Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

Justice and Its Administration

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: Justice and Its Administration

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 057

Dictation Name: RR171AE57

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, Ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly father, with joy and thanksgiving we come again into thy presence. We thank thee, our Father, that day after day thy mercies are indeed new every morning. We thank thee that, in a troubled world, we have the blessed assurance that it is thy will that shall prevail and thy kingdom that shall come. Make us ever joyful therefore, in thy government, confident in thy victory, and faithful in thy service. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is from Exodus 18:13-27. Our subject: Justice and Its Administration. Exodus 18:13-27. “And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. And when Moses' father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even? And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to enquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws. And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God: And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens: And let them judge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee. If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace. So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father in law, and did all that he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves. And Moses let his father in law depart; and he went his way into his own land.”

As we saw last Sunday, justice is a religious matter. All law and all ideas of justice are religiously derived. They come from the god of a particular system of thought. The word “god” may not be used nowadays, but law and justice are concerned with issues of ultimacy, and religion is ultimate concern. So, whether it is explicitly or implicitly called religious, all justice, all law is religious. In democracies, we are told the voice of the people is the voice of God, and law and justice are then seen as expressions of the general will, still religious.

In this episode, we see Moses taking all day to adjudicate cases brought to him by the people. As he told Jethro in verse 15, “The people come to me to enquire of God.” Whatever conflicts they had, good or bad, the people wanted justice. Every man wants justice for himself, whatever else he may do. He may be unjust towards others, but he wants justice. The people recognize that justice is a religious fact, and they therefore came to Moses because God had already used Moses and was close to him. Jethro had a solution to the oppressive burden Moses faced. Spontaneously, without any organization, the people, whenever they had problems, started coming to Moses, and so, from morning till evening, he was there with the crowd waiting, and he had to adjudicate all their conflicts.

Jethro held it to be God’s counsel and asked Moses to look to God for verification, verse 23. We know that Moses did so because in Deuteronomy 1:9-18, he declares it was God’s decision. What Jethro proposed, and God confirmed as His purpose was a system of graded courts. Elders out of the tribes would be chosen, over ten families, over fifties, hundreds, thousands, and so on up to what became later known as the Sanhedrin, 70 elders plus the high priest. This was originally the general plan of the College of Cardinals. In Deuteronomy 1:13 and 17, we are told that Moses took from the leaders of the tribes men chosen apparently by the tribes, and made them elders on the various levels of authority and rule. Then Moses instructed them in God’s law.

Earlier when Jethro questioned Moses, Moses said of the cases he tried, in verse 16, “I do make them know the statues of God and His laws.” Now some raise a question here. Since the law was not yet given at Sinai, how did Moses know the law? Some say it was by general revelation, or natural law, which is a modern view. It’s absurd to read that back into the situation. Because God had entered into covenant with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with Israel at the passover, He had given them his law orally, because a covenant began with the giving of law. A covenant is a treaty of law, at a contract. Israel therefore knew the law. At Sinai, the law was given in written form, and in greater detail. It is therefore a very wooden reading of scripture to assume that the covenants were made, that the giving of the law delayed. Everything we know about the making of covenants in Antiquity is against that. A covenant was a contract, a treaty of law.

In verse 12, we saw last week, that the elders had a part in the sacrifices. This almost certainly means that they had judicial functions as well. Because justice comes from God, the communion meal sets forth the nature of justice. That is why communion in any age or any time is not communion if there is no setting forth of the meaning of the law. It used to be that the ten commandments were always read as a preface to communion. In the Episcopal church, that was retained until a few years ago but I don’t know what the new liturgy does there. Communion means community with God and therefore, with men, in terms of God’s covenant grace and law.

Moses, as a Levite, and God’s prophet, was the highest human judge. All the elders up to Moses had a duty to give justice in terms of God’s law to the people, and to give the people justice is, in scripture, an act of grace and mercy. Humanistic justice is relativistic, even when it claims to uphold eternal truths. We are told that it is in Plato that we have the concept of eternal truth in law, and it is true only to this point: That Plato held justice to be a universal idea and eternally valid, but at the same time Plato held to a separate justice for philosopher kings, another kind of justice for soldiers, and still another for workers. Now you begin to understand why the elite love Plato’s Republic because what he says there is simply this, justice is minding your own business and the place to which you’re assigned. Plato has Socrates saying in the Republic, and I quote, “And again, we have often heard that to mind one’s own business and not be meddlesome is justice, and we have often said the same thing ourselves. Then it would seem, my friend, that to do one’s own business in some shape or other is justice. Thus, according to this view also, it will be granted that to have and do what belongs to us and is our own is justice.” Now such a view simply enthrones tyranny and gives it a pompous façade, yet we are told that this is the highest view of justice ever propounded by man. Although I think that Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. perhaps felt that by positing that justice was experience, the experience of the human race, he had gone beyond Plato. But Plato’s idea was simply the same thing, with a more pompous front.

So, the world’s idea of justice is injustice enthroned. You mind your own business, you do what the philosopher kings tell you to do. The philosopher kings, ala Holmes, constitute the nine persons on the supreme court bench. They are the voice of law, and they tell everyone to mind their own business and their own station.

Now the characteristics of the men who would share with Moses in the administration of justice are of interest. They are given in verse 21. First, they are to be able men. The word “able” in the Hebrew means “a force, an army, a virtuous, a wealth, a strength.” The judges therefore are to be a moral force, an army of virtue, and hence a wealth to the people. Second, they are to be men who fear God, not men. They must be men of a religious dedication to justice, men strong in upholding God’s law. Third, they must be men of truth. The word in the Hebrew for truth means “having a firmness in their adherence to what is right.” It has a connotation of dependability, of being a strong support to the cause of God’s justice. And fourth, they must hate covetousness, which means despising bribery and pay-offs. A godly character is mandatory, it is mandated for a godly office, and the administration of justice requires this.

So, the law as God gives it is totally contrary to all humanistic law. Moses is told to provide these men out of all the people, and the word “provide” means, in the Hebrew, to have a vision, in a prophetic sense. The primary criterion is ability in faithfulness to God’s covenant law. In this plan, there is a decentralization in the administration of justice, and there is the availability of appeal when the judges over tens, to fifties, to hundreds, to thousands, and on up.

This was the pattern that Christians, as against pagan traditions and native rulers, gradually set up throughout Europe, and you did have, as the basic judicial district in English and early American law, the hundreds court. To me it’s amazing that there is virtually nothing on the subject. To my knowledge one book alone has been written on the hundreds courts in England with nothing about the biblical background, and it’s just the barren chronicle of some of these courts. What these judges were supposed to be, we see in Israel’s history later, in the charge by Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, to the judges, echoing what Moses says on more than one occasion.

In 2 Chronicles 19:6-7, Jehoshaphat says to the judges, “Take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for the LORD, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of God be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts.” The judge was to represent God’s law. God’s justice. With humanism, the judge represents the state, which has taken the place of God. Jehoshaphat said the judgment is the Lord’s, and Moses says God will deal with unjust judges, since judges should fear God. Since there is no iniquity in God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of bribes, for judges to be guilty of these things is to face God’s vengeance. In Psalm 82:7, God’s sentence on all such judges is death. He tells them, “I have made you as little gods, but when you depart from me you will die like men.”

Alfred the Great, who is very much forgotten these days, established his justice system in terms of the biblical pattern. The hundred courts became the basic local division, and this pattern, as I mentioned, was transferred to the American colonies. Much of the strength of early America was due to the combination of a strong Christian faith combined with the emphasis on local justice, and the law book was the Bible.

Jacob Erlich, who is not a Christian, a criminal lawyer in San Francisco, in his studies pointed out very clearly a good many years back that the textbook, as well as the law book, not only in Colonial America but Constitutional America was the Bible.

In verse 27, we are told that Jethro, having done his work counseling Moses, was allowed to return to his own country. Jethro, while having a certain authority over Moses, had no desire apparently to remain and exploit it. Moses, grateful with Jethro’s guidance and very happy with it, made no attempt to hold him because it would have enhanced his authority to have Jethro’s support. Each man was faithful to his calling.

Then finally, there is an important point that can be made with respect to God’s qualification for judges, for God’s law and the biblical requirement, for social order. There is, in the Bible, an essential relationship between law and morality which does not exist in the world at large today. In the modern world, there is virtually no connection between law and morality, and the essence of state law is enactment or legality. There is also a hostility to any moral critique of the law in terms of God’s word, and this should be expected. If man, through the state, is the source of law, man will resent totally God’s declaration that He, God alone, is the sovereign and the lawgiver. Whether admitted to or not, this means that the humanistic man’s greatest enemy is the God of scripture, and man will wage unremitting warfare against God. Since the French Revolution, this warfare has increasingly become an open fact.

When I said there is no relationship now between law and morality, I should have made an exception because whenever the state embarks on something new, something that will take quite a bit of uphill work to persuade the people to obey, they then talk about morality. That’s why, when equalitarian was mandated by, equalitarianism, racial equality, was mandated by law, a lot of talk about morality was forthcoming. They had to vindicate school busing which has been a disaster, by talking about morality. So, it’s only when they are opposing what the people want, that they appeal to a Christian element with regard to law, morality.

As against the biblical requirements for the judge as given in verses 21 and 22, and elsewhere in the law, the statist requirement is increasingly in favor of a party hack, for whom justice is the will of his class or his political party. Justice, in such a society is steadily replaced by the will of some men. Justice is a problem in our time. We see, increasingly, the death of justice. We see one agency after another in Washington issuing laws, because their regulations are law, and the will of man has become law, and justice is dying. To all practical intent, it has been killed in Washington, and the state capitols, and nothing makes them more furious than anyone who upholds a moral critique of the law.

We have here and there across country, some men who are in state legislatures who are Christian reconstructionists, and the wrath against them is enormous, because they insist on upholding a moral standard. When, on a variety of issues, including gay rights, Bill Richardson quoted scripture in Sacramento, he had one very prominent legislator who professes to be a very good Christian, get up and wrathfully say he was tired of hearing the Bible quoted in the Senate. It had no relationship to the law-making process. Well, when that temper triumphs, tyranny will be absolute, but because God is on the throne, its triumph will never be absolute and will not prevail. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that it is thy law that rules men and nations, and the nations that transgress thy law and the men that despise it shalt be dealt with in thy sovereign justice. Teach us therefore to walk by thy word, to walk in thy grace and mercy, and to know that we are members of a kingdom against which all men and nations wage war against it shall be shattered. How great and marvelous thou art, oh God, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions? Yes?

[Audience] The judges that were appointed were not lawyers.

[Rushdoony] No, moral character was primary, and in early America, Colonial and Constitutional, they were very commonly on the key level, not lawyers, and in fact for a time, at least in one colony, the presence of lawyers was forbidden. They were not legally able to function because they felt these men are toddies of the crown, they will operate in terms of royal law, and we are going to operate in terms of God’s law. So, what you find, and in some areas almost till World War 1, that the basic law in a community was administered by the Justice of the Peace, and he was a man of character and highly respected in the community, and what we’ve seen in this century in the main is the steady discrediting of the justice of the peace, and as the character of the people has drifted away from the faith, the justice of the peace has become an irrelevant person, and he’s virtually nothing where he still exists.

[Audience] But as far as in England were not lawyers. {?}

[Rushdoony] Again true. That was in terms of what was originally the hundreds courts. yes?

[Audience] Do you think it would have worked if the founding fathers had picked all theologians for the first supreme court and then required in the Constitution that only those with a doctorate in theology and perhaps a jurisdoctorate could be nominated for the supreme court subsequently?

[Rushdoony] Well, the biblical pattern was that you had judges and then you had lawyers, that is, masters of God’s law. Both sat on the bench. The master in God’s law did not render a decision. He simply said what law applied. So he was there to say, in terms of what law the man should be tried and how the law applied, and to deal with matters of rules of evidence. The judge heard the case and the other judge, and rendered the decision, so you had the two, and as long as that system was kept it functioned quite well. One of the problems with our supreme court was that the founders never expected it to be very important, because, first of all, the United States, until 1860,m was a plural noun. You would say “The united States are.” After that, it became the United States is,” and therefore the extent of federal law was limited, and the function of a court was believed to be very small because it would adjudicate only a limited number of cases, and for some years, the court met about two weeks each year at the most. Now, that was the way they intended it. They never imagined a permanent capitol. Washington originally was just a few buildings and boarding houses where the judges stayed, and the members of congress when they were there. They didn’t live there.

[Audience] Do you think this was a lack of vision, or do you think it was naïveté about the sinfulness of man that society would eventually begin to disintegrate?

[Rushdoony] I don’t know, it could have been both. The man who perhaps saw clearly what could happen is now out of some textbooks altogether; Patrick Henry. He was afraid that, in correcting the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, they’d open the door to too strong a state, even though their intentions were otherwise. Yes?

[Audience] Jefferson feared the court.

[Rushdoony] Yes, Jefferson feared the court because John Marshall, his cousin who he hated, was the Chief Justice, and the two were always in total war against one another, so Jefferson’s fear was to a great extent personal, and to a lesser extent premised on a fear of a false strength there.

[Audience] It almost sounds as if their temerity almost cost them the game in the long run. You’d think that they would have not been able to get a Constitution written or not been able to have a Articles of Confederation had Patrick Henry sought to have a theologically-based court?

[Rushdoony] I don’t think if occurred to them. You see, their problem was they simply assumed that the country was Christian and always was going to be Christian. It never occurred to them that man, having come thus far, would throw overboard the foundation of western civilization. Only a few of them saw this in the French Revolution, which was a few years later, but most insisted on seeing the French Revolution through rose-colored glasses and with a kind of Christian perspective and they thought something of a better Christianity and a freer Christianity would emerge, and something like the United States, so they had all kinds of illusions. Yes?

[Audience] Is there a connection between today’s passage and the first part of 1 Corinthians 6 where Paul instructs the Corinthians to appoint judges to settle disputes?

[Rushdoony] Very good. Yes. What Paul was there counseling them to do was exactly what had been done always. They were to create their own courts, and of course, for six centuries they were the only courts in Europe, and their work was outstanding. Yes?

[Audience] I suppose that answers my question about how they got paid, with the limited amount of money going towards that sort of thing, and I guess it was the {?} whatever it was. It’s easier to be impossible to make all the leaders who were tens and all the leaders over the hundreds full-time bureaucrats.

[Rushdoony] We don’t know anything about that aspect.

[Audience] There wouldn’t be enough money to fund{?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. We simply do not know. It could be that those who came for justice each had to pay a nominal sum for the costs. So that let’s say there were twenty people that came in a day, if each paid something towards the costs, a nominal sum, it would provide a pay for judges, but we don’t know the details. Yes?

[Audience] Even during the monarchy, the {?} referred to the princes of Israel. Are these the people it’s referring to by the princes of Israel?

[Rushdoony] Well, they were leaders of the tribes. They could have been judges or elders. You see, the word is also used, “captains, judges, elders” all applied to the same office, and they were drawn from the princes or leaders of the tribes so very often the term would apply to them but not exclusively so. Yes?

[Audience] The scripture {?} such a thing as a civil judge.

[Rushdoony] A civil?

[Audience] A civil judge.

[Rushdoony] No. No, that’s exactly what they were setting up this system to replace because they knew what civil judges were. They were instruments of Pharaoh, or whoever was the tyrant of the day. So, this was a system designed to get around a humanistic concept of justice. Yes?

[Audience] We do have civil judges today. The question then arises: What is the Christian’s relationship to a civil judge?

[Rushdoony] Well, what we do need to do is to set up Christian courts of arbitration, and Lawrence Ek {?} has been instrumental in doing that. Some have functioned very well and others have not, but this is something we have to return to. We have to recreate the fundamentals of Christian civilization, and we have to go back and dig up a good deal of what was done. You can read recent books about King Alfred without any mention of anything that he did with respect to biblical law. Yes?

[Audience] In the meantime, are Christian subjects of civil judges?

[Rushdoony] Uh.

[Audience] In the meantime, are Christians supposed to subjects of civil judges, that we have now?

[Rushdoony] In the meantime, are Christians are subject to the civil…

[Audience] Are we, should we be subject?

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, we are, but we should create another system of justice to replant{?} it, just as the Christians who heeded Paul, and this went through the church immediately, this system. Were brought before civil judges, and tried, and convicted, but they were building another system of justice that was so successful that in time, Constantine said all bishops of the church had to wear the garb of a roman magistrate in public so that everyone would know where they could get real justice, and that’s how bishop’s garb came about. Well, our time is just about up. Let us conclude now with prayer.

We thank thee, our Father, that thy word is sufficient unto every area of life and thought, and that thou art mindful of us in things great and things small. We pray, our Father, that thou wouldst enable us to rebuild the fallen walls, reestablish those things that have been broken down, and again recreate a Christian culture. And 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.

End of tape.