Eighth Commandment

Liability of The Bystander

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Liability of The Bystander

Genre: Speech

Track: 77

Dictation Name: RR130AQ77

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Deuteronomy 22:1-4 and verses 23-24, the Liability of the Bystander. “Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with all lost thing of thy brother's, which he hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise: thou mayest not hide thyself. Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again.”

Verses 23-24: “If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.”

These verses we have previously considered in another context. Today we analyze them in terms of the liability of the bystander, which is cited in these verses.

We are all familiar with a number of incidents which have hit the front pages in recent years, and only a few of them have. Cases where a girl or a man has been attacked, and no one has rendered aid. There have been a number of such very flagrant cases. In fact, one assault took place in a bus terminal, indoors, with many witnesses present, many of them men and some of them servicemen, and no one rendered aid.

Failure to render aid was once a serious legal offense. However, the direction of humanistic law has been one of absolving men of legal obligations to be a Good Samaritan. As a matter of fact, one decision from a Texas court, which has become the law in that state, read in part as follows: “A bystander may watch a blind man or a child walk over a precipice, and yet he is not required to give warning. He may stand on the band of a stream and see a man drowning, and although he holds in his hand a rope that could be used to rescue the man, yet he is not required to give assistance. He may owe a moral duty to warn the blind man or to assist the drowning man, but being a mere bystander and in no wide responsible for the dangerous situation, he owes no legal duty to render assistance.” This is indeed a sorry situation when our laws have been altered to absolve the bystanders.

However, in certain states and in certain cases, there are still legal penalties for failure to render aid. In federal offense, the offense usually still stands. In terms of federal law, you can at any time, be punished if you have failed to render aid. For some reasons, federal law in this area is still far more conservative and closer to the old Christian, legal tradition. I know that when I was in Nevada, there was an obligation, which more than once, of course, I met of rendering aid in case of a forest fire. Anyone over 15 could be drafted on a moment’s notice to drop everything, to park their car by the side of a highway and immediately go and render aid. If they failed to, there were serious legal penalties. This is still the case with respect to forest fires, as well as a number of federal offenses.

However, formerly, all bystanders, in every state, in every Christian country, had a legal duty to render aid to a hew and cry. Now, the term hew and cry is a legal term. It comes out of the Bible in part, in that it comes from the obligation of the woman who was assaulted in the city to raise a cry, and out of that expression came the term hew and cry. At a hew and cry, by anyone, man, or woman, or child, everyone who heard that hew and cry had an immediate obligation to drop everything and to render aid.

Later, the term hew and cry, came to be the term for a legal writ or a written proclamation, asking for the apprehension of criminals or of stolen goods. It also became the title of an English gazette, an official gazette which published information on crimes and criminals. The liability of the bystander is unique to Christian countries. It comes out of biblical law, out of the case laws which I read earlier; Deuteronomy 22:1-4, 23-24 in particular.

Case law, as we have seen more than once, cites a minimal case. If it be true in this minimal case, then it is true in every other. Thus, we cannot rob a man of his property by our neglect. We must be good neighbors to our enemy and to a stranger, so that if their ox or their horse, or any animal they have, goes astray, we have a duty, the law says, to apprehend that stray animal, hold it, and return it to the owner. Similarly, if we find an article of clothing, or any property of our neighbor, we have a similar duty, and when a person cries for help, we have a duty.

Thus, if with all lost things of another man we have an obligation to render aid, even more so to help rescue a man. At the cry of a woman, every man at the sound of her voice, had the duty to render immediate aid. Failure to do so was, according to the rabbis, an abomination which polluted the land and darkened the sun, figuratively. That is, it cast a shadow morally on the land.

When we go to, for example, the rabbinic tradition, we find in the Talmud, this kind of statement, and there are many such. “Our rabbis taught on account of four things, is the sun an eclipse? On account of an {?} the vice president of the Sanhedrin who died and was not mourned fittingly, on account of a betroth maiden who cried out aloud in the city and there was none to save her, on account of sodomy and on account of two brothers whose blood was shed at the same time, on account of four things are the luminaries, the moon and the starts an eclipse, on account of those who perpetrate forgeries, on account of those who give false witness, on account of those who rear small cattle in the land of Israel, animals that cannot be prevented from ravaging the field of others, and on account of those who cut down good trees.”

Now, it is interesting in this Talmudic statement that the guilty bystander, that is, the man who does not render aid, is accounted worse than the man who gives false witness. The man who gives false witness in a trial misrepresents the truth. The non-interfering bystander becomes an actual accomplice to the crime by refusing to render aid, and therefore, his guilt is greater. In the Psalms, we read Psalm 50:18, “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentest with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.” In other words, a man who sees a crime and does nothing about it to prevent it, gives consent to it, and the penalty is similar to that of the false witness. Thus, if a man gives false witness in a case where the death penalty is to be invoked, then, for his false witness, he suffers the death penalty also. In other words, whatever the penalty in the crime involved, the false witness suffers similarly and the guilty bystander likewise.

It is spoken of repeatedly in scripture as a fearful offense. Solomon said in Proverbs 24:11-12, “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?” One scholar, Derek Kidner{?}, on commenting on this verse in Proverbs, has written, “Exceptional strain and avoidable responsibility are fair tests, not unfair of a man’s mettle. It is the hireling, not the true shepherd who will flee bad conditions, hopeless tasks, and pardonable ignorance. Love is not so lightly quieted, nor is the god of love.” In other words, the point that is here made is that when a man beholds a crime, it is not an unfair test, but a very true test of his character. It reveals the man. What is he doing as a bystander? Is he running away and keeping silent or is he doing what he can to render assistance? In other words, in terms of biblical law, a man cannot be a bystander who does nothing. As older American law stated it, when our law was faithful to scripture, “The law requires the duty of doing good at all times,” the law requires the man to do good at all times.

Now, this point is very important, because out of this law of the liability of the bystander, we get a very important aspect of our law which mostly survives only in the United States today, the police power of the citizen. This is what the police power of the citizen means. It means that no man can be a bystander to a crime. He has a positive duty under God to render aid. If the woman cry, he must render aid. If property is lost, or an animal strays, he must render aid. In other words, the law is his responsibility. He has the duty of doing good at all times. Now, that’s being a policeman. This is what the police power of every citizen means.

According to American law, every man is still a policeman. Now, this power has been whittled down, even as the police have their power whittled down. It’s the same thing. Every time the police have their power attacked or whittled down, it’s an attack on your power, but we still have basic aspects of the police power, even in the states. For example, under common law, any sheriff has the right to muster every male citizen of a community, 15 years and older, to render aid. This is still the case. He still has the right, and any policeman has the right to commandeer you or your property, such as your automobile in order to apprehend a criminal. This is basic to our law, however much it has been whittled, and it has been whittled. The sad fact is that, little by little, the courts are destroying that police power of the citizenry, and therefore, your ability to protect yourself. Thus, the police can commandeer your property, your car, for example, to apprehend a criminal, but the courts now deny you any access to them if your car is damaged. Your car could be taken, but there is no liability on the part of the state, or the county, or of the city, according to the courts.

Again, with regard to citizen’s arrest, we know what the courts have done to it, and the attorney general of the State of Ohio has spelled out some of the ground rules of citizen’s arrest. “With some state by state variations, U.S. law holds that a private person may arrest someone for committing or attempting to commit a felony or a misdemeanor in his presence. He may also arrest someone whom he has reasonable cause to believe has previously committed a felony, but not a misdemeanor, in the past. Some states allow citizen’s arrest only for felonies, while others provide broad arrest powers for citizens for all crimes.” However, usually the police power of the citizen is best exercised in rendering aid to the police, informing them, and assisting them, and rendering aid to victims of crimes. Some countries still have severe penalties for failure to do so. In Germany, the police powers of the citizenry are virtually gone, and yet the liability remains in case of a crime. Thus, a German who fails to render aid to the victim of a crime can be fined up to $2500 and be sentenced to prison for a year. There are similar laws in France and Italy. The American statute law has tended to supersede the old Christian common law at this point.

The federal law, as I have stated, is stricter, and Warnick{?} commented at this point, “It is not a crime in any state as it is under common law, and quite generally in Europe, for a citizen to fail to disclose commission of a felony to police on his own initiative, but by act of Congress, such misparisian{?} of a felony is a crime in the United States if it is a federal than a felony that goes unreported. A layman’s view of this is that if you saw a store robbery and went your quiet way, you’d be on the right side of the law, if not your conscience, but if you saw a mail robbery and didn’t call the cops, you would have committed a federal felony.

What has brought all this to the fore again is, of course, the resurgence of crime and mob violence in America, the downgrading of the police to the point where fewer people even want to be police, and the shocking apathy of many people toward becoming involved in crimes. If the law does not require you to call the cops when the store is robbed or someone is brutally beaten, if you are liable to false arrest charges even when acting most reasonably on your own, if you may not be protected against injury or liability when obeying an officer, then you are privileged to take a position even against your own feelings, that society itself isn’t really serious about controlling crime. Society, in this case, is the legislatures and the courts. Why isn’t misprision{?} of a felony a state offense as it is a federal offense? Legislators can restore the common principle that made it so.”

Of course, Warnick’s{?} point is right. Society really isn’t serious about controlling crime. It is, through the courts and the legislatures, destroying the remnants of the common law. The federal law is still conservative at this point, but the federal courts are now steadily overturning it. It may be that very soon that misprision, that is, the concealment of a crime, will no longer be an offense, but in terms of God’s law, the inactive bystander is a party to the crime. This is basic to all the Mosaic law.

As a result, knowing this when we turn to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we’re not dealing with a case of goodness of the heart or feeling, but of law. The whole point of the parable is that the Pharisee and the Levite violated the law they claimed to be upholding, and the Samaritan whom the Pharisees despised as people who had no feeling for the law, was the man who maintained the law. He rendered aid. The Parable of the Good Samaritan then is the declaration of the law as against the failure of the church of our Lord’s day to pay any attention to the law. The sad fact is that the church of our time also is as guilty as the Pharisees and the Levites of our Lord’s day. This most important aspect of the law has been forgotten, and the meaning of the Parable of the Good Samaritan has been bypassed{?}. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for thy word and its plain speaking. Give us grace, therefore, to be men of plain dealing, obedient to thy word, ready to render aid according to thy law, to hear the cry of victims and the oppressed and to render aid, to establish again, our Father, a society in which men are Good Samaritans, for thy word again binds men to men, and men to thee. O Lord, our God, indeed we have sinned and strayed from thy word, and our nation has become confounded by its own sins. O Lord, judge those who need judging and deliver those who call upon thee, and make us again a people of thy word. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, in terms of our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. A good point. When it speaks of thy brother’s ox or ass, does it mean that we should only render aid where a Christian is involved? The answer to that is that in Leviticus 19, God made a point that that the law in such matters applied. Loving our neighbor, that our neighbor, and brother in that sense, included also the Egyptian, who was their greatest enemy at the time, who had enslaved them, so that in this respect, the law requires that we have respect for every man’s property and person. In other situations, the brother refers to someone within the faith. In the New Testament, in the epistles, this distinction is made, but in the law here, unless it specifies the Israelites, it normally means, from everything we know, from the Old Testament and the legal tradition, that it does refer to those beyond the bounds of the church. Now, to get to the specifics, I know what you say is very often true, and I recall reading of one case where a man came to the aid of a woman who was being savagely beaten and screaming, and it was her husband who was beating her, and when he came to her aid, she turned on him so now he was being assaulted by both the man and the wife. Now, in such a case what do you do? Well, in such a case, of course, you turn them both over to the police, because the fact that she was ready to turn on you doesn’t make the crime of the man any the lesser. He’s still guilty. Now she’s guilty as well. She’s assaulting you, so that the legal implications remain irrespective of the feelings of the person.

[Audience] {?} woman being attacked by her husband {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s not the case I have in mind. It is true that our law today is perverse here, and it’s beginning to penalize the police as well. Our law is very, very perverse, so we have to act with circumspection and we need help when we can get it, but our moral responsibility under God remains the same. We have a duty to render aid. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. We’re dealing with very difficult situations. I know your first case is very true, and it’s the very perversity of the way the law acts today that does confound us, but there was a case just in the last two weeks when someone stopped on a freeway to render aid in a similar case, and in this case, he was commended by the police. They stated he was technically wrong and violated the law in stopping, but also, I’ve forgotten what he did, saved someone’s life, but he was also given a very signal commendation. You don’t know today where you stand in terms of the law. It’s very serious, and doctors in particular, have been subjected to very fearful conditions here. If they render aid and save a man’s life, they can still be sued. The law is extremely perverse today. We need to be very, very careful, but we still have a moral responsibility, and we have to work to create a situation where things will be different.

Now, there are lots of groups today working on all kinds of measures. Why not one to protect, for example, the Good Samaritan? A doctor today is so liable that many doctors simply will not stop to render aid even when it involves saving a man’s life, because they’re just sitting ducks for lawsuits, and they have been sued under the most flagrant cases and lost. Now here’s a good point for some people to crusade. It would be easy to do something about this through the legislatures, but nobody is doing it.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The courts are to blame, but the people have done nothing through the legislatures to correct this, and they could. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They are not liable in California? Well, I’m glad to hear that. In many states they are, and I knew of a case in another state which was extremely ugly. Yes?

[Audience] {?} My question, do you know anything about {?}

[Rushdoony] In what?

[Audience] {?} do you know if {?}

[Rushdoony] No, no. You cannot render aid there. The state has taken over entirely. You can get into trouble for rendering aid. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. They state, for example, on the Los Angeles freeways that every twenty minutes at the most, there will be an officer along, so that you are told to stay in your car, and the latest that an officer will be by will be twenty minutes. On the other hand, there are many, many situations where the moral obligation is critical. I know we’re on a touchy subject because the law has confused the situation, but we also must remember that by and large, the people today are morally unwilling to render aid. When they can stand by in a bus terminal or on a street corner, and see a man or a woman beaten to death, and this has happened repeatedly, and not move a finger, you know there’s something morally wrong. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. You’re very right. Now a days, and for couple generations this has been the case. There’s nothing worse than a tattle tale on the school grounds. The idea is not to report in terms of any sense of justice, but it’s basically a sympathy with evil. Let him get away because you’d like to get away with something. This is what it amounts to. Yes?

[Audience] I was wondering {?}

[Rushdoony] The primary responsibility is the man’s, right. The woman has a responsibility, however, as quickly as possible to summon aid by calling on men so that the woman cannot interfere in a situation without only involving herself helplessly, but she has an obligation to report and to call, and here again, you have one of the most flagrant things. In a matter of two or three minutes, aid in most cities can be rendered by calling the police, and a police car is that close, but I can cite specific cases where church members have been involved and have not called for aid, when they could have gotten the police there in two or three minutes, and they’re supposedly very fine, evangelical Christians. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] You do, alright, we’re not asked to be foolish. If there are ten men, or ten young hoodlums assaulting a man, and you’re all alone, you’re very often incapable of doing something in such a situation, but you can get to a phone in a matter of seconds, or knock on a door and get to a phone, and you see, people are not doing even this minimal thing. This is the tragic thing. Well, one more question and then . . .

[Audience] {?} Currently, I’m aware of the argument for {?}

[Rushdoony] There’s a lot there and it would take a long time to cover it all, but very briefly, to start at the end, Hitler and his abilities to do a great deal in Germany, first of all, Hitler was not able to tamper with money very much. He did abolish the holding of gold, but he kept the mark on a gold basis to a considerable degree, for the simply reason that the one thing the Germans remembered was the runaway inflation of 1923, and therefore, the one thing they most feared was a fiat money, so at that point, although Hitler was basically socialist to the core and not a hard money man, and Shock{?}, his financial wizard so-called, was a Keynesian basically. They had to play a conservative role as far as money was concerned until the war was well underway, and then they simply couldn’t stick with it, so that Germany had to play a conservative role with regard to money, in spite of all opinions to the contrary. Then, with regard to the War of American independence, this is a myth, concerning the paper money and so on, that you find in some of the funny money advocates. Actually, the Colonies wanted nothing more than hard money. However, the king in England was discriminating against the Colonies when he allowed them to coin money, which was not very often. They were supposed to have the right, each of them, as independent countries with no connection with England save having a common monarch. They had the right to coin money, but every time they passed such a measure, the kind vetoed it, or at best, he allowed them to coin it at lesser rate. In other words, this made their money, in terms of comparison with England’s worthless, because it was baser.

As a result, the only way they could get even with England in terms of all the discriminations and it’s a long story, the various commercial and industrial discriminations against the Colonies, was to issue paper money, knowing the king would veto it by the time the bill was sent back to England. They used that paper money to pay off the English ships. An English company, for example, the East India Company, would come to America with a carload of cargo. Now, that cargo was sold at a controlled price in America, and the Colonies had no right to buy any of the same stuff from anybody else. The English had a monopoly. The Americans didn’t like it. So, they would pay off with this paper money, knowing it was worthless, because they figured, “Alright, you’re discriminating against us, we’ll get even with you.” It was a form of economic warfare. As soon as the country was free and the Constitution was formed, they stipulated only hard money.

Our time is just about up, but there are a few things I do want to share with you. Some time ago, someone two or three months ago, and I’ve been forgetting to deal with this, raised the point of the suffering of the martyrs in the early church, and how they suffered in their horrors, and the point I made was that very often, they did not suffer as we would have expected because their faith and the Lord, by his Spirit, bore them up, and I mentioned the earliest eyewitness account of the martyrdom of Perpetua, a young girl. Do you remember I cited that her family tried to get her to renounce Christ by holding her newborn baby up and asking her, “Now just offer incense at the Emperor’s image and here’s your baby,” and she spoke of her breasts aching because they were heavy with milk, but she did not, and then Felicitas, her companion, a very young woman, too, I think about 18 or 19, was having her first baby in the cell. I believe two days before she was going to go to the arena, to the lions, and one of the guards said, “You who are in such suffering now,” because she was crying out with labor pains, “what will you do when you are thrown to the beasts which you despised when you refused to sacrifice?” and she replied, “Now it is I that suffer when I suffer, but then there will be another by myself who will suffer for me because I shall be suffering for him.” Thus, she brought forth a little girl which a certain sister brought up as her daughter.

Then, as they were taken from the prison, they went forth from the prison into the amphitheater as if to heaven, joyful and with radiant countenances, trembling, if at all, with joy and not with fear. Perpetua followed with bright steps, as a bride of Christ, with a flash of her eyes quelling the gaze of the populous. Felicitas, likewise, rejoicing that she had been safely delivered, was about to be washed after childbirth, with a second baptism, and when they were brought to the gate and were being compelled to put on costumes (that is, of various pagan gods, because this was a part of the religious games, the men that of the priests of Saturn and the women that of Devotees{?} of Syrees{?}), her magnificent firmness up to the last fought against this disgrace for she said, “We have so far come to this quillingly, lest our liberty shall be taken away. We have pledged our life that we will do no such thing. This is the very bargain we have made with you. In justice, recognize justice. The tribune allowed them to be lead in simply in whatever attire they were. Perpetua sang a song. Revocatus and Saturninus and Saturus uttered warning threats to the spectators on this fashion when they came within sight of Hilarianus. They began with gestures and nods to say to him, “You may judge us, but God will judge you.” This infuriated the people and they demanded that they should be punished with scourges in front of the line of these fighters. Now he who said, “Ask and ye shall receive,” had granted to these petitioners the particular death that each one had desired.

Now, for the young women, the Devil prepared a very savage cow infuriated for that purpose beyond what was customary, wishing to rival their sex with that of the beast, and so they were brought forth stripped and enclosed in nets. The crowd shuddered, seeing one a delicate girl and the other, fresh from childbed with dripping breasts. In such plight, they were called back and clothed with loose garments so it wouldn’t arouse too much pity. Perpetua was tossed first and fell on her loins, and sitting up, she drew back the tunic which had been torn from her side to cover her thigh, mindful of her modesty rather than of her sufferings. Then she was called for again and bound up her disheveled hair, for it was not becoming for a martyr to suffer with disheveled hair, lest she should seem to be mourning in her glory. So she arose, and when she saw Felicitas tossed, she approached her and gave her her hand a lifted her up, and both of them stood together, and the brutality of the populous being appeased, they were called back to the {?} of the Varian{?} gate. Then Perpetua was received by a certain catechumen, Rusticus by name, who kept close to her, and she, as if aroused by sleep, began to look around and to the amazement of all said, “I cannot tell when we are going to be lead forth to the cow.” Some were taken to the bulls, others to cows, others to bears and lions, and when she had heard that it had already happened, she did not at first believe it until she saw certain marks of the injury on her body and on her dress. Then, having sent for her brother, she addressed him and the catechumen saying, “Stand fast in the faith and love one another, and all of you, and be not offended at our sufferings.”

And to continue with regard to Saturus, immediately at the conclusion of the show when a leopard was let loose, Saturus poured forth from one bite so great a quantity of blood that the people shouted out to him as he turned round, what amounted to a testimony to his second baptism, “Well washed, well washed.” Then he said to Prudence, “Farewell. Remember me in my faith, and let not these things trouble you, but strengthen you.” At the same time, he took from his finger, and having dipped it in his wound, tossed it back to him for a keepsake as a pledge and a memorial of his sufferings, and then already half dead, he is laid along with the others in the usual place for the throat cutting, and when the people demanded that they should be brought into the midst in order that they might feast their eyes on the sight of the sword piercing their bodies, they voluntarily rose up and transferred themselves whither the crowd wished. They had already before this mutually exchanged the kiss in order to complete the martyrdom by the solemn rite of peace. The rest indeed immoveable and in silence, received the sword. Saturus, as was natural since he had first climbed the ladder, was the first to give up his spirit, for he was waiting for Perpetua, but she, in order to taste something of the sorrow being pierced between the ribs, cried out loudly, and she herself placing the wavering right hand of the youthful gladiator to her throat, her chance so noble a woman who was feared by the unclean spirit, could not have otherwise been put to death.

And then it concludes with a comment of their having been truly called and elect for the glory of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and how it is he and the same Holy Spirit who is always working, even now, and almighty God the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, to whom be glory and infinite power forever and ever. Amen.

Then, to turn from that very moving and serious thing to a lighter thing, in one of the Charlie Brown things, there is this little dialogue which I think is both amusing and telling, as the one character says to the other, “You’re flabby. If a crisis ever occurred, your muscles would never respond.” And the response, “She’s right. That means I have a choice between exercising and hoping that a crisis will never occur.” I hope a crisis will never occur, and if that doesn’t sum up the spirit of our day, betwixt and between they hope a crisis will never occur. Well, with that, we are adjourned.

Oh, one final word. The books you ordered on the special Christmas offer are here, so please see me.

End of tape.