Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Pole Tax

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Pole Tax

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 107

Dictation Name: RR171BF107

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, for with a heart, man believeth unto righteousness and with a mouth, confession is made unto salvation. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks that all power in heaven and on earth is given unto Jesus Christ, that He is our Lord, our redeemer, our next of kin. That in Him, we have access to thy throne of grace and can come to confess our sins, make known our needs, to open our mouths wide that thou mightest fill them. And so we come, our Father, minister unto us in thy grace and mercy, bless and proper us, cause thy face to shine upon us, and use us mightily for thy kingdom. In Christ name, amen.

Our scripture is from Exodus 30:11-16, and our subject: The Pole Tax, or The Ransom of Souls. The Pole Tax. Exodus 20:11-16. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls.  And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls.”

This text deals with the pole tax, and the pole tax, of course, has a long, long history from Moses to the present day, including to Margaret Thatcher in England. This is a prescribed tax, the same for all. It was strictly forbidden according to verse 15, to tax the rich more heavily or the poor more lightly. All males 20 years old and older had to pay, and it was an amount payable by all without exception. Now, there are differences of opinion as to how much a half shekel was worth, but it is clear that it was not an unreasonable amount. It was not impossible or difficult for a poor man to pay. According to verse 13, this half shekel had to be in terms of the sanctuary weight. It could not be in terms of any varying inflation or civil standard.

Now the word “ransom” is used to describe the tax in verse 12, and in verse 16 it is called the atonement money. The word “random” is cofer; to cover, to atone. The pole tax is described in Numbers 1 as a census of Israel for taxing. According to Exodus 13:13, every firstborn son belonged to God and had to be ransomed or redeemed. But all Israel, all covenant men are God’s firstborn according to Exodus 4:22, so here a head, or a pole tax is laid upon all males. This tax was apparently often neglected. Other more oppressive taxes were imposed by the kings, but King Josiah returned to the pole tax.

Now, when verse 16 speaks of the atonement money, the literal reading is atonement silver. The reference is not to a coin, but a weight in silver. Now this was obviously a religious tax, but we must recognize from the standpoint of the Bible, everything is religious, so that if a civil government imposes a tax, it is no less religious than the tithe to the Lord, so a religious tax can be a godless, state-imposed tax. Our income tax, in terms of the biblical definition, is a religious tax, imposed by a state in terms of its humanistic purposes.

Now the reasons for the tax are two-fold. First, tax is to prevent any plague among God’s people. Verse 12 says, “That there be no plague among you.” The word in the Hebrew which Christian scholars render as a “plague,” means a stumbling. However, Dr. J.H. Hertz, once chief rabbi of the British Empire, pointed out is dealing with this text years ago back in the thirties, that the word comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for “slaughter in battle.” So, the word we have as plague also means slaughter in battle, and one of the Ancient Hebrew commentators translated this phrase that they suffer not defeat in battle.

Now, this suggests a very different meaning for the text. It was indeed a temple tax, but we must remember that the tabernacle, and then the temple, were God’s house or palace, and the Holy of Holies was God’s throne room. This was a tax collected for rule. This representation of the church as God’s throne room we have until fairly modern times, and the chancel was built as Christ’s throne room, and I pointed out previously, the congregation stood for the reading of scripture because it was the word of the king. The true governmental center, therefore, as well as the ecclesiastical center, was the Holy of Holies. To describe this pole tax in modern terms as a church tax or an ecclesiastical tax is therefore to warp its meaning. The temple to the fall of Jerusalem was always in some sense as well as being the religious or ecclesiastical center, to use it in the modern center, was also the civil center, and the only difference between the two, or rather the only similarity was that the high priest resided at both meetings.

Now, Rome recognized this fact, and that’s why they very strictly controlled the high priesthood and other offices. Not because they were interfering with the religious side of the high priest’s duties, as they recognized he presided at the governmental center also.

But then second, the atonement or ransom term, cofer, is used to describe the tax, but the term again here has a civil reference. Now, restitution for sins, which we now call criminal offenses, is called in the Bible a form of atonement. It’s a means of civil forgiveness, so that when a man makes restitution, he has, in relationship to manmade atonement for his offense. So, we have both when we think scripturally, civil atonement and theological atonement. Atonement in relationship to God, and atonement in relationship to man, or restitution.

God sees, in other words, all offenses, whether against himself or against men, which also involves a violation of His law, as requiring atonement, restitution, forgiveness, and this atonement is sometimes manward when the offense involves men. Thus, as we have seen, if a man steals $100, he must make restitution or atonement by paying $200 to the man robbed, and this is apart from his relationship to God and what he does there. Therefore, a tax for civil atonement means that we recognize that this is a fallen world, and that in Adam, we are all members of a fallen humanity. A ransom, or covering, against the evils of that world requires a civil tax to provide for officers of state who will be a terror to evildoers. Now, a civil tax, therefore, helps protect us from enemies without, from the plague which is slaughter in battle, as well as protect us from enemies within.

There is an interesting aspect of the pole tax among Jews. Most Rabbis now a days, because they are thoroughly ecclesiastical, synagogue oriented, as pastors and priests are church-oriented, now see this tax as ecclesiastical, related to worship. But when we go back to the history of this tax, we see some very, very interesting things. When Jerusalem fell and it was no longer the governmental center, this tax was collected by the Nasi{?} or prince, a patriarch, and the qualifications he had to show for collecting it was to be the leading male in the line of decent from David. In other words, membership in the royal line, and we are told by Saint Jerome that the Roman emperor executed an important Roman official for violating the private papers for one such patriarch prince, Gamaliel, probably Gamaliel V. The belief in Rome, as well as later among Christian rulers after the fall of Rome was stated very clearly by Pope Gregory I, and I quote, “Since they are permitted to live in accordance with Roman law, it is just that they, the Jews, should manage their own affairs as they think best and let no man hinder them.” And so, whoever was the Jewish patriarch prince was paid this silver tax, all over the known world.

Well, in time, one such Davidic descendent, a prince or Nasi{?}, came to rule in southern France, in Narbonne, and some of the adjacent areas. Therefore, the pole tax, in terms of this scripture, Exodus 30:11-16, was paid to him by Jews throughout Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. He was, as a result, the wealthiest ruler in Europe. Carolingian kings intermarried with this Jewish royal family in order to establish their dynasty as the successor to the biblical kings of Israel, as related to the house of David and, of course, to Jesus Christ. As a result, through intermarriage, the various royal families, including the English, very soon saw themselves as the successors of the kings of Israel. This is part of the mythology behind the Stone of Scone, and this is why, for example, the English royal family always will name one of their princes, if not every one of them, among the many names they have, David, because they see themselves as so descended, as did all the European royal families.

Now, this Jewish princedom helped also to make the pole tax a part of the life of Europe, although it was already coming in. Centuries later, it became also a part of American civil life, the means whereby the state gained its taxes. But it was abolished in this century. It lingered here most of all in the South, and it was originally a tax on males and then later, access to voting, and it was because it was so used to bar blacks from voting that the supreme court abolished.

Now in scripture, all power comes from God. No legitimate power exists other than what He ordains in His law, and the pole tax thus provides for civil government. Well, the implications of this tax are very, very important. God ordained one-tenth of the tithe for worship, that is, for the priests, although the musicians are also provided for by the tithe, as are teachers or scholars, Levites, instructors generally. So, because the tithe to the Lord must include more than worship, power is not allowed to concentrate in the church. Now, at the same time, according to God’s law, with the civil tax limited to a pole tax, power is not allowed to concentrate in the state. The income, if they are godly, of both is severely limited. Neither the church nor the state are allowed to be power centers. If there is a power center in God’s view of this world, it is the family, and then all freely functioning spheres of society. Georges Duby has observed, and I quote, “The role of marriage is fundamental to every social formation. It is through the institution of matrimony, through the rules governing marriage and the way those rules are applied that human societies control their future, even those societies that claim and even believe themselves to be the freest.”

Well, I started reading a book yesterday which I finished this morning, which was about the origins and development of the Industrial Revolution, and the author felt it necessary to set to one side before he went ahead with his text, two theses which other scholars in the past few years have expounded. One, that the Puritan technological millenarianism, which was prompted by the Puritan study of Daniel was a major force in creating the Industrial Revolution. The point of that study was the Puritans who formed the foundation for the Royal Society and so many scientific groups, gave a great deal of attention to the book of Daniel which predicted that men, in the latter days, would begin to advance dramatically and communication and travel would be vastly enhanced, and they said, “Well, God ordains that this is to be so, and He does not say how. It must be through men.” And they set themselves to improving the technological aspect of society. Then, the other thing this man, this scholar wants to set aside, but I don’t think he succeeds in either case too well, is the family. The original corporations all involved in the Industrial Revolution he recognizes were family corporations. They were families who passed on a field of endeavor, included the daughters whose husbands were taken into the family corporation, and they were the developers of many of the key advances in the Industrial Revolution, which is very interesting. In fact, all your major modern corporations, or those who contributed to the modern age, began as family enterprises.

So, despite this particular author’s thesis, in which he tries to set aside these two recent theses, I think the evidence is quite clear that this is the case, and not surprisingly so, because what happened with the Reformation was a renewed emphasis on the fact that, according to scripture, the centers of power are not to be church nor state, but the family and freely functioning men within society. When church and state become power centers, it is because families and persons have diminished in their self-government under God. We see today a very marked hostility to biblical law in both church and state, and of course most emphatically, humanistic statists. It should be apparent now why this is so. The dream of Plato, of rule by philosopher kings, has always appealed to elitists who see themselves as little gods whose wisdom and abilities make them fit to rule for everybody else. God’s order, God’s law severely limits man’s power. God’s law, as I’ve pointed out more than a few times, number some six hundred regulations, most of which are not enforceable by church nor state, but only by God, by His providence in time or in eternity. But men are restless with such freedom for all. Only the elite philosopher king should have freedom.

As a result, everything is done to make God’s law word to sound ridiculous, and every attempt is made to heap contempt on God’s law, especially His law concerning taxation. Jewish and so-called Christian, as well as humanistic scholars and observers have all joined in on this, but the last word, as always, belongs to God. Let us pray.

O Lord, our God, we thank thee for thy word and for thy government, for the certainty of thy triumph and our triumph in thee. Make us strong in faith, and faithful in thy service, to the end that the kingdoms of this world might indeed become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there any questions about our lesson, or any comments? I think, by the way, that the episode with the power of Narbonne and the high respect in which it was held by all the contemporaries indicates that sometimes we have had a very one-sided view of the history of Jewish/Christian relationships over the centuries, and the great work on that kingdom is by a Jewish scholar. It has not been very widely recognized, although it’s a masterly historical study. Yes?

[Audience] You spoke of the danger of concentrated power in the church or the state. Is there any danger in the concentration of power in certain families, and if so, how does a man prevent. . .

[Rushdoony] No, because a family doesn’t go beyond its own sphere, and even when families were the corporate powers in the industrial world, their interest and concern was personal, because they had a strongly personal characteristic. They were also on the look-out for strong men among their employees whom they could advance. Their whole concern was a very personal one.

[Audience] I’m thinking of the development of the family dynasties of a given nation.

[Rushdoony] Well, if they fail to perform properly they go down.

[Audience] {?} family for example.

[Rushdoony] Throughout the Middle Ages and right through the Industrial Revolution, up until almost the middle of the last century, most of the European corporations were simply family corporations, and this was true in banking as well. Yes?

[Audience] So far, no political or dynastic organization seems to have survived the most outstanding is the Catholic church, and that’s ecclesiastical.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, and no other group has had a comparable survival. The closest thing to it was Byzantium, which lasted a thousand years, but, more than a thousand. About eleven hundred, almost twelve. But, the Catholic church has lasted the longest, and without the religious angle, no family corporation or any country lasts very long, and that’s why the survival of any entity requires a religious faith and in the history of the world, the Christian groups are the only ones who have had the ability to survive without being taken over and thoroughly altered. Yes?

[Audience] Also, the only place that’s, that resurrected from near catastrophe.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. Again and again, that’s been true. Yes?

[Audience] At what point in history does the idea arise that rich should pay a greater tax than poor people?

[Rushdoony] That’s fairly modern, that’s fairly modern. That is in western European history. In Antiquity, you often have it, various communist movements, but it began with some of the French philosophs. It culminated in the French Revolution, and then again in the Russian Revolution. It’s most militant development was, of course, with Karl Marx, although he was preceded by a number of older contemporaries who were equally militant.

[Audience] Was this a politically motivated philosophy, or?

[Rushdoony] Envy-motivated philosophy. It has, as its basis, Plato’s Republic. A belief that philosopher kings alone should rule, that anyone else was unfit to rule. No one has ever written about the aspect of this dream that went into the English Reformation, because Henry VIII was reared to be such a one. He and his brother, Arthur, were both reared by some of the great Renaissance scholars who believed strongly in the dream of Plato, and he was reared also to be a Renaissance man, capable in one field after another. He was an accomplished musician and poet, among other things. Unfortunately, since the film of the thirties with Charles Lofton, he’s been envisioned as a total slob, which is very far from the truth. Henry’s great sin in the eyes of scholars then and ever since was that he kicked over the Traces {?} and Sir Thomas Moore was the one who counseled him to defy the pope and then became the loyal Catholic because Henry would not follow orders. Henry decided he could do it, he didn’t need these scholars any longer, and they’ve hated him ever since. So, I’m not saying he was a good man, but I’m saying he has been the target of a particular distaste by historians because he was to create this kind of platonic social order. With the Renaissance, you had a flood of Utopias and, of course, Sir Thomas Moore wrote Utopia. Bacon himself produced a like work. Bacon’s differed from the others only in one respect in that he stressed scientists more than these egghead scholars and, as a result, he had a profound influence through his book in Puritan circles. But, as religious faith diminished, envy replaced faith as a dominating force in the western world. Yes?

[Audience] Going back to the pole tax, I think it’s interesting that the American people have never been told that Margaret Thatcher eliminated the house tax in favor of the pole tax.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the property tax is gone, and that’s been a major headache in Britain, as here, but they’re not told the truth. I think if the American public knew what the pole tax represented, there would be a surge of enthusiasm here for it, because with the property tax, a man’s house is not his castle. He is not secure in it indefinitely. Well, if there are no further questions or comments, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee for the multitude of thy blessings. We thank that, day after, day we life, move, and have our being in thee, and in thy mercy. Make us ever mindful of all that thou art, of all the blessings upon our yesterdays and todays, so that we may thank thee, praise thee, and serve thee as we ought. 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.