gleaning of the grapes and corn. Not that He absolutely assigns to the poor whatever remains, so that they may seize it as their own; but that some small portion may flow gratuitously to them from the munificence of the rich. He mentions indeed by name the orphans, and widows, and strangers, yet undoubtedly He designates all to the poor and needy, who have no fields of their own to sow or reap; for it will sometimes occur that orphans are by no means in want, but rather that they have the means of being liberal themselves; nor are widows and strangers always hungry.<\/p>\n
Calvin\u2019s summary calls attention to certain key facts of this law. First, it is God who requires charity of us. It is a law, not an option. Second, the law of gleaning gives no title to the poor for our goods or wealth. It is not their right: it is rather God\u2019s mercy expressed through His people. Thus, the law of gleaning denies an option to the rich, or a right to the poor. Third, its purpose is community, and charity is the means of establishing it.
\nThe goal is a convenantal tie between men. This is summed up in Leviticus 25:14\u201317, 35: \u201cYe shall not therefore oppress one another: but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God\u201d (Lev. 25:17). Instead of oppression, there must be help. Failure to help means a violation of the communion with God as well as man.
\nGill noted:<\/p>\n
Aben Ezra observes, the feast of weeks being the feast of the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, it is repeated here that they might not forget what God had commanded them to do at that time, namely to leave somewhat for the poor; and the Jewish writers observe, that this law, being put among the solemn feast of the passover, pentecost, and tabernacles, and the beginning of the year, and the day of atonement, teaches, that he observes it, and leaves the corner of the field and the gleanings to the poor, it is as if he built the sanctuary, and offered his sacrifices in the midst of it; but a much better reason may be given for it, which was, to teach them that when they expressed their thankfulness to God, they should exercise charity and liberality to the poor.<\/p>\n
The laws of charity have had a long history of both remarkable observance and serious neglect, both in Judaism and in Christianity.
\nVery early, the church began to create institutions to govern covenantal life. In 1 Corinthians 6:1\u20134, St. Paul gives the requirement for Christian courts of justice. These were quickly established, became a powerful force for centuries, and attracted even the ungodly. To provide justice is a merciful act.
\nVarious \u201chospitable institutions,\u201d to use Riquet\u2019s phrase, were also established by the early church. There was, first, xenodochium, which provided lodging for passing strangers, pilgrims, refugees, exiles, and others. Rich and poor were alike helped, and the hospitality was good enough to please the rich. Because the inns of the Greco-Roman world were also houses of prostitution, the girl being a part of the provision for the travelers, the xenodochium served a very important function in providing a godly inn.
\nSecond, the mosocomium was a hospital for the sick, and it provided doctors, stretcher-bearers, and attendants, and also a priest.
\nThird, the orphanotrophium, or orphanage, provided food, clothing, shelter, and an education to the many orphans of that era.
\nFourth, there was a gerontocomium or gerocomium to provide care for the aged in the forms of shelter, food, clothing, and general care.
\nFifth, later, in the medieval era, when the Crusades brought back leprosy into Europe, special hospitals were built for the care of lepers.
\nSixth, the ransoming of captives became a part of the Christian ministry also. St. Epiphanius (A.D. 439\u2013497), bishop of Pavia, ransomed more than 6,000 prisoners.
\nThese were the major forms of charitable activities in that era.
\nThese were ministries carried out by the church or by Christians who felt called to these specific services. St. John Chrysostom made it clear, however, that giving away money to charitable causes did not dissolve our personal responsibility to be charitable as occasion required it:<\/p>\n
Perhaps someone of you says: Aye, if it were given me to entertain Paul as a guest, I readily and with much eagerness would do this. Lo! it is in thy power to entertain Paul\u2019s Master for thy guest, and thou wilt not: for \u201che that receiveth one of these least,\u201d he saith, \u201creceiveth Me\u201d (Matt. 18:5, Luke 9:48). By how much the brother may be least, so much the more does Christ come to thee through him. For he that receives the great, often does it from vainglory also; but he that receives the small, does it purely for Christ\u2019s sake. It is in thy power to entertain even the Father of Christ as thy guest, and thou will not: for, \u201cI was a stranger,\u201d He says, \u201cand ye took me in\u201d (Matt. 25:35); and again, \u201cUnto one of the least of these the brethren that believe on Me, ye have done it unto me\u201d (ib. 40). Though it be not Paul, yet if it be a believer and a brother, although the least, Christ cometh to thee through him.<\/p>\n
It is very important, in this connection, to note that Scripture tells us that such charitable service is both our duty, to further community, and the only true means to dominion and authority. Our Lord declares:<\/p>\n
25. But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.
\n26. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;
\n27. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.
\n28. Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25\u201328)<\/p>\n
Christians have forgotten how they became great, and as a result they have lost strength. Our Lord is very clear: service is power, and it is the foundation of true authority and dominion. The modern state is aware of this, in a Machiavellian sense. Hence, the state has taken over the church\u2019s diaconal service: it is now the dispenser of charity or welfare, and its power is largely based on this service. No resentment against the state\u2019s power can alter its power. Only as the church restores the ministry of service, the diaconal ministry, to its ordained intention, will it regain its freedom. To surrender the diaconate to the state leads to disaster, no less now than in ancient Rome.
\nAs Otto Scott has noted, other areas have also been taken over by the enemies of Christ. Psychiatry and psychology in the West have replaced the confessional. In Marxist countries, forced public confessions give us a more grim example of this.<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty<\/p>\n
The New Year
\n(Leviticus 23:23\u201325)<\/p>\n
23. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n24. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, and holy convocation.
\n25. Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD. (Leviticus 23:23\u201325)<\/p>\n
In the Old Testament calendar, the seventh day is the day of rest, and the seventh month was also a kind of sabbath. These great festivals were celebrated in the seventh month: the feast of trumpets, the day of atonement, and the feast of tabernacles. In v. 24, reference is made to the \u201cblowing of trumpets,\u201d which is literally a \u201cshouting of trumpets,\u201d a joyful acclamation. Psalm 81 has been used by the synagogue on this day, the feast of trumpets. The rabbis held that the day also commemorated the creation of the world, when \u201call the sons of God shouted for joy\u201d (Job 38:7). The trumpets were blown all day during this feast.
\nKeil and Delitzsch noted:<\/p>\n
For the whole month was sanctified in the first day, as the beginning or head of the month; and by the sabbatical observance of the commencement, the whole course of the month was raised to a Sabbath. This was enjoined, not merely because it was the seventh month, but because the seventh month was to secure to the congregation the complete atonement for all its sins, and the wiping away of all the uncleannesses which separated it from its God, viz. on the day of atonement, which fell within this month, and to bring it a foretaste of the blessedness of life in fellowship with the Lord, viz. in the feast of Tabernacles, which commenced five days afterwards. This significant character of the seventh month was indicated by the trumpet-blast, by which the congregation presented the memorial of itself loudly and strongly before Jehovah on the first day of the month, that He might bestow upon them the promised blessings of His grace, for the realization of His covenant. The trumpet-blast on this day was a prelude of the trumpet-blast with which the commencement of the year of jubilee was proclaimed to the whole nation, on the day of atonement of every seventh sabbatical year, that great year of grace under the old covenant (chap. 25:9); just as the seventh month in general formed the link between the weekly Sabbath and the sabbatical and jubilee years, and corresponded as a Sabbath month to the year of jubilee rather than the sabbatical year, which had its prelude in the weekly Sabbath-day.<\/p>\n
In Nehemiah 7:73\u20138:12, we have an account of the celebration of this feast. Since the people then were newly returned from the captivity in Babylon to a ruined city, and because the reading of the law by Ezra made them aware of their sins, the people wept. Nehemiah, however, told the people to look not to their evil past but rather to God\u2019s grace, and to rejoice:<\/p>\n
9. And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha (or, the governor), and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the LORD your God; mourn not, nor weep. For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.
\n10. Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our LORD: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.
\n11. So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved.
\n12. And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them. (Nehemiah 8:9\u201312)<\/p>\n
These verses are important, not only because they give us an account of a New Year sabbath, but also the meaning of all sabbaths. First, the sabbath is to be a day of joy, of \u201cgreat mirth,\u201d of eating and drinking. Second, the sabbath is a day in which to remember the poor \u201cand send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared.\u201d Third, it is to be a joyful day because it is a celebration of God\u2019s victory in time for us and in us. Therefore, \u201cthe joy of the LORD is your strength.\u201d
\nThis festival of the new year is now called by Jews Rosh Hashanah, \u201cthe beginning of the year,\u201d a term found in Ezekiel 40:1. It became, especially with Maimonides, a day of repentance for past sins. Many saw it as the day of judgment for all men. The Biblical emphasis, however, is on joy. Judaism sees the ten days between the New Year and the Day of Atonement as days of repentance and even fasting. Paul apparently referred to this in Ephesians 5:8, 14.
\nA complimentary fact is that Judaism in time came to observe four separate days of the year as a New Year. First, this day, the first of Tisri, was the start of the civil calendar and the first day of the Sabbath year and of the Jubilee. Second, the first of Nisan was the New Year for Jewish kings and for the religious calendar. Third, the first of Ebel was the New Year for the tithing of cattle. Fourth, the first of Shevat was the New Year for trees.
\nAgain, in this festival, we have an important emphasis on time. Goldberg is right in stating that, here as elsewhere, \u201cwe see in the calendar its prophetic implications.\u201d On New Year\u2019s Day, \u201cservile work\u201d was banned, and offerings required. But this was not all. Even more than the weekly sabbaths, but like all sabbaths, it was to be a day of \u201cgreat mirth,\u201d and of sharing with the needy.
\nWe have noted that work means survival, and, in antiquity and in much of the world today, the connection is very close and immediate. It is less immediate for some societies but equally real. The command to be charitable (Lev. 23:22, Neh. 8:9\u201312) consequently appears to be a law to destroy a man\u2019s hope of survival. Thus, the sabbath has a double thrust against man\u2019s hopes for self-sufficiency. First, it requires regular cessation from work, which seems to militate against survival. Second, it requires that this rest from labor be accompanied by charity.
\nAll this seems dangerous to humanistic man over the centuries. God\u2019s law, however, is prophetic and predictive. In both Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 25, God declares that when His law is obeyed, the result is prosperity. This is summed up in Leviticus 25:18\u201319:<\/p>\n
18. Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.
\n19. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.<\/p>\n
Because time and the world are God\u2019s creation and not man\u2019s, prosperity depends not on man\u2019s planning, but on God\u2019s law obeyed by man. For men to attempt survival and prosperity on their fiat terms is thus a will to death.
\nNew Year observances are common to many cultures, and their character is usually oriented to pleasure and to chance. The New Year celebration of Scripture requires joy and community, and charity as essential to that community. It is, when Biblical, prophetic, because it celebrates the redeemed man\u2019s growing dominion over all things in the name of Christ.
\nIt is a Sabbath, and it celebrates the harvests to come, the assured victories in our God. In Ecclesiastes 11:1, we are told, \u201cCast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.\u201d The reference is to rice growing: the rice is the farmer\u2019s bread or food, and he must throw it upon the rice paddies in order to have a harvest. The Sabbath is such a trust in our future in the Lord. Faith is not easy where our sustenance is concerned, but, as Psalm 126:6 declares, \u201cHe that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-One<\/p>\n
The Day of Atonement
\n(Leviticus 23:26\u201332)<\/p>\n
26. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n27. Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you: and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.
\n28. And ye shall do no work in that same day: for it is a day of atonement, to make an atonement for you before the LORD your God.
\n29. For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people.
\n30. And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people.
\n31. Ye shall do no manner of work: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
\n32. It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath. (Leviticus 23:26\u201332)<\/p>\n
Here again, as in Leviticus 16, we have laws concerning the day of atonement, Yom Kippur. Three times in these seven verses there is the command, \u201cYe shall afflict your souls.\u201d The Berkeley Version gives us \u201chumble yourself,\u201d and \u201chumble your souls,\u201d and Robert Young\u2019s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible also uses the word \u201chumble.\u201d Goldberg called attention to the fact that \u201csorrow in itself does not take away sin.\u201d What God requires is not sorrow on our part but rather a redirection of our lives that is grounded on the fact of atonement. The Hebrew word anah means to depress, and we are to recognize our pride and sin and to trust, not in ourselves, but in God. Since man\u2019s sin is to be his own god (Gen. 3:5), to afflict our souls is not merely a negative introspective attitude but rather a trust in the grace and power of God. To trust in God means to depress our trust in ourselves and our righteousness. In Leviticus 16, the priests were instructed concerning this day; here it is the laymen who are addressed. The Good Friday observances of Christians are a continuation of Yom Kippur.
\nOn the day of atonement, there was to be no work, and the appointed sacrifices were to be made. Most important, as Grant noted, \u201cAtonement brings the glory back, but man must be made to know his need, and to receive it humbly.\u201d
\nThe practices of this day had a characteristic of which Hebrews has much to say. In Israel, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies: \u201csin is a separating power.\u201d With Christ, the veil of separation is gone, and man has in Him direct access to the Father (Heb. 6:19; 9:3ff.; 10:20).
\nIn Judaism, the emphasis of Yom Kippur is on the collective confession of sins rather than on the objective fact of God\u2019s provided atonement. Pietism has tended to a like error.
\nThose who failed to observe the day were, according to this law, to be excommunicated (v. 29), and God would bring destruction in His own way on violators (v. 30). The atonement gives life; to reject the atonement is to choose death.
\nIt is noteworthy that the Hebrew day was from evening to evening. In some churches, the liturgical calendar requires observances in terms of this fact, so that various holy days begin on the evening preceding the modern date.
\nWe have again a holy day which stresses the meaning of time. Modern Judaism, in commenting on Yom Kippur, sees it in terms of man\u2019s self-atonement. Since the sacrificial system was not continued after the destruction of the Temple in the Jewish-Roman War (A.D. 66\u201370), a humanistic view of salvation openly took over. Thus, one writer has said of Yom Kippur, that it \u201cadds a new dimension: however low man has fallen he can pull himself up again.\u201d Since perhaps the eighth century, the Kol Nidrei has become a part of the service, and it has led to anti-Jewish charges that all oaths are annulled on Yom Kippur. In actual fact, Kol Nidrei applies only to personal religious vows which neither affect nor involve others.
\nIn modernist churches, atonement has given way also to man\u2019s self-salvation, and the social gospel holds to salvation by the state.
\nAll such interpretations see the meaning of time as derived from time, from man. As in the fall (Gen. 3:1\u20135), man becomes his own savior. Time, however, when separated from God, loses its meaning and becomes merely an empty succession of moments. Existentialism is a logical consequence; it exalts the meaningless moment and sees salvation in an existence which is uninfluenced by anything outside or beyond itself. No atonement is then either desired or seen as necessary. The exaltation of time leads to the destruction of its meaning.
\nSince God is the creator of all things, the world, time, and history, the atonement and redemption of man, time, and history is impossible apart from Him. Because the atonement alone gives life, to reject it is to choose death.
\nThe atonement also tells us that progress is possible in history. Humanistic doctrines of progress have foundered and are being abandoned. Many aphorisms call attention to this: history repeats itself, we are told, meaning that it does not advance. Sir Robert Walpole said, \u201cAnything but history, for history must be false.\u201d Others have seen history as a lie, because it posits a meaning and direction. The Bible is clear that the universe is one of total meaning, God-created and God-ordained meaning, so that the very hairs of our head are all numbered (Matt. 10:30; Luke 12:7).
\nWithout the atonement, the world is meaningless. It is caught in the cycle of sin and death, whereas for us there is atonement and resurrection. Grant is right: \u201catonement brings the glory back,\u201d the glory of God\u2019s creation of all things as \u201cvery good\u201d (Gen. 1:31).<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Two<\/p>\n
The Feast of the Lord
\n(Leviticus 23:33\u201344)<\/p>\n
33. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n34. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, the fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be for the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD.
\n35. On the first day shall be an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
\n36. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.
\n37. These are the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD, a burnt offering and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and drink offering, every thing upon this day:
\n38. Beside the sabbaths of the LORD, and beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, and beside all your freewill offerings, which ye give unto the LORD.
\n39. Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: on the first day shall be a sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a sabbath.
\n40. And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.
\n41. And ye shall keep it a feast unto the LORD seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month.
\n42. Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths:
\n43. That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
\n44. And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the LORD. (Leviticus 23:33\u201344)<\/p>\n
The Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Festival of Booths, is the last of the three great festivals of Israel. It is known in the Jewish religious calendar as Sukkot. Both in ancient Israel and later, this was the major festival. The booths referred to were shade-shelters made of branches and erected in front of tents to provide protection against the sun and a place to eat and to rest. The commandment to return to a week of such living was intended to remind the Israelites of their wilderness journey and all its difficulties. In spite of the problems, the covenant people were provided for in the desert and had a promised land ahead. The festival is a reminder to us that, whatever our present problems may be, God is leading us to our promised land. In 1 Kings 8:2, 65, we have a reference to the celebration of this festival in Solomon\u2019s day; Ezekiel 45:23 also refers to it. In Exodus 23:16, it is called \u201cthe feast of ingathering,\u201d and also in Exodus 34:22. This term best expresses the fact of an agricultural harvest as well as the great ingathering of the nations.
\nThe observance of this festival meant an annual dislocation of the routines of everyday life for tent living, for camping together. The contrast between the tents and their homes would bring to mind God\u2019s prospering hand and His purpose. It was in Israel a time of community known simply as \u201cthe Feast.\u201d This reference appears in John\u2019s Gospel.
\nMany commentators insist on seeing this festival as simply a Canaanite harvest feast. That harvest celebrations marked many societies is clear, but such a view overlooks the key aspect of this feast. The people celebrated in tents to remind them of their wilderness journey, a backward look with thanksgiving. It was also a forward look towards God\u2019s great ingathering. People had minds before we scholars were born. Some scholars connect the incarnation and the resurrection with pagan winter and spring festivals. Such a view is a studious refusal to accept the historical facts.
\nIn Nehemiah 8:13\u201318, we have an account of the revival of this festival after the Babylonian Captivity. Because they were in a city, they were told to build their tents on their flat roof-tops, in the courtyard, and in certain urban locations. Subsequently, all kinds of regulations were issued by rabbinic leaders to govern the size and materials of the booths.
\nThe needy and poor were to be helped at this festival also. Since in antiquity living in tents reduced the apparent differences between peoples, it also furthered community. The tent or tabernacle looked back to the wilderness journey and also ahead to the great ingathering by the Messiah. Israel saw Amos 9:11 as a reference to this fact. The sacrifices of this festival were early seen as looking ahead to the atonement and redemption of all the nations.
\nHowever soon a heresy became a part of the festival, namely, pleading \u201cthe merits of the fathers,\u201d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the ground for God\u2019s blessing. This was also done in the prayers for forgiveness and atonement on Yom Kippur. The shift was thus from God\u2019s grace to ancestral merits, and the results warped the religious life of the people. But, as the Talmud noted, the festival also looked ahead to the redemption of all nations.
\nAnother aspect of this festival, as Israel developed its meaning, is well described by Edersheim:<\/p>\n
When the choir came to these words (Psa. 118:1), \u2018O give thanks to the Lord,\u2019 and again when they sang (Psa. 118:29), \u2018O work then now salvation, Jehovah;\u2019 and once more at the close (Psa. 118:29), \u2018O give thanks unto the Lord,\u2019 all the worshippers shook their lulavs towards the altar. When, therefore, the multitudes from Jerusalem, on meeting Jesus, \u2018cut down branches from the trees, and strewed them in the way, and \u2026 cried, saying, O then work now salvation to the Son of David!\u2019 (Matt. 21:8, 9; John 12:12, 13), they applied, in reference to Christ, what was regarded as one of the chief ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles, praying that God would now draw from \u2018the highest\u2019 heavens manifest and send them salvation in connection with the Son of David, which was symbolized by the pouring out of water. For though that ceremony was considered by the Rabbis as bearing a subordinate reference to the dispensation of the rain, the annual fall of which they imagined was determined by God at that feast, its main and real application was to the future outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as predicted\u2014probably an allusion to this very rite\u2014by Isaiah the prophet. Thus the Talmud says distinctly: \u2018Why is the name of it called, The drawing out of water?\u2019 Because of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, according to what is said: \u201cWith joy ye shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.\u201d Hence, also, the feast and the peculiar joyousness of it are alike designed as those of the \u2018drawing out of water;\u2019 for, according to the same Rabbinic authorities, the Holy Spirit dwells in man only through joy.<\/p>\n
Our Lord made use of this rite of the drawing out of water when at the feast, and with reference to Isaiah 12:3 and 44:3 (cf. John 4:14):<\/p>\n
37. In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
\n38. He that believeth on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
\n39. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) (John 7:37\u201339)<\/p>\n
Just as we have lost the connection between work and survival, so too we have lost the connection between water and life. A healthy man can survive a few weeks without food, but not more than three days without water. Jesus is the necessary water of life without whom men and cultures perish.
\nTwo important aspects of the Feast of the Tabernacles were not of Mosaic origin. These were, first, the pouring out of water, and, second, the illumination of the Temple. Both represented insights into the meaning of the festival. All lights were put out in Jerusalem, and then relit from the Temple altar. With this in mind, our Lord declares, \u201cI am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life\u201d (John 8:12). John 1:4\u20139 stresses this same fact.
\nOther festivals and days were added to the religious calendar which were not required by Scripture: the feast of candles for the dedication of the Temple, later the fast for the siege of Jerusalem, the fast of Esther, and Purim. The new moons, of course, were observed monthly. The last Biblical festival was Tabernacles or Sukkot.
\nThe sacred calendar was to govern the people. This was true in much of church history also. Now the calendar is largely secularized, as is time. There is no experience of time by the dead: they have dropped out of the calendar and time; growth, change, and movement are beyond the dead.
\nOur Lord declares, \u201cI am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me\u201d (John 14:6). Men and nations who abandon Christ abandon time and life. This, the last festival, is so prophetic of Christ\u2019s work and Kingdom, that it can be called the Feast of the Lord. It is the foundation of missions and more.
\nIt tells us that the sacred calendar alone does justice to time and eternity. The humanistic conception of time is in terms of Genesis 3:5, the desire to be one\u2019s own god; it finds its fulfillment in George Orwell\u2019s concept of man\u2019s triumph, a boot stamping on a human face forever. Both time and meaning are thereby lost. What \u201cCzar\u201d Tom Reed said a century ago about most congressmen applies to others as well: \u201cThey never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.\u201d
\nThe remarkable inferences made from the meaning of this feast point to Christ as the water of life, and as the light of the world. He in turn declares this to be our calling, to be the world\u2019s light and the water of life.
\nEdersheim\u2019s reference to the rabbinic authorities is also telling: \u201cthe Holy Spirit dwells in man only through joy.\u201d In Nehemiah\u2019s words, \u201cthe joy of the LORD is your strength\u201d (Neh. 8:10).<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Three<\/p>\n
Sacred Objects
\n(Leviticus 24:1\u20139)<\/p>\n
1. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n2. Command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.
\n3. Without the vail of the testimony, in the tabernacle of the congregation, shall Aaron order it from the evening unto the morning before the LORD continually: it shall be a statute for ever in your generations.
\n4. He shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick before the LORD continually.
\n5. And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake.
\n6. And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the LORD.
\n7. And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the LORD.
\n8. Every sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant.
\n9. And it shall be Aaron\u2019s and his sons\u2019; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the LORD made by fire by a perpetual statute. (Leviticus 24:1\u20139)<\/p>\n
We come to a section titled by R. K. Harrison, \u201cSacred Objects.\u201d The regulations concerning the golden lampstand (or menorah) are given in vv. 1\u20134, and those concerning the shewbread or bread of the Presence in vv. 5\u20139.
\nBefore considering the details of either, let us examine the fact of sacred objects. To the modern mentality, the concept seems remote and simply a relic of more primitive ways in religion. The Bible not only has much to say about sacred objects, but also declares that the goal of history is to make all persons, things, and objects sacred. In our first chapter, on Zechariah 14:20\u201321, we saw that God\u2019s purpose is that, by means of His law, His covenant people will in due time make all things sacred.
\nAnti-Christianity seeks either to desacralize the world, to strip it of all association with God, or to sacralize it on anti-Christian terms. The Beatnik movement began such a systematic attempt. Thus, Michael McClure, in his \u201cPeyote Poem,\u201d describes drugs as a means of realizing divinity. Allen Ginsberg, in \u201cFootnote to Howl,\u201d declares that all things are holy as they are, including the homosexuals. In this anti-Christian perspective, Christianity is the enemy of fallen man\u2019s natural holiness.
\nIn Scripture, not only are we called to be holy, (\u201cSanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God,\u201d Lev. 20:7), but times, objects, and places are also declared to be holy. This concept has now been transferred to the modern state: state holidays have replaced holy days, and we speak of national treasures and shrines. It is an act of perversity to deny that Christianity should have sacred times, objects, and places.
\nThe golden lampstand (Ex. 25:31\u201340; 27:20\u201321) was to be kept burning continually in the holy place, which otherwise would have been dark. It was the duty of the high priest each day to care for the lamps, and, at the beginning, he lit them (Num. 8:3). The golden lampstand was thus an artificial, man-provided light in the holy place. God provides the salvation, but it is the new man who provides the light to blot out the darkness. Of Jesus Christ, we are told, \u201cThat was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world\u201d (John 1:9). All who are in Christ are now the light of the world. According to our Lord,<\/p>\n
14. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
\n15. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
\n16. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14\u201316)<\/p>\n
God is able to provide light in all places, but He has made it our duty to carry Christ\u2019s light into all the world. If we fail to do so, even the holy place becomes dark.
\nIn v. 3, we are told that the lamps were to burn \u201ccontinually,\u201d or, better, regularly, from evening until morning, even when the holy place was not in use.
\nIn Revelation 1:20, we are told that the lampstand means the church.
\nThe lampstand, according to Exodus 25:31, was to be of \u201cpure gold.\u201d At this point, we come to another controversy. The disciples themselves were indignant when a woman with an alabaster cruse of very precious oil poured it on Jesus\u2019 head. They demanded, \u201cTo what purpose is this waste? For the ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor\u201d (Matt. 26:8; Mark 14:4\u20135). Our Lord rebuked them for this, but, ever since, men have echoed the disciples\u2019 complaint. The church, it is held, should not have beautiful buildings, nor costly furnishings. Such complaints come from the rich and poor alike. Clearly, anything costly or beautiful is in their eyes too good for God! Scripture tells us, however, that even the robes of the high priest were to be \u201cfor glory and for beauty\u201d (Ex. 28:2, 40). While beauty in itself is nothing, and it must be linked to holiness, it is still God\u2019s requirement. We are commanded to \u201cworship the LORD in the beauty of holiness\u201d (1 Chron. 16:29), not in the ugliness of holiness.
\nIn vv. 5\u20139, we have reference to the shewbread, or bread of the Presence. Ginsburg\u2019s comment on this is very good:<\/p>\n
Each cake, therefore, was made of two omers of wheat, or, as it is here said, of two tenth-parts of an ephah, which is the same thing. As an omer is the quantity which, according to the Divine ordinance (Exod. 16:16\u201319), supplies the daily wants of a human being, each of these cakes represents the food of a man and his neighbour, whilst the twelve cakes answered to the twelve tribes of Israel.<\/p>\n
The bread was unleavened and thus did not mold during the course of the week. According to Dummelow, the bread \u201cwas an acknowledgment that man owes his \u2018daily bread\u2019 to God. It was a kind of perpetual grace over meat.\u201d
\nThe term, \u201cbread of His Presence,\u201d is rendered by Calvin as \u201cthe bread of faces.\u201d He wrote,<\/p>\n
\u2026 this is no ordinary symbol of God\u2019s favour, when He descended familiarly to them, as if He were their messmate. They (the loaves) were called \u201cthe bread of faces,\u201d because they were placed before the eyes of God; and thus He made known His special favour, as if coming to banquet with them.<\/p>\n
Wenham is right in stating that, like circumcision and the Sabbath, the bread of the Presence set forth the fact of the covenant between God and His people.
\nWe have God\u2019s covenant presence where His law-word is obeyed, and where all that belongs to God is treated with reverence as sacred. This applies to all things connected with worship, all sacred objects; it covers us and our resources and money, all the earth, which is the LORD\u2019s (Ps. 24:1). Instead of desacralizing all things, we work to bring all things, and every thought, captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).
\nWe work to reverse the fall, and to reverse the retreat of faith. Under the influence of pietism, Christianity has withdrawn to the inner life of man and left the world to the state. The world is seen as under the jurisdiction, not of Christ, but of the state. Freud, recognizing this situation, held that to destroy Christianity, the best means would be to reduce guilt and the problems of man\u2019s mind to scientific problems with scientific solutions. There is no further ground left for retreat. Either Christians recapture every area of life and thought, or face the judgment of God.<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Four<\/p>\n
Blasphemy
\n(Leviticus 24:10\u201316)<\/p>\n
10. And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp;
\n11. And the Israelitish woman\u2019s son blasphemed the name of the LORD, and cursed. And they brought him unto Moses: (and his mother\u2019s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan:)
\n12. And they put him in ward, that the mind of the LORD might be shewed them.
\n13. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n14. Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp; and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him.
\n15. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin.
\n16. And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall he be put to death. (Leviticus 24:10\u201316)<\/p>\n
This is a very popular text with the ungodly, who regularly cite it as an example of the \u201cprimitivism\u201d of the Bible, an odd charge from smug members of the world\u2019s most bloody century.
\nThe question at stake is authority. Blasphemy is forbidden in Exodus 22:28, \u201cThou shalt not revile (or, blaspheme) the gods (or, judges), nor curse the ruler of thy people.\u201d There is no penalty stated in Exodus, and perhaps this meant that the penalty was determined by the situation and case. In this instance, the man was held in custody so \u201cthat the mind of the LORD might be shewed them\u201d (v. 12). J.R. Porter held that the case was further complicated by the fact that the man was half Egyptian. Did the law apply to him? The man\u2019s descendants would in the third generation be eligible for full entry into covenant life (Deut. 23:7\u20138). Nothing is said about the father of this man, although we are given the name and family of the mother. It would appear that perhaps the father was not Israel. Rabbinical scholars have given us an account of the father:<\/p>\n
They say that the father of the young man was the Egyptian slain by Moses (Ex. 2:2), that he was the taskmaster under whom the husband of Shelomith worked, and that Moses found him smiting the man whom he had injured and put to shame. It is added that the quarrel in which the young man was engaged arose out of a claim set up by him to have his abode in the camp of the Danites (see Num. 2:2), not being content to remain in the quarters appropriated to foreigners.<\/p>\n
This story is discounted by most Christian scholars, and it has no confirmation. However, much in history is without confirmation, and the rabbis were the best historians of antiquity. There was something unusual about this episode, and perhaps the rabbinic report gives us the background.
\nIn v. 14, we have the laying on of hands by the witnesses prior to the execution. The laying on of hands has varied meanings: it could mean ordination to God\u2019s service (Acts 6:6); a blessing (Gen. 48:14); a transfer of guilt (Lev. 1:4; 4:3\u20134); healing (Mark 5:23); and more. Here it apparently means that the witnesses testify to the man\u2019s sin, that his blood is upon his own head, and that there is no guilt on those who stone him to death (v. 15).
\nSome rabbinic commentators have claimed that the guilty man\u2019s mother was the only woman in the camp with an illegitimate child. They see her character indicated in her name. \u201cShe said \u2018hello\u2019 (shalom) to all men and she was a chatterbox (dabranit, punning on Dibri.)\u201d.
\nCalvin, quite realistically, assumed that many young Israelite women married into the Egyptian nation in order to gain some protection for themselves and their families through their husbands. Moreover, the rabbis to the contrary, Shalomith\u2019s name means \u201cwoman of peace.\u201d
\nWe are not given any specific data about the nature of the blasphemy, because it is not necessary for us to know them. It was, clearly, a flagrant offense, and one that struck at the authority and majesty of the covenant Lord. Knight holds that it was a denial of God and His covenant, a declaration that belief in God, His covenant with Israel, and His providential care is nonsense. In some form, it was a contemptuous challenge and a denial of the authority of the covenant God. It is an incident which makes it clear that \u201cif for any reason a stranger take up his abode within the circle of the divine government, he is amenable to the laws thereof.\u201d In some way, the blasphemer had denied that God had jurisdiction over him, and this may be the reason why Moses consulted God.
\nThe word blasphemy in the Hebrew is naqab, to curse, revile, puncture, or pierce. It means to seek to destroy. It is warfare against God and His covenant law. This tells us something of this man\u2019s offense. This incident is set in the midst of laws; it tells us that, even as the law was being given, this man was expressing his contempt for God and His law. The summons of the law is to holiness; the offense of this man was in some form a contempt for and an attack on the idea of holiness. Peake saw the blasphemy as a complete renunciation of any allegiance to or regard for the covenant Lord.
\nThe subject of blasphemy is a difficult one for modern man to understand. In antiquity, it was commonly punished by death in various cultures. In its most elemental and basic meaning, blasphemy is \u201cproperly any species of calumny and detraction,\u201d but in Scripture is limited to God and to things sacred. It is a denial of the fundamental authority in all creation. Modern man sees himself as his own god and law, having developed the implications of the fall to their limits. Contempt for authority is more congenial to him than respect.
\nWhere respect for the authority of God and His word is gone, then soon all authority is eroded. Scripture declares blasphemy to be a very serious offense because any society which begins by profaning God and His authority will soon profane all things. The alternative to authority is total terror by the power state. Where there is no authority, there is soon no justice, because men no longer speak the same moral language of law and authority. The respect for God\u2019s authority establishes communication and healthy dissent. The kind of dissent which thrives in an anarchic situation is the dissent of increasing evil, violence, and destruction. Godly dissent is constructive, not destructive, and its goal is justice and holiness.
\nOtto Scott has called my attention to the fact that there is a strong, humanistic doctrine of blasphemy in effect in our time. In several countries, it is illegal to make any reference to minority groups which can be construed as derogatory, even if the comments are accurate. Thus, to cite the high rate of crime and violence among certain groups, even if the data be police statistics, is severely punished. Criticism of certain minorities is viewed as blasphemy.<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Five<\/p>\n
Blasphemy and Social Order
\n(Leviticus 24:17\u201323)<\/p>\n
17. And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.
\n18. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.
\n19. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;
\n20. Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in man, so shall it be done to him again.
\n21. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.
\n22. Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God.
\n23. And Moses spake to the children of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones. And the children of Israel did as the LORD commanded Moses. (Leviticus 24:17\u201323)<\/p>\n
These verses are a continuation of the subject of blasphemy, of vv. 10\u201316. Their purpose is to make clear why the death sentence was pronounced against the man guilty of blasphemy. We are told that the law of God is binding on all peoples, both in its penalties and its protection.
\nSince God is the source of all law, it follows that offenses against God are a denial of all law in a society. We cannot see blasphemy simply as words spoken against God. To think so is to isolate God from the realm of meaning and law, and to make Him an irrelevant outsider to the universe. No court of law takes kindly to anyone who denies the legitimate jurisdiction of that court. It is much more serious to deny the validity of all law. Such a man then affirms the validity of Genesis 3:5, i.e., of himself as his own god and law. He may use the Bible as a fa\u00e7ade, but he has given it his own innovative meaning against God\u2019s meaning.
\nIt is an interesting fact that in the Slavic languages, the word provoke means law, truth, and justice, and zakon means law, religion; these words are ancient in their meaning and use. Law is inseparable from religion, from truth and justice.
\nMen, however, are prone to take seriously offenses against themselves, but not offenses against God. An ancient cynical proverb declares, \u201cI can defend mine honor; let God defend His.\u201d The answer is that those who do not uphold God\u2019s honor become a part of the realm under His judgment.
\nThese verses affirm \u201cthe law of retribution.\u201d In Porter\u2019s words, \u201cThe idea is not to make the punishment fit the crime but to restore to the victim what he has lost.\u201d This can be by an equivalent compensation for damages. Retribution has many presuppositions. First of all, it assumes the responsibility of all persons. They are responsible for what they do, for the behavior of their animals, and the safety of their buildings (Ex. 21:29, 33\u201336; 22:6; Deut. 22:8; etc.). Second, restitution is necessary to restore as much as possible the order which existed. In cases of murder, the death of the killer is an aspect of this. Third, restitution seeks to restore justice to the human scene and thereby affirm God\u2019s moral order. Fourth, retribution is know as lex talionis, and for some generations it has been regarded as a form of primitivism which psychology and sociology are replacing. Without this fact of retribution, however, justice is denied and is replaced by psychotherapy.
\nSome of the related passages are Genesis 9:6; Exodus 21:12\u201314, 18\u201325, 35\u201336; and Deuteronomy 19:21. Oswald T. Allis called attention to three aspects of this lex talionis: first, it means exact justice, not revenge. Second, it is public justice, not private revenge. Third, just compensation for all injuries other than murder is required; there can be no ransom for murder (Num. 35:31f).
\nThe fact that the protection of God\u2019s law extends to forgiveness is very important. God extends that protection to all races and peoples because all are required to live by that law and will be judged and punished by that law. The source of the law is also the source of judgment. Where state law, made by the state\u2019s fiat, governs us, we are then also judged by the state\u2019s fiat. Arbitrary laws then prevail, and the security of our persons, freedom, and property are lost to the same fiat will. The assertion by the state that its fiat will can replace God\u2019s law is blasphemy.
\nBush commented:<\/p>\n
It is moreover to be remembered that blasphemy is not confined to the mere profane use of the name of titles of the Most High. Any kind of disparaging or contemptuous reflections thrown out against the power or grace of God comes into the same category in the estimation of the Scriptures. Thus Rabshakeh is charged with blasphemy for asserting that the God of Israel had no more power than the gods of the heathen. And thus the Psalmist pleads, \u2018O God, how long shall the adversary reproach, shall the many blaspheme thy name for ever?\u2019 Thus, moreover, Paul says of himself that he was before his conversion a blasphemer, because he had spoken against and opposed the grace of Christ; and doubtless it is for the same reason that James says of the rich men of his day, \u2018Do they not blaspheme that worthy name by which ye are called?\u2019<\/p>\n
The incident of Rabshakeh\u2019s blasphemy is very interesting. This commander of the Assyrian armed forces ridiculed Hezekiah\u2019s trust in God\u2019s ability to deliver Judah. Rabshakeh found such a faith ridiculous and made fun of it (2 Kings 18:19\u201325), even stating, as though he were himself a prophet, that God had sent him to destroy the land. For Rabshakeh, an historical power could not be touched by God: history has priority over eternity.
\nBlasphemy is thus more than taking the name of the Lord in vain: it is a denial of the power and relevance of God and His law-word; it is the contempt for His word as empty and impotent. It is the misuse of God\u2019s word to serve man\u2019s purposes, as though God is nothing and cannot see to avenge Himself. Blasphemy treats God as a non-entity.
\nScott observed long ago,<\/p>\n
Blasphemy against God, yea, contempt of him, expressed in words or actions, is in its own nature not only more heinous than theft or robbery of any kind, but even than murder; and though it frequently escapes unpunished by man, yet it shall by no means escape the righteous vengeance of God.<\/p>\n
More than a few scholars believe that the law of retribution was set aside by our Lord in Matthew 5:38ff. Such men also often feel that their more modern wisdom enables them to correct or supplement both Moses and Christ. Kellogg\u2019s comment is pertinent:<\/p>\n
\u2026 Much cavil have these laws occasioned, the more so that Christ Himself is cited as having condemned them in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:38\u201342). But how little difficulty really exists here will appear from the following considerations. The Jews from of old have maintained that the law of an \u201ceye for eye,\u201d as here given, was not intended to authorise private and irresponsible retaliation in kind, but only after due trial and legal process.<\/p>\n
Kellogg pointed out that the plain evidence of Hebrew history makes it clear that the meaning of the law was never that an eye was gouged out in restitution, but that the penalty had to be equal to the crime. Modernists are very prone to attempts to reduce such language to primitivism: any era without their wisdom is held to be barbaric.
\nTo deny the validity and importance of blasphemy is to undermine justice. Because blasphemy is no longer regarded as anything but a dead concept, we see justice being replaced by class and race laws, and by psychotherapy. Such systems, Marxist, Nazi, or democratic, see the source of social order in the ideas of an elite class, race, or profession. God\u2019s law and justice are mandatory for all peoples, and they judge and protect all peoples.
\nThe law against blasphemy tells us that the fundamental law, authority, and law-Giver of all creation must be revered in every sphere. No building can stand if the foundation and the first floor are suddenly removed. Similarly, no society can stand if it blasphemously denies the foundation of all justice.
\nDavid asks, \u201cIf the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?\u201d (Ps. 11:3). The Hebrew word for foundations is shathah, a basis, figuratively, a political or moral support, foundation, or purpose. The righteous or just dare not be indifferent to the destruction of the foundation of society.<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Six<\/p>\n
The Land\u2019s Sabbath
\n(Leviticus 25:1\u20137)<\/p>\n
1. And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,
\n2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.
\n3. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;
\n4. But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
\n5. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.
\n6. And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee.
\n7. And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat. (Leviticus 25:1\u20137)<\/p>\n
We come now to one of the Bible\u2019s most important chapters. The Sabbath year has many aspects. In Deuteronomy 15:1\u20136, the cancellation of debts among the covenant people is cited. In this text, we have a Sabbath for the land and from the normal routines of work. There can be no harvest for sale; as vv. 6\u20137 make clear, only that which grows of itself can be used for food. There is to be no sowing or pruning.
\nIn Leviticus 25, the jubilee chapter, we see the sharp difference between the good society as Scripture sets it forth, and the good society of humanists. The Bible sees society in terms of atonement, restitution, and forgiveness. These are the means whereby sin is dealt with. Men receive a new status before God by Christ\u2019s atonement; they become a new creature by His regenerating power. They apply restitution, and with restitution, forgiveness, to all of their relations. As against this, we have a variety of conceptions which either seek to discount sin, or see only its endless burden. Those who seek to discount sin cannot escape the fact of guilt; it governs and haunts a sinful society: the burden of sin is a sociological fact. But men want simplistic answers. Jones has written of the common expectation of Confederate troops from Louisiana: \u201cEvery Louisiana soldier was obsessed with the same goal in 1861\u2014to meet the Yankee invaders in combat and end the war swiftly in one glorious, textbook battle.\u201d The Romantics, whether they call themselves social scientists, reformers, or statesmen, believe in such simplistic solutions to the problems of sin. Freud, in writing on \u201cDostoyevsky and Parricide,\u201d saw that men turn the burden of guilt into a burden of debt. As Wiseman pointed out, \u201cthe mental economy\u201d of the guilty leads them into self-degradation and humiliation as means of atonement. \u201cWithout such self-imposed retribution, the unexpiated guilt becomes unbearable.\u201d This is clear in the case of Gelles de Raiz, Satanist, sadist, sodomite, and a man who sacrificed countless small boys in his evil rites. The more he plunged into evil, the more he also plunged into debt. He sinned, and he \u201cpunished\u201d himself by incurring impossible debts. It is ironic that debt today has its defenders as the way of progress. It would be more accurate to say that our international debts and loans are today the means of pseudo-atonement to bring judgment upon the nations.
\nBelievers in karma take sin more seriously, but for them there is no atonement, no grace, and no forgiveness. Life becomes a painful cycle of continuing punishment and hopelessness. Life becomes a living death: the many evils of ostensibly previous incarnations add to present ones to produce a life of inescapable guilt and misery.
\nThe premise of the Sabbath year is the atonement. Men can rest in the Lord. By His atonement, they are free. By His law, we find continuing renewal for the earth and ourselves in the Sabbath.
\nThis fact of the Sabbath remission of debts means that foresight, providence, and work govern men for six years and make possible a rest on the seventh. Consider the amount of interest paid by most men yearly; add to this the interest cost in all goods we buy, since businesses operate on debt and pay interest. Add also the interest paid in taxes on the national debt. The direct and indirect interest we pay out annually would in itself also keep us for the seventh year.
\nThe Sabbath year laws are basic to the laws of holiness. They required the cancellation of debts, freedom for \u201cslaves\u201d (really bondservants), and a rest for the land. What the trees or vines bore in the Sabbath year were to be food for all, so that the poor would, as in gleaning, be allowed to harvest the fields. According to Exodus 23:9\u201312,<\/p>\n
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.
\n10. And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather the fruits thereof:
\n11. But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.
\n12. Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.<\/p>\n
It is clear from this text that the Sabbath rest must be used to bring the covenant people together in a concern for one another, as well as in a trust in the Lord. Notice that in v. 1 we are told that these laws are a part of God\u2019s revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is not a later addition to the law but an essential part of it. As Moses set forth the revelation, it came to its culmination in this chapter.
\nMeyrick set forth the meaning of this law thus:<\/p>\n
The principle is, as before, that as the land is God\u2019s land, not man\u2019s, so the Israelites were the slaves of God, not of men, and that if the position in which God placed them was allowed to be interfered with for a time, it was to be recovered every seventh, or at furthest every fiftieth, year.<\/p>\n
As Riley said of God, \u201cHe not only rules the realm; He owns it.\u201d Therefore His law must govern it, and His ordained rest. Moreover, \u201cIn this Sabbatical year God also emphasized dependence upon His Providences.\u201d A central aspect of the Sabbath year was education in the meaning of God\u2019s law (Deut. 31:9\u201313).
\nAccording to 2 Chronicles 36:21, the Babylonian captivity was necessary so that the land might enjoy the Sabbaths denied to it by Israel\u2019s apostasy. Seventy years of Sabbaths were kept during that captivity, a year for every skipped year. God\u2019s law is not to be trifled with: rest for the land means its renewal.<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Seven<\/p>\n
The Jubilee, Part I
\n(Leviticus 25:8\u201317)<\/p>\n
8. And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.
\n9. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.
\n10. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
\n11. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.
\n12. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
\n13. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.
\n14. And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour\u2019s hand, ye shall not oppress one another:
\n15. According to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee:
\n16. According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.
\n17. Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 25:8\u201317)<\/p>\n
The jubilee makes it very plain that the economics of God\u2019s law is sharply different from all other economic systems. After seven sevens of years, and seven sabbatical years, the jubilee, another sabbath year, is celebrated. This means two sabbath years in a row, a fact referred to in 2 Kings 19:29 and Isaiah 37:30. The jubilee is also cited in Deuteronomy 15:1\u201318 and 31:9\u201313. It is present even more, perhaps, in the New Testament: our Lord cites the jubilee proclamation of Isaiah 61:1\u20136, i.e., v. 1 and part of v. 2 thereof, and then declares, \u201cThis day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears\u201d (Luke 4:16\u201321). His coming marks the beginning of God\u2019s greater jubilee. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes echo the jubilee law and Isaiah 61:1ff. The Lord\u2019s Prayer is a jubilee prayer, and the petition, \u201cForgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors\u201d (Matt. 6:12), is an aspect of the jubilee law.
\nThe jubilee law has some key provisions. First, all rural property was to be returned to the original owner or his family. \u201cSales\u201d were thus leases for the number of years to the next jubilee. Urban properties could be sold permanently, but not rural properties. Because God is the owner of the earth (Ps. 24:1, etc.), God dictates the terms of men\u2019s possession thereof.
\nSecond, Hebrew \u201cslaves\u201d or bondservants could not be held for more than six years. The seventh year was the year of release. The jubilee not only celebrates their freedom but also their return to their original home. God, as the go\u2019el, or next of kin, is the redeemer of these covenant peoples from their financial bondage.
\nThird, all debts were cancelled in the sabbath years and also by the jubilee. By combining this cancellation with the return to the land and to one\u2019s family, the meaning of the release is intensified.
\nFourth, the land is allowed to lie fallow, and its volunteer crops are for the use of all. It is now known that fallowed land increases its productivity thereafter: it is renewed.
\nFifth, the jubilee year began on the Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month (Tishri, which is September\u2013October), and was thus inaugurated by atonement.
\nSixth, the great emphasis of the jubilee was on liberation: \u201cproclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof\u201d (v. 10). This verse has had a long history in Western civilization as a hope and faith. The Hebrew word for liberty is d\u2019ror, running free, finding oneself in a happy flow of freedom.
\nThe doctrine of land ownership set forth was firmly established among the people, as the case of Naboth made clear (1 Kings 21:8ff.). The indictment of Micah 2:2 is concerned with violations of the land law.
\nGrant said, of this land law,<\/p>\n
In the yielding up the right of property every seventh year, the Israelite owned from whom he held it. For that year he was not proprietor, the harvest belonged to any one as much as to him, and it was expressly as a Sabbath to Jehovah that this was appointed. That year Jehovah entertained all freely with that which sprang up under His hand apart from human cultivation. It was upon this recognition of the divine lordship Israel\u2019s tenure of it all depended. For the violation of this command the land was to enjoy its Sabbaths that had been wrested from it, lying vacant while the people were cast forth (chap. 25:35). And this clearly gives meaning to the jubilee-restoration. Moreover in His parable of the husbandmen, the Lord expressly connects their rejection of Himself with the rejection of Jehovah\u2019s rights over the vineyard which He let out to them. Here the idea conveyed in the Sabbatical year is extended and developed (Matt. 21:33\u201341). The prophets had been His servants sent to receive His fruits: \u201cAfterward He sent unto them His Son, saying, They will reverence My Son. But when the husbandmen saw the Son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill Him, and let us seize on His inheritance.\u201d Hence comes the righteous sentence upon them.<\/p>\n
The Great Jubilee of God comes with the new creation: it is called by Peter, \u201cthe times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began\u201d (Acts 3:21). The doctrine of restitution is basic to the jubilee, and to the Biblical doctrine of liberty.
\nNo study has been made of the application and use of this law in Christendom. It is worthy of note, at any rate, that<\/p>\n
An Armenian code of the twelfth century put some bits of the jubilee law into practice: the rule that urban property could be redeemed only within one year after it was sold, while property outside city walls was subject to redemption for seven years\u2014a very considerable modification.<\/p>\n
One aspect of the jubilee which must be noted is the requirement of family reunions, i.e., of covenant members. It is an error to stress simply the economic aspects of this law. For God\u2019s law, economics and the family are essentially tied. The purpose of economic activity is to further the life of the family.
\nKnight is thoroughly right in seeing this law as a strong correction to the view that Scripture\u2019s message is the redemption of individual men, who are called to be born again; it is that and much more. First, the covenant family rests and comes together to be renewed in their love and their faith. Second, the land by its jubilee rest is also renewed or born again.
\nThe jubilee law also makes it clear that inheritance is not a personal and individualistic fact: it is religious, and it looks to the transmission of land and other forms of wealth to generations yet to come. No man can view himself as anything but a trustee under God of whatever he possesses.
\nThe law of the jubilee thus makes it clear that economics is an aspect of family life, and, together with the family, is a part of our life in the Lord in terms of His law. Henry George was greatly influenced by the jubilee law, although his use of it was a humanistic revision. In Ruth 4, we see an aspect of the family duties required by this law.
\nModern man has created false divisions in his life by needlessly isolating its spheres. The unity of things is imposed from above by the state\u2019s controls which intervene in the family, economics, inheritance, education, and all things else. This is a false unity and a destructive one. In the Biblical faith and law, the unity is under God, and the locale on earth is the family. Humanism leads to false and totalitarian emphases. Those to whom economics is the key insist on an economic or free market perspective on everything, and some Randians give prostitution, as a free market activity, equal status with the family. Others, by seeing the state as the unifying agent, give us various forms of socialism. The jubilee most certainly deals with economic facts, but its perspective is theological, as economics must be. The declaration, \u201cYe shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God\u201d (v. 17), is a religious statement governing an economic fact.
\nChrist\u2019s coming is a jubilee fact, because it declares that both restitution and liberty are basic to His Kingdom, together with a victorious rest. Romans 8:19ff. celebrates the Great Jubilee at the end of history, and our Lord speaks of it in Matthew 19:27\u201330 and 25:34, as does 1 Peter 1:4. The law of the jubilee tells us that both time and eternity result in victory.<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Eight<\/p>\n
The Jubilee, Part II
\n(Leviticus 25:18\u201324)<\/p>\n
18. Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.
\n19. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill and dwell therein in safety.
\n20. And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:
\n21. Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.
\n22. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
\n23. The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.
\n24. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. (Leviticus 25:18\u201324)<\/p>\n
The laws of jubilee are also called the laws of release or the laws of liberty: \u201cproclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof\u201d (v. 10). In Honeycutt\u2019s words,<\/p>\n
All of creation is the Lord\u2019s, and to set creation free is to acknowledge that sanctity. So God\u2019s continuing call is: Free the land, free the poor, free all who are encumbered. Freedom acknowledges that all creation is sacred, belonging not to persons but to the Lord.<\/p>\n
In the Biblical perspective, rural land is not a commodity to be sold for a profit but a trust from God to the family. The family here means also the generations yet to come, so that the trustee possessor of the land holds it under God for future generations. A future-oriented tenure was thus a result. At the same time, the past trustees and their work to build up the family\u2019s land was a very present fact. Biblical faith is land-oriented. The earth was cursed for man\u2019s sake at the Fall (Gen. 3:17), and it is to be blessed at the new creation of all things (Rom. 8:18\u201325).
\nIt is noteworthy that both vv. 18 and 19 stress the fact of our safety when we are faithful to the Lord. Bush said, concerning the Hebrew word labeta\u2019h, \u201cin confident-safety,\u201d<\/p>\n
The Heb. word expresses both the boldness and confidence with which men that fear and obey God trust in him, and the safety and security which they feel in his protection in times of doubt or danger.<\/p>\n
In vv. 18\u201322, there are two major promises. The first, as already noted, is safety. The land and people will live in security and peace if they obey God and observe this law. The sabbath and jubilee years quite obviously required faith and obedience. To go without planting for one year in Sabbath years, and two in the Jubilee, meant living two and three years on old stored food on faith, because another season would pass before a harvest. However, second, God promises a blessing of very great plenty for all who are obedient. He commands His blessing on all who are commanded, on all who obey Him in faith. This is a special and providential blessing.
\nLet us turn again to the fact that these are laws of release. The Jubilee is the great Sabbath, and the sabbaths are all a rest and release. John Newton\u2019s hymn, \u201cSafely through another week God has brought us on our way\u201d (1774), says,<\/p>\n
From all worldly cares set free,
\nMay we rest this day in Thee.<\/p>\n
We need to recognize the kinds of meaning set forth concerning the sabbath doctrine, days, years, and jubilee: safety, release, plenty, rest, and more, all in faithfulness to the Lord. The land, too, has a release. First, the land has a release from man. We are not to prune or cultivate the land and its vines and trees in the sabbatical years. Because \u201cthe earth is the LORD\u2019s\u201d (Ps. 24:1), we must obey God\u2019s law and give the land its periodic release. This release applies to every person and sphere. In the Ten Commandments, we are told the rest applies to our families, workers, and animals (Ex. 20:8\u201311). In no sphere, including our own lives, do we have unrestricted power or jurisdiction. The law concerning menstruation gives a like immunity to women (Lev. 18:19, 20:18, etc.). \u201cThe earth is the Lord\u2019s,\u201d and so are we.
\nSecond, not only are we the Lord\u2019s property, as is the land, but the harvests too are His possession. \u201cThe earth is the LORD\u2019s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein\u201d (Ps. 24:1). The tithe, the offering of the firstfruits, the sabbaths, gleaning, and more, witness to God\u2019s ownership of the products of the earth, whether agricultural, mineral, or manufactured.
\nThird, God\u2019s ownership must be acknowledged by more than verbal statements, such as merely theological affirmation. God\u2019s ownership must be confessed not only by the observances of the land\u2019s release, but also by our obedience to the whole law of God. One of the evils of the modern church is the substitution of a verbal affirmation for a life of faithfulness. This is strongly condemned in Scripture:<\/p>\n
13. Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
\n14. Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. (Isaiah 29:13\u201314)<\/p>\n
7. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
\n8. This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
\n9. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Matthew 15:7\u20139)<\/p>\n
Symptomatic of this waywardness is the fact that today the sabbath is a church observance, not the life of release in the Lord for the land and the people.
\nFourth, God\u2019s requirement for the land and His people is holiness. God\u2019s blunt demand is, \u201cye shall not pollute the land.\u2026 Defile not therefore the land\u201d (Num. 35:33\u201334). In many laws, as in Leviticus 18:24\u201330 and 20:22\u201326, God declares plainly that the land itself will vomit out a disobedient and faithless people. What happened to the Canaanites, the Israelites, and many other peoples will happen to us and to all who defile the land. The earth is under a curse because of man\u2019s sin (Gen. 3:17), and the earth itself takes vengeance upon men and nations who continue the defilement of God\u2019s holy creation. We are plainly told in Leviticus 25:23, \u201cThe land shall not be sold for ever (or, in perpetuity): for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.\u201d This is why, as Davies pointed out, \u201cit is impossible to discover any Israelite idea of the State.\u201d The state means government by man, whereas in God\u2019s law, all areas of government are under Him and His law.
\nHistory is the story of God\u2019s dispossession of false tenants, and His insistence on the holiness of the land, which must have a holy people. Because \u201cthe earth is the LORD\u2019s,\u201d man must believe and obey God\u2019s terms of tenancy, His law, or else be dispossessed, or at the very least, cursed. The premise of the Great Commission is that all nations must be discipled because it is God\u2019s earth they dwell in (Matt. 28:20).
\nCommentators are usually skeptical about the jubilee laws and question whether they were ever observed. Honeycutt correctly states, \u201cLeviticus speaks to so few today because so few believe that God can come to them through and yet beyond the words of another culture and time.\u201d To limit the validity of Leviticus to ancient Israel is to sin; it means positing an evolving God who adapts Himself to an evolving people. Such questions about the validity of God\u2019s law for today require no small arrogance on the part of men. A better approach is found in Dummelow:<\/p>\n
The Year of Jubilee was thus, as it were, the \u2018new birth\u2019 of the whole nation, when property was redistributed, and the inequalities arising in the previous period were removed. It was a remarkable social law, putting checks upon ambition and covetousness, preventing the acquisition of huge estates, and adjusting the distribution of wealth in the various classes of the community. The incidents of Ruth (c. 4) and of Naboth (1 K 21) show that the law against the alienation of land was in force in early times: cp. Jer. 32:6f. That it was not unnecessary in later times appears from such passages as Isa. 5:8, Mic. 2:2.<\/p>\n
All the same, the basic emphasis is not economic but theonomic. The concern is holiness, not society\u2019s goals. We must minister to men because God requires it for His Kingdom, not because men see it as a humanistic cause. The purpose is a holy community, not the kingdom of man. Hence we are told by Paul and the apostolic fellowship,<\/p>\n
12. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
\n13. And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
\n14. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:12\u201314)<\/p>\n
Chapter Sixty-Nine<\/p>\n
The Jubilee, Part III
\n(Leviticus 25:25\u201334)<\/p>\n
25. If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold.
\n26. And if the men have none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it;
\n27. Then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it; that he may return unto his possession.
\n28. But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of the jubilee: and in the jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession.
\n29. And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year may he redeem it.
\n30. And if it be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then that house that is in the walled city shall be established for ever to him that bought it throughout his generations: it shall not go out in the jubilee.
\n31. But the houses of the villages which have no wall round about them shall be counted as the fields of the country: they may be redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubilee.
\n32. Notwithstanding the cities of the Levites, and the houses of the cities of their possession, may the Levites redeem at any time.
\n33. And if a man purchase of the Levites, then the house that was sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out in the year of the jubilee: for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel.
\n34. But the fields of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold; for it is their perpetual possession. (Leviticus 25:25\u201334)<\/p>\n
A brief survey of the specific meaning of these rules is necessary before going further. Land was \u201csold\u201d or leased at a price for the years remaining to the next time of release, so that the value was calculated in terms of the time remaining. If because of poverty a man was compelled to \u201csell\u201d his land, his closest kinsman had to redeem the land for him. This meant that members of a family had an obligation to relieve distress within the family, to prevent the loss of land and also various forms of need. If no relative could redeem the land, and a little later the man himself was able to do so, the price of redemption was calculated in terms of the years remaining until the release or jubilee.
\nA house within a walled town, i.e., in a city, could only be redeemed within the first year. Urban properties were not subject to jubilee. Houses in open, unwalled villages were properly a part of the rural areas and could be redeemed and did revert to the original family in the jubilee.
\nThe urban exception was the house, and cities, of the Levites. These were their permanent heritage from the Lord for His purposes. This law includes the pasture of Levitical cities: they could never be sold (Num. 35:2ff.).
\nLet us consider first the possession of the Levites. The Levites included the priests or clergy, but they also included a variety of other functions, all religious and tied to God. They were the instructors of Israel, the scribes, the experts on law who interpreted the law for the courts, and so on. They were the teachers and scholars of Israel. Their cities were throughout the land, strategically located to give every area a center of learning and a radiating influence. The tribe of Levi was given no farm land, but it was given cities, and it was the normal channel through which tithes were distributed, of which one-tenth, or one-hundredth of a man\u2019s income, went to the priests for worship (Num. 18:26\u201332).
\nThe meaning is thus clear: God\u2019s law protects godly scholarship. More than theologians are indicated here. Christian schools and their staffs, men in various fields of learning who have a Biblical faith and perspective, and so on, all form a clerisy whom God\u2019s law requires us to protect and support. The medieval era was right in seeing the support of scholarship as a religious necessity, but wrong in requiring it to be a part of the church and its clergy.
\nThe reference to the kinsman-redeemer is an important one. It is a major strand of Biblical faith. Jesus Christ is by His incarnation one of us, and our Kinsman-Redeemer. The kinsman-redeemer redeems the land, frees his kin from slavery, and, on occasion, as with Boaz and Ruth, marries a widow to redeem her and her property for his people and posterity.
\nThe distinction made between urban and rural properties is important. Both must observe the jubilee as well as the sabbath years, but the city is exempt from the restoration of properties. The countryside is thus made an area of stability, and the city an area of change. Knight cites a proverb, \u201cBanks and churches never sell.\u201d While this is no longer true as it once was, it still reminds us that once upon a time certain constants remained! God\u2019s law stipulates His constants, while man posits himself as the constant, with all else variable in terms of his will. Hence, the meaning of the sabbath year and jubilee, however valuable to man and the land, must be sought in God\u2019s purpose.
\nOehler said of this:<\/p>\n
The year of jubilee, by which the sabbatic cycle is completed, while involving the idea of the sabbath year, has, moreover, its own specific import in the idea of release, and of the reinstatement of the theocracy in its original and divinely appointed order, in which all were, as the servants of God, to be free, and each was to be assured of his earthly maintenance, by being restored to the enjoyment of the inheritance allotted to his family for this purpose. The God who once redeemed the people from Egypt, and acquired them as His possession, here appears again as a redeemer, to restore the bondman his personal freedom, and to re-endow the poor with the share allotted him in the inheritance of his people. For among the covenant people no poor should properly have been found (Deut. 15:4); and the fruit of a consistent carrying out of the law of the year of jubilee would at least have been that a proletariat could not have been found in Israel. Before such a year of grace, however, could appear, transgressions must have been pardoned; hence the year of jubilee was to be proclaimed on the Day of Atonement.<\/p>\n
After the Babylonian captivity, with Nehemiah, the sabbath years were restored, but we have no information on the jubilee. It does seem that, by the time of our Lord at least, there was no jubilee. However, before the fall of Jerusalem, rulers like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar freed the Jews from taxes in sabbatical years. A strange and fallacious attempt at compliance with the sabbatical and jubilee laws exists among some in Israel today, namely, to lease the land to Moslems (and Moslems only) for two years.
\nWe do not know whether or not the jubilee was observed by the early church or during the very early medieval era. It was, we know, later spiritualized and observed in an ecclesiastical form at least as early as 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed a jubilee as a time of pilgrimage and grace, and of indulgences. In time, this jubilee was held every twenty-five years.
\nWe should not rule out the possibility of jubilee celebrations in terms of God\u2019s law in Christendom\u2019s past. After all, the very prevalent practice of gleaning in America has had no scholarly notice, and much important on it is being lost. The interest of historians has not been in God\u2019s law.
\nIn another sphere, indirect attention is being given to the jubilee. Nicholai Kondratieff, a Russian economist of the early years of the twentieth century, set out to prove the fallacy of capitalistic economies. He discovered a fifty to sixty year cycle of prosperity and depression, the average cycle being fifty-four years. The Kondratieff Wave Theory held that human action could not affect this cycle, which is a natural phenomenon. The gains made during periods of prosperity are wiped out by inevitable collapse.
\nKondratieff\u2019s theory has had no small opposition. His data is sound; historically, the cycles have occurred. The problem is the explanation. Are they natural phenomena, inescapable for man? Such a conclusion militates against man\u2019s humanism, and Stalin found Kondratieff\u2019s opinions traitorous. Many have held that, while the cycles have been true of the past, now the state\u2019s \u201cfine-tuning\u201d of the economy will prevent their recurrence. Such men view Kondratieff\u2019s work as an historical account of things past rather than as a binding law for the present. Current economic events are confirming Kondratieff\u2019s theory.
\nThe issue is very well stated on naturalistic terms by Kirkland:<\/p>\n
The primary reason the Kondratieff Wave Theory is so difficult for academics to accept is that its premises are counter to accepted economic logic. Even in their most basic courses, economists are taught to solve scientific questions by sequential reasoning, i.e., by manipulating known economic and financial variables in a logical manner until desired results are determined. The Kondratieff Wave Theory takes an entirely opposite tack, stating that the end result is already known, and that the economic and financial variables interacting to achieve that final result are largely irrelevant in determining the outcome.<\/p>\n
At its heart, the issue is a religious one. Kondratieff held to a naturalistic economic determinism, and his data seemed to confirm his belief. Other economists hold to a humanistic determinism, i.e., either man or the state determines the economy, for better or for worse.
\nIt is noteworthy that Kirkland finds one instance in past history of an awareness of this cycle, the Levitical law of jubilee. This places a brake on accumulated debt, on inflation, and on the continuing expansion of credit. By this means, the cycle was controlled and disaster prevented.
\nWe can go further and say that the sabbath years and the jubilee worked together to prevent the boom and bust cycle from occurring; they blocked long-term debt, and they militated against inflation and credit expansion. With the observance of sabbaths and jubilees, the economy then moves, not in terms of man\u2019s will, but in terms of God\u2019s law. Modern economics, whether conservative, liberal, or radical, insists that human action can determine economics. The law of God tells us that, no less than the light of the sun He created dominates the physical life of man, so, too, His laws govern man\u2019s economic life and all things else. In every sphere, without exception, it is always true that \u201cthe wages of sin is death\u201d (Rom. 6:23). Sin, moreover, is very plainly defined for us: it is the transgression of the law of God (1 John 3:4).<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy<\/p>\n
The Jubilee, Part IV
\n(Leviticus 25:35\u201338)<\/p>\n
35. And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.
\n36. Take no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.
\n37. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.
\n38. I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. (Leviticus 25:35\u201338)<\/p>\n
This is not a popular text with the modern evangelical church. It smacks too much of the \u201csocial gospel.\u201d One reason for the rise of the social gospel in the nineteenth century was the development of pietism, with its unconcern for worldly matters like charity. Among many Catholics and Protestants, devotional exercises were supplanting the Christian concern for the needy. The modernists, with their social gospel, did not meet this need. Their solution to it has been statism, i.e., state charity or welfarism as the substitute for Christian action.
\nThus, both evangelicals and modernists contributed very substantially to the rise of the modern state. The evangelicals steadily retreated from Christian action in the areas of health, education, and welfare, and the state moved in. Social financing must be provided, if not by Christians, then by the state. For the modernists, the state was and is the answer to problems. For differing reasons, both evangelicals and modernists have surrendered most of the world to the state. They should not be surprised or angry at the results; they share in some of the guilt for it.
\nAt the same time, in some cultures where Christianity is new, many groups have readily accepted the responsibility for their fellow Christians and for others. Knight reports that in the islands of the South Pacific, members of a family help one another, finance the overseas university education of a student, and assist one who is in trouble of any kind.
\nWe thus have a duty to help those \u201cfallen in decay,\u201d i.e., weak in the hands, unable to help themselves because of some adversity. The goal is \u201cthat thy brother may live with thee.\u201d
\nBush noted:<\/p>\n
\u201cLife\u201d in the Scriptures is often used in opposition to sickness, distress, calamity, as Isai. 38:9, \u201cthe writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered, (Heb. was made alive) of his sickness.\u201d Neh. 4:2, \u201cWill they revive (Heb. make alive) the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?\u201d 1 Chron. 11:8, \u201cAnd Joab repaired (Heb. made alive) the rest of the city.\u201d Gen. 45:27, \u201cAnd the spirit of Jacob their father revived (Heb. was made alive).\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bible associates life with health, freedom, and salvation.
\nA number of versions give a different reading of v. 35 than does the Authorized Version:<\/p>\n
35. If your brother, being in straits, comes under your authority, and you hold him as though a resident alien, so that he remains under you,
\n36. do not exact from him advance or accrued interest, but fear your God. Let him stay under you as your brother.<\/p>\n
35. If your brother becomes poor and cannot support himself, you must maintain him as if he were a resident alien or settler and let him live with you.<\/p>\n
In this form, we see that brotherly love is to be extended to resident aliens as potential brothers.
\nIn v. 36, interest is forbidden on all charitable loans. It is noteworthy that the word interest in Hebrew is usually neshech, from the root \u201cto bite.\u201d The law in Deuteronomy 23:19\u201320 reads:<\/p>\n
19. Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury.
\n20. 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.<\/p>\n
The alternate reading of Leviticus 25:35 suggests that in cases of need among resident aliens, i.e., non-covenant peoples, the same rule should apply as to covenant members. This law is not concerned with business loans. The alien was not governed by the jubilee release, but the law of charity is broader.
\nCalvin\u2019s comments on usury, in connection with the law of Exodus 22:25, are of interest here. He concludes, \u201cusury is not now unlawful, except in so far as it contravenes equity and brotherly union.\u201d
\nInterest, or usury, translates, as we have noted, a word meaning bite; other Hebrew words translated as usury include nasha, to exact; mashaha, an exaction; and, in the New Testament, tokos, offspring.
\nIn any case, the laws of this section, as others, are intended to give us the practical rules for applying the law of Leviticus 19:18:<\/p>\n
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.<\/p>\n
It is immoral to affirm this law, the law of our neighbor, while denying all the laws whereby God requires us to manifest our love. Making money off the poor is strictly forbidden. The various federal programs for relief to the poor provide more money to the bureaucracy than to the poor. Snaith\u2019s analysis of the words used with respect to interest or increase in v. 36, and increase and profit in v. 37, is very important, despite the modernist reference to \u201clater legislation\u201d:<\/p>\n
36. interest \u2026 increase: these are two types of interest. The first (nesek) means interest paid regularly, and in the end the original loan is repaid in one payment. The second (tarbit) involves no interim payment of interest, but an increased sum being repaid in the end. Exod. 22:25 (Heb. 24); Dt. 23:19f. deal only with the first type. Probably this later legislation is to block a loophole which the money-lenders had discovered.
\n37. profit: the Hebrew is marbit and the meaning is the same as that of tarbit in the previous verses.<\/p>\n
Marbit, profit or increase, can also mean nourishment. We are not to be fed on our neighbor\u2019s poverty.
\nThis ministry to the poor was at once assumed by the New Testament church because they saw themselves as the true Israel of God, continuing the life and work of the old Israel. The diaconate was established to make this ministry more effective (Acts 6:1\u20134). It should be noted that one writer, who has a modern view of the law as obsolete, still adds, \u201cCan believers today do less than what was commanded then?\u201d Christ does not open the door to a lesser obedience but to more faithfulness and power in our obedience. This requirement of non-profit help to the poor is referred to in various places, most notably perhaps Ezekiel 18:17. Rabbi Hertz commented on this law:<\/p>\n
This is in strongest contrast to the treatment of the impoverished debtor in ancient Rome. The creditor could imprison him in his own private dungeon, chain him to a block, sell him into slavery, or even put him to death. If the debtor had several creditors, the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables ordained that they could hew him in pieces; and although one of them took a part of his body larger in proportion to his claim, the other creditors had no redress!<\/p>\n
Many subterfuges have been invented to evade the force of this law. In one way or another, God\u2019s law is declared null and void because we are now on a higher spiritual plane and need not personally concern ourselves with the poor. One of the strangest excuses comes from Morentz and Alleman: \u201cIt (the law of Lev. 25:35\u201338) could be applied only in a society in which blood was a guarantee of character, which means that it was a religious ideal.\u201d Two things stand out in this strange statement. First, there is the assertion that in Israel \u201cblood was a guarantee of character.\u201d Everything in the Old Testament is against such an idea. The test of character is obedience to the Lord, not blood. For that matter, Israel and its people were not united by blood but by God\u2019s covenant. In Abraham\u2019s household, we see 318 fighting men (Gen. 14:14), which means that there were perhaps as many aged non-fighting men, and as many children, about 1,000; another 1,000 women were also of the house of Abraham. Out of 2,000, thus, only one young man of Abraham\u2019s line remained in the covenant line, Isaac. Israel left Egypt a mixed multitude (Ex. 12:38), so that more foreign blood was added. The foreign admixtures were continual, so that the unity of blood is nonsense. Second, this law is denied status as a law because it is supposedly \u201ca religious ideal.\u201d Is a religious ideal something to be revered but not obeyed? If something is \u201ca religious ideal,\u201d it should be all the more mandatory.
\nTo believe that vague affirmations can replace law and bring in a brave new world is nonsense, even if it be very popular nonsense and also ecclesiastically respectable.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-One<\/p>\n
The Jubilee, Part V
\n(Leviticus 25:39\u201346)<\/p>\n
39. 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:
\n40. But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubilee:
\n41. 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.
\n42. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondsmen.
\n43. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.
\n44. Both thy bondsmen, and thy bondsmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondsmen and bondsmaids.
\n45. Moreover of the children of the strangers 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.
\n46. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondsmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. (Leviticus 25:39\u201346)<\/p>\n
The law requires loans without interest to help the poor. It does not, however, allow the poor to exploit this fact. Bond-service to repay debt, or as a refuge from an inability to be provident, was the law. More specific details are to be found in Exodus 21:1\u20136 and Deuteronomy 15:12\u201318. There is recognition that some people will prefer a state of dependency. The freedom of all such was possible during the Sabbath years and in the Jubilee. In any case, such people could not be treated as slaves, but simply as lesser members of the household. It is important to note that the law, in Deuteronomy 23:15\u201316, forbids the return of a run-away bondservant to his master, whether he be an Israelite or a foreigner. This made it necessary for the master to give justice and fair pay and treatment to all bondservants. In v. 38, God declares that He is the Lord, and we must obey because He requires it. It is also noteworthy that, if an angry master injured a bondservant, he had to free him at once (Ex. 21:26\u201327). C. D. Ginsburg noted:<\/p>\n
The authorities during the second Temple enacted that the master\u2019s right, even with regard to this kind of bondmen [for life, RJR], is restricted to their labour, but that he has no right to barter with them, to misuse them, or to put them to shame.<\/p>\n
The tasks assigned to a covenant member who is a bondservant cannot be degrading; v. 39f. makes it clear that they must be comparable to work assigned to competent free labor.
\nGod declares that we are all His servants, in bond-service all our lives to Him (v. 42), and hence we can never treat another man as our property because we are all together God\u2019s property. As has been noted by one commentator, \u201cYou may hold them to service, but only to service, nothing more.\u201d
\nThere was much abuse of this law in Israel. Thus, in 2 Kings 4:1, we see creditors seeking to seize the two sons of a widow, and her appeal to Elisha; this was a pagan pattern, as witness Nehemiah 5:4\u20135. Israel, Isaiah says, had sold herself into slavery by her sins (Isa. 50:1); the Messiah\u2019s task is the release of captives and of the exploited (Isa. 58:7). For failure to obey the law of release, Judah herself would go into captivity (Jer. 34:8\u201311). Amos 2:6 and 8:4\u20136 give us a telling account of Israel\u2019s apostasy in her disregard for these laws. The same was true in New Testament times (Matt. 18:25).
\nEven if an Israelite chose to be a bondservant, he went free in the jubilee year: freedom and responsibility were his inescapable duties. The unbeliever, being a slave to sin by nature, could walk away if conditions were unjust, or convert and become eligible for Sabbath year release. During the early medieval era, Jewish traders took in countless numbers of European slaves in trade for goods; these slaves usually adopted Judaism to gain their freedom, and their descendants make up the major and overwhelming proportion of those who call themselves Jews. In the United States, in the early colonial era, blacks who converted thereby gained freedom. It became necessary to pass legislation against the Biblical law, which was common law, to establish slavery in America.
\nBush summarized the operation of this law in Israel thus:<\/p>\n
Persons were sometimes sold among the Jews by judicial process when they had been guilty of theft, and were not able to make satisfaction, Ex. 21:2. Some were sold by their parents; i.e. they disposed of their right of service for a stipulated sum, and for a number of years. Others, again, when reduced to extreme want, sold themselves, as we have explained more at large, Ex. 21:2. The Jewish writers inform us that this was not considered lawful except in extreme cases. \u2018A man might not sell himself to lay up the money which was given for him; nor to buy goods; nor to pay his debts, but merely that he might get bread to eat. Neither was it lawful for him to sell himself as long as he had so much as a garment left.\u2019\u2014Maimonides.<\/p>\n
Such practice, while not literally in terms of the law, had a logic to it, namely, as long as the man retained his freedom, he would be able to regain the means to redeem his children from bondservice.
\nThroughout the law, we see regulations governing the treatment of all kinds of servants. God\u2019s law requires man to be always mindful that all men are God\u2019s creatures and His servants. Samuel Clark gives us a good summary of these laws:<\/p>\n
Kidnapping was punished with death (Ex. 21:16). The slave was encouraged to become a proselyte (Ex. 12:44). He might be set free (Ex. 21:26, 27). Special rules were laid down for the security of his life and limbs (Ex. 21:20, 21, 26). The Law would not suffer it to be forgotten that the slave is a man, and protected him in every way that was possible at the time against the injustice or cruelty of his master.<\/p>\n
Bamberger has called attention to an interesting aspect of this law in later Judaism. It became a requirement that the owner of a non-Jewish slave must seek to convert him and have him circumcised. If, after a year, the slave refused to become a Jew, he was to be sold. In early Europe after the fall of Rome, such slaves were commonly sold in the Mediterranean world.
\nBasic to this law is God\u2019s statement, in v. 42, \u201cthey are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondsmen.\u201d Calvin commented:<\/p>\n
God here declares that His own right is invaded when those, whom He claims as His property, are taken into subjection by another; for He says that He acquired the people as His own when He redeemed them from Egypt. Whence He infers that His right is violated if any should usurp perpetual dominion over a Hebrew. If any object that this is of equal force, when they only serve for a time, I reply, that though God might have justly asserted His sole ownership, yet He was satisfied with this symbol of it; and therefore that He suffered by indulgence that they should be enslaved for a fixed period, provided some trace of His deliverance of them should remain. In a word, He simply chose to apply this preventative lest slavery should altogether extinguish the recollection of His grace, although He allowed it to be thus smothered as it were. Lest, however, cruel masters should trust that their tyranny would be exercised with impunity, Moses reminds them that they had to do with God, who will at length appear as its avenger. Although the political laws of Moses are not now in operation, still the analogy is to be preserved, lest the condition of those who have been redeemed by Christ\u2019s blood should be worse amongst us, than that of old of His ancient people. To whom Paul\u2019s exhortation refers: \u201cYe masters, forbear threatening your slaves, knowing that both your and their Master is in heaven.\u201d (Eph. 6:9)<\/p>\n
Calvin was right in seeing the application of this law today, though wrong in seeing \u201cthe political laws of Moses \u2026 not now in operation.\u201d This is especially curious because he insisted on the present validity of this law! His rendering of Ephesians 6:9 is also questionable. The word in Greek which appears in Ephesians 6:5\u20136, and is referred to in v. 9, is douloi (doulos), and it is also the verb form in \u201ceyeservice\u201d (v. 6), and as \u201cservice\u201d in v. 7. It can mean \u201cslave,\u201d but more generally means servant and implies bondage, i.e., in the form of some kind of subjection. Calvin\u2019s usage is thus not correct. What is valid in Calvin\u2019s statement is that God\u2019s property rights are invaded and usurped if we enslave men or in any way exercise ungodly powers over them. This is especially true of fellow believers, but it is also true of all men. The law denies us the freedom to hold a purely individualistic relationship to God. We are members of a community of humanity, and we have an obligation both to God and, in Him, to our neighbor. Our Lord declares:<\/p>\n
37. \u2026 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
\n38. This is the first and great commandment.
\n39. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
\n40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37\u201340)<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-Two<\/p>\n
The Jubilee, Part VI
\n(Leviticus 25:47\u201355)<\/p>\n
47. And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the stranger\u2019s family:
\n48. After that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him:
\n49. Either his uncle, or his uncle\u2019s son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself.
\n50. And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of the jubilee: and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an hired servant shall it be with him.
\n51. If there be yet many years behind, according to them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for.
\n52. And if there remain but few years unto the year of the jubilee, then he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give him again the price of his redemption.
\n53. And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigour over him in thy sight.
\n54. And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of the jubilee, both he, and his children with him.
\n55. For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 25:47\u201355)<\/p>\n
A book published in August 1987 (written in 1986), Jubilee on Wall Street: An Optimistic Look at the Coming Financial Crash, by David Knox Barker, gives a Biblical perspective on the work of Nikolai D. Kondratieff.<\/p>\n
He points to the overall teaching of scripture about human nature and to specific passages about God\u2019s provision of the jubilee every 50 years in Old Testament times to correct economic imbalances. In contrast, the author of the new book notes, the free market has no such \u201csafety valve,\u201d so it experiences a crash about every 50 years.<\/p>\n
These economic perspectives are excellent and necessary, but we must remember that the doctrine of the jubilee is essentially theological: it sets forth the governing fact of God and His law as dominant in every sphere, economics included. Thus, the understanding of the jubilee as well as of economics is theological. Briefly stated, there is more to any economic transaction than men and man\u2019s economic planning: there is always God and His law under and over all. Next, the jubilee law is family oriented. On the human level, the family is the basic social and economic fact.
\nIn Leviticus 25:47\u201355, we have the case of a poor Israelite who goes into servitude to a foreigner. The law governs the alien who is living within the borders of Israel; he must be governed by the same law of God as are all others. His bondservants thus are subject to redemption and\/ or the jubilee, whatever the laws of his home country may have been.
\nThe laws of slavery over the centuries have varied from country to country. At times, the \u201cright\u201d to own slaves has been the privilege of the ruling peoples, as in Islam over the centuries. Bush noted, early in the last century,<\/p>\n
At present no Christian or Jew in a Mohammedan country is allowed to have as a slave, we will not say any native, but any Mohammedan of any country\u2014nor, indeed any other than Mohammedans, except Negroes\u2014who are the only description of slaves they may possess.<\/p>\n
In Leviticus 25:23, God declares: \u201cThe land shall not be sold for ever (or, in perpetuity): for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.\u201d The Hebrew word translated as sold means a sale into slavery. God\u2019s earth cannot become enslaved by men, nor can the covenant men to whom He gives the land as stewards thereof be enslaved in perpetuity. Thus, freedom, rest, and release are basic to God\u2019s plan for man and the earth. It is noteworthy that, while in Exodus 23:11, the Sabbatical year is called \u201cthe seventh year,\u201d in Deuteronomy 31:10, it is termed \u201cthe year of release\u201d (cf. Deut. 15:1). The jubilee is called simply that in Numbers 36:4; there is a reference to land redemption in Ruth 4:3ff; it is presupposed in Isaiah 61:1ff. and Isaiah 5:7\u201310, where it is the basis for judgment. We find it clearly in Ezekiel 46:17. In Jeremiah, instead of a year of release, sinners find \u201ca year of visitation\u201d or judgment (Jer. 11:23; 23:12; 48:44). After the captivity, Nehemiah 5:1\u201313 recounts efforts to restore the jubilee laws.
\nIn v. 55, it is clearly stated that the covenant people are God\u2019s servants. They are therefore not permanently to be the servants of men and must redeem themselves or be redeemed as soon as possible. Paul refers to this in 1 Corinthians 7:23, \u201cYe are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.\u201d
\nThis places an obligation on us, first, to live debt-free as far as is possible, and providentially. As God\u2019s people, we are to be dominion men, not under dominion through debt or any other means. Second, we have an obligation to our family and kin. Paul tells us,<\/p>\n
But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his house (or, kindred), he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. (1 Tim. 5:8)<\/p>\n
This means that, among believers, there is a responsibility to care for one another and to relieve distress and debt. This has led to family associations with treasuries to meet needs and provide opportunities within the family.
\nThird, Paul\u2019s reference to our \u201cown\u201d means fellow Christians. Agencies must be created to alleviate need and to make Christians free people.
\nParker\u2019s comments on v. 55 are especially good. He said, in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor unto me the children of Israel are servants,\u201d Levit. 25:55.<\/p>\n
This is a remarkable expression as connected with the fact of which God is always reminding the children of Israel, namely, that he brought them out of the house of bondage and out of the land of Egypt. He appears to acquire his hold upon their confidence by continually reminding them that at one period of their history they were bondmen.\u2014Now he insists that the men whom he has brought into liberty, have been brought only into another kind of service.\u2014This is the necessity of finite life. Every liberty is in some sense a bondage.\u2014Christians are the slaves of Christ; they are burden-bearers and yoke-carriers, specially under the supervision and sovereignty of the Son of God.<\/p>\n
Freedom means responsibility; the ugliest fact about slavery is that it diminishes responsibility even as it diminishes freedom.
\nAs Noordtzij points out, God declares that a covenant man is \u201cHis inalienable possession (v. 55)\u201d We have here an indication of the doctrine of eternal security.
\nJustice required that the redemption of a bondservant be made with full compensation to the master for the years of service remaining. The law in no way permits either the defrauding of the master or the abuse of the bondservant. As C. D. Ginsburg noted:<\/p>\n
The authorities during the second Temple rightly pointed out that this passage enjoins the Hebrew to treat the heathen master fairly by duly compensating and compounding for the number of years he has still to serve till jubilee, and to take no advantage of the idolater.<\/p>\n
Leviticus 25:47\u201355 is an aspect of the law of the kinsman-redeemer, which finds its full expression in Jesus Christ. As very man of very man, He is our Kinsman-Redeemer, and, as very God of very God, He is totally and permanently efficacious in all His works.
\nThe jubilee law gave hope to society when observed. The relentless concentration of land which marks decadent societies is prevented. The family basis of society is maintained, and the central responsibility for social order, government, and relief is plainly delegated to the family. Rather tardily now, we have begun to understand the importance of the family. Karl Zinmeister has reported:<\/p>\n
Within the past several years it has become generally accepted that family breakdown is now the primary force causing poverty in the U.S.<\/p>\n
It took 20 years of furious and bitter debate, however, for the nation to reach that common realization\u2014the process may be said to have begun upon publication of the so-called Moynihan report in March 1965, and to have ended in January 1986 with the airing of Bill Moyers\u2019 CBS broadcast \u201cThe Vanishing Family.\u201d Unfortunately, the pace of domestic decay accelerated breathtakingly during that period, especially so during the last seven years. As a result, easy solutions to our poverty and welfare problems lie far beyond reach.<\/p>\n
The major factor creating poverty in recent years has been the decline of the two-parent family.<\/p>\n
The whole of Biblical law, and especially the jubilee, requires a familistic society. The failure of Christians to take God\u2019s law seriously is a guarantee of impotence.
\nKellogg wrote,<\/p>\n
No one will pretend that the law of the sabbatic year or the jubilee is binding on communities now. But it is a question for our times as to whether the basal principle regarding the relation of God to land, and by necessary consequence the right of man regarding land, which is fundamental to these laws, is not in its very nature of perpetual force. Surely, there is nothing in Scripture to suggest that God\u2019s ownership of the land was limited to the land of Palestine, or to that land only during Israel\u2019s occupancy of it. Instead of this, Jehovah everywhere represents Himself as having given the land to Israel, and therefore by necessary implication as having a like right over it while the Canaanites were dwelling in it. Again, the purpose of God\u2019s dealing with Egypt is said to be that Pharaoh might know the same truth: that the earth (or land) was the Lord\u2019s (Exod. 9:29); and in Psalm 24:1 it is stated, as a broad truth, without qualification or restriction, that the earth is the Lord\u2019s, as well as that which fills it. It is true that there is no suggestion in any of these passages that the relation of God to the earth or to the land is different from His relation to other property; but it is intended to emphasise the fact that in the use of land, as of all else, we are to regard ourselves as God\u2019s servants, and hold and use it as in trust from Him.<\/p>\n
Such statements have a curious character. It is seen as out of the question that anyone should take God\u2019s law seriously. Yet these laws have a \u201cperpetual force\u201d! What does this mean? That man has a right through the state to formulate laws governing property to express that perpetual force? When men replace God\u2019s \u201cprimitive\u201d laws with their own \u201cwisdom,\u201d we had better be fearful!
\nEarlier, reference was made to Barker\u2019s Jubilee on Wall Street. Barker shows how anti-inflationary the jubilee system is. In modern humanistic economics, prices inflate until a collapse sets in because of the debt pyramid, and a slow, painful recovery through depression ensues. Because in the jubilee economics, the basic wealth, land, is most valuable in the first year after the jubilee, this inflationary spiral is negated. Land was worth more in year one than in year forty-eight, when a sale was valid only for a brief time. As Barker notes, \u201cIn a Jubilee system all prices in the economy would have been controlled by having the price for the land constantly falling.\u201d Then Barker adds that this means that those elements in modern economics which lead to collapse, debt, prices, and expansion, are all controlled by the jubilee system.
\nAll this means that the world of economics is not a man-made world but a God-created, ordained, and governed realm. The only thing that will work therein is the Jubilee.
\nIt should be added that, welcome as Barker\u2019s book is, he sees Kondratieff as more valid than the jubilee law! He uses the jubilee to confirm his vision of free market economics rather than starting his economic thinking with Scripture. Such an approach does not honor God, nor can it be pleasing to Him.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-Three<\/p>\n
Jubilee and Covenant, Part I
\n(Leviticus 26:1\u20132)<\/p>\n
1. Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God.
\n2. Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 26:1\u20132)<\/p>\n
Many modern scholars view the Pentateuch as a collection of documents brought together rather haphazardly. As a result, they miss the necessary relationship between the laws and see nothing of the total interdependence. Wenham very tellingly cites the meaning of Leviticus 26:1\u20132, which stands between the jubilee laws of Leviticus 25 and the laws of Leviticus 26:3\u201346, with their declaration of the necessary consequences of obedience and disobedience. He titles these two verses, \u201cThe Fundamentals of the Law.\u201d
\nIn v. 1, idolatry is forbidden. Idols, eleelim, are \u201cthings of nought.\u201d The \u201cstanding image\u201d could be a statue, pillar, or obelisk. This is not a prohibition of sculpture, but of idolatry: there can be no manufacture or erection of any such image in order \u201cto bow down unto it,\u201d i.e., to offer it any religious devotion.
\nIn v. 2, Sabbath-keeping is required. The reference is to far more than one day in seven; it refers to sabbath years and to the jubilee as well. This is the pre-condition of reverence for God\u2019s sanctuary.
\nThese two verses are the preface to the blessings, judgments, and promises in the rest of this chapter and are an essential part of what precedes them and what follows. Lange observed:<\/p>\n
That the bearing of God towards Israel was an impartial bearing, which could only be obscured through the idea of a national God, is proved even by our section with its threatenings in presence of the development of the history of Israel itself: they have been brought out of Egypt, and Canaan must become their land; but when they apostasize, they must lose Canaan and must be scattered among the heathen. Not only the impartiality, indeed, but the jealousy of Jehovah must be made manifest in this. The idea or key of the whole history and destiny of Israel is: vengeance of the covenant. The people could fall so low because they stood so high, because they were the first-fruits, the first-born son, the favorite of God. But for this reason especially the promise of their restoration is bound up with the prophecy of their curse.<\/p>\n
It is worthy of note that the Jewish year which ended in the fall of 1987 was observed in Israel as a Sabbath of the land. While in many respects it fell short of the Biblical requirements, most notably because the farmers who observed it received aid from American Jews to do so, it was at least a step in the right direction.
\nThe law says, v. 2, \u201cye shall \u2026 reverence my sanctuary.\u201d The Hebrew word is yare (yawray), to fear, i.e., fear my sanctuary. This brings into focus a meaning neglected by modern man, who sees a church as a man-made building established and built by a congregation of men. This is a man-centered and humanistic view. God\u2019s sanctuaries are witnesses to His presence on His earth among His covenant people. To build a church is thus to establish the visible evidence that God will bless or curse a people in terms of their obedience or disobedience. It is an invocation of blessings or curses as the case may be. Hence, this law says, first, \u201cye shall keep my sabbaths,\u201d which means to acknowledge God\u2019s government, ownership, and law. It means recognizing that the conditions of our existence and prosperity are God-ordained, and that we cannot prosper apart from Him. We worship then no other God, and His law governs us, for to set up other laws is a form of idolatry. Men make ideals of their own minds, wills, and laws, and they ask other men to bow down to them.
\nSecond, we are commanded to fear God\u2019s sanctuary, i.e., the fact of His presence therein by His word and Spirit. Modern man often fears the state, and with good reason, given its tyrannical sway. The power of God far outweighs the power of the state, and His sway is a universal and eternal one.
\nIt is not without reason that Keil and Delitzsch call these two verses \u201cthe essence of the whole law.\u201d
\nBecause vv. 1\u20132 require far more than modern sabbatarianism, they are hostile to formalism. For a man to allow his land to rest during the seventh year, and himself to rest, means that his trust in God is a very active one. When Noth writes that these two verses have \u201cno special relationship to what has gone before,\u201d he shows no understanding of the text and reveals the lack of any desire to comprehend it.
\nAs more than a few commentators have pointed out, Leviticus 26 is a part of chapter 25. Morgan noted, \u201cThe great promises show how conditions of well-being are ever entirely dependent on obedience to the government of God.\u201d In the synagogue lectionary, Leviticus 26:1\u20132 is read together with Leviticus 25.
\nThese verses were once very important to the faith and had a hold on believers which is now lacking. The reason is not hard to discover. Basic to the life of the faith now is the unity of believers, and often of all men, believers and unbelievers. Basic to the faith of all such is peace and unity among men, whereas for Scripture it is peace and community with God, and only in Him and according to His law-word, with men. For Biblical faith, idolatry is thus any effort to give preeminence to any doctrine of community, person, institution, or law which supplants the triune God and His covenant law.
\nFor Scripture, all society or community is a covenant, and inescapably so. It is either a covenant with God in terms of His grace and law, or it is an anti-God covenant, an idolatrous one. The modern age began with the social contract theory, a form of the covenant doctrine. Its significant variation is that the social contract is between men, not between God and man. Contemporary political theorists deny the validity of the social contract as an historical fact among primitive men. They do accept it as a belief that men create their political orders in terms of their needs and hopes.
\nAnother major non-Christian political theory is derived from Aristotle, namely, that man is a political animal. This means that society and civil government are not products of a contract among men, i.e., of man\u2019s application of his mind and will to the organization of society, but rather that society and the state are expressions of nature as surely as the animal pack is an expression of the lives of wolves, for example. This view denies the consent of the governed. John Locke (1632\u20131704) held that \u201call power given with trust for the attaining of an end being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those who gave it.\u201d This view echoed the covenant idea but made it humanistic.
\nIn more recent years, these two views, Aristotle\u2019s and Locke\u2019s, have merged. The force of the natural, i.e., Aristotle\u2019s concept, has been used to provide for doctrines of historical inevitability. At the same time, after Rousseau, the elite rulers express the general will of the social contract, i.e., the democratic consensus, and therefore manifest the historical inevitability of their rule.
\nOnly in the doctrine of the covenant is there freedom for man. Man cannot be the source of the law: God alone is the Lord or Sovereign.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-Four<\/p>\n
Jubilee and Covenant, Part II
\n(Leviticus 26:3\u201313)<\/p>\n
3. If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them;
\n4. Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
\n5. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
\n6. And I will give you peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land.
\n7. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
\n8. And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
\n9. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you.
\n10. And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new.
\n11. And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you.
\n12. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
\n13. I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright. (Leviticus 26:3\u201313)<\/p>\n
This passage is very much neglected in the modern church. The neglect comes in part from the influence of pietism. All the blessings promised here are temporal ones; they have to do with time, not eternity, with history, not the soul of man. These verses clearly and plainly declare God\u2019s concern with time and history. For those only interested in heaven, these verses and the law as a whole are distasteful and somehow no longer valid.
\nThe neglect of time and history is not Biblical. It is amazing how far some will go to separate God from mundane affairs. A few prominent evangelicals have gone so far as to deny that AIDS is a curse from God. As John Lofton has said, \u201cShall we call it a blessing then?\u201d
\nNotice the promise of v. 6: \u201cI will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.\u201d These are magnificent words, especially wonderful because they come from our God, who cannot lie (Titus 1:2). In these days of massive insecurities, this promise and its preconditions should be preached and made familiar to all Christians. It is a sad fact that they are not.
\nThere are a series of promises here. First, there is a promise of rain so that the land will be fertile. Second, fertility is promised, an abundance of crops, and prosperity. Third, safety and security in their persons and possessions will ensue from obedience. Fourth, evil beasts will be eliminated from the land. Fifth, invasions will be eliminated, and they shall easily overthrow their enemies, no matter how much out-numbered. Sixth, they will be blessed with a population increase. Seventh, their prosperity will be so great that the \u201cold store\u201d will be plentiful even as the new harvests come in. Eighth, there shall be peace in the land. Ninth, God will be with them because of His covenant to be their God, and will bless them. These are God\u2019s promises to covenant Israel. They are His promises also to the church, Christ\u2019s new covenant Israel. By Christ\u2019s atonement, we are His covenant people, and the recipients of His peace and mercy as the new Israel of God (Gal. 6:16). To deny these promises is to deny Christ\u2019s covenant with us.
\nThe promises are pointed ones, e.g., \u201cI will give you rain in due season\u201d (v. 4), not haphazardly or dangerously. This is a statement of the doctrine of Providence. Not only are God\u2019s promises temporal, but they are also timely.
\nI recall a seminary professor, a liberal or modernist, who ridiculed the \u201ccrass materialism\u201d of so much of the Old Testament and its promises such as these. He believed in more intelligent motivations for man! However, man needs food to survive, a crass bit of materialism, of course, and to ignore the day-by-day \u201ccrass materialism\u201d of our lives is insanity.
\nOswald T. Allis rightly called attention to v. 12, \u201cAnd I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people,\u201d as an echo of Genesis 3:8. With faithfulness, covenant man will see the earth become a greater Garden of Eden, because the God of Eden so ordains it.
\nWhat Eden was, the whole earth shall become, with a far greater glory in Christ. We have, therefore, a dominion mandate (Gen. 1:26\u201328; Joshua 1:1\u20139; Matt. 28:18\u201320, etc.), and we have here the terms thereof and the blessings for obedience.
\nOne of the promises, in v. 11, is God\u2019s tabernacling presence. This we have fulfilled or put into force for us in the person of God the Son. In John 1:14, we read literally, \u201cThe word was made flesh and tabernacled among us.\u201d Tabernacled in the Greek is eskenomen. Can we take this promise and neglect the others?
\nIf we are obedient, God says, \u201cI will have respect to you,\u201d or, literally, \u201cI will turn toward you.\u201d This has reference to a king who turns from His duties to reward a faithful servant.
\nWhile Calvin\u2019s comment on this text has serious flaws, he was still correct in noting that,<\/p>\n
Because now-a-days God does not openly take vengeance on sins as of old, fanatics infer that He has almost changed His nature; nay, on this pretence, the Manicheans imagined that the God of Israel was different from ours. But this error springs from gross and disgraceful ignorance; for, by not distinguishing His different modes of dealing, they do not hesitate impiously to cut God Himself in two.<\/p>\n
It should be noted that Leviticus 25 is the necessary aspect of a covenant. All covenants in antiquity included various promises for faithfulness to the covenant, as well as penalties for faithlessness. Because covenants are treaties, ancient treaty-making always had clear advantages and penalties for both parties. Modern treaties lack this aspect. As a result, they are easily broken and are for the most part exercises in futility. God\u2019s covenant with man sets forth maximum blessings and curses, so that it has the requirement of total commitment.
\nThe promises given for obedience are often cited by the prophets, as witness Amos 9:13:<\/p>\n
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.<\/p>\n
God makes it clear that He is no absentee God, that He is a very present help, as well as judge, and we cannot escape either His blessings or His judgments. It is God\u2019s purpose that in due time His covenant blessings become permanent, for hence His plan for His tabernacling Presence, and hence also the gift of the Holy Spirit.
\nIn. v. 13, God reminds Israel that in Egypt they were slaves; like animals, they were in effect yoked and unable to stand upright. By His covenant, He had made them free. His covenant purpose for them and for us is freedom to do His will and to be His covenant dominion people. As Parker wrote:<\/p>\n
God will have no slavery of a social kind. He is against all bonds and restrictions that keep down the true aspirations of the human soul. God has always proceeded upon the principle of the enlargement and the inheritance of liberty. We know how much God has done for a man by the degree of that man\u2019s uprightness. That is an excellent and undeniable standard of judgment. God has no crouching slaves cringing around his altar and afraid to look up to the Cross which has given them forgiveness. In proportion as we are carrying bands and yokes, have we not known the Spirit of the living God. This relates to all conduct and religious observances, to the keeping of times and seasons, and the offering of all manner of sacrifices. Whatever is done through a sense of servility and humiliation is wrongly done, and is in no sense done in obedience to the command of Christ. When all is right within us we run the way of God\u2019s commandments, we sing at our work, we turn the very statutes of God into songs in the house of our pilgrimage. What God has been doing for man in the first instance has been the breaking of yokes.<\/p>\n
God\u2019s covenant with man is a covenant of grace and law. A covenant between equals is a covenant of law. God, however, is our Lord and Sovereign. When He enters into a covenant with man, it is an act of grace wherein He gives us His law. It is Arminianism to place God on equal terms with man by seeing His law as anything other than a gift of grace. To see God\u2019s law in terms of a works-based salvation is a theological denial of God\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-Five<\/p>\n
Jubilee and Covenant, Part III
\n(Leviticus 26:14\u201339)<\/p>\n
14. But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments;
\n15. And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant:
\n16. I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
\n17. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.
\n18. And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
\n19. And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
\n20. And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
\n21. And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
\n22. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.
\n23. And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary unto me;
\n24. Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
\n25. And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
\n26. And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.
\n27. And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me;
\n28. Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
\n29. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
\n30. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
\n31. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
\n32. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
\n33. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
\n34. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies\u2019 land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
\n35. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
\n36. And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
\n37. And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
\n38. And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
\n39. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies\u2019 lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them. (Leviticus 26:14\u201339)<\/p>\n
A key word in this text is translated as contrary in vv. 21, 23\u201324, 27\u201328, 40\u201341; it describes the attitude of the people towards God, and God\u2019s attitude towards them. Wenham translates it as defy, \u201cIf you defy me,\u201d and notes that it is literally \u201cwalk obstinately with me.\u201d Bush\u2019s comment was very telling:<\/p>\n
If ye walk contrary unto me. Heb \u2026 keri, a term of doubtful import, as appears from the marginal reading of our version, \u2018at all adventures with me;\u2019 i.e. heedlessly, indifferently, reckless of consequences. This sense is adopted by the Hebrew writers, though the Gr. and the Chal. give that of \u2018contrariety,\u2019 and Gesenius and other lexicographers define it by \u2018hostile encounter,\u2019 or \u2018going counter\u2019 to any one.<\/p>\n
Both meanings seem well attested, and they do not necessarily conflict. Our Lord, in the Parable of the Two Sons, tells us of a son who says that he will do his father\u2019s bidding, but does not; the Pharisees are here described (Matt. 21:28\u201332). Their attitude shows both contrariety and indifference. At any rate, in Leviticus God makes it clear that a people who go their way in defiance or indifference to God\u2019s law will find God indifferent to them and deliberately contrary to their hopes.
\nKnight calls attention to the character of the judgments sent by God. They are all \u201cnatural\u201d ones. Man lives in a created realm, the natural order, and, when he lives in obedience to God, that physical order is at peace with him. This is also the vision of Isaiah 11:1\u20139, and other texts. When, however, man is indifferent to God\u2019s law, he is in effect in rebellion against God. The physical world is then at war with man. Harmony is replaced with conflict and disaster.
\nWenham and others point out that we have in these verses a series of curses for disobedience (vv. 14\u201339). The first curse, vv. 14\u201317, is a general warning:<\/p>\n
14. But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments:
\n15. And if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant:
\n16. I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of the heart; and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
\n17. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.<\/p>\n
Similar statements can be found in Deuteronomy 28 and elsewhere. The requirement here is that we \u201cdo all these commandments.\u201d We are not given the option of selective obedience to God. Failure to obey will have consequences in every realm, including the loss of courage and the will to resist tyranny. We are here compelled to recognize that every area of our world, including our own inner life, is open to God, under His total control, and always subject either to His judgments or blessings. We may imagine an indifference to God\u2019s laws only at various points, but God sees it as contrariety and hostility. Behind the heedlessness is contempt.
\nIn brief, life apart from God is terror and judgment. Life\u2019s alternatives for us are clearly curses or blessings. There is no other choice. God says, \u201cI will even appoint over you terror,\u201d or, literally, trembling. Life becomes fear and anxiety.
\nIn v. 9, the promise to the faithful is, \u201cI will have respect unto you,\u201d or, literally, \u201cI will turn toward you.\u201d In. v. 17, we have the reverse: \u201cI will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.\u201d When the King\u2019s favor and grace are withdrawn, we are helpless before our enemies. To flee when none pursue means utter demoralization.
\nThe curses here include failed harvests and physical ailments. In Micah 6:13\u201315, we have a like prediction:<\/p>\n
13. Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.
\n14. Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take hold, but shalt not deliver: and that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.
\n15. Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.<\/p>\n
The second curse is drought and poor harvest (vv. 18\u201320):<\/p>\n
18. And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
\n19. And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
\n20. And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.<\/p>\n
The word translated as punish in v. 18 is rendered by Wenham as, \u201cI shall disciple you.\u201d Since the Hebrew yacar can mean teach as well as reprove or punish, this is an aspect of its meaning. God\u2019s judgments are both privative and reformatory. Such judgments bring the godly back to their covenant Lord, whereas the ungodly become more insistently faithless (Amos 4:6, 8\u201311). God promises drought and crop failures, and the breaking of man\u2019s pride for persistence in rebellion.
\nGod\u2019s law here makes it clear that, in Morgan\u2019s words, \u201cconditions of well-being are ever entirely dependent on obedience to the government of God.\u201d Again, \u201cIn like manner the warnings show that disobedience will always be followed with calamity.\u201d
\nC. D. Ginsburg had a telling comment on v. 19:<\/p>\n
And I will break the pride of your power. That is, the strength which is the cause of your pride, the wealth which they derive from the abundant harvests mentioned in verses 4 and 5, as is evident from what follows immediately, where the punishment is threatened against the resources of this power or wealth. (Comp. Ezek. 30:6, 33:28). The authorities during the second Temple, however, took the phrase \u201cthe pride of your power\u201d to denote the sanctuary, which is called \u201cthe pride of your power,\u201d in Ezek. 24:21, the expression used here, but the identity of which is obliterated in the Authorised Version by rendering the phrase \u201cthe excellency of your strength.\u201d Hence the Chaldee versions paraphrase it, \u201cAnd I will break down the glory of the strength of your sanctuary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The third curse, in vv. 21\u201322, is wild animals:<\/p>\n
21. And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
\n22. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.<\/p>\n
Because of modern man\u2019s sentimental view of wild animals, it is hard for him to see the proliferation of wild animals as a curse. However, many farmers of average income can testify that birds and animals protected by the state cost them five to ten thousand dollars a year, a margin which sometimes prevents prosperity. Sheep are at times wiped out by protected coyotes and bears. God promises an even grimmer judgment: the destruction of cattle, and even of children. The roads will become unsafe for solitary men.
\nThe early Samaritans suffered from wild beasts (2 Kings 17:25f.), and Ezekiel warns against this judgment (Ezek. 5:17; 14:15, 21).
\nRabbi J. H. Hertz had an interesting comment on the use of the word contrary in v. 21. He pointed out that the Hebrew word also means accident, and noted, \u201cIn defiant opposition to God, they would despise God\u2019s laws, and act as if accident ruled the moral and spiritual universe.\u201d
\nThe fourth curse is war (vv. 23\u201326):<\/p>\n
23. And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things, but will walk contrary to me;
\n24. Then I will also walk contrary to you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
\n25. And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you: and ye shall be delivered unto the hand of the enemy.
\n26. And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.<\/p>\n
The judgment here is of war, siege, plague, and famine. For ten women to bake the bread of ten families in one oven means dramatic shortages, so that the combined resources of all amount to a trifle. In such circumstances, survival is a problem. All this is a part of the vengeance of God\u2019s covenant, for contempt of His grace and law. The Chaldee versions of v. 25 read, I \u2026 \u201cshall avenge on you the vengeance for that ye have transgressed against the words of the law.\u201d
\nThe fifth curse describes the collapse of ordered and moral life (vv. 27\u201331):<\/p>\n
27. And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me;
\n28. Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
\n29. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
\n30. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
\n31. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.<\/p>\n
God reduces apostate man to the moral level of his life. Our moral level is revealed by crisis. In this century, many such horrors have occurred, although largely suppressed or ignored. We descend into barbarism while our elitist rulers imagine an ascent into heaven on earth. It is a grim and ironic fact that, given man\u2019s history from antiquity to the present, one commentator could refer to v. 29 and cannibalism as a \u201cliterary clich\u00e9.\u201d
\nThe climax of this curse is that God refuses to associate Himself with the religious worship of an apostate people. They may invoke His name, but His response is to smash their cities and their sanctuaries, their false cults and their supposedly true houses of worship.
\nThe sixth and culminating curse is dispersion and exile (vv. 32\u201339). Their organized life as a people is shattered, step by step, and then the relics of their existence as a people are broken. If they will not live on God\u2019s law terms, they shall not live at all.<\/p>\n
32. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
\n33. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
\n34. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies\u2019 land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
\n35. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
\n36. And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
\n37. And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
\n38. And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
\n39. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies\u2019 lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.<\/p>\n
Many peoples over the centuries have lost their homelands and have been dispersed only to be blessed in their new homelands. God\u2019s curse here gives a different prospect: exile will only compound the judgment upon the apostate. Their inner guilt will render them cowards and victims, and God\u2019s avenging sword will pursue them.
\nMeanwhile, the land will enjoy its sabbaths; it will remain idle. All the neglected sabbaths will be kept. God\u2019s will is done; if men will not do it, God will execute it to their confounding. Joseph Bryant Rotherham\u2019s translation of v. 34 in The Emphasized Bible is a telling one:<\/p>\n
Then shall the land be paid her sabbaths. All the days she lieth desolate, while (ye) are in the land of your foes, (then) shall the land keep sabbath, and pay off her sabbaths.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Hertz made a similar translation, while the 1962 Jewish Publication Society of America translation reads, \u201cThen shall the land make up for its sabbath years,\u201d the same idea.
\nWenham is very right and wise in seeing all this, as it applies to Israel, as a reversal of the promise to Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation (Genesis 15, 17). We must add that those peoples today who have become the heirs of Abraham in Christ will be similarly cut off, cast away, and cursed if they persist in their contempt for God\u2019s covenant grace and law.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-Six<\/p>\n
Jubilee and Covenant, Part IV
\n(Leviticus 26:40\u201346)<\/p>\n
40. If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
\n41. And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
\n42. Then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
\n43. The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
\n44. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
\n45. But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.
\n46. These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the LORD made between him and the children of Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses. (Leviticus 26:40\u201346)<\/p>\n
The subtle nuances of Scripture are many and marvelous, and they deserve very careful attention. This text has reference to repentance and restoration into the covenant. The essential requirement is a confession of sins. There are, however, certain necessary aspects to this confession.
\nFirst, there must be a confession of their own iniquity (v. 40). There can be no blaming of the past. To confess primarily and essentially the sins of one\u2019s ancestors, parents, or forbears is no confession at all. As a result of Freudianism and virtually all modern psychologies, psychotherapy means recounting the sins of one\u2019s parents. Such confessions are exercises in hypocrisy, phariseeism, and the evasion of personal responsibility and guilt. In the twentieth century, however, it is a common practice, both personally and collectively, to place primary guilt on our forebears. The \u201cproblem\u201d is seen as the guilt of our colonial forefathers for creating national problems, or slave-owning ancestors, or factory-operators in the family\u2019s past, and so on. Nationally and personally, the peoples of the twentieth century see the moral stance as one easily attained: lay all the sins on our past, on our forefathers. This is not confession: it is sin. Thus, God makes it clear that there can be no restoration by such false confession. The primary and essential confession of each generation or person must be of his own sins. Anything else is sin compounded.
\nSecond, only when we have confessed our own personal sins can we confess the sins of our fathers. Moreover, we can confess the sins of our forebears if we recognize them to be our present sins also, however altered their form. James Moffatt rendered this sin common to the Israelites before their time, and the presently standing generation, i.e., our sins and those of our forefathers, as \u201ctheir life of defiance against me,\u201d for \u201cthey have walked contrary unto me\u201d (v. 40). In other words, our confession of the sins of our forbears requires that we identify ourselves with them. We have been indifferent to or in defiance of God. All particular varieties of sin are summed up in this fact: they mean indifference to or defiance of God, and He never allows this to be forgotten.
\nThird, there is no real break between this confession and v. 44, which is a continuation of the confession, namely, the recognition that God has walked contrary to or in defiance of the faithless people, and His judgment has led to their captivity. It is His purpose to humble them and to have them accept the judgment overtaking them (v. 41). The fact that the people might call themselves believers means nothing if they are disobedient. In fact, \u201cjudgment must begin at the house of God\u201d (1 Peter 4:17). The greater the blessing, the greater the curse; the greater the responsibility, the greater the culpability (Luke 12:48). To confess the sins of our forbears is thus no easy confession. It is preceded by our own confession, and it requires that we recognize that we ourselves have lived in indifference to or defiance of God\u2019s law.
\nFourth, only then will God remember His covenant, and also the land (v. 43). This is a very important statement, because God irrevocably links His covenant with both the people and their land, with man and the earth. The world around us cannot be separated from God, His covenant and law, and our faith and life. To reduce God\u2019s purpose solely to the salvation of man\u2019s soul is to deform the faith and to make it resemble more a pagan mystery cult than the faith set forth in Scripture.
\nFifth, we come now to something very much opposed to so much of the \u201cchurchianity\u201d of our time with its cheap forgiveness. What we are told in v. 43 is that even though men repent, and God \u201cremembers\u201d His covenant with them, the consequences of their sin must run their course, i.e., their captivity and the necessary sabbaths of the land. God does not say, Because all is forgiven, all is forgotten. Rather, He declares, Because all is forgiven, after judgment there shall be mercy. In this instance, the land shall have its rest. In any case, while God\u2019s atoning grace wipes away the guilt of sin, it does not remove the consequences of our sin. If we destroy our sight by our sin, forgiveness will place us in God\u2019s grace, but it will not restore our eyes. In this instance, the land must have its Sabbaths; our repentance will not remove that necessity, but it will give us God\u2019s mercy and grace. Antinomianism not only sets aside God\u2019s law, but it also disregards the necessary penalties of the law for lawlessness.
\nSixth, God, \u201cfor all that,\u201d is mindful of His repentant people even as they are under judgment (v. 44). They may be in the hands and land of their enemies, but, even while the penalties continue, so too does His covenant mercy. He does not annihilate or destroy them completely, however much they deserve it. Jeremiah, in Lamentations 3:22\u201327, as he describes the horrors of the fall of Jerusalem, the fire, pillaging, rape, and death, echoes this verse:<\/p>\n
22. It is of the LORD\u2019S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
\n23. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
\n24. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul: therefore will I hope in him.
\n25. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
\n26. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
\n27. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke of his youth.<\/p>\n
There is here a grim and inevitable logic. When a people profane God\u2019s covenant, His earth, and themselves, God treats them as profane: they are cast out and trodden under foot of men (Matt. 5:13). The profane are profaned. Both the people and the land must be re-sanctified. They must become holy, and this requires time and faithfulness. This is an aspect of God\u2019s discipline which He imposes upon men.
\nThus, the promise of a continuing penalty is very clear, but with it also is the promise that He will remember His covenant with their ancestors in the faith (v. 45).
\nIn the concluding v. 46, we have a reference to God\u2019s revelation on Mount Sinai to Moses, and it is described as \u201cstatutes and judgments and laws.\u201d In a sense, all three words describe the same thing with a differing stress. The word statutes refers in Hebrew to something which is an enactment and an appointment, or an ordained way. Judgments has reference to statutes as government, to their function as the governing power in a society. Law is the familiar word torah, meaning a precept or law. The three together carry the meaning of an empire of law, covenant law, given as a blessing to man.<\/p>\n
Chapter Seventy-Seven<\/p>\n
The Meaning of Vows, Part I
\n(Leviticus 27:1\u201313)<\/p>\n
1. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
\n2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the LORD by thy estimation.
\n3. And the estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary.
\n4. And if it be a female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels.
\n5. And if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male of twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels.
\n6. And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.
\n7. And if it be from sixty years old and above; if it be a male, then thy estimation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels.
\n8. But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him; according to his ability that vowed shall the priest value him.
\n9. And if it be a beast whereof men bring an offering unto the LORD, all that any man giveth of such unto the LORD shall be holy.
\n10. He shall not alter it, or change it, a good for a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all exchange beast for beast, then it and the exchange thereof shall be holy.
\n11. And if it be any unclean beast, of which they do not offer a sacrifice unto the LORD, then he shall present the beast before the priest:
\n12. And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad: as thou valuest it, who are the priest, so shall it be.
\n13. But if he will at all redeem it, then he shall add a fifth part thereof unto thy estimation. (Leviticus 27:1\u201313)<\/p>\n
Leviticus 27 concerns vows made to God. The doctrines of the covenant and the jubilee make clear God\u2019s total government over all things. We live in God\u2019s empire of His law and the Holy Spirit, and we are thus in a totally God-created environment and realm. We owe everything to the Lord, and we must never forget this fact. The meaning of the vow is simply this: covenant man, mindful of his debt of gratitude to God, will from time to time seek to demonstrate it in a practical way. He will promise or vow to God to do certain things, or to make certain gifts. This might be done in a moment\u2019s flush of gratitude, and then forgotten, but it is not forgotten by God. The vow is voluntary, but it is a commitment, and it must be kept. We are told, concerning vows,<\/p>\n
21. 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 to thee.
\n22. But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in thee.
\n23. That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform; even a freewill offering, according as thou hast vowed unto the LORD thy God, which thou hast promised with thy mouth. (Deuteronomy 23:21\u201323)<\/p>\n
It is a snare to the man who devoureth that which is holy, and after vows to make inquiry. (Proverbs 20:25)<\/p>\n
4. 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.
\n5. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. (Ecclesiastes 5:4\u20135)<\/p>\n
The meaning of Proverbs 20:25 is that it is wrong for a man hastily or rashly to make a vow, and only later consider the implications thereof. God holds us accountable for what we say.
\nThree kinds of vows are cited in vv. 1\u201313: 1) there are vows of persons, whereby a man dedicates himself to God\u2019s service; 2) there are vows wherein certain clean animals are promised to God; and 3) in other vows unclean animals which are useful are promised. The law here says that the only way out of such vows is by the payment of an equivalent value.
\nIn the first kind of vow, the man or person seeks to extricate himself from the service promised to God. This service may involve a single act, or short-term labor. In any and every case, the price of redemption is a telling one. A person can only redeem himself at the price he or she would have commanded in any pagan slave-market. As Wenham has pointed out, the price of an adult male slave was fifty shekels (v. 3; cf. 2 Kings 15:20); a boy commanded twenty shekels (v. 5; cf. Gen. 37:2, 28); a woman brought thirty shekels (v. 4).
\nAccording to 2 Kings 12:4ff., such funds as came into the sanctuary from the redemption of vows went into a fund for the repairs and maintenance of the Temple.
\nThe child up to five years old required less redemption, and the same was true of men and women over sixty. The vow could be a minor matter, or a negative vow, i.e., a promise to abstain from certain activities or pleasures for a given time. All the same, the redemption cost was the price of their life, since the promise to God is so serious. There was no merit gained by a vow; it did not obligate God in any way. Rather, a man in gratitude obligated himself to God, and, if he did not render the promised service, he had to render a penalty.
\nIt should be noted (v. 8) that the priest had the discretionary power to lower the redemption rate for a poor man, but he could not wave it. Poverty is no excuse for a failed vow to God.
\nIn the second section, the redemption of clean animals, we see that when a man who has vowed to give an animal to God attempts to substitute a lesser animal, he is penalized. Both animals must then be surrendered (vv. 9\u201310). If a man wanted to keep a vowed animal, he had to redeem it at the price set by the priest. The redemption price, for clean and unclean beasts alike, was the full value plus twenty percent. Moreover, no substitution could be made, even if a better animal were offered; the precise nature of the vow had to be kept, and redemption had to be in terms of the original animal vowed.
\nIn the third section (vv. 11\u201313) unclean animals are cited. A man could vow to give a donkey, or a work horse, to God, and, later, regretting the possibility of losing a well-trained animal, seek to redeem it. This could be done at the assessed value plus twenty percent. The term \u201cunclean\u201d animal could include a clean animal which was unfit for sacrifice because of some defect.
\nAll of these are vows to God; some vows are made before God to abide by certain obligations and duties. Still other vows are both to God and to man. In this last category we have the baptismal vow, made either by us, or for us by our parents. While this is essentially a vow to God, it is also a vow in the context of the family and church and involves both. The marriage vow is before God and man, and it is both to God and to one\u2019s spouse. The ordination vow is before God and man, and it is to God and the church. The vow or oath in a courtroom is before God and man, and it is to God and man; we then swear to bear witness honestly so that justice may prevail. Other forms of vows can be cited. The comment of F. Meyrick on such vows is of interest:<\/p>\n
There are conditions under which vows and oaths are not, or cease to be, obligatory. Jeremiah writes (4:2), \u201cAnd thou shalt swear, The Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness.\u201d Isaiah speaks of those \u201cwhich swear by the Name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness\u201d (Isa. 47:1). Accordingly, any oath or vow is void which was an unrighteous oath or vow when taken; and the sin of breaking it, though a sin, is less than that of keeping it. Therefore Herod ought not to have kept his oath to the daughter of Herodias (Matt. 14:9); and the observance of their oath by the forty conspirators who had bound themselves to kill Paul, would have been a sin on their part (Acts 23:12\u201321). Further, a vow, as distinct from an oath or contract, ceases to be obligatory if the person concerned comes to regard it as unrighteous and wrong for him to fulfill with his changed mind or under changed circumstances. Thus, the vow taken at ordination to administer the sacraments in the form received by a special Church, is not binding if a man ceases on conscientious grounds to be a member of that Church, and the vow of celibacy taken by Luther and others, who have become reformers, no longer binds them when they have come to the conviction that the vow was unrighteous, and when they have rejected the discipline of their Church. The marriage vow, however, stands upon a different basis, but also a promise to man, by the non-fulfillment of which wrong could be done.<\/p>\n
If a minister or priest takes an ordination vow and then finds himself no longer able to adhere to that vow, he has a duty to leave that church. If he feels that his vow, insofar as God is involved, is still valid, he must still recognize that he is no longer faithful to that particular church, and departure is his moral duty.
\nThis chapter is dismissed by some as too mercenary, too much oriented to a bookkeeper\u2019s mentality. This criticism tells us much about those who make it. Do we consider it an honorable relationship if we have $3,000 due to us but receive only $10, or $1,000, or anything other than that which is our due? If we resent injustice towards ourselves, can we expect God to feel happy with us if we yield him a penny, when we have vowed to give Him far more? God is not a Uriah Heep, fawning over us with gratitude for a kindly word. \u201cOur God is a consuming fire\u201d (Heb. 12:29).
\nGod has blessed man with speech: it is not to be used casually. Our Lord declares: \u201cBut I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment\u201d (Matt. 12:36). If every idle word is important in God\u2019s sight, how much more so are vows offered to Him? An article in The Catholic Digest tells of an interesting penance imposed on a woman by her priest: \u201cFor your penance, keep your mouth shut.\u201d The woman reports on the blessings which followed!
\nLanguage is used too casually by fallen man, and certainly this is especially true in the modern era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chapter Fifty-Six The Sabbath Rest (Leviticus 23:1\u20138) 1. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts. 3. Six days shall work be done: but the seventh … <\/p>\n