Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
The Meaning of Vows II
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 79
Track: 79
Dictation Name: RR172AR79
Date: Early 70s
Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, our God we come into Thy presence rejoicing in Thy government. We thank Thee that there is a court above all courts, a government above and beyond all governments, a power that uses all powers for its sovereign purposes. Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that Thy judgments are true and righteous altogether and they shall prevail. In this confidence we come to rejoice in Thy Word, to delight in the gift of Thy Spirit and to give thanks unto Thee for Thy mercies. In our savior’s name, amen.
Our scripture is Leviticus 27:26-34, “The Meaning of Vows,” our third study, and final study in Leviticus. Next week we shall begin Exodus. “The Meaning of Vows,” Leviticus 27:26-34:
“26 Only the firstling of the beasts, which should be the Lord’s firstlings, no man shall sanctify it; whether it be ox, or sheep: it is the Lord’s.
27 And if it be of an unclean beast, then he shall redeem it according to thine estimation, and shall add a fifth part of it thereto: or if it be not redeemed, then it shall be sold according to thy estimation.
28 Notwithstanding no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord.
29 None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death.
30 And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: it is holy unto the Lord.
31 And if a man will at all redeem ought of his tithes, he shall add thereto the fifth part thereof.
32 And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord.
33 He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be redeemed.
34 These are the commandments, which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai.”
As we have seen, vows are very important in the sight of God. Indeed, we must say that all speech is in the presence of God and under His Law. The doctrine of vows sets forth both God’s government of speech and of language. Both written and oral are to be governed by God.
In biblical faith, God is the speaking God. Now this is an important fact. Very few people outside of our faith have any god who is a speaking god. Only those religions which are imitative of biblical faith; revelation is a biblical fact. It does not exist in any other religion, except those influenced by the Bible.
Words are thus very important to the Bible. In three of the Ten Commandments, language is central. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” “neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor,” and the third, “honor thy father and thy mother.” And honor involves speaking, because immediately after the Ten Commandments in Exodus 21:17, we read, “and he that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.” Then there’s a fourth commandment tied to speech, because our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, in dealing with the commandment “thou shalt not kill,” applies it to speech also. “Ye have heard it was said by them of old time, ‘thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment and whosoever shall say to his brother, raca, shall be in danger of the counsel, and whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift.” Thus, our Lord adds a fourth commandment to the list of those related to language.
God the Lord declares His ownership of all creation, and by His Word, He sets forth His ownership and sovereignty over language. Language must be defined in terms of God and His Word. It is the instrument for communication in terms of God’s image in us: knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion. Language is a religious fact. This is why when the Bible ceases to be dominant in a culture, language deteriorates. This can be traced in English very carefully and very thoroughly. When God’s Word loses its centrality, all other words begin to diminish in their meaning and in their importance. Humanistic doctrines of language see it as man’s means of self-expression. Thus, as we saw on a recent easy chair, that Otto and I did, speech began as the mating cry of primates for Darwin (that is a sexual expression).
Now because for Humanism, language is an accidental or chance development of the human species, language has no holiness; neither is it essentially related to knowledge. When men depart from God, they depart from meaning and then language is severely debased. Marxism is more honest than other forms of politics in the world today because it regards language as a weapon of war and says so. It does not see it as a means of communicating truth. It is part of the warfare of one class against another. By separating language from the God of scripture, we separate language from knowledge and truth.
Now Christianity requires literacy and language. And when Christianity declines, both these things are imperiled. The modern State uses language for its own goals and it makes itself god in order to define meaning in every area of life, including language. Statist laws redefine life and freedom to mean slavery and death and they interpose the State between God and man. Language and words then, which are created to set men apart for God’s calling are used to subvert men and to create a new focus for life and for man, and that new focus is the State.
Now Leviticus 27:26-34 has four brief sections:
1. Concerning the first born, in 26 and 27
2. Things devoted, in verses 28 and 29
3. Tithes, in verses 30-33
4. The conclusion in verse 34
The first section says that all the first born of clean and unclean animals belong to God. This of course, we find also elsewhere, as in Exodus 13:2 and Exodus 34:19. The unclean animals had to be redeemed or sold. Now because all such first born animals already belonged to God, they could not be vowed to God. We cannot offer to give to someone what is not ours, nor can we promise to God as a new gift what already belongs to Him.
In the previous section of this chapter, verses 2-25, four kinds of things are specified which can be vowed to God:
Persons
Animals
Houses
Lands
Now we are told in these verses that conclude the chapter, what we cannot vow to God. And these specified animals are the first of this forbidden classification.
Second, things devoted to God cannot be redeemed, but must be executed. The devoted thing could be a man or an animal. It was devoted, or banned, because God’s Law requires it. Now to illustrate this, using modern situations: if a dog, without provocation, goes out or crosses the street to bite someone, to injure them or kill them, it cannot be redeemed. It must be killed. The same is true of anyone legally sentenced to death in faithfulness to God’s Law. They cannot be redeemed from death. It used to be at one time that whatever the penalty, including death, upon payment of a large fee to the ruler or monarch, the person could be redeemed. On the other hand, we cannot devote to God by vow what His Law forbids—shedding innocent blood, and hence Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter was murder. No vow can supersede or contravene God’s Law. Therefore, the thing banned had to be what God required be destroyed, not what man decided. The devoted thing means ‘the cut off; the excluded; the condemned thing; the banned thing.’ There were three kinds of bans in the Bible: First, the war ban, second, the justice ban required by God’s Law (and these two forms had to be in conformity to God’s Law, or in terms of a special revelation, from God). Now in this case, the third, we have a private ban, one coming from the head of a household, and this too had to be in terms of God’s Law. Because in much of history, men have lived in isolation from courts, justice had to be local and in that sense, private. An isolated community would have necessary legal decisions to make and these had to be in terms of God’s Law, and no evasion was permitted. Because in these cases, one would be inclined to overlook justice, this law is given. This law also applied to fields, which for one reason or another were banned or devoted. And there have been occasions when a piece of land has been the reason for a murderous quarrel between relatives and has then been devoted to God. It is separated from men for that reason.
Then third, we have laws relative to tithes. No man can vow a tithe to God because the tithe is already His. He cannot say ‘I’m going to vow to give the tithe to God,’ because that is giving to God what already is His due. Now if a man vowed to tithe his sheep, he had to give every tenth one to God. This meant if there were 39, he gave 3. So where produce or animals were concerned, this gave the farmer or rancher a break. As the sheep were herded past him, every tenth animal was marked by a staff tipped with paint. These marked animals then belonged to God irrespective of their condition. He could not exchange them. If he decided to keep the sheep, he had to redeem them at the full value plus 20%. If a man switched animals in separating the tenth animal for his tithe, then both the original animal and the replacement belonged to God and could not be redeemed. The tithes were normally given to the Levites who then tithed the tithe to the priests for worship.
Then fourth, we have verse 34, the conclusion. “These are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai.” We are reminded here that this is God’s Word, His commandment, spoken to Moses in Mount Sinai.
In the years prior to World War II, a word was very popular with the clergy in the United States and it went across all lines, all denominations. And that word was ‘ineffable,’ that is, incapable of being expressed by words. The word was very popular with modernist preachers and with evangelicals or Protestants and Catholics who were theologically fuzzy. They spoke of the ineffable Christ, our ineffable faith, and so on and on. And they popularized the notion that words cannot describe Christ nor our faith.
Now, this was destructive of language and destructive of theology. Well, of course, what is beyond our world and experience, words cannot convey to us. And this is why the Bible, both because it will not satisfy our curiosity and it could not set them forth, has no description of Heaven. It’s none of our business and it would not be able to convey it to us. But the whole point of revelation, of what God says in His Word is that it can be uttered, it can be said. God, who is the creator of all things, is also the creator of language. It is not a vague cloud of connotation, but language is a means of exact communication. The fact of vows makes clear the precision God requires in our speech. We have come to despise language and therefore we are despising God. We have come to abuse language and this is an insult to the God who gave language for communication, for precision, for truth.
The modern State insists, because it is pagalian and has a doctrine of a developing and changing meaning in all creation, in all the universe, that both language and law are human products, and therefore necessarily imprecise and changing. It is therefore hostile to propositional truth and to a biblical doctrine of language.
For us, however, language is God’s instrument of revelation and is given to us to hear Him and to exercise dominion in terms of the revealed and heard Word. To abuse language is a sin. That is what the doctrine of vows tells us, and the abuse of language is a part of education and of civil government today and of the courts. All you have to do is to look at a history of the interpretations given of various laws by the courts right on up to the Supreme Court to see how language has been abused. This is a contempt of meaning and therefore contempt for God.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that Thou art a speaking God and has given us language whereby we can grow and communicate truth. Increase our knowledge and understanding and exercise dominion in one sphere after another. Teach us to honor Thee by using language as Thou hast ordained. Grant us this; we beseech Thee, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson?
[Audience] Well, the Marxist use of language has become the American use of language. There’s what you might call a subconscious Marxism dominating language in the United States. For instance on the question of human rights, the Marxist definition of human rights is the right to have medical attention provided by the State, the right to have a job, the right, all these material rights. And that’s now the argument of various rights groups in the United States so they’ve adopted the Marxist definitions.
[Rushdoony] Yes
[Audience] And when you combine that with Freud, who did two things; first of all, he distorted the religion of the Greeks, then he distorted the historical language by which we refer to historical developments, and set up a whole new vocabulary on explaining behavior, in which all behavior is ignoble, no behavior is honorable.
[Rushdoony] Yes.
[Audience] All behavior has a dishonorable basis and eliminated the word confession and replaced it with the word analysis.
[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, to me, one of the most interesting things about Marxism is that when Darwin’s book came out, and in 48 hours the entire printing sold out, in 1859,
[Audience] 24.
[Rushdoony] 24 hours.
[Audience] 24 hours.
[Rushdoony] Yes. Marx and Engels wrote happily to one another that they had now triumphed. Because they were Hegelians they believed in the evolution of all cultures, and now Darwin was providing a biological basis for it. And therefore, once Darwinism is accepted, the language was gone. And that was where Marx and Engels were very astute. They realized the whole of the world order of their day would have to give way to their truth if Darwinism stood. And that’s why we are, in this country, in the courts and elsewhere, Marxist, whether the people know it or not, because they are using language as the Marxists do.
Yes.
[Audience] With regard to Otto’s comment that language is used as a political tool, when we were in Sweden, we were told that every 40 years by official act of the government, the Swedish language is revised and of course that’s a political act, and political theology is reflected in that. So I think that explains to a large degree perhaps why the Swedish culture and religion have been so debased from its Christian origins.
[Rushdoony] That attitude is increasingly common among scholars in most of Western Europe. Sweden is in advance of the others. But it is a theory that rest in the doctrine of Evolution.
Yes.
[Audience] Well, you see this in practice in the idea of new biographies appearing every 20 or 30 years, although the information is not new of historical figures and events, but an absolute refusal to use older sources, as though they are inadequate, just because they are older sources. And I’ve noticed that these new editions, Allen’s biography of Emerson, for instance, was a simplification of the older biographies in which he trimmed away all kinds of very significant detail. So it’s not only a, ah, an alteration, but it’s, it’s…it’s a let’s say, it’s not just an updating, it’s a distortion. It’s an alteration.
[Rushdoony] Well, if you believe in Evolution, truth will have a new meaning to each generation and you rewrite the past and the meaning of the past in terms of the, that doctrine. One scholar, not very well known, has nonetheless written very ably on what he terms ‘presentism,’ whereby the only meaning that the past has is in terms of what it contributes to your present. So that you go back, whether it is a hundred years, or a thousand years, and the only thing significant is, what is there here that I can see is important for the present. And this means that you radically distort the past and you replace history with, in essence what is propaganda.
[Audience] Well, since every generation mistakes the great men of its own time, elevates second-raters, and only their grandchildren point out that there were illustrious minds among them that weren’t honored, that whole argument means that there would be no chance to re-discover Jane Austen for instance.
[Rushdoony] Yes.
Well, language is in trouble, and it won’t be revived without a revival of biblical faith. If there are no further questions or comments, let us now bow our heads in prayer.
Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast given us so great a heritage. We thank Thee our Father that even as those who seek death depart further and further from Thy Word, Thou doest ground Thy future more and more firmly upon Thy kingdom, Thy Word and Thy purpose. Tie us ever-more closely to Thee and to Thy purpose, oh Lord that we may prevail in the days to come. 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.