Eighth Commandment

Landmarks and Land

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Landmarks and Land

Genre: Speech

Track: 82

Dictation Name: RR130AS82

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 19:14. Our subject: Landmarks and Land. “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it.”

Some months ago, we considered this law in relationship to social inheritance. At that time, we indicated that its primary meaning was with reference to land. This morning we shall consider its primary meaning. You will recall that we saw, at the time, that in the ancient world, fields were marked by landmarks. These were the boundary marks which designated the extent of one’s property. It was the custom on the part of some men in times of lawlessness to go out in the middle of the night and move the boundary stones a few feet over. Then to plough early in the morning so that the change would not be noticeable. It would be difficult for man to spot any change in the landmark, the boundary stones, or markers, when it was only a matter of a few feet each time, but over a period of years, this would whittle away at his land. He would see that, whereas once the boundary to his field, say the west boundary, was far off, gradually he’d begin to realize it was beginning to come closer and closer to his house.

Now, this law, of course, was taken symbolically also, so that as we meet it in the various places where it is cited in scripture, it is also in Deuteronomy 27:17, Proverbs 22:28, Proverbs 23:10, Job 24:2, it means that we are not to remove the ancient landmarks of faith, of morality. The ancient landmarks of God’s word and standard, and we saw its significance in that secondary sense. Our concern today is with the fact of land, its relationship to the biblical laws concerning land.

This law, forbidding tampering with landmarks, was a part of virtually every law code. In Rome, the removal of landmarks, or changing landmarks, was punishable by death. Calvin said of this offense, “For that everyone’s property may be secure, it is necessary that the landmarks set up for the division of field should remain untouched as if they were sacred. He who fraudulently removes a landmark is already convicted by this very act, because he disturbs the lawful owner in his quiet possession of the land. Whilst he who advances further the boundaries of his own land to his neighbor’s loss, doubles the crime by the deceptive concealment of his theft. Whenst also we gather that not only are those thieves who actually carry away their neighbor’s property, who take his money out of his chest, or who pillage his cellars and granary, but also those who unjustly possess themselves of his land.” Calvin’s point, of course, is accurate. It’s a double fine.

Tampering with the landmarks involved not only stealing, but bearing false witness. The law, of course, is a unit. As James said, “Whoever shalt keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” A crime against the land can also involved violation of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath laws, as we shall see, and the sixth law, Thou shalt not kill, because it involves destruction of the earth, to which man’s life is bound.

The Talmud gives us an indication of how seriously the rabbis regarded any violation of this law. They pointed out that God declares in Leviticus 25:23, “Mine is the land. God, as creator, therefore, declares that he absolutely governs the land. Therefore, even in the hand of the heathen, the land is the Lord’s, and the heathen are accountable to God for their use of the land, and for the tithe.” But one of the rabbis’, Rabbi Eleazar, said with respect to the land and with respect to man, something that I think is very significant. Rabbi Eleazar said, “Any man who has no wife is no proper man, for it is said ‘male and female he created he them, and called their name Adam.’” Rabbi Eleazar further stated, “Any man who owns no land is not a proper man, for it is said The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath he given to the children of men.” A very interesting and a discerning observation. In other words, a man to be truly and fully a man had to be both married and own property. Then truly, would he be able to exercise dominion in the two areas that are basic to manhood: the family and property. So that a man’s manhood, according to the rabbis, was very closely tied up to these two facts: marriage and land. It is interesting that, in terms of the scripture, the man is seen as defective if he is not married, but not the woman.

The laws concerning laws in scripture require a Sabbath rest for all the land. In Exodus 23:10-11, Leviticus 25:1-11 disappears. The true meaning of the Sabbath, in spite of what ministers today tend to say is not worship, but rest, rest in the Lord, but basically it is rest, and the scripture declares that not only should man rest, but all his animals, and the very earth. Therefore, in every seven years, the earth is to rest one year, be allowed to lie fallow. Now a days, of course, some soil researchers and scientists have made clear that there are microorganisms in the soil which periodically do need a time when the earth lies fallow so that they can revitalize the soil, break down what is deposited in the soil, and reestablish the basic life cycle that is in the soil, but God, as the creator of heaven and earth, from the beginning knew the significance of the meaning of rest, for the very earth itself. The land itself needs a rest for its revitalization.

Bonar, some generations ago, said with regard to this passage, “It has been well said that, by the weekly Sabbath, they own that they themselves belong to Jehovah, and by this seventh year Sabbath, they profess that the land was his, and they are his tenants.”

Now, at the heart of the land law is one law which we have to reckon with, both to understand and to face up to the question: “Does it apply today, and if so, what do we do? And if it does not, why not?” In Leviticus 25:23, we read, “The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mind, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” In other words, it was forbidden to sell farm land in the Bible. Town land, town houses, could be sold, but the farm land could not be sold. The land shall not be sold forever, we are told. It could be, in other words, leased or sold for a term, a maximum of forty-eight years. During that time, it could be redeemed by paying back that which was the balance of the purchase price, but at the end of that time, the land reverted to the family of the original owner. The land could only be sold permanently if the sale were to a member of the family. It remained, in other words, within the family.

Now this seems very strange to us, and we need to understand the reason for this law and its relevancy today. We do realize when we study land ownership the world around, that there are deep-seated prejudices in most countries against the sale of land. If you were to go, for example, to France, and decide to settle there, you would find it very difficult to buy a piece of acreage in the country. A peasant would refuse to sell it. It was his father’s land, and his father’s land before him. If you bought land there, you would have to buy it from someone of the nobility, a chateau, or a manor house, where the owner has no feeling for the land and is ready to sell a portion of it. Much of the basic conservatism of Europe has been due to these peasants and their unwillingness to sell the land. This is why it is only when cities begin to dominate the countries of Europe that the radicalism flourishes. In France, it is Paris and the other cities that today dominate the country, and the same is true in the other European countries.

It is interesting, too, that it is the peasant parties, and they have organized political parties in the past fifty years that have, in E. Europe, given the basic resistance to communism. The peasant parties, to this day, underground, of course, are the real roadblock to the communists. Stalin did not feel that he could really make the country communist until he wiped out thirteen million Kulaks, or peasants, the peasant landowners, in the early thirties, and these peasant landowners are still the roadblock in the rest of the Iron Curtain country. Over the years, these peasant political parties have produced the best statesmen Europe has seen in the part fifty, seventy-five years. They are still active underground, and they have an international headquarters in New York City, although we are never told about them. They have a very simple flag, a green flag, the color of budding crops, and of hope.

Now, how shall we understand this biblical law against the sale of land? A very fine Christian commentator, C.D. Ginsburg, wrote some years ago, commenting on Leviticus 25:23, “God has not only helped the Israelites to conquer the land of Canaan, but has selected it as his own dwelling place and erected his sanctuary in the midst of it. He therefore, is enthroned in it as Lord of the Soil, and the Israelites are simply his tenants at will, and as such, will have to quit it if they disobey his commandments. For this reason, they are counted as strangers and sojourners, and have no right absolutely to sell that which is not theirs.” This is an interesting point. When we analyze the significance of the tabernacle and temple, we saw that the Holy of Holies was God’s throne room. Palestine, therefore, was the palace area, the palace land. It therefore, had to have an unchanging character. Today, God’s throne is in heaven. Heaven is an unchanging place, but because there is no longer an unchanging throne area on earth, there is no longer the necessity for no sale of land, anywhere on earth. It is significant that even in Palestine in those days, the land possessed outside of the original apportionment could be bought and sold. Thus, the Danites moved, a portion of them, from their tribal area to the north of Israel, and conquered a portion that they took from the Assyrians. This area they were free to buy and sell. It was not a part of the throne land, the original apportionment.

As a result, this particular law applied only to Israel at that time. On the other hand, the purpose of this law was to give stability to land, and among the lawless with respect to land that are still valid, that are a part of biblical law and were not a part of this throne provision, is the fact that there was no property tax on any kind of property, land or otherwise. This is important for us to understand. The only tax that the state was allowed to impose upon the people as we saw when we considered the laws of taxation, Exodus 30:11-16, the only tax was a head tax, a pole tax. This could only be imposed upon every male, 20 years old or older. It had to be equal for all men. We shall again, in a few weeks, return to another aspect of these tax laws. There was, however, no property tax.

The purpose of God’s law was to make a man secure in his possessions. Out of the biblical law came the Colonial slogan, “A man’s house is his castle.” No man could set foot on his property without his permission. The state, least of all, could come onto that land to tax it or to confiscate it. In other words, the man had a basic security in his property. The purpose of biblical law was to protect man in his property and thereby, in his liberty. Today, of course, the modern tax law destroys property.

Let’s illustrate that by a few examples. In one city in California, twenty-five and thirty years ago, a beautiful residential area was built up, large homes from ten to thirty rooms inside, many of them of stone construction. Today, all those homes, still as beautifully kept as they were then, are steadily being torn down. Why? The taxes are so great on that property that no one can afford to maintain a home in that particular area, and so some luxury apartments are taking over that particular district. Only a few elderly people with major inheritances, which have not yet been hit with the inheritance tax, can continue to live in an area so overtaxed. In other words, modern taxation has destroyed the properties of those people. Again, another area. Good homes, but the heavy taxes led to the deterioration of the area. People could no longer afford to live in such highly priced homes, as far as taxes were concerned and, as a result, the area deteriorated, people moved out, and the homes became multiple dwellings. In ten years, there was a 90% change in an area which once had homes from $65,000-125,000, the population changed over 90% in less than ten years, and the area began to turn into a slum. Again, taxes were responsible. They destroyed ownership. The ability of the state to move in with taxes and destroy an area is almost unlimited.

Not too long ago, a book was written about Boston’s west end. These were old homes, or older apartment in most cases, well-built, but very cheap. There was no renovation work for some years. The area had become an Italian community. It was a particularly law-abiding, a particularly religious area, virtually no crime, and yet the urban planners decided to move in an confiscate the area, which they did. Today, the power of the state over property has become virtually unlimited.

Eminent domain is like taxation, a form of theft. In terms of biblical law, we can say to the modern state, “Remove not the ancient landmarks,” and declare that those who remove the ancient landmarks are guilty of theft, and the modern state has removed God’s ancient landmarks. We have come a long ways from the time when before the War of Independence broke out, the American colonists appealed to the Canadians to join them in war against Parliament, and one of their appeals was, “Do you realize what those people back in England will do to us? They may even tax our land, they are so crazy.” Today, the godly landmarks have been removed, and without the British Parliament. Our state and county governments are in the process of confiscating land. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” scripture repeats over and over again. A land tax usurps God’s rights and is unlawful. A property tax of any kind is a denial of the God-given security which God ordained that a man should have his property. The ancient landmarks have been removed, and God’s judgment therefore, must be upon those who removed them. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that though men remove thy landmarks, thy law remains. Thy judgment is sure. Thy justice never fails, and so, our God, we appear from men unto thee, from the laws of nations to thy law, beseeching thee, O Lord, to bring us back again into conformity to thy law-word, to establish again the ancient landmarks of thy law, that once again we may be secure, every man and his possession, rejoicing in thee, and in thy bounty. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] The first part when you first {?} family, and {?} reason that {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. A good question. Not the Constitution, but the various state constitutions all required that voters be property owners. This goes back to ancient biblical standards. In fact, in the Bible, the man also had to be married in order to be able to vote. So, the roots of that law are very, very deep in Old Testament history. Yes?

[Audience] Where do they get the one vote, one man {?}

[Rushdoony] The one man, one vote concept is a product of the thinking of Rousseau. It is a revolutionary concept, and very, very definitely not biblical. According to the scriptures, we have seen men who are slaves, that is who cannot support themselves, who are recipients of welfare, have no right to vote, and that was once the case in this country, but Karl Marx made it clear that the surest way to usher in communism was to allow those who have no property to vote taxes against the property of property owners. Yes?

[Audience] {?} liberty and property {?} Constitution {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, well not in the Constitution, but in the documents of the period. Liberty and property are always linked together. Yes, they’re inseparable.

[Audience] {?} Constitution {?}

[Rushdoony] I’ll have to check that, but I know that in all the thinking of the time, liberty and property were inseparable concepts, and that’s very definitely true in the Declaration of Independence also. Yes?

[Audience] In the {?} period, when the princes of Europe {?} taxed so much {?} was property taxes {?}

[Rushdoony] When we think of the heavy taxation that we read about in the history books by the monarchs of Europe, we should be so lucky. If we went back to the time of Louis XIV, we would feel that there were no taxes to speak of. Most of the taxes though, at that time, were on trade, on business transactions. They were duties. They were not taxes, by and large, on property.

[Audience] {?} spent on the {?} money {?} spent most of the wealth {?} most of the money was turned it over to the {?}

[Rushdoony] When we read about how much was spent, say at weddings and celebrations by these lords of the Medieval and early modern period, we should remember this, too. One of the things that was common in that day was that a lot of taxes were paid and debts were paid in kind. Thus, in England for example, a lord who had a great many tenants on his land would be paid by those tenants not in gold and silver. He would be paid in cows, in chickens, in pigs, in ducks, geese, and the like. Now, the lord could take himself a portion of that in the nearby city and get money in exchange, but what he usually did with the balance was to have a big blow-out, and he would have, say, a week or two weeks of celebration. If there were no reason for it, he would just declare a holiday. If someone were getting married in the family, or if there were some kind of family celebration, that would be the occasion, and as a result, everyone always presence who had paid in these animals, would gather together and help eat them up. Adam Smith has a great deal to write on with respect to this kind of taxation and what it did in the life of the times, and he said one thing that it did was to make the people much closer together, because you didn’t feel very hostile to the lord if you drove some cows and a pig or two to his pens, and then helped him eat them a couple weeks later. It was when the taxes were required purely in money that the breach between lords and tenants began to develop. Yes?

[Audience] {?} the San Bernardino County {?} welfare.

[Rushdoony] Very interesting point. Forty-five and one-tenth percent of the San Bernardino tax dollar goes for welfare, and I would say the balance of the rest goes for education.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s unusual.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] In Los Angeles County, education is extremely high, right next to welfare. Yes?

[Audience] {?} tax on the people, and he called it a tax{?} castle and his home {?} income tax {?} people {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You will recall in 1 Samuel 8 what God said through Samuel would happen to Israel if they had a king, that the king would take a tithe from them.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It was illegal. Now, the significant fact is that when it came to the building of the temple, the people were ready to do it, but when it came to building a house for Solomon, they balked. It took thirteen years as against, I believe, about seven, to build Solomon’s palace, because the people were quite unhappy about doing it. So, even though the officers were exacting a laborer levy, there wasn’t enough cooperation to make it possible to build his palace very readily. But 1 Samuel 8 is the key passage there. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. David had accumulated much of the material. Some {?} was accumulated but basically it was labor levy in order to do the building. Now, as we shall see when we review again the tithe, because we shall be considering it, education and welfare, and most of the basic social functions that today come out of tax money, in biblical law, came out of the tithe. The tithe is unto the Lord, not unto the church or to the priest. The priest received one tenth of the tithe. The rest of it, portions of it, went through the Levites back to the temple in the temple service. It went for music. It went for art. It went for education. It went for welfare. It went for a variety of purposes, and the basic tithe, since there was a double tithe, averaged out on the yearly basis to about fifteen to eighteen percent of a person’s income. We shall deal with the tithe again in a few weeks in relationship to the eighth commandment. Yes?

[Audience] Was the welfare in that time {?}, how was it handled {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Every man had the liberty, as long as he gave the second {?} tithe, first to give to those whom he felt were deserving, or to give to priests or Levites who handled it and gave to those who were deserving, to permit the gleaning within his fields, and so on. Now, in Christian Europe, very early, foundations were developed for the purpose of ministering to the poor. Beginning with Charlemagne, although in England, it may have started earlier, the tithe was collected. I’m dealing with some material that we’re going to treat in a few weeks, but I’ll just touch on it briefly because it is important. Tithes were collected by law from every man, it was required that every man pay a tithe. Now, he could pay it where he want it, but he had to pay his tithe, and they didn’t speak of tithe, but the law then read tithes, plural. The poor tithe and the regular tithe.

Foundations were set up which dealt with the poor, which dealt with education, which provided hospitals. Every hospital, until modern times, was in fact, established by a poor tithe, and the hospitals were sometimes extremely well built, with excellent services. It’s only when the foundations were destroyed, a couple of centuries, about three centuries ago, by the monarchs, that medical care went downhill very rapidly, but these foundations ministered to every area. At the time of the Reformation, and subsequently, the various monarchs, Catholic and Protestant, confiscated the foundations, and for the first time, you began to see serious social problems with respect to the poor and needy. Foundations were revived in recent years, beginning with Carnegie, but now in terms of not Christianity, but an anti-Christian religion, humanism. The modern foundation is a religious institution, but it is an institution of the religion of humanity, and therefore, it is working to destroy our Christian civilization, or what’s left of it. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] In the Preamble, he made it a little vague, but all the indictments against King George III involved, basically, violations of liberty and property. If you’ll read the whole catalog, violations of liberty and property.

[Audience] {?} Preamble {?}

[Rushdoony] No, I don’t think we can read that {?} because Jefferson was strongly property-oriented.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, this gets into a grey area. They give Jefferson credit for writing it, today, but Adams claimed he wrote it, and I think there is a good case for the fact that it was John Adams, basically, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, but Adams is not as popular today as Jefferson so scholars tend to treat it as Jefferson’s first.

[Audience] Professor {?} pointed out that the claims that Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence was never made by any public official until the election of 18{?}, and {?} of a anti-Federalist {?}, Jefferson’s {?} but the {?} called it {?} anti-federalist {?}

[Rushdoony] Which is typical of modern historiography. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, again, this represents a variation from the biblical pattern. It used to be, and it’s almost gone now, that every church group had homes for widows and orphans. The Lutherans still do have, in some places, a few homes left, but this was the pattern, so that people were cared for. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. We have to recognize that we cannot read modern meanings into some of the statements of the day. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No. According to the Bible, nothing in the mind of man has any relevancy. It’s the act. It’s the act that counts. So, if you kill somebody, you are guilty. The only kind of distinction that is made is with respect to the act. Thus, if you are, say chopping wood and the ax head breaks, it is manslaughter, not murder, because that was purely accidental, but if the ax head were faulty and you knew it and still used it, then you’re guilty of murder. It’s the act that counts, the nature of the act. So, when you reduce it to the intent of the mind, you destroy crime. In other words, then you are no longer concerned with actions. This is the only way we can judge people. Today, people are always excusing someone saying, “Well, it’s in the their mind,” or “It’s because of the way their parents treated them,” or “That man is in his forties, and that’s a dangerous period,” or “That woman is in her forties, and it’s a dangerous period,” or “They were under the influence of liquor,” or one thing or another. In other words, there no longer is any crime. They have destroyed it. Now, of course, they say that maybe it’s defective genes as well.

[Audience] {?} four year olds {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I’ve had six four year olds in my day. The youngest is now fifteen, and I can tell you the four year old knows the difference between right and wrong, and I have known a lot of morons over the years, and even a moron knows the difference between right and wrong, you see. So, this is no excuse. In fact, I’d say fewer crimes are committed by morons than by college intellectuals these days. Yes?

[Audience] {?} and the reason why I say that{?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. With respect to God, you see. God knows our thoughts, but as far as man is concerned, the Bible says we are to judge in terms of acts. Now, where the {?} come in is in relationship to things we have never done, you see. God says, “Alright, maybe you didn’t commit murder, but you have murder in your heart. Maybe you didn’t commit adultery, but you had adultery in your heart, and I am the judge in this area,” but I don’t have a right to go around judging people’s minds, except insofar as I’ve judged their acts, and I can say, “Well, he’s got to be a foul ball in terms of his acts.” If we get into the mind, we’re playing God, and this is what the state is doing today. When it says, “We’ll judge the mental condition of this or that criminal,” we are playing God because God alone knows the thoughts of man’s heart, and therefore, it says, “Well, maybe your son, or your daughter, your husband or wife were murdered by this person, but we find that there are things in their mind which excuse it, so we’re going to excuse him.” Not even God does that. He never excuses the act, but he can judge the thoughts as well.

But today, this is all that matters, and of course, when you get into that area, you’re getting into pure environmentalism. Our time is just about up, but I do want to take a moment to go into this. This week, I saw an editorial in one of the papers here which dealt with the Indians at Alcatraz, and the point that the editor made was, this was wrong, the seizure of Alcatraz, was the wrong way to go about it, but in a sense it was good because it called attention to the terrible plight of the Indians, how they had been mistreated, and so on and so forth. So I called up and asked for the editorial desk and the man who had written the editorial. It was interesting. The man was a conservative, but he was muddle-headed and basically had accepted Marxist environmental thinking, because I told him, I said, “You and I should be as lucky as the Indians are. They’ve got choice land, they don’t pay a property or a land tax of any kind. They have all kinds of federal grants. Everything is provided for them, cradle-to-grave security, medical facilities free, they don’t have to pay a doctor, their education is guaranteed. They’re provided free education through the twelfth grade with no taxes, and beyond that, special scholarships.” I said, “Can you tell me anyone else in the United States who has it so good?” and he said, “Well, I’ve seen reservations and they live in such poor circumstances,” and I said, “Yes, I know many of the reservations of California, and almost all of Nevada and Arizona, and Oregon, and it’s some of the choicest land. I wish I had it. I’d be very happy to have it,” and I said, “If they’re living meagerly and poorly on it, it’s because of a lack of character, and I can take you to some of those same reservations and show you how well the Christians are living there because of the difference of character.”

Well, again he tried to explain all of that away in terms of environment, you see. “Well, they’ve been beaten, they’ve suffered this, and they’ve suffered that,” all of which was designed to excuse the act. Now, he was trying to play God, and that’s what the environmentalist ultimately does, and we are to be men, and we are to say, “This is the act, and we judge in terms of the act, and you prove what you are by your act.”

Like a man I once knew whose wife kept protesting she loved him and nobody else, but she’d had two children by other men since they were married, and the poor fellow was so befuddled by all of the kind of thing he’d gotten now a days. He was over-educated. Over-educated, and he kept saying, “But she says she loves me.” Well, what can you do with people like that? I mean, love proves itself by action, and the most obvious thing was she didn’t love him. She loved the security that he could provide her, the income, the home, but she didn’t love him, and her actions proved it, and he had no right to go beyond her actions. He was trying to play God and say, “I know more than I can see. I can look like God down into the heart of man, and I can find there everything,” and of course, he was finding what he wanted to find.

Well, our time is up, but I’d like to call your attention to the December 17 review of the news. “Who faced the Modlay Massacre and why.” Our servicemen are being charged with a fearful massacre there which has been invented by the press. It’s a most important issue, and you can pick it up in an American Opinion bookstore, and I think you’ll find it important reading.

Well, we are adjourned.

End of tape