Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Division of the Land

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson : The Division of the Land

Genre:

Track: 63

Dictation Name: RR181AH63

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Year:

Let us worship God. I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come into thy presence in the face of all the evil and the depravity of this world, rejoicing that thou art on the throne, that thine eternal purpose shall be accomplished. The ends of the earth shall know that thou art God, and there is none other. We thank thee that the powers that be shall be confounded, that all the evil that men do shell be used by thee to bring forth thy good, that thou art He who doth make all things work together for good, to them that love thee, to them that are the called according to thy purpose. Great and marvelous are thy ways, O Lord, and we praise thee. We rejoice in thy mercies, and we gather together to give ourselves to the study of the things of thy kingdom. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 34:1-29, and our subject: The Division of the Land. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land of Canaan; (this is the land that shall fall unto you for an inheritance, even the land of Canaan with the coasts thereof:) then your south quarter shall be from the wilderness of Zin along by the coast of Edom, and your south border shall be the outmost coast of the salt sea eastward: and your border shall turn from the south to the ascent of Akrabbim, and pass on to Zin: and the going forth thereof shall be from the south to Kadeshbarnea, and shall go on to Hazaraddar, and pass on to Azmon: and the border shall fetch a compass from Azmon unto the river of Egypt, and the goings out of it shall be at the sea. And as for the western border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border: this shall be your west border. And this shall be your north border: from the great sea ye shall point out for you mount Hor: from mount Hor ye shall point out your border unto the entrance of Hamath; and the goings forth of the border shall be to Zedad: And the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the goings out of it shall be at Hazarenan: this shall be your north border. And ye shall point out your east border from Hazarenan to Shepham: and the coast shall go down from Shepham to Riblah, on the east side of Ain; and the border shall descend, and shall reach unto the side of the sea of Chinnereth eastward: and the border shall go down to Jordan, and the goings out of it shall be at the salt sea: this shall be your land with the coasts thereof round about.

And Moses commanded the children of Israel, saying, This is the land which ye shall inherit by lot, which the Lord commanded to give unto the nine tribes, and to the half tribe: for the tribe of the children of Reuben according to the house of their fathers, and the tribe of the children of Gad according to the house of their fathers, have received their inheritance; and half the tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance: the two tribes and the half tribe have received their inheritance on this side Jordan near Jericho eastward, toward the sunrising.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, These are the names of the men which shall divide the land unto you: Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun. And ye shall take one prince of every tribe, to divide the land by inheritance.”

And from there on through 28, we have their names, and verse 29: “These are they whom the Lord commanded to divide the inheritance unto the children of Israel in the land of Canaan.”

This chapter is concerned with two things. First, the borders of the land as ordained by God for Israel. This is in verses 1-15. Second, we have the names of the men who are given the responsibility for dividing the land. These are Joshua, the commander, and Eleazar, the high priest, together with one man from each tribe or clan which had not yet received land. Caleb, together with Joshua, the only survivors of the elder generation, because Moses would soon pass away, would represent Judah, according to verse 19.

Like so much else in the bible, this chapter tell us that, first of all, our faith is land-based. We are creatures made of the dust of the earth, according to Genesis 2:7, and we return to dust with death. We cannot live except on the produce of the earth. Now this is an important fact. It is the idiocy of modern philosophy, going back of course to the Greeks, that despises work with hands, work with the earth, the production of the earth, and deifies with the earth so that we are supposedly not allowed to tamper with it. Our food, our minerals, oils, building materials, everything, including water, comes from the earth. Where religion becomes spiritual and anti-material, we lose our recognition of the limitations of creature-hood, and we lose our awareness of our dependency on the earth.

Then, of course, capitalism is despised. Then you have the kind of thinking that is leading more and more people here in California and elsewhere to say that farmers should not have water except on the same rate as city-dwellers, which would make agriculture impossible or raise food prices to the point where no one could eat. The girl university student of the 1960’s whom I’ve often cited, who advocated a work-free world, dismissed the question about how food would be provided by saying, “Food is,” and that’s the kind of idiocy that, since then, has become prevalent, and dominates the thinking of the media. Modern man, knowing little about the sources of all those things that make life and work possible has lost his sense of reality. Our urban culture has cut man off from his land-based reality, and our media has helped foster many delusions about the nature of life. The fact of life now mean sex. Not food, not work, not survival, because we recognize our earth-bound nature. Modern man has become a sleep-walker on the brink of destruction.

It is so bad that even a major corporation, when the first space flight took place, showed a spaceman out in space, floating, without, of course, anything but the space suit, and the earth below, and scissors snipping the umbilical cord, and the letters, “We have cut the cord.” That is insanity, but it prevails, it governs the mentality of our world. This is why chapters like this are passed over, are regarded as really non-essential for us to read and to know.

Then second, because God is the creator of heaven and earth and all things therein, we cannot look down on the material aspects of our lives without despising God. If we despise the earth, its purpose to provide us with food, with minerals, with oil, with resources, to be used for human life, not to be deified as the mother earth cult does. We despise God. But this is what men in and out of the church insist on doing. They are going to be either too spiritual to be of any earthly good, or they’re going to deify the natural world, and say as Earth First does, that 90% of the world’s people should be eliminated, and handful of caretakers, themselves of course, alone allowed to exist.

Years ago when I was a university student in the thirties at Berkeley, a militant atheistic philosophy major who saw the universe in Hegelian terms, that is as something out of matter towards geist, or spirit, dismissed the biblical God as unworthy of belief. His reason, which he put very crudely was that an intelligent God could not and would not tie man down to urination and defecation. He felt that that was a gross insult and no decent God would do that. I told him that the purpose of that was to help him remember that he was a creature. We did not get along very well after that. Sad to say, too many churchmen, over the centuries, have shared this contempt for material things, beginning with the flesh.

Then third, we are told very plainly, beginning at the early portion of Genesis, Genesis 3, that our problem is not matter but sin, and spiritual things can be as evil as material. It depends on how man uses things of mind and flesh. The dividing line in life is not between spirit versus matter, but sin versus grace. Failure to recognize this very obvious fact leads to all kinds of evils, and to a false view of reality. To cite one example among many, many perfectionists, people who are traveling the length and breadth of this country as discussion leaders for special conferences for churches. Their thesis is “God Hates Divorce,” when the reality is God hates sin. Godly divorce is a remedy for sin. God, in Jeremiah 3:8, for example, speaks of divorcing Israel. He gives us laws concerning divorce. He does it because man’s problem is sin, not matter. God uses matter even to protect the spirit, as in the dowry system, for the dowry system, no man could treat his wife casually. After all, he normally worked three years in order to provide a dowry, although Laban, being distrustful of a man from a long distance even though a relative, insisted on seven years’ work for the dowry.

While the amount of the dowry is not specifically ordained and commanded, two verses even give us some idea of it. Exodus 22:17 and more specifically, Deuteronomy 22:29, tell us that fifty shekels of silver; a shekel was a weight, was the dowry, and it was then a very considerable amount.

Then fourth, God requires, as we see in Leviticus 25, a sabbath of the land. Both man and his work animals on the one hand and the earth require a sabbath, a rest. One day in seven, one year in seven. God’s rest in Genesis 2:2-3 meant a cessation of the work of creation. The rest of man and animals together with the earth means restoration. Man, by obeying God and recognizing his own creaturely limitations and those of the earth, thereby praises God for the privilege of being a creature, and we should see our creatureliness as a privilege. It is life. Man then enjoys being God’s creature, and since man is not a god, he had better enjoy being God’s creature. He has no other choice.

Then fifth, because man is a material being of flesh and blood, his life is a material life, and he sins if he forgets that fact, and this is why this generation is so deeply in sin. An obvious fact of the Bible is the punishment afflicted for sin. In some instances, it was restitution and in others, capital punishment. Both constituted and constitute forms of restoring order. The death penalty was both a form of punishment, restitution for sin, and excommunication. In the words of Hans Becker, “The victim was not permitted to be buried in the burial place of his family. He was excluded from the community even in death. There is a great deal of material from the history of the law and religions, enabling us to understand why stoning was regarded as a curse. For the ancients, the criminal was possessed of a real guilt which jeopardized the community. By covering the evil-doer with stones outside the town, the evil that he could spread was vanished.” Thus, as Becker and others have pointed out, whatever the form of execution, the man was unfit even for the earth, so when he was executed, he was covered over with stones, because he represented a curse. The earth was not fit to receive him. Even more, the community was maintained on the foundation of God’s covenant and law. Godly order meant peace, and it meant God’s blessings.

Then sixth, God’s covenant with man is inclusive of the earth, so that in Genesis 2:8-17, God lays down the terms for its possession. After the flood, God in his covenant with Noah in Genesis 8:15-22, makes certain promises with respect to the earth. In Deuteronomy 28, the curses and blessings on man involve the earth and the weather. Man’s sin brings a curse upon him, on the earth, on the weather; whereas faithfulness brings blessings in all spheres. Man’s destiny is linked inseparably to the earth.

God’s patience with Canaan was exhausted after many generations, and therefore, He required Israel to execute judgment on Canaan. As Girdle Stone pointed out a century ago, this judgment was in no way an act of personal revenge by Israel. They were quite alien to the land and the people, and as he observed, the people almost had to be girded into the land. They were not allowed to take plunder, because all the wealth seized had to be given to the Lord. The task of conquest was not for military glory nor as a reward for merit. God was simply honoring His covenant. His goodness to Israel was an act of sovereign grace and mercy. The Canaanites were a depraved people under judgment by God, and Israel was not to permit things to survive which could lead them into idolatry and perverse forms of sexual practices. Moreover, God had been patient for generations and centuries with Canaan. Their iniquity, their love of evil had exhausted God’s patience, and their judgment was the will of God, not the will of Israel.

Then seventh, our promised land, according to our Lord in Matthew 28:18-20, is the whole earth. Christians are reminded of this in 1 Corinthians 15:24-28. The method of conquest is different, but we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring all things into captivity to Christ, Paul tells us. In its own way, the opposition we face is as evil and as determined as were the Canaanites.

Then eighth, the detailed account in this chapter of the areas to be conquered, what was in fact the promised land, are both revelatory of God’s ways with us and also of our material existence. Joseph Parker, whose dates were 1830 to 1902, and it’s a pity that so few people remember him or read him, or that any of his writings are now published, but he stated the matter very clearly in these words. Remember, this was more than a hundred years ago. “We cannot get rid of boundaries. Never listen to those who talk about equality simply because you have no time to waste. Equality is impossible. If we were all equal, one day we should all be unequal before the sun went down. Let us listen only to the truly reasonable in this matter. There is something better than outward and nominal equality, and that is an intelligent appreciation of the fact that there must be differences of personality, and allotment, and responsibility and that, in the end, the judgment will be divine in its righteousness. We find boundaries in gifts of all kinds.”

We each have our gifts. We are not equal because we are different. I’ll never forget the first time, for example, I saw Bob Green lay a tree precisely where he said he was going to lay it when he cut it. There is no way in a hundred years I could learn to do that, or that the rest of us could. We each have our gifts. God made us to be different. This creates differences, boundaries, and Parker was right. We cannot get rid of boundaries.

Then ninth, God in giving this careful described area to Israel, did not hand it to them. Apart from the miraculous conquest of Jericho, all the rest of Canaan was taken, or more accurately, partially taken, only after perseverance and hard battle. It was the promised land, not a given land. It was a land to be earned by the hard lessons of the wilderness journey and by long period of battle. God’s promises to us as to men of old are not hand-outs. They come with a necessity for struggle and victory comes after struggle.

Then tenth, and finally, this command concerning the division of the land is given by God to Moses, but Moses is given no part in anything more than delegating the responsibility to others. His hard years of painful service were nearly over. In Deuteronomy, we have his summary of God’s law and his parting words of counsel. Very little work remained for him to do. Others must now carry on, fight the battles, and deal with the problems. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thou hast made us to be creatures. Cleanse from us all remnants of our original sin, our desire to be gods. Make us joyful in our creatureliness. Make us joyful in the fact that, by thy grace, we who are creatures, flesh and blood, made of the dust of the earth, are called by the adoption of grace to be thy sons and daughters throughout all eternity. How great and marvelous thou art, O Lord, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] The orthodox Jews argue that Israel lost that land for its sins, and that {?} Israel that it still belongs to it, is invalid, because according to the orthodox, they are condemned to remain stateless until the Messiah appears.

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is that deep cleavage. Some of the orthodox are in Israel to await the Messiah, and they are very hostile to the Zionists because they regard them as atheists and socialists, and rightly so, and when Jerusalem fell, even though they refused to recognize the reason why God had judged them, namely for rejecting Christ, they knew that God had punished them. They made all kinds of excuses for it, and it is interesting that they turned their service into a melancholy one, although later that decreased to an extent, but they abolished an instrument which was then taken over by the Christian synagogues, later called churches; the organ. The organ was an instrument of worship in Judea, and they felt that because it was so joyful an instrument, it could no longer be used. They knew they had been judged, but would not acknowledge why. Any other questions or comments? We need to recognize that an important aspect of our creatureliness is, not only are we land-based, but instinctively, because God has made us and has placed within us certain feelings and impulses, when times of crisis come, men lose their sense of internationalism and even nationalism for localism. Then you have a breakdown of social orders into their component parts. We’ve seen this in its beginnings in the Soviet Union, in Yugoslavia. Now, in Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks are insisting on separatism, and in Britain, the Scots and the Welsh are insisting on it, and this is happening elsewhere, all over the world. Why? Well, man is land-based, and when the illusions of prosperity and vast dreams men have of playing god over all the earth begin to collapse, the cry is, as in the days of Rehoboam, “To your tents, O Israel.” Every man to his own corner. Every man to his own roots, and we’re beginning to see that now, worldwide. Yes?

[Audience] The idea of a new world order as a delusion that’s not new is what you’re saying?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is not new, it goes back to the Tower of Babel, and the European community is using the Tower of Babel, a picture of the Tower of Babel as its symbol, with a motto that says that this time they’re going to make it work. They are that self-conscious of creating a Tower of Babel all over again, a new world order, and He who sits in the circle of the heavens, David tells us, shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. So, we need to share in God’s laughter at the delusions of these peoples. Yes?

[Audience] Well, the environmentalists, they have a {?} unique will to death then?

[Rushdoony] Yes. We are told in Proverbs 8:36 that “all they that hate me love death.”

[Audience] I know someone {?} they like to pine away on the job, so I guess they want everybody to pine away to death with them.

[Rushdoony] Well, the will to death is prevalent and it governs the nations today, and God says come out from among them and be separate. Well, let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that as we face a world filled with evil, we have thine assurance that it is thy will that shall be done and thy kingdom that shall come, not the kingdom of man, that the mouth of all evil-doers shall be stopped, and it is thy word that shall resound from pole to pole, amidst all the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations. Give us patience to wait on thee, strength to fight those battles that thou dost ordain us for, and joy in thy service. 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.

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