Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace

Holiness and the Family

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Lesson: 47

Track: 47

Dictation Name: RR172Z47

Date: Early 70s

Our help is in the name of the Lord who made Heaven and Earth. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him. He also will hear their cry and will save them. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” saith the Lord Jesus Christ, “there am I in the midst of them.” Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we come into Thy presence, rejoicing in Thy blessings, thankful for Thy mercies, and free by Thy grace. We thank Thee that Thou hast made us a new creation in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that the ends of the earth shall serve Thee and Thy kingdom shall prevail, and all things shall do Thy bidding. Make us therefore confident in Thy victory, ever zealous in the battle, and more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is Leviticus 20:7-9, and our subject, “Holiness and the Family.” Leviticus 20:7-9; “Holiness and the Family.”

“7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God.

8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you.

9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”

These verses are very important to an understanding of Biblical Law and biblical faith and culture. One of our problems nowadays is we have lost the ability to read. And therefore, we read after the manner of the Dick and Jane Readers; very naively and without comprehension.

First of all, before we go into what these verses mean and why there are so all-important, let us note that these verses are repeated and echoed throughout the Bible. Verse 7 for example, is repeated again and again in the Law and in the New Testament. It calls for a God-centered emphasis to all of life. What it says is summed up by Paul in I Corinthians 10:32 “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” The first half of verse 8, “And ye shall keep my statutes and do them,” is clearly echoed by our Lord in Matthew 5:19-20 when he says, “19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.20 For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Our Lord refers to this also in Matthew 7:24, 25 and in Matthew 12:50. The latter half of verse 8, “…I am the Lord which sanctify you,” echoes a great many verses earlier given in the Law and subsequently as well as repeated by the prophets and in the New Testament. The common thread in all of this is that God sanctifies His covenant people. He sets them apart and hallows them for His holy purpose.

Now, the law of verse 9, “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him,” is very, very important for us to understand. It is hard for modern man to take seriously the death penalty for such an offense. First, he does not understand what is involved in the offense, and second, he is no longer family-oriented. The Law does not require a love of one’s parents, but honor. Parents can be evil. They often are. They can abuse children and be guilty in many, many areas. The Law does not ask us to overlook such things. What we are told is that offenses against the family are comparable to manslaughter and murder and certain forms of sexual offenses. Therefore this offense against parents must be punished by death because it destroys society.

Now to understand what is involved, we must realize that to curse is more than angry words. It is on the obvious level, the antithesis of honor. To honor, in Hebrew, means “to make heavy; important, weighty, central to life.” But to curse is “to make light of; to treat as trivial, unimportant, despicable.” The family is basic to society, and therefore its authority is important. To curse one’s parents is not the same as disagreeing with them. It is, among other things, the rejection of the family as God’s given order. It is an open contempt for the family as essential to man. It is a denial of our past, and an insistence of another kind of order as the life of society.

Now until recently, in virtually every culture the world over, parricide, the killing of one’s parents was regarded as the most fearful, the most evil of all offenses. All lesser offenses against parents were also viewed with horror as indicative of a radically evil person. In some cultures, as in early Rome, a parricide was sewn into a leather sack together with some animals like rats and vipers and cast into the sea. Even in its degeneracy, Classical Greek saw offenses against the family as devastating to society; so that when Greece had become cynical about virtually everything else, it still retained a sense of shock where offenses against the family were involved. Only in periods of social decay and degeneracy do we find the family not zealously guarded in its integrity in both law and custom.

Fifer in his analysis of the meaning of this offense in Leviticus 20:9, said, “The cursing of father or mother is both a grievous violation of the law and a denial of the very existence of the family which God ordained for man’s good.” But there’s more involved here. It speaks of the offense as ‘cursing one’s father or mother.’ Now, we are so far removed from a religious orientation in our culture, and even in the church that we no longer know what cursing means. To curse is to invoke the power and the law of some other god to accomplish something. Now, anyone cursing God or anything that God defends or protects in His Law cannot invoke the name of God. That would be a contradiction in terms. It would be asking God to destroy what God says must be blessed and protected. Our covenant God requires the family to be honored. It makes it basic to the kingdom. It says that cursing one’s parents requires the death penalty.

So what is cursing one’s parents? It did not involve the name of God. It involved invoking some other force against your parents, against your family. Now, since even the pagan gods of antiquity and throughout the world have always been family oriented in their societal plans, what it meant was to invoke satanic, demonic powers against one’s family. That was the meaning. It meant to invoke destructive forces, demonic forces. It meant a total denial of the covenant God. It was a religious act. The offender in cursing his parents transferred his hope from God to Satan. He has said that everything in God’s order is evil; that the family as the basic institution of society was evil and everything with it. It was a denial of the meaning, and of the content, and of the significance, which God gives to the family. It was an attack on God and on God’s fundamental order in the universe.

Now a culture which perpetuates, a culture which fosters this kind of attack is also under judgment in terms of this law, under God’s judgment. And we too should judge it and be opposed to it. The family today all over the world is less and less protected in its life and property by the State. It is increasingly regulated. And it is not the evil family people who are regulated, but the godly. All the evidence indicates that child abuse is increasing. But it is good families that are the target of the laws too often that are directed against child abusers. Just as a rapist who cuts off the hands of his victim, kidnaps her, which is a death penalty, leaves her to die, on more than one count is deserving of death, but gets less than seven years on prison. So our culture abuses the family and protects the guilty.

Consider the inheritance tax. It robs widows and orphans. It is clearly a means whereby the State curses the father and the mother and the children; the family. Now, that’s how the law has to be read! That’s how the scripture teaches us the law is to be read. It gives us a very good example of it when it says, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth out the corn.” And then, we are told in the New Testament by our Lord and by St. Paul that this minimal instance is to illustrate its far-reaching meaning. You don’t muzzle the worker. The worker is worthy of his hire. And they that labor worthily for the Lord are worthy of double honor—double pay. That’s what honor meant in those days, something our culture has forgotten. So this law, too, “for everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he hath cursed his father or his mother, his blood shall be upon him,” it applies to the individual. It applies to the culture, to the nation. And we have a civil government today here in this country, across all borders and the world-over that is busy cursing fathers and mothers and orphans: the family! Penalizing them in every way. But that’s not all.

What about Statist education? It is anti-Family to the core! Just since World War II, shortly after the war, the word went out and was passed around at all PTA meetings, ‘Don’t try to teach your children. Don’t teach them the alphabet. Don’t teach them reading before they come to school. Don’t teach them what they don’t know when they go home.’ And one of the reasons why the New Math was adopted was that it prevented the parents from helping their children with the problems. Now isn’t that cursing parents? It most emphatically is. And Statist education today is the means whereby the family is being cursed—by law—which indicates that civil government has become the world-over demonic in various degrees, because that’s what cursing the family involves. It means you turn from the power of God to alien, destructive powers. This is what has been done. The “Family Education Courses,” so-called, which teach that sexuality is neutral, neither good nor evil and that one is to follow his or her own tastes. They curse the family.

Moreover, the media and its view of the family is a curse on the family. How long has it been since you’ve seen any respect for a family in any television program or any film? Or any novel? That’s cursing the family, cursing one’s parents. And all this invokes the curse of God upon individuals and upon a culture.

“His blood shall be upon him.” This can be paraphrased as scholars have pointed out, into contemporary English as, “He has none to blame for his death except himself.” The countries of the world have no one to blame for the judgment that is beginning to come upon them except themselves. They have denied the power of God. They have invoked other powers, destructive powers against God’s order, against His Church, against His schools, against His fathers and mothers and children. All such shall be surely put to death; if not by man, then by God.

Turning from verse 9 back to 7 and 8 again, we see that these two verses tell us two things. First, we are to be holy because God is holy. Holiness is not an option to be exercised by the clergy and a few others who want to be saints. It is mandatory for us all. It is a separation to the life God requires of His people. And second, the “way of holiness,” means to sanctification is God’s Law. “Ye shall keep my statutes to do them.” The commandment to be holy is given with the Law, because keeping the Law is the way to holiness. Therefore, to imagine that man-made routines of spiritual devotions or exercises can give us holiness is foolishness. God says, “I am the Lord which sanctify you,” or “I am the Lord who sets you apart and makes you holy,” who makes you useful in terms of my kingdom. No holiness is possible in terms of man’s way or on man’s terms, only by means of God’s Law, by God’s Word, and the family is basic to holiness.

To curse the family is to unleash destructive forces against it, to invoke destructive forces, and this is what the State legislatures, Congress, and civil governments the world over are doing every time they meet—unleashing destructive forces against the family, by means of taxation, by means of controls, by a hundred and one ways. The whole of the modern tax structure is anti-family. It curses the family. It works to destroy community property.

Consider the fact that while we still have community property laws, they apply basically in most states, if they exist, between husband and wife (occasionally it will apply to one of the children). But community property law in the Bible and in culture historically, meant that the property belonged to the family from generation to generation. And it meant cursing the family to move against the family’s property, because when you struck at community property, you struck against the community of the family. Do you see how absurd and evil the modern interpretation is?

“For everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.” If you get angry with your parents, the authorities, they say, are supposed to take you out and kill you. I hear that regularly when people tell me how terrible Biblical Law is. And they don’t want to hear what it means. That’s the last thing they want to do—to understand it. Because it would make clearer to them that they are demonic, that they want a satanic destruction of God’s order. Well, such have none to blame for their death except themselves. Thus, it is clear that the meaning of this law has been commonly, routinely, and sometimes deliberately misunderstood.

When meaning is gone in a society, not only do men become empty, but words also. This is why in this century alone the deterioration is apparent in the language. Look at the 2nd Edition of Webster’s, and the 3rd, which denies the fixedly of grammatical rules, of meanings, which says in effect, ‘whatever you want to say is valid, and it will mean what you say it says.’ So, for twentieth century man, the curse is simply to utter words or to use bad language and it’s nothing. For most men, its supernatural content and religious meaning no longer exist.

But how can men give meaning to words when they have no meaning in themselves? When they have abandoned meaning? And they have become part of a sensate culture, when nothing has any significance for them except ‘my will be done.’ Surely all such have none to blame for their death except themselves.

Oh Lord our God, make known Thy truth. Throughout the world, that if men will not harken to Thy word, let them know Thy truth through Thy judgment. Indeed, oh Lord, men and nations today are busily cursing father and mother and see it as an advantage and a blessing to themselves to do so. We thank Thee that it is Thy judgment and Thy Word that shall prevail, that all such shall be swept aside, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Give us patience, give us unfailing zeal, and make us faithful in Thy service. In Christ’s name, amen.

Yes, John

[John] The very, uh, how serious {?} what I mean, it is a very serious crime for a person to spread false rumors and innuendos and what have you about another person in the community, we know that. Uh, but the thing that strikes me as interesting is how many of the modern stand-up comedians us the same kind of tactic in the guise of comedy to attack the nation’s leaders, to attack various other elements of traditional society.

[Rushdoony] Well, uh, you may recall about a year ago at one of our staff breakfasts, Otto developed the point about modern humor that it is no longer humor; it is a put-down, an insult, a way of denigrating someone else, so it’s become related to cursing. It no longer has a healthy motive, an enjoyment of life. And this is why those of us who love comedy find it very difficult to find much comedy in our world today.

Yes.

[Audience] I think part of the trend to deny responsibility, or rather to deny parental authority, while retaining responsibility; the State holds you responsible to care and feeding and so forth for your children, but denies that you have any rights of authority over them, is part of the denigration of age. I was watching a Japanese film recently, about a village, which was governed by the oldest male. Great respect was paid to this particular, and ancient individual. But age in the United States has become something ridiculous. Somebody’s described as aging—as though anyone isn’t—and the idea is that your brains fall out when you pass 50 or something of that sort, you become an idiot automatically. And that of course has had a lot to do with undermining parents, because they become associated with what is obsolete, what is antique, what is no longer relevant. You wipe out an entire generation and its experience. A few years back there was even an attempt by some sections of the Academy and the media to created what they called a generation gap and to argue that young people should dispense with older people.

[Rushdoony] Yes, uh, with the contempt for age has gone an exaltation of immaturity and the propagation of perpetual immaturity and adolescence throughout our culture, and this has been very deadly. It’s amazing the degree to which our culture seeks to convey the impression of perpetual youth. If you look at the publications for senior citizens, they’re ridiculous, because they do try to convey the idea that you’re going to be perpetually young, that now you’re freed from your children and grandchildren, so live it up! Enjoy yourselves! As though the family was meaningless, and it was something to separate yourself from. Well, that’s a reversal of everything in our history and in our faith.

Yes.

[Audience] Not to change the emphasis of your thought, but it occurred to me while you were speaking that there might be a possibility of the application of the lesson you presented in terms of physical parents, to the attitude of men throughout history towards the Church and the Word of God. Because, as we look at Church History, in particular, and particularly modern-day Church History, we’ve seen almost from the beginning innumerable slits and sects and cults and anything that you want to call them, in the church, and it’s basically caused by, as I see it, by the addition or subtraction to the Word of God, and then their application in the life of the Body of the Lord. And as I see it, this is man’s attempt, uh, or at least some man’s attempt, to divide and rule so to speak. They’re taking the organic creation of God as a living body and turning it into various organizations with all kinds of names ending in some –ism or another. And this is, as I recall when you first started this series of lessons on Leviticus, you made a comment along the line that, ah, to whatever extent men depart from God’s Word, they are depersonalizing themselves; this is a depersonalization of the Church, which is the mother of all the saints, and it’s a denial of the Word, who is the father of the saints. Now, is this getting too spiritual, or …..

[Rushdoony] No, let, uh, when you deny the authority of the family, authority in church and state and every other field disintegrates.

Now, the point in the Law is not that we are always to obey father and mother, but always to honor them. Sometimes it’s necessary to obey God rather than men, and sometimes it is necessary to disobey the Church and the State, but at the same time to honor them—honor the authority that god has created in that sphere. Well what we are seeing, and we see in every time of decadence is not merely a disagreement, but a dishonoring. A systematic plan of dishonor. In the ages of vitality of the Church, there have been no lack of disagreements, of conflict, of tension, but dishonor is another thing, trying to destroy authority, trying to render all authority as meaningless. It’s a radically different fact.

[Audience] This wouldn’t include then the way men take portions of God’s Word and add their own words to it?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it would.

[Audience] It would.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] Because {?}

[Rushdoony] That was the Pharisees.

[Audience] Uh, I recall, uh…

[sneeze]

[Audience] … reading one of your books by {?} you were pointing out what you termed the beatitudes of revelation and one of them in particular caught my attention. “Blessed is the man who watches the {?} of the garments.” And whether I see it correctly or not, I see the garments of every Christian as being the righteousness of God’s Word, and to whatever extent we put on, or seek to put on God’s righteousness in our lives. And if we won’t watch and keep this in our life and in our living, we will appear naked.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, we cannot add or subtract, it is forbidden, and to do so is a means of saying it is not a sufficient word, and therefore our word takes priority, our addition or subtraction to the Word of God.

[Audience] So this would come under the heading of dishonoring your father and mother?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Well, our time is about up. Let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee for all Thy blessings, and according to Thy Word, we open wide our mouths that Thou mightest fill them, knowing that it is Thy purpose to provide for us, to bless us and to prosper us. We thank Thee that Thou art on the throne and it is Thy will that shall prevail. 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.