Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
Profanity
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 43
Track: 43
Dictation Name: RR172X43
Date: Early 70s
Let us worship God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. Let us pray.
Send, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, Thy Holy Spirit into our hearts that He may rule us, that He may direct us, comfort and command us, and make us Thy people in word, thought, and in deed. Defend us, oh Lord from ourselves and from all error. Lead us into all truth that we may ever be steadfast in the faith and in Thy service, and may increase to Thy glory and in Thy kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our text this morning is Leviticus 19:26-31. Our subject, “Profanity.” Leviticus 19:26-31(let me say parenthetically that we are reading from the King James, which, while not a perfect translation, there is no such thing, is clearly the best and it is the open door, not only to the Word of God, but to the literature of the past. Recently an article in Moody Monthly went over the various translations of the Bible, rating them in terms of their readability, in terms of educational levels, and of course the one that came out ahead of others was that which was understandable on a third grade level. The poorest was the King James which required more than two years in a university for comprehension. Now this tells you what has happened to modern education, and why it is an abomination and why it is no difficult matter for home schools and Christian schools, when they are tested, to rate 2 – 5 years routinely ahead of the public schools. Those of you who were here Friday night at our Chalcedon Christian School Open house know that even our kindergarten children can read the King James. So this tells you of the rapid descent into illiteracy that marks our time. And their solution of course is, to recommend that version which third graders can understand. Well, they are bringing a judgment on themselves because to use Van Till’s expression, “What we are witnessing is integration downward into the void.” With that, let us turn to Leviticus 19:26-31):
“26 Ye shall not eat anything with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantments and observe times.
27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads; neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.
29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.
30 Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.
31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.”
These are laws concerning profanity in the biblical sense. In verse 29 we have the only appearance in the Bible of the word ‘prostitute,’ because the usual biblical word is ‘whore,’ or ‘harlot.’ Your marginal note will tell you that the clearer reading of ‘prostitute’ is ‘profane; do not profane thy daughter.’ Because reading it in the modern sense, “do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to be” (in the future that is,) “a whore,” is a tautology. It does not make sense. The word ‘prostitute’ is a Latin word which as I said, is nowhere else used in the Bible, and or us its use is normally to describe a harlot; a whore. However, the origin of the word prostitute is in the Latin and it comes from a root meaning “to place.” It is used of a woman or a girl, placed in an exposed, vulnerable way of life and is unprotected. ‘Profane’ means “outside the temple; outside of God, outside of religious protection.”
Now this verse tells us a great deal about the entire passage and we will begin by analyzing its meaning. As I have pointed out already, as it reads in modern English, it is a tautology. If a daughter is prostituted, in the modern sense, she is made a whore. It is not a future possibility, as “to cause her to be a whore” would indicate. The Hebrew word ‘profane’ has also the meaning of “dissolve,” so that it means something of the parental relationship and protection has been dissolved. Thus, the very obvious meaning is allowing a girl to do something outside of God which dissolves the God-ordained family relationship and has devastating effects on the land.
How then, does a man profane his daughter? Well, we have a long history of understanding and interpretation of this text which is a clear one, and important in the modern world. To profane a daughter means to allow any ungodly relationship with a man, non-marital sexual relationships, or to place her in a position where she is vulnerable and unprotected. The rite of marriage was viewed in Bible times and for a long time since as the sanctification of the man and the woman in their sexuality. In God’s Law, it is the normal, the godly estate. Hence, if the father permits any profane conduct its effects on society are far-reaching. The land would fall into harlotry and become full of lewdness. In other words, it talks about a sexual revolution; a revolt against God’s Word. Thus, the requirements of this law have meant over the centuries
1. It speaks of the authority and responsibility of the father. He must not condone ungodly or profane activity. Since this is case law, it applies to every member of the family. It asserts the father’s godly authority.
2. If no sanction can be given to profane living, neither can an inheritance or a subsidy or any other form of assistance be given to any member of the family who is profane, who steps outside the government of God and his Word. The family capital must capitalize the Christian future. Not profanity.
Then again, this law stressed the social consequence of private acts. What the family does affects society profoundly. The thrust of all these verses is that holiness is a total concept and profanity in any sphere has societal results.
Now in verse 26, “Ye shall not eat anything with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantments and observe times,” we see what to us is a culmination of unlikely things: the eating of blood and occultism. But the two have historically been very closely related. There are now in some of the pagan and satanic cults that have arisen in our day, the ritual drinking of blood again. The prohibition of eating blood was dealt with earlier in Leviticus 17:10 and following. Maimonides, the great Hebrew scholar of the early medieval era, wrote of the pagan rites of blood, when men killed a beast then received its blood in a pot and drank the blood for two reasons:
1. To gain the power of the animal
2. To establish communion with the spirits
In this verse, it is associated with the pagan practices of divination and soothsayings. Now, the word used in verse 26, ‘enchantment,’ is a very interesting one. It is nachash, virtually the identical word translated in Genesis 3:1 to describe Satan and the Garden of Eden, translated into English as ‘serpent.’ The root meaning of it is “to hiss or to whisper” that is why the name was applied to snakes, but it means more. Its essential reference is to the secret word, the hiss, the whispered word, the attempt to circumvent God’s Law Word. The devious attempt to say, “Yea hath God said?” The attempt to question the integrity and the truth of what God has declared. The tempter in the Garden of Eden, Satan, is called The Serpent (the whisperer), the one who believes that the defiant secret word of rebellion and independence can alter God’s reality. But God’s reality is never governed by the creature’s word.
The future cannot be determined apart from, or in defiance of the triune God. And what men attempt to do over and over again is to find a means of determining the future on their terms apart from God. That’s what the crisis of our time is about. Our fiat money is a whispered word, the enchantment, the attempt to say, “Yea hath God said? We ourselves will create the word of power, the means of establishing a valid medium of exchange.” The 36th verse, just balances, just weights, has reference not only to measures of grain and liquids but also to measures of money—weights of money, gold and silver. But the word of ‘enchantment’ is the attempt to circumvent God’s order in any and every sphere. We have narrowed the meaning of everything in scripture. We have rendered it “religious,” that is ecclesiastical. We have limited it to a personal word, not to a word that speaks to individuals and to societies.
But men are determined to create the future themselves, to determine its character without God. This is what the text speaks about—the whispered word, the enchanting word (to use the English, which is not too accurate), that will delude men into believing that man can create an order in defiance of God’s order.
Verse 27 is now regarded as a curiosity. “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads; neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” Some Jews by their overkill method of observing God’s Law have allowed the side locks to grow long in order to prove that they go beyond God’s requirements to show their obedience. The Hassidic in particular have done this. It is interesting that Nicholas I of Russia tried to force Jews out of compliance with their belief on this text by ordering the cutting of all side locks. This was designed to assimilate the Jews, because he believed the future of Russia required the assimilation of all the subject peoples, and thus he wanted them to look like one another so they could become members one of another. On the other hand, during the regime of Maria Theresa of Austria, earlier than Nicholas I, Hassidic Jews were ordered to comply very strictly to the regulation of the side locks because they had concluded the Hassidic Jews could never be changed and therefore they had to be identifiable for what they were. So, there have been a variety of uses for this law in rather ungodly ways.
However, there was and still is in a few places, and the Arabs in particular have been prone to this, the habit of shaving all the head except a dish-like tuft on the crown. This has been as a means of identifying one another; and also, making one another look unattractive to outsiders. It’s a means of preventing strain. If any of you have ever seen pictures of old-fashioned Arabs who perhaps in a few out of the way places, still do this, in which everything except a little round circle is shaved. That little round circle at the top of the head is a tuft that is greased to stick straight up; not a pretty sight--certainly designed to prevent assimilation. On the other hand, others have gone to another extreme and this in the far east, of shaving the top of the head and leaving only the hair at the sides; the tonsure, which crept into Buddhist religious practice and then into Western practice for a time within the church.
It means moreover, this law, that the beard is not to be deformed in various ways. Many, many means have been used to deform the head and the facial hair as means of tribal markings, class markings, racial markings, just as tattoos are used in India to indicate class or caste status. All these are forbidden by God and the statement of, ah, Wenham on this is very good. Wenham said, “This law conforms to other holiness rules which seek to uphold the natural order of Creation and preserve it from corruption. God created Man in His image and pronounced him all creation ‘very good.’ Man is not to disfigure the divine likeness implanted in him by scarring his body. The external appearance of the people should reflect their internal status as the chosen and holy people of God. Paul uses a similar line of argument in I Corinthians 6, ‘the body of the believer belongs to Christ,’ he says, ‘and therefore glorify God in your body.’” In other words, the relevance of God’s Law here as elsewhere is a continuing one. Unnatural styles have too often warped man’s head and body.
In verse 28, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord,” the ornamental cuttings in the flesh or cuttings to show mourning are still practiced by some peoples, and tattoos are practiced by virtually all. All these practices are forbidden. It is noteworthy that in the Turkish Empire and in other nations, slaves were routinely tattooed, especially on the forehead, to make them identifiable as slaves. A man’s body is God’s creation, and it is a sin to disfigure it or to mar it. As Knight has pointed out, the word ‘flesh’ in the Hebrew covers the whole being of man, his personality, his soul, and his body. Such disfiguring includes what is in our mind and thought as well as dabbling with the occult. We are God’s workmanship, we are told, and any tampering with His work is a sin and an outrage. Birth defects are an aspect of a fallen world, and their correction is not at all wrong. It is tampering with God’s good order that is condemned. God underlines the importance of this law by declaring again, “I am the Lord.”
In verse 30 we read, “Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.” God requires Sabbath keeping and reverence for His sanctuary. Once again, with the reminder, “I am the Lord.” The Sabbath and the Law as a whole are given by God as His love and care for man, and are to man a way of privilege, a way of glory. In ancient times, some rabbis held that the more the commandments from God, the more a man’s life can be sanctified and beautiful. Thus, it was said in ancient times, “Beloved are the Israelites, for God has encompassed them with commandments.” Rabbi Phinehas said, “Whatsoever ye do, the commandments accompany you. If you build a house, there is Deuteronomy 23:8 (battlements). If you make a door, there is Deuteronomy 6:9. If you buy new clothes, there is Deuteronomy 22:11. If you have your hair cut, there is Leviticus 19:27. If you plow your field, there is Deuteronomy 22:10. If you sow it there is Deuteronomy 22:9. If you gather harvest, there is Deuteronomy 20:19. God said even when you are not occupied with anything, but just taking a walk, the command accompanies you, for there is Deuteronomy 22:6.”
In verse 31, “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord…” we are told that any trust in or resort to mediums or wizards or occultist wise men is strictly forbidden. To do so is to choose the fellowship of God’s enemies. At issue is the source of knowledge. Do we seek it under God, or outside of, and in defiance of God? What scripture tells us is that all ungodly quests for knowledge are profanity.
Let us pray.
Thy Word, oh Lord is truth and Thy Word encompasses us with Thy love and grace. Teach us so to walk day by day, that by our faithfulness we may know Thy love in Thy Law and by Thy spirit. Bless us always in Thy service In Christ’s name, amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson?
Yes.
[Audience] I have a trivial question. What are the {?}…
{Rushdoony] What?
[Audience] …the corners of the beard? That troubles me.
[Rushdoony] Yes, the corners of the beard, there is a great deal of question about that, but one opinion which comes from, uh, Jewish sources, is to try to make, uh, the beard into something other than it naturally is. For example, one of the things that is commonplace in Liberal Judaism among rabbis is a beard which is shaved along the sides, along the corners, and just the, uh, the area around the chin is left unshaven. Now, that was an ancient Canaanite style. And the liberal rabbis who will grow a beard have done this deliberately to show their break from Orthodoxy. They’ve shaved this area—the corner between the ears and the chin area. It’s their way of showing that they are not orthodox.
Yes.
[Audience] Just one other comment and that is, now Surgeon General Koop is talking about the need to educate children on safe sex beginning in kindergarten. And how does that fit with the injunctions regarding dowries?
[Rushdoony] That requires parents to leave their daughters unprotected. If they leave them in schools where the kind of thing that is taught will reach the children, because some of it is incredible, the kind of thing that is taught, and the experts in the field have said that it is worthless, because condoms do not offer protection, it is worthless because it creates an interest in subjects that children are ignorant of, so that the effect of it will be deadly. But that does not bother these people, nor Koop.
Yes.
[Audience] We have now, an entire conjury of reproductive experiments—test tube babies, surrogate mothers, uh, abortion, at the same time we have these weird experiments regarding reproduction by other means, that we’re turning close to Huxley’s Brave New World in which children were produced, if you recall, in vats, row on row in which the ovum and sperm was gathered and the parentage was anonymous, and accompanying this right now we have that fiction, but now we have the prototype of such experiments in reality, and we also have genetic experiments, I mean, they’re tapping the amniotic fluid to tell whether the embryo has any defects in which case it can be aborted, and then they’re on the verge of attempting to alter the embryo before birth in order to give it certain characteristics. Now, the Pope has recently issued a Vatican statement condemning all these activities, but there’s nothing coming from the Protestant clergy as a group. I think certain denominations have taken issue with certain aspects; they’re against abortion and things of that sort. But the Catholics and Orthodox Jews appear to be the only groups that have come across the board against any kind of experimentations. Is that true?
[Rushdoony] Yes and no. Ah, some Protestant groups have, but it never gets into the press, only the Protestants who favor such things. Very early when they began these things, more than a few people who were involved in them made it clear when Christians challenged them saying, ‘you’re aborting, or killing babies on the one hand, and the you’re trying all kinds of means to produce them in novel ways.’ And more than a few of them said it was to demonstrate that man could create his own order.
Now, this has been very vocal. In fact, ah, more than 25 years ago, and in the process of moving I’ve lost so many things like this, I had a statement from a top man at NASA. The whole point of space exploration was to disprove scripture; to prove that life existed elsewhere, and hence the vast sums expended to listen to sounds from space, supposedly to hear messages. They are determined to say that the universe created itself and man now can re-make it to suit his purposes.
As a result, we’re going to see more and more attempts to re-make all things, and those who will not be re-made will be treated as the enemy. This is why there is the growing hostility to Christian Schools, to churches, to home schools, and the attempts to limit birth. Because it is you’re orthodox believer who has the high birth rate.
There are some now who claim that there is documentation beginning to develop that abortion is a part of the means of controlling all birth; that what has happened in China will happen throughout the world. The pressure has already been exerted on Welfare Mothers and in due time will be exerted against others. We’ve had two legislatures in 50 states that regularly have bills introduced to limit the number of births allowable per family. Hawaii and Florida regularly have such legislation introduced. And little by little they hope to pick up more support; this despite the dropping birth rate.
[Audience] What do they plan to do to those who disobey the limits?
[Rushdoony] They will be taken in, as in Red China and put through compulsory abortion.
Any further questions? Well, let us bow our heads in prayer.
Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee that it is not the counsel of man that shall prevail, but Thy sovereign decree and counsel, that the heathen may rage and take counsel against Thee and against Thy anointed, against Thy Word, that Thou who sittest in the circle of the heavens doest laugh and hold them in derision. Oh Lord, the time of smiting has come. Give us a strong heart as we together with the World go through the days of judgment. And make us mindful that it is Thy kingdom that shall prevail and Thy Will that shall be done. 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.