Law in the Old Testament

God the King

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Lesson: God the King

Genre: Speech

Track: 124

Dictation Name: RR130BQ124

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture is Judges 21:25. We shall begin this morning a survey of the law in the Old Testament, and when we have concluded that survey, we will study the law in the New Testament, and Grace and the Church in the New Testament. “God the King” is our subject this morning. Judges 21:25. “In those days there was no king in Israel: and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

It is important for us, as we begin a survey of the law in the Old Testament, to examine once again in a little more detail, the meaning of the word “law.” Two and a half years when we began our study of the law, we looked at the word briefly. Let’s examine it more closely now.

The Hebrew word for law is Torah. As a matter of fact, the whole of the books of Moses; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, is called by the Jews, and by many biblical scholars, simply the Torah, or the law. As a matter of fact, very often the whole of the Old testament is called the Torah. Sometimes the law and the prophets. Our Lord, throughout his ministry, spoke of the Old Testament as the law and the prophets. Sometimes it was shortened simply to the law. Thus, the whole of the Old Testament was known as the Torah. Sometimes, in the early church, this usage continued so the Old and the New Testament both, that is, the whole of the Bible as we have it, was known as the Torah. It is important for us to understand what they meant by Torah. What is the meaning of this Hebrew word?

Torah, or law, in Hebrew, means “a pointing out.” So that if you asked me directions and I say, “Go this way,” that’s a torah. It’s a direction. Even more than that, it refers to authoritative direction from the Lord. So when we talk about Torah, we are talking about authoritative direction from the Lord. This is why the word Torah was once used for the whole of the Bible, because the whole of the Bible, all of God’s word, is authoritative direction from the Lord.

As a result, in the biblical sense, no relationship with God is possible without law, without authority to give direction. Now, let’s examine the meaning of that a little further. Supposing I tell you, when you ask directions that this is the way to go and then you turn around and go that way? My directions are an indictment of you, are they not? Because you have asked for directions. You’ve been given the proper directions, and you choose perversely to disobey them. As a result, the authoritative direction of God is an indictment, is a death sentence to everyone who despises it, who says, “Oh, so God says that way? ‘Ye hath God said, Thou shalt not eat thereof?’ Well, we will eat.” What is the law then? A death sentence, and such it has been to all of us. We have died in Christ because the law, as a death sentence to us, has been fulfilled in his person, and we are alive in Christ and now, what is it that the law is, St. Paul says? Why is it given to us? That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now, we’re on the right direction. So, the law is also, and we’re headed in the right direction, as well as when we’re headed in the wrong direction, a schoolmaster, because it teaches us, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” The law is pointing us the right way, and the law is also the righteousness of God. It’s the way of life for the believer.

So, you see, when you say “direction,” this is what law is. There is no Bible possible without law. God’s plan of salvation, his grace, all these are a part of the Torah, the direction, and this is literally the meaning of the word.

This is not all. Our Lord declared, very plainly, “I am the Torah.” That’s in the Bible. Where did he say it? Why, in John 14:6. He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Now, just look up the word “Way” in Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, that’s an old standard one. It hasn’t been infected by any of the modernists’ scholarship of our day. Now, what does Thayer tell us that the word “podos,” the Greek word “podos” means. He says, Well, it means a literal direction, or when used metaphorically, as in John 14:6, it means “ordinance.” The purposed ordinance, or law of God. So what was our Lord saying when he said, “I am the Way.” I am the authoritative direction, I am the law, the purpose, the ordinance of God. Even more, as scholars of bygone generations pointed out, when he made that statement, it carried far more weight and shock, as it were, to the listeners than it does today. Why? Because he began, “I am.” Now, the name of God Jehovah, is “I am that I am.” So when Jesus said, “I am,” he equated himself to God, the Way, the ordinance, the law, of God. You can imagine the impact of that on his disciples. “I am,” that is, “I Jehovah, the sovereign God incarnate,” and the law, the ordinance{?}, the direction, and “no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Unless there’s no Bible if you say there is no law, because the Bible is the authoritative {?} of direction. It is the ordinance, the law of God.

Now, since the modernists laugh at faith and the sovereign God, they cannot accept the existence of a given law, an absolute law, existing from the beginning of time. Instead, they believe in evolution, and therefore, they hold that law is the expression of man’s development. It is the codification of man’s experience in history. Therefore, the modernist sees the law as written very late in Israel’s history. This is a very important face in case you have never read some of the modernist critique’s of the Bible. They say that the law, which we have at the beginning of the Bible, came at the very end of the Bible as the last thing to be written. It was written by some of the scribes in the school of Ezra after Ezra’s day who, somewhere around 350-400 B.C., when the whole of the Bible was supposedly finished, set to work and they codified the evolving law that had developed in their history, and then said, “Oh, it was given away back in the beginning,” so it was a pious forgery in effect. This is because they see only an evolutionary development. The basis of their faith is, concerning the Bible, that development is the explanation of all things because evolution is the truth about all things.

Moreover, the development brings out things that are latent in man, out of the heart of man, rather than from God in heaven. Moreover, to analyze any word, whether it purports to come from God or man, used a naturalistic yardstick, the comparative method. You compare religions and you compare histories, and you say, “This has evolved in this and that fashion,” but according to scripture, the law of God is not a product of evolution. It was there from the beginning, from the Garden of Eden, because God from the beginning gave man an authoritative direction, a word. “This is the way. Walk ye in it.” “Thou shalt not eat thereof,” for in the eating thereof, dying ye shall die.

Law is therefore assumed from the beginning of scripture, given subsequently in written form, but assumed from the beginning, and of course, the Bible makes no sense if you say the law came at the very end. The book of Joshua then has to be a forgery, too, does it not? Because Joshua begins by reminding people that they must obey the law of God in order to be blessed by God. He cites the law of the ban{?}, the cities of refuge, he cites the division of land according to the law. Over and over again, judgments are rendered according to the law. then Ruth, the next book, gives us the law of gleaning, the levery{?}, the rejection of the land, and much, much more, and of course, in Judges, the central theme of the Book of Judges is that, and this verse is repeatedly given in the Book of Judges as the theme thereof, and it completes the book. “In those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Now, the modernists tell us and too many evangelicals who’ve never bothered to examine the matter that this refers to the fact that there was no king like Saul, or David, or Hezekiah, or Asa, or anyone else. The reference is not to a human king. As a matter of fact, the human kings come out in a very sorry light in the Book of Judges. Moreover, we have a reference to a king in Israel, Abimelech, the son of Gideon, and what a perverse and wicked reign his was. There was no king in Israel means that God was not recognized as king. Do you remember when we studied the significance of the tabernacle, we saw that the Holy of Holies was the throne room of God. God, the King of Israel, the King of the universe, had been rejected.

As a result, Israel, having rejected its lawmaker, the sovereign God, the universal king and covenantal king, was unable to stand against its enemies. It had instead, anarchy. But, whenever they returned to their king, God, the immediate result was victory.

For example, Deborah the prophetess recalled the people to faith God and to obedience unto the Lord, and the immediate result was God the King being restored to his rightful place, let them to victory. In Judges 5:20 we read in the song of Deborah as she celebrates the victory. “They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” Everything in the universe was used by God, when his people returned to obedience to him, to overthrow the power of Sisera, and so the storm, and the weather itself were used to overwhelm and destroy the enemy, because at a time of the year when the weather was normally dry, a tremendous storm wiped out the major advantage of Sisera, his infantry, and his cavalry, and his chariots, and then, as Deborah goes on in verse 23, “Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.” What is the significance of this verse? The battle is over. The captain of the hosts, God the King, rewards and punishes in terms of performance in the battle, and so God says, “Cursed be Meroz, said the angel of the Lord.” Now, that means Jesus Christ. The term “angel of the Lord” is used repeatedly in the Old Testament, and once or twice in the New to refer to the second person of the Trinity. “Cursed ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of,” not Israel, not Deborah, but “the Lord.” God the King, but similarly Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite is blessed above all women, because she was responsible for killing Sisera, the enemy of God.

Then, as the song of Deborah concludes, it shows us the enemy’s palace, and the fretting, the worrying, “Where are our men? They are not returned.” “The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots? Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself, Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?” The reason why they are late is not because as was the reality, they are dead, destroyed by God, the king and his hosts, but because they are dividing the spoil, they have so much of booty to bring home to you. And then Deborah concludes, “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.” The enemies are the enemies of the Lord, who is the King, and in verse 31, where it referred to the son, Let them that love him (God the King) be as the rising of the sun in its strength. Thus, the true direction and the true life are in obedience to God, and those that obey him, who trust in him, who walk by faith, are like the sun in its might. They are not only walking in terms of the direction, but they give direction. They walk in the light and therefore, they give light. They obeyed God the King.

“In those days there was no king in Israel,” and the days of unbelief and disobedience, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” The alternative to law, to direction, is anarchy. This is the meaning of the sentence. Anarchy is the alternative to law.

When St. Paul in Romans speaks of the people who are without faith, he uses a word “anomos.” What does he say about them? The Greek brings it out very clearly. To be without faith is to be anti-law, without direction, to be anarchistic, to have no purpose, no ordinance, no direction, and this the believe never has, “anomia.” In the Epistle of John we are told that “He who says he is without sin is a liar,” that is, who has no hamartia. Hamartia is one of two words in the Bible for sin. It means “missing the mark.” Now, each of us as Christians, often misses the mark. It is impossible for us in this life to be without hamartia, sins that fall short of God’s purpose, but later on we are told that because we are now of the Lord, we no longer sin, anomia. We are no longer moving in the wrong direction. A Christian can commit hamartia. He’s going in the right direction, but he misses the mark, but he is never anomos, or anomia, going in the wrong direction, because by faith, by the saving grace of God, he is now in the right direction. This is what law means, direction. Walking in the paths to which God has called us.

“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” and today, there is no king in America, or in Britain, France, and elsewhere, and as a result, “every man does that which is right in his own eyes,” and the world moves steadily toward anarchy, but the word of the Lord is “I am the Way.” I am the ordinance, the direction. “No man cometh to the Father but by me.” God’s grace and law are not in opposition for the believer. They are the beginning and the direction, the Alpha and the Omega of the way to the Father. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that by thy grace through Jesus Christ, we have been redeemed from our lawlessness. We have been turned around, regenerated, given the right direction. We thank thee, our Father that, day by day, thou dost bless, sustain and guide us, and dost point out to us the way that we should walk, and by thy word dost set before us such great promises in Jesus Christ. Give us grace, therefore, our Father, ever to walk in thine appointed way, to prosper therein, and to abound unto thy glory. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but it was also government through a social order, a state. You see, our problem today is that the state really has no law, because if the law does not come from God, ultimately it is anomia, anomos. It’s anti-law, and today what law is there? Isn’t this our problem with the Supreme Court? Isn’t this our problem with the legislators? They truly have no law. It’s anarchy. Yes?

[Audience] Yes, I agree with {?} God {?} want God through the people {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, because we are not perfect. You see, if we were perfect and the law was perfect in our hearts and our response to it was perfect, then there would be no problem, but first of all, we live in a world in which many people are perversely taking the wrong direction. So we need civil government for those people. Then we are taking the right direction so we cannot be guilty of anomia, but we can be guilty of hamartia. We fall short, so we need the law continually, both outside of us, in church, state, school, family, in every area, as well as within our hearts.

As a result, without a family, you see, the family is a law order, and the father and the mother lay down the law. Now, in a family where every child and every adult is regenerate, they are still guilty of hamartia. So very often the children have to be brought into line and told, “Now look, you know, this is what you should do, so get busy and do it, and if you don’t, I’m going to paddle your behind.” Very often, husband and wife have to correct each other in terms of the law, because we are guilty of hamartia. Our direction may be sound, but we’re falling short, or we’re becoming lazy, and instead of moving in that direction, we sit down and say, “I’ve grown enough, Lord. I’m tired of growing. Just let me sit back and enjoy things for awhile instead of having to grow all the time.” This is why we need government, without as well as within. The law, therefore, is a schoolmaster all the days of our life. Life is a continual school. We never graduate until we enter heaven. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s very foolish, and your position is entirely right, entirely right, and I could recite from war zones in recent years some horrible tragedies of people who thought, “Well, all I have to do is to have faith and sit back, and the Lord’s going to take care of me.” That’s ridicules. That’s tempting God. It’s tempting God, and God has given us his word, his law. He’s given us intelligence, and we have to use it and to protect ourselves, and especially because the times are evil, all the more we need to protect ourselves. If that were true, we should say, “Since the Lord will take care of me, there’s no need of having a lock on the door, or even having a door. After all, I should walk by faith.” That’s blasphemy, I believe. Yes?

[Audience] The problem {?} how long {?}

[Rushdoony] In the Book of Judges. The period was from the time of Joshua’s death to the time of Samuel. Now, scholars have debated endlessly about how long this was. It was two or three centuries. We’re not sure exactly how long, but it was two or three centuries. So it was a considerable period of time. Now, this does not mean it was unrelieved anarchy in that time, because when you read through the Book of Judges, you find that periodically, a godly man rose to power, and we are told, “And the land had rest for forty years,” or the land had rest for so many years, a generation, and then it went back into anarchy as men departed from the faith, so it was a period of considerable up and down. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, up and down. Anarchy and good rule under God the King. Similarly, when they took the monarchy, it was a period of up and down the same way. Very often, God ruled as with David, and most of Solomon’s reign, and under Asa, Hezekiah and others, but again, there was this regular, up and down situation. Now, in the Northern Kingdom, Israel was almost unrelieved apostasy. In the Southern Kingdom, Judah, it was even as in the period of Judges, up and down, up and down, and progressively down. So that although they had one or two very fine kings towards the end, the reformations as they came, came increasingly from the top, as with Josiah. Josiah’s reformation was almost entirely from the top. The people were no longer responding to reformation, and as a result, when Josiah died the nation was doomed, and it went down the drain, but it was a theocracy throughout its history.

Now, let’s take that a step further. What we have to say is this: not only was Israel a theocracy throughout its history because it was a people called of God, but every Western country is a theocracy in spite of what it may say, and is going to be judged by God because as theocracy, countries in which God is the King, God has been despised.

Last night, I heard a very fine man speak, one of our finest men in the State of California, Congressman John Schmidt, and the point he made I thought was very good, among many heathen better things, but relevant to what we have to say. He said it’s a tragic situation when men can pray in a space capsule in outer space and they cannot pray in our schools and institutions. That’s the extent to which God has been pushed out, and pushed out into a space capsule and even then, objections to any scripture reading there.

Now, since we are a theocracy, God will judge us, as he will every other country, and since God is moreover the universal King, he will judge the ungodly peoples as well, but we have a covenant relationship to him as well, you see? So we have doubly transcripts{?}, and this country was very clearly established as a theocracy.

I think I mentioned some months ago that when I was in Mississippi in March, I was very much thrilled to see that, over the state courthouse, was the statue of Moses. This was the conception of law with which they began, and yet I talked to two Mississippians recently who didn’t even know that was Moses’ statue on the courthouse. In other words, it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the answer to that is that it is true that the world around us, the material universe, is interrelated, and the tides and other things indicate this fact. But when you get into the realm of the mind, since you accept that position, what you do is to end up in total determinism. Astrology is a form of deterministic philosophy. What is implies is that ultimately no man is free, that just as the tides move without any minds in the tide, or any volition, you see, so man is the puppet of the stars, of the planets. He’s totally controlled by natural forces. This is why it is anti-Christian. We are not a product of the environment. We are then set in this world to be lords over the environment, to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. This is why, in the Old Testament, those who look to the stars for guidance and counsel, are condemned, because instead of being ruled by them, we are set on earth to rule the earth. So, the two beliefs, Christianity and astrology, are totally at odds with each other. Completely. This is why, if someone begins with the one, he will ultimately have to forsake the other. Does that help make it clear?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. In other words, the weather is a part of a material world. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in recognizing that it’s a fact of nature, that the tides are there, that various cycles of moon have certain effects on natural things. For example, if you are going fishing, you know that where you have a full moon, there is a lot more night feeding by the fish. So, your chance of catching fish, say in a trout stream when you’ve had a full moon the night before, are not as soon as when you had a dark night, you see. It’s just a natural fact, but we are not on the level of the fish. We move in terms of either a response to God or against God. We are either covenant keepers or covenant breakers, and to posit the stars have any influence over us is to try ultimately to evade responsibility, and this has always been the reason why astrology comes into popularity in a day like ours. Now, I think any one of us who are, say 50 years old or older can remember that, not too many years ago, astrology was rather uncommon. There was a time in the twenties when Evangline Adams was very popular, with some people in the East, business leaders and the like, but by and large, when you got down to the grass roots level, the ordinary people, astrology was something very remote, but today it’s extremely popular. Why? Well, again and again throughout history, when men have denied God and denied responsibility, they justify it by turning to astrology. It’s a way of running away from reality, of running away from responsibility. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I’ll check up on it. I referred to it about a year and a half, two years ago, and we touched on this in passing, and I couldn’t say at the moment, but there are just two or three passages where it speaks of looking to the stars, and what not, and condemnation. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, of course. Man is set on earth to be a good steward under God, and to exercise dominion under God.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, right, and man is supposed to give the earth a Sabbath and not to abuse it. When he does, he’s going to pay the penalty, the scripture makes this clear, and because Israel and Judah had abused the land, God said he was going to remove them from the land and give the land seventy years of Sabbaths, seventy years of rests, and God did, and it wasn’t until after the seventy years that he restored them to the land, and of course, when they began to abuse it again, they paid a price, and there are portions of the world that, because of the abuse by man, have turned into desert. When we think of Palestine today, no one who goes to Palestine today sees it as our Lord saw it, or as David and Joshua saw it, because then it was a land that was forested, that had running streams. They paid a price, and much of Arabia was all once forested land. North Africa was, but you see, when you cut over land, you turn it, in many cases, to drifting sand as the land erodes. We know from the remnants that North Africa’s Sahara was once farm land and cattle land, but it’s been destroyed. Now, in recent years, with American aid in some portions of what was North Africa or Marcania{?}, once a very highly populated area, they’ve gone in and reforested, and this has helped, but now with radicals in control, they’re turning sheep and goats into the area that we reforested, so that’s going to be destroyed. In other words, the earth is a stewardship from God, and when men abuse it, they pay a price. When men exercise dominion over it responsibly, under God, then God blesses them. We’ve seen signs of God’s curse, this year, in the blight with destruct {?} the corn crop. This week they were beginning to give tentative estimates of how many billion bushels of corn were ruined. Now, this comes from abusing the soil, and it will only get worse. This is the law of God, his judgment, and he makes it very clear in the scriptures. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Astrology is used to justify the anarchy. For example, the whole point of all this talk about now being in the Age of Aquarius is that we are now in a time of lawlessness where we are beyond law, beyond Christianity. We are in the Third Age, as it were, whatever terminology you want to use, and therefore, none of the old standards apply any longer. So, astrology is basic to the revolutionary thinking of our day. Astrology is extremely important to understanding revolution today. The whole of that play, Hair, is from start to finish, based on astrology, and it justifies the immorality it propagates in the name of astrology, and of course, you have something now that you can buy every Friday at your corner drugstore, on, what is it? Myth, Man, and Magic, in which they line up all the top scholars, including theologians, most of your liberal theologians, the top names, Catholic and Protestant, are lined up there to present a worldview that is basically anti-Christian and evolutionary.

Now, evolution favors astrology, for this simple reason. Even though some of your scientists “poo poo” evolution, it is logical to see evolution and astrology go hand-in-hand, because evolution says you evolve out of primordial chaos, out of matter, and therefore man is basically conditioned by this. So, what do you do to understand man? Well, Freud said you look backward to the animals, to the primitive man, to the unconscious, to understand man. So, if you look backward into the material world around us, why that material world includes the stars. It includes the moon and the heavenly bodies, and so the astrologers say, “Of course, our faith presupposes evolution,” and the theosophists say this is the whole point of theosophy and astrology. We assume that it took millions and millions of years for man to develop, and man being a product of these things, is controlled by these things, governed by these things, predestined by these things, but since we say since God created all things, it’s God who controls and predestines all things. So, it’s either nature or the stars, or God. Take your choice. It’s that clear. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the third world idea is a vaguely religion idea that came out of the church, but was anti-Christian. It disguised itself as Christian. It originated in the early part of the Medieval period, Abbot Joachim of Flora was the author of it, and he said there were three ages in the history of the world. The first was the age of the father, God the Father, the age of law. The second was the age of God the Son, the age of Christianity and grace, and the third is the age of the Holy Spirit which is the age of a one-world religion when God is dead, God the Father and God the Son are dead, and all men are caught up in this one world spirit. Now, this is third age thinking, and supposedly, in terms of their astrological reckoning, the third age began, I think in 63 or 64. So we are now in the third age, and therefore, all that belongs to law, or to God the Father and God the Son is abandoned, and by God the Holy Spirit they mean the spirit of man everywhere. So, astrology is basic to our anti-Christianity today. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No.

End of tape