Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Spirit of Wisdom

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Spirit of Wisdom

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 96

Dictation Name: RR171AZ96

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God. He hath showed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly before thy God. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God. Thou wilt not despise. Let us pray.

Our Father, we give thanks unto thee for all thy blessings and for thy mercy and grace unto us. Thou art more ready to give us good gifts than we are ready to receive or to desire them, yet thy mercies are new every morning. Give us grateful hearts day by day, that rejoicing in thy providential care, we may move in a dark and fallen world, in the confidence that this shall be by thy grace and mercy a realm of light, a realm of peace, a realm governed by thy grace and of thy law. Give us hearts full of hope, eyes seeing the things that are of thee, and hands ready to do thy work. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is from Exodus 28:1-5. Exodus 28:1-5 and our subject: The Spirit of Wisdom. The Spirit of Wisdom. “And take thou unto thee Aaron thy brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons. And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty. And thou shalt speak unto all that are wise hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments to consecrate him, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And these are the garments which they shall make; a breastplate, and an ephod, and a robe, and a broidered coat, a mitre, and a girdle: and they shall make holy garments for Aaron thy brother, and his sons, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And they shall take gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen.”

These words have had a powerful impact in the history of the church. To understand their impact, let us first of all look at the meaning of various words in this text. In biblical thought, the word “heart” has a very different meaning than in western thought and in most cultures. For us, the word heart refers to two things mainly: to a physical organ which pumps blood and the emotions, but neither of these is true for the biblical word. The Hebrew word means the center of a man’s being, not an organ. It is inclusive of the intellect and the emotions, but it cannot be limited to them. We have absorbed something of the biblical meaning into English when we speak of the “heart of the matter.” That is, the core of meaning. This is the biblical meaning as in Proverbs 4:24, “Keep thy heart with all diligence for our of it are the issues of life.” This doctrine of the heart is a key concept in the Bible, from beginning to end, but especially since the days of David Hume, the 18th century philosopher, western thought has tended to deny that man is more than fleeting sensory impressions. His being has no core nor center, and man is simply a reacting animal, not a determining creature. But this view of the heart, the biblical view, is an essential doctrine for any understanding of the Bible.

In Antiquity, and in much of the world until recently, physical skills in any area, whether in farming or invention, the arts, architecture or anything else, were the attributes of slaves. To work with one’s hands was the mark of a slave or a very poor man. I believe some months ago, I referred to the experience of a man I know, a Californian, a very successful farmer who, when abroad, found that they could not believe he was legitimately a man of wealth when he worked with his hands, that he actually tilled his own ground.

The achievements of Greece prized by modern man were mainly slave products as I pointed out last week, and they often earned freedom for the slave. Israel left Egypt highly skilled because of its bondage there and Egypt was left greatly impoverished. The fact that the church began very early to build magnificent churches from the very first ones built, and at first these were small parish churches, and all of them, to fill them with art, was due to this heritage, to this text and others like it. The same was true earlier of the synagogue. Excavations some years ago showed that the Nazareth synagogue in Christ’s day was a stone edifice beautifully adorned with art.

Because we are the heirs of biblical faith, it is difficult for us to understand the revolutionary character of such verses as Exodus 28:3, which speaks of men who “are wise-hearted, whom I hath filled with a spirit of wisdom.” Now, wise-hearted, of course, referring to the core of their being, being informed by wisdom, the wisdom of God, and the word “wisdom,” is again important. Our modern idea of the word and concept of wisdom is closer to the Greek meaning than the biblical one. We associate it therefore with intellectual pursuits and an academic orientation. So much so in fact, that there are many people who question whether anyone without degrees and a university position can be wise, and can produce an intelligent work.

Some years back, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt put together a group of professors as a brain trust under the assumption that wise counsel would be forthcoming from them. They were subsequently quietly dissolved. The biblical meaning of wisdom has both the connotation of commonsense and skills; artistic, inventive, mechanical and so on. The wise man is one who relates true faith to the world of thought and action. The scribe or writer in biblical realms was a man of wisdom, not a palace flunkey, as in other cultures.

There is still another aspect to all of this. God tells Moses of these wise-hearted men of various artistic abilities, men who not only produced the garments, breastplate, and the various aspects of tabernacle equipment, but also crafted the furnishings, that He had filled them with the Spirit of wisdom. Artistic skills are described thus as an endowment and gift from God. We are required to see our skills and aptitudes as gifts from God to be used for His kingdom. It is no wonder that Medieval and early modern culture saw the artist as one attached closely to the church. Against this, the Renaissance and subsequently, the Enlightenment rebelled.

There is still another important aspect to these verses. In verse 2, God commands Moses, “And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.” This is an important statement. A purely utilitarian approach is thus specifically denied. The garments of a priest are not merely representational of a function under God. They were also for glory and for beauty. Both through the Middle Ages and during the Reformation era, those who were Greek in their outlook, objected to the idea of any beauty in the garments of priests or pastors, but again, we cannot understand what the early church and the Medieval church did, apart from such statements. The garments of a priest were not merely representational of a function under God, they were also for beauty and for glory. The glory of God was celebrated in the architecture of a church, in its furnishings, and in its art. The Zwinglian view of a bare church, devoid of beauty and of music, was not biblical. It has been a disaster that has so many people have adopted it. Only by relegating the Old Testament to a state of obsolescence, can people do so. Glory is thus a requirement. The other requirement is beauty. God, who has created so glorious and so beautiful a creation, commands that those who serve Him add, by His endowments, to the treasure house of earthly beauty. This is not an option for men. The requirement of beauty is an aspect of God’s commandment. We need to work and pray for the day when Christians will again see their moral responsibility in this sphere, and God makes it a moral responsibility. Only a perverse and irresponsible reading of scripture will neglect this fact. How far such thinking can go, we can see all around us all the time, unfortunately, and it is a disaster.

Well, we need to recognize that God has created a mandate. A mandate for beauty, a mandate for glory, and the perversity of modern man has been such that in both Catholic and Protestant circles, but especially Protestant, drabness and even ugliness are now being exalted. Modern art has had a powerful influence in that direction. Moreover, part and parcel, this has come a perverse and neo-Platonic reading of scripture. A good example is 1 Peter 3:1-4 which reads, “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation (or, in modern terminology, behavior) of the wives; while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” Much nonsense has been written about these verses and preached about them by Medieval monks and modern preachers. But about two hundred years ago, so it’s no new insight, in fact a very old one, John Brown, one of the great theologians of Scotland, pointed out that the reference to fear means the fear of God, not of one’s husband, and he put it very bluntly, “Verse 3 does not forbid attractiveness in hairstyles, nor does it forbidding the wearing of gold, but rather a false trust in outward adornment.” “In fact,” he wrote, “A sloven is disagreeable and an slattern intolerable.” John Brown was a very forthright Scot, and he disliked people trying to justify unattractiveness in women on biblical grounds. If verse 3 be read as a prohibition of certain types of attractive hairdo, or gold ornament, then those who so interpret it must advocate nudism, because Peter seemingly condemns the putting on of apparel, but he’s only condemned a trust in apparel, not in clothing as such. So, the text condemns a trust in appearances, rather than character.

I cite this because such abuses of scripture have become routine. They go back to the neo-Platonic influence in the early church which triumphed with some monkish commentators in the Medieval era and those who have followed Zwingli in the Reformation era. The failure to see the God-given requirement of glory and beauty in every sphere is a very sad one.

We have also, in these verses, the calling of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood. Their garments are to be holy because their function is a holy one. Now, I think it is very significant, and so have many, many scholars and churchmen over the centuries, that in this context, neither Aaron nor his sons are called holy, although the garments are. The men are called to a holy function wherein they are required to be holy or face God’s judgment, as Nadab and Abihu a little later did. But neither the function gave to Aaron and his sons, nor the skills he gave to the various artisans, made any of them holy. It gave them a duty to seek holiness. The greater God’s gifts, the greater are His requirements of us. Our Lord declares, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” And whom men have committed much of him they will ask the more, but as against that, a radically false premise of modern art is that the greater the gifts of the artist, the greater the exemption from moral responsibility.

In verse 4, we have reference to the ephod. We’ll deal with that more next week. This word has two meanings in the Bible. First, as here, it has reference to a priestly garment, a kind of vest reaching from the shoulders to the waist. Here, the ephod refers to a garment which was limited to high priestly use, together with other high priestly clothing. But, in 1 Samuel 22:18, we see that it refers to a garment worn by ordinary priests and non-priests, so that it’s usage was not limited to the high priest, however distinctive his own particular ephod might be. The non-priestly use was to someone like King David. But, second we have a reference in Judges 8:26-27 to an ephod made of gold and purple raiment, which seems to have been some kind of image or pointing to a god. It was apparently something often used in idolatry to clothe an image. The reference, apparently, was to the fact that kings, judges, and notable persons wore robes which were mantles of distinction. Those who, in the ancient world and in some areas to the modern era, were regarded as god-kings, human gods, wore robes of glory. When Jesus was sentences to death, the soldiers stripped him and put on him a purple robe, a robe of glory, and then a crown of thorns. Since he was condemned for his kingship, they mocked him as a pretended king and beat him savagely.

The ephod worshipped in Judges 8:26-27 was apparently designed to honor God and to represent His presence and power but it became instead a great evil. The spirit of wisdom and power cannot be localized and confined, no more than being a priest or a pastor makes one holy, nor being an artist gives one skills, can God’s power and presence be attached to any created thing of place.

At the beginning, I pointed out that these verses have had a powerful influence in the history of the church. We forget that people now a days do not read as carefully as was the case before the era of films, radio, and television. There is no concern for details, only an interest and an insistence on movement and action.

A book written some years ago, a few generations ago in fact, over a century I believe now, a century ago, Otto of the Silver Hand, a very fine boy’s story, is mostly descriptive. In fact, there are seven and a half pages of description at the very beginning before there is one word of dialogue, and there was a time when people enjoyed that, delighted in it. But now, reading is a quick movement for action and dialogue, and this is a result of films, radio, and television. The nuances of meaning and implications are, as a result of this, lost on the modern reader. At one time, such texts were as this, Exodus 28:1-5, were influential precisely because readers were not racing over the words, but pondered their application to their lives and their world. We need such intelligent reading again. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that thy word is truth. Teach us to ponder over thy truth, to know that these things were said for our instruction. Make us a people of wisdom, skilled in the things that are of thee, using thy good gifts for thy kingdom. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I can’t help but recall that, in the thirties, writers were paid by the word, and now they’re paid by the piece.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the interesting thing is, you’ve mentioned that before, Otto, and I’ve thought back on it and remembered a lot of the pulp {?} stories that were paid for by the word, and how skilled the writers became in making every word intensely interesting because they knew an editor would blue-pencil excess words, that you wouldn’t get by just by padding. You added the words and you made them worthwhile.

[Audience] The same {?} he could talk about the colors and the landscape for at least a chapter.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, when Dickens was writing the same way, and his novels were coming over on the installment in magazines, people would wait for them and someone would read them aloud as soon as they arrived to an assembled throng, and he’d have to read slowly because they wanted to get the full impact of every word of the page after page of descriptive prose. We’ve changed a great deal. Now, for university students, you have abridged editions of Dickens and Scott, and numerous others of the, writers of the last century. Yes?

[Audience] Cliff notes being the most prominent, a lot of college students get by with, on these Cliff Notes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] The question I wanted to ask is since the universities were started by Christian orders, did the adoption of school colors, such a blue and gold, and so forth, were these derived from biblical sources?

[Rushdoony] Those came in much later, and as an imitation of European universities. It was when, after the 1860’s, you began to have a trickle and then a stream of people who went from the United States to Germany to study, that they brought back a great many of the traditions of European universities. Their attitude towards them was sometimes near idolatry. It was though, as though all wisdom was born there in a German university. Any other questions or comments? Well, I trust through such texts as this, you’re beginning to understand something of the impact of books like Exodus on the church over the centuries. No one has ever bothered to give too much attention to it, only a nod towards Exodus and other books, and yet the impact has been enormous. The same is true of 1 Kings as it describes the building of the temple. Men once studied these passages because they were trying to understand the implication of the biblical faith for the arts, and it was on the part of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, a very studied thing to take the arts and transfer them from one sphere to another. It was a revolutionary effort, and a successful one with the Enlightenment. Well, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that thou hast called us to thy kingdom. Thou hast summoned us to make all nations thy disciple, to occupy every area of life and thought for thy namesake and for thy kingdom. We thank thee that small and insignificant as we may be, triumph is certain because it is thy power that shall accomplish these things, and of thy kingdom there shall be no end. Make us ever joyful in the coming and certainty of thy victory. 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.