Laws of Liability and Restitution

In these verses, we continue the study of the laws of liability and restitution. Already you have, no doubt, recognized the continuing jurisdiction of some of these laws. They are at the base of western civilization. We have, step-by-step, moved away from them, but they are recognizable very readily because they are in our background.

In the first case, verses 14-15, we read, “And if a man borrow ought of his neighbour, and it be hurt, or die, the owner thereof being not with it, he shall surely make it good. But if the owner thereof be with it, he shall not make it good: if it be an hired thing, it came for his hire.” This has to do with trusteeship. A borrower becomes, by the act of borrowing anything from another person, a trustee with full responsibility for the care of the borrowed property. If any damage occurs while the thing borrowed is in his possession, he is responsible even if he did not, by any personal act, damage the thing, even if it were normal wear or tear. He is the trustee. As James McGregor summed up the legal implication, “Omission is commission,” so that negligence leads to responsibility. However, if the tool or animal was hired, together with the owner, then the owner was responsible. To bring it up to date, if we borrow a friend’s power saw, and it malfunctions while we are using it, we are responsible for repairing it. That’s a risk we take whenever we borrow something. On the other hand, if we hire someone to cut down a tree, any problem resulting to his equipment is that man’s responsibility, because he is hired together with his equipment. In borrowing, the borrower takes the risk. In hiring, the hired man assumes the risk as part of his pay. Current trends in legislation are working to overturn this premise.

In the second case, verses 16-17, “And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.” As the law states, this has to do with the seduction of an unbetrothed virgin. In Deuteronomy 22:25-29, we have the law of rape, but in this instance the word used is “entice.” Although the girl participates in the act, the responsibility still rests primarily on the male. In biblical law, the greater the responsibility, the greater the culpability, and God gives primary responsibility to men. Therefore, they have greater culpabilities. Without any qualification whatsoever, this law says the guilty man must pay the virgin the dowry of virgins. The amount is not specified here, but in Deuteronomy 22:28-29, we are given the amount; fifty shekels of silver, a very large amount in those days. In ancient Hebraic law, it was usually said to be about the income of three years of which the man was capable, but in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 it’s fifty shekels, and shekels in those days were weights. This dowry is to be paid whether or not he marries the girl. Seduction was, thus, too costly to become commonplace in times when the law was kept. It wasn’t that the young men were any different then, it was that the law made it very expensive. Whether or not a marriage followed depended on the girl’s father. He had the authority. If he utterly refused the man as a son-in-law, the dowry still went to the girl. Since a subsequent suitor also paid some kind of dowry, the girl went into her marriage well endowed. This law stressed the priority of the father over both his daughter and her possible husband. It was his duty to protect his daughter and strive to ensure a good marriage for her.

The third case is verse 18, which says simply, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The word in Hebrew translated as “witch” appears only here, in Deuteronomy 18:10 and 2 Chronicles 33:6. It is rendered by the Septuagint with a word, a Greek word, which means poisoner. Scripture has other terms for those who divine to cast spells and indulged in various occult arts, so called. Although those who were witches could also dabble in occultism, they were primarily in Antiquity and over the centuries dealers in poison. They are thus dispensers of death and therefore, must be executed. The Medieval view of witches at times brought together pagan ideas as well as the prohibition of poisoners. Many of our ideas of witches, for example, flying on broomsticks, come from the witches themselves because, dealing in poisons, they were also dealers in a variety of drugs. They took some drugs themselves, which caused hallucinations of flight, and so this is the origin of that tale. We are seldom told nowadays that American Indians feared witches in their midst, that is, claimants to occult powers, and often killed them in great numbers, sometimes a considerable element of a tribe would be decimated. Indian medicine men knew these poisonous drugs and they warned people against evil practitioners, who specialized occasionally in killing for hire.

I know one old Indian once when we were hunting, called attention to various things that we saw up in the mountains, and he was very quiet at one point, and waited until his son was some distance away when he said, “This was used as a poison to kill people.”

One reason for our contemporary impotence in dealing with some of our problems is a neglect of God’s law, a failure to take it seriously and to attempt to understand it. The fourth case, verse 19, concerns bestiality. This was a religious practice in many pagan religions, especially among Canaanites. Its religious uses still survive. Its purpose was revitalization through ritual chaos. Because primeval chaos was seen as the source of all life and power, chaos was regularly invokes, as in the Saturnalia, to renew and regenerate man and society. This law appears in several forms in Leviticus 18:23, and Leviticus 20:15-16, and Deuteronomy 27:21. Now, evolutionary theory has the same premises as the ancient chaos cults, and it is leading to like practices. Biblical law is equated with a restraint on the human potential, and sin is seen as freedom. As a result, it is held that man can only realize his potential in violating God’s law. Years ago, when I was young and before I fully appreciated the significance of it, I was with a friend visiting an artist who was very much avante garde and when I indicated very, very mildly my lack of comprehension of its purpose and meaning, he spoke scornfully of realistic art and traditional art as a restraint on the human potential. He understood its meaning.

The fifth case, verse 20, strongly forbids sacrificing to any god, save the Lord. This is a law of treason to the covenant God and to His covenant. It forbids any sacrificing unto any god, save unto the Lord only. It is concerned with acts. Acts of sacrifice and of worship. The literal reading of the last clause, “He shall be utterly destroyed,” is “he shall be devoted or banned.” Some scholars have seen this as equivalent to the Amish practice of shunning, and in fact this is where the Amish practice comes from. Others see it as the death penalty. Perhaps we will never know for sure what it is, but we have a hint in 1 Corinthians 5:3-5 where St. Paul refers to the necessity of maintaining excommunication. The sinning person is devoted, or given over to Satan, Paul says, “for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” It obviously has reference not to execution, but to excommunication.

Now, commentators, in dealing with these verses, tell us of similar laws in the pagan nations of Antiquity, but the resemblance is superficial. Middle Assyrian laws, with respect to seducers, gave the right to the father to kill the seducer. Well, you can say that as long as something is done, there are parallels. That’s the basis in terms of which they say they are similar. For example, Hittite law forbad bestiality with a sheep, cow, or pig because of possible damage, but it permitted it with other animals. There’s no resembance between that and biblical law. We can be said to resemble Jack the Ripper in that we have eyes, and hands, and feet. That’s the kinds of parallels scholars often see.

These pagan laws were humanistic. The offenses were viewed with an orientation based on the priority of the created order and of man, and the state. Humanistic considerations governed these laws. The pagan perspective was thus very different than the biblical one, even when there was a coincident. The reason given for the laws in scripture is very simply. Thus saith the Lord. No other explanation or justification is necessary. The creator makes the rules. The covenant people are reminded again and again that the law expresses God’s will and justice, not man’s will or pleasure. However, good the law of God is for man, it must be obeyed, not for its benefits, but because God is requiring it. Israel is reminded, as in Deuteronomy 18:12, “For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord; and because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” The Hebrew word translated into English here as “abomination,” and there are two or three words, I believe, four all told, that are translated into English as abomination, but in this instance the word means something loathsome, disgusting, and idolatrous. It is applied to moral evils, sexual evils, prohibited foods, magic and idolatry. It refers to things particularly repulsive in the sight of God, and therefore to be so regarded by men also. An abomination is thus something repulsive. Loathsome to think about, let alone practice. It tells us something about our time, that the word abomination is not in common use, and is now essential a biblical word. This means that things once repulsive to most people are now tolerable. Behind such a situation is a reversal of the moral order.

As against abomination is God’s call to holiness. This chapter of Exodus concludes with God’s commandment, the 31st verse, “And ye shall be holy men unto me.” The word “men” is a word which, in the Hebrew, has a root meaning “frail.” The word means “mortal,” often male mortals. God holds men primarily responsible. They are more severely punished for their transgressions. Because of their greater responsibility, the requirement of holiness, while the duty of all, is especially important in men. Whereas moral and other offenses against God’s law can be termed abominations, holiness is the antithesis of the loathsome and the repulsive. This is why the term “the beauty of holiness” appears three times in the Psalms. In Psalm 29:2, “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness,” and Psalm 96:9, “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.” Again in Psalm 110:3, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.” This last Psalm has reference to Christ.

God’s law is the way of holiness, and the command to be holy is repeatedly given in the law. This holiness means a personal and covenantal relationship to God and His law. According to Gierke{?}, the Romans discovered the abstract idea of law, while it can be argued that the Greeks preceded them in this. At any rate, in other cultures, law came from a ruler and was not abstract. In biblical law, God expresses His nature and justice in the law, which is His totally personal word.

Because Greek and Roman ideas of law were abstract, their cultures are appealing to modern man because, since the Enlightenment, modern man has reduced all things to an abstraction, has depersonalized the universe, and man also. In biblical law, God expresses His nature and justice in the law, which is His totally personal word. Modern law is again abstract, and in addition, is a creation of men and the state. The erosion of law and the rise of lawlessness can be traced to these sources: abstraction and humanism. Now, the significant thing is that even though men have repeatedly; the Greeks, the Romans, and modern man reduced the law to abstractions, man is not abstract and he personalizes the law so that a person then stands behind it, and what happened? Aristides the Just was banished from Athens because the people were tired of thinking of him as just, they resented that, being themselves unjust. What happened? The law was personalized in an evil way. There was no god behind the law, only the will of the state and an abstract idea, ideas floating around in space, and it was easy for the personal element to be introduced. This happened, of course, very flagrantly in Rome, and today, the law again, because it is an abstraction, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil men who have no god before their eyes to fear. So that when the very personal God is removed from behind the law, very evil persons stand behind it.

Biblical law rests on this premise: Thus saith the Lord, a very personal God. Let us pray.

O Lord, our God we thank thee that thy word is truth, and thou art the eternal person who stands above and behind all things, who shall judge all men and nations, and whose word alone shall prevail. We give thanks unto thee that, in spite of the silly laws of men, thy word, thy law alone shall prevail. How great thou art, O God, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I think it’s worth noting that the humanists were the ones who conducted the witch trials, and not the church.

[Rushdoony] The humanists what?

[Audience] Conducted the witch trials, and not the church.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That, too, is a very, very important aspect of our history that we are not commonly allowed to know, or that torture came with the revival of humanism and is very much with us now to an unprecedented degree in all history, because of humanism. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] Shamanism is also revived.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We have the exaltation of that kind of thing now by anthropologists and not too long ago on PBS there was something in which shamans were being depicted with hushed and reverent tones.

[Audience] Carlos Castenada and his books.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, they’ve been demonstrated to be fiction but they continue to be good sellers, and to be used and referred to by people of scholarly claims. One of the things that makes watching otherwise interesting things on PBS difficult is the reverence with which they cover the most incredible things.

[Audience] The U.S. Army has recognized witchcraft as a valid religion.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and Rhode Island now recognizes witches as legitimate religiously, and apparently they can be chaplains at the universities, I would gather from the implications of their recognition. They would be fitting chaplains for the modern university. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou who dost sit upon thy throne dost laugh at the pretentions and futility of all men’s activities, all their raging against thee and against thy kingdom. Enable us, O Lord, to share in thy laughter, to know that we are more than conquerors in Christ, and that we have been called to victory in Him. 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.