Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Trumpets and Warfare

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Trumpets and Warfare

Genre:

Track: 15

Dictation Name: RR181H15

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee and will look up. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou, who art the author of all beginnings and endings, the Alpha and Omega of all things, hast blessed us with thy providential care, and hast brought us through many trials and difficulties to a goodly place, to a place of increased service for thy kingdom. We come unto thee to commit all our hopes, our burdens, our efforts into thy care, that thou wouldst use us and make us mighty and effectual for thy namesake. Bless us now as we give ourselves to thy praise. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is from Numbers 10:1-10, and our subject: The Trumpets and Warfare. Numbers 10:1-10. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they blow but with one trumpet, then the princes, which are heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee. When ye blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east parts shall go forward. When ye blow an alarm the second time, then the camps that lie on the south side shall take their journey: they shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow with the trumpets; and they shall be to you for an ordinance for ever throughout your generations. And if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies. Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your God: I am the Lord your God.”

When I was a boy, I heard occasional references to this text, and during the Vietnam War, I read of one pastor’s use of it. In the main, however, this is a forgotten text.

Before going into an account of its meaning, we should take a look at the use of trumpets as a signal, because we are so remote from such signaling, that we need to understand what it was all about. Some of us can recall the day when military communications still relied, in part, on the bugler. Then, the bugle receded to the military camp, but much earlier, signals to the troops, whether to retreat, or to regroup, or to charge were all given by a bugler.

At one time, such signaling was very widely used. A well-known form of this was bagpipe music. Now, the various clans had excellent means of communication from village to village, and throughout the rural area, as well as during a battle. A familiar tune could be played by a piper in various ways. Thus, a piper could take something as familiar as Amazing Grace and play it so that it would be a summons to people up and down the glens, to be repeated by anyone who heard it. There is an attack underway. Come to the central point, predetermined. The same tune could be played to give a variety of signals. Dorothy and I heard an outstanding piper once take a single tune and play it as it would be used for a wedding, to summon people to worship, to summon people to battle, to issue a warning, and so on, just by changing the tune and the way it was played.

Thus, various forms of musical instruments, historically, have been very important. They have provided a very rapid means of communication. An army could be assembled in haste from far and near as the musician or the drummer, or with the Scots, the piper, passed on the summons or the news.

Well, the silver trumpets of Numbers have reference to a like use, and our problem in understanding it, at first reading, is because we’ve forgotten this is how musical instruments were once used. Horns, bugles, cornets, trumpets, and bagpipes. The text makes clear that there is a difference between various calls, especially a general alarm. Such means of communication, as we have seen, had an important part in past history. The Arch of Titus, commemorating the fall of Jerusalem in Rome in the war of 66 to 70 A.D. depicts these silver trumpets taken from the temple in Jerusalem. They were long, straight, and slender tubes with flared ends. Most authorities say the trumpets were three to four feet long, although Josephus says they were 18” long. In 2 Chronicles 13:12-16, we have a reference to their use in war time. In the Apocrypha, 1 Maccabees 4:40, we have another example. We have references in the New Testament to the trumpets in relationship to the last judgment. Within Christendom, bells replaced the silver trumpets, as a call to worship, to toll the death of someone, or birth, or issue a warning that people should gather quickly to repel, attack, and so on. Church bells were thus very important, and continued the kind of use the silver trumpets had in the Bible. Of course, the use of trumpets in the Fall of Jericho is a familiar story.

A trumpet blast has come to mean a dramatic marking of time, announcing a beginning or an ending, or some great event. The use of trumpets in the Bible included, first, to enable the people to know they were being called to assemble, to signal the time of march, to call upon the Lord for help in battle and to muster the fighting men, and to call for the Lord’s presence in festivals, as Psalm 98:6 makes clear. The trumpets were in the possession of the priests.

Walter Riggins wrote, “It was the priests who blew the trumpets, further stressing God’s control over the camp.” That latter part needs to be stressed, stressing God’s control over the camp. Everything they did had to be done in terms of God’s law and at God’s command. Well, this tells us why this is now a neglected text and you never hear any explanation of its meaning. What it means is it required and requires a biblical decision to declare war. The control of the trumpets was not in the hands of the state, as a Dutch commentator, Mersing{?}, wrote, “The blowing of the trumpets and the sounding of alarm had to do directly with God. Twice we read that the blowing of the trumpets constituted an appeal to Him, to graciously remember His people, both in time of peace and in time of war. The short concluding sentence, ‘I am the Lord your God,’ means you can rely on me.” And God required that, in order to rely on Him, they obey His covenant law, and this meant that the laws of God governing war and peace had to prevail. This also meant that recourse by the civil leaders to the priests and Levites for a judgment out of the law had to be made before any steps were taken, not only with regard to war, but with regard to anything else.

This was mandatory if God’s blessing was desired. For example, when King Jehoshaphat of Judah joined King Ahab, and they decided on war against Syria, Jehoshaphat, while recognizing Syria’s aggressions, refused to go to war unless God’s will were ascertained through God’s prophetic ministry. The false preachers or prophets that Ahab summoned all said, “Go.” There was no true priesthood nor Levitical order in Israel, so Jehoshaphat said, “These men are not from God,” and asked for a faithful prophet. “And Micaiah, the son of Imlah was sent for and Micaiah made known God’s disfavor and predicted the death of Ahab.” This was the practice. No covenant people could rightly move apart from God’s covenant law. To do so meant making an enemy of God, because God is king over all creation, king of the universe, his law word must govern every sphere of life.

Not surprisingly, Calvin stressed this text greatly, and I’d like to cite his comments in part, because what he had to say was at some length. “We know how often in earthly affairs God is not regarded, but counsels are confidently discussed without reference to His word. He testified, therefore, by this employment of the priests, that all assemblies, except those in which He should preside, were accursed.” He was also unwilling that war should be undertaken precipitately, or with a desire of vengeance, but that the priests should perform the office of heralds in order that he might be the originator of them himself. We must, however, observe the promise which is inserted that the Israelites should be remembered before the Lord, that He should put their enemies to flight, not as if the safety or deliverance of the people was attached to the trumpets, but because they did not go to battle except on reliance of God’s aid, for the reality itself is conjoined with the external symbol that they should fight under God, should follow Him as their leader, and should account all their strength to be His grace, and that all the saints were guided by this rule appears in Psalm 20:7, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,” and again “There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength.” “Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy.”

Now this tells us how we should interpret the text, and how it was interpreted over the generations. The priests and the Levites were required to expound the meaning of God’s covenant law. They were not given in courts, the power to pass sentence upon a law-breaker, but they were called upon to cite the law of God as they applied to a particular offense of charge. Similarly, when war was considered, the priests and the Levites would apply the law of God to the current crisis. Then, the declaration of war was the decision of the civil authority, but the formal proclamation came with the trumpet blast, and only the priests could use the trumpet, so the trumpet could only be blown after a decision had been made.

The reason for this rested also on the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Life is God’s creation. It can only be taken on God’s terms as set forth in His law. As a result, there are laws governing the killing of certain animals for food, laws concerning wild animals both clean and unclean, laws concerning self-defense and the killing of those who invade our houses, laws governing warfare, laws with respect to executing certain criminals, and so on, all of which tell us that life can only be taken on God’s terms, in obedience to His law, whether in peace time or war time.

For this reason, warfare especially must be subject to God’s laws, and there are numerous texts which tell us this. Therefore, the sounding of the trumpets was the work of the priests. It could not be coerced without sin. As T.E. Espin{?} wrote, “As the trumpets were emblematic of the voice of God, the priests only were to use them.” The peaceful uses of the trumpets were not of the same controversial character, of course, as the use of them in proclaiming war. According to W. Binney{?}, the silver trumpets were not to be confused with the trumpets of Jubilee. “Although bearing the same name in the English Bible, these are quite different instruments, and are called by a different Hebrew name. The former is the cornet, which as it’s name implies, was a horn or at least horn-shaped, whereas the latter was a long, straight tube of silver with a bell-shaped mouth. The true intention of the silver trumpets is distinctly enough indicated in the law before us.” In every use of the trumpets, according to verse 10, they are said to be “for a memorial before your God.” The word translated as “memorial” is, in the Hebrew, a word meaning, “a record, a writing, a memento.” The same word appears in Leviticus 23:24 where the text reads, “a memorial of blowing of trumpets, or a remembrance blowing.” It is there a summons to sanctification. The reference to the blowing of trumpets as a memorial before God means that it was a reminder to the people that what they embarked upon had to be governed by the Lord. They went on record as recognizing that fact as the trumpets sounded.

Well, this text has disappeared from public consideration in church as well as state, and it is an evidence of how far we have become secularized. Now, wars are fought with little regard for God’s law. A major target in warfare now is the civilian population. The creation of terror is deliberately sought and modern warfare is justified as practical. Well, such a view has no regard for God and His law. This text is forgotten because men do not see God’s word as their governing law. They mind the Bible for beautiful thoughts. Books have actually been written with such titles as Nuggets From Joshua or Nuggets from Deuteronomy, as though except for certain verses, the rest is dross. We know that Israel supplanted the word of God with the traditions of men, making the law of God of non-effect our Lord said in Matthew 15:1-9. We know also what God did to Israel for this apostasy, and the church had better take heed.

Now, this law did not infallibly avert bad wars, because the priests, like leaders in the state, could be evil men. Men are not capable of inerrancy. It did, however, require that all men make all decisions in every sphere in terms of God’s law, because God is our Lord and sovereign. Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, we thank thee that thou art on the throne. We thank thee that thou hast summoned us to be thy people, and to go forward or to rest, as thou dost command us in thy word. Take away from us, in our personal lives, in church and in state, all self-will, all autonomy, all self-law, and make us again a godly people wherein righteousness dwelleth. We thank thee, our Father, that our times are in thy hands, where if they were in our hands or in the hands of other men, we would be of all men most miserable. Give us grace, therefore, day by day, to come unto thee, to commit all our ways unto thee, to cast our every care and concern upon thee, knowing that thou carest for us better than we can care for ourselves. Our Lord, how great thou art, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] It says in here that when you go into battle in your own land against an enemy who is oppressing you, then sound the blast on the trumpets, was Israel ever authorized to go to war in a foreign land that was outside of the Promised Land given by God in order to avert oppression?

[Rushdoony] No, they were not. They could, when somebody invaded them, chase them into their territory, but they were not given any mandate . . .

[Audience] So, they were not to be involved in foreign entanglements outside of their own secure .{?}

[Rushdoony] That’s right, and you use the word “foreign entanglements,” Washington’s statement in his farewell address came out of an awareness of biblical law. Yes?

[Audience] Would you say that the church seems to be much in the situation of the Corinthian church? Paul makes a reference in 1 Corinthians 14 about an uncertain sound of the trumpet.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s what he’s talking about, the uncertain sound. In other words, they’re not going to the word of God for their marching orders, and therefore, it’s an uncertain sound, and of course, any time the church does not rigorously place itself under the whole word of God, it will be, as with the Corinthians, an uncertain sound and sin. This morning I was reading some of the sermons of James, or as it was in the Netherlands, Jacob Saurin, and he was, in his day, the greatest preacher, not only of his generation, but of a couple generations. In fact, when we were in London, I spoke at a church where a couple hundred years ago, Saurin had preached, and the next door neighbor to the church was a man by the name of Isaac Newton, a great scientist, and he came to hear Saurin, and he said it was like hearing an angel from heaven preach, because it was such a tremendous opening of scripture. Well, Saurin is no longer read or remembered, and it’s easy to understand why when you open his collected sermons. He preached in terms of God’s law, absolute faithfulness to it, and we now have abandoned that for antinomianism. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] Did Israel ever compact with an outside nation to help defend an outside nation, and to apply that to today’s situation, what cases should nations compact with other nations to help defend them? {?}

[Rushdoony] This was done with disastrous results. In fact, Israel died because of it, the northern kingdom. Of all things, they courted Syria as against Syria, and they figured by going to a mighty power some distance away, they would be safe against an enemy close at hand. So, as Syria came in and of course took care of Syria, overcame it and absorbed it into its empire and then went after Israel, and King Josiah did this also, and lost his life, of course, and he was warned not to go to war or to make such an alliance. So, the results were bad. Yes?

[Audience] They have a provision in the United States Constitution reserving that congress the right to declare war. If an agency of the state, such as congress, acts in terms of God’s law, is that a legitimate provision?

[Rushdoony] They should act always in terms of God’s law, but all the same, what is required here is what we term now “checks and balances,” so that there should be checks and balances against Congress. Congress will not have all the wisdom, and just as in the Hebrew courts the men who expounded the law of God, the priests or Levites, did not render a sentence. They just said, “This is how God’s law applies to the offense charged,” then the civil judges gave the verdict. So, this system of checks and balances is a legitimate one, and it should apply here as well, especially since congress doesn’t represent a religious interest, but a purely civil one. Yes?

[Audience] In our fifth amendment, the check and balances you’re referring to is what, the church?

[Rushdoony] It was in the colonial era and in the early constitutional era, the custom, which was taken for granted, no one every thought it would disappear, that before every election, there would be an election sermon preached in all the churches. Now, the election sermon did not name candidates, but it expounded scripture in terms of some of the concerns of the day, politically, so that people would know what God has to say on a particular issue, and the election sermon was once routine in all the churches, and it was precisely in terms of this kind of thing. It provided a check on the political order. When it disappeared, politics very quickly moved away from any kind of Christian integrity and became corrupt. Yes?

[Audience] Would you say then, in modern day, since the priest was the one who blew the trumpet, there should be some sort of unofficial, understood, informal way in which church leaders would give forth the impression that we need to go to war or we need to follow a certain policy as the check on what the congress can do? Am I understanding you correctly in that regard?

[Rushdoony] Yes. It means that, on every level of government, in a Christian society, Christian leaders will be consulted in terms of God’s law. Now, in our Lord’s day this was so routine that the name given to those who became specialists was lawyers. They were priests or Levites, but they were called lawyers because they expounded the law of God. It didn’t mean that they couldn’t be corrupt because man is not infallible and in our Lord’s day, the priests, the Levites, and the lawyers had, to a considerable extent, followed, as our Lord charged them, the traditions of men rather than law of God. However, we also know there was a substantial element who were faithful and when we read the book of Acts, we find that a great many priests and Levites were in the early church, came over in great numbers. By the time the New Testament was completed, there were approximately, according to historians, half a million Christians that had come into the church and professed their faith. Now, a very high percentage of that was Jewish, and among them, the priests, Levites, lawyers were quite prominent. They continued prominent for some time. Some of the church fathers were Jewish and because they had Latin names, we forget that fact. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] What sort of trumpet signals can we expect from a new world order?

[Rushdoony] Ungodly ones.

[Audience] And how can we follow them? We cannot.

[Rushdoony] No, we cannot. We cannot, because it’s simply the dream of the Tower of Babel that is being enunciated by those who talk about a new world order. They believe that paradise on earth can be created without God, and they do not see the problem of man as sin, as rebellion against God and God’s law word, but as improper organization. Evil is in the environment, not in man. The only time we ever ascribe evil to man will be for a selected few whom we demonize like Hitler and Sadam Hussain, and someone else from time to time.

[Audience] We have fought five undeclared wars since World War 2. Will this nation ever realize that if it’s going to go to war, is the day over for actually declaring a war before we send our troops into battle?

[Rushdoony] Well, the reason why the war declaration has been lacking is because there has been a push to get us into war before the people can react against it.

[Audience] That’s another thing. All the wars we’ve fought have never been from the ground up, and what you’re speaking here of the church leaders blowing forth the trumpet, and then the civil leaders declaring war before this happens. What we’ve had, from the top down, all of a sudden we hear about something way far away, that we never even knew where it was, there’s a conflict, and then we’re whipped up from the top down, and sent over in an undeclared war.

[Rushdoony] It is interesting that one rabbi in Israel has spoken out against the total secularization of public policy, even to the declaration of war and the treatment of the Palestinians, and he’s been treated as though he were a criminal, simply because he went back to the law and said, “We’re paying no attention to it.” Yes?

[Audience] In Genesis 14, when Abraham went to battle to get Lot back, you know, when he had been stolen by the {?}, he didn’t only bring Lot back, he brought back the booty and returned it to the king of Sodom, and he also went to liaison with the Amorites, and could you comment on that? Was that {?} blessed by Melchisadek, does that have any, seems like he made a poor liaison.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the answer to that is first, in that era, you still had godly men outside the line of Abraham. In other words, just because Abraham was the man through whom the promised seed was to come, does not mean that, at that time, the faith of God was restricted to the line of Abraham. Job, apparently, was someone living about the same time, and yet Job was a thoroughly godly man, as were some of the others in his day, and Melchisadek, definitely, king of Salam, or Jerusalem, which was not far from where Abraham was, was a true priest of God, so that it’s altogether illogical to conclude that those whom Abraham took with him, or associated himself with, were also godly. It was not until generations later that the Canaanites became ungodly. But consider the fact that Jerusalem, or Salam as it was known in those days, was one of the great strongholds in all of Palestine, and its king always powerful. It was one of the last places that the Hebrews were able to take hundreds of years later. So, at that time, they were still, to a great extent, godly outside the Promised Land, and Melchisadek, of course, is a classic example of that, but you see that surviving even at the time of the Exodus, because what man who still knew the true God and could be a prophet but was usually a false prophet? What man was there that came to testify against them and God judged him for it? Balaam. Balaam was a straying prophet who still knew the true God, so we cannot restrict the line of those who truly knew the Lord to Abraham’s household and those descended. Little by little it came to be so, as the others went into apostasy, but in Abraham’s day and even in Moses’s day, there were some. His father-in-law was one. Now apparently his daughter didn’t have much faith, but we know that Jethro was a godly man, and he was not a Hebrew.

Well, our time is about up. Let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee for the multitude of thy mercies and thy blessings. We thank thee that, day after day, though we often are fretful and impatient, thy patience and thy mercies are new every morning. Teach us to take our eyes off ourselves and the world around us, and look there where our true joys are to be found, in Jesus Christ, our Lord. 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.