Deuteronomy

Inheritance

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 67-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 067

Dictation Name: RR187AK67

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Praise ye the Lord, sing unto the Lord a new song and His praise in the congregation of saints. For the Lord taketh pleasure in His people. He will beautify the meek with salvation. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we rejoice in Thy mercies and in Thy care. We thank Thee that in a troubled world Thou art our peace. We thank Thee that in a world that is falling apart we know that Thou art building a city without hands whose maker Thou art. And we are called to be Thy people therein. Give us faith day by day to confront the powers of darkness and to be more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 21:15-17. Deuteronomy 21:15-17.

“If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated:

16 Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn:

17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.”

This is a part of the laws of inheritance; some believe its presence here is due to the preceding law, Deuteronomy 21:10-14, the law with respect to captive women. It assumes possibly that the man’s bad conscience might lead him to hate that woman and her son. This law covers of course the possibly also of polygamy which is forbidden in Leviticus 18:18. But God’s law controls even that which it forbids because it recognizes that men are sinners. The reverse attitude was that of the Soviet Union which viewed prostitution of a product only of capitalism and therefore held that it was non-existent in a socialist country even though it was widespread. Therefore they had no way of dealing with it, it did not exist, even though it was extremely prevalent. God’s law deals realistically with mankind. Practically in any society only a very, very small minority have ever been able to afford two wives let alone more than that. If there are two sons, one by each of the wives and both are godly, the older of the two, if the son of the hated, or less liked wife, cannot be set aside. He must receive a double portion. With two sons it would mean the elder received two third of the estate with the responsibility of caring for the elderly and the other son received one third. Now in verse eighteen through twenty three we are told it is the parental duty to denounce an evil son, a habitual offender, to the authorities. This is not only a form of disinheritance but also a step towards execution. Personal preference in other words cannot be determinative whether in inheritance or in the surrender of a delinquent son to the authorities. Faith must take priority over blood.

The words in verse fifteen, beloved and hated, are sharp because they are to indicate greater or lesser feelings of preference. God’s law must take priority over personal feelings. Now this law is very important to the context of history. Whether in Europe or Asia the exultation of personal preferences over any law led to a long history of bitter and murderous struggles over succession. The biblical law in early Europe prevailed, however, the latter decision in Europe to be governed strictly by primogeniture meant that crowns well deserving of good men went to evil and even mentally defective elder sons. God’s law requires character in the heir while protecting an orderly succession. Morecraft has summarized ably the major references to inheritance. First, as Paul sums it up in Second Corinthians 12:14 and as Solomon stated it centuries previously it is a parental duty to provide an inheritance for one’s children when possible. Second, parents are forbidden to set aside a godly oldest son. Third, they are forbidden to favor an ungodly son. Fourth, where there are no sons or no godly sons the inheritance goes to the daughters. Normally the dowry provided by the husband was a very rich form of inheritance for the daughter. Fifth, where there was no son nor daughter the next of kin could inherit. Sixth, the son of a concubine, that is a wife without a dowry, could inherit. Seventh, a maid could be her mistress’s heir but this was not normally approved of. Eighth, a slave could inherit and ninth, inheritance could not be transferred from one clan to another. Tenth, rulers or princes could give land to their sons but not permanently to servants and eleventh, the state cannot seize nor confiscate the properties of the people to give to persons or to the state. The world has failed to follow God’s law with respect to inheritances.

And this has meant that people have had no eye to the future because godly inheritance following God’s laws capitalizes the godly sons and heirs. It helps determine the future. The words in verse seventeen ‘he shall acknowledge his son’ are a technical legal term. To prevent the abuse of this law at some point in Hebrew history because it’s always been something that people have done, find a loophole or try and go around the law, it was forbidden to a father to dispose of his assets before his death to circumvent this law. The premise is is that God’s purpose outweighs ours. God wants the future of His kingdom to be capitalized by His people. To violate this law by favoring an ungodly son or setting God’s purpose aside for a private one is a sin, it decapitalizes God’s realm. Displacement of an heir on religious grounds however has a long history in the bible; Esau was set aside in favor of Jacob, and Adonijah in favor of Solomon. Esau’s line in the time of Herod claimed to be the messianic line but God had ruled otherwise. In Esau’s case he was favored by his father but not by God. Thomas Scott rightly pointed out that this law is not restricted to sons of two wives or even of two wives who succeed one another. It is valid wherever two sons or more than two are in a family. The purpose of the law is to prevent discrimination on personal grounds against the godly older son. Modern commentators come to this text sometimes blinded by the reference to two wives but the basic concern is the family under God. This law safe guards the godly heir. He cannot be set aside on arbitrary grounds. He can even though he is a devout person, if he is foolish, be set aside because there has to be both godly and sensible leadership. If the son is faithful to God the father must be faithful to him. God’s law is the standard, not personal feelings. On the other hands as verses eighteen through twenty three make clear an ungodly delinquent son has no standing whatsoever as an heir. As an incorrigible criminal he must be denounced to the authorities by his parents. Tried and if found guilty he must be executed.

However, even if he is not criminal if he is not a faithful one he must receive anything. The family in the bible is clearly God’s basic institution but the family is not its own end. Its purpose must be transcend itself it must serve God not itself. And the family must look ahead to the future. Paganism worships gods who were at best irresponsible if not evil. Homosexuality in the Greek religion existed in Olympus among the gods as witnessed Ganymede the cup bearer to the gods. His kidnapping by Zeus is given to us in flowery language, many scholars who speak of scripture with scorn write with loving words of the sodomite gods and try to conceal from the public the full truth about them. In the present century the abolition of all inheritance has become a social goal all over the world widely approved by intellectuals of the left. This has led to a marked hostility to the bible and its stress on a theologically governed doctrine of the family and inheritance. Inheritance controls the future and those who are anti-Christian do not want to see inheritance controlled by the godly, by the family. Since the enlightenment the socialist emphasis has been lifted and shifted from the family to property. It began with a very conservative emphasis. John Locke had an important part in this. The shift stressed property rather than the family. It was conducive to moving family property into the hand of the state. The slighting of the family which began with Locke, a bachelor, has led to a belief in the incompetence of family ownership in favor of state ownership. This revolution has gone hand in hand with the sexual revolution.

The older revolutionary slogan before World War One was “Free Love in a Free State” meaning an anarchistic or a Marxist state. It is not surprising that our text has been seen as a relic of a primitive past. Many commentators pass over it with a few words which treat the law as a curiosity but it is on the contrary a very relevant law. Inheritance is basic to any man’s view of the future. A future oriented people always recognize the importance of inheritance and the necessity for a religious perspective on the subject. A present oriented society prefers to use the potential inheritance of the next generation on present and short term activities. Our failure to consider the religious dimension of inheritance is a case of willful unconcern. As we have seen this law is routinely assumed to refer to a polygamous situation. This is a possible interpretation but by no means the only one nor necessarily the original one. We can grant first that the law covers the problem of heirship in a polygamous union. But second, this law can and does cover successive marriages by a widower. Such marriages were once common. In a marriage I knew of rather well which took place in the 1870s in the United States both the husband and the wife had lost their first spouse by death. Then they had a child together and came into the marriage, both of them, with children all living in the same family, all were godly children. The mother’s children had some inheritance by her deceased husband. The father’s preference was for the son by the second marriage but his first born son was a fine young man who he could not with justice set aside. This and like cases are covered by this law. Then third, divorces nowadays complicate the picture, many a divorce is followed by a migration to another part of the country. Some children of a second marriage have not met their older half-brothers and half-sisters. Such cases are also covered by this law.

Then fourth, there is still another factor. Which heir is the godly seed? Most deserving of a double portion and best suited to caring for the elderly mother or both the aged parents? In terms of the criteria of faith and character Ishmael was passed over in favor of Isaac. Jacob was given preference over Esau and Ruben the eldest was replaced by Judea. Then fifth, this law places the focus not on the mother but on the son. The father may with good reason hate the one wife or the late wife or the ex-wife but the important thing is not the woman but the son. The laws of inheritance are designed to compel us to view the future under God. The godly man must seek to capitalize the future. The common bumper sticker of the 1970s and 80s ‘we are spending our children’s inheritance’ is disgusting. It is a mark of an existentialist and a barbarian. Someone with no sense of the future, no love for his posterity, but such an attitude saturates every sphere of life today. Our politics is dedicated to spending our children’s future; we are not a nameless people. According to Genesis 2:19 even the naming or identification and classification of animals is important in God’s sight. How then does God name or define us? Our modern politics strips a countries wealth and inheritance for existentialist purposes and robs our children of a future. Let us pray.

Our Father, we give thanks unto Thee that in Thy wisdom Thou art more mindful of our future than are we. Give us grace to turn from our ways and follow Thy ways. To do Thy will so that Thy kingdom may indeed come. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The inheritance goes to the oldest who is the most godly and responsible. I have known of cases where the elder son was a very devout person but he was not a very provident person nor very capable as a manager and so the inheritance was given to the other boy because he was the one who would care for his mother or for his father if he were aged and infirm and more responsible. And would also be better able to be of help to his brother. So it went to the one who could under God be the most effective. Yes?

[Question] Did this rule out girls? In other words what if you had…[Rushdoony interrupts]

[Rushdoony] This is an important question now because the girls don’t receive a dowry which is supposed to be their inheritance and in terms of scripture is a very rich inheritance. We’ll come to that in a few weeks because the, well, just by way of jumping ahead a bit the civil tax was half a shekel of silver, half a weight of silver. The normal dowry was held to be something in the vicinity of a hundred shekels of silver. Now that’s a considerable amount. Very considerable amount. Well, this meant that a girl with a dowry really had very often a better inheritance than her brothers! But of course we’ve abandoned the dowry system although I’m glad to say that our influence is leading to its restoration and I just received a letter either yesterday or Friday from a young wife who because of what I had taught about the dowry told her husband according to scripture I’m only a concubine, an undowered wife, are you going to make me an honest woman, your wife! So he handed over all his savings to her with more to come.

Now, given our present situation where there is no dowry it is legitimate then to say here I have two or three or four or five children and the daughter is the godly one. The provident one, the strong one. This is my heir because she’s not been endowered and made an heir that way. But in a biblical society there is a capitalization of all the godly seed including the girls and the girls is the richest which is a remarkable fact. So no one can say the girl if a godly order prevails is not better endowed. Does that answer your question? Yes?

[Question] Some historians think that the Irish destroyed the stability of their society by dividing all the estate among all the children for successive generations which round up leaving everyone with a little bit of nothing.

[Rushdoony] That’s very true and that happened in this country. There are a few scholars that dealt with this, how in antiquity to the English laws of inheritance which irrevocably tied it to the eldest son no matter how bad he was. The American law after the war of independence destroyed that and required an equal division irrespective of any circumstances. And it immediately destroyed the stability of American society and what you might call aristocracy of faith and ability. So that it had a very destructive influence on this country. The sad fact is we have had no thorough study of the laws of inheritance in western civilization and how much damage they have done in the modern age to society. It was bad enough when primogeniture came in, that came in somewhere after the year of 1000 or better, 1100. Prior that it did not exist except perhaps here and there somebody might have followed it. But basically it was ability. Well, ultimately what destroyed European monarchies was not revolution but primogeniture. And what destroyed the aristocracy of Europe was the same thing, tying it to the eldest son irrevocably. Yes?

[Question] The [unknown] family in Italy lasted from the time of the Caesars until a generation ago by adopting bright individuals if they didn’t have any children that they considered capable.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That was done in biblical pattern because adoption when there was no godly heir was the biblical pattern and there are some who having examined the genealogies of Joseph and of Mary say that this apparently was done in some instances there also. It was considered totally legal and the person was the son. There were elements of this in Roman law. One aspect of it that led to a great deal of caution in adoption was that an adoption could not be revoked, so you adopted someone who you knew to be responsible and this is why when Paul uses the terminology of adoption and says that we are by the grace of God made heirs by adoption it means that we have an eternal security. God will not cast aside those whom he has adopted because they cannot be set aside. So the history of adoption and of inheritance is a very important one and it’s strange, it has not been dealt with. Perhaps not so strange because in the modern age scholarship has seen the state as the heir primarily. Yes?

[Question] It never fails, but every lecture you give we always speak of the darkness in this world today, how great it is, how it prevails now, gives me great peace to think of Psalm 34:21 and 22 where it says : “Evil shall slay the wicked and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate and the Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate.”

[Rushdoony] Yes very good.

[Question] It gives me great peace to know that they are going to destroy themselves.

[Rushdoony] Yes they are, yes they are. Well the decisive man in politics in the modern age has been John Locke, a bachelor. And he influenced the politics of the modern age in a very thorough way and the family did not have much place in his thinking. What he does say about the family is just an echo of that which still was strong around him but it was not basic to his perspective on the future. Well our time is about up, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee for Thy word. Thy word gives us strength and peace and it enables us to become more than conquerors in Christ. We have a lamp that lightens the darkness of our world and teaches us the way that we should go. Our Father we thank 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.