Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Levitical Cities

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson : The Levitical Cities

Genre:

Track: 64

Dictation Name: RR181AJ64

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people. Give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name. Bring an offering and come into His courts. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Fear before Him, all the earth. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most high, to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that, day after day, thou dost undergird us with thy mercies, thy protecting care, and thy grace. We thank thee that Jesus Christ is Lord, that all things shall accomplish His holy purpose. Make us joyful in the face of all adversity knowing that, in our Lord, we are more than conquerors, that we need not fear what men may do unto us, for thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. Our God, we thank thee and we praise thee. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 35:1-8, and our subject: The Levitical Cities. “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they give unto the Levites of the inheritance of their possession cities to dwell in; and ye shall give also unto the Levites suburbs for the cities round about them. And the cities shall they have to dwell in; and the suburbs of them shall be for their cattle, and for their goods, and for all their beasts. And the suburbs of the cities, which ye shall give unto the Levites, shall reach from the wall of the city and outward a thousand cubits round about. And ye shall measure from without the city on the east side two thousand cubits, and on the south side two thousand cubits, and on the west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two thousand cubits; and the city shall be in the midst: this shall be to them the suburbs of the cities. And among the cities which ye shall give unto the Levites there shall be six cities for refuge, which ye shall appoint for the manslayer, that he may flee thither: and to them ye shall add forty and two cities. So all the cities which ye shall give to the Levites shall be forty and eight cities: them shall ye give with their suburbs. And the cities which ye shall give shall be of the possession of the children of Israel: from them that have many ye shall give many; but from them that have few ye shall give few: every one shall give of his cities unto the Levites according to his inheritance which he inheriteth.”

In the division of the land, the Levites were to receive no central area. They were to be given no assigned territories, as were the other tribes. Instead, they were given forty-eight cities, of which six were to be cities of refuge. Three of these were to be east of the Jordan and three on the west, the cities of refuge. The suburbs refer to the surrounding pasture, or orchard areas, and each was to be, depending on how the ancient measurement terms are interpreted, over two hundred acres in size or four hundred and thirteen acres.

The sanctuary was to be centrally located, and there could only be one sanctuary in Israel. Weekly worship took place at home and later in the synagogues and, of course, with the New Testament, the home and the church. On the other hand, the Levitical cities were to be strategically located among the twelve tribes or clans, in terms of population centers. They were different from the many existing cities in that they belonged to the Levites, and were Levitical cities. Thus, the Levites were scattered throughout the land, so that there would be a Levitical city close to all the people.

The Levites had a part in temple care and ceremony, but their part in the temple was subordinate to that of the priest. In the blessing of Levi by Moses before his death, he cited the fact that this clan, on various occasions at Sinai, Massah, and Meribah, placed loyalty to God above all other loyalties, according to Deuteronomy 33:8 and 10. Their task is described in these words by Moses: “They shall teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law. They shall put incense upon thine altar.” The second half of this sentence cites Levi’s liturgical function. Only a small minority of Levites were even needed at the tabernacle or temple. Therefore, this function affected a limited number of a rotation basis.

The basic Levitical function was to teach God’s judgment and God’s law. This meant two things. First, Levites were used as judges because they were experts in the law. Second, they were to teach the law. They were the national educators. Now, imagine the implications of this if applied to the present. It would mean a network across the whole of the United States of Christian schools, colleges, and universities, all concerned with establishing a Christian culture and upholding God’s law, and all within the reach of people everywhere. Now, if this seems a visionary idea, we must remember that it was done once, to a degree, in the United States, up to about 1900. About seventy-five percent of all colleges and universities in the United States were founded by Scottish Calvinists who were immigrants here, and they founded it in terms of this premise. When I was a student and first learned of this fact, I mentioned it with {?} to an elderly retired Scottish pastor, a Presbyterian, and he referred to it as a Levitical task. The more trusting ways of his time, and the lack of a Van Tillian presuppositionalism made it possible in time to subvert all these schools, but it was still a remarkable and biblical accomplishment. Even Berkeley was once a church school.

The Levites were able to go out from these cities to teach in every community. They could also establish in their cities, centers of scholarship. A reading of the Old Testament seems to indicate that possibly the Levites were more faithful than the priests. After the captivity, Levitical cities apparently were never rebuilt, according to rabbinic tradition. Levitical properties could not be alienated. At any time, a Levite could redeem a house he sold if he had the funds. At the Jubilee, it reverted to him if he had failed to redeem it. The open land could not be sold at all.

In the division of the land, the Levites received four towns in each tribe except Judah and Simeon, where they received a total of nine, and Naphtali which had only three Levitical cities. There was apparently a lack of full faithfulness to this planned allotment, because the book of Judges indicates the unsettled and apostate nature of some of the Levites in Judges 17:7-9. In Fact, it would appear from Judges 17:7-13, that some Levites became chaplains to wealthy men, and also that their faith was syncretistic, if not pagan. We see this in Judges 18:1-31. In 1 Chronicles 6:54-81, we see that the record gives a different story than does Joshua. While there are a similar number of cities, they are not the same. One less in each of Judah and Benjamin, and two less in each of Dan and Zebulun. In other words, some plans and promises were discarded. The people were faithless.

In the reformation of Jehoshaphat, the Levites, princes, and priests were used to teach in the cities of Judah, to bring about a return to God’s law, according to 2 Chronicles 17:7-9. However, Hezekiah’s reformation was similar. It also used the Levites, according to 2 Chronicles 30:2, at the end of the Babylonian captivity, sadly, proportionately fewer Levites returned to Judah, according to Nehemiah 7:39-45. Only seventy-four Levites, as against 4,289 priests. So, during the captivity, the Levites, who before had been apparently the most faithful, became faithless. In the New Testament, the priests are often mentioned and the Levites rarely. Ezekiel 44:10-13 indicates that, while the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the Levites had become especially apostate and deeply involved in idolatry. They had almost to the last been a reformed group. It is possible that, after the captivity, the rise of the synagogue was a replacement of the Levites and their work.

As we have seen in Numbers 18:24-32, the tithe was given to the Levites, who then tithed a tenth of this tithe to the priests. This meant that instruction when this law was obeyed, took priority in the life and faith of the people. Now in our day, such an emphasis on education and scholarship on the part of the Christian community would revolutionize and recapitalize society. This law is also one reason why theonomy is unpopular in an age when the institutional church claims the total tithe, and denies the right of anyone else to a penny of it.

Over the centuries, this Levitical aspect of God’s ministry has been the object of suspicion and control. When the Medieval university developed, for example, its scholars were either monks, priests, or scholars. That is, under the jurisdiction of a church-controlled order. Protestantism has been no less eager to control its teachers. This has been an impediment to Christian scholarship. If Christian scholars cannot be trusted, are we to assume that only priests and pastors can be? Is it not wiser to recognize the propensity for all to sin, and to trust God’s requirements above man’s controls. Men too often have more confidence in themselves than in God. They find it a pity that God will not take their advice.

Now, this dispersal of the Levites meant that they were to have no corporate and separate existence at the trial. They could not be all together. They were rather fragmented in this way, in a God-appointed isolation. This was to place the stress on their teaching function rather than their corporate status. Our academic lemmings, however, insist on tenure, and host of controlling academic associations. The result has been a politically correct rigidity and an isolation from reality. At the same time, the Levites were put together in strategically located cities, which were like fortresses of learning. In fact, for no valid reason, a few scholars have tried to see the forty-eight cities as military centers because of their locations. They were rather to be centers of intellectual, spiritual defense.

Calvin wrote, “It was then in God’s wonderful providence that they, the Levites, were placed in peculiar and fixed residences and allowed to mingle themselves promiscuously with the peoples, for the cities which God assigned to them were so many schools where they might better and more freely engage themselves in teaching the law, and prepare themselves for performing the office of teaching, for it they had lived indiscriminately among the multitude, they were liable to contract many vices, as well as to neglect the study of the law, and to prepare themselves for performing the office of teaching. For if they had lived indiscriminately among the multitude, they were liable to contract many vices, but when they were thus collected into separate classes, such a union reminded them that they were divided from the people that they might devote themselves altogether to God. Besides, their cities were like lamps, shining into the very furthest corners of the land. They were therefore fortified, as it were, by walls, lest the corruptions of the people should penetrate to them. Their association together also should have stimulated them mutually to exhort each other to continency, decency and modest manners, temperance, and other virtues worthy of God’s servants whilst if they fell into dissolute habits, they were the less excusable. Thus, their cities were like watchtowers in which they might keep guard so as to drive impiety away from the borders of the holy land. Hence was the light of heavenly doctrine diffused. Hence was the seen of life scattered. Hence were the examples to be sought of holiness and universal integrity.”

Calvin’s words remind me of two professors at Berkeley, at the university, for whom I graded test papers. One felt that the only civilized place for a university was New York City, where a man could be a part of the theatrical, social, and intellectual scheme. The other believed that it was not ivory tower thinking for colleges and universities to be isolated so that their forces and focus could be on scholarship, not set in a scene given to trend and fashion. But the biblical pattern, God’s pattern, is a marvelous one, because what it says is that nine-tenths of the tithe had to be given to Levites; instructors, scholars. That they were to be scattered throughout the land, so that within reach of everyone for their education and their children’s education. There would be schools, and colleges, and universities.

Consider the incredible cost of a college education now. Over 20,000 at many a school, and even the cheaper ones, it’s much too much for most families. But if God’s plan, as laid out here and elsewhere in the Bible, were followed, then it would mean that the whole of the United States would have centers of Christian scholars and Christian teachers, and the tithe would help support them, and everyone would be instructed. We have not followed God’s plan, so what do we have? God’s plan was ten percent for the tithe, not nine percent for the Levites and instruction, one percent for instruction, and then half a shekel of all males, 18 years old and older for civil government and national defense, for the courts. Now, we are paying in taxes, in this country, forty-seven and a half percent of our income, and what happens to it? It is mostly wasted. A plan was just defeated in congress whereby those who are in prison could on getting out, on the thesis that education is salvation, get generous scholarships so they could go to a college or a university. Could you imagine what it would do to the colleges and the universities to be flooded with these convicts who are given an easy living in order to “save” them with a college education, and this what it would do to the educational level of these universities. Now that measure has just been defeated, but it is not just going to die. They’ll keep coming back with it, and when they pass other such foolish measures, it will mean that over fifty percent of your income will go down the rat hole of federal grants and subsidies to everything under the sun.

Well, except the Lord built the house, they labor in vain that build it. It is time that we, as a people, go back to God’s ways. Our text refers to six cities of refuge and we will return to that subject two weeks from today. Let us pray.

Our Father, we give thanks unto thee for this, thy word. We thank thee that thy way is the only way, that Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life, has given us in His enscriptured word, the way in every sphere, the truth for all of life. Grant, O Lord, that what we do here may be a part of thy rebuilding of this nation in terms of thy law word. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] God seemed to resent the faithlessness of the priests more than, in the Bible, more than He did the Levites. Because his punishment was so fast and direct on the priests, {?} Aaron and his sons who were. . . was He more concerned about the priests than He was about the Levites?

[Rushdoony] Well, throughout the Bible, and our Lord himself said, “To whom much is given, of him much shall be required.” In other words, the greater the responsibility, the greater the judgment. So, because the priests were given the responsibility of being mediators as substitutes for Christ, the high priest in particular, God’s judgment upon them was the most severe, and in Levitical rules, as in Leviticus 4, where the sacrifices that are required for sin are given, the high priest and the priest come right up at the top. Then the prince, or the ruler, and then finally, the ordinary people, so that the sin, say of the ordinary man, while it is judged by God, is not judged as severely as those say, in church and state. God will judge them more severely, so “to whom much is given, of him shall much be required.” That’s a fundamental premise of scripture. That’s why our Lord says when He looks at the cities that rejected Him, “It shall be more tolerable,” he says, “of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you because you have rejected me.” You’ve come face to face with God incarnate, with truth incarnate, and you’ve turned on me like a pack of wolves, so your judgment shall be greater. Yes?

[Audience] Those involved in Christian ministries considered to be a part of the ministry?

[Rushdoony] Yes. You see, today we restrict the church to the house of worship and the people connected to it, and everything else like the Christian school, and Chalcedon, and independent missionary organizations are called para-church organizations, and often attacked by some church groups. That’s because they have radically limited the doctrine of the church, so that we should regard the Christian school as a ministry, as truly before God a part of His church. Perhaps not the man-created institutional church, but in God’s sight, a part of His church. We severely have restricted the ministry in modern thinking. Yes?

[Audience] The misappropriation of the tithe has caused us many evils.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the misappropriation of the tithe is thoroughly evil, and it belongs to all kinds of Christian ministries. It belongs to a variety of groups that serve educational purposes, such as Chalcedon, to Christian schools and colleges, to a host of missionary activities, to rescue missions in the inner cities, and much, much more. In some cities, the churches, with reluctance, will agree to have a rescue mission in the inner city, and very quickly will stop supporting it, because they don’t consider it important, and yet, the work of the rescue missions is very, very important, and what they do it far reaching in its implications. They take the human derelict and redeem them. They are responsible for a great deal of welfare work with these street derelicts. One writer, about ten years ago, said the Salvation Army was doing more in New York than the federal government, and yet these works are treated as though somehow, they were not a ministry. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] Would you tell me which is a correct statement? A man’s character constitutes his religion. A man’s religion constitutes his character.

[Rushdoony] A man’s religion, his faith, determines his character, and his character will reveal whether or not he has any religion, so you can take that statement from both angles. “By their fruit shall ye know them.” So, if there is no faith, there is no fruit. If there is fruit, there must be faith.

[Audience] {?} the beginning though. His character is rotten, because he was born in sin. So character must be his religion that makes his character rather than his character constituting what religion he will follow.

[Rushdoony] His character doesn’t make his religion. His character reveals it. His faith makes his character, and then his character reveals what he believes.

[Audience] Does his character from the beginning, can make him a humanist, . . .

[Rushdoony] His character does not determine what he is. It’s his faith that does.

[Audience] It’s his religion, his faith and his religion that determine his character, and he takes it from there. His fruits come from . . .

[Rushdoony] By their fruits shall ye know them.

[Audience] Thank you.

[Rushdoony] Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee that thy word shows us the way to walk. We thank thee that thy word governs and covers every area of life and thought. Grant that we grow in Jesus Christ and in obedience to thy word, that we may bring every area of life and thought into captivity to thee. 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.

End of tape