Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
The New Year
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 60
Track: 60
Dictation Name: RR172AF60
Date: Early 70s
This is the confidence that we have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the Throne of Grace with true hearts, in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, oh Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou unto whom all things are open, and from whom no secrets are hid, doest know the hopes and desires of our hearts. Thou knowest our every need better than we ourselves, and we beseech Thee to minister to us and to our loved ones, in Thy wisdom, in Thy grace and mercy. Fill our hearts with the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit that we may love Thee with all our heart, mind and being and in all things magnify Thy holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our scripture is Leviticus 23:23-26 and our subject, “The New Year.” Leviticus 23:23-25 more accurately:
“23And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
24 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, in the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation.
25 Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.”
The biblical New Year is an important festival. Sometimes it is difficult in studying Hebraic records to analyze the New Year, because there is a conflict. For a variety of reasons, the ancient Hebrews and modern Jews celebrated for a different new year’s day, depending on what their interests were.
But the biblical New Year which is here described is in terms of the Old Testament calendar. The Old Testament calendar tells us the seventh day is the day of rest. The seventh month is also kind of Sabbath because three great festivals were celebrated at that time:
The Feast of Trumpets (heralding the New Year)
The Day of Atonement
The Feast of Tabernacles
The harvest was over, the old year was ended, and the New Year was now celebrated.
The phrase to celebrate it with a blowing of trumpets is more accurately a shouting of trumpets—a joyful acclimation. Psalm 81 has been used in the synagogue from ancient times on this day, on the Feast of Trumpets. The Rabbis also held that this day commemorated the creation of the world, when all the Sons of God shouted for joy, according to Job 38:7. Off and on all through this day, the trumpets were blown.
Collin Dalglish noted a century ago, in commenting on this, “For the whole month was sanctified in the first day as the beginning or head of the month and by the sabbatical observance of the commencement. The whole course of the month was raised to a Sabbath. This was enjoined, not merely because it was the seventh month, but because the seventh month was to secure to the congregation the complete atonement for all its sins and the wiping away of all the uncleannesses which separated it from God on the Day of Atonement which fell within this month, and to bring it a foretaste of the blessedness of life in fellowship with God in the Feast of Tabernacles, which commenced five days afterward. This significant character of the seventh month was indicated by the trumpet blast by which the congregation presented the memorial of itself loudly and strongly before Jehovah on the first day of the month, that He might bestow upon them the promised blessings of His grace, for the realization of His covenant. The trumpet blast on this day was a prelude of the trumpet blast with which the commencement of the year of Jubilee was proclaimed to the whole nation. On the Day of Atonement of every seventh sabbatical year, that great year of grace under the old covenant, just as the seventh month in general formed the link between the weekly Sabbath and the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, and corresponded as a Sabbath Month to the Year of Jubilee rather than the Sabbatical year which had its prelude in the weekly Sabbath Day.”
Now in Nehemiah 7:73-8:12, we have an interesting account of the celebration of this feast, Ne Year. The people had newly returned from captivity, and they had come from all the power and physical splendor of Babylon to a ruined city. The reading of the Law began and the people became aware of their sins and transgressions and they wept. But Nehemiah told the people not to look at their evil past, but to God’s grace and to rejoice. In fact, the passage in Nehemiah is very important not only with regard to this festival, but because it tells us what the Sabbath meant in terms of scripture. In Nehemiah 8:9-12, we read,
“9And Nehemiah, which is the Tirshatha” (or the governor), “and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people,” (this is after the reading of the Law), “This day is holy unto the Lord your God; mourn not, nor weep. For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law.
10 Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
11 So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved.
12 And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them.”
Now we’ve forgotten his aspect of the Sabbath. Historically, no funerals have been allowed by the Church on the Lord’s Day. It’s the Sabbath. It’s a day not of mourning, not of grief, but of rejoicing. Similarly, historically, weddings have been performed on the Sabbath, on the Lord’s Day after the morning worship because it was believed that the wedding was most appropriate because it was a time of joy, a time of banqueting, a time of happiness. So until the last century or two, weddings were performed on the Lord’s Day. These verses therefore are very important because they for centuries told people very plainly how to celebrate the Sabbath, that first it was to be a day of joy, of great mirth, of eating and drinking and visiting.
Even when I was on the Indian Reservation, there were one or two tribes where there were a sizeable number of Christians in those days, now Modernism has come to those pulpits and destroyed them. But in those days, the Lord’s Day was given in the morning to worship. Everyone brought food and all the churches (on some reservations half a dozen, others two or three) would meet together in one building, or in pleasant weather, in a place of trees and shade where there were benches. And they would eat there and visit. It would be a day of family reunions, a day of visiting with friends, until the evening when they again had a snack and evening worship out there in the open and went their way. And it was a day that even the nonChristian Indians envied because it was a day of such happiness. This is the way that we are told the Sabbath is to be celebrated—a day of joy, of great mirth, a day of eating and drinking.
And second, we are told it is to be a day of rest in which to remember the poor and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared. So it was to be a day when people were to be charitable.
Third, it was to be a joyful day, a celebration of God’s victory in time for us, and in us, and victory to come. Therefore, as Nehemiah says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” One of the great verses of scripture: “The joy of the lord is your strength.” This was the Old Testament New Year’s Day; the Sabbath. It is now called by the Jews, Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the year, a term which is taken from Ezekiel 40:1. Unfortunately however, beginning in the Middle Ages with Maimonides, a very great scholar, the meaning of the New Year’s Day was altered. It became a day of repentance for past sins. Many say it as a day of judgment for all men and so it was a time of mourning and contrition for past sin, whereas the biblical emphasis is on joy. In fact, Judaism subsequently began to see the ten days between New Year’s and the Day of Atonement of days of repentance and even fasting. Paul apparently refers to this fact in Ephesians 5:8, 14.
Now we have seen that in these festivals, there is an important emphasis—the emphasis on time; on time as coming from God, and for His purposes, so that the calendar has prophetic implications. Servile work is banned. Offerings are required to help the poor. It is to be a day of great mirth.
Now work in antiquity meant to everyone without any question, survival. It’s still means survival. Eliminate work, eliminate farming, eliminate production, and the world would soon end with starvation. Work means survival.
But the command to be charitable in scripture is, as we saw last week, apparently a law to destroy man’s hope of survival. The Sabbath thus, as epitomized in the Great Sabbath of the New Year, was a double blow against Man’s hope of self-sufficiency.
First, it required a cessation from work which seems to militate against survival. But no matter what the burdens or problems, men were to cease from their labors.
Second, they were required to rest from their labor and be charitable to the needy, so that in a world where survival in those days was much more difficult than now, this is quite a requirement. Remember now we have a distribution system that enables food to be moved from one area to the other, so that if there are bad harvests in one area, or storms that destroy the crops, the people are not helpless. Food can be shipped in from elsewhere. This was not true until fairly recently. So that to give up one’s food or to give up of one’s substance, or to cease from work was seen as destructive.
Remember the verse in scripture, “cast thy bread upon the waters and after many days it shall return unto thee”? It had reference to rice growing. Here is a man after a hard winter with only a little bit of rice left between himself and hunger if there is not a good harvest and his family is on short rations and he has to go out and literally throw the rice on the waters in the hopes of a harvest. In another text we are told, “He that goeth forth sowing with tears,” that was not an uncommon fact. When all you had between yourselves and starvation, most of it had to go for seed and the weather had been so contradictory, contrary and bad. You went out and sowed with tears. It was your food you were throwing away in hope. But they shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them.
This is what New Year and the Sabbath and all the great festivals are about. That’s why they command mirth. It’s a day of joy, because you rest not in your sufficiency, but in God’s sufficiency. And so it is to be a day of great mirth.
Over the centuries, this doctrine of the Sabbath has seemed dangerous to Humanistic men everywhere. Add to this, all the other holy days. Add to this all the holy days of the Middle Ages that were added to the calendar. It seemed incredible that these Christians could survive and prosper and reap better harvests than others. But God’s Law is prophetic and predictive.
In Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 25, God declares that His Law when obeyed results in prosperity. In Leviticus 25:18, 19, this is summed up in these words, “18Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety.19 and the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.” Because time and the world are God’s creation and not man’s and they depend not on man’s planning but on God’s Law. Hence, we keep the Sabbath. Hence, we obey God’s Law.
For men to attempt survival and prosperity on their terms is thus a will to death and the economies of the world now are marked by this will to death. Their planning is going to determine all things. Their hopes will govern and determine reality, because the rational is the real. That’s the basic premise after Hegel of the modern world. What my mind conceives to be as necessary and truth is therefore true. As one writer has said in regard to the Klune {?} study. It isn’t amenable to rational analysis. Why should things be that way? Therefore they are not. The rational alone is the real to modern man. And hence, modern man has a will to death. He is not capable of a Sabbath, and the Sabbath can only be truly observed when we see its meaning in all its festivals in all the weekly Sabbaths in the Jubilee of God. That man must work, but he must also rest. And it is God’s work that is determinative, God’s plan that is determinative.
Now New Year observances are common to many, many cultures the world over and their characters are usually oriented to pleasure and to chance. After all, consider the Chinese New Year, it’s usually the year of the dragon or the year of the rat or whatever is coming up and it’s all a part of chance. And therefore, it’s going to determine things. Not the mind of God, chance. And therefore, you celebrate it to drive away the demons and hope for the best no matter how bad the outlook for the year of the rat may be.
But the New Year celebration of scripture requires joy and community and charity as essential to that community. It is, when it is biblical, also prophetic, because it celebrates the redeemed man’s growing dominion over all things in the name of Christ. It tells us the calendar moves in terms of God’s plan—not chance, not man’s plan, but God’s plan. And God shall accomplish His purpose. And our joy and our great mirth is to be in that fact. God is on the throne and therefore, He who doeth all things well and is mindful of us as His people will perfect that which concerneth us.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, our God, teach us to know Thy Word and to rejoice in it and to know that Thy purposes are altogether righteous and true. Make us joyful, that with each New Year and with each day, we are brought closer to Thy great and eternal purpose, that on this day, we can rest in Thee, knowing that it is not our work, but Thy work which governs all creation. How great Thou art! And we thank Thee. In Christ’s name, amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson?
Yes.
[Audience] … Major riots in Israel over the Sabbaths
[Rushdoony] Yes, well, Humanism has so infected thinking even on the part of the Orthodox that they tend to believe that if they don’t do something it won’t be done.
Yes.
[Audience] I think it’s interesting to contrast the biblical means of survival with {?} Biblically the means of survival was to sow…
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Audience] … {?} upon waters and reap a harvest which produces joy. The non-biblical way is exploitation. You survive on the, the work of others with is essentially theft.
[Rushdoony] Yes, and when you lose a biblical faith, you’re going to have exploitation by capital and labor and by agriculture—everybody is going to exploit.
Sometime a good history could be written about the exploitation of labor by capital, and there are some works on that, but not about the exploitation of capital by labor and their abuses and the exploitation of labor by labor unions, or the exploitation of the consumer by the farmer. And all kinds of rules and regulations have had to be introduced by producers, by shippers, in dealing with producers. For example, it used to be common place to make sure that cattle got a lot of salt before they were sold so they could tank up on water. They could add quite a few pounds that way. If you were selling a few hundred or a thousand head, quite a few pounds on each would add up to quite a fortune. Or to water your fruit the day before, or a couple of days before picking, so they would be very watery and not as tasty and would weigh more. A hundred and one dodges that way.
Yes.
[Audience] Thomas Sowell in his book on the rise of ethnic groups in the United States pointed out that fundamentally, they only rose through work, not through political connection, and not through political pressure.
[Rushdoony] Yes, uh, that’s very true, and we have in the process of politicizing the economy, created ghettos. It isn’t that there weren’t poor neighborhoods at one time but until fairly recently, they were places of transiency.
I think I’ve mentioned to some of you that the Presbyterian Church in the old days used to maintain a labor temple on Manhattan in the area where most immigrants moved in and all the stores and the street signs in the neighborhood by the shops would be in a particular language for five or six years and then those people in that time would have accumulated enough money by hard work to move upward and the complexion of the neighborhood would change dramatically as a new group of immigrants moved in from a different country. Now that’s gone today. They are permanent dwellers today.
[Audience] Well it isn’t true of the Asians, they
[Rushdoony] No...
[Audience] …moving through, and the rise of the Jewish people in the United States has been ascribed to education, with that… Sowell exposed that. He said the first group that came over did not go to school, they went to work. It was after they earned enough money they sent their second generation to school. So it was based on work.
[Rushdoony] Yes, very good point. I’d forgotten that, and now through the public schools, they have destroyed their younger generation.
Are there any other questions or comments?
Well if not, let us conclude with prayer.
Our Father, we thank Thee that the government is not upon our shoulders, that Thou hast summoned us to do Thy will in the confidence that if Thy will be done, Thy kingdom shall surely come. Make us joyful in this fact, ever full of hope and ever eager to serve. 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.