Law and Life

Laws of Inheritance

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Sermon Series

Lesson: 32 of 39

Track: 135

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Dictation Name: RR156R32

[Rushdoony] Reading is from Exodus four verses 22 & 23, and numbers 27:8-11, and our Subject is “the laws of inheritance”. We touched on the laws of inheritance when we dealt with Biblical law, now we go into some of the implications of the laws of inheritance in terms of what we have been dealing with about occultism, capitalization and Decapitalization of society, and God’s plan for His covenant people.

First of all, Exodus four verses 22 & 23. “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: 23 And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.”

Then Numbers 27 verses 8-11: “And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. 9 And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. 10 And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father's brethren. 11 And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family, and he shall possess it: and it shall be unto the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the Lord commanded Moses.”

We have dealt in our past studies with occultism, the occult is the hidden, the veil, the underground. The very word “occult” comes from the Latin occultus, occulo – to hide. In an occultist society, if such a thing were possible, all assets, all power, all wealth and activity would be hidden, it would be concealed to the degree that occultism flourishes in any society, the vast degree in fear of envy, confrontations, socialization, and assault well, is hidden. In some far Eastern societies it was common place until recent years for men of wealth to dress in rags simply because to dress well would be to invite immediate hostility, attack, and theft. In an occultist society, again if such a thing were really possible, but in any society occultism begins to play a part leadership is avoided in order to avoid malice, envy, and attack.

As we saw on previous occasion in some Indian societies and various other societies the world over if a man begins to accumulate any wealth, or if he is very successful in the hunt, he must immediately distribute everything he has to prove he has not improved his status in relationship to others. He must beggar himself because the very success he has had will immediately invite attack, so he must make himself poor than anyone else. Occultism, you see, is very closely related to envy and hatred, to {?} and to equalitarian demands. Occultism works {?} the open and the stable order of society by its insistence on the priority and the fulfillment of hidden demands, envies, and impulses.

The more democratic an age the more occultist of course it will be. As a result of these developments occultism and equalitarianism, and the two are very closely related, have a common hostility then a freedom of inheritance. Inheritance is taxed, inheritance becomes a symbol that is oppressive, everything that is evil, and the Bible is attacked because in the Bible freedom of inheritance in terms of God’s law is very firmly fixed. Now the Bible in the Hebrew and Greek did not use the word “inheritance” but rather “succession”, succession. We will return to the significance of that a little latter, but the word succession is important because it means a continuing, orderly, stable basis for society. If the occult, if the hidden is to succeed it must dismantle the visible, open, orderly nature of society. By destroying succession, by attacking the idea of inheritance, succession, orderly continuity in society is destroyed. All taxes on inheritance are revolutionary; their purpose is to destroy succession, to create a revolution, to prevent the continuity of institutions, of families, of businesses, of farm enterprises. At this late date finally all the farm periodicals have caught on to the fact that suddenly, because inheritance taxes have been going up steadily, and inflation has been depreciating values, the farmers face total destruction in the next 10 or 20 years.

Farms that were bought when I was a college student for five thousand are now selling from three hundred to five hundred thousand, and the farmer doesn’t have the cash and his heirs don’t have the cash so when he dies the estate has to be liquidated in nine months, the farm is wiped out. Suddenly at this late date there {?}. It was not an accident that in the communist manifesto inheritance {?} taxes were high on the list of priorities for revolution. An open inheritance society needs freedom, it needs visibility, it needs protecting in order to develop. An occultic order must destroy such freedom in favor of underground forces in order to paralyze capitalization and growth. It is important for us, therefore, to understand the Biblical laws of inheritance.

Now the Biblical laws of inheritance are very, very important, very unique in the world. If you go outside to paganism you do not find the kind of inheritance laws we take for granted because of our Christian background. We will later return to some of these laws and pagan origins in a few weeks when we deal with how they have come to focus in communism and the Marxist idea of destroying inheritance, it is totally anti-scriptural. We have come to assume that the idea of inheritance and succession that we are so familiar with is universal, but it is a product of scripture. Outside of scripture you do not find it, it is a world of envy, the world who says “thou shalt not have more then we have.” “Thou shalt steal if somebody has more than you have.” And the only way there has been any kind of inheritance outside of Christian society is if a man is so strong nobody dares take it from his estate or his family because he’s taking it from them. In other words it’s not a law-order, it’s a plundering order.

Now scripture clearly states, many passages such as II Corinthians 12:14 that it is a parental duty to provide and inheritance for Godly children. IT says further that the Godly child cannot be set aside for personal reasons, such as being born of a first wife who was not liked. Deuteronomy 21:15-17. The Godly first born son gave they double portion because he also inherits a double responsibility for the parents care and a double responsibility for any debts contracted, as well as the responsibility to the other brothers and sisters. It is very clearly stated in Deuteronomy 21:16, 17, and elsewhere.

Normally, as we saw in Numbers 27:8-11 succession is from father to children, or if there are no sons the daughters or the relatives, and so on. But the inheritance of one tribe could not pass to another according to Numbers 36:1-12, but a slave could inherit as against a relative as another son, because the important thing was not blood but a succession and the slave in the household, if you were Godly, knew the purposes of the master better then a relative living elsewhere. Moreover the confiscation or seizure of property by the state is prohibited as in Ezekiel 46:18. Now the Biblical law of inheritance is religious, it is theological and its basis is the fatherhood of God over His chosen people. This is the meaning of Exodus 4:22 & 23.

Now as God declares Himself, the Father of Israel, Thou shalt say unto Pharaoh thus saith, Israel is my son, even my firstborn, and I say unto Tee let my son go that he may serve, and if thou refuse to let him go behold I will slay thy son, even Thy firstborn.” The first thing we must understand about this passage which is {?} to all laws of inheritance in terms of scripture is God declares Himself to be the Father by grace, and as Father he will redeem his captive son. Now when we declares Himself to be the Father and Israel His firstborn the word “Father” as God uses it is not simply imagery, it’s not hyperbole, we cannot take it merely as typology, it is given to us in scripture as a literal legal fact, as a legal fact. We miss the whole significance of the Father of God if we forget the scripture establishes it as a legal fact.

It means {?} and God does not intend his heir to be destroyed, this is why we cannot speak of the fatherhood of God as the modernists do, because the ungodly are to be cast out, they’re not heirs, God denies them, they claim to be heirs, they try to please the world as heirs of God, but God says ‘No, cast them into the outer darkness, they are not heirs the legal perspective of the earth out of the kingdom of heaven, of the new creation belongs to my heirs. The fatherhood of God therefore in scripture is a legal fact, this is what we must always remember when we pray, when we read scripture. Scripture has been too spiritualized and its meaning has been nullified, it means something to be an heir, it means something because it means you have a portion of an estate. Thus when scripture says emphatically that God declares Himself to be our Father by fatherhood it has reference to a legal fact and thus it is that it is when God is about to deliver His law, when He redeems His people from Israel and gives them His law it is then that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God comes back. As is when He establishes a new covenant with His people, a legal relationship, then again by adoption He makes them His son and restores them to a legal status as children.

So the first fact is that God, when he declares Himself to be our Father, is not indulging in mere imagery, but is establishing a legal fact that we by grace and adoption are His children. Then second, and this is so important that the idea of succession, the idea of inheritance in the Bible that if we miss this idea we do not understand what inheritance means both with respect to God and with respect to our children. ‘Israel is my son, even my firstborn and I say unto thee, let my son go that he may serve Me.’ The realm to be inherited by the Son requires work and development. The Father builds up the estate so that His Son may continue therein and the Son’s service is required, and God says “I created this world to be a paradise, let my son go that He may serve Me, that He may re-establish this world as My kingdom.” Inheritance means succession, succession and service in a common task; and this is why inheritance to the ungodly is meaningless, it just means money, possessions. But Godly inheritance is succession in service. Thus heirship is not only a legal fact but also a question of work and succession. As a result a slave can inherit, but not a man who was a blood relative, but from another tribe. Because he had not grown up within the framework of the work of the man who died, and this was importance. It was the work that had been carried on, it was the property in terms of the work and of the service that had to be maintained intact and passed on.

Then third, God takes His fatherhood so seriously that He declares “if thou refuse to let him, my son go, behold I will slay thy son, even of thy firstborn.” In every age when men indeed make themselves the heirs of God, in the succession of work, of service, of obedience to His law-word as a creation mandate to exercise dominion and subdue the earth He strikes at the firstborn of the world their oppressor to deliver His chosen sons and daughters into his {?}. We must expect the same today. God declares that He is a better father then our father is after the flesh. As Isaiah 63:16 reads “Doubtless Thou art our Father” without a doubt in other words, thou art our Father. “Though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not” Abraham could rejection us and Israel would refuse to acknowledge us “Thou oh Lord art our Father, our redeemer. Thy name is from everlasting.”

Thus as one English scholar, a legal expert, has said in analyzing scripture, although his perspective is totally alien to ours, God was the owner and relative of the whole people, that is his covenant people, as the redeeming Father God requires absolute obedience to His law, Exodus 20:2, Leviticus 25:38 and many, many other passages. He has the right to command as the creator, as the Father, as the lawgiver. Another scholar has written, Donald A. Leggett, and I quote “ Basic to the laws of land tenure is the conviction that Yahweh is the true owner of the land. The land cannot be sold in perpetuity for the land is mine, for you are of strangers and sojourners with me. Because the land was conceived as belonging to Yahweh religious and moral considerations were involved in questions of land ownership and transfer. One of the outworkings of this idea of God’s ownership of the land was that no Israelite could lose his property permanently” There’s much truth in watch Leggett says but his last sentence misses the point entirely. The emphasis in land-laws and inheritance in the Bible is God-centered, not man centered. The Israelites could and did lose their land, and it was God Himself who disposed them because they were not in the true succession of faith and service, faith and obedience.

The land shall not be sold forever, or beyond recovery literally, for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. The land cannot be sold from the Lord. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, we cannot alienate from God that which belongs to God. Moreover it is the land that cannot be sold, and ye are strangers and sojourners with me. God is saying “The earth is mine, and the fullness thereof; and it shall remain to be my kingdom. If you are not a part of this succession of my covenant you disappear, but the land remains and it shall accomplish my purpose.” Therefore in Leviticus 25:24 He goes on to say “In all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land,” or a right of redemption shall ye give the land. Thus we see that, first, the emphasis is not on man’s tenure but God’s ownership. The redemption rights belongs to the land primarily, rather than to man. It is reserved to God’s purpose, not man’s. The redemption of the land is too the Lord, for the Land is mine.

Then second God says to the Israelites possessors “for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” C. D. Ginsburg comments on this, and I quote “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 tenets at will, and as such will have to quite it if they disobey His commands. For this reason they are accounted as strangers and sojourners and hence have no right absolutely to sell what is not theirs.” God remains, and the land remains. People are kept whose tenure depends on God’s mercy and grace and their obedience. People are aliens and pilgrims, the perspective thus as God speaks about inheritance is not our lifespan and our wishes, but God’s purpose [brief audio cut out] align ourselves with the Lord, not with men, not with our riches. The parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16-21 gives us the attitude which leads to dispossession; rejoicing as though all this were mine to do with as I choose. But in Psalm 90 we have the Godly attitude towards possession.

Then next it is very clear because the earth is the Lord’s man’s possession thereof must be in terms of Godly succession in the Lord and in terms of His purpose. Bloodline is secondary by far to faith line. Anything other than that God says, in Deuteronomy 28 and elsewhere, that He Himself will dispose. The temple land, in other words had to be surrounded by temple people and the purpose is that the meek inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace. According to Psalm 38:11 and Matthew 5:5 the word “inherit” in both cases means “succession” and it has reference to a literal, legal, inheritance. Thus we see clearly that according to the scriptures inheritance is a theological fact, not essentially a genealogical fact. Inheritance thus is not in terms of our genes, our blood, but in terms of God’s purpose. When God’s purpose is met then it can be in terms of our genes. Otherwise the slave, the ultimate someone who is low in the eyes of men, inherits over the blood {?}

Property thus is an instrument of dominion. The creation mandate requires the development of property and power {?}. The Bible stresses open, Godly succession. Proverbs 13:22 says “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children and the wealth of a sinner is laid up for the judge.” God purposes the dispossession of the ungodly and possession by the Godly, and we must work to that end. Moses song at the red seashore in Exodus 15:17 declares “Thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance” or succession “in the place, Oh Lord, which Thy hands have established.” Levi’s inheritance was the tithe according to Psalm 16:5 and other passages, as Levi prospered so God’s kingdom prospers. But as scripture makes it clear this is ultimately true of all, all men in their prosperity depend on the prosperity of God’s kingdom and therefore must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then these things shall be added unto you. To undermine God’s kingdom is to destroy life and is suicidal, and of course occultism is suicidal in essence.

David in the Psalms feels that the problems of those whose life inheritance is threatened, by those who are destroying the foundation of society, and in Psalm 11 he raises the question that he hears on all sides “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” And David’s answer is emphatic; when men tell him it’s useless “Flee, run away, give up” he declares emphatically that God’s inheritance for His people is certain. God will deliver them and establish them in the succession he has ordained, but the inheritance of the wicked is judgment. God’s inheritance he says moreover in Psalm 11 is justice, and therefore we must not surrender but have confidence.

Property is thus a theological trust{?} In heritance has to do not with the family primarily, but within the family as an instrument in the hands of God for dominion, for the establishment of God’s kingdom. Property cannot replace God in our lives, but it cannot be seen as irrelevant to God and to our faith. Now children too are declared to be an inheritance from the Lord, according to Psalm 127 verse 3, but very few people as they read this see the rest of the Psalm, which says emphatically that they are like arrows, a quiver full of arrows, they are a means of destroying the enemy, that the purpose of children are not our personal fulfillment, but our children, our household, our menservants and our maidservants, the slaves God says, their purpose is to subdue the enemy, that they be reared in terms of God’s word, God’s law. So they are compared to arrows in the hands of the Godly. So often we hear the first part of that Psalm which speaks of the blessedness of having children, but not the purpose, to subdue the enemy, to extend dominion.

Inheritance thus is not a worldly fact but a Biblical fact. It is necessary to our faith and must be defended. And thus it is important for the Godly to make plans for Godly succession. This means that when God says the bloodline may have to be set aside for slaves, we set aside anything and everything in terms of God’s kingdom, it takes priority, it must be established and filled up, because this is the meaning of the laws of inheritance in scripture “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” Inheritance is a theological fact, its foundation is in the Fatherhood of God, a legal fact for us{?} we dare not regard His fatherhood on any other term than He does. The fact of grace, whereby we are adopted to the household of faith and are legally made heirs of the kingdom of God. “Let my son go, that He may serve me.” How dare the son, having been delivered from her captivity to {?} then refuse to serve God with his whole heart, mind and being and His {?} let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank Thee for the sufficiency of Thy word. Thy word is truth and Thy word is a lamp unto our feet. Oh Lord our God make us mindful as we plan our today’s and our tomorrows, that we have been established as Thy sons by grace, and that we are called upon to see the future in terms of Godly succession, that Thy kingdom be magnified and all our work, through all our substance, and in all our prayers bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

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

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is where did the wife fit in on the inheritance and in the succession. The dowry system took care of that. The man before he married to have the equivalent of three years income as a dowry for his wife. You remember Laban required seven; he was being ultra-strict about, and a little stinky. But this was the requirement and in the colonial era, and shortly thereafter insurance companies arose in this country as a means of taking care of the same thing. In other words to endow the wife through an insurance policy, this was started among the clergy because they didn’t have the means normally to get married with a dowry, so insurance was the means they took and its basic function to this day, although people have forgotten its meaning.

Now the wife could not alienate that dowry and use it for her own purposes, it belonged in the family. Similarly the man as he developed and accumulated wealth could not say “Well this is mine to spend” because he and his wife were trustees in terms of passing on something, Godly succession, so that the kingdom could be furthered, so that whereas they held a title to it in a sense, they held it in terms of a Godly succession, as a trustee to pass it on for generations to come to{?} It’s an interesting fact that although the faith is gone among some of the new England Yankees who are the old puritan families, this idea of never touching your capital still remains with them. It’s a part of a trustee-ship for the future, but they’ve made it a trustee-ship in terms of purely genealogical and humanistic ends, but the idea behind what they’re doing was in origin scriptural.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] At the moment it escapes my mind. It was 15 months earlier, it has been reduced to 9, and I forget whether this was federal or state. But in any case the pressure across country is to shorten the time span, so I would not be surprised that if in a year or two it is down to 6 months. Because you see, everyday there are millions of people whose estates, because they passed on, are up for grabs as it were and the state and the federal government hate to wait that long, so they’ll shorten the period.

Now this means that it has to be liquid in a short time and it means therefore that everything has to be sold in most cases, 75% of all estates are wiped out by the taxes because everything has to be put up for sale, the house, the farm, the business, in order to meet the taxes. It sometimes comes close to wiping out big estates too which are usually better prepared. When William Randolph Hearst died it almost wiped out the Hearst empire, they had to put so much on the market to meet the taxes, which at that time were not as severe as they are now.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all it’s an anti-Biblical tax. It taxes something which, in terms of scripture, the state has no claim too.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, because…

[Same audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right, political revolutions have recognized, through centuries, that you have to destroy inheritance in order to alter society because if property continues in the hands of the family, the stability of the family, which is a basic fact of society, is maintained, you have to destroy the stability of the family unit, and it’s through the inheritance tax that you do this.

This is why revolutionary regimes from the time of Mazdac {?} in ancient times to Karl Marx in the present all work against the idea of inheritance.

Any other questions, yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] I really don’t know, I really don’t know. But I do know that among Indians this fragmentation of property was one of the things that destroyed the Indians on the reservations. It was insisted on that when the reservation system was set up. Now the old Indian system was bad enough, but some of the Christians had other ideas, however fractional heirship was required, so it meant that the leadership among the Indians who were Christians could not develop.

Any other questions?

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Uh, yes. I don’t think much of it. This is the Taylor, Kenneth Taylor paraphrase.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I have gone through that about a year ago, I go through so many of those things sometimes {?} does anyone here? It is the Taylor version, well yes. Taylor’s version is really a perversion and it’s not a translation. Some scholars have charged that he did not even translate it from any Greek or Hebrew manuscript, he just went to existing English versions and paraphrased in his own language, and when you paraphrase without even having the Greek or Hebrew you can pervert, and there is a book on the Taylor paraphrase which points out how on very important points doctrine undercut or nullified. If you want a thing you can understand, why sin is more understandable to most people than righteousness, so in terms of something I can understand, that principle can lead people into serious trouble.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] A good question. In case you didn’t all hear it, the wife inherits something in her own name, does that all go into the pot, or is it hers? It is hers but under God she has a duty to use it scripturally, you see. In other words when we say it has to be scriptural it doesn’t mean that the only one who can think scripturally is the man that would be unscriptural. But it does mean that Godly succession has to be the point.

Yes?

[Audience member] Comment on that instance in the gospels where the man comes up to Christ {?} about his inheritance and Jesus says something to the effect “don’t concern yourself about it.”

[Rushdoony] No, he refuses to play the role of the judge in the situation. In other words he had not come ot be a court, an arbitration board, he was more concerned that they seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and as He’d already told them, everything that they had was to be destroyed. The beginning and the end of His ministry the message is destruction. So these people were not listening to Him so He really cut them short.

Now what was the message of course back with John the Baptist? The ax is laid to the root of the tree. In other words, it’s finished. And our Lord made this emphatic over and over again, even His disciples would not accept it, right up to the last. But over and over again He made this point clear. Your order is finished and here you’re quibbling about this. Now when did the disciples finally realize after his resurrection the implication of what he’d been telling them from the beginning, and what John the Baptist had been saying from the beginning, they immediately sold everything in Judea. And this is why you have only in the Jerusalem church where, as they sold their property, they very often came and gave some or all of it to the disciples to be used to try to evangelize the country before it was too late. But none of them died when Jerusalem, the most total destruction in all of history, because they knew that as far as Judea was concerned it was doomed. They took God’s word seriously, they liquidated their property there.

[Audience member] Lots of times when you talk to people who deny the law of God they come upon these instances in the New Testament and Christ says {?} don’t pay attention to that, like the women {?} cast the first stone.

[Rushdoony] That’s the law of testimony “he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” If you are guilty of a crime you cannot be a judge or in any way give testimony you see. You have to have clean hands in order to give testimony and to be a judge. And He drops the charges, there was no civil charge against her, but there was still the theological charge, she had sinned against God. So as far as the civil judge nobody was there to witness against her so charge is dismissed, but before God, go and sin no more. But she recognized Him as Lord, she called Him Curios, Lord. Not even the disciples were calling Him Lord, Master or Rabbi, teacher.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Not in the sense that it is commonly used, as though God changed His way of dealing with humanity in various stages. But to dispense means to give out and God does have a dispensation of the Spirit with the New Testament, and so on, so they don’t represent a radical break with God’s healing {?}, but here there is an out-pouring of it, so it has a legitimate use.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} [laughter]

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a good question. We’ll all declare ourselves a part of the Godly succession then. [laughter]

Well, our time is up let us bow our heads for the benediction. Now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.