Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Demand for Equality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Demand for Equality

Genre:

Track: 23

Dictation Name: RR181M23

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Year:

Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for all thy many blessings and for the certainty of thy grace, thy loving-kindness, and thy government. We commit unto thee these, thy people, thy sons and daughters, thy children. Thou knowest, O Lord, every burden of their heart, every need. In thy grace and mercy, minister unto them and bless them. Protect them all the days of their life, and make them joyful in thee and in thy kingdom. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture this day is Numbers 12:1-16. Our subject: The Demand for Equality. Numbers 12. “And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.) And the Lord spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out. And the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both came forth. And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them; and he departed. And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said unto Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother's womb. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee. And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again. And Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days: and the people journeyed not till Miriam was brought in again. And afterward the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran.”

Our study of Numbers has been dealing with the waywardness of Israel, richly blessed by God and yet, ungrateful. We have a numbers, well the sin related to Numbers 11 wherein gratitude is the reason for God’s judgment. Here it is envy. Apparently, Zipporah, Moses’s wife, died. Although her father and brother were godly me, Zipporah lacked their faith, or at least she lacked faithfulness. She was, in every instance we meet her, not much to commend in a wife, and she did give evidence of pettiness and was a problem to Moses. Apparently, she had died and Moses had remarried an Ethiopian, or more accurately, a Cushite woman, of a group related to the Midianites. That is, of a people related to his ex-wife. Zipporah’s influence on Moses had been of no account. Miriam and Aaron, as his sister and brother, were those closest to Moses. As a result, they were the ones most capable of influencing him up until this point. Now, there was another woman in the picture, one more agreeable to Moses, and quite obviously truly a helpmeet. So, there was an immediate reaction: envy. Miriam was very clearly, very obviously the leader in this, and Aaron, once before in the golden calf episode, had proven himself to be a weak man, and now again, he proves himself to be a weak follower, led by his sister.

As a result of Moses’s marriage, both Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses. They challenged his primacy as God’s chosen man. In verse 2, we read, “Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us?” Now this was partially true, but half lies are sometimes the deadliest kind. In many instances, God, as we read through Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, speaks to both Aaron and Moses, but it is primarily Moses that He speaks to. In Exodus 15:20-21, Miriam is called a prophetess, one who speaks for God as she led all the women in their celebration of God’s deliverance. Both Aaron and Miriam in Micah 6:4 are referred to as having been used of God, but this is minor. The preeminence of Moses is very obvious. Anyone reading the accounts can see its primacy. It was even more obvious to those who were there on the scene.

Now, in verse 3, Moses is referred to as the meekest man in all the earth. The sentence is in parenthesis, having been added to the Mosaic text by God’s appointed helper. Perhaps Joshua was the man who put together all of these and added that inspired by God, but the word translated as meek has a very inappropriate connotation at times in the English. The same is true of the word humble. We have cheapened some very important words. We think, at times, of the hypocritical Uriah Heep of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. This is a radical perversion of its meaning and it warps all of the Bible.

Walter Riggins, a Scottish commentator, has called attention to the four inflections in the Hebrew of the word “meek.” First, it means poor and needy; second, powerless, without influence; then third, oppressed by the powerful; and fourth, therefore, one who relies solely on God in life. Well, this is accurate, but it can be very misleading. Unless we see this poor, powerless, and oppressed condition as coming from God and leading to a sole trust in Him. In this sense, the word meek has been defined as meaning “broken to harness, trained and made useful by God for His purposes,” and this is a very important difference. In this sense therefore, a meek man can be strong and forceful in dealing with the ungodly, because he is under God’s discipline, not man’s. Moses was a forceful man. He was strong as he stood up to men, but he was meek, tamed, in relationship to God.

What is now identified as meekness means subservience to men, not to God. When our Lord tells us, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” he doesn’t mean Blessed are the mousey. What He is saying is blessed are those who are broken into usefulness to God, rather than to subservience to men. They are the men who shall inherit the earth.

God refers to Moses, in verse 7, as “my servant Moses.” This is a title also given to Abraham in Genesis 26:24, and to Caleb in Numbers 14:24. The prophets are also termed “servants of the Lord,” and Jesus is called, in Isaiah 53:11, “The great servant of the Lord.” So it’s not a title that the Bible uses casually.

Moses found himself unready to deal with his envy from the two people who were so very close to him; Miriam and Aaron, his sister and his brother, and both older than he. Miriam had been important to him since childhood, and so he was taken aback. He did not know how to cope with the problem. God, therefore, spoke for Moses. Suddenly, we are told in verse 4, all three were summoned to the door of the sanctuary, for God ordered them in to face the truth, and the pillar of cloud enveloped them, and God’s anger was very clear, according to verse 9. All prophets and peoples other than Moses whom God uses, He says He had made His word known and would make it known through a revelation, or a dream. The word translated as a dream has a meaning in Hebrew of a binding, or a dominance. He summons as a man so that He can speak, so the person is silenced. That’s what it means, so that God can speak through him.

All to whom God gave such an experience were on a lower level than Moses. To whom God spoke directly because he faithful in all my house, completely loyal to God and His kingdom. God says that He speaks to Moses as mouth to mouth, as friend to friend, plainly and familiarly, not in dark speeches. How dare they speak against Moses. In doing so, they spoke against God.

When the cloud lifted from the sanctuary it became at once apparent that Miriam was far gone with leprosy, eaten up with it. Aaron however, was not so afflicted. Miriam and Aaron were thus, both publicly put to shame; Miriam, with her leprosy and Aaron, because he had none. It made clear that Miriam was the main offender, and that Aaron, as in the golden calf episode, was a weakling. He was, in effect, of no account, and he was shamed by God as a non-entity in the situation. Hers was a physical humiliation, his, a spiritual humiliation. At this point, Aaron spoke more like a man. He confessed their guilt, and begged that it be not laid upon them. Spare us from our folly, he says. Entreat the Lord for us, he asks of Moses in verses 11-12. Aaron thereby, confessed in asking Moses to entreat for them, the priority of Moses against which they had just spoken shortly before. Aaron’s description of Miriam’s changed appearance compares her to a premature birth, a miscarriage in her appearance. So, she was in a frightful condition.

Moses immediately prayed to God for Miriam’s healing. God’s response is especially important for the church of our time to understand. IN verse 14, God tells Moses, If Miriam’s father, or the father of any woman, spat in her face, would she not hide herself for a week out of shame? Now, this refers to a public act of contempt. If a daughter, a wife, or a son shamed their father, such an act would be, at the most, a public disavow of any relationship forever, or at the very least, their public disgrace and separation until restitution and repentance were made. In this case, Miriam had to reside outside the camp, separated from her family and all others, until the week ended and then she rejoined the camp cleansed of her leprosy.

Now some commentators say that Aaron was not stricken with leprosy because he was the high priest and therefore, necessary. This is ridiculous. It was God who made Aaron high priest, and He could raise up another man for that office. There are no necessary people in God’s sight, and to believe so is madness. Verse 9 speaks of the anger of the Lord, and some translate it as a burning anger. Because the sin of Aaron and Miriam had been a public offense, God subjected them to public humiliation and judgment.

Some now a days have seen the sin of Miriam and Aaron as an example of racial prejudice. Well, racial prejudice is a modern thing. If this had been the case, it would have been shown towards Zipporah much earlier. It was rather a resentment against anyone other than themselves having a closeness to Moses. It is clear, also, that whereas Moses is ready to forgive and forget, God was not. Therefore, the seven days of shame and a mild rebuke to Moses for asking an immediate restoration, this tells us something about God, and Otto Scott’s words, which are going around the globe now, “God is no buttercup.” God here shows mercy, but not without a penalty.

Well, we must now, in the light of this, look again at verse 3, the reference to Moses as a meek man. Philip J. Budd refers as to Psalm 9 for its meaning. “The meek will He guide in judgment; and the meek will He teach His way.” Psalm 37:11 is similar, and of course, we have it in Matthew 5:5, the blessed meek who shall inherit the earth. Budd says that the word is often used as a trustful attitude. Not being self-assertive, not being egoistic. Thus, Moses was a forceful man, but not egoistic. It was God’s glory, not his own, that concerned Moses. This is why God asks Miriam and Aaron, “wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” What Moses had not taken as an insult, God saw as an insult to Himself.

What Miriam and Aaron had done was to claim equality with Moses, and God found this offensive. This false claim to equality is another aspect of Numbers that is no longer preached about. We have, since the French Revolution, come to regard equality as a great virtue, even as a humanistic inequality was seen as a social necessity prior to that Revolution. What God requires of a society is justice. Men want their will, whether it’s equality or inequality, be done. My will be done, men say. Here, the pretention to equality with Moses was an insult to God, and He took vengeance. To build a society on equality or inequality is injustice. We must build in terms of God’s justice.

God asks in every instance, why are you not afraid of me? Such a sin strikes at the foundations of social order. It reduces a society to lawlessness and anarchy. The demand for equality, God strikes at here. Older commentators like Professor W. Binney, called the action of Aaron and Miriam sedition. It’s interesting that now a days, no one ever uses such a term nor calls it a false claim to equality, because they don’t dare use the word equality in any derogatory sense. Equality and envy have now become major political and social virtues. So, we see again why Numbers and the other books of Moses are bypassed in our antinomian age. God made Miriam unclean because of her envy and her demand for equality, and He shamed Aaron, who now hardly appeared a man.

Watson’s comment of a few generations ago is more appropriate than ever, “Modern society making much of sanitation and all kinds of improvements and precautions, intended to prevent the spread of epidemics and mitigate their effect, has also some thought of moral disease. Persons guilty of certain crimes are confined in prisons, or cut off from the people, but of the greater number of moral maladies, no account is now taken, and there is no widespread gloom over the nation, nor rest of affairs when some hideous case of social immorality or business depravity has come to light. It is but a few who pray for those who have the evil heart and wait sympathetically for their cleansing. Ought not the reorganization of society to be on a moral rather than an economic basis? We should be nearer the general wellbeing if it were reckoned a disaster when any employer oppressed those under him, or workmen were found indifferent, or a great crime disclosed the low state of morality, it is the defeat of armies and navies, the overthrow of measures in government that occupy our attention as a people, and seem often to obscure every moral and religious thought, or if injustice is the topic, we find the point of it in this: That one class is rich while the other is poor. That money, not character, is lost in shameful contention.”

In Watson’s day, politics and economics were seen as the means to the salvation of society, and the consequences of that false faith are now all around us. In Psalm 94:20, the psalmist asks, “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” Men have enacted evil by laws, legalizing equality and inequality, ingratitude and envy, and they wonder why evil prospers. We see again why this chapter is neglected. No doubt, if some feminist were to learn of this chapter, she would use it to show how sexist and anti-feminist God and the Bible are. The concern of the Bible, however, is with God’s salvation, with sin, with His justice, grace, and mercy. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thanks unto thee that thy word is truth. Indeed, oh Lord, our age has sinned and gone astray, and has made things that are evil in thy sight to be good. It has called injustice justice, and has turned the moral universe upside down. Oh Lord, our God, bring judgment upon the ungodly and cleanse the world of this ungodliness. Make us again a righteous people, and make us fearless, confident, and victorious in thy service. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}ask for equality are those who feel unequal.

[Rushdoony] What’s that?

[Audience] The only ones who ask for equality are those who feel unequal.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes, and that was the case with Miriam and with Aaron, and it was envy because they no longer had influence and they had shared in the limelight with Moses, and therefore, they were angry, and of course, what you’ve said explains everything that has happened in this country in the recent years. Those who simply are not competent are demanding that everything be leveled to their level. We had the levelers at the time of the English Revolution, a group who wanted a leveling of all things, and they used the name of Christ to demand that, and we have some in the churches still doing that. Are there any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] I remember my first brush with the misuse of the word meek in the 1950’s was, they had a sign in college, Rachel Carson’s book The Silent Spring, where {?} where she defined meek as insects will inherit the earth, if man didn’t turn back. {?} old Webster’s dictionary to find the definition in biblical terms.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, there are some who would like the insects to inherit the earth, and they alone left their group to act as caretakers, and just as in the French Revolution, they argued as to how many of the French they should eliminate to have a workable population. We have that same mentality today among many, many groups, and it is still as it has always been: evil. Any other questions or comments? Well, as you can see, the relevance of the books of Moses is an amazing one, and the fact that they are neglected today, not only by society as large, but by the churches as well, tells us why we are in trouble. Let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father, thy word is truth, and thy word speaks to us and to our world. Give, O Lord, us grace, that we may, by thy cleansing word, cleanse this generation of its wickedness, that we may again restore this country and make it again a godly nation. We thank thee that it is thy will that shall be done, that he that believeth shall not make haste. Give us patience therefore, knowing that thy kingdom, thy will 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.

End of tape