Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

Moses’s Blessing

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: Moses’s Blessing

Genre:

Track: 17

Dictation Name: RR181J17

Location/Venue:

Year:

The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee in this joyous season that thou art on the throne, that thy will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven, that thy purposes shall be accomplished, and the wages of sin are inescapably and inevitably death, that the wages of faith, of trust in thee, are righteousness and everlasting life, and so our God, we come into thy presence, rejoicing in these thy mercies, thine assured promises in Jesus Christ, the certainty of grace, and the blessedness of thy mercy. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Let us turn now to Numbers 10:33-36. Moses’s Blessing. Numbers 10:33-36. “And they departed from the mount of the Lord three days' journey: and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days' journey, to search out a resting place for them. And the cloud of the Lord was upon them by day, when they went out of the camp. And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when it rested, he said, Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel.”

The cloud of God’s presence went with the covenant people as they marched. We are told in verse 34 that it was upon them by day, that is, it overshadowed them, so that they were both led by it and also protected from the sun. We are told in verse 33 that this first stage of their travel was a three days’ journey. While they rested each day, they did not make camp since they were moving on in the morning.

Normally, the ark was carried by the Kohathites in the middle of the line of march. In this instance, to indicate God’s signal and blessing, the ark preceded the marchers together with the cloud. Since en enemy might well attack the vanguard of the marchers, the ark and the cloud at the front set forth God’s protecting promise and power. We cannot imagine how real God’s presence was in this march. We know that Moses spoke to the ark at this time, as to God. This was not a normal nor a routine fact, but it indicates that God, at this point, gave a very special manifestation of himself to Israel and to Moses. This made then the complaints and whining of the people which we find in Numbers 11:1, all the more evil in God’s sight. T.E. Espin was right in calling each forward movement and each rest of the ark as having a sacramental character.

Central to the text are Moses’s prayers or blessings, in verses 35 and 36. F.B. Huey, Jr. observed, “The prayer of verse 35 seems more appropriate as a battle cry.” And this is the reason by Moses’s prayer in verse 35 has not been popular, nor too well known. There are, in fact, two things about it that have led people to relegate it to a primitive stage of religion, which is what some scholars call it. The first is the militancy of the words. “Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered,” or “Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered,” but the whole of David’s Psalm 68 is a development of this particular prayer. The first eight verses of David’s Psalm 68 give us its spirit. “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name Jah, and rejoice before him. A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.”

“God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness; Selah: The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God: even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.”

God cannot be limited to those things approved by men, that is, love, mercy, and peace. He is, indeed, as David declares, the God of justice, a protector of orphans and widows, and much, much more. That God is much more than what polite liberals are agreed upon, scripture tells us, “He is a consuming fire,” Hebrews 12:29 tells us. To limit God is to deny Him.

Israel wanted God to meet their expectations and to be someone who ratified their hopes and expectations. It was for this reason that immediately after this, in Numbers 11:1, we read of God’s quick and fiery judgment upon Israel. It is popular now among the dispensational and rapture-oriented churchmen to speak of God’s unconditional love for Israel. In fact, the most recent prayer breakfast in Washington in late January had, as its theme, God’s unconditional love for Israel. There is nothing unconditional about a covenant. A covenant is a contract. It binds both parties. God’s love for Israel or for the church, or for us as individuals can never be unconditional. The covenant binds a party to total obedience to the covenant law and the covenant Lord. The covenant with Israel was broken when Christ was crucified. The covenant is now being broken by many churches, by their apostasy, and they face God’s judgment.

We cannot expect God’s blessing if we are unwilling to pray with Moses, “Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered.” The alternative is to allow them to flourish and to have their way. Then they become accursed to us for failing to see what God’s enemies are.

This prayer has traditionally been known as Moses’s blessing, precisely because Moses prays for deliverance from the prosperity and success of all God’s enemies. The second part of this brief prayer is, and “Let them also that hate him flee before him.” Well, it is now an intellectual fashion to decry all hate. Supposedly it manifests a terrible mental state. I once asked a person who condemned all hate, although he was very, very unloving towards me, if he did not hate murder and rape. His confused answer was that such things should be regretted, and however strongly we felt about the act, we should condemn the sin rather than the sinner. But sin is not a thing. It has no existence apart from man. It is the act of man, and it is the outworking of the mind and heart of men. Our Lord tells us in Matthew 7:15-17: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

Now then, what are false prophets? “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit,” and our Lord goes on and on in that long passage to insist on an absolute relationship between a man’s heart and his actions. So, how does he define the false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves? Why, there are these love babies who say, “We must hate the sin but love the sinner.” Remember, anyone who says that, according to our Lord’s words, is a false prophet. He may have sheep’s clothing, but he is a ravening wolf, and a ravening wolf is the most dangerous.

Thus, our Lord makes very clear that we can and must judge people by their fruits, by their works, by their lives. There is a correlation between a tree and its fruits, between a man’s heart and his outward life. More important, as our Lord tells us, it is evil men, false prophets who wear an outward disguise of love, but are really ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing. It is precisely men who claim that we cannot know what is in their heart who are false prophets.

In Psalm 97:10 we are told, “Ye that love the Lord hate evil.” In Psalm 139:19-22, David recognized the inseparable connection between death and evil, between God’s judgment and evildoers. In verses 19-22 of that Psalm, David says, “Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men. For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.”

In Matthew 5:44, our Lord commands us to love our enemies. Petty and trivial hostilities are commonplace. We are to pray for such people and love them. That is, we must obey God’s law in relationship to them because love is the fulfilling, the putting into force of the law. We are thus told to pray for our personal enemies, where the enmity is a matter of trivialities, but where the enemies of God are concerned, we cannot treat their hatred as a minor matter. They must be our enemies in a profound sense, if we are God’s people, and their enmity is governed by a desire for our destruction because we are God’s. We cannot be unjust towards them, but we must recognize the fact of a deep enmity towards us.

The second prayer, or blessing, of Moses is, “Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel.” This blessing was pronounced when the ark rested. Proximity to the ark and the pronouncement of these two blessings meant proximity to God, to His consuming fire. This is why judgment, in Numbers 11:1, the next verse, comes quickly when Israel complained. Nearness to God means nearness to blessings and curses. This is why Peter declares in 1 Peter 4:17, “Judgment must begin at the House of God,” the church. The Christian family and its children thus have a greater liability to judgment than to others, and greater openness to blessings.

Now this second prayer, or benediction, can be read, “Return, O Lord, unto the myriads of thousands of Israel,” and some believe, with good reason, that the many thousands refers not to individuals, but to families, because Israel was divided into units of ten families with a captain, or elder, over each. Then, fifties, then hundreds, and then the basic governmental unit, the thousands, and this persisted in Christendom. As I pointed out before, the basic governmental unit in England and in the Colonies, and beyond the Colonial period, and our justices of the peace, were survivors of the Hundreds Courts, courts for every hundred families.

Individualism and social atomism have not been normal to civilization but appear in their decline. The basic family unit in Israel was essential to its governmental structure of families under tens, hundreds, and thousands as their ruling courts and powers. By invoking the presence and blessing of God on the people, Moses also opened them to God’s judgment above any judgment against their enemies. Just as privileges involve responsibilities, so too God’s blessings require also that we accept His judgments. It is a mark of antinomianism that it wants only pleasing things from God. This is why these two blessings, or benedictions, of Moses are so very, very important. “Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered. Let them that hate thee flee before thee, and return, O Lord, unto the myriad thousands, unto the families of Israel.” Let us pray.

O Lord, our God, we give thanks unto thee for thy word, and we thank thee that thou hast called us to be thy people, and summoned us to love our enemies and to hate thy enemies. Grant, O Lord, that day by day, we move in the sure and certain knowledge that because we are thy covenant people, thy love, thy mercy, and thy grace unto us is conditional upon faithfulness, upon obedience. Make us, therefore, thy faithful people. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] Romans 5:8 says, “God surrendered His love toward us and yet while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,” and Ephesians 2:4-5, “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;),” are chief examples of God loving the sinner but hating the sin? [21:58.60

[Rushdoony] Those are evidences of God’s grace and mercy, His electing grace, but what His law for us is that, having been gracious unto us, we must be faithful to His covenant, which is a contract. The word “covenant” in the Bible, b’rit, can be translated as contract, or treaty, and the very form of the covenant as we have it in the Bible, we find again and again, or archeologists have in the tablets of Antiquity, and it’s always a contract. So, God used the very form of the contract known to all of Antiquity to set forth that His relationship to us is not unconditional. It is of grace, which is a different thing, but it is contractual. We must be faithful. Yes?

[Audience] You mentioned that the hundreds family position of responsibility being justice of the priest. Does the elected office of constable have any roots in this same kind of . . .?

[Rushdoony] Very good point. The constable comes right out of England, and he was closely tied to the Hundreds Court. Yes, he was a part of this structure of families organized by tens and hundreds, and therefore, you had a local court, and the value of it was that the Hundreds Court could not be dominated by say, the most prominent or the weather man in the community, and you were living close together, and therefore, there was a strong sense of, well, if you wanted to live here, you administer justice. It was a very good system. It was not infallible, but it was very effective. There are so many things that we have in our system which are now relics, but which come straight out of Biblical law.

I was very interested, recently someone telephoned me about trying to locate a copy of Clark’s Biblical Law. This was a lawyer. Now, Clark’s Biblical Law was published by a legal firm in this country and reprinted, I think the last time was in the forties, and it was simply in legal terminology and language, a compendium of all biblical law and all decisions out of American law, on all levels, local, state, and federal, of decisions substantiating this or that law, and being rendered in terms of it. Now, most people don’t even know that such a think as Clark’s Biblical Law once existed, that it was regularly used, that it was a book for lawyers which was simply biblical law. That was the whole thing from start to end. I was very much surprised that the lawyer had ever heard of it, but I found out he first learned of it through seeing references to it in my Institutes of Biblical Law, then he discovered how widely it was once used and discovered something of the printing history, but now was trying to locate a copy. Clark’s Biblical Law. If you ever run across a copy in a bookstore, grab it because it’s become . .

[Audience] Read{?} Moses asking God to scatter His enemies and your comments on {?} like that {?}, do you have any theory as to what has happened to the Christians who can no longer defend their faith?

[Rushdoony] They’re going to judged, of course, and that’s a very important question, because consider the glee with which so many Americans viewed the destruction of cities in Iraq, and yet they will object if you talk about God’s hatred of His enemies, or about Hell. Now, in direct violation of scripture we did things in war after war that God forbids, but it seems to be alright if we do it, and we don’t realize the kind of hell we are creating. Moreover, as one scholar has of late pointed out, war is becoming so lawless, and declarations of war are now really passé, that what we will see before long are unmarked planes dropping nuclear weapons, and one man has predicted that Libya and Israel will be among the first to go, and others as well, so the whole world may see the destruction of cities unless we would add, there is a return to a biblical faith, but lawlessness in warfare is increasing to the point that a scholar looking at things objectively says, “The next step will be anonymous planes eliminating dams they don’t like, for example, because both Turkey and Iraq have created dams that offend their neighbors, eliminating nations they don’t like. So, we do face horrors unless there is a change. So, hatred is growing exponentially, but if we talk about the need of hating God’s enemies, somehow we are moral monsters.

[Audience] The casualty figures for Iraq have not been {?} made this week, high commander of the United States Army said a hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers, which we buried with bulldozers in the desert. The casualty figures for the cities have not been released.

[Rushdoony] Yes, and this is why some experts in the area are announcing cities are doomed, because unmarked planes will start dropping super bombs within the next generation, and what’s to prevent it, short of a change of faith, a change of heart? People are too ready to say, “Well, that’s the way things are now a days, and that’s the way war should be conducted,” rather than “As for me and my house, we will live in terms of the word of God.” So, we do face horrors.

[Audience] Well, we’re already inflicted them.

[Rushdoony] Yes, we’ve inflicted them, so why shouldn’t they be inflicted upon us? Are there any other questions or comments? Well, with that we will conclude, and with a very wonderful fact that next week we will be dealing with and celebrating the Resurrection, so that for us, there is the supreme hope. Let us pray.

Thy word, O God, is truth, and thy judgments are altogether righteous and true. Make us faithful to thy word, joyful in it. Teach us to bow down and worship thee rather than our will, and grant that thy will may be done by us, and thy kingdom come. We thank thee, our Father, that thou art with thy people. Bless us and judge us, guide us and correct us that we may, in all things, be faithful unto thee, and rejoice in 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.